Lindon leaned around her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of her expression. “Forgiveness, but…what did they teach me?”
He crashed into her back as the cloud came to a sudden halt. A massive square building loomed in the distance, set with huge columns and a stone mural of four beasts locked in battle. The whole edifice lurked on the edge of an enormous cliff as though it had done so since the beginning of time.
“The Ancestor’s Tomb,” Yerin said, and vaulted down from the cloud. “Master went to the Heaven’s Glory in particular just for this. They say it leads down into some labyrinth where even my master couldn’t step easy.”
Her hand was on her sword, black sacred artist’s robes trailing shredded edges in the wind. She pulled the stolen badge over her head and tossed it to one side. “They poisoned him and they stabbed him, so he tried to hide in the Tomb. Died two steps from the door.”
She looked back at him, but her scarred face wasn’t as cold as he’d imagined from someone seeking revenge. It was etched with grief. “Last thing he said to me, he told me to finish forming my Path. He didn’t know he’d be leaving me his own Remnant, but…he did. Nobody else touches his spirit but me, and that’s the fact of it.”
Lindon surveyed the giant Tomb. Two guards had revealed themselves on the front steps, and they would certainly have seen the Thousand-Mile Cloud by now. One of them raised a hand, sending a flash of gold light streaking into the air. A signal.
“There’s not much I can do in a straight fight,” Lindon said honestly. “But I’ll help you however I can.”
Yerin patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’m convinced that you will. You’ve got less choice than a tethered ox.”
He cleared his throat. “I would have helped you without the oath.”
“There’s a chance you would, but now you won’t give up midstream and beg for your life.”
Lindon prickled at that. “There’s no reason for that. I may be weak, but I’m not a coward.”
She rolled her arm in its socket, loosening it up for the fight, and she grinned at him over her shoulder. “Couldn’t know that when I made you swear, could I? I trust you more now. A notch more.”
At least she hadn’t set another trap for him. He sighed and began sorting the Heaven’s Glory artifacts into different pockets. He’d jammed them all into his pack without looking, but now he might need to draw them quickly.
One of the guards activated an egg-shaped golden construct that looked the same as the one Rahm had used, and the other was beginning to set up walls of gold-tinged glass.
“Now, Wei Shi Lindon, we live or die together.” Yerin took off in an explosion of snow, blasting forward with a speed only an Iron body could achieve.
As she shattered the first wall of glass, sending a hot wind billowing out as the glass broke, Lindon took his time packing up the treasures. He couldn’t help until the fight was over, and he wouldn’t run headlong into death. If the heavens considered that a violation of his word, so be it.
The Thousand-Mile Cloud wouldn’t compress, and he determined that it required a special case to fold up. Since he didn’t have one, he fed it a trickle of his madra and dragged it along behind him as he picked his way across the frozen boulders and toward Yerin. It followed like an obedient bird.
Light burned a river of steam in the snow, and a wall of glass appeared to block Yerin’s counterattack. She was steadily advancing, but the two guards and the construct were using every trick at their disposal to keep her at bay. When she flipped in midair to avoid two golden beams and then sliced a fifteen-foot glass wall from top to bottom with sword-madra, Lindon knew it was only a matter of time before she closed the gap. He knew what would happen when she did.
He kept an eye on the battle as he advanced, but by the time he reached the bottom step of the Ancestor’s Tomb with his cloud in tow, Yerin was flanked by two bleeding bodies and fizzing golden plates that had once been a Heaven’s Glory construct.
“Are they dead?” Lindon asked. He wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter to him if Heaven’s Glory lost two more fighters.
Yerin cleaned her blade on the snow and then wiped it dry on the corner of her robe. “Iron bodies are tougher than snake leather. The man’s not long for breathing, but I didn’t want to stare down more Remnants than I have to. The woman might hang on until her school gets here. She passed out from the pain.”
He picked around the bloody snow, following Yerin up the stairs. “Sacred artists are supposed to be beyond pain.”
“No one’s beyond pain,” she said, and then she stood before a tall door. It looked like wood, but it carried the eternal aura of solid rock. From within, a sound rang out like steel on stone. The note hung in the air, endless and pure.
“Seals?” she asked, adjusting her red rope-belt.
Lindon held up the stack.
“Let me hear your role,” she ordered, but Lindon didn’t take offense. She was stronger than any of the Jades in Sacred Valley; she had more right than anyone to order him around, even if she was barely older than he was.
“I’m putting these seals into a circle in front of the door,” he said. “When you lure it out, I throw a seal directly at it and run while you fight it here, where the seals on the ground can help you. If that’s not enough, I come back and seal it again.”
She eyed him. “If you thought I told you to run, you heard wrong.”
“I have to run to set these up,” Lindon said, revealing an inch of purple banner. “I’m not even running, I’m providing strategic support. Now, you have your ward key?”
“Remnant will tear through that like a bull through a paper door.”
“If he’s tearing through this, he’s not tearing through you.” The air of tension around her was lifting, which was a good thing as far as Lindon was concerned. She’d been talking like someone on her way to the grave, and if she died, he wouldn’t be far behind. Now, he saw the distant shadow of a smile on her face, and she turned as though to respond.
The door tore in half with a sound like screaming metal. He registered nothing beyond sudden light and agonizing noise before something hit him in the chest and he tumbled backward down the steps, slamming onto his back at the bottom.
His body hadn’t had a chance to recover since the last time he’d jammed his full pack into his spine, and he indulged in an instant of self-pity imagining his rare boundary flags snapping in half. Then the reality crashed in: that door had split in two from the inside. The impact on his chest was Yerin pushing him back faster than he could react, or he would be lying at the top of the steps in two pieces.
The Remnant of an expert beyond Gold, the spirit that they had assumed was sealed inside the ancient tomb, had cut through its restraints like an axe through a spiderweb. It hadn’t been sealed.
It had been waiting.
He pushed his battered body to his feet, taking quick stock to make sure nothing was broken or bleeding. Then he saw the Remnant of the Sword Sage.
It was a mass of rippling liquid steel in the shape of a human, as though someone had poured a mirror over a man. Its face was featureless, blank, polished to a flawless reflection. It had no arms or legs, merely an uninterrupted sheet of metal, and it flowed over the ground like a snail.
The Remnant was far more solid, more real, than any Forged construction Lindon had ever seen. The only parts he recognized as madra at all were three hoops criss-crossing its chest: one a loop of vivid white color, one scarlet, and one inky black. The circles spun in rapid orbit around the sword-Remnant’s chest as it surveyed the scene mirrored in its smooth face.
It reflected the two bodies and Lindon slowly edging backward before its gaze rested on Yerin. There it stopped.