The Middle Kingdom (88 page)

For a while Li
Yuan stood there, his eyes closed, breathing in the fresh, sweet
night scents of the garden. Then he went outside, onto the balcony,
the coldness of the marble flags beneath his feet making him look
down, surprised.

"Prince
Yuan?"

He waved the
guard away, then went down, barefoot, into the garden. In the deep
shadow of the bower he paused, looking about him, then searched
blindly until he came upon it.

"Ah!"
he said softly, finding the book there, on the side, where she had
laid it only hours before. It had been in the dream, together with
the horse, the silks, the scent of plum blossom. The thought made his
throat dry again. He shivered and picked the book up, feeling at once
how heavy it was, the cover warped, ruined by the rain. He was about
to go back out when his fingers found, then read, the pictograms
embossed into the sodden surface of the cover.

Yu T'ai Hsin
Yang.

He moved his
fingers over the figures once again, making sure, then laughed
shortly, understanding. It was a book of love poetry. The
sixth-century collection
New
Songs
from a]ade Terrace.
He
had not read the book himself, but he had heard of it. Moving out
from the bower he turned it over and held it out, under the
moonlight, trying to make out the page she had been reading. It was a
poem by Chiang Yen. "Lady Pan's
Poem on the Fan."

White silk like a round moon

Appearing from the loom's white silk.

Its picture shows the king of Ch'in's daughter

Riding a lovebird toward smoky mists.

Vivid color is what the world prefers,

Yet the new will never replace the old.

In secret I fear cold winds coming

To blow on my jade steps tree

And, before your sweet love has ended,

Make it shed midway.

He shivered and
closed the book abruptly. It was like the dream, too close, too
portentous to ignore. He looked up at the three-quarter moon and felt
its coldness touch him to the core. It was almost autumn, the season
of executions, when the moon was traditionally associated with
criminals.

The moon ... A
chill thread of fear ran down his spine, making him drop the book. In
contrast to the sun the new moon rose first in the west. Yes, it was
from the West that Chang-e, the goddess of the Moon, first made
herself known.

Chang-e . . .
The association of the English and the Mandarin was surely
fanciful—yet he was too much the Han, the suggestive resonances
of sounds and words too deeply embedded in his bloodstream, to ignore
it.

Li Yuan bent
down and retrieved the book, then straightened up and looked about
him. The garden was a mosaic of moonlight and shadows, unreal and
somehow threatening. It was as if, at any moment, its vague
patterning of silver and black would take on a clearer, more
articulate shape; forming letters or a face, as in his dream. Slowly,
fearful now, he moved back toward the palace, shuddering at the
slightest touch of branch or leaf, until he was inside again, the
doors securely locked behind him.

He stood there a
while, his heart pounding, fighting back the dark, irrational fears
that had threatened to engulf him once again. Then, throwing the book
down on his bed, he went through quickly, almost running down the
corridors, until he came to the entrance to his fathers suite of
rooms.

The four elite
guards stationed outside the door bowed deeply to him but blocked his
way. A moment later Wang Ta Chuan, Master of the Inner Palace,
appeared from within, bowing deeply to him.

"What is
it, Prince Yuan?"

"I wish to
see my father, Master Wang."

Wang bowed
again. "Forgive me, Excellency, but your father is asleep. Could
this not wait until the morning?"

Li Yuan
shuddered, then shook his head. His voice was soft but insistent. "I
must see him now, Master Wang. This cannot wait."

Wang stared at
him, concerned and puzzled by his behavior. Then he averted his eyes
and bowed a third time. "Please wait, Prince Yuan. I will go and
wake your father."

He had not long
to wait. Perhaps his father had been awake already and had heard the
noises at his door. Whatever, it was only a few seconds later that Li
Shai Tung appeared, alone, a silk
pau
pulled about his tall
frame, his feet, like his son's, bare.

"Can't you
sleep, Yuan?"

Li Yuan bowed,
remembering the last time he had spoken to his father, in the Hall of
Eternal Truth, after his audience with Ssu Lu Shan. Then he had been
too full of contradictions, too shocked, certainly too confused, to
be able to articulate what he was feeling. But now he knew. The dream
had freed his tongue and he must talk of it.

"I had a
dream, Father. An awful, horrible dream."

His father
studied him a moment, then nodded. "I see." He put a hand
out, indicating the way. "Let us go through to your
great-grandfather's room, Yuan. We'll talk there."

The room was
cold, the fire grate empty. Li Shai Tung looked about him, then
turned and smiled at his son. "Here, come help me, Yuan. We'll
make a fire and sit about it, you there, I here." He pointed to
the two big armchairs.

Li Yuan
hesitated, surprised by his fathers suggestion. He had never seen the
T'ang do anything fcut be a T'ang. Yet, kneeling there, helping him
make up the fire, then leaning down to blow the spark into a flame,
it felt to him as if he had always shared this with his father. He
looked up, surprised to find his father watching him, smiling, his
hands resting loosely on his knees.

"There. Now
let's talk, eh?"

The fire
crackled, the flames spreading quicker now. In its flickering light
the T'ang sat, facing his son.

"Well,
Yuan? You say you had a dream?"

Much of the
early part of the dream evaded him now that he tried to recall its
details, and there were some things—things related too closely
to Fei Yen and his feelings for her—that he kept back from the
telling. Yet the dream's ending was still vivid in his mind and he
could feel that strange, dark sense of terror returning as he spoke
of it.

"I was high
up, overlooking the plain where the City had been. But the City was
no longer there. Instead, in its place, was a mountain of bones. A
great mound of sun-bleached bones, taller than the City, stretching
from horizon to horizon. I looked up and the sky was strangely dark,
the moon huge and full and bloated in the sky, blazing down with a
cold, fierce radiance as though it were the sun. And as I looked a
voice behind me said, 'This is history.' Yet when I turned there was
no one there, and I realized that the voice had been my own."

He fell silent,
then looked down with a shudder, overcome once more by the power of
the dream.

Across from him
the T'ang stretched his long body in the chair, clearly discomfited
by what his son had seen. For a time he, too, was silent, then he
nodded to himself. "You dream of Tsao Ch'un, my son. Of the
terrible things he did. But all that is in our past now. We must
learn from it. Learn not to let it happen again."

Li Yuan looked
up, his eyes burning strangely. "No ... it is not the past.
Can't you see that, Father? It is what we are, right now. What we
represent. We are the custodians of that great white mountain—the
jailers of Tsao Ch'un's City."

Normally Li Shai
Tung would have lectured his son about his manners, the tone in which
he spoke, yet this was different: this was a time for open speaking.

"What Tsao
Ch'un did was horrible, yes. Yet think of the alternatives, Yuan, and
ask yourself what else could he have done? Change had become an evil
god, destroying all it touched. Things seemed beyond redemption.
There was a saying back then which expressed the fatalism people
felt—E
hsing
hsun
kuan.
Bad nature follows a
cycle; a vicious circle, if you like. Tsao Ch'un broke that
circle—fought one kind of badness with another and ended the
cycle. And so it has been ever since. Until now, that is, when others
wish to come and set the Wheel in motion once again."

Li Yuan spoke
softly, quietly. "Maybe so, Father, yet what Tsao Ch'un did is
still inside us. I can see it now. My eyes are opened to it. We are
the creatures of his environment—the product of his
uncompromising thought."

But Li Shai Tung
was shaking his head. "No, Yuan. We are not what he created. We
are our own men." He paused, staring at his son, trying to
understand what he was feeling at that moment; recollecting what he
himself had felt. But it was difficult. He had been much older when
he had learned the truth of things.

"It is
true, Yuan—the world we find ourselves born into is not what we
would have it be in our heart of hearts, yet it is surely not so
awful or evil a world as your dream would have it? True, it might
limit our choices, but those choices are still ours to make."

Li Yuan looked
up. "Then why do we keep the truth from them? What are we afraid
of? That it might make them think other than we wish them to think?
That they might make other choices than the ones we wish them to
make?"

The T'ang
nodded, firelight and shadow halving his face from brow to chin.
"Perhaps. You know the saying, Yuan. To
shuo hua pu ju shoo.
"

Li Yuan
shivered, thinking of the moonlight on the garden. He knew the
saying: Speech is silver, silence is
golden.
Sun and moon
again. Silver and gold. "Maybe so," he said, yet it seemed
more convenient than true.

"In time,
Yuan, you will see it clearer. The shock, I know, is great. But do
not let the power of your dream misguide you. It was, when all's
considered, only a dream."

A dream. Only a
dream. Li Yuan looked up, meeting his father's eyes again. "Maybe
so. But tell me this, Father, are we good or evil men?"

CHEN LOOKED up
from where he was sitting on the stool outside the equipment barn to
see whose shadow had fallen across him.

"Do I know
you?"

The three Han
had ugly, vicious expressions on their faces. Two of them were
holding thick staves threateningly in both hands. The third—the
one whose shadow had fallen across him—brandished a knife. They
were dressed in the same drab brown as himself.

"Ah. . . ."
Chen said, seeing the likeness in their faces. So the thief had
brothers. He got up slowly. "You have a score to settle?"

The momentary
smile on the eldest brother's face turned quickly to a scowl of
hatred. Chen could see how tense the man was and nervous, but also
how determined.

Chen let the hoe
he had been repairing drop, then stood there, empty handed, facing
the man, watching him carefully now, knowing how dangerous he was. A
careless, boastful man would often talk too much or betray himself
into ill-considered movements, but these three were still and silent.
They had not come to talk, nor to impress him. They had come for one
thing only. To kill him.

He glanced
across and saw, in the distance, outlined against the lip of the
irrigation dike, the Overseer's man, Teng. So. That was how they
knew. He looked back, weighing the three up, letting his thoughts
grow still, his breathing normalize. His pulse was high, but that was
good. It was a sign that his body was preparing itself for the fight
to come.

"Your
brother was a thief," he said, moving to his right, away from
the stool, putting the sun to one side of him.

The eldest made
a sound of disgust.

Yes, thought
Chen; I understand you. And maybe another time, in different
circumstances, I'd have let you kill me for what I’ve done. But
there are more important things just now. Like DeVore. Though you'd
not understand that, would you?

Chen saw the
man's movement a fraction of a second before he made it, the sudden
action betrayed by a tensing of the muscles, a slight movement in his
eyes. Chen bunched his fist and knocked the big knife aside, then
followed through with a kick to the man's stomach that left him on
his knees, badly winded.

The other two
yelled and charged him, their staves raised.

Chen moved
quickly to one side, making them wheel about, one of the brothers
momentarily hidden behind the other. Taking his opportunity, Chen
ducked and moved inside the stave's wild swing, his forearm lifting
the man's chin and hurling him back into his brother.

At once Chen was
standing over them, kicking, punching down at them, his breath
hissing from him sharply with each blow, until the two men lay there,
unconscious.

The eldest had
rolled over, groaning, still gasping for his breath. As Chen turned,
facing him again, his eyes widened with fear and he made to crawl
away. But Chen simply stood there, his hands on his hips, getting his
breath, and shook his head.

"I'm sorry.
I did what I had to do. Do you understand me? I have no quarrel with
you. But if you come again—if any of you come again—I
will kill you all."

Chen bowed then
walked back to the barn, picking up the hoe. Only then did he see
Pavel, watching from the doorway.

"You saw
then, Pavel?"

The young man's
eyes were wide with astonishment. "I saw,
Shih
Tong, but
I'm not sure I believe what I saw. I thought they'd kill you."

Chen smiled.
"Yes. And so did Teng. I must deal with him, before he can tell
others."

Pavel's eyes
narrowed; then, as if he had made up his mind about something, he
took Chen's arm and began to turn him about.

Chen shook him
off. "What are you doing?"

Pavel stared at
him. "You said you must deal with Teng. Well, he's gone already.
As soon as he saw what you could do. If you want to catch him you had
best come with me. I know a quicker way."