Chapter Text
Crows went up in a clamour as Song Lan stepped through the main gate of the house; bad luck, bad luck their harsh voices called, but he knew that already. The spirit screen before him wasn't painted dark like the walls, but pale stone coloured blood-red by the setting sun, and the protective array it held writhed with malice. But it didn't stop Song Lan from entering the courtyard, turning left and then right to the flowerhung gate that led to the main courtyard.
There was only a deep well of shadow beyond the gate. His vision blurred with exhaustion. Few cultivators were strong enough to fly even a short distance these days, and though Song Lan was very strong, it had been a long trip and he hadn't slept the night before.
He mounted the steps to a fresh chorus of fury from the crows, and Xue Yang loomed out of the darkness. Song Lan froze in the shadow of the gate, staring at the rigid grin in his white face, hair unbound and tangled. For a shattering moment, Song Lan thought he was dead, that it was all too late, and he clutched his burden tighter.
"What the fuck do you want?" Xue Yang said, his voice halting and unsteady. Song Lan could smell him, unwashed and sickly sweet, as repugnant as the spirit screen. "Come to kill me? Come to die?"
His sword appeared in his hand, humming darkness. He tossed something aside, and it shattered on the paving in another bloom of harsh scent. Song Lan flinched back, expecting some vile trick, but then he placed the scent. Xue Yang had been drinking.
Xue Yang threw a talisman up, and a dozen lanterns flared to light, casting writhing shadows. The courtyard was overgrown and disorderly, furniture and plants, dozens and dozens of plants, arranged haphazardly. Everything smelled sweet, cloying in his throat.
"Come on, Song Zichen," Xue Yang said in a taunting sing-song. He backed into the centre of the courtyard, and made an inviting gesture. Then he laughed, high and echoey. "Maybe this was how it was always going to end."
Song Lan advanced slowly, watching Xue Yang's swordhand. He stepped into the lantern light, and Xue Yang froze. His eyes narrowed, then widened.
"Is that - " he said.
Song Lan shifted the weight in his arms, and pulled back a layer of cloth, revealing Xiao Xingchen's lolling head. Dried blood matted his hair; his eyes stared at nothing and his mouth hung open.
"Bring him back," Song Lan said.
They said a lot of things about Xue Yang, and Xiao Xingchen had always refused to believe the worst of them. Song Lan had reserved his judgement, and now he needed it to be true. He needed whatever wicked tricks Xue Yang had.
Xue Yang dismissed his sword with a gesture, and stepped in close. He put his hand on Xingchen's cheek, and leant in close, the stink rising off him. For a revolted second Song Lan thought he was going to kiss the slack mouth. But he just sniffed, as if he were scenting non-existent breath, and then he said in a crisp tone, "It's not too late. Follow me."
He turned his back and darted away, and Song Lan forced his shaking legs to give chase. Xue Yang ran up the steps to the darkened main hall, and turned right along the walkway and then left into a covered passageway to another courtyard. Song Lan got there just in time to see him turn right through a gate in the eastern wall, and followed him into a fourth courtyard full of savage shadows. Ahead was a moon door, offering a view into darkness. The sun had set.
Song Lan hesitated, clutching the body tighter. Xue Yang's voice floated to him in the darkness. "Move! We don't have much time!"
He plunged in the direction of the voice. The smell was overwhelming, heavy, rotting smells and the overwhelming sweetness of flowers and the fermentation of overripe fruit. It was a garden, but no serene and lovely place of contemplation. It reeked of corruption. Fallen fruit squelched under his boot and foliage clung to his hems as he fought his way past clutching branches. Things screeched in the darkness that he hoped were only beasts.
There was light up ahead, and he steered towards it. A black gash in green turf; Xue Yang, crouched by a lantern, his face in ghastly relief. His hands were busy, rustling things from pockets.
It was a grave.
"Did you know I would come?" he said, and Xue Yang lifted his head, gaze blank. Song Lan nodded towards the grave, and Xue Yang snorted, a smile wavering briefly across his face.
"No. It'll need to be a little longer, actually. Keep him here while I get it ready."
Song Lan had been infusing qi into Xingchen's limp body since he'd lifted him from the bed, a few minutes after the healer had said I'm sorry, there's nothing more to do. He was exhausted in body and soul, but he laid the body down in the grass and called up all his reserves. The dull eyes stared through him, and his throat thickened with tears, but he set his teeth. If he lost his resolve now, he'd have the rest of his life to grieve.
Xue Yang worked fast, digging into the ground with bare, filthy hands that were already scratched and bloodied. There were several more discarded jars around the grave, black flies collecting around their sticky neck. How long had Xue Yang been out here? How had he known?
The grave dug out to his satisfaction, Xue Yang fled into the darkness, rustling through bushes. Song Lan's heart pounded faster and faster as he waited, hearing crashing and cracks, but soon Xue Yang was back to throw snapped-off boughs into the grave, some thick with flowers, others heavy with fruit. Herbs, carelessly ripped up and crushed in his hands, scattered on top. Then he dug into his sleeve and produced a sheaf of talismans, which he laid into the grave with no carelessness at all, face still and focused.
"All right," Xue Yang said. "Get him in there. No, get him undressed first."
Song Lan opened his mouth to protest the indignity, but failed. Xingchen was dead, and only the flickering remnants of Song Lan's strength kept him together. There was no time to argue even if it mattered.
He unwrapped the sheet, and then began to untangle the layers of robes. Xue Yang watched, crouched, still. He hesitated over the inner clothes, but Xue Yang made an impatient gesture and Song Lan stripped him naked before lifting him into the grave and straightening his tumbled limbs with some effort. His skin was thick to the touch, like clay, holding fingermarks.
Xue Yang peeled the last layer of fine linen from the pale throat. His breathing slowed, trembled, as he uncovered the stitched-tight wound.
"He should be - " he said.
"I got to him almost in time," Song Lan said. Maybe there hadn't been an in time. But maybe if he'd moved just a little faster -
"You were in time," Xue Yang said. His flat certainty was little comfort, but better than none. "All right, don't panic."
Light flared on the blade of his knife, but Song Lan was too exhausted to flinch. Xue Yang shrugged his robe down over his shoulders. He was naked under it, and Song Lan watched in dull silence as he drew his own blood, and began to adorn his skin with sigils. His brow, his sternum, his lower body; he pulled at his belt and spread his thighs to write there, and then his arms.
Then he leaned forward, over the grave, and pushed up one stiffening leg. He put the knife where the flesh was livid with pooled blood. It came out thick and black under his pressing fingers, and Song Lan looked away, the gorge rising in his throat. When he looked back, Xingchen was smeared over with black and bright red blood, and Xue Yang was busily adding the black to his own body.
He looked up, and his eyes and teeth gleamed in the lantern's light. "Three is lucky," he said, and gestured with stained fingers towards Song Lan. "Three is life."
The smell. Metallic, sweet, rotting. Xue Yang looked like nothing human, now, blood-smeared and grinning.
He looked at Xingchen's body, lying naked and filthy in the grave. He should be dressed and cleaned, hair groomed and wounds powdered over, sent on with dignity and incense and prayers. But Song Lan had brought him here.
"All right," he said, and undid his belt.
Xue Yang barely looked at him as he sliced into his thigh and began to paint him. Song Lan stayed rigid still. The blood wasn't cold, but it clung unpleasantly to his skin.
"This works," Xue Yang said, and his tone was soft, as if he were trying to soothe. "The three dantians, three of us." He spread his fingers under Song Lan's navel. "You have strong qi, you'll root the array. I'll be the forge. And Xingchen the eye."
It made little sense to Song Lan. Xingchen was dead. He couldn't do anything. But he stayed still as Xue Yang worked.
"You're bleeding a lot," he said, not quite caring. Xue Yang giggled.
"More flowers," he said. "Go on. Get some. Anything. Grab what you can."
Song Lan shrugged back into his outer robe, unable to go naked even through the humid summer night. The garden was larger than he'd thought, and he had to keep looking back for orientation, blinding himself with the lantern every time. He stumbled into cool water, and out again, and then found a bush of flowers he tore the blooms from, clutching his sleeve in his fist to make a bag. He almost walked into a shelf of flowering plants against a wall, and it was only after tearing out some flowers he realised they were planted into skulls, roots crawling out of the eyesockets in search of more earth. He turned hurriedly away, and almost fell as something screeched under his foot, vanishing into the darkness. Just an animal, he told his racing heart, and the cackles from overhead were just birds disturbed in their roosts.
He drenched the corpse in petals, and Xue Yang piled on more crushed herbs and then more talismans, holding them down with strips of green turf.
As he settled the last few into place, the weak trickle of Song Lan's qi twisted within his body. It was not quite pain; it was as if he were stretching into a new and difficult sword form, his muscles protesting the unfamiliar shape. And then Song Lan felt the bloodied signs on his body bind him there, his qi redirected like a dammed river.
As Xue Yang vanished into the night, Song Lan felt the corpse's cold wrist. There was no pulse to find, but qi was moving steadily through the meridians. Borrowed qi, but it was there, and it moved in time with his own.
Xue Yang came back with a jar, and Song Lan eyed it.
"Bugs," Xue Yang said. "Worms. To get it started."
"Started," Song Lan echoed, and had to look away again as Xue Yang uncapped the jar. Rustles, and other unidentifiable sounds, and then silence.
Song Lan looked back to see Xue Yang leaning over Xingchen, staring down at his blood-painted face. He leaned in, hair piling onto Xingchen's bloodied hair, and perhaps kissed him. Song Lan couldn't tell for sure.
"Last chance, Song Zichen," Xue Yang said indifferently, sitting back, and panic flared in Song Lan's chest. He looked down at Xingchen's pale face, the unseeing eyes, the slack flesh. His hands shook as he touched the cool skin, and he pressed his lips hastily to Xingchen's brow, just above the bloodied mark.
He wanted to beg, but Xingchen had gone beyond the reach of words.
"Bury him," Xue Yang said, and began to shovel earth back onto him with his hands. Song Lan joined in, cringing at the feel of the dirt against his skin. There wasn't enough from the grave, and they had to collect more from a nearby flowerbed. Xue Yang found a pot and brought scoops of rich-smelling earth from somewhere else, spreading it down and patting it into place, until there was just a long expanse of earth and nothing left of Xiao Xingchen.
The moon had risen, but it slipped in and out of the clouds, so the light was uncertain and shadows moved around them. Song Lan looked at the grave, and said, "It's not deep enough."
"What?" Xue Yang said. Blood still trickled from his wounds. He pushed his filthy hands over his face. "No, it's right."
"It's not deep enough," Song Lan said, stupidly. It was too late now. "Things will - his body, it'll - "
"That's the whole point, Song Zichen. Things will happen."
Things, a feeble euphemism for the pollution of death. Song Lan could not even think of it.
"You're supposed to fix him, not - " his voice cracked and failed.
Xue Yang rubbed his face again, smearing a ghastly mask over his skin. "You decided to trust me when you brought him here. It's too late to change your mind."
Song Lan stared at him, but Xue Yang wasn't paying attention to him any more. Under Song Lan's gaze, he stretched himself out and lay down by the long mound of earth, throwing one arm and leg over it like a lover. He closed his eyes.
There was space there for him. One other side of the grave, the sheet that had wrapped Xingchen's body lay tangled with his discarded robes. It was tempting to just… lie down. Await events.
It was Xingchen's only chance, though.
He picked up all the discarded robes and folded them, wrapped them in the sheet and hung them over his arm. Then, gingerly, he rolled Xue Yang over and lifted him up. He was a limp weight, distressingly reminiscent of Xingchen's body; his skin was almost as cold as the body's had been. He took up the lantern, and made his way back to the gate, passing the shelves of skulls and plants and trying not to look at them.
He hesitated on the threshold of the garden, stepping through slowly, but the connection held and the qi continued to flow. Outside the boundaries, he could feel it flowing to Xue Yang, too, circulating between them.
He went back to the main courtyard, where most of the lanterns had burnt out. The doors to the main hall stood open, and when he lifted the lantern he carried, he saw an untidy and sparsely-furnished room. The smell of rotting food and alcohol mixed repulsively with the smell of blood and Xue Yang's filthy body. Song Lan's gorge rose, and he forced that back with the tears.
The western door led to a room with storage chests and shelves. He tried to the east, and found a kitchen, with a door that led out to the passageway. He put the lantern down, and set Xue Yang down in front of the cold stove with the robes and sheet thrown over him. There was a bucket of coal nearby, and tinder of dried grass and discarded paper, and soon he had a fire going. Xue Yang didn't shift, his breathing shallow. Song Lan reminded himself that Xue Yang had exceptional vitality, and turned to look for food. There was a half-full kettle, and he set that on the stove. He found brown sugar in a jar, and a ginger root.
Making the tea settled him a little; the scent of ginger was sharp and fresh, and he chewed a small piece to take the sour taste out of his mouth. By the time he poured the boiling water over, in cups of purple clay he found abandoned in the main hall, he felt steadier. He knelt beside Xue Yang and lifted his head, trying to ignore the feel of greasy, matted hair.
Xue Yang licked his lips at the touch of the hot liquid, and his nostrils twitched; then his mouth curled into a smile even before his eyes opened. Confusion fluttered briefly over his face.
"Oh, it's you," he said, and shook Song Lan off. He took the cup, though, sitting up with his legs folded, and Song Lan pulled up a stool and sipped his own tea, the warmth spreading through him. The ginger would stimulate their qi; he hoped Xue Yang had plenty of it. Perhaps it grew in the garden.
How long would it take? What was even happening out there, under the dirt?
Xue Yang laughed, and when Song Lan looked at him, he bared his teeth in something more animal than a smile. "You can wash it off, now, it's done. There's a well in the back courtyard."
"Where's the latrine?" Song Lan said, and Xue Yang made a vague gesture.
"North courtyard, door closest to the garden."
He had an ingot of soap packed away, and there was a drain in the kitchen, so he heated more water and washed up there, scrubbing until his skin felt warm and raw. The well was to the west of the north courtyard, surrounded by rails for hanging up clothes, and he pulled all but Xue Yang's own robes away from him and hung them up to air. He found his spare clothes, and dressed in those from the skin outward. He had hoped that being clean again would restore him, somehow. It did not.
When he went back to the kitchen, Xue Yang was asleep. Song Lan didn't wake him. In the hall there was a large platform with bedding scattered across it. It was better than nothing, he supposed, and he closed the doors and put out the lantern
The pillows smelled, but not Xue Yang's sourness. He could smell osmanthus and sandalwood; the oil Xingchen used on his hair.
He closed his eyes and breathed it in, and after a few seconds he twined his arms together and took hold of his own hand, linking his fingers and smoothing his thumb over the back of his other hand. He imagined that Xingchen was there beside him, that if Song Lan only tugged on his hand, he'd slide closer, and press his lips to Song Lan's in the dark.
But still he smelled blood and rot, felt cold skin under his lips, was lost in the rustling darkness of that garden.
The knowledge that he'd done a terrible thing chased him into sleep, and he ran through endless gardens, searching for Xiao Xingchen and finding only empty graves.