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They arranged themselves as best they could around the metal device. “It would be great if Kyoshi and I didn’t have to waste time guessing what problems you have with this man,” Rangi said. “Especially since you’re the one who said we should meet him.”
“It’s simple,” Nyahitha said, returning much quicker than Kyoshi expected. “The headmistress thinks I ruined Kuruk.”
“And Sage Nyahitha believes I and the rest of Kuruk’s companions did,” Hei-Ran said.
Neither of them was fazed by the other’s open hostility. Nyahitha laid down a tray and filled teacups for each of them. Rangi picked hers up and frowned. “Pardon me, but this is cold.”
“No fires allowed,” Nyahitha said. “Do not create any heat in here.”
Kyoshi had never heard of a holy man of the Fire Nation eschewing flame. In fact, she was surprised he wasn’t burning candles everywhere in the tent. “Why?” she asked. “What is this place?”
Nyahitha sipped his ambient-temperature tea. From his grimace, it was a concession rather than a preference. “North Chung-Ling is built over a deposit of flammable vapors. Instead of gold or silver, we have gas below our feet. If too much of it gets out in a concentrated place, a single spark will cause an explosion.”
“But control the flow, and it becomes useful,” Hei-Ran said.
Nyahitha shrugged. “Useful is a strong word. The first visitors to North Chung-Ling who reported spiritual visions likely stayed too long over cracks in the earth that let the gas rise naturally. Breathing the vapors will make you woozy and prone to hallucinating.”
He flicked the bronze pot on the ground. “This gadget, however, lets me moderate how much vapor comes out of a natural spout, once I’ve located one.”
“You’re a fraud,” Rangi growled, forgetting they were here to seek his assistance. “You charge people for a spiritual vision and then crank up the vapors until their eyes deceive them.”
“Yes, I’m guilty of that.” Nyahitha clapped his hands together. “Now, what can this old fraud do for the Avatar?”
“Mother, we are not letting this scam artist anywhere near Kyoshi.” Rangi made to get to her feet.
Hei-Ran grabbed her daughter by the side-buckle of her armor and forced her back down. “Despite my personal issues with him, Nyahitha was also a true Fire Sage, next in line for High Sage before the Saowon clan played dirty with the selection process.”
Kyoshi thought of Kelsang, who would have been Abbot of the Southern Air Temple before he fell from grace. “I’d like to stay,” she said. Rangi huffed but made no further protest.
Nyahitha listened to Kyoshi’s story from the beginning. He waited quietly and patiently, saying nothing while she told him how the blood-drinking spirit named Father Glowworm had picked her out as Kuruk’s reincarnation and claimed Yun as his price for the task. Once she was done, the former sage leaned back and crossed his arms. “The curse strikes again,” he muttered.
“What are you talking about?” Kyoshi said. “What curse?”
“That name you bring across my door is some very bad luck,” Nyahitha said. “Kuruk tangled with many hostile spirits during his Avatarhood, and Father Glowworm was one of the worst. He never fully defeated it, and after their battle it doomed him to suffer catastrophic fortune in the physical world. Anyone he told about Father Glowworm would be cursed in the same way, anyone who even learned of its existence. I believe the intent was to isolate the Avatar from any allies he might call on to help him defeat the spirit for good.”
There was an uncomfortable silence in the tent, the moment after opening a tomb.
“With all due respect, a curse?” Rangi said incredulously. “Bad luck? Are we falling to superstitions now?”
“Misfortune from the spirits is what people across the Four Nations pray to ward off every day,” Nyahitha said. “Too little rain, too much rain, sickness, where the fish school—these are matters of life and death. If you don’t believe in curses, look at me. I used to be a leader at the High Temple back in those days and where am I now? Kuruk didn’t meet a happy end and neither did Jianzhu the Architect, if what you told me is true.”
Zoryu was supposedly cursed, Kyoshi thought. Many people in the Earth Kingdom thought ill of her in a similar manner.
Fortune was an invisible, unconquerable creature that ruled commonfolk and noble alike.
“You fell due to your own vices,” Hei-Ran said to Nyahitha, forgetting in anger that she was the one who had pushed for his help. “Vices that you infected Kuruk with.”
“I tried to make sure at least some of the emptiness inside him was filled with purpose,” he snapped. “You, who spent so many years with him, what did you produce? A good Pai Sho player? Some companions of the Avatar your lot were.”
Excuses upon excuses for Kuruk. Kyoshi was sick of it. She slapped her hand on the earth beside her.
“Kuruk was responsible for himself!” she shouted. “Now, are we going to weep over what could have been for the past Avatar? Or are we going to help the current one?”
There was a hiss in reply. She’d dislodged the brazier planted in the middle of the tent. Nyahitha hastily re-centered it and tightened the valve.
“Did your boy have any strange features when you last saw him?” he asked. “Animal-like parts of his body?”
Kyoshi shook her head. “Not that I could see. But when he came back for the first time in Qinchao, there was something wrong with him. I mean palpably wrong. It was like he was making everyone around him sick and afraid.”
