He opened his arms to take in the vista of the narrow valley with steep mountainsides. Below, a stream snaked along, blue where the sun could not touch it, silver where it did. Green, so much green and very deep, along with the rich brown of cultivated fields, screamed fertility. Even the way the buildings had been constructed into the landscape, adding to it without exploiting it, felt incredibly right.
“I grew up on Shen-zin Su. I love my home. As I look out here, however, it is as if I had been living in a picture. A beautiful picture, yes, but a picture of Pandaria. This land calls to me. It fills an emptiness that I’d never known I had. Maybe that is why I have wandered so much. I was looking, but didn’t know what for.”
He frowned. “I growled less for Li Li than for them calling her a ‘wild dog.’ For her, for me, Pandaria is home. It is a place where I could be at home.”
“And yet those two are like others who would forever point out why you are not of Pandaria.”
“You understand.”
She passed him the sachet of heart’s ease. “Better than you know.”
They marked their travel north to Zouchin not by days or hours but by the tales of Li Li’s passing before them. She’d been helpful but irascible. More than one person referred to her as a wild dog, but they quoted her as calling herself that. Proudly, too, as it turned out. Chen could not help but smile, and he easily imagined the legend of a wild dog spreading throughout Pandaria.
At Zouchin, nestled between cliffs and the sea, they found Li Li working hard in the midst of the village. The storm had wrecked one boat, collapsed some houses, and ripped a dock from its pilings. Li Li had pitched right in, and by the time they arrived, she was supervising a salvage crew and barking orders at carpenters to speed up work on the houses.
Chen caught Li Li, hugged her, and spun her around as he had when she was a cub. She squealed, but this time in protest at the destruction of dignity. He set her down, then bowed deeply and respectfully. That gesture silenced clucking tongues, though her returning the bow just a bit deeper and holding it a second longer started their clucking again.
Chen introduced Yalia to his niece. “Sister Yalia Sagewhisper has traveled from the monastery here with me.”
Li Li raised an eyebrow. “I bet that was a long journey. How did you get him out of taverns and not drinking beer all the way here?”
Yalia smiled. “Our journey was sped because we were chasing stories of Li Li the Wild Dog and her exploits.”
Li Li smiled broadly and dug an elbow into her uncle’s ribs. “She’s a sharp one, Uncle Chen.” Li Li scratched her chin. “Sagewhisper? There’s a Sageflower family here—name’s almost the same. They survived pretty well, just bumps and bruises.”
“This is good to know, Li Li.” Yalia nodded respectfully. “If there is time, I might pay them a visit; our names are so close.”
“I’m sure they will marvel at the coincidence.” Li Li looked around the village. “I’ll get back to work, then. The villagers are great on the water, I’m sure, but need some driving on the land.”
Li Li hugged her uncle again, then ran back to her work crews—whose pace quickened with her increasing proximity.
Chen cocked his head. “You’ve not been back here since you joined the monastery, after Taran Zhu changed your name. Does your family know you are alive?”
She shook her head. “Some of us are wild dogs by birth, Master Chen. Others by choice. It is for the best.”
Chen nodded and returned to her the packet of heart’s ease.
9
It surprised Vol’jin that Tyrathan was already up and out of bed by the time he arrived with a jihui board and pieces. The man had made it all the way over to the window and leaned against it, much as Vol’jin himself had done. The troll noticed that the man’s cane remained at the foot of the bed.
Tyrathan looked back over his shoulder. “Can barely see any signs of the storm now. They say you never see the arrow that will kill you. I didn’t see that storm. Not at all.”
“Taran Zhu said such storms be unusual but not rare.” Vol’jin set the board down on the side table. “The later they come, the more savage they be.”
The man nodded. “Can’t see anything, but can still feel it. There is a chill in the air.”
“You should not be barefoot.”
“Nor you.” Tyrathan turned, a bit unsteadily, then hooked his elbows on the casement. “You’ve taken to adapting yourself to the cold. Up before dawn, standing in the snows on the south side, the snows sheltered in shadow during the day. Admirable but foolish. I do not recommend it.”
Vol’jin snorted. “Calling a troll foolish be most unwise.”
“I hope you will learn from my folly.” The man levered himself away from the wall and staggered toward the bed. The limp had almost vanished, despite his weakness. Vol’jin turned toward him but made no move to aid him. Tyrathan smiled, catching himself on the footboard for a rest. It was part of the game they played.
The man lowered himself to the edge of the bed. “You’re late. Do they have you doing my chores?”
Vol’jin waved the question away as he dragged the side table over, then fetched a chair. “It speeds my recovery.”
“Now you come to take care of me.”
The troll’s head came up. “Trolls be not without a sense of obligation.”
Tyrathan laughed. “I know trolls well enough to know that.”
Vol’jin centered the board on the table. “Do you?”
“Do you remember when you commented on my troll accent? You said Stranglethorn.”
“You ignored me.”
“I chose not to respond.” Tyrathan accepted a canister, poured out the black pieces, and arranged them in sets of six. “Do you want to know how I learned?”
Vol’jin shrugged, not because he didn’t want to know but because he knew the man would tell him regardless.
“You’re right. It was Stranglethorn. I found a troll. I paid him very well for a year. He told himself he was my guide. He performed his duties well. I picked up his language—at first without him knowing I was listening, then in conversation. I have a facility for that.”
“I be believing that.”
“Tracking is a language. I would track him. Every day I would go back to a patch of ground to watch how his footprints deteriorated. In the hot season, after the rain. I learned the language that told me how long before he had passed, how quickly he’d gone, how tall he was.”
“Did you kill him after?”
Tyrathan scooped the black troops back into the canister. “Not him. I’ve killed other trolls.”
“I be not fearing you.”
“I know. And I have killed men, as have you.” The man set his canister on the table. “This troll, Keren’dal he called himself, would pray. That’s what I thought, and I mentioned it. He said he was speaking to the spirits. I forget what he called them.”
Vol’jin shook his head. “There would be no forgetting. He never told you. Secrets be secrets.”
“Times he would be irritable, like you. Those were times when he spoke to them but got no answers.”
“Does your Holy Light answer you, manthing?”
“I’ve long since stopped believing in it.”
“Which be why it abandoned you.”
Tyrathan laughed. “I know why I am abandoned. For the same reason as you.”
Vol’jin locked his face into a neutral mask but knew that by that very act, he had betrayed himself. The fact was that since he had tracked through Tyrathan’s memories, since he had seen the world through the man’s eyes, the loa had been distant and quiet. It felt as if the storm that had raged around the monastery still raged in the spirit realm. He could see Bwonsamdi and Hir’eek and Shirvallah, but only in dim, gray silhouettes that vanished in waves of white.
Vol’jin still believed in the loa, in their leadership and gifts, in the necessity of their worship. He was a shadow hunter. He could read tracks with the same facility as Tyrathan, and just as easily he could commune with the loa. Yet in the storm, tracks vanished and swirling winds stole words.