The Poppy War

Rin returns to school and registers as an apprentice. The clerk disappears for a while when Rin shares that she pledged Lore—they don’t know what color her armband should be. Eventually, she gets a white one. Classes begin the next day. She spends mornings learning from the other masters and afternoons with Jiang. To begin, he asks her what Lore even is. Rin has no idea; she suggests they’re studying “weird things.” Jiang says that during the Tournament, Rin called a god and it answered. He explains that long ago, before shamans knew what they were doing, they all went mad. Rin will go mad too without his instruction.

Jiang’s teaching methods are unorthodox. He does things like make Rin live nocturnally and catch minnows with her hands. Jiang shows her things that shouldn’t be possible, as when he causes the wind to blow leaves around. He tells her to suspend her disbelief, but he gives an infuriating explanation for how he can do this: he’s “a mortal who has woken up, and there is power in awareness.” Slowly, Rin begins to come to a different understanding of what’s real and possible. Jiang often sends her to the library to research things like gods and shamans. He continues to tell her that she has to understand her place in the world and how the gods work to be able to “borrow power” from them. The worst part for Rin is having to learn to meditate. It “fe[els] wrong to be sitting so still” after being so busy.

One spring day, Jiang takes Rin hiking in the mountains and then announces a lesson on plants—he’s going to “get high,” but Rin is not. He explains that the poppies, mushrooms, and cactus aren’t native to Sinegard, and they discuss Nikan’s outright ban on drugs. Rin and Jiang agree that opium does awful things to “common” people and addiction “destroys local economies,” but he explains that shamans have used poppy seeds and other hallucinogens for centuries: doing so allows them to commune with the gods and enter the Pantheon. This, Rin realizes, is how Jiang will connect her two lines of research (the gods and the nature of the universe) from the past few months.

Rin, however, is confused, as Jiang says that drugs can help her access the universe “contained within [her] mind,” suggesting that Rin herself has the capacity to be god-like. He explains that most people don’t find “the god within” by smoking opium because they don’t know what they’re looking for. There used to be lots of monasteries with shamans, but the Red Emperor did away with them. And in a modernizing world, he notes, the gods don’t have as much of a place—the modern world requires “conformity and uniform obedience,” and people like Jun want to be able to teach thousands of soldiers the same thing. Jiang’s educational methods don’t work that way, though they’re better and more effective. Though Rin proposes she spread Jiang’s teachings to others, he sadly says the “age of the gods is over.” He smokes his pipe, and Rin hikes back to school alone.

Jiang refuses to let Rin meditate with hallucinogens, stating that she isn’t ready yet. Even after months of working together, he refuses. Rin confronts him, accusing him of keeping her behind. He explains that he’s doing this because she has a natural aptitude for Lore, but she’s also careless and doesn’t meditate enough or well enough. She’s also too hateful and likes hating, but hate won’t help her reach the gods. Rin scoffs and reaches for a poppy, but looking pained, Jiang explains that he taught four students a decade ago who were power-hungry. They went mad when they finally called the gods. This is not something to be flippant about, he says seriously.

As the year progresses, Rin feels increasingly distant from her classmates, even Kitay. She doesn’t share any of what she’s learning with him, though he shares that people are afraid of her. Second-years can fight in the ring, and with Altan graduated now, Nezha becomes the reigning champion. Jiang forbids Rin from fighting, but Rin attends as a spectator regularly. Slowly, the infighting among the classmates peters out—though Rin and Nezha continue to nurse grudges. However, when a diplomatic crisis with the Federation of Mugen arises near the end of the year, students begin fighting again. Han, who’s from the province where Federation soldiers killed Nikara, starts a fight with Nezha, whose father (the Dragon Warlord) won’t send troops to help out. Two more crises occur soon after, the second being the death of the Federation’s emperor. Now, the violent nationalist Emperor Ryohai is in charge of the Federation.

Jiang seems to be the only person who isn’t interested in the crisis; he seems frail and suddenly old when Rin tries to ask him about his role in the Second Poppy War, where he supposedly fought the Federation. Rin decides to drop the subject with him. By the time Rin has been apprenticed to Jiang for two years, Rin can meditate for five hours at a time. Jiang gives her a flask and sends her to drink it and meditate in a cave at the top of the mountain for “[a]s long as it takes.” Rin hikes up through the rain, drinks the tea, and settles in. It’s difficult at first, but as a week passes, Rin focuses more on her breath and “tip[s] into the void.” By day 15, Rin is certain that her consciousness is one with all life on earth. She stops counting days at this point.

Rin continues to meditate and finds herself in a small, tiled room. There’s a Woman there, with sad, red eyes, who says that Rin will be offered immense power—and the Woman refused that power when it was offered to her. The gods will require a sacrifice if Rin wants them to change the course of life on Earth, and the “Phoenix wants suffering” and “blood.” Rin argues with the Woman: she has blood to give and isn’t afraid. The Woman gets closer to Rin and begins to scream, and Rin is certain this isn’t what was supposed to happen. She can hear screaming and sees dark-skinned bodies dancing around a fire and then burning—but then the skeletons get up and dance. Rin ignores the Woman telling her to “go back”; she can see something alive in the fire. The woman explodes, and Rin floats up.

Rin opens her eyes to Jiang, who asks what she saw. She describes the circular room she saw in her final vision, which Jiang says is the Pantheon, where the gods live. Rin is skeptical of this—she suggests it might’ve been a dream. But she also realizes that she’s reached a new level of understanding. Shamans can commune with the gods, and the gods are “forces of nature, entities as real and yet ephemeral as wind and fire,” and they live in a limbo state where there’s only endless potential ready to influence the living world. Now, Rin knows what it means to exist and that when a person dies, they “wake up” and “leave the illusion” that is the real world.

Rin is thrilled. Now that she knows where her power came from, she just has to learn how to harness it. But Jiang says that Rin is “cured” and can avoid ever becoming unbalanced and calling the fire again. This isn’t what Rin wants to hear, and she asks what the purpose of learning all this even is. Jiang suggests that understanding is enough; she can now learn to divine the future or cure people. But privately, Rin wants to put her knowledge to military use, and she doesn’t want to spend her whole life learning, as Jiang suggests she must. She doesn’t tell Jiang about the “Speerly Woman’s admonitions” during her vision.