47. Destinations
It took me three weeks to reach my mountain. Alone I could have made the journey in two days. Carrying the others in their pocket dimensions, adjusting their sense of time and distance to keep them constantly on the edge of exhaustion without breaking them? That was exhausting, and I needed to stop many times throughout the first week. Gradually I got better at it, and I wasn’t surprised when the others adapted to the training I was putting them through as well.
It might have been a cruel things to do to my disciples, my friends, but it served several purposes. The first purpose, which was almost entirely selfish, was that it helped me train my spacial affinity, which I had unlocked carefully inside the library-ring which Pi Phon had delivered to me, and I had returned to him.
The second thing it did was bring the others to a somewhat equal baseline in terms of their physical, mental, and spiritual health. As they pressed through the hardship of the endless journey I put them through, they came closer and closer to the cusp of stepping onto the bronze path without actually crossing it.
The third, was that it taught them about themselves. The long periods of isolation in which they were alone with their own thoughts, forever chasing my back, taught things that are difficult for young cultivators to understand. The loneliness required for cultivation. The perseverance. The mental fortitude. The devotion and drive.
The fourth thing that it did was build us as a unit. While I never felt like I was one of them – how can I relate to teenagers when I have the cumulative memories of thousands of lives? While I was never one of them, the bonds between us grew closer, and trust built. The fact that I never pushed them too far past their limits, the fact that there was always a campfire waiting while I rested, while we rested, and the conversations that we carried out during those rest periods brought us together in the way that only young people can be brought together.
It was a kind of magic on its own.
The fifth thing that the journey did was that it really pissed off Yara and Hien Ro when they realized our final destination.
“This is it? You brought us home?” Yara demanded, her voice rising.
My eyebrows rose at that. “I brought us to my mountain, yes. It’s where we’ll be doing our training. I need to speak with the Tunrida first, but I plan to—”
“You put us through hell for months just to bring us home?” she demanded.
The two of them shouted at me for a while, while I smiled with chagrin. I hadn’t anticipated this much backlash to my first training method. It took a while to calm them down and explain to everyone why the journey was necessary. The others weren’t quite as angry with me, as they’d never been to my mountain and didn’t realize just how close it was to Mer’cah.
When Yara took out a map and showed them, however, they had a few choice words of their own. I could only sigh, informing them that I was leaving to negotiate with the Tunrida for further rent of my mountain. My relationship with my landlord had thus far been mostly positive, so I was hopeful for favorable terms for the extension of the lease.
~~~~~~
Pi Phon knelt before his lord, having given his report to Di Ram in full and now awaited the judgment of the patriarch in exile of the Six Mountain Sect.
“It is good that you returned,” Di Ram said at last, “And that you returned this to me as soon as you found out what it was. The truth is that I had no idea myself that it was a copy of the Sect’s archives. I thought that the old library was torn down one hundred years ago, when the new library was built, and that the mortals who worked there were released from our service. Instead they spent the remainder of their lives inside this ring.”
“Their remains were given high honor in the tomb within, with ranks of ‘elder’ and ‘grand elder’ of the sect,” Pi Phon reported. “And the others have found the memoirs of six of them filed within the directory. They were isolated, but it seems that they volunteered for the duty-which they saw as an honor.”
“It makes me wonder how long it was that my father saw this tragedy coming,” Di Ram said, half to himself. “And why he didn’t prepare me better for picking up the pieces in his absence.”
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“My lord, you have done—”
“I know what I have done. I have done my best in an untenable situation and more than anyone asked of me. And last night I attended the funeral fire of a five year old girl who died with hollow eyes and a swollen belly because it wasn’t enough . Do not taunt me with what I have and have not done,” Di Ram raged, and Pi Phon did not shrink back.
“And without you?” the man asked. “When would the girl have died without you?”
Di Ram sighed and looked away. “I’m sorry, my friend. You’re one of the few who remember me from the old days who I trust not to spread a rumor that I’m breaking down.”
“Every pillar shifts when the weight is added to it,” Pi Phon said. “The question is whether or not it cracks.”
“So then. Tell me about our visitors from the south.”
“I do not know exactly what to tell you. When I arrived they were in the process of forming a first in a thousand year tournament. Hundreds of young cultivators participated. It was a great financial win for the Raging River Sect, which bankrolled it and spent a significant effort promoting it. However, it was all started by Little Bug. He put the idea in the idea of a small coalition which had, ironically perhaps, come to investigate an array that he had set up in the first place. That coalition now rules in the city of Mer’cah, and it is the representatives that they sent to ‘protect me’ that now wait outside.”
They discussed Pi Phon’s time in the city of Mer’cah in detail for some time. When they each felt that there was no more ground to cover, they shook hands, and Pi Phon vanished inside the ring that Di Ram now wore on his right hand.
He went to the entryway of his command tent and opened it, undoing the soundproofing wards with a soft touch of his Qi. He nodded at the mortal guard, one Po Kennet, and said “Please politely inform the master cultivators from the south that I am ready to receive them at their earliest convenience.”
Then he returned to his desk and spent the next twenty minutes thinking about latrines.
When the coalition arrived, they were admitted immediately. He smiled with a false face and welcomed them, but he saw immediately on their own faces a look of pity.
“I am Sonilla. Tonilla, who leads the council of sixteen, is my mother. I am not empowered to speak with her voice, but I share her mind and her heart and her dedication to helping those poor souls outside,” the leader of the southerners stated.
The other southerners made sounds of agreements. Di Ram sighed and nodded. “The truth is that you’ve already given us a great gift. The food and clothing that you sent in exchange for us judging your tournament was exceedingly generous, and has delayed tens of thousands of deaths. But now that the tournament is over, I’m afraid I do not know what else I have of value to barter with for your continued support.”
“I think that is a lie,” Sonilla said, glancing at his hand.
He covered the ring, but then uncovered it. “Not the ring. But perhaps the secrets within. Little Bug showed you the library?”
“Not me. My mother, and the other members of the council,” she said. “But they were most impressed by the wealth of the heritage of your sect. If that knowledge were for sale, then …”
She trailed off, but he saw her point.
“The knowledge of the Six Mountain Sect cannot be shared with competing factions,” Di Ram said, his voice growing stern. Then he thought of a five year old girl playing with her friends three months ago and he lost the iron that made his back straight. He wanted to sag, but refused to show weakness. “If you wish to purchase the knowledge within this archive, then we must enter into a formal alliance. The terms of which I believe you are not empowered to enforce. I think that it is time that I journey to the city of Mer’cah myself and meet your mother, and her council.”
“As you wish,” Sonilla said, bowing, a light smile on her face. “In the mean time, my delegation will investigate the rumors of undead and corruption in the north. I have ways of communicating with my mother over distances, and I assure you that my report will arrive in Mer’cah before you do.”
“Is that a challenge?” Di Ram asked.
She grinned. “Perhaps. It shall depend on how fast you travel, I suppose, and how much baggage you bring with you.”
Di Ram looked at his ring, and he thought of the possibilities. The archives only took up one third of the space within. How many mortals would fit inside, and for how long would they be able to stay? His mind did the math without much effort on his part.
“I have everything I need for my journey right here,” he said, raising his hand and flashing his ring.