Ch. 023| The Talisman Shop Below the Mountain

Half a month of sweeping, and only then did Lin Que get his opening.

That day it was his turn to refill the lamp oil. He took the oil pot and filled his way up, floor by floor. By the time he reached the third floor the sun hung slanting, and the whole Archive Hall was close and hot. The young scroll-warden had sat the better part of the day, his back against a pillar, his eyelids sinking and sinking, until at last he could bear it no longer and gave a long yawn, his chin nodding down against his chest.

Lin Que's hand at the oil did not stop, but his feet, leaving no trace, edged half a pace nearer the black timber door.

The faint green ward on the door was resting just then—as the scroll-warden dozed, the jade token in his sleeve drove it more weakly, and the light flowing over the door dimmed, leaving only along the lower edge of the frame a stretch of black base-pattern carved into the wood.

The point of heat beneath Lin Que's left eye had long since woken.

He looked at that stretch of base-pattern, at that light on the verge of brightening, and traced the ward's course inch by inch in his mind. The ward was alive, driven by the jade token; but the root that drove it was this ring of array's base-pattern carved dead into the doorframe. He followed that base-pattern with his gaze—followed it to one place, and stopped.

At the root of this ward, there was a wrongness.

The wrongness was buried very deep, like a meridian that had been deliberately cut and then forced back together. The array-pattern should have wound around the door in one unbroken breath, but at that stretch on the lower right of the frame, the qi broke for an instant and was forcibly rejoined by another hand—rejoined so cunningly that an ordinary talisman-master could not see it; yet to Lin Que's eye that seam was plain: all the ward's force hung upon this one stretch.

Loosen this one stretch, and the whole ward would rest along with it.

He could see it. But he was no talisman-master.

Where the seam lay, he saw plainly; but how to set a needle to that seam, what manner of talisman-method to undo it with, he had not the faintest idea. He could tell what was broken, yet could not mend it—that took a hand that could draw talismans.

Lin Que lowered his eyes, drew from his robe a slip of thin paper cut to size and a small pinch of finely ground lamp-ash. In the moments of the scroll-warden's nodding drowse, he laid the thin paper over the stretch of base-pattern exposed along the lower edge of the frame, dabbed lamp-ash on the pad of his finger, and, very lightly and very quickly, took a rubbing.

On the paper, that pattern—cut and then rejoined—showed faintly through.

A sound came from the stairwell. The scroll-warden started awake and straightened his back. Lin Que had already withdrawn to the lamp, oil pot in hand, trimming the wick with an unchanged expression, not the slightest thing amiss. The rubbing-paper he tucked away against his body.

"Done filling?" The scroll-warden rubbed his eyes and asked crossly.

"Done," Lin Que answered, and carried the pot downstairs.

Down on the ground floor, a few copying disciples were murmuring low. Lin Que swept the last stretch of floor and took each sentence in.

"Senior Brother Chen of the West Court—nine days in seclusion now."

"I heard from his junior that in another three to five days his qi will be full, and he'll break through to the sixth layer."

"...Let's hope he clears it this time."

The hand with which Lin Que swept slowed half a beat.

Three to five days.

The rubbing-paper in his robe suddenly had weight.

Sweeping done and duty discharged, Lin Que did not go straight back to the menial-chores court. He took the long way round, past the little path outside that row of meditation cells in the West Court.

The last meditation cell in the West Court had a seal-strip pasted over its door, and outside squatted a junior on watch, idly scratching lines in the dirt with a twig. Lin Que slowed his steps and, under cover of picking up a fallen stick of kindling, paused a little way off.

"Senior Brother Chen inside?" he asked, as if in passing.

"Mm." The junior on watch didn't lift his head. "Nine days sealed in now. My senior says he'll come out to break through the layer once his qi is full. He set me to watch—the moment he comes out, someone's to hand him ginseng broth."

"When does he come out?"

"Soon. By my count, three to five days."

Lin Que gave his thanks, picked up the kindling, and left. The ink on the seal-strip was still fresh, and beneath it was a man who did not know he was treading on a seam.

---

Every ten days an outer-gate disciple got half a day down the mountain to buy sundry necessities. Early the next morning, Lin Que drew a descent token and, along with a party of menial disciples, walked down the mountain road.

The Xuanzhao Sect stood halfway up the mountain, and at the foot, along the mountain road, a small market town had gathered—sellers of mountain goods, of talisman paper, of cooked food from open stalls, mostly folk who could not touch the sect's fringes yet could not do without the sect's rations either. Lin Que entered the market town and, in no hurry to buy, first walked a circuit of those few rows of low shops.

Before the last shop at the end of the market town, he stopped.

The shop was very narrow, its front only a table's width. On the table were spread a few stacks of talisman paper, a few ingots of cinnabar, and a row of blank talisman blanks cut to size. Behind it sat a woman, her head bent, tracing out a talisman stroke by stroke. A worn moon-white robe, its cuffs frayed to fuzz—yet the hand that held the brush was very steady.

Xu Qinghe.

Lin Que stood before the shop and said nothing.

Qinghe finished her last stroke, set down the brush, and only then looked up. Seeing that it was him, the flicker of surprise passed at once and settled into her habitual, faintly haughty arch of the brow. "And here I thought some distinguished guest had come. It's only Young Master Lin, who's entered the Xuanzhao Sect and climbed onto a high branch."

"You set up this shop quick enough," Lin Que said, looking at the talisman stock on the table. "I'd thought you'd keep to that courtyard back in the market town."

"And what would I keep to that empty courtyard for?" Qinghe set the finished talisman aside to dry. "The hand that cut the talismans of my Xu family—the trail leads up here, to this Xuanzhao Sect. Keep to the market town, and I'd never track it down in a lifetime. Whereas you—" she cut him a sidelong glance, "—a pill-boy who's entered a sect, swept floors for half a month, and looks worse than he did in the market town. Sweeping stir up troubles for you?"

Lin Que didn't take her barb. The point of heat beneath his left eye swept over the talismans on the table—Qinghe's talismans ran far smoother than before; that broken meridian at the final stroke, which had trapped the Xu family's Green Seal-Script Talismans, was now rejoined clean. But two fresh, thin calluses had appeared on the knuckles of her tracing hand, ground there by nights of rushed work. This shop of hers was no easy thing to hold up.

Perhaps because he'd looked too long, Qinghe followed his gaze down and glimpsed her own calloused hands; somehow she drew them back into her sleeves and turned her face aside. "What are you looking at? Everyone who runs a talisman stall has hands like these."

He drew the rubbing-paper from his robe, laid it on the table, and pushed it toward her.

"Take a look at something for me."

Qinghe bent her head and gave it a glance, careless at first. But halfway through that glance, all the idleness of her tracing suddenly gathered in.

She reached out and pinched up the thin paper, held it to the light, and her brows knit tighter and tighter.

"This is the base-pattern of a ward's array," she said, her voice dropping. "Where did you take this rubbing from?"

"The third floor of the Archive Hall," Lin Que said. "Behind that door is locked what I want. Over the door is a ward, driven by a scroll-warden's jade token. I can tell its whole force is caught at one place—but I can't break talismans."

Qinghe did not answer at once. She stared at that pattern, stared a long while, her fingertip tracing lightly along the array-lines, her brows knitting deeper and deeper.

"This ward is set wickedly," she said at last. "The array-lines are neat and whole, but the force inside is wrong—as though one meridian had been tampered with and then wiped clean." She shook her head, her fingertip hovering over the paper, unable to come down. "But where it's broken, I can't see clear. The hand that set this ward is far above me. An ordinary talisman-master couldn't so much as touch its vital gate."

"You said just now," she looked up at Lin Que, "that this force is caught at one place. Which place?"

Lin Que bent close, and the point of heat beneath his left eye swept along the array-lines. That meridian, cut clean through and rejoined by another method, was plain to his eye. He raised a finger and touched a spot on the rubbing. "Here. This meridian was broken, then rejoined. The whole ward's force hangs on this rejoined stretch."

Qinghe's gaze fell along his fingertip. This time, with a place to land, her talisman-master's eye read it at once—

"The meridian-cutting method," she spat out, her voice changing abruptly. "First cut a meridian, then rejoin it by some other method; the rejoined stretch is the vital gate. Touch it, and the ward breaks." She stared hard at that rejoined seam, her gaze cooling inch by inch. "This method... I know it."

She turned and took an old wooden box from the shop's inner room, opened it, and inside, cushioned on a layer of faded red silk, lay an old, yellowed talisman. The paper was brittle and yellow, its corners frayed to fuzz—a thing of some years.

"The Green Seal-Script Talisman handed down in my Xu family—the original," Qinghe said, laying that old talisman beside the rubbing, spreading them side by side. "Those eyes of yours—look at these two: the opening of that break, the angle of the rejoining stroke. Are they the same hand?"

Lin Que bent close. The point of heat beneath his left eye swept across the two sheets—the broken meridian at the old talisman's final stroke, and the cut-and-rejoined seam on the ward's base-pattern in the rubbing: the angle of the break, the opening of the rejoining stroke, matched to the hair, as though from the same hand, in the same place, each laying down a single cut.

"The same," Lin Que said low.

"The same." Qinghe put the old talisman back in the box, her movements very gentle. She stared at that rejoined seam a long while before saying quietly, "This hand—I've hunted it for years. I never once thought it was hidden here on this mountain—right behind the very door you mean to enter."

She looked up at him. Back in the market town it had been he who'd spoken that truth aloud for her; and now it was he again who'd helped her dig this hand out. Beneath that cooled-down hatred, something else quietly leaked through, and a thread of red rose to her earlobes. Lin Que saw it and said nothing.

The shop was still for a moment.

The string drawn taut in Lin Que's heart stirred lightly.

He had come only to borrow a talisman-master's hand, Qinghe's, to break a door that stood in his way. Only now did he realize that what he'd stumbled into was the old score Qinghe had chased for three years.

"Can it be broken?" he asked.

"It can," Qinghe said, folding the thin paper carefully and tucking it into her sleeve. "But not out of thin air. To undo a meridian-cutting ward, you need an unbinding talisman that cures the ailment—cut to answer cut, and flick open the very stretch it rejoined. This talisman I can draw." She paused. "Only it takes one ingredient: red-scale sand from the pill hall. Cinnabar can't hold down the counterforce of the cut meridian; you need red-scale sand to grind the ink, or the talisman won't stand. The Xuanzhao Sect's pill hall has it. You can't buy it in the market town."

"Red-scale sand," Lin Que noted.

"Three days," Qinghe said. "Get me the red-scale sand, and I'll have the unbinding talisman drawn within three days." As she spoke, she pulled a small talisman, palm-sized, from the table and passed it into Lin Que's hand. Her fingertip brushed his palm and paused half a breath before she drew it back, as though remembering something, though her words ran on smoothly. "Take this first. A ward-probing talisman—stand a while against the door, and it'll trace out for you the hours the ward brightens and rests. Learn first when your scroll-warden dozes, when the ward is weakest, and only then can the unbinding talisman be put to use. Don't force your way in."

The small talisman was very light in the hand, a fine green line across its face—Qinghe's own work.

Lin Que closed his grip on it.

"Why are you helping me?" he still asked. To leave himself a way out with every move was a trait he could not break—he had to know what Qinghe was after.

Qinghe took up her brush again, dipped it in cinnabar, and bent her head to the unfinished talisman. Only after a while did she say, "I'm not helping you."

"The hand that cut my family's talismans—I've hunted it three years." Her brush-tip paused. "This rubbing of yours is the first thread in three years that lets me follow it down."

Lin Que asked no more. He tucked the ward-probing talisman away against his body and turned to go.

Reaching the mouth of the market town, he glanced back without thinking—across from Qinghe's little shop, beneath a tea awning, sat a blue-robed man he did not recognize. The man held a bowl of tea, but his eyes were not on the bowl; they stayed, quietly, unbroken, fixed toward Qinghe's shop.

Lin Que's feet did not stop; he drifted out of the market town with the crowd, his expression unchanged. Qinghe had hunted that hand for three years; and now, it seemed, that hand was hunting her.

【Ch. 023 End · the market town below Xuanzhao Mountain · Qinghe's talisman shop】