Chapter 17 Summary, Analysis, and Key Themes
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The chapter opens with Zen abruptly canceling their training session. His face is described as wiped clean as a slate, a look that reminds Lan of the time his eyes turned completely black at the walls of Haak'gong. Shàn'jūn drops his gaze and Tai tenses as Zen strides past them through the bookhouse. Zen announces they will go to Guarded Mountain that night instead.
Zen gives two reasons for the urgency: Master Nóng returns the next day and will want to treat Lan's arm, and Dilaya has begun forming ideas about whatever Lan's mother left her. Zen wants to act before Dilaya confides in her mother or the grandmaster, which could complicate matters. When Lan worries that taking her poses a risk to his status, Zen says nothing he does will affect his reputation at the school anymore, and offers to answer any questions she may have about rumors she has heard. Lan declines, instead thanking him for taking her to Guarded Mountain, for saving her at Haak'gong, and for training her. The fire in his eyes cools.
They descend the nine-hundred-ninety-nine steps of the mountain. Lan senses the mountain's vitality, noticing ripples in the energies, shadows at the corners of her vision, and breaths down the back of her neck. At the base, Zen explains the Boundary Seal, marked by a tree called the Most Hospitable Pine. As Lan crosses, she experiences a vision: a woman standing in snow, haunting song, figures moving around her, voices just out of earshot. Zen pulls her through. She tells him she thinks she saw her mother.
Zen explains the Seal reaches into the depths of a person's heart to understand their intentions toward the school, and that it is held together by the spirits of masters and grandmasters who served the school in life and now protect it in death. He performs a Gate Seal, transporting them to an evergreen forest about a day's travel from Skies' End. Lan asks what Zen sees when he passes through the Boundary Seal; he replies,