The Secrets of Jin-Shei (64 page)

And then, before she could move, before she could speak, she saw the thing that she had made shiver and then fall into dust so fine that it stirred at a breath.

But it had lived. For a brief, shining moment it had
lived.

“It was that easy?” Tai breathed. “Making a doll to hold the breath of life? That was all it took? Why could Lihui not do this long before now?”

“Because,” Nhia said, “he did not have that elixir. What was in the potion, Khailin? What did you have to do to make this work?”

Khailin shot her a look at once defiant and terrified. “You don’t want to know, Nhia.”

“Yes, I…” Nhia began, but Khailin shook her head violently.

“No.
No.
I will not speak of it, not here, not where I can be … I made it live, but it is gone.”

“What do you mean, it is gone? Gone where?” Nhia said, her hand tightening convulsively.

For answer, Khailin reached into the pocket of her tunic and brought out a handful of dust. “Gone,” she said.

“Khailin … Khailin … what have you done?” Nhia gasped, appalled.

Khailin flinched. “I succeeded,” she murmured, her face chalk white. And then she fainted.

“Nhia, what do we …” Tai began, but Nhia, after she helped lay Khailin down on a low couch, straightened with steely purpose in her eyes.

“Cahan, this is beyond me,” Nhia said. “Take care of her, Tai, I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?” Tai called, her voice trembling on the verge of panic.

Nhia paused, turning back to look at Tai. Her face was grim. “I’m going to get Maxao,” she said. “Whatever he is, or says he has once been, he has knowledge of these things.”

Left alone, Tai darted in and out of the room where Khailin lay, setting cloths wrung out in cool water on her
jin-shei-bao
’ forehead and her wrists where the pulse beat. It was a while before Khailin came to, but when she did, she was lucid.

“I need to get back to my laboratory,” she said.

“No,” Tai said firmly. “You’re staying right here. Nhia has gone to fetch help.”

“Help? Whose?” Khailin laughed, a bitter, brittle laugh. “Liudan? She can’t do anything.”

“Not Liudan. Maxao.”

Khailin’s eyes narrowed. “Maxao would see me dead for this,” she said flatly.

“Not so,” said the voice of the Sage from the door, where he had apparently just materialized with Nhia at his side. “You may have disappointed me in going on with a project which I told you would come to no good end, but the fact remains that you appear to have wrought something that has eluded many of us for centuries. This is a mystery that has excited the students of the Way since the day the world was born. Did you think that Liudan was the first to crave immortality? Or Lihui? Lihui took what he could get, but what he did with his life was flawed, imperfect. You have succeeded in doing something quite different. And you may have given us the perfect weapon.”

“Weapon? In which war? Against whom?”

“Lihui will learn of this thing that you have made, if he does not know of it already,” Maxao said. “This is the opportunity that I have been waiting for. He will come for the secret of its existence, of this I am certain. With this at his disposal, he can cure his physical disabilities—all he needs is another shell, another body, and this one will be perfectly immortal, with no need for replenishment.”

“But it’s gone,” Khailin said. “It’s no more than a pile of lifeless dust …”

“Oh, he will come.” Maxao smiled grimly. “And when he does, we will be ready for him.”

“We? …”

“You and I will bait the trap for Lihui, Khailin. We had better return to your laboratory. There are things there that we will need.”

Tai stood up, her eyes hot with anger.

“You don’t care how many of us die,” she snapped. “Nhia said you were a good man. I don’t believe that anymore. No good man would glory in this, in what it has brought, in Yuet’s …”

Her voice broke, and Maxao turned his blind eyes inexorably to where she stood. “And what,” he said, “is a good man? We work toward a goal, all of us. Are we good when we pursue that goal or are we good when we let
circumstances divert us from that pursuit? What would you do if you needed to clear your path toward the light of your destiny, or to correct a past mistake which has blighted all of your life?”

“Not kill,” Tai whispered.

Maxao nodded. “That is good. Then you are better than I am. It is a different kind of good. As for me, if a death clears a way for a good thing, then the death was in a good cause. I am sorry your friend is gone, but that is just the Way—that was where her path led her. Someday her memory may be a bright and holy thing.” His mouth twisted into one of his angry, wolfish smiles. “In the meantime, my young friend, we have an opportunity to rid the world of a fell thing, of a spreading darkness—if you will, of a disease which could kill more than you dream of. Perhaps, in her death, your healer friend has performed the final and glorious act of healing and will be remembered for it for many years to come.”

“You just want your revenge on Lihui,” Tai said.

Maxao raised an eyebrow. “And if I do?”

“You didn’t like what Khailin was trying to do at Liudan’s asking, so you tried to stop her. But she was not the only one involved in that secret endeavor, and because you decided then that it was a bad thing to do and revealed that secret to the world, Yuet paid with her life.” Tai’s eyes filled with tears again. “You are the most arrogant, most heartless, most selfish man that I have ever laid my eyes on.”

“Life is selfish,” Maxao said bluntly. “Selfishness is how we survive. You think the world cares about us, that we should care about it?”

“The world, maybe not,” Tai whispered. “But there are people in that world, people whom we love. You destroy whatever is in your path, and it doesn’t matter to you if you care for it, or used to care for it once. If it stands in your way, it’s doomed.”

“Yes,” said Maxao. “I do what I have to do; I do what needs to be done.”

He held out his arm. Khailin hesitated for a final moment and then, her eyes full of tears, stepped up to lay her hand on it. Nhia backed away as the two of them passed through the door, and out of the room, out into the streets where Yuet had died, seeking the lifeless, deathless thing that Khalin had made.

“I
t is gone, Maxao. How do you intend to bait a trap with a thing that no longer exists?”

“The creature is of secondary importance,” Maxao said.

“But you told the others …”

“I did not tell them everything,” said Maxao gently “Don’t be naive. Lihui will not come for that lumbering thing that you created; he knows as well as you how to make an image of a man. What he will come for is the elixir you used to do it.”

“But I failed,” whispered Khailin. “It is dust and ashes …”

“Yes,” Maxao pointed out, “but it is a dust which had no right to live and yet lived at your word. The rest is refinement. Lihui has made an obsession of this endeavor, and he now knows that you have discovered the secret. The mere act of giving breath of your breath and blood of your blood is not enough.”

“How do you know what I did?” Khailin gasped.

“I have read the same old scrolls, my dear,” Maxao said. “So has Lihui. You, apparently, found the secret ingredient that eluded us both—but as for the rest of it, it has been common knowledge for centuries.”

“I don’t have the elixir any longer,” Khailin said.

“I know. But inside your head is locked the secret of how to make more,” Maxao said.

“So it isn’t the creature that’s the bait,” Khailin said, very white. “It’s me.”

“I will be there,” Maxao said.

Khailin did not feel reassured. Her skin tightened with the memory of Lihui’s hands on her, his casual possession of her body and her mind, the malevolent authority granted to him by her own willing act of submission.

His scream as the acid exploded into his face.

Khailin looked up, to see Maxao’s blind eyes turned on her in a sightless scrutiny.

“You bested him once,” he said, “and you were alone then. Do not be afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” Khailin said.
Merely terrified. Not of Lihui himself, but of his right to claim me. I belonged to him, once. I still do.

A part of her already knew how he would come to her—the easiest way, the way of a simple act of will, the ghost road. Maxao had said that first the trap must be baited, that Lihui must learn of Khailin’s achievement, and that this should be left up to him; when he and Khailin returned to Khailin’s laboratory he withdrew into isolation for the better part of an hour, to set the lure, to free the secret knowledge into the places where Lihui would find it and lust after its possession. Then he had returned, and had told Khailin that the only thing they could do after that was wait.

“But the creature …”

“Read your scrolls more carefully, child,” Maxao said. “You cannot share the same space with a thing like you have made. It is, in a lot of respects, you, yourself. It unbalances the world to have both entities in the same place. There can never be more than one in existence. The danger in creating a perfect double of your spirit which is gifted with this immortality is simply that it might destroy you, the original you, so that it can take your place. In that, at least, you did not succeed, and for this we can be thankful.”

“But how can you …?”

“You know this, too. You know of the ways that you can extinguish the spark of independent life that another possesses and then feed it your elixir, and breathe your own essence into it, just like you have done with your double. Both will then be you. And you cannot both exist. It is against all laws.”

“Wouldn’t it die, this other, just like my creature did, if I were to do this?”

“It is possible,” Maxao agreed. “But think on this—before you did what you did, people were ready to swear it could never be done. Taking it a step further could merely mean gaining a greater understanding of what you have achieved. It’s a worthy prize.”

Khailin laughed, a laugh which had an edge of madness to it. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

“Because it is something that you know, or that you were on the point of discovering,” Maxao said. “And because I now know that it is knowledge that you will never use again.”

“You put much faith into me,” Khailin murmured.

“I always have,” said Maxao.

“How touching,” said a third voice, a familiar one, full of remembered honey and laced with a gentle sarcasm. Khailin jumped, but Maxao did not even turn his head.

“Welcome, Lihui,” Maxao said. “I was wondering how long it would take you.”

“You left me to die to take up with that old relic?” Lihui said, turning to Khailin. “What has he been telling you, my dear? Haven’t you found out already that whatever power Maxao might once have had
I now possess?”

“Not all,” Maxao said tranquilly. “I have a memory of sight, Lihui. I have one chance to use that, and I have long hoarded it until this moment. You thought you took everything from me? You were wrong, Lihui-
mai
.”

Distracted, fascinated, Khailin failed to pay attention to Lihui for one fatal moment, and when a clawlike hand closed viciously around her wrist she cried out as she stumbled toward her captor. Lihui himself wore a smile every bit as wolfish as his erstwhile mentor’s.

“So destroy us both, then,” he taunted. “Go on, old man. Do it. Go out in style—your old pupil, the most brilliant you’ve ever had, and your newest disciple, with one blow.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head, in mocking sympathy. “But oh, I forgot—kill her, and you will never know the secret of the Golden Elixir.”

“Neither will you,” Maxao said. His mouth thinned. “You know, you both know, that if I had to destroy you both here, I will do it.”

“No, Maxao. You won’t.” Lihui’s voice was a weapon again, velvet-sheathed steel. “Remember, I know your weakness. You pour too much of yourself into your disciples. You have invested too much in this one already. You won’t destroy that.”

“You mean as I once failed to act quickly enough to destroy you?” Maxao laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. “I learn from my mistakes, my young disciple. And you were a harsh lesson to me. No, I do not destroy things of value lightly. But, Lihui, she is
nothing
in this game now. Without her you cannot leave this room. You left whomever you used as
your eyes out on the ghost road to die, again, as you’ve done many times before.”

“I’ll never go with you alive!” Khailin flung at Lihui.

For a long moment Maxao hesitated, as though weighing something in his mind. Khailin had time to wonder bitterly if her own life and all she had accomplished in it were really so utterly insignificant in Maxao’s reckoning.

Lihui’s grip tightened on her arm, and he stepped back, pulling her against him, her ear against his lips.
“Remember the house you burned”
he whispered intently.

The ghost road …

Khailin tried to clamp down on her memories, but they came flooding back unbidden—the pagoda roofs, the dragons in the door which had burned her if she dared to touch them … the cold gray ashes into which she had turned all these things … enough, enough was there to open the path of the ghost road and take her back, back to that place,
back …

The walls behind Lihui lost a little of their solidity, became flickering blurs.

“You hold her,” Maxao said affably, as though there had been no pause, “but in order to make use of what she knows you have to take her out of here while she still lives and is useful to you—and you have just heard the lady state that she will not allow that to happen. Neither, Lihui, will I. Don’t you see? I cannot lose. The only difference is in the degree. You will not leave this room, whether or not you still hold your shield. And since you will not leave this room, Khailin’s knowledge is useless to you. Whether or not she dies with you, Lihui, you die here. You will never have what you are seeking.” He shook his head with a weary disappointment. “You always were precipitous, Lihui, my young apprentice. Too hasty, and too quick to reach your conclusions.” He lifted his hand, a gesture of invocation. “Look at the shadow that stands behind you …”