Week 13

  Mount Pingyang was not the highest or most scenic of the local peaks, but it had the distinction of being almost entirely composed of sharp-edged gravel and the kind of pine trees that stabbed you when you tried to use them for support.

  They had been climbing since dawn, but it was hard to tell the hour in the endless cloud.

  After a quarter hour of determined upward suffering, Briar muttered, “This is not a walk. This is vertical penance.”

  “You’re the one who insisted on bringing a root vegetable for every possible disease,” Callie replied, puffing.

  Briar huffed, shifting her satchel. “I thought we were visiting a sick cow. Did you know what this was, really?”

  “Nope,” Callie said. “That’s what makes it a pilgrimage and not a house call.”

  Ahead, Zhao Tong stopped at a sharp bend where the path turned from loose stone to a ledge covered in green lichen. The mist thinned, revealing a natural alcove in the cliff face: not a cave, exactly, more like the hollow under a massive boulder, with just enough shelter from the wind to feel like a room.

  Someone—or something—had arranged the space: a low cairn of river stones at the back, two pine branches stuck upright like awkward antennas.

  Tanith ducked inside, blinking dew from her spectacles. She crouched beside the cairn and, after a moment’s hesitation, placed a small handful of rice and a single, perfect pinecone on the altar. “I made an offering,” she whispered. “Just in case.”

  Briar followed, peering around the alcove. “If this is a spirit home, it smells a lot like goat pee.”

  Callie grinned, then stepped into the hollow, feeling the chill fade from her bones almost instantly. The place radiated a low, constant warmth.

  Zhao Tong lingered at the entrance, arms crossed. “It will come soon,” he said.

  Briar squatted beside Callie, opened her satchel, and began lining up her “remedies” on a flat stone: dried mushroom caps, a flask of stinking wine, a crumbling block of sulfur. “If it’s a monster, I have stuff for monsters,” she said. “If it’s a person, I have stuff for persons.”

  “That’s not how medicine works,” Callie murmured, but she appreciated the gesture.

  She had just begun to rub warmth into her palms when the mist at the cave mouth shifted.

  A shadow flickered across the light, then resolved into something with four legs and a tail.

  The Bai Ze made its entrance with all the grace of a sick dog, head low, fur bristled with cold. It moved with a rolling, almost lazy gait, as if walking was something it did for the benefit of witnesses. Two horns curved from its forehead, ridged and dark as old lacquer. Its face was somewhere between a lion and an ox, but with none of the menace or blankness of either animal. Instead, it looked at Callie with a flat, administrative exhaustion.

  Its eyes were a problem: she counted five at first; two forward, three arranged like gemstones along the brow; but as it settled, the number seemed to change, an effect less magical than procedural.

  It huffed, then sneezed. A fleck of mucus hit the ground with a noise that made Tanith flinch.

  “Visitors,” the Bai Ze said hoarsely. The voice was dry, old, and just the faintest bit nasal.

  Tanith, who had been silent up to now, bowed her head and offered the pinecone again, arms outstretched. “We come with respect,” she managed.

  The Bai Ze looked at the pinecone, then at Tanith, then at the group as a whole. “And yet, here you are.”

  Briar stared, mouth open. “It talks.”

  “Of course it talks,” Callie whispered. “It’s an oracle. Or a sage. Or a living encyclopedia. Depending on which story you like.”

  The Bai Ze coughed. “All are correct. But for now, we are simply tired.”

  They curled up at the far end of the alcove, tucking their tail around their feet with a precision that seemed at odds with their monstrous size. For a moment, they just breathed, then turned one eye (the topmost) on Callie.

  “You are the one they sent,” they said. “The failed audit.”

  The phrase hit like a slap, but Callie didn’t flinch. “I’m here to help,” she said. “If you want it.”

  The Bai Ze’s many eyes glazed, then cleared. “Who is your leader?”

  Zhao Tong stepped forward and knelt, his forehead nearly touching the ground. “I am the escort for Lady Calanthe,” he said, gesturing behind him with the most formal deference Callie had ever seen. “She is our decision maker.”

  The Bai Ze twitched their whiskers. “A fine appointment. And these others?”

  Callie introduced each in turn. “Professor Tanith, fire mage and formalist. Briar, gatherer and field medic. Zhao Tong, tactician. And myself, Calanthe—unlicensed healer.”

  The Bai Ze nodded, then sneezed again. “You are less impressive in person.”

  Tanith winced. Briar made a face that suggested she’d heard worse from plants. Callie only shrugged. “I get that a lot.”

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  The Bai Ze’s horns flicked, the effect somewhere between a smile and a threat. “You wish to know what afflicts me?”

  “That is why we came,” Callie said, more softly than she’d planned.

  The beast considered, then began to speak. “We are the Sage Beast,” they said. “The White Marsh Oracle. We sit between realms, recording the names and properties of all that passes. It is our purpose to mediate between your world and the one beneath. Usually, it is a noble job. Lately, it has become... vexing.”

  It looked away. “There has been a disturbance in our records. Something keeps rewriting the stories of monsters and people, over and over, erasing the proper distinctions. This is not permitted. And now, we have caught it, too.”

  “You caught… what, exactly?” Callie asked.

  “A sickness of narrative,” the Bai Ze replied, and if a beast could sigh, this one did. “A plague of uncertainty. A psychic infection that silences knowledge. Our mind is overloaded with prophecies it never asked to know. We are drowning and our memory flickers.”

  The Bai Ze’s fur rippled, its limbs briefly shortening and then re-extending, the number of horns shifting to three before re-settling at two.

  Tanith’s pen was already out, scribbling on her cuff.

  Callie waited for the transformation to stabilize, then said, “Who did this to you?”

  The Bai Ze fixed her with a look that could have sterilized a forest. “A nasty woman,” they said. “A clever, nasty woman. You might know her.”

  “Why would that be?” Callie asked.

  "Because you have so much in common?" The Bai Ze chuckled hoarsely and Callie felt that she had walked right into that one.

  "I jest, I jest,” the Bai Ze continued. “Didn't you say you came from Apsu's Respite? She lives around there nowadays."

  Callie had not said where they came from but she had little time to consider her next answer as the Bai Ze fell into a deep and sudden sleep.

  ***

  The Bai Ze’s sleep lasted only twenty seconds, but when they uncoiled again, they seemed more alert than before. Their many eyes blinked in slow, even rhythm, and their voice echoed softly in the alcove.

  “My friends, we have been rude,” they said, as if resuming a conversation from a century ago. “Whenever visitors come with a worthy petition, they are to receive a talisman (白泽符). It is not a gift. It is a receipt of service.”

  From somewhere in the impossible geometry of their fur, the Bai Ze produced a sheaf of white paper slips, each inscribed with a circle of tiny, perfect eyes drawn in black ink. The edges of each slip curled slightly, and as the Bai Ze placed one in the open palm of Briar, the eyes shimmered blue for an instant before settling to stillness.

  “Uncoil and carry it on your person,” the Bai Ze intoned, “and no lesser plague, monster, or hostile spirit will touch you until the next moon.” It passed a second to Tanith, whose hands shook as she took it, and a third to Zhao Tong, who received his with a bow so low it nearly upended him.

  Callie extended both her hands, feeling the eyes of the party on her.

  The Bai Ze looked at her hands, then at her face, and then her forehead. It made a low, untranslatable sound.

  “And you... ” it said. “No. You don’t need one.”

  Callie blinked, unsure if she’d heard right. “Excuse me?”

  “No,” the Bai Ze said, more clearly. “You do not require my protection.” They were not angry; if anything, they sounded faintly amused. “You are already catalogued in the higher registers.”

  Briar, not to be left out, held up her charm for Callie to inspect. “Look, Doc. It’s pretty. The eyes move if you stare long enough.”

  Callie stared at the charm. The eyes did move, in a slow, hypnotic swirl, like the surface of an ink pot disturbed by wind. She resisted the urge to reach for Briar’s and tuck it somewhere safe.

  “Are you sure I don’t need one?” Callie pressed. “I can’t imagine how powerful a Bai Ze talisman drawn by the Bai Ze themselves could be.”

  The Bai Ze snorted, horns vibrating in a way that suggested deep fatigue. “Indeed, our form has been drawn on talismans to protect homes; Emperors kept scrolls with our form on them in palace libraries; images of us were painted on coffins to guide the dead and repel corpse-eating demons.”

  Callie frowned. “Exactly. So can I have one? Please?"

  “Not at all,” the Bai Ze said. They paused, then added: “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool bent on folly. Those verses were written about you.”

  “So rude!” Callie said.

  Zhao Tong chuckled. Tanith, ever the academic, was already making notes on the charm’s script and construction.

  “I could hold yours for a while,” Briar offered, waving her slip between two fingers.

  “Thank you, but I think it only works if it’s given directly,” Callie said.

  The Bai Ze nodded. “Correct. It is keyed to the soul of its recipient. No substitutions.”

  Briar looked crestfallen for only a second, then brightened. “Can I have an extra, then? For emergencies?”

  The Bai Ze considered, then reached deep into its fur and drew out two extra slips. “Very well,” they said, “but the rules still apply.”

  Briar tucked the extras into the lining of her vest, where it almost vanished. “I’ll save it for later, then.”

  The Bai Ze shook out its mane, and spoke in the slow, measured tone of someone reading an ancient contract for the thousandth time.

  “Before you commence with our healing, I am authorized to grant knowledge of 152 things. The price is nonnegotiable, and payment is due upon delivery.”

  It paused, waiting for Callie to absorb the offer.

  Tanith interrupted: “Wait. That’s not what the records say. The legend is 1,520 things. That’s an order of magnitude reduction. Why the discrepancy?”

  The Bai Ze sighed. “That number is an exaggeration, likely propagated by contemptible marketing efforts. No one needs knowledge of 11,520 things. Most applicants never make use of more than three.” It eyed Tanith, then Callie. “But if you require the original package, the surcharge is considerable. I usually supply it to Emperors and you… don’t seem to measure up.”

  Callie found her voice. “No. I just... " she stopped, thinking of how to phrase it without sounding petty, "I just want to know if this is some kind of raw deal because I have red hair?”

  The Bai Ze’s whiskers twitched in genuine amusement. “No raw deal. Your red hair is pretty, so why should I give you a raw deal because of that. You white people are so sensitive. I should know. I’m white myself.”

  Briar cackled, then coughed it into her sleeve. Zhao Tong looked away, embarrassed.

  Callie squared her shoulders. “Let’s do it. What’s the payment, exactly?”

  The Bai Ze’s eyes narrowed to a businesslike focus. “The equivalent value in golden mana.”

  Callie’s stomach dropped. She remembered, all too vividly, the agony of the last time she’d spent mana to rewrite a death.

  The Bai Ze must have seen her hesitation, because it went on, “How much did you spend to revive your beautiful young wife?” It nodded toward Briar, who grinned at being called young.

  Callie hesitated, doing the math. “About seventeen million gold mana.”

  The Bai Ze nodded. “A miracle is never cheap. I can offer the 152 things for half that price. But only if you cure me.”

  Tanith’s head snapped up. “That’s eight point five million. You’ll lose... ” she calculated, lips moving, “another eight levels.”

  Callie scowled. "A Level 29 Healer. No fucking way… "

  "Suit yourself little missy," the Bai Ze intoned.

  Zhao Tong whispered in Callie’s ears. "The Bai Ze always gives a good deal. You can trust them.”

  “The Bai Ze is honorable,” Tanith added. “Their gifts never fail.”

  Callie looked at her XP counter, the numbers floating just to the right of her field of view: 13.5 million, with the bar a comfortable gold, like a ray of sunshine.

  She remembered how Abyssa used to say that the only reason to get strong was to see what you’d do with it when it was gone.

  “Fine,” Callie said. “I’ll pay.” She sighed and turned to Briar. “You know,” she said, “I thought these things were about getting stronger.

  "I’m really going to kill the person who wrote this world.”