The Middle Kingdom (49 page)

Li Shai Tung,
T'ang, senior member of the Council of Seven and ruler of City
-Europe, stood up and turned away from his advisor, a tear forming in
the corner of one bloodshot eye.

"Then it is
wuwei."

THE SMALL GIRL
turned sharply, her movements fluid as a dancer's. Her left arm came
down in a curving movement, catching her attacker on the side. In the
same instant her right leg kicked out, the foot pointing and
flicking, disarming the assailant. It was a perfect movement and the
man, almost twice her height, staggered backward. She was on him in
an instant, a shrill cry of battle anger coming from her lips.

"Hold!"

She froze,
breathing deeply, then turned her head to face the instructor. Slowly
she relaxed her posture and backed away from her prone attacker.

"Excellent.
You were into it that time, Jelka. No hesitations."

Her instructor,
a middle-aged giant of a man she knew only as Siang, came up to her
and patted her shoulder. On the floor nearby her attacker, a
professional fighter brought in for this morning's training session
only, got up slowly and dusted himself down, then bowed to her. He
was clearly surprised to have been bested by such a slip of a girl,
but Siang waved him away without looking at him.

Siang moved
apart from the child, circling her. She turned,

wary of him,
knowing how fond he was of tricks. But before she had time to raise
her guard he had placed a red sticker over the place on her body
shield where her heart would be. She caught his hand as it snaked
back, but it was too late.

"Dead,"
he said.

She wanted to
laugh but dared not. She knew just how serious this was. In any case,
her father was watching and she did not want to disappoint him.
"Dead," she responded earnestly.

There were games
and there were games. This game was deadly. She knew she must leam it
well. She had seen with her own eyes the price that could be paid.
Poor Han Ch'in. She had wept for days at his death.

At the far end
of the training hall the door opened and her father stepped through.
He was wearing full dress uniform, but the uniform was a perfect,
unblemished white, from boots to cap. White. The Han color of death.

The General came
toward them. Siang bowed deeply and withdrew to a distance. Jelka,
still breathing deeply from the exercise, smiled and went to her
father, embracing him as he bent to kiss her.

"That was
good," he said. "YouVe improved a great deal since I last
saw you."

He had said the
words with fierce pride, his hand holding and squeezing hers as he
stood there looking down at her. At such moments he felt a curious
mixture of emotions; love and apprehension, delight and a small,
bitter twinge of memory. She was three months short of her seventh
birthday, and each day she seemed to grow more like her dead mother.

"When will
you be back?" she asked, looking up at him with eyes that were
the same breathtaking ice-blue her mother's had been.

"A day or
two. I've business to conclude after the funeral."

She nodded, used
to his enigmatic references to business; then, more thoughtfully.
"What will Li Shai Tung do, Daddy?"

He could not
disguise the bitterness in his face when he answered. "Nothing,"
he said. "He will do nothing." And as he said it he
imagined that it was Jelka's funeral he was about to go to; her death
he had seen through others' eyes; her body lying there in the casket,
young as spring yet cold as winter.

If it were you,
my blossom, I would tear down Chung Kuo itself to get back at them.

But was that a
deficiency in him? Were his feelings so unnatural? Or was the lack in
Li Shai Tung, putting political necessity before what he felt? To
want to destroy those that have hurt your loved ones—was that
really so wrong? Was he any less of a man for wanting that?

Tolonen
shuddered; the thought of his darling Jelka dead filled him with a
strange sense of foreboding. Then, conscious of his daughter watching
him, he placed his hands on her shoulders. His hands so large, her
bones so small, so fragile, beneath his fingers.

"I must
go," he said simply, kneeling to hug her.

"Keep
safe," she answered, smiling at him.

He smiled back
at her, but his stomach had tightened at her words. It was what her
mother had always said.

A COLD WIND was
blowing from the west, from the high plains of Tibet, singing in the
crown of the tree of heaven and rippling the surface of the long
pool. Li Shai Tung stood alone beneath the tree, staff in hand, his
bared head bowed, his old but handsome face lined with grief. At his
feet, set into the dark earth, was the Family tablet, a huge
rectangle of pale cream stone, carved with the symbols of his
ancestors. More than half the stone—a body's length from where
he stood—was marble smooth, untouched by the mortician's
chisel. So like the future, he thought, staring at Han Ch'in's name,
fresh cut into the stone. The future . . . that whiteness upon which
ail our deaths are written.

He looked up. It
was a small and private place, enclosed by ancient walls. At the
southern end a simple wooden gate led through into the northern
palace. Soon they would come that way with the litter.

He spoke, his
voice pained and awful; like the sound of the wind in the branches
overhead. "Oh, Han . . . oh, my sweet little boy, my darling
boy."

He staggered,
then clenched his teeth against the sudden memory of Han's mother,
his first wife, Lin Yua, sitting in the sunlight at the edge of the
eastern orchard by the lake, her dresses spread about her, Han, only
a baby then, crawling contentedly on the grass beside her.

Bring it back,
he begged, closing his eyes against the pain; Kuan Yin, sweet Goddess
of Mercy, bring it back! But there was no returning. They were dead.
All dead. And that day no longer was. Except in his mind.

He shuddered. It
was unbearable. Unbearable. . . .

Li Shai Tung
drew his cloak about him and began to make his slow way back across
the grass, leaning heavily on his staff, his heart a cold, dark stone
in his breast.

They were
waiting for him in the courtyard beyond the wall; all those he had
asked to come. The Sons of Heaven and their sons, his trusted men,
his son, his dead son's wife and her father, his brothers, his own
third wife, and, finally, his daughters. All here, he thought. All
but Han Ch'in, the one I loved the best.

They greeted him
solemnly, their love, their shared grief unfeigned, then turned and
waited for the litter.

The litter was
borne by thirty men, their shaven heads bowed, their white,
full-length silks fluttering in the wind. Behind them came four
officials in orange robes and, beyond them, two young boys carrying a
tiny litter on which rested an ancient bell and hammer.

Han lay there in
the wide rosewood casket, dressed in the clothes he had worn on his
wedding day. His fine, dark hair had been brushed and plaited, his
face given the appearance of perfect health. Rich furs had been
placed beneath him, strewn with white blossom, while about his neck
were wedding gifts of jewels and gold and a piece of carmine cloth
decorated with the marriage emblems of dragon and phoenix.

At the foot of
the coffin lay a length of white cotton cloth, nine
ch'i
in
length, Han Ch'in's own symbolic mourning for his father—for
tradition said that the son must always mourn the father before he
himself was mourned.

Li Yuan,
standing at his father's side, caught his breath. It was the first
time he had seen his brother since his death, and, for the briefest
moment, he had thought him not dead but only sleeping. He watched the
litter pass, his mouth open, his heart torn from him. Merciful gods,
he thought; sweet Han,

how could they
kill you? How could they place you in the earth?

Numbed, he fell
into line behind the silent procession, aware only vaguely of his
father beside him, of the great lords of Chung Kuo who walked behind
him, their heads bared, their garments simple, unadorned. In his mind
he reached out to pluck a sprig of blossom from his brother's hair,
the petals a perfect white against the black.

At the far end
of the long pool the procession halted. The tomb was open, the great
stone door hauled back. Beyond it steps led down into the cold earth.

Most of the
bearers now stood back, leaving only the six strongest to carry the
litter down the steps. Slowly they descended, followed by the
officials and the two boys.

His father
turned to him. "Come, my son. We must lay your brother to rest."

Li Yuan held
back, for one terrible moment overcome by his fear of the place below
the earth. Then, looking up into his father's face, he saw his own
fear mirrored and found the strength to bow and answer him. "I
am ready, Father."

They went down,
into candlelight and shadows. The bearers had moved away from the
litter and now knelt to either side, their foreheads pressed to the
earth. Han lay on a raised stone table in the center of the tomb, his
head to the south, his feet to the north. The officials stood at the
head of the casket, bowed, awaiting the T'ang, while the two boys
knelt at the casket's foot, one holding the bell before him, the
other the hammer.

Li Yuan stood
there a moment at the foot of the steps, astonished by the size of
the tomb. The ceiling was high overhead, supported by long, slender
pillars that were embedded in the swept earth floor. Splendidly
sculpted tomb figures, their san-t'soz glazes in yellow, brown, and
green, stood in niches halfway up the walls, candles burning in their
cupped hands. Below them were the tombs of his ancestors, huge
pictograms cut deep into the stone, denoting the name and rank of
each. On four of them was cut one further symbol—the
Ywe
Lung.
These had been T'ang. His father was fifth of the Li family
Tang. He, when his time came, would be the sixth.

A small table
rested off to one side. On it were laid the burial objects. He looked
up at his father again, then went over and stood beside the table,
waiting for the ritual to begin.

The bell sounded
in the silence, its pure, high tone like the sound of heaven itself.
As it faded the officials began their chant.

He stood there,
watching the flicker of shadows against stone, hearing the words
intoned in the ancient tongue, and felt drawn up out of himself.

Man has two
souls, the officials chanted. There is the animal soul, the
p'o,
which comes into being at the moment of conception, and there is
the him, the spirit soul, which comes into being only at the moment
of birth. In life the two are mixed, yet in death their destiny is
different. The p'o remains below, inhabiting the tomb, while the
hun,
the higher soul, ascends to heaven.

The officials
fell silent. The bell sounded, high and pure in the silence. Li Yuan
took the first of the ritual objects from the table and carried it
across to his father. It was the pi, symbol of Heaven, a large disc
of green jade with a hole in its center. Yin, it was—positive
and light and male. As the officials lifted the corpse, Li Shai Tung
placed it beneath Han's back, then stood back, as they lowered him
again.

The bell sounded
again. Li Yuan returned to the table and brought back the second of
the objects. This was the
tsung,
a hollow, square tube of jade
symbolizing Earth. Yang, this was— negative and dark and
female. He watched as his father placed it on his brother's abdomen.

Each time the
bell rang he took an object from the table and carried it to his
father. First the
huang,
symbol of winter and the north, a
black jade half-pi which his father laid at Han's feet. Then the
chang, symbol of summer and the south, a narrow tapered tablet of red
jade placed above Han's head. The fcuei followed, symbol of the east
and spring, a broad tapered tablet of green jade, twice the size of
the chang, which was laid beside Han's left hand. Finally Li Yuan
brought the hu, a white jade tiger, symbol of the west and autumn. He
watched his father place this at his dead brother's right hand, then
knelt beside him as the bell rang once, twice, and then a third time.

The chant began
again. Surrounded by the sacred symbols the body was protected. Jade,
incorruptible in itself, would prevent the body's own decay. The
p'o,
the animal soul, would thus be saved.

Kneeling there,
Li Yuan felt awed by the power, the dignity, of the ritual. But did
it mean anything? His beloved Han was dead and nothing in heaven or
earth could bring him back. The body would decay, jade or no jade.
And the souls . . . ? As the chant ended he sat back on his haunches
and looked about him, at stone and earth and the candlelit figures of
death. When nothing returned to speak of it, who knew if souls
existed?

Outside again he
stood there, dazed by it all, the chill wind tugging at his hair, the
afternoon light hurting his eyes after the flickering shadows of the
tomb. One by one the T'ang came forward to pay their respects to his
father and once more offer their condolences, the least of them
greater in power and wealth than the greatest of the Tang or Sung or
Ch'ing dynasties. Wang Hsien, a big, moon-faced man, T'ang of Africa.
Hou Ti, a slender man in his forties, T'ang of South America. Wei
Feng, his father's closest friend among his peers, T'ang of East
Asia, his seemingly ever-present smile absent for once. Chi Hu Wei,
a. tall, awkward man, T'ang of the Australias. Wu Shih, T'ang of
North America, a big man, built like a fighter, his broad shoulders
bunching as he embraced Li Yuan's father. And last Tsu Tiao, T'ang of
West Asia, the old man leaning on his son's arm.