He was about to point out some of those similarities when she interrupted him. “Doesn’t make a lick of difference. Can’t read my own name.”
Lindon stared at her for too long before realizing how awkward that must be for her, then he shifted his gaze and pretended he’d been examining the stone all along. “That’s…ah, I’m sorry. Did the Sword Sage not…”
“Not much writing to be done with a sword,” she said, in a deliberately casual tone.
In the Wei clan, everyone learned to read before they learned their first Foundation technique. But it fell to the individual families to teach their children; he’d never considered what it might be like for someone raised outside a family.
“Well, ah…this section at the top is a simple sequence. It explains the history of the Blackflames.”
His fingers brushed the vertical lines of writing, each column separated by pictograms: a dragon flying over a human, then a human standing over a dragon, then a human with a dragon on a leash.
“When the humans came to this land, the dragons ruled. They burned through all opposition, ignoring all defenses. No one could stand against them. Finally, a...I think this means 'great disaster'...came to this land from the west, bringing the dragons down from the sky.”
That was interesting; Sacred Valley and the Desolate Wilds lay to the west. There were no pictures illustrating the great disaster, to his disappointment.
“Once they fell, the humans began to learn the sacred arts of the dragons. It helped to even the score, but their understanding was incomplete. While they were still studying the arts, the dragons discovered a way to...”
Lindon hesitated. “It says here they leashed the humans, but it seems to imply that the humans were the ones to benefit. Maybe a deal? A contract.”
Understanding sparked. The first Blackflames, at least, had bound themselves to the dragons just as he had done with Orthos.
“Some Paths bind their kids to sacred beasts,” Yerin said. “It’s like gluing a sword to your hand so you don’t drop it, if you ask me.”
Lindon spent a moment wondering if she was trying to insult him before he realized she didn’t know. He hadn’t seen her since making his contract with Orthos…who was drifting around the mountain as the mood took him. If Lindon wasn’t mistaken, Orthos would probably check on him before he finished the Trials.
“Not to ask too much of you, but if you happen to see a giant, flaming turtle wandering around out here…please don’t attack it.”
Yerin stared at him like he’d started babbling nonsense.
“Well,” Lindon continued, “it seems that the remaining dragons linked themselves to the Blackflame ancestors for some reason. With the power of the dragons...”
He tapped a picture of a man with a dragon standing over a large crowd of humans, and Yerin nodded. “Yeah, I can figure that one.”
There was a line of text just beneath the story, separated from everything else. These words were engraved more deeply, so the passage of time had hardly touched them.
“The dragon advances,” he said aloud.
“That’s a long stretch better than ‘Fierce Robe Burning Fire,’ true?”
“It’s not a technique name. It looks like their family words, or maybe the philosophy of the Trial.”
Yerin looked bored, so he moved down to the next section.
“Now it's talking about the Trials, and the language gets harder. The Blackflame ancestors placed three Trials here for the three basic techniques of the Path, that much is clear. This one is the...you know, the Fierce Fire Robe. It's their Enforcer technique. Seems like it burns...”
He trailed off.
“You'd expect fire madra to burn,” Yerin said.
“No, that's...ah, it seems to burn away the body of the user.” He searched his mind for another interpretation, but came up with nothing. That would explain why Eithan thought he needed the Bloodforged Iron body to handle the Path, but he wasn't exactly enthusiastic about burning himself from the inside out.
“That's a gem for you, isn't it?” Yerin asked. “If a technique costs you something, means it must be a good one.”
Lindon grunted noncommittally and gestured to the smoky crystal ball on the pedestal. “I'm supposed to run the technique through the crystal, and that will activate the Trial. Apologies, but it looks like we can't move on until I’m familiar with it.”
She folded her arms. “I'll wait.”
He looked from the madra diagram to her. “This could take me days.”
“Really?” Yerin tapped a knuckle against the illustration of the madra channels. “This?”
The diagram seemed to require him to make dozens of small directions and adjustments to his madra flow with every breath. To use it without thought in a fight would take him months.
“I defer to your experience,” he said, “but I think three or four days is reasonable.”
Yerin slid her sword around on her belt, then plopped down to the ground. She patted the dirt in front of her. “I'll be buried and rotten if I let you take days for something that simple. Have a seat, I'll walk you through it.”
Lindon took one final glance at the diagram and then sat with his back to the stone, his knees against Yerin's. Once again, he wished he'd brought paper and ink; tracing the madra pattern would have helped commit it to memory.
“Do what I tell you, when I tell you, you hear me?” When Lindon nodded, Yerin straightened her back. “Close your eyes.”
He did so.
“We're keeping this to a crawl, now. Deep breath in, and picture your madra running like tree roots through your whole body. You inhale, and the roots spread.”
It was the same sort of visualization Eithan had mentioned while teaching him the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel. He followed along, and his madra responded with surprising ease.
“Exhale, and burn it all up. There's a fire consuming those roots, you're burning them, and that fire is the fuel that drives you.”
When Lindon focused on the fire, it was as though the Blackflame madra leaped forward like a hungry beast. It spread from his spirit and sunk into his body, but the sensation was painless, just a hot and disturbing tingle as though his muscles were slowly fizzing away to nothing.
He opened his eyes. “As expected of the Sword Sage’s disciple,” he said, saluting her with fists pressed together. “I almost felt it work. A few more tries, and I think…what?”
She was wearing a smug smile. “Almost?” The silver blade over her shoulder inched forward, leaving a polished steel surface in front of his face. “Do it with your eyes open this time.”
It was harder to picture his madra flow with his eyes open, so this attempt took him longer. But this time he was watching when his madra flared and the tingling sensation washed through his veins.
The reflection of his face was suddenly blurred by a haze of red-and-black fire.
Lindon almost fell backwards.
Yerin gestured to him. “That covers you all over, like burning smoke. It's got a menacing look to it, I'll tell you true. Jai Long will have to bring a diaper to the fight.”
He rose to his feet. “How? So quickly?”
She drew her sword so that she could reach the stone tablet with its tip, pointing to little symbols next to the madra pattern. Lindon had taken them for reading directions in the ancient script.
“Can't read a word, but you'd see these pictures on most old Path manuals. I had more talks about cycling theory with my master than we had hot meals.” She shrugged. “You're just moving your own spirit around, aren't you? The feeling does you more good than remembering some directions.”