The Eighth King by Matt Weber

Author:Matt Weber [Weber, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620079577
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Published: 2017-11-26T22:00:00+00:00

I have spoken before of the exigencies of storytelling, and the desire to elide events so as to produce a satisfying thematic unity and density of incident within a scene. To approximate the effect without sacrificing accuracy, I shall omit a few amusing conversations held on the way to the post, and from the post to the nearest inn, which happened to be the Typical Moniker on the Road of Bulls. Let us leap ahead, instead, to the small protuberance of Shrastaka which the four friends were required to traverse before entering Gyachun and then, by means they had not yet determined, making their way back into and across the Great South Plain. The terrain was flat plateau, slowly greening, though the Bat Mountains serrated the southwest horizon; the sky was preternaturally clear; they were making good time to the next post stop and thence, if all went well, to the Pavilion of Delight, a shabby establishment whose name was nonetheless excellently underwritten by its fine roast goat and light wheat beer.

It was Lin Gyat who saw the pillar beyond the mountains, in the sky. He made a noise, and the others saw it too. At first it was a column of white, rising slowly, as though the horizon were receding at some immense tidal pull; but then it stopped and fanned out, like one of the fountains at the Orchid Palace’s Seven Ocean Courtyard. A stain of white inched across the far-off sky. Datang thought she could see the shadow that it cast—on Imja, over the mountains, where it must have been.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I have a conjecture,” said Lin Yongten.

“We must turn back,” said Netten.

“Back?” said Lin Gyat. “There is nothing to shoot back there, and no wheat beer either.”

“Back to the fork, then southwest on Red Tenshing’s Road and the Road of Reason,” said Netten. “We cannot afford to entangle ourselves on the Great South Plain now.” He spent a moment lost in thought, then swung a leg over his horse’s back to dismount. “I beg your pardon. It is the First Blight, Left Hand, and there are rituals I think I must perform.”

Lin Yongten’s face went the merest shade of dark, but he nodded. “We will grant you the space we can, and deter strangers.” But Netten had already assumed the half-lotus and begun to breathe deep, whispering exhalations through his nose.

The rest withdrew, Lin Gyat down one side of the road and Datang and Lin Yongten down the other.

“He is conducting the preparatory meditations outlined in the Book of Tenshing,” said Lin Yongten, as soon as they had put some distance between Netten and themselves. “He thinks he is still King.”

“He wants to help,” said Datang.

“Have I said anything different?”

Well,” said Datang, “I think there is a difference between highlighting a man’s goodwill and highlighting his pretensions.”

Lin Yongten smiled a small, thin smile. “And there may be at that. Yet I have always known Netten to be a man of good will; it is the pretensions that are new, and troubling.

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