Feeding the Feral Children by David Farland (fantasy books to read .txt) 📗

Huang Fa could not breathe, could not get air into his lungs for all the dust, and began to fear that despite his best efforts, he would suffocate in the storm.

Coughing, his face hidden beneath his robes, at last in a perpetual gloom he dropped to his knees to crawl, holding on to the cuff of the monk’s robe. At last his hand bumped something that yielded, and realized that they had found a tent.

The monk knelt and untied some fastenings, and they lunged into a pavilion where several merchants in their finest wares—in multicolored silks as bright as songbirds and butterflies--sat on cushions around a single golden lantern, drinking tea. Even in here the air was thick with dust. A courtly scholar in dark blue robes peered at Huang Fa knowingly and announced, “And here, good sirs, are the visitors that I promised: one man who is holy, and another who is damned.”

The silk merchants gaped at Huang Fa and the monk in astonishment. “Incredible!” one of them cried. “In the midst of a killer storm!” another shouted. Two of the men actually clapped in delight at such a spectacle.

#

That night, as wind prowled outside the pavilion like a demon spirit and dust filtered through the air in a dense fog, Huang Fa peered through gritty eyes at the wizard, a eunuch with a face that was somehow regal despite the fact that he had no beard.

“You should not have given Battarsaikhan the dragon’s tooth,” the wizard warned after he had heard Huang Fa’s tale. It had been hours since he’d entered the pavilion, but only now was he able to breathe well enough to plead for help. The day was dying, the sun descending into a bland orange haze, and the silk merchants lay about in a strange lethargy, weary of breathing, so that only the wizard, Huang Fa, and the monk were up. “If a sorcerer has something that you have touched and owned,” the wizard continued, “it can give him power over you.”

“I only hoped to gain his forgiveness, Master Wong,” Huang Fa apologized.

“There shall be none,” the wizard intoned. He peered down into his lap.

“Is there nothing we can do?” the monk begged. “How will the sorcerer attack?”

“I am an expert in divination,” Master Wong replied. “I am not an expert in all sorceries, but I have traveled the Earth, and I know something of these barbarians. He will send an animal spirit to possess Huang Fa, one that will fill him with animal desires and lead him to ruin.”

“What kind of spirit?” the monk asked.

The wizard shook his head. “I cannot be sure. A fox spirit would fill him with lust, a wolf with a thirst for blood. A boar will turn him into a glutton. An ape spirit would make him act like a fool, but we are far from the land of apes. It will be . . . an animal close to the sorcerer.”

Master Wong clapped his hands and asked a young boy, his assistant, to bring his “special trunk.” The boy hurried to another pavilion, and returned moments later. Master Wong had Huang Fa lie down; he took a bottle of henna dye and a calligraphy brush and began to write spells of warding upon Huang Fa’s face. As he worked, he explained, “Animal spirits cannot take control of you unless you welcome them in. You can fight them. You must fight them. The spells that I am writing will help. The spirits will seek to enter through an orifice—your nostrils or mouth are the weakest points, and so I will surround them with spells.”

“You told the others that I was damned,” Huang Fa said. “How did you know?”

Master Wong hesitated in his brush stroke. “I cast the yarrow stalks this morning and formed a trigram, then read from the I-Ching.”

Huang Fa was skeptical at this. The I-Ching, or Book of Changes, suggested that all of life is in a flux. Every person’s situation was always about to change, and by casting the yarrow stalks, one could then consult the book and learn direction for the future. But it was not as simple as that. In part, one had to rely upon the abilities of the wizard who did the divination. One had to trust his insights.

“So you learned that I was damned from the I-Ching?”

“I have felt your coming for days,” replied Master Wong. “‘A stranger is coming,’ the yarrow stalks foretold, ‘one with blood on his hands and a curse on his soul. He has an enemy more powerful than this storm.’”

“You divined all of this?”

The wizard nodded solemnly, then set down his brush and folded his hands. “I could learn little more--except for the hour or your coming.”

“Is there any hope for me?”

Master Wong frowned. “This Battarsaikhan has powers that go far beyond mine. He sent this storm to slow you down—or kill you, and that is no small feat. Yet this I also know: the human heart has a magic of its own, as powerful as any spell. Perhaps if we understood his powers better. . . .”

Huang Fa’s heart hammered, filling him with hope. “Is there a surer form of divination than the I-Ching?”

Master Wong leaned over Huang Fa and gave an inscrutable expression, as if he might be annoyed. “You are a skeptic? You don’t trust me? I do my own readings twice a day. I would not have survived for a hundred and twelve years without them! If the stalks tell me to eat an apricot today, I eat it. If they tell me to stay out of the rain--”

The monk’s mouth dropped in surprise. “You are a hundred and twelve years old?”

The wizard did not look a day over fifty. He kept a straight face for a moment, and burst out laughing at his own jest. “If you want a surer form of divination,” he suggested to Huang Fa, “we can consult the turtle’s oracle bones.”

This was a form of divination