Unsouled (Cradle Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter 5

While it violated clan decree for Lindon to follow a Path, it was technically allowed for him to study technique manuals. After all, he couldn’t actually
use
the techniques without madra of a compatible aspect, which he couldn’t harvest. Learning a technique outside of a Path was like tearing a branch off a tree and expecting it to bear fruit.

But this one didn’t need any particular aspect, nor did it require him to be of Copper level. He turned the first yellowing page, expectation transforming into a hopeful excitement.

I leave this manual out of obligation. Any technique deserves to be studied and remembered, in the hope that it may someday spark greater inspiration. Even such a dim spark as this one may one day strike a great flame.

The impetus for this technique comes from a longtime rival of mine, a deceitful and cowardly man whose name I will not honor by repeating it here. I bear the great shame of sharing a clan with this man, and thus we have challenged each other many times since our youth. They say that a good rival sharpens a warrior as a stone sharpens iron, but not my deficient opponent. I defeated him handily each time, and had no reason to grow in strength or skill. He was a pathetic match.

But some scrap of talent must have remained in him, for he developed an underhanded technique that he christened the “Empty Palm.” I will not lower myself to attempt the technique on my own, but as I understand the theory, he focuses neutral madra into a simple palm thrust. How he cancels out the aspects of his spirit, I have not yet deduced, but the result is undeniable.

When his Empty Palm makes contact with my core, his madra disrupts my own. For a few seconds, I am as powerless as a wretched Unsouled. Even more so, perhaps, as I can hardly muster the energy to control my own limbs.

I tried a series of techniques to defeat him, but each time he managed to land a single Empty Palm upon my core. Even such as he, with his lack of talent, can lean upon a technique as a crutch.

It is thus in desperation that I have developed this defense, and at last rightfully triumphed over him. Should he pass down this Empty Palm, I can rest at ease, knowing that my future disciples reading this manual may oppose his legacy.

Heart of Twin Stars is utterly simple in its concept: you must divide your core in two. Thus, even when one core is disabled through some device such as my rival’s, you have a second to rely upon.

The observant reader will notice that this does not increase the power available to you. Splitting one’s core is a painful process prone to many risks, though it is mercifully quick. If attacks such as the Empty Palm ever become commonplace, I wish to leave behind this defense.

Here at last, I leave a record of my journey to split my core, in exacting detail. Be sure to follow my path to the very step, lest you suffer a crippling injury from which you cannot recover.

Useless. Heart of Twin Stars was an utterly useless technique, which doubtless explained why no one practiced it. Even if he wanted to split his core in two, Wei Mon Eri wouldn’t have any techniques like this Empty Palm. He would be just as defenseless as before.

The book did include a cycling technique, which would at least work better than his own pathetic Foundation method, but he wouldn’t see any benefit before the duel. Besides, the cycling technique was designed to prepare him to split his core, which he never intended to do. The Heart of Twin Stars wouldn’t even make up for his broken arm, which—even with his mother’s scripts—could never heal before he had to fight.

His enthusiasm had dimmed, but not died entirely. The technique manual had given him a few other ideas he could try, and maybe a new search tomorrow would reveal more promising results. After locking up the archive—leaving the Eighth Elder drunk on the roof again, perfectly visible—he returned home, cycling his madra according to his new technique. His nerves kept him at it until dawn, and he would have continued except for a brutal hammering on his door.

“Get ready,” Kelsa told him, dressed in the orange shadesilk training clothes of a Copper Ruler. Her copper badge, marked with a scepter, hung proudly in the center of her chest. “You’re training with me today.”

***

Lindon brought his pack to the Shi family gardens, surrounded by blue mountain roses and tiny clusters of cloudbell, and knelt across from his sister. They faced each other over a stretch of grass.

Ordinarily, they would have joined the rest of their family in the main courtyard for daily cycling, but Kelsa seemed to have something else on her mind. She started off studying him, her hair pulled back and face severe.

“You seem tired,” she said at last. “You didn’t sleep well, which will slow your arm’s recovery. What were you doing?”

Over the years, he’d found that the fastest way to deal with his sister was to respond immediately and honestly. “Cycling. I was trying to process the rest of the fruit.”

“And have you?”

“Not fully.” The foreign madra still crackled like lightning in his core, but less than it had the day before. He couldn’t tell how much less, or if digesting it had made any difference at all. This was not the effect he’d ever imagined from a legendary natural treasure.

Kelsa cupped her chin in her hand, pondering for a moment. “We’ll come back to that. For the moment, we should discuss our strategy in getting you through the duel.”

Only five days left. “Can we?” he asked.

Her answering glare was as firm as a strike to the chest. “This is our family’s honor. If I can’t get you to acquit yourself well, I don’t deserve my badge.”

Lindon straightened his spine, adjusting for the increased pressure on his shoulders. “Then where do we begin?”

“Obviously, there’s no good outcome if you fight the girl. You’re shamed if you win, and shamed if you lose.”

He didn’t need a reminder of that, but he remained quiet, waiting for her to continue.

“Your only honorable option is to challenge someone of greater standing in the Mon family, like perhaps Wei Mon Teris. This has the disadvantage of getting you killed.”

That was a slight exaggeration; the Mon family wasn’t likely to kill a relative in front of the whole clan. But they could. And honor would require them to injure Lindon severely, which was another consequence he’d prefer to avoid.

“I suggest you fight the girl for a while and then concede. You could say that an Unsouled is not worthy to fight someone of the Mon family, which gives them face. They’ll accept, you’ll be embarrassed for a while, but in the end your reputation will improve. You will have handled the duel with grace and accepted defeat with dignity.”

“At the price of telling the Mon family that I’m worth less than they are.”

She nodded once. “Yes.” Kelsa never shied away from the truth.

Lindon didn’t think of himself as overly prideful, but he burned at the thought of humbling himself in front of all the other Wei families. For one thing, his Shi family would be seen as vulnerable if he publicly demonstrated his weakness. Their rivals would push them, seeking to exploit a perceived opening.

After watching his expression for a few seconds, Kelsa folded both hands on her knees. “But I’m sure you didn’t waste the day yesterday. What’s your plan?”

Sheepishly, Lindon reached into his sling, where he’d tucked the technique manual
.
“I found this technique in the archives. It’s not directly useful, but it might have given me an idea.”

She snatched the manual from his hand and glanced over the first page. “You want to split your
core?”
Her tone made it clear exactly what she thought of that idea.

“No, of course not.” While cycling according to the method described in the
Heart of Twin Stars
manual, he’d spent the night thinking
.
He suspected there were other uses for a split core rather than just defending against one specific technique, but they were too risky or difficult to test. “There’s a second technique in there.”

Kelsa looked back down at the book. “The Empty Palm.”

“It would be easier if I was Copper, I know, but in theory it’s just injecting your madra into a certain spot. It could be enough.”

She flipped through each page in the thin manual, paying special attention to the back. “It doesn’t describe the timing, or the energy flow, or the Foundation you’d need to pull it off. Only how to defend against it.” Kelsa snapped the pages shut. “But ultimately yes, I think there’s enough information here that we could develop a version of the Empty Palm. It’s simple enough anyway.”

Lindon leaned forward, eager. “Can you teach me?”

In the Wei clan, most sacred artists reached the Iron stage in their twenty-first or twenty-second year. For Kelsa to have reached the barrier between Copper and Iron at the age of sixteen meant that she was more than merely talented; she had the discipline and skill to match.

Abruptly, Kelsa rose to her feet. “That’s up to you. I have some ideas, but I need a living target with a functioning core if I want to try them out. That means you.”

“You can disable my spirit, but it won’t do much. I can hardly defend myself to begin with.”

Kelsa stretched first one arm, then the other. “That’s not what I mean. The manual mentions that he had to achieve purity for the technique to work. We don’t have time for that, so I’ll be pushing my madra into your core until I get a feel for the technique.”

As a sacred artist on the Path of the White Fox, Kelsa cultivated aspects of dreams and light, bent toward the purposes of deceiving enemies. Accepting it directly into his core meant…

“I have another idea,” Lindon said, with a half-step back. “I could try on
you
first, and we could work from there.”

“I need to understand the theory myself,” Kelsa said, dropping into a balanced stance on the balls of her feet. Her left hand was extended, her right held back, her whole body angled sideways. “First trial.”

Lindon tried to protest again, but Kelsa unfolded in a deceptively quick movement that left the heel of her palm against his core, just below the navel. She’d used hardly any force, and the strike came with no pain; it felt like a light slap, if anything.

But the world went mad.

The soft blue cloudbell flowers at his feet took flight, flapping around his eyes. Shadows in the bushes flickered and giggled, while the clouds zoomed around like zealous fish in the ocean of the sky. Grass tickled his feet through his shoes, and he tiptoed around to avoid it. The ground must not have liked that, because it finally had enough and slapped him in the back of the head.

He came to in a wrench of returning sensation, lying flat on his back in the garden and staring up into the sky. His arm had begun to ache again.

Over him, Kelsa was flexing her palm. “Too slow. The motion has to carry the madra, you can’t rely on transmission through contact. Stand up, I need to try again.”

Lindon crawled to his feet, still dizzy. “Wait. I think it’s worse on me, because I can’t—”

She hit him again.

After the garden stopped partying without him, he spoke from the ground. “I’m not standing up again. I’m not.”

Kelsa was moving at half-speed, stepping forward into a slow palm thrust. She repeated the first step a few times, working something out in her head. “Then you’ll be worthless for the rest of your life,” she said casually, but the words were like a spear to the ribs. “You don’t want to shame the family? Stand up.” She didn’t so much as glance at him, as though she didn’t care whether he stood or not. “I’ve almost worked it out…it has to transmit all at once. Not like a stream, but a gust of wind.”

Lindon stood up again. And again.

Eleven more times.

By the end, the earth never stopped spinning, even when the effects wore off. He tried to rise again, but
up
and
sideways
seemed to have swapped places, and he stumbled into the cloudbells. Their stalks were sharper than they looked.

Kelsa reached in and hauled him out with ease, steadying him with a grip on his shoulder. Ten breaths passed before he could take a step without swaying.

“Rally yourself,” she said. “Step forward and shove in one motion, focusing madra in your palm. Release it in one breath like a gust of wind, being sure to exhale and cycle to the rest of your body for stability. Understood?”

Lindon was trying to determine if his senses were back under control. Was that flickering shadow a sign of lingering madness, or a leaf blowing in the wind? “Please, I need…I need a moment.”

Kelsa rarely had the patience to wait around, and though she allowed him his rest, she did so reluctantly. She paced in the garden, studying
Heart of Twin Stars
as she did. “Let’s return to an earlier subject,” she said, without looking up from the book. “The fruit. Have you finished cycling it?”

“Almost all,” he said, sensing the tingling sparks that lingered in his core. “I haven’t noticed much of a change.”

She squinted at the page. “I can’t see clearly. Bring out your light.”

Lindon looked around at the bright morning light. “Do you need me to find a healer?”

She used the manual to point at his robes. “You’re my disciple for the day. Pull out your light.”

To his sister, Lindon would have protested. To his master, Lindon would have obeyed without a word. He spent a few seconds deciding which she was, and eventually reached into his pack to produce a palm-sized board.

The board was covered with an intricate three-layered script circle, and when he fed his madra into it, it burst into white light. The runelight was much stronger than from an ordinary script, and remarkably steady. That was this script’s only purpose: to produce light on command. It would last as long as the user’s spirit did.

Lindon held the board over the book with the shining script down, though it made no discernible difference among the bright sunlight.

Kelsa didn’t thank him, but spoke as she read. “I finished processing the orus last night. It was quite the experience. Did it feel as though you’d swallowed a thunderbolt? Mine did. But as I continued cycling, I didn’t feel much else. It was as though the fruit vanished. I wondered if Mother was mistaken, and this wasn’t the miraculous spirit-fruit she thought.”