The Swordsman's Ward

When the woman had gone, Ning sat a long while beside his dead fire, turning her story over. He was an honest man, and honest men do not always believe in ghosts, but he had seen this one, and he had heard her, and she had not come to harm him.

He believed her. And because he believed her, he did the only thing an honest man can do when he believes a ghost: he went to find the swordsman and ask him plainly what there was to fear in this temple.

Yan was in the outer court, where the rain had washed the dust clean, sharpening his sword on a stone. He did not look up when Ning approached. Ask, he said, before Ning had decided how to begin.

Ning told him everything: the singer, the woman at the fire, the story she had told him, the thing that sent her out. Yan listened without changing his face. When Ning was done, he nodded, as though a question he had been waiting to be asked had at last been put to him.

You have been kinder than most, Yan said, and that is why she came to you. The thing in this temple is no spirit of the dead. It is a ghoul that feeds on men while they are warm, and it uses the dead to bring them warm. The girl is its tool, but she is also its prisoner.

Why have you not killed it already? Ning asked. Yan looked at him, and for the first time something like respect crossed his face. Because it has not yet come for me, he said. A man with a sword does not draw it on a thing that hides. I wait until it shows itself, and then I finish it in one stroke. It is the only way to be certain.

Then teach me to survive tonight, Ning said. Yan studied him a moment more, and then he rose, and unloosened from his sleeve a small folded packet of paper and wood. Hang this above the door of whatever room you sleep in, he said, and do not leave it. When the thing comes, it will strike at the ward, and the ward will strike back.

But it will not be enough, Yan went on, if the thing is angry. It will come in the shape of the girl, because that is the shape you will open the door for. Remember what she told you. She did not ask you to let her in. She asked you to let her out. Do not confuse the two.

Ning took the ward and hung it as he was told, above the lintel of the ruined hall where he meant to pass the night. Yan went to his own corner, across the courtyard, and lay down with his sword across his chest, and the temple was quiet.

Ning did not sleep. He lay in the dark and watched the ward, and listened to the night settle around him. Somewhere in the inner courts, the thing that had used Xiaoqian waited. He could feel its patience, which was older than the temple and colder than the rain.

The third watch struck, and nothing came. The fourth watch, and still nothing. Ning began to hope that the ward had been enough, that the thing had chosen another traveler on another road. He was almost asleep when he heard the soft sound of sandals on the stone, and the voice of Xiaoqian calling him by name.

He did not open the door. He lay still, and he thought of her warning: it will come in the shape of the girl. He listened to the voice call him, softer and softer, and he did not answer. Then the voice changed. It became a thing that was not a voice at all, and the ward above the door began to glow.

There was a blow, and a sound like a struck bell, and then a long, wrong silence. Ning did not move until dawn. Across the courtyard, Yan sat up, laid his sword aside, and called across the court that it was finished, and that the road would be safe to travel when the sun was up.