Chapter 18 15. Whose Trap Is This?

Xiaogu was listless and out of sorts for quite a while. He did not go looking for a doctor, because Duke Town had only one doctor—His Reverence the priest himself. Xiaogu was entitled to study divine arts, and as a temple priest, practicing divine arts was part of his daily duties; but not every priest was an outstanding divine artist. That depended on a man's own aptitude and training.

Xiaogu had spent several years merely on the entry-level awakening of his power, and in the end it had only been accomplished through a ceremony presided over by the grand divine artist Gelie at the Xuya Temple. Even now he barely met the standard of a second-rank divine artist, able to use only a handful of low-rank divine arts, including the blessing divine arts—the most important of which was the healing art.

The healing art among the blessing divine arts was the most important thing for a country temple priest to cultivate. It was not only the guarantee that he himself would be respected by the residents; it was also a symbol of divine miracle.

It had been nearly a month since he had coughed blood and collapsed in public. His Reverence Xiaogu had used the healing art on himself any number of times, and once he came around his body had long since been fine—he simply felt listless all the time, as though something were stuck in his heart. There was a weight on his mind that had to be lifted, and at last the moment had come. After breakfast that day, he summoned the temple servant Ma Qi.

Xiaogu was the only priest and scribe in town, but a temple could not possibly be run by one man alone; a great deal of the work was done by servants and assistants. His Reverence Xiaogu lived in comfort and wanted for nothing; the only work he handled personally was the registering. Ma Qi was his most capable assistant, helping to manage the temple's daily affairs and overseeing the other servants—and the man had already reached the third level of combat arts.

His Reverence Xiaogu was all warmth and kindness today; the moment he saw Ma Qi he smiled and called out, "Come here. Sit down."

Ma Qi was a little overwhelmed by the honor. "Your Reverence, isn't it a breach of etiquette for me to sit at the same table as you?"

His Reverence Xiaogu put on a show of displeasure. "What kind of talk is that? You're my most capable assistant, my most trusted partner. What's wrong with sitting at the same table? Sit down at once, or I'll be angry!"

Ma Qi leaned forward deferentially in his chair by the table. Xiaogu pushed a plate of sweets across to him—fresh wild berries the servants had picked in the woods east of town, sweet and tart and delicious. Ma Qi took one and ate it carefully. Xiaogu asked with a smile, "Your combat arts have reached the third rank already, haven't they? Just one step from the achievement of a mid-rank warrior."

Ma Qi answered quickly, "I was only an ordinary miner in this town. You were the one who told me there was something like combat arts in the miners' craft, and who read me the books on training combat arts—that's the only reason I could achieve this at all. Rest assured, Your Reverence, as you instructed, I've told no one else."

Xiaogu smiled happily. "What would I need to be reassured about? You're the person I trust most. If you can become a mid-rank warrior, I can go to the lords of the city-state and put in a word for you. With luck I might find a chance to make you a noble; at the very least I can make you a warrior of this town's temple, an assistant with a clerical post."

Ma Qi hastily stood up, pushed back his chair, stepped back and bowed. "Thank you, Your Reverence Xiaogu. I don't know how I could ever repay you."

Xiaogu waved a hand. "Sit down, sit down and talk... Ma Qi, that matter I asked you to look into a few days ago—have you found out what I need to know?"

Ma Qi sat down again and answered earnestly, "As you ordered, I've been watching Amon for the past ten days. Besides going to the Old Madman's house so often, he goes alone into the Black Fire Thicket in the middle of the night, through a very well-hidden path between the rocks."

Xiaogu frowned. "He's got real nerve, I'll say that much—a child walking into the Black Fire Thicket at midnight? What does he do there?"

Ma Qi shook his head. "I don't know." No sooner had he said it than he seemed to feel that was the wrong answer; after a moment's thought he added, "Maybe he's gone looking for ore cores again. Last time he picked up so many in the Black Fire Thicket—maybe he's hoping for another lucky find?"

Ore cores in the middle of the night? Xiaogu was somewhat puzzled. He lowered his voice again. "And the other thing I asked you to do?"

Ma Qi lowered his voice as well. "While Amon was out at night, I went into his house three times, and that drunkard never noticed a thing. There's very little in the house and it's all plain—you can see everything at a glance without searching. I found several dozen silver coins and two gold ones. As you ordered, if I didn't find the godstones I was to touch nothing. Those godstones must be on Amon's person all the time; I remember they were wrapped in a piece of sheepskin."

Xiaogu leaned toward him. "Ma Qi, tonight I want you to do something..."

After a whispered conversation, Ma Qi's face had gone pale and his expression stiff; for a moment he said nothing. Xiaogu rose and walked around behind him, reached out and patted his shoulder lightly. "Those twenty godstones—they're all yours. As for the one blue godstone, I want you to enshrine it in the Temple of the Goddess Muyun, where no one will discover it. It is an offering to the goddess. I won't be there, and you never handed it to me. Remember that?"

Seeing that Ma Qi still had not answered, Xiaogu pressed his hand on his shoulder and went on. "If you can become a mid-rank warrior, I'll make certain to apply for a temple warrior's post for you. You'd be exempt from taxes and draw a stipend besides. As for that sum of money—as a gift to the lords of the city-state, it might one day give you the chance to become the third noble of this town. How you live your life is your own choice, but don't forget this: right now I'm treating you as my most trusted assistant."

Ma Qi gritted his teeth; the fleshy muscles of his face twitched a few times. At last he nodded. "Your Reverence, I understand. Everything as you command!"

Xiaogu went to the corner, poured two cups of wine and sat down again, handing one to Ma Qi. Then he shook his head with great seriousness. "Wrong. You must remember that this was not my order! If anyone finds out, you'll say only that you followed Amon on your own, hoping to find the place where he picks up ore cores, and that I knew nothing about it."

In the Black Fire Thicket at midnight, with no one about, Amon sat by the spring practicing water elemental summoning. That day he was not cultivating the divine art the Old Madman had taught him. A child's nature loves play, after all, and Amon had turned the water elemental divine art into a game. The water in his surroundings was controlled and condensed into fine crystals, like a layer of mist, drifting back and forth over the water's surface and shifting into all sorts of shapes. It was fun!

Now tiny droplets, now fine ice crystals, now dissolving into the air.

Amon was enjoying himself when he suddenly felt that something was off. The muscles of his back tightened, as if someone were staring at him. He stopped; with his left hand he quietly drew out the Deep Blue Water Heart, and with his right he gripped the stick beside him. Crossing the gloomy Black Fire Thicket at midnight, Amon of course did not go empty-handed—he carried a very particular stick, the most valuable thing in his house apart from the godstones.

Amon's father was a drunkard, and after Amon's mother died he drank more than ever, but in his youth he had been the finest blacksmith in Duke Town. That stick was a keepsake the drunken father had left behind many years ago. It looked like a slightly crooked branch, its surface mottled with marks—the yellow was rust, the black was ash—so that it was almost impossible to recognize it for a blank of the very finest refined iron.

The miners of Duke Town were forbidden to forge the iron they processed into armor or weapons, and no one taught them how to forge it; what they produced was only iron blanks and blanks of refined iron. The very finest refined iron ore sand, however, was not mined from the mine. It was sifted and smelted out of the dung of a kind of iron-armored beast that lived in the iron-rich mountains—exceedingly rare.

In his youth, to test his own skill, Amon's father had quietly collected the finest refined iron ore sand and smelted and forged it into this single blank. Even afterward he never took the "stick" to trade for wine; it stayed in the forge room, used as a poker for stirring the coals. Whenever Amon crossed the Black Fire Thicket at night, he carried the stick along to lean on, and it served to defend him besides.

The gloomy Black Fire Thicket was not as dangerous as it looked. As long as you did not lose your way, it was in fact a very quiet place. Now and then hares and wild dogs did roam there, but at the sound of a human voice they fled far away. Still, when they were starving, wild dogs might attack a person or a flock of sheep, so it never hurt to be careful.

Gripping the stick, Amon quietly scanned his surroundings. The moonlight was still and silent, and he found nothing. Weird black rocks and thick-grown shrubs covered the area—the best cover for hiding; even if something were concealed there, it would be hard to see. For some reason Amon could not shake his unease. Suddenly he closed his eyes and tightened his left hand around the Deep Blue Water Heart.

The Deep Blue Water Heart gave off a faint blue glow, but closed in Amon's hand it did not shine out. Unnoticed, a thin mist rose from above the spring and drifted into the woods around him. Using the Deep Blue Water Heart, Amon pushed the simplest water elemental summoning art he knew to its utmost—and sure enough, something was wrong!

Within the reach of the divine art, the mist in the air quietly answered his summoning sense. Even with his eyes shut, Amon could feel the shapes of the rocks and thickets as the mist drifted among them—and there, some dozens of paces behind him, was a man! The man was hiding behind one of the weird rocks, half his head showing through the brush as he watched Amon; in his hand he held something whose shape was very familiar—the miner's sledgehammer, the commonest thing in Duke Town.

Elemental divine arts were not normally used for detection, because their sensing range was far smaller than that of detection arts, and casting in this way was slow besides; if the opponent were a sharp divine artist, he might notice in an instant. Detection arts were mid-rank divine arts—the most typical being the puppet-eye art, which could probe conditions over a vast area and a great distance.

Amon had no idea yet what a detection art was; he had never even heard of the puppet-eye art. Yet in doing this he had unintentionally made the simplest water elemental divine art produce the effect of a detection art, and it conformed to the most basic principle of detection as well. Ma Qi, who had followed him and was lurking in the dark, did not yet know that he had been exposed.

Amon did not move, though; he went on sitting there quietly. The night deepened, and the chill that filled the air seemed to grow heavier. At last Ma Qi could not hold back—he had almost decided that Amon had fallen asleep sitting there. Carrying the sledgehammer, he crept softly out of the thicket.

A first-rank warrior had exceptional explosive strength; a second-rank warrior generally needed agility beyond strength; and to reach the third rank of combat arts, one had to master the coordination of strength, speed and endurance. The third-rank warriors of Rod-Dick's personal guard could hurl a spear clean through several oxen. Ma Qi had never had that kind of training, but even carrying a heavy sledgehammer he moved like a nimble leopard cat, making almost no sound at all.

Beside the spring was a small clearing. Ma Qi came out of the thicket to a spot where a single glance back from Amon would have shown him, no more than twenty-some paces away. Then his eyes turned savage; he suddenly put on a burst of speed and charged, swinging the mining hammer up in his right hand. At that distance a third-rank warrior's dash took the blink of an eye—far too fast for Amon to react, and Amon indeed seemed not to react at all.

But Ma Qi had taken only two steps when the unexpected happened. His foot slipped and his body lurched; he fought to steady himself, but when his other foot came down it slipped too. With the momentum of his charge behind him he could not keep his balance at all, and went down with a heavy thud, the mining hammer flying from his hand and sliding all the way into the spring. By the time he collected himself and tried to rise, a heavy blow landed on his shoulder, so painful that he nearly passed out.

Ma Qi barely raised his head, and saw that Amon was already standing over him, a tree branch in one hand pointed at his face, one foot planted on his shoulder. The boy was shockingly strong—that foot pinned him so he could not turn over, and the ground beneath his body was so bitterly cold that he could not help shivering. Then he heard Amon ask in astonishment, "Ma Qi, how is it you? Why did you follow me out here in the middle of the night?"

Ma Qi had only himself to blame for his bad luck today. Ordinarily, a third-rank warrior who was on his guard and prepared need not fear a novice first-rank divine artist in close combat. But Ma Qi had never dreamed that Amon knew divine arts—and though it was only the simplest first-order water elemental art, the control and execution were freakishly monstrous.

Once Amon spotted Ma Qi, he had quietly condensed a layer of slick ice along the path the man would take, and masked its sheen with thin mist so it was hard to notice. Had Ma Qi walked slowly he might have fared better; charging with all his strength, he could only come down hard. This was the might of divine arts—they need not be powerful, and yet they command another kind of strength. Amon had also drawn on the Deep Blue Water Heart.

Ma Qi was furious. He reached out a hand to grab Amon's ankle and shouted, "Amon, let me go this instant! You can come here, so why can't I? What kind of manners is this for a child?"

"Of course you can come to the Black Fire Thicket. But why follow me in the middle of the night?" Amon did not let up with his foot. The "branch" in his hand tapped Ma Qi lightly on the back of the hand. Ma Qi bared his teeth in pain, his bones nearly broken, and only then realized that the stick in Amon's hand was no branch at all—it was harder and heavier than raw iron.

Panic seized Ma Qi. It came to him suddenly that in this place, one hard swing of the stick in Amon's hand could beat him to death and no one would ever find out. His own plan had been to finish Amon off quietly in some deserted spot; he had never expected the situation to turn around like this. He explained in a rush, "Amon, I followed you only to see where exactly you picked up those ore cores. I wanted to try my luck too!"

Amon narrowed his eyes. "You think I came looking for ore cores—at this hour of the night?"

Ma Qi said, "Isn't that it? Otherwise what are you doing in the Black Fire Thicket every day?"

Of course Amon could not tell Ma Qi that he had been secretly practicing divine arts. Then another thought struck him: he had just used a divine art to make Ma Qi fall, and the man must have noticed something. That was a secret that must not leak. He raised the iron rod in his hand, but did not bring it down. Instead he asked coldly, "Every day? Have you followed me many times? And why did you come charging at me with that sledgehammer just now?"