His stomach rumbled, not mine. I laughed quietly at the sound, but still I hesitated. “Why does everyone try to ply me with food? You and Master Longhai and Ammi…”
“The Maia I know never passes up good food.”
Concern crept into his voice, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
“I’m still the Maia you know,” I assured him—it wasn’t a lie, I hoped. I couldn’t even tell anymore. “But I can’t go with you to the temple. I have to be in Lapzur in a week’s time.”
“Lapzur is on the other side of the Tura Mountains,” said Edan softly. “The temple is on the way. Let Master Tsring help you. And if he cannot, I will come with you to Lapzur.”
My eyes glared red in the reflection of his gaze. Seeing them, I covered my face. I wasn’t even angry; I was happy for the first time in weeks. So why had my eyes changed?
“I…I can’t….”
Edan caught my hand, pushing it away from my face. “Now that I’ve found you again, Maia, I will never leave you. I will stay by your side until the fire in the sun grows cold and the light in the moon is no more. Until time blots out the stars.”
“You’ve gotten more poetic since I last saw you,” I said mildly.
Edan’s expression did not change. “I know you would do the same for me.”
Seeing him again, feeling his arms around me and his breath warm against mine, I found my resistance wavering. “How could Master Tsring help me?”
“Bandur was once an enchanter. And Master Tsring knows more about the oath than anyone else in the world. Perhaps he can find a way to break your pledge to Bandur.”
My brow furrowed. “Why is he at the temple of the beggar god?”
“Nandun is not the most beloved of the A’landan deities, true, but he’s one of the most important. He had compassion for the humans he’d been instructed to punish, so he renounced his heavenly state and became a beggar like the poorest of humankind. He gave strips of his golden skin to the humans, until he too became flesh like them, and quite nearly mortal. When drought and famine came, he dissolved into the Jingan River; his blood became the water to irrigate the land for crops, his bones, fish to feed the hungry A’landans.”
“I’ve never heard the tale of Nandun told in this way,” I reflected. “Often, he’s made out to be a fool.”
“A fool to the other gods, perhaps. But we are taught otherwise: it is said that Nandun’s disciples were the first to be touched by magic. To control the greed and hunger for power that some of his students developed over the years, he created the oath—to bind magic from those who would disrupt the world’s natural balance and overpower the gods.”
“He created the oath?” I asked.
“The origins of magic are unknown,” Edan replied. “You’ll find the story changes depending on who you ask. But Master Tsring is a disciple of Nandun’s teachings, and the keeper of many of magic’s mysteries.” A pause. “He was also Bandur’s teacher.”
A flare of hope lifted my brow. “His teacher?”
He nodded, extending a hand for me to take. “Come, let’s see him.”
No one can help me now, I thought, looking toward the water glittering in the east. Lapzur was that way, beyond its mist, waiting for me. I’d already bought as much time from Bandur as I could.
But if this Master Tsring had truly been Bandur’s teacher, maybe I did stand a chance. Maybe there was hope.
Maybe.
Above us, dusk was falling. Amana was winding up the threads of the day, unspooling shadow and moonlight across the aging sky. And my cloth bird had returned—she fluttered from tree to tree, making percussion of the rustling leaves before she landed on my palm. As I patted her soft head, I sighed. Maybe her return was a sign of better things to come.
Against my better judgment, I took Edan’s hand. “All right, I’ll go,” I told him. “But just for a day.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
A pair of inky eyebrows darted up at the sight of me, drawing creases in the monk’s broad forehead.
“Your kind is not welcome here,” he said, waving me away from the temple doors. “Go now, before my master arrives and banishes you to the fiery pits of Di—”
The last thing I needed was a reminder of what I was becoming. “Summon your master,” I said, cutting him off. “I have come to speak with him.”
The monk opened his mouth to protest, but he noticed Edan beside me.
“You!” he cried. “You are not permitted to return here either. Master Tsring specifically—”
Like me, Edan wasn’t in the mood for the doorkeeper’s games. He pushed past the young monk, and I followed.
The monk scurried past us, shooting warning looks at Edan. “Once he hears you’re back, Gen, you’ll be in trouble yet.”
Edan and I ignored him and continued along the corridor. The Temple of Nandun was ancient, its structure carved into the underbelly of the mountain so skillfully one could not tell where the temple ended and the mountain began. We passed several chambers, sparsely occupied by the master’s acolytes, their eyes half closed in concentration.
“Are they practicing magic?” I asked Edan.
“Most are.”
I tilted my head at a lone plum tree in one of the open-air courtyards. “How does it flower so late in the year, and so high in the mountains?”
Edan led me to stand under its branches. “Nandun took refuge under a blossoming plum tree,” he explained. “Magic is what keeps it alive here. The disciples take turns tending to it, and it blooms always, even in the dead of winter.”
“Plum blossoms are the first flowers to bud after winter,” I remembered. “They’re a symbol of hope and purity.”
He plucked one and set it in my hair, the way he’d done on our travels with the blue wildflower I now kept pressed in my sketchbook. “And new beginnings,” Edan said quietly.
We found Master Tsring meditating in the garden. His eyes were closed, and if he heard us approach, he made no gesture to acknowledge it.
Copying Edan’s movements, I sat cross-legged on the ground, and waited.
Master Tsring looked so old and frail his robes practically swallowed him: his pants hung slack, the hems discolored with age. His shoulders were pinched, narrowing his gaunt frame. Yet when he spoke, his voice was strong.
“You disobeyed me, Gen,” he said. His eyes snapped open, pupils sparking like burning coals. “I forbade you to leave the temple.”