To help with the large cast of characters,
I have put together a spoiler-free Dramatis Personae
The forest by the mountain road
The wild again. The cold. Min La wrapped his coat around his shoulders and sat for a moment behind a tree to rest his aching knee. The low winter sun was already dipping behind the western range of the Osa Len Mountains and it was barely past noon. He would be traipsing through the forest in the dark if he didn’t hurry.
For a day and a half he and So Ga had been doubling back. But first they had argued about it. So Ga’s mood had been foul since they had left the Kodas on the mountain road. When Min La had suggested that they leave their belongings where they had hidden them and continue on to Osa Gate, matters had worsened.
Enraged, So Ga had refused to see the madness in returning to Tola Dol territory just for a bag of food and medicine.
“It is not the medicine,” he had snapped, eyes flashing. “If I don’t have the seal in Osa Gate you might as well kill me now in this forest.”
“We will die just as quickly if we’re caught again. We know that village is patrolled. We cannot take the risk.”
“We have to,” So Ga had insisted stubbornly. “You know it as well as I.”
They had argued for several more minutes until So Ga had stomped off into the forest only to trip and slide on his backside down a small hill. It would have been comical were they not both angry and still thrumming with nervous terror. For his part, Min La still trembled at the thought of the executioner’s blade slicing through the air for his neck. He felt restless, helpless, cornered by an enemy he could not see. His path had led him into a corner and there was no escape.
The enemy, of course, was himself. His choices had, time and again, brought them to the brink of disaster.
In the end, he had retrieved So Ga from where he had slid down the hill and then he had put him in a cave they had found behind a fallen ash tree. Limping back and forth across the opening, he had blocked it with a scattering of branches. Inside, he spent some time starting a fire with dried bits of leaves that were piled near the back of the cave. A fire was a risk, but the cold would kill the prince for certain. There was never a good option.
As the tiny flame sparked in the darkness, he had said, “You will wait here and I will go back.”
So Ga had stood, eyes wide. “No!” he yelled, his voice echoing inside the tiny stone space.
Something in So Ga’s face made Min La think that he no longer trusted him, though he couldn’t think of what might have changed in him. It was as if he believed that Min La would take his seal and their gold and abandon him. It had surprised Min La to find that he hadn’t even considered that.
“I can move faster on my own,” he had argued. “I am better at sneaking around unseen than you are.” After a pause he had added, “I will come back.”
So Ga had said nothing for a long time. He had stood with his fists clenched and lips tightened into a firm line. His dark eyes roved the interior of the cave, as if the ideal answer was etched somewhere on the stone walls.
“Your knee,” he had said at last.
Min La had shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”
Neither had had a choice in the matter. Both had known it. Min La had left So Ga in the cave before dawn. Walking — and sometimes running — as fast as he could, he had nearly reached the little abandoned village where they had left their bag five nights ago. The rough journey across the Osa Len foothills had been like needles in his knee. And so now, just within sight of the little village, he paused to rest.
He had seen no one in the forest since dawn. Perhaps the Tola Dol had been so anxious about angering the Koda that they had withdrawn entirely. And with the change in the Ŏklo House, soon, perhaps, Tola Dol would have no reason at all to patrol these lands. It didn’t matter; he still had to be careful.
Keeping to the shadows that cushioned each structure, he crept into the little village. The air was utterly empty, so much so that the grinding of the gravel under his boots seemed as loud as a hammer fall. In the silence, however, he could hear nothing else. The village was empty, he was sure of it.
It took longer to find the little house where they had hidden that night, but when he did he slipped along the shaded side of it looking for a shadow-shrouded way to enter. The only one he found — a shutter with a thin frame of wood covered over with thin wooden slats — was stuck closed by neglect. So he crept to the front of the house to use the door.
Inside, the afternoon darkness was thicker and he took a moment to let his eyes adjust. Then, after pausing to rub his knee, he went to the back of the little house to find the place where So Ga had hidden their bag.
A spot under a board, he had said. Under a window in the eastern corner.
The interior of the little house was less cold than the crisp winter air in the forest, which was a small relief, considering. Min La’s rest outside the village had made the ache in his knee more noticeable. He was tired, exhausted, and he still had the trek back. They hadn’t eaten anything but berries and herbs since the Koda heir had given them broth. Moving soundlessly through the little house, Min La knew that this was both a waste of time and something that he had to do. So Ga was right, after all. Without his seal at Osa Gate, the two of them would be no one at all.
It wasn’t until he turned the corner leading from the little front room to the back of the house that he heard the sound.
It was a soft clinking, the unmistakable music of coins. Min La froze and reached for his chest— but his bag and the knife hidden in it were not there. Turning toward the sound he saw a figure crouched in a corner, his bulk occupying the space just under the window. At his feet rested a board that had been pulled up from the dusty floor, exposing a space under the house.
The man heard Min La and looked up. He seemed just as surprised as Min La, and, with a start, dropped what was in his hand.
Min La’s silver medallion fell onto the bag, clinking sharply against the purse of gold. His attention was so fixed on the bag — where he could see the sheathed silver dagger Nŏl had given him — that he did not at first look at the man.
But then the crouching figure stood and Min La’s breath caught in his throat. His dark gray cloak was mud spattered and his boots almost white with dust. But his black suede golt was clean. The crisp material was night-dark in the dimly-lit room where the only light came seeping in from the hole in the floor.
Táno Gín’s men had found him. In that moment, the first thought that entered Min La’s mind was one of relief. He was relieved that he had left So Ga in the cave in the woods, relieved he was alone.
His second thought was significantly more helpful. This man, this mercenary, was just as alone as he was. Probably a scout, he realized. Táno Gín had likely sent several of his men in all directions into the forest around the mountain road. It occurred to him then that Táno Gín would be growing desperate to catch them — or So Ga, at least — especially now that they were so close to Osa Gate.
In the swirl of seconds that immediately followed, several other disconnected thoughts came to color Min La’s mind. He remembered the shining sword of the executioner, and the terror on the face of So Ga. He thought of the pain in his knee, the cold clamped tightly around his bones. He thought of So Ga’s dead bodyswords, of his distant royal father, of the Koda House abandoning them on the road, of Sivo Hin Ŏklo sending bandits to kill them. He thought, too, of his own House, piled dead in ditches in Hin Dan.
He thought of So Ga, alone in a cave waiting for him, trusting him to come back.
How many times had Min La’s path intersected with a sword? How many times had the Ădol demanded of him payment in blood? And for what? Why did he continue? How? What power in him put one foot in front of another? He should have given up days ago. Why did he continue?
These thoughts rose up in his mind like a cacophony of voices from a taunting crowd, a wave of noise that grew into a shrill cry which, at last, he realized was coming from his own throat.
He ran across the darkened room and lowered his shoulder, colliding with the mercenary at full speed. He felt the man buckle, he heard him gasp when Min La slammed his shoulder into his stomach. They fell as a knot of scrabbling limbs and muscles against the wall of the house. The mercenary slid to the side, his foot caught in the opening in the floor.
Min La reached over and grasped blindly for his bag. His fingers brushed the chain that held his brother’s seal, they stabbed into the purse and felt the cold shock of the crisp gold. Then, at last, he felt the coarse hilt of the dagger.
Wrenching it free from its sheath, he stabbed blindly, but the blade met wood. The mercenary had dodged, ducking his body to avoid Min La’s slender knife. His foot was still stuck in the hole, trapping him in an awkward half-seated position. As Min La drew back, the man grasped at his foot with one hand and the scabbard on his hip with the other. Min La could see that he was trying to decide which was more urgent.
Min La did not hesitate. Pushing aside the mercenary’s well-timed block, he fell against him again, using the weight of his body to drive the blade through his chest. The man gasped, his arms clutched Min La’s shoulders, fingers clawing at his back and arms. Min La pulled himself free, removing the knife. And then he plunged it in again. His arms burned, his chest burned, his knee felt like it had been replaced by a piece of hot metal. But he stabbed again and again until the man stopped moving.
Then he fell back, sprawled on the floor with the dead man’s blood cooling on his hands and on the front of his golt. The knife was still stuck in the mercenary’s chest, blood pooling under him and creeping across the wooden boards to the opening in the floor. Min La rolled onto his side and plucked the bag out of the hole, squeezing it around the mercenary’s trapped leg. Then he hugged it to his chest and lay still for several minutes trying to catch his breath.
In time, he sat up. Without looking at the dead mercenary, he took stock of the bag’s contents, relieved to find that everything was there, especially So Ga’s golden seal — wrapped tightly in a spare golt — and his brother’s martial seal, which he quickly put on, feeling a wave of calm when he felt the cold metal against his trembling chest.
Yanking the blade out of the mercenary’s chest, he cleaned it on his dark gray cloak and then put it back in its sheath. Then he looped the bag over his head to rest against his chest.
Glancing back at the dead mercenary, a certain hollowness filled him. A question came and needled its way into his mind. What did he die for, this nameless man? Min La killed him to save himself, to save So Ga. But why did he die? Was payment motivation enough to risk dying alone in a little abandoned village in the Osa Len Mountains? Was there honor in the company of Táno Gín? Was honor the thing that had driven these men to pursue them relentlessly across Sona Gen? What honor was there in the murder of a prince?
Though he wasn’t entirely sure why he did it, Min La went to the dead man and unfastened the cloak from his shoulders. This he draped over his gaping, dead face. Then he took his foot out of the hole in the floor and arranged his legs neatly. When he was found by his comrades, no one would know that he had died because of something as ridiculous as a foot stuck in a hole. Whatever honor he had had, perhaps he could keep it. Min La heard himself mutter a word to Ávoth, then he put the dagger into his bag and left.
It was nearly dawn before he made it back to the cave where So Ga waited. Collapsing exhausted upon the leaf-littered stone floor, he pushed the bag into So Ga’s arms.
“I was beginning to get worried,” So Ga said, holding the bag in his lap, but looking at Min La.
“I ran into a little trouble,” Min La answered as he leaned against the cave wall and began to massage his knee. There was blood on the front of his golt and a little on his hands still. He was too tired to hide it.
Tying his dirty hair into a loose knot, he said, “Let me sleep for a couple hours, then we’ll go.”
“Are you alright?”
Min La closed his eyes. “My knee hurts a little. That’s all.”
“I mean…”
When he didn’t continue, Min La opened his eyes again and looked at him. So Ga had seen the blood on his clothes and stared at it with dim eyes.
“I’m fine. I didn’t get a scratch,” he said. “None of this is my blood.”
“What you did…” So Ga trailed off again. He had plunged his hands into the bag and was blindly fishing for the gold seal. “What you did,” he repeated, but stopped again as he continued to dig around in the bag.
With a sigh, Min La took it from him. He found the rolled-up golt and pulled So Ga’s seal from within. Without much ceremony, he handed it out to him. So Ga stared at it for a long time without moving.
“What you did,” he began again, extending one hand to take the shining chain and its heavy pendant. “In the camp back there. What you did, you can’t do that again.”
Min La blinked in surprise. “Do you mean when I pretended to be you?” Was that why So Ga had been angry with him? Because he had presumed to present himself as the prince? Min La shook his head. “I only did that because—”
“No, not that.” The chain was like a pool of gold in So Ga’s palm, one end trickling over his thumb. He stared at it, moving the little pool so it caught the sparse light of the tiny fire. Min La waited, his brow creased.
“They were going to kill you,” So Ga said at last. “You didn’t have a plan, did you? You were going to let them kill you?”
“Ah, that,” Min La said with a sigh. “To be honest, I didn’t give it much thought at the time—”
“You were going to let them kill you. You took the blame for the dead soldier. You gave them your head. To protect me, you were going to die.”
Min La felt his heart quicken. So Ga words brought him swiftly back to the cold mud and the blinding light of dawn as the sun sliced across the swung blade, severing his mind from his actions. He had felt himself float suddenly away from his body, he had felt himself drawn apart from the events. In a sense, he hadn’t yet snapped back. Ever since the blade had lifted — and then never fallen — he had felt himself holding a strained breath. So Ga’s words were like a tether, a hook in his ribs pulling him back to reality.
He didn’t know why he had done what he did. Nor did he understand his own prolonged sense of shock. It was not, after all, the first time he had nearly died. But on that day, all those years ago, he had died for something clear, for his family, for his failed attempts to save them and himself. He didn’t have an explanation to offer So Ga. Instead he just sat in silence, rubbing his fingers.
“You can’t do that ever again,” So Ga said sharply.
Min La stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“You cannot give your life to protect mine. If they’re going to kill me, you have to let them and save yourself.”
Min La laughed lightly. But he stopped as soon as he saw the dark look in So Ga’s eyes.
Gathering all the confidence he could into his tired voice, he said, “They didn’t kill me.”
“But they would have.”
“I am not the crown prince, So Ga. I am a Houseless beggar. You are the one who needs to survive, not me.”
“We both need to survive.”
“We both did.”
So Ga shook his head. His hand clamped shut around the golden pool. “You can’t do that again. You can’t throw your life away for mine. Never again.”
“But you will be king,” Min La said gently. “What will happen to Láokoth if you die?”
“Whether I live or die makes no difference. We both know I can’t do anything for Láokoth.”
“You can when you’re king.”
So Ga shook his head. “You can’t give your life for mine. I order it.”
With a small smile Min La answered, “You aren’t king yet, Your Highness.”
They left before daybreak. Min La had managed only an hour or two of sleep, but So Ga seemed rested enough. Still, they were both shivering from the cold, they were both stiff, pale, hungry, exhausted. After only half a day of walking, Min La had had to lean on So Ga for support as his knee was almost too stiff to bend. They hobbled along like this, keeping to the densely packed forest to the west of the mountain road, until they found themselves upon a narrow path.
“We’ll follow it,” Min La said, gesturing. “This will take us to a village.”
By the time the stars were brightest in the night sky, they finally saw the first structures and bright lanterns of a small mountain village. A single stone marker indicated their arrival, but it was too dark to make out the village name.
So Ga’s breathing had become labored as Min La’s weight became too much for him to support. Surveying the structures, Min La at last saw, nestled in a copse of maple trees on the outskirts of the little village, the pale stone wall of a small temple.
“There,” he said.
So Ga nodded and they hobbled over. They didn’t pause to see what kind of a temple it was; in truth, it didn’t matter. All temples were safe havens for travelers on the road.
In the end, Min La had to sit on the stone step next to the temple gate while So Ga rang the little bell with some urgency, pulling the thick blue rope again and again. Min La wanted to tell him not to be quite so panicked, after all, this wasn’t exactly an emergency.
But then he glanced at the thickening blackness of the forest. He knew the mercenaries were in there somewhere, possibly closer than they even realized. Gripping his aching knee, he thought, too, of their need for shelter, for food, for warmth…
So Ga continued to ring the bell.
At last a little monk wrenched open the narrow gate. He was not young, nor was he old; his shaved head made it hard to determine his age, exactly. Staring at both of them with wide eyes and an open mouth, he said nothing for several seconds, until finally he blurted out, “Do you think if you ring it with greater intensity I will suddenly be able to move my ancient legs with greater speed?”
So Ga bowed. “I’m sorry, please. My brother…” and he gestured to Min La who was trying to stand up.
The monk’s eyes went immediately to Min La’s golt, and he only remembered at that moment that he still wore the blood of the mercenary he had killed. There was nothing to be done about it now. So Min La made no effort to hide it.
Try though he might, Min La was only able to get himself onto his good knee. When he reached out for So Ga’s help, the prince instead fell to his knees next to him.
“Please,” So Ga said again. “Please help us.”
The sudden sight of the two young men on their knees in supplication snapped the monk out of his apparent irritated shock. He waved his hands and said, “No, no, my sons. I am just surprised, is all. We see so few pilgrims at our gate, you understand.”
Min La looked up in confusion as the man came over to help both of them to their feet. Both he and So Ga had to work to hoist him upright. When he was standing he leaned against the monk in an effort to spare So Ga.
With his free hand the monk gestured to the arch over the gate where a carved bas-relief in the stones depicted a beardless man standing guard over a flowing river.
“You see,” the monk said. “Not many will stop here casually. This is a House of Ávoth.”
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