Chapter 56. The Rite of Grief

asked you to wake up half an hour ago,” Zhou said into the darkness of Pendaran’s sparse room.  He groaned in protest as the flare of Zhou’s pale lantern burned into his vision and reminded him where he was.

He was in hell, he decided.  It was still dark outside his window and the birds had not yet ventured to sing.  True, he had gone to bed while it was still light, but he needed his rest and it was inhuman expecting someone in his condition to get up at such an ungodly hour.  And did Zhou seriously think this was a bed?  It was on the ground.  His father had given his dogs better places to sleep than this.

“Enough mind chatter, Pendaran.  Get out of that bed now and put on your clothes.  If you are not in my study before the clock tolls three bells, you will regret it.” 

Zhou placed the round globe of the paper lantern on the floor beside the opening to Pendaran’s room.  There was no furniture, of course.  His muscles seized painfully, protesting as he climbed off of the thin pallet.  No door, no privacy and the clothes were ghastly.  Well, he was almost strong enough to take care of himself.  A few more days and he could dump the tyrant and find his own way.  He had always managed before.

“I’m not a monk!” he snarled, hoping Zhou could hear him as he shrugged into the pale cassock and belted it with a black cord around his waist.  He was fairly certain he looked like a corpse and his hair had been butchered, probably by that Nandao character.  Fine, he would go for now, but Pendaran was not going to stand for being treated like dirt.

He grabbed the lantern, using it to guide him down the shadowed corridor, part of him wondering how long he had before the clock struck three.  Now that he was mildly awake, he was beginning to regret his defiance, remembering the feel of Zhou’s will sharp and unyielding within his own mind.  What was he planning at this strange hour? 

He was grateful when his hand fell over the smooth silvery handle of the study door and the quiet of early morning was not disturbed by the city clock tower.  Gingerly he pulled it open and was shocked to see the room transformed.

“Come in and close the door quickly,” Zhou snapped, “I will not be disturbed.”

Pendaran nearly dropped the lantern, for the figure that stood before him now was transformed, a towering creature of darkness with a bronze mask of spiky feathers and a vicious beak.  Zhou’s voice issued from the raptor face, but in the flickering lantern light he was no longer human.  Swallowing against his fear, Pendaran slid into the room and closed the door quickly, his heart hammering in his breast.  He did not want to obey, and yet his body did so against his will.  He leaned against the door, his hand hovering over the handle so that he could pull it open and escape if Zhou… that thing came near him.

His eyes trailed over the floor, naked tiles now for the rich carpet had been taken away.  A symbol was drawn over it in crystalline sand, a circle device divided into eight planes and a sigil at its center.  Incense drifted in slow curls at each quarter, no doubt aligned to the four corners of the world.

“What Rite is this, Pendaran?” the terrible bird creature demanded. 

“It is Zhou!” he told himself angrily, “He is just wearing a mask. Calm down.”

“Demon crested Naghe flew,
A cloak of midnight clasped,
In the hour before dawn,
Sword red with blood.
Despair he welds
In grasping claw.

“In the hour before dawn
The Rite of Grief is sung.”

Pendaran blushed as the song returned so easily to his lips.  And then his hand really did grasp the door handle and he attempted fruitlessly to open it and escape.  He had heard of this rite.  It was the stuff of nightmares.

“Go into the circle, Pendaran.”

“No,” he rasped.

“I’m not asking you to do it, I’m telling you to,” the bird creature snarled, his eyes burning now with magenta rage and its ragged cloak of black feathers rustling menacingly as it stalked closer.

There were twelve rites held sacred to Lyssa, one for each hour.  Pendaran had only experienced two of the minor rites.  This, however, was a major rite.  Why had Zhou chosen this one? 

“I don’t want to,” he pleaded, “I’m not ready.”

“You are quite ready,” Zhou replied, and for an instant Pendaran recognized the gentle eyes of the man behind the fierce mask of Naghe the Render of Souls.

“Why?” he croaked, shuddering as Zhou resumed his demonic aspect, menacing Pendaran toward the center of the dim room.  And now he saw the bloody sword clutched in the creature’s talon and trembled.

“You escape with lies and pain and sex, but they have been taken away,” Naghe replied, “You have no where to run, and so you must face me at last.”

He staggered toward the center of the circle, his voice dead in his throat as the cool sand crunched beneath his unshod feet.  The distant tolling of the clock sounded the beginning of the final hour as Naghe’s sword pressed on his shoulder and pushed him slowly to the ground.  The demon bore the mask of grief to him and set it before his knees. 

The sight of it filled him with horror, black and clinging, its visage twisted and blind as he stared down into it.  Its mouth was agape in an eternal scream and he could hear its echo deep within his being, primal and raw.  He wanted no part of it.

“Wear the mask, Pendaran.”

“I’m scared,” he breathed, “Don’t ask me to do this, Zhou.”

Neither Zhou nor Naghe responded, only pressed the mask into his hands.  Tears rolled down his cheeks as he slid the hood down over his face, binding it tightly at his nape.  Its velvety darkness took away his vision but he felt the hardness of its face plates, the horrible screaming of its jaws, his jaws.

“I am become despair, the ruin of men,” Pendaran gasped, his body twanging as if seized by the jaws of a trap.  Zhou knelt before him now, his hands pressed firmly over his shoulders as if to keep him anchored to the ground.  Instinctively, Pendaran clasped the man arms as a low moan emerged from his throat, drawn up from some dark aching place.  And then he saw them all, brief flashes of memory in the darkness, the images that had turned his heart to ashes one piece at a time.  The ruins of his home, a field strewn with charred corpses, his brother’s putrid head returned from the field of battle in a wooden box, the first man he had ever killed.  Clarissa.  The darkness.  Luitha.  His body flayed red beneath Mai Ling’s blades.

At some point he had started screaming, the cry so primal and horrible he did not know it for his own.  He felt Zhou’s forehead pressed against his own, his voice softly chanting as he poured his energies into Pendaran.  Now he felt its rawness in his throat, pouring out of him like blood, like vomit.  He could not stop, could not move.  He saw himself starving and destitute selling his wedding band.  He reached for it, wanting it back.  And there were the people he had sold himself to, the ones that had taught him to hate himself, to forget how to feel, to embrace pain and despise life.

But the city clock tower tolled four and Zhou uttered a single syllable that silenced the scream.  Pendaran gasped for breath as his master guided him to a bucket into which he vomited copiously.  He shivered under a sheen of cold sweat, barely strong enough to move away when he had heaved himself empty.  Zhou guided him slowly out of the circle.  He was still blind but too weary to care.

The door opened and he heard footfalls, the soft shuffle of servants.  He was borne up by them, carried gently down the stairs, and he assumed, back to his room.  To his surprise, however, they helped him sit upon a cold bench of stone and he wondered where they had taken him.

“Look upon the world now, Pendaran,” said Zhou, sitting beside him.

Slowly he lifted his hands and released the knot, pulling the hooded mask from his face.  They sat in the garden beneath the trailing purple flowers of an old wisteria, the steely sky blushing with the first light of dawn.  Birds were just beginning to greet the returning sun with their cheerful music and the moist air was heady with the scent of blossoms.   It was as if he were seeing sunrise for the first time, a moment so pure and lovely he felt overwhelmed with gratitude for it.

“Savor this, Pendaran.  It is what awaits you when your training is done,” Zhou said gently, rising and making a bow, “Be at peace.”