Forbidden Garden - 5
"How leisurely."
Dokmuhu, the Poison Martial Empress, returned to the Forbidden Garden and murmured to herself, letting the warm late-afternoon breeze wash in through the window.
She had spent her whole life in ceaseless toil—battlefields, the training of martial arts, the study of the Poison Human. But today was different.
Her attainments had deepened past any need to devote herself to training as she once had, and with her husband long dead, there was no longer any reason to pour her hours into her research on sterility. For the disciple taken in during her twilight years, she had granted a day of rest.
And so today found her far more idle than usual.
"Dangga Pungun, is it."
Dokmuhu had never cultivated a taste for idle books. Hers had been a life of reading one more martial treatise, one more medical text, whenever such time presented itself.
Her late husband had once pressed an amusing novel on her, but she had read it only for the sake of having something to talk over with him. No mere pastime had ever truly stirred her heart.
"I had better finish it quickly and return it tomorrow."
This time she had picked up Dangga Pungun to have something to share with her disciple. If she simply nodded along and praised the fiancé, the bond between master and disciple could only grow firmer.
Precisely that much—no more—was the expectation with which she opened the book.
"Love at first sight. Just the sort of thing the young take to."
Watching the protagonist Dang Jeong lose his heart to the finest beauty in Sichuan at a single glance, Dokmuhu gave a small snort.
She had already lived through all of it—love, wedded life, bereavement. To her, a passion that boiled over in an instant could only look like the recklessness of youth.
With mildly doubting eyes, she read on.
"To make love the kindling of one's training. Now that takes me back."
Memory ambushed her at an unexpected turn. In Dang Jeong stoking his devotion with love for fuel, a scene from her own past lay overlaid upon the page.
She, too, had become a Half-Poison Human so that she might, come what may, walk out of the Orthodox-Demonic War alive and return to her husband's side.
"Dang Jeong... an upright boy, to a degree rarely seen."
People sometimes begin a book armored in doubt and prejudice, only to find the bolt of their heart sliding open at the one passage that mirrors their own life. For Dokmuhu, that passage was Dang Jeong at his training.
"Tsk, tsk. To rush in to save a woman knowing full well he may die. What a fool."
At the scene of Dang Jeong hurling himself at Saekma to rescue the finest beauty in Sichuan, Dokmuhu clicked her tongue. To gauge the gap in strength was the barest duty of any murim warrior—how could anyone be so reckless?
And yet, across the lips of that tongue-clicking Empress, a smile was quietly spreading.
"True. But that is exactly what makes him Orthodox. A warrior of the great Sichuan Tang Clan."
To fling oneself into injustice without pausing to weigh water from fire. In the young of this age such a sight had grown rare, and Dokmuhu could not help but smile.
"My lady! My skill is too humble to promise you victory. But if Saekma would lay a hand upon you, he must first take my head!"
"Hohh..."
At a line that would wring an admiring sigh from any man or woman alike, Dokmuhu let out a long breath of her own.
"To think her fiancé is a man who can speak such words. No wonder my disciple's heart has melted clean away."
Through Dang Jeong, Dokmuhu saw the man who had written him. Here was a fellow exceedingly practiced in the melting of women's hearts—a man of genuine accomplishment in the art of setting human feeling ablaze.
Understanding at last why her disciple praised her fiancé every other day, she allowed herself a private smile.
"The Poison Killing Domain? Why, that is my disciple's own secret art."
Dokmuhu, who had poured an entire lifetime into training and study—
"Ha! Forcing Saekma to withdraw by sheer force of bearing! Well done! Well done!"
She was past all hope of pulling her mind out of Dangga Pungun.
"You still haven't read it?"
The next day. Dokmuhu, who had devoured both volumes of Dangga Pungun and now suffered a thirst no draught could quench, scanned her disciple's room.
"No. Not yet."
"Why not?"
Had she not been given the whole of yesterday? The note of regret escaped Dokmuhu before she could stop it.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Ahem! It came from your fiancé—I rather assumed you would have read it by now."
Catching her slip, Dokmuhu hurried to smooth it over.
"I already know nearly everything that happens."
Volume 3 of Dangga Pungun had existed as a finished manuscript before she ever departed for the Tang Clan. For Tang Hwa-rin, hearing Kang Yunho's news from Tang Pae had come first—reading a book whose contents she already knew could wait.
Though it was equally true that the shock of Tang Pae's report had yet to fade, leaving her no mind to think of books at all.
"I see..."
A silence thick with disappointment settled over the room.
Why is she being like this? Surely not. From her master's unwonted manner, Tang Hwa-rin suddenly saw what the strangeness was.
"Don't tell me... you've read Dangga Pungun?"
"...Ahem. It is the first time in my life I have lost a night's sleep to a novel."
Dokmuhu admitted it at once, looking faintly sheepish.
Mortifying, yes, to confess to a night spent turning pages—but she had picked the thing up in the first place for want of something to share with her disciple. There was no call to hide it.
"Hehe. People who've read Yunho's novels say that all the time."
Tang Hwa-rin covered her mouth with a hand, her eyes curving into a smile.
"It feels like being young again, back when the blood ran hot."
She had taken it for simple diversion—who could have guessed she would be unable to put it down until the final page? Dokmuhu marveled in earnest.
"Shall I lend you Volume 3, then?"
"Would you?"
A healthy glow rose in Dokmuhu's face.
"Of course. Here you are."
Her master had praised her fiancé's writing. Light of heart, Tang Hwa-rin passed the book over.
"No... it cannot be, after all."
Dokmuhu spread open the first page of Volume 3—and promptly handed the book back, disappointment written plain across her face.
"Pardon?"
"This book was made for you and you alone. How could your master lay a hand on so precious a gift from your betrothed?"
I'll be waiting at Daseogak.
With all my love, — Kang Yunho.
The page Dokmuhu had opened bore words brimming with love. The first to read this book could not be her. Dokmuhu returned it at once.
"Master..."
"Enough. Put that apologetic look away. I have sent my maid to tell them that I, Dokmuhu, wish to read Dangga Pungun, Volume 3. If nothing goes amiss, she will return with one."
"Yes, Master."
"Ah—there she comes now. Had I known, there would have been no need to say a word."
The two turned to the window, where a single maid could be seen running toward them.
"Lady Dokmuhu!"
"Why do you come empty-handed? Did you do no more than pass the message along?"
Finding no book in the maid's hands, Dokmuhu asked, puzzled.
"The thing is... I did ask them for your copy, my lady."
"You asked, and then?"
"The First Elder of the Council of Elders overheard, and bade me carry back his reply."
Head bowed, her face a study in embarrassment, the maid spoke.
"That reprobate? What did the First Elder say? Out with it—all of it, nothing spared."
Dokmuhu and the First Elder had fought shoulder to shoulder in the Orthodox-Demonic War; between the two of them stood something like an old partnership in mischief. What nonsense could that man have spouted at her maid?
The maid looked upon her mistress's face—a face on which no answer could be the wrong one—took a breath as though arriving at a decision, nodded, and opened her mouth.
"'You hussy! They say nothing in this world is more fearsome than thieving learned late in life. I have been waiting till my neck stretched clean out of my collar, and you would presume to cut ahead of me? Go stand in line on release day, just as I must!'—that is what he said."
"..."
Even the First Elder, queuing up? Bewilderment flashed across Dokmuhu's face. And then, without her willing it, her gaze slid to the book in her disciple's hands.
"Shall I lend it to you after all?"
"Hmm-hmm."
Before so tempting an offer, Dokmuhu found her composure very difficult to keep.
"He's in there."
Knock, knock. At the sound on his office door, the Clan Head Tang Baek-ho answered without lifting his eyes.
"Dang Mugi, Head of the Medical Pavilion. Coming in."
"Enter."
"Reading Dangga Pungun, I see."
The Pavilion Head said it to the Clan Head with a smile that said he had expected as much.
"I read it the moment I returned. I'm reading it again now."
The Clan Head answered, his gaze never leaving the page.
"Nothing problematic in the content?"
"Nothing problematic as far as Saekma goes. He changed the man's origin to the Demonic Cult."
"That is a relief."
The Pavilion Head nodded, visibly reassured.
So long as Saekma's background had been changed, there was nothing left to balk at. After all, Dangga Pungun was, at bottom, a fictional tale reworked from the past for inspiration.
"So—what brings you here?"
"The clan warriors covet the new volume so fiercely that they've been wailing they'll turn Green Forest bandit over it. Tang Pae begged for his life, so I've come to you."
"Tang Pae must have had a hard time of it. I'll have to summon him separately and commend him."
Only then did the Clan Head look up from his book, smiling at the Pavilion Head.
"That one will come to his senses only with a bit more hardship."
"Heh heh."
"So how shall we arrange for the new volume to be distributed at once?"
"..."
No answer leapt readily from the Clan Head.
Why is he hesitating? Something is weighing on him. The Pavilion Head sensed that something was off.
"Clan Head? Is there some other problem?"
"Tell me—have you ever told the boy the story of me, from twenty years back?"
The tale of the Clan Head and Hyang-ah had indeed once been told to Kang Yunho. Could some part of it be gnawing at him? The Pavilion Head nodded.
"I told him as much as he needed to hear."
The Clan Head looked from the Pavilion Head to the book and back, then, with visible reluctance, raised one particular subject.
"...Did you happen to tell him of the swordswoman as well?"
"What is this about?"
The Pavilion Head balked at the utterly unforeseen question.
"Well... you remember. The cold-faced swordswoman we fell in with while hunting Saekma."
"Cold-faced? Ah! Now I remember. We traveled with her briefly on Saekma's account. Such beauty that every one of the lads thought to try his luck with a word or two—but she raised an iron wall none could breach."
At the Clan Head's words, the memory returned at once. Even twenty years on, the phrase cold-faced alone was enough to summon her—a swordswoman of beauty so striking the description needed no explaining.
But what could that possibly have to do with Dangga Pungun, Volume 3?
"Is that as far as your memory goes?"
The Clan Head asked it with something like interrogation in his tone.
"I remember, too, that her gaze never strayed from you, Clan Head."
Time had dulled his shine a little, but in his youth the Clan Head had worn the face of a man who could leave any number of women in tears.
Remembering how every man's eyes had gone to one woman—and how that woman's eyes had gone to one man alone—the Pavilion Head smiled wryly.
"So it was you, after all."
Wearing the look of a man betrayed, the Clan Head bore down on the Pavilion Head.
"I beg your pardon?"
"How could you go telling him such a thing! No—if you were going to tell him, you might have told it right!"
Betrayal, mortification, helplessness—with all of it crowding his face, the Clan Head pressed him hard.
"I have no notion what you mean."
"It was one night's dalliance, nothing more! She stole into my bed with not a stitch on—tell me, with a young man's blood at a boil, how was I to refuse?!"
Wrongs beyond bearing soaked every word of the Clan Head's voice.
"That sort of thing happened?!"
The Pavilion Head could not conceal his consternation at a secret of the Clan Head's now more than twenty years old.
"It happened before I ever met Hyang-ah, no less! The book has the chronology all wrong! The true order is Volume 1, Volume 3, Volume 2! And pairing the two of them up, no less! Of course we had a traveling party—but she was merely one of its members!"
"Clan Head? Please, compose yourself."
The ever-imperturbable Clan Head, both hands clutching his head, quite at a loss—and the Pavilion Head, honestly, no less so.
"Compose myself?! What must my son think of me! One moment the story has him believing I thought of nothing but his mother, and the next it turns me into a man who goes straying! You! Say something—how do we fix this?!"
"I never told him any such thing. To begin with, this is the first I am hearing of it today!"
The Pavilion Head waved his hands in vigorous denial, as though such a thing could never have been.
"Then who in the world told him?! No—never mind. That is not what matters. The misunderstanding must be corrected. Should I write him a letter? Say the chronology is wrong? Write that from the day I met your mother onward, nothing of the sort ever happened? He said our bond ends here, after all—what if he refuses to even accept a letter from me?"
He did not wish the rift of misunderstanding between father and son to deepen. Even if the wound could never truly heal, he had meant to borrow the strength of passing years—watching from a distance that was near yet far—and slowly close the gap.
Never had he imagined his son labored under so absurd a delusion. All dignity abandoned, the Clan Head stamped his feet in frustration.
"Clan Head. It is surely but a small misunderstanding."
The Pavilion Head did his utmost to calm him.
"It is agony enough to be remembered by my son as the father who abandoned his mother—this I cannot bear on top of it. Put your mind to it with me—what is to be done!"
The Sichuan Tang Clan. Its lord. Tang Baek-ho.
Among the foremost masters of the murim, a man of renown, the head of a clan whose authority none within the Sichuan Tang Clan dared defy—and yet, when all was said and done, a father.
"Are you calmer now?"
"Whew... What an unseemly sight I made."
Barely mastering himself, the Clan Head sank heavily into his seat.
"A parent's worry is never done. When the chance arises, I shall visit him in person and set the misunderstanding right."
"I am grateful. You are the only one I have."
He had read his son's new volume the moment it reached him last night, and had not slept a wink for worry. At the Pavilion Head's words, the Clan Head finally exhaled his relief and nodded.
"Then what would you have us do about Dangga Pungun?"
"Distribute it. There is nothing in the content itself to take issue with."
Volume 3, he had heard, had been finished before his son ever set out for the Tang Clan. No doubt its contents had been slipped in with the hope that his father might catch wind of them.
Worried though he was by whatever went on inside his son's head, there was nothing wrong with the content itself, and the Clan Head gave his consent readily.
"I will convey that at once. And there is one more thing you should hear."
"And what would that be?"
Something beyond the matter of Dangga Pungun? Could Tang Pae and his men have more news of his son to relay? The Clan Head lent his ear.
"A warrior of the clan who has only just returned from the outside world says he witnessed a most curious scene beyond the gates of Chengdu."
"A curious scene?"
The Clan Head echoed the question, facing the Pavilion Head's suddenly grave expression. Not news of his son, then? This was not a man who spoke in idle jest.
As the Clan Head waited for the answer, wholly unexpected news leapt from the Pavilion Head's lips.
"They say the warriors of the Moyong Clan are on their way here."