“Now then,” said the Messah monk, “we welcome you to Qi Shi Monastery. I am Brother William, and these are my fellow junior monks. They will accompany us to the Sutra Chamber to ensure no one strays. So please, follow closely. While we wish you no harm, my brothers have been trained not to hesitate.” Indeed, the eight monks eyed every step they made, waiting, watching for a mistake, a misstep, a justification to hurl the strangers out the ancient red gates. But Adnihilo was not afraid. He eyed them right back, figuring which in a fight he thought he could best. None of them looked half as tough as Eyebrows, and he was tempted to start a bout with one just to test his strength. He wanted to know for certain how much farther he’d come since his final lesson with Cain outside Amsah’s place. The notion put a grin on his face, a grin Brother William must have seen. He spoke directly to half-blood, saying. “If, however, it is a fight you want, you’d be best off waiting until we’ve reached the Sutra Chamber. It is the abbot’s habit to accept outside challenges, and he’ll provide a more worthy opponent than anyone else here.”
“What about Mags?” asked Adam as they entered the ruinous maze, like a shard of city from another age: open sky between sweeping tile overhangs, walls of wood-rot with rammed earth behind, and ground stones taken from the bed of a river, perfectly fitted together and worn over time by a thousand-thousand footfalls and rains and snows. Yet, as they walked, they saw not a trace of dirt nor overgrowth—only footprints in the rime on the stones.
Brother William answered without slowing, “You mean the girl? That, too, is to be determined by the abbot, though I think it likely he’ll let you stay. He was delighted when last we boarded a visitor.”
“Who was he? The last visitor, I mean?” inquired Adnihilo.
They took several sharp turns as their guide considered his answer, passing near three dozen chambers filled with oddities beyond imagining. The half-blood glanced a few like the room with great craters in its floor from the ritual stomping of monks or the chamber where they rang gongs with absurdly long hammers. And there were more: a long hall with blood speckled bags suspended at head height, and what looked like a torture chambers—two huge incense sticks set to fit a man’s head between, a series of mirrors placed to confuse and disorient, and worst was the room which opened to the well. There, men carried buckets with daggers strapped under their arms so that the slightest shrug of weakness would be punished.
Then suddenly, their guide stopped and turned. They stood on the threshold of the inner most chamber. Brother William spoke, his voice tempered, “The last visitor? That depends of when you ask. I myself was a very different man when I arrived here, blind and arrogant. The man you ask of…he came to us a wild dog, but under the abbot he became his own man. That was almost two years ago. He left us last winter thaw. He never gave a reason for leaving, and the abbot has forbidden us to ask. It’s led to rumors, naturally. Some of the juniors believe the stranger had reached enlightenment.”
“Enlightenment?” Adam began, but the monk waved away his question.
“I have given you all the answers I can give,” he said, “We have reached the Sutra Chamber.” He fell to both knees and bowed before the door—ancient bronze as green as jade. “The abbot is within, but we cannot interrupt him. Please, bow with me until the way is—”
Adnihilo marched aside the monk and grabbed for the door handle. It was a ring bigger than his head, ill fit for human hands, ribbed and spined, and hanging from the cast-bronze face of a demon. Around such a thing, his fingers closed and squeezed ever tighter, never letting go even as he recoiled in pain. The door swung open. Adam and William and Ba’al all called his name, but Adnihilo rushed forward. He had to move before his courage waned—before his conscience became aware of the danger.
And so he entered the dark and ancient hall. Inside was long and tall and narrow; the only lights were candles, one in front of each of the twenty elder monks. They lined either end of the stale, empty chamber, taking turns repeating their sutras. The very air quivered as each member spoke—like a mirage in the desert, only Adnihilo could feel it shake the courage from his bones. Yet he could not stop watching those parchment-thin monks in their ragged clothes chant and hum their mysterious tongue—until he noticed one man seated alone at the end of the hall—a Gautaman, bald and in gray like all the others, yet younger and stronger. He wore his robe tied off at the waist, exposing a body stripped of excess. Every inch of skin was striated by the fibers underneath—every blood vessel visible.
The abbot’s eyes flashed open, and at once the sutras ceased. He said something
