The strangest part of being his own man was just how much of Xi's life remained exactly the same as when he had been an apprentice.

He'd never harbored a dream of walking away into the mist the day he passed his test, but he discovered more ties fastening him to his past than he had expected. He meditated at sunrise because Rustam taught him to. He recorded his thoughts every evening because Zijun did. When he looked at the perfect lines of characters in the morning, he cringed, because the deep-clarity of his poems would not be up to Master Jiang's standard.

He wrote anyway.

After the futile struggles with poetry, before going to sleep, he poured melted wax over the cut-out map of the North-Western Provinces. Night after night, his mother's figurine, Yu's and the third one, the faery, did not move from Tarkan. But a few armed knights of the Empire started their march towards the city. A castaway from the nest of the court gossip, Xi did not know if those were reinforcements. Fenghuang outpaced even the news as she raced towards Tarkan.

He looked anyway.

Every night, like an automaton, he recited the verses about the godawful Empress Mei to feel the presence of his mother in his heart. The memories of her lacked the deep-clarity in the same manner his poetry did. They fled to the periphery of his mind, staying just out of his grasp.

I am a mage, he lamented in vain, my memory should have been sharper. Tien Lyn continued to elude him, obscured by Yu's looming presence. Yet, he also knew that in his short childhood, Yu was the distant one, and his mother won't let him out of her sight.

He recited the lines anyway.

The days went in flight and in mental drills. His scars itched rather than throbbed, except when he smiled. The gold-and-scarlet hues of southern fall turned to the many shades of white in the North. Nearing their destination, the Quantong mountains tried to box the fenghuang in, and she climbed higher and higher, exposing him to the sky so piercingly cold-blue, it hurt his teeth whenever he looked.

They set their last camp together on the stony ground, above a goat herder's trail. A group of giant boulders that sheltered them looked stable, but at some point, those rocks must have crashed from up high. Xi gave up on extracting a significant philosophical observation from that fact and just peered at the rugged landscape. The narrow winding trek was still visible under the dusting of snow, but he could not see fresh prints of men and their livestock, only those of the wild goats. The herds must have already descended to the lower ground.

From up high Fenghuang and Xi observed the walled city nestled in the mouth of the valley they had followed since two nights ago, a dark gorge cut by the raging water. The canals spider-webbed from Tarkan, full of the same water, only lazier.

The Sunset Road appeared no wider than a silk ribbon from the mountainside. It trailed the green squares of cultivation as far as the eye could see.

"The land in the shadow of the mountains looks pleasant," Fenghuang said.

"Three days' travel by a camel and it turns into the Sandsea of Bones, my enigma."

Instead of a response, she gave him a look that pleaded to not insult her intelligence. He smiled apologetically and wondered how far his magic bird flew without him, and how much her loyalty to him held her back.

"My mother crossed its dead vastness, only to stay put in Tarkan. I would know why tomorrow. Then maybe I can... you can..." The words caught in his throat.

Fenghuang clicked her beak. "Are you sure you want to trudge through the snow? I can swoop---"

"No swooping," he said and hugged her neck. "At least for now. I will find you here should I miss your mighty wings."

"You are a flatterer, Chong Xi."

He smiled and winced cradling his aching cheek. "Never!" Just as he turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of a tilted profile, a white-jade cheek, a dark sweep of a brow over an almond eye, and the spill of the loose tresses... feathers. He did not look back and walked on.

Cold rarely bothered Xi so his wool-and-fur overcoat felt like overkill in Sutao. It felt inadequate sliding down the slippery slope, particularly when he had to catch himself to keep his footing, and his hand plunged into snow from the shelter of the sleeve. His walking staff was proving more of a hindrance than a help on the icy trail. He started to regret not letting Fenghuang set him down on the glamorous central square of Tarkan.

Frozen and disheveled, Xi finally made it to the joining of his goat trail to a larger road. There was a small village there, but he passed it without stopping, despite the thick smell of cooking that tempted his resolve to get to Tarkan before nightfall.

Talking down his growling stomach, Xi did not sense the demon before he landed right in front of him on the road. The creature towered over seven feet, his skin and hair vibrant red from the crisp mountain air, brighter than brandished copper.

Ancestors, how did I miss him?!

The should-have-been-impossible-to-miss demon lashed out with both his qi and his taloned hands. The drooling snout came within an inch of Xi's face, but his instincts had finally kicked in, and he dove out of the way into a sideways roll. The frozen ground sent a shock through his shoulder — it was nothing like falling on the mats in training — but he kept on rolling. In close quarters Xi had no hope against the demon, even if his opponent could not tease apart the mind-shield he put up against the qi-drain.

The demon came after him, with only the smallest pause when he hit Xi's mental barrier.

"A wizard," he grated, "a wizard with a demon's qi." And surged forward.

Xi plunged the white jade hair-pin into the ground. It barely sank in, but it would have to do.

The talons raked Xi's already tender cheek, but he understood...

The soil beneath the demon's feet shifted and imploded, sucking him down to the knees. He screamed out his hatred.

The talons reopened the scabs on Xi's face, but worse than the bleeding, raw passion seared his mind like molten metal. The emotion was not his, it was an unrestrained demonic thing. Xi's mouth gaped on his own accord, producing high-pitch yells that made him want to stuff his fingers into his own ears. He had never come this close to insanity.

The demon might have won, except he panicked seeing the dirt come up to his hips. The monster started digging furiously, throwing half-frozen soil and rocks at Xi. Xi nearly howled with laughter: a pebble? He wants to break my focus with a pebble?!

Blood ran down from his nose into his mouth. He smothered it away along with dirt and sweat. At some point, they both stopped screaming, but Xi did not remember when. He was on all fours now, but, somehow, he still understood. His hsin had won over the flood of emotions, and no more was coming.

Touch... I felt what he felt when he clawed me. I am safe as long as he does not touch me. As long as nobody touches me. Ancestors! It was Jiang's merriment, it was the deserter's anger I felt yesterday...

The demon sunk a few more inches and stopped fighting. Instead, he fixed Xi with a thoughtful stare, more disconcerting than the burning coals of hatred.

"Blood from the Sea told us of the Apostate, a human touched by the Blood's qi, but burning through it, not cultivating the Blood-gift," he said in a husky voice, as seductive as Jiang's, though lower. The poisonous stings of qi attacks still impaled into Xi's mind-shield in dozens, like a swarm of wasps.

The shield and the distance, Rustam taught him, was what won the battles with the demons.

Xi crawled another step backwards and dared a deeper breath in. How long could he hold it together against the bombardment?

He fumbled for his knife, but his hand fell away. Touch the demon, Xi — and your mind would be destroyed by the creature's passions.

"The Blood's scent is so faint on you," the demon went on, folding his muscular arms on top of his head, to keep them free of the soil devouring him, "so faint, in fact, that I wonder. What are you, O Youngest?"

"I am not of the Blood," Xi croaked. Ancestors, I am suffocating him, and he wants to talk about Yu?! Their Apostate could only be Yu, his mother's miserable redhead lover.

The demon persisted in his questioning. "Touched by the Blood then? Did a Hunter that left their mark on you have a name? Did they come from the Sea?"

Xi kept his mouth shut. He no longer could offer a polite conversation on top of the slow burial, his understanding fraying at its edges, disintegrating in the current of qi like a sheet of paper in a stream.

The creature sank down an inch for every painful minute of his labors, maybe less.

Behind him was the village where the goatherds and their families cooked the stew he'd smelled... the demon would sap qi from someone there if he failed.

Xi gritted his teeth and forced the demon down another inch.

"You lie, O Youngest. Sap my qi... so it may return to the Blood when they kill you..."

"Not... of... the..." Why, why should it bother him that the demon thought he was someone else? Or was it because the monster implied he was Yu?

"They will kill you," the demon promised, just before frozen dirt rose over his mouth. It filled his nostrils.

Not long now, no more lies, Xi thought.

The demon's attacks ceased abruptly.

The embers of his eyes went out.

Xi collapsed on his stomach, hitting his chin on the icy dirt, as sharp as glass shards... probably, he had never fallen on broken glass before. The welts on his cheek reopened, bleeding again, driving frustrated tears from his eyes. He was almost done. He had to cover the demon's corpse for the villagers' sake. The soil at the bottom of its feet was not even frozen... small blessings.

Releasing most of his focus, Xi lifted himself up with the help of his walking staff. The understanding skimmed the surroundings not deepening his insight with magic. The weight of the centuries he had yet to live bent his shoulders. He'd just extinguished a life, shred by shred, and the one he was killing watched the oncoming death, and never took his eyes away. Can I die like that? Can any human?

Tarkan might have been on the Islands Beyond now, for all the difference it made. He'd not reach the gates before the nightfall, and the sweat that soaked up his tunic started to freeze. There was his chance to experience the slow death of exhaustion and cold. He did not want it.

Reluctantly, Xi stumbled back to the village and knocked until someone opened a door, and let him tumble into the smoky hut. There was barely any space on the floor for him to fall down, with all the goats and the family crowding it. But they made room for him.

The hut was hot and stuffy, stinking of sweat and beasts, and it was the closest place to Heavens he'd even been to. Forget the peach gardens...

Treating Xi to salted tea so strong that he'd nearly squirted it out of his nose, they sat quietly at first. Then came the smiles and whispers in their own tongue. Finally, the Shen words got strung together, one by one, with lots of repeats and bursts of relieved laughter: they heard the screams, the demon had hunted them before, and that the 'lords' in Tarkan frowned in consternation, but did nothing.

"I killed him. Buried him alive," Xi explained. Then he showed them what he did, digging in a pebble into the dirt floor between two rags. A precocious child with her eyes as big as saucers climbed into his lap and stroked his face with a tiny finger, mumbling something soothing. He held back the wincing. It was throbbing again, but at least he stopped dripping blood on his tunic.

Soon he was swallowing coarse meal soaked in steaming goat milk, and the hut got really crowded. I wish Master Jiang could see me now, Xi thought with a sheepish smile sitting in the center of the tiny crowd. They like me here.

The world tilted, unwilling to let him savor being a hero for the three dozen goat herders. And just when he was starting to enjoy being a hero too! Xi mumbled an apology to his hosts and drifted beyond the reach of their voices (and the ten tiny sticky fingers) into a mind-saving meditation.

While sliding down the well-oiled groves of understanding, Xi remembered that the demon he'd killed held himself separate from the Islands' Blood. It would not be welcome news to the authorities in Tarkan, unless they had known already that the demons penetrated the Empire from somewhere to the West, and did not send a word to Sutao as they should have had.