And it was Rollan, along with Conor, Abeke, and Finn. They seemed in high spirits, apart from Finn, whose youthful face was as masked as Meilin’s. In the lamps of the map room, his gray hair looked nearly white.
“It’s a little late to be studying up on geography,” Rollan said to Meilin. Essix sailed in behind him, tucking her wings to keep from singeing them on the torches.
“I was bored,” she replied stiffly. “I finished packing hours ago.”
“Let me guess,” Rollan said. “You took a class in it. Four tutors taught you how to fold your clothing.”
“For the record, I traveled a lot with my father. I taught myself.” Meilin turned to Finn. “Tell me again why our mission is so important?”
Quietly, Finn explained, “If we truly can find Rumfuss the Boar, we might be able to persuade him to give up his talisman. I understand you four retrieved one from Arax the Ram. The Devourer seeks these talismans to use them in the war, and we must beat him to them.”
“If,” Meilin echoed. “If we find the boar. If we persuade him to give us the talisman. What if we don’t?”
Finn gave her a very long look. “I don’t think we should bank on failure so early, do you?”
Suddenly Tarik flew into the room, cloak swirling, face grim. “I’m sorry to be late, but I have very bad news.”
Meilin’s stomach lurched. She felt like Tarik was looking at her in particular.
Father!
Sure enough, Tarik’s eyes held hers a moment longer. He said, “Zhong has fallen to the Conquerors.”
“No . . .” she whispered.
“I’m afraid so,” Tarik said. “The capital city has been taken over. And, Meilin — your father is missing.”
Meilin folded her arms to hide their shaking. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself do so in front of the others, all of whom were trying very hard to look at anything but her. Instead, as devastation burned behind her eyes, she shouted, “I should have never come here! There’s absolutely no point to having me along on a — a treasure hunt across the globe! I should’ve been fighting by his side.” She shot a poisonous look at Jhi. “And you — !” The panda met Meilin’s glare with her own gentle gaze, cutting the girl short. Jhi’s presence was a painful reminder of home.
All Meilin could think of was the colorful roofs of Jano Rion burning. Zhong fallen! Her father missing!
“Meilin,” started Tarik. “I know that this is terrible news, but finding Rumfuss is really the most helpful step you can take right now.”
“I don’t believe that!” she snapped. She thought she could feel some sort of emotion coming off Jhi, but she pushed it away. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll find him, and there’s no guarantee that he’ll give us the talisman, and even if he does, there are more than a dozen left to go! Zhong needs me now.”
“You’re only one girl,” Tarik said. “Here, you’re part of a team.”
Meilin’s cold gaze flitted across Conor, Rollan, Abeke, and Finn. The servant, the orphan, the traitor, and the warrior who had given up war.
Not much of a team, she thought.
“You cannot force me,” she said. “I’m going back to Zhong.”
“You can’t,” Conor said, an unbearable concern in his voice.
“Watch me,” Meilin shot back.
Conor stuttered, “B-but we need you.”
“Zhong needs me.” Turning to Jhi, she added, “You can stay here.”
Storming from the room, she slammed the door behind her. She hurried down the hall so fast that the flaming lamps flickered as she passed. She hoped no one tried to come after her. All she wanted was to get her bag and a horse and go. She’d follow the main trade road back to Zhong.
She was nearly back to her room when a hand caught her arm.
“Meilin.”
She spun. It was Finn. She didn’t know how he caught up to her so silently.
Meilin’s expression darkened. Trundling behind him was Jhi. Slower, of course. Not much louder, though.
“You can’t keep me here,” she said.
Finn tossed her arm away. Almost contemptuously, so she could see how he never intended to physically contain her. In a way, it made her feel better that he wasn’t trying to spare her feelings, like Tarik or Olvan might have. She didn’t want to be coddled.
He said, “I left a place once in anger. Leaving in anger means returning in regret. I don’t want that for you.”
I’m not returning, Meilin thought. So the regret won’t matter. But something about the way he spoke, calm and measured, reminded her a little of her father. So she said, “I’m listening.”
“You did your spirit animal a bad turn back there,” Finn continued. “Has she ever done the same to you?”
Glancing at Jhi out of the corner of her eye, Meilin felt a little stab of guilt . . . but not enough guilt to change her mind. Out loud, she said, “No! She does practically nothing. The bond was wrong. I’m sure she’d be happier with a different girl.” Actually, Meilin thought that Jhi would have been perfect for the girl everyone back in Zhong had thought she was. Very few had known about her combat lessons or her interest in strategy. Most saw only the carefully made-up girl who looked so pretty as she strolled in the tea garden or handled the cocoons for silk-making. Jhi would have looked right at home with that public Meilin.
“I don’t know if you’re so different,” Finn said. “Will you come with me? I’ll show you something. If it doesn’t interest you, you can leave and I won’t be the one to stop you.”
Meilin reluctantly followed him to a foyer with an iron chandelier, and then through an arched doorway. The room inside was cluttered with dusty mirrors, musical instruments, and objects Meilin saw no use for. It reminded her of all the useless weapons at the morning’s training exercise. This room was piled with things that would serve as shoddy weapons. The mess of it irritated her. What was the purpose, she wondered, of a room full of disorganized junk? Even if there was something useful in here, no one would be able to find it.
“What is this place?”
“This is the Moon Tower,” Finn said. “It’s a place where Greencloaks can form deeper bonds with their spirit animals.”
“My bond is fine,” Meilin replied crisply. Jhi sat down heavily beside a dusty gong. “She would go into passive form on the first day. Rollan is still struggling.”
Finn raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t compare myself with Rollan. We are our own competition.”
Shocked, she said, “My father said that very same thing to me.”
“Well then,” Finn said with a ghost of a smile. “He must be very wise. Now, this tower isn’t for training. It’s more like play, or meditation. Sometimes music, art, or logic games will encourage a stronger bond and reveal hidden skills.”
Meilin sighed in frustration. “I know her skills. But she’s nothing like me.”
Finn’s expression sharpened. “You do everyone a disservice when you forget who you really are. Is combat all there is to you?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. The question was maddening in its silliness. “Of course not. But my home has already been taken. It’s what Zhong — what my father — needs of me at the moment!”
“And at the end of all this?”
Meilin raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “We’ll see about that once we get there. If we get there.”
“Take my word on it: That might be too late. Balance, Meilin. Surely your father told you that. Look at this.” He pulled up his sleeve, looking for one tattoo among the tangle of tattoos. Finally, he pressed his finger to a symbol inked between a tangled thorn tree and a collection of pictograms. It was a circle, divided in half with a wavy line. One half was light. The other half was dark.
Meilin was again shocked. “That’s a Zhongese symbol. How do you know it?”
“I was one of the Greencloaks’ greatest warriors. I have been all over Erdas in my time. So you know this symbol?”
Of c
ourse she did. “One side is light, one side is dark. One side is active, the other is passive. Day and night.”
“Opposites,” Finn said. “But both part of the same whole.”
Meilin worked hard to quell her indignation. She was getting tired of Greencloaks telling her she needed to make more of an effort to bond — as if she hadn’t been trying. “How does that do me any good?”
Finn gestured to the things around them. “This is a place to find out.” When she still looked unconvinced, he said, “I’m using this room myself. Would you like to hear the story?”
She merely raised an eyebrow in response.
He began, “My final battle was near Zhong, in Oceanus. My brothers and I were ambushing a small band of the Devourer’s allies. There were fifty of them and only five of us, but we had fought worse odds with our spirit animals. Five Marked siblings in one family, yes,” he said in response to Meilin’s puzzled look. “The Greencloaks told us we were chosen. I was supposed to accomplish so many great things.” Finn said this last part with a bitter smile that gave Meilin a stab of anxiety. The Greencloaks were saying the same thing about her.
“I was known to be clever with the making of things, so my brothers asked me to build a trap. It was a cunning one, a great pit with young trees bent this way and that over it. Over the top of their flexible trunks, I’d woven in brush with the roots still hanging, so the plants would stay green. When I was done it looked just like a grassy bank. Just another hill to climb. It was strong enough to support one man, but the trees would give way under the weight of more than one. Then all we’d have to do is wave at the enemy from up above after they’d all fallen through.
“Half of the Conquerors were meant to fall in it before the other half even knew what was going on. But then something went terribly wrong. They discovered the trap — or rather, their spirit animals did. Somehow, all fifty of them had bonded with spirit animals. That’s impossible, but they had. So it was not only fifty Conquerors, but fifty Conquerors aided by fifty spirit animals.”
Meilin made a soft noise of disbelief — bonding with spirit animals was so rare that it was hard to imagine fifty Marked individuals in one place, outside of the Greencloaks.
But Finn’s face was serious. “You doubt it. I doubted it myself. Like I said: impossible. But you’re also impossible. No one can summon a Great Beast, and yet the four of you have. It seems we have entered impossible times.”
Meilin inclined her head. True enough.
Finn continued, “The spirit animals discovered the trap easily, making it useless. There’s nothing dangerous about a hole no one falls into. My brothers and I tried to hold them off, but it was no use. There were too many of them. Imagine if you can, Meilin: fifty spirit animals. Animals we’d never seen before. Rhinos. Cougars. Anacondas. Scorpions. My brothers were slaughtered. It was — I barely . . . My youngest brother, Alec, distracted them so I could get away.
“Recovering has been difficult. It was horrific. Not just for me, but for my spirit animal, Donn. I nearly lost him. During the battle, he entered the passive state and now he will not come back out.”
Meilin’s eyes were wide. “Your brothers. That’s terrible. And your spirit animal . . . I didn’t know that could happen.”
Finn looked around the Moon Tower. “My spirit animal, Donn, and I had a very difficult bonding. I lived in a very remote village and the Nectar didn’t make it in time — I was the only child of age and the Greencloaks found me too late. The Moon Tower helped us to find a measure of peace. I know it will help us again.”
Meilin said, “I want to ask a question, but it might be rude.”
Finn smiled a tiny smile. “I won’t be offended. There’s not much that can hurt me in this world anymore.”
“Was your hair always that color?”
Now Finn smiled ruefully as he patted the crazy gray-white spikes. “No. It changed after the battle. I woke up and my hair had gone completely white. Now — will you try to connect with Jhi here in the Moon Tower?”
Slowly, Meilin nodded. She didn’t think it could really change her mind, but after his terrible confession, she felt she owed it to him to try.
“What’s the right way to do this?” she asked.
“It’s play,” Finn said. “There is no right way.”
Meilin had never been a playful child. There had always been combat to train for, languages to learn, skills to conquer. There might have been time for play, but she hadn’t been interested. Play had never changed the world.
She took another look around the room. Before, she had found it disordered and useless. But with deeper examination, she saw a kind of organization. Drums gathered near paintings that had to do with earth and objects made of leather and wood. String instruments were near metal sculptures and mirrors and paintings of water. Woodwinds, paper objects, and anything having to do with air seemed to be grouped together.
Somehow this made her trust the room’s purpose more. She had been educated in the usefulness of the arts. She would never be convinced there was a purpose for chaos.
Her eyes landed on an erhu, a traditional instrument from Zhong. She had received hours of lessons, but it had been months since she’d played. Taking up the bow, she crossed back to Jhi. Standing this close, Meilin could feel the heat radiating from the panda’s body and smell the wet bamboo scent of her coarse fur.
Jhi rolled her gaze toward Meilin.
“I’m trying,” Meilin said. “I’ll try if you’ll try.”
Feeling a little foolish, she began to play. At first, she could only remember her instructor correcting her finger position and her bow technique. But after a few measures, she began to feel something else. A wide-open peace. Meilin knew that the emotion was coming from Jhi. This was part of the panda’s power. Ordinarily this was where Meilin lost patience — she had no interest in being calm.
But she had promised Jhi she would try. Slowly the peace focused.
A very strange thing happened then. Meilin imagined she was surrounded by small, floating planets. Tinier moons circled some of them. She knew in a fuzzy, dreamy way that these orbs were her options. As the erhu sang sweetly in the background, Meilin realized that the closest little sphere represented the path back to Zhong. It was certainly the closest option, but it was also the smallest. And there were no other moon-choices floating around it.
With her decisions hovering outside of her mind, it was easy to tell that her plan to return to Zhong was logical, but reactive. And it was easy to see too that it left her with nowhere else to go.
Jhi’s power kept pushing at Meilin. She glimpsed the orb that represented the choice of going in search of Rumfuss. It was a troubled, stormy planet, but it was surrounded by more choices, and each of those was surrounded by even more. It wouldn’t be an easy choice, but it had more possibilities close by.
Meilin strained her neck to see it closer. Suddenly, in one of the orbs, she saw her father’s proud face. You’ve made the wise decision, he said, instead of the smart one. Well done.
Meilin stopped playing all at once. The mysterious orbs vanished. Jhi blinked quietly at her.
“What happened?” Finn asked. Meilin had forgotten he was there.
Meilin didn’t know how to explain it. The panda had helped her to think.
“I made a decision,” she said. “I’m going with you.”
5: Journey
IT STARTED TO RAIN. IT RAINED AS THEY FETCHED HORSES FROM the stables. It rained as they left Greenhaven Castle. It rained while they loaded supplies onto the boat to Eura. It rained as the ship shoved off from the pier and into the storm-gray water.
It rained on everyone, but it especially rained on Rollan. He didn’t get along with boats, so he stood at the railing and tried not to focus on his churning insides. He could bear being drizzled on if it meant he didn’t throw up on anyone. Essix found a perch on one of the masts, looking a little unsettled herself. Stuffing her head under her wing, she quivered sickly.
> It was strangely quiet; he could hear the rain falling on the ocean. Although the ship had sails, they were tied tightly away on the masts. He couldn’t quite work out what propelled the ship. Far up ahead, though, he saw two odd waves breaking again and again. Water pushed by the ship’s hull, maybe? It didn’t seem very likely.
“Whales.” Abeke’s clipped voice startled him as she joined him. The rain dribbling down her nose matched the rain dribbling down Rollan’s. Uraza sauntered behind her, ears pinned in the damp, tail thrashing.
“Whales what?”
Abeke pointed. “Rockback whales. They’re pulling the ship.”
She indicated the odd waves. Now that Rollan focused on them, he could tell that they were indeed whales, not water. The beasts were as mottled gray and black as the stormy sea, and their spines were studded with stones and boulders. Like moving cliffs just beneath the water. They must have been longer than the ship itself.
Rollan was deeply impressed, but would have never admitted it out loud.
He asked, “How did you know?”
She didn’t seem as if she wanted to answer, but she pressed her lips together and replied, “When I accompanied the Conquerors to look for the first talisman, we traveled in a ship like this. I’d never seen anything like it. There is not much opportunity to travel by ship in Nilo, much less a rockback-whale ferry.”
For a few minutes, they both watched the rocky backs rise and fall. In the eerie hush, one of the whales called to the other. It was a hollow, echoey sound that seemed both very close and very far.
“Wow,” Abeke breathed.
“Creepy,” Rollan corrected. “Speaking of creepy, let’s talk about those Conquerors.”
It wasn’t the most tactful way to bring it up, but Rollan wasn’t really known for his tact.
Abeke raised an eyebrow but said nothing; it was hard to say if she was hurt by his words or hiding something. Rollan glanced toward the mast where Essix perched, her head still beneath her wing. Her intuitive power would have come in handy right about now, but she showed no signs of helping out.