She Who Became the Sun

by Shelley Parker-Chan

  Two-thirds. Zhu saw the enormity of that figure hit the Abbot, and his dawning fury. It was a fury without politesse, and to Zhu’s alarm she saw that the Abbot, who had always held knowledge as his greatest strength, had no idea that the eunuch bore him a grudge for that past humiliation. All he saw was that beautiful surface, as opaque as white jade.

  She stepped forwards, the movement provoking an explosion of agony in her head and knees. Inside the agony was another, smaller pain: the throb of her connection to the eunuch. He turned to look at her, a faint furrow of perplexity marring the cool perfection of his face. Like knows like, she thought, disturbed. She said urgently, “Esteemed Abbot—”

  But the Abbot didn’t hear. Focused upon the Yuan general, he raised himself to his full height. He was a tall, heavy man, and in his anger he towered over the slight eunuch. “Two-thirds!” he thundered. He knew as well as Zhu did that it would leave them beggared. “That the Prince of Henan should send his creature to insult me so!”

  “Do you refuse?” the eunuch said, with a terrible quickening of interest.

  “Know well, General, that everything a monastery owns is in accordance with Heaven’s will. To demand what is ours is to turn your face from the Buddha’s blessing. With knowledge of the consequences, will you still proceed down this path?”

  Zhu knew what the harsh triumph in the Abbot’s voice meant. And why shouldn’t the Abbot refuse? It was impossible to defeat a monastery’s greatest defense: that any harm to it would be repaid to the perpetrator as suffering, in life after life.

  But to the monks’ horror, the eunuch just laughed. It was an awful sound, the profaning of all that was sacred. “Esteemed Abbot, are you trying to frighten me? No doubt that threat would have worked well enough on the Prince of Henan, or even my master Lord Esen. But why do you think it was me they sent?” A dark rasp came into his voice: a viciousness aimed at himself as much as at the Abbot. “Do you think someone such as I am has any fear of what suffering you could lay upon me, in this life or the next?”

  And with that, Zhu saw his inner self as clearly as if his face were transparent ice. She saw the shame and fury seething underneath the blankness, and with a flash of terrible insight she knew the eunuch had never wanted the Abbot to yield. He had wanted the Abbot to refuse, so he could have the satisfaction of forcing him to feel his power. He had come desiring revenge.

  The eunuch general called, “Come in.”

  Clinking and creaking, the dark river of his soldiers flowed into the hall. Their bodies overlapped those of the ghosts, dark replacing light. It was the outside world penetrating what had been a sanctuary, and Zhu gasped at the sudden agony of being pulled. In a blaze of pain she realized the inevitability of what was happening. The monastery was never to have been forever; she was always going to be expelled into that world of chaos and violence—of greatness and nothingness.

  Nothingness. She had run from it for nine years, and she wasn’t going to stop now. There’s always a way out. And the instant she thought it, she knew the way. If the outside world contained greatness as well as nothingness—then the only escape from one was to become the other. Zhu Chongba had been fated for greatness. If she had to be in the outside world, then while she was there she would be Zhu Chongba so completely and utterly that she would achieve his fate, and survive.

  Desire is the cause of all suffering. All Zhu had ever desired was to live. Now she felt the pure strength of that desire inside her, as inseparable as her breath or qi, and knew she would suffer for it. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the awful magnitude of the suffering that would be required to achieve greatness in that chaotic, violent world outside.

  But the eunuch general wasn’t the only one unafraid of suffering.

  You may have ended this, but you haven’t ended me, she thought fiercely at him, and felt the truth of it shining inside her so brightly that it seemed capable of igniting anything it touched. Nobody will ever end me. I’ll be so great that no one will be able to touch me, or come near me, for fear of becoming nothing.

  The eunuch showed no sign of having felt any of her thoughts. He turned his back on the monks and passed through the doors, the ceaseless flow of his incoming soldiers parting around him like a stream around a rock.

  He said to them, “Burn it to the ground.”

  PART TWO

  1354–1355

  5

  HUAI RIVER PLAINS, TENTH MONTH

  Autumn mornings on the plains were cool and drab. Under its cap of dung smoke, the Prince of Henan’s army encampment bubbled with activity. The eunuch general Ouyang and his second-in-command, Senior Commander Shao Ge, rode toward the infantry battalions. So vast was the camp that it would have made a long walk. Leaving the center where the army’s leaders had their round felt gers, they passed the tents of the Semu foreigners who provided the army’s expertise in engineering and siege weaponry, then the supply wagons and the herds of livestock, and only after that came to the periphery and the infantry: some sixty thousand conscripts and volunteers from the bottom of the Yuan’s social order. These men, Nanren according to the official name of their caste, were the former subjects of the fallen native emperors of the south. The Mongols more often called them the Manji. Barbarians.

  “Betraying the Great Yuan to join the rebels,” Ouyang said as they rode. “He was a good general; I don’t know why he did it. He must have known how it would end.”

  Until last week the newly named Red Turban rebels of the Huai plains had been led by General Ma, a seasoned Yuan general who had defected some years ago. Now he was dead. Ouyang, who had killed plenty of men in his career, found that the old general’s face had stayed with him more than most. Ma’s last expression had been a despairing realization of the inevitable. As much as Ouyang would have liked to flatter himself that he had been the inevitable, he suspected Ma had been thinking of something else.

  “It was a good victory,” Shao said in Han’er. Because they were the rare Nanren leaders in a Mongol army, Shao had taken to using Han’er when they were alone together. It was a familiarity Ouyang disliked. “I thought we’d have bad luck after you flattened that monastery, but it seems Heaven hasn’t decided to make you eat bitterness quite yet. It must be saving that for later.” He gave Ouyang a sly sideways smile.

  Ouyang was reminded that he didn’t just dislike Shao’s familiarity, but Shao himself. Unfortunately, sometimes it was necessary to put up with what one disliked. It was something at which Ouyang was well practiced. Pointedly using Mongolian, he said, “It went easier than expected.” Strangely easy, given how slow their headway against the Red Turbans had been in previous seasons. General Ma had been no slouch.

  Shao looked resentful: he understood the rebuke. He said in Mongolian, “They’ll be even less of a challenge without General Ma. We should be able to cross the Huai and take Anfeng before winter.” Anfeng, a small earthen-walled city nestled in a crook of the Huai River, was the Red Turbans’ base—though the rebels liked to call it a capital. “And once the Prince of Radiance is gone, that will be the end of that.”

  Ouyang grunted noncommittally. The Prince of Radiance had attracted popular support like no rebel leader before, but there had been rebellions before him and doubtless there would be rebellions after. Ouyang thought privately that there would be rebellions for as long as there were peasants. And if there was one thing the south had never lacked, it was peasants.

  They came to where Commander Altan-Baatar’s infantry battalion was quartered along the river on the camp’s southern border. A drill was already under way. Subcommanders stood at the head of each thousand-man regiment, shouting the count. The action of thousands of feet upon the earth sent its top layer pluming up into hanging curtains of yellow dust. The Nanren soldiers, massed in their identical armor, wheeled through it like a murmuration of birds.

  Altan rode over. “Greetings to the Yuan’s finest general,” he said, a jibe in his voice. He was bold enough to be disrespectful because he w
as kin to the Prince of Henan and the son of the wealthy military governor of Shanxi; because his sister was Empress; and because he was seventeen.

  “Continue,” said Ouyang, ignoring Altan’s tone. The boy was only slightly less subtle than his elders in making known his belief that a general should have better qualifications of body and blood. But unlike those seasoned men, Altan was still eager to show off his skills to his superiors. He had a privileged youth’s expectation of doing well, of being recognized and raised to his rightful place at the top of the world. Ouyang looked at the knot in Altan’s throat, speckled with chicken-skin follicles through which the new beard protruded, and felt revulsion.

  The men completed the drill. It had been serviceable; the other infantry battalions had done about as well.

  “Inadequate. Again,” Ouyang said.

  How transparent Altan was. All those expectations laid bare without any idea that he might be hated for them. He watched the emotions race across the boy’s face like clouds: surprise, disbelief, resentment. The resentment was particularly satisfying.

  The subcommanders were watching them. Frowning self-consciously, Altan turned from Ouyang to relay the order.

  The drill was performed once more.

  “Again,” Ouyang said. He cast his gaze over the men, deliberately passing over Altan’s look of naked outrage. “And you may continue to do it, until correct.”

  “Perhaps if you would tell me exactly what you’re looking for, General!” Altan’s voice trembled in anger. Ouyang knew he believed himself betrayed. According to the unspoken compact between the Mongol elite, a young commander’s efforts should have been rewarded.

  Ouyang gave him a contemptuous look. He thought he had never been so young himself. “As this drill is too taxing for your present competence, perhaps we should try another.” He glanced at the river. “Take your battalion across to the other side.”

  Altan stared. The river was at least half an arrow’s-flight wide, as deep as a man’s chest in the middle, and the day was frigid.

  “What?”

  “You heard well enough.” He let the boy’s anger ferment a moment longer, then added, “And have their hands tied before them, to test their balance.”

  After a long silence, Altan said rigidly, “There will be casualties.”

  “Less if they have been trained well. Proceed.”

  The boy’s throat worked for a moment, then he yanked his horse around to the waiting subcommanders. Receiving the instructions, one or two of the men glanced to where Ouyang and Shao were watching. From the distance it was impossible to tell their expressions.

  The exercise was cruel. Ouyang had intended it to be. Pressed forwards by their screaming subcommanders, cringing under the whips, the regiments waded into the river. Perhaps on a warmer day it would have been easier, but the men were cold and terrified. At the deepest point of the river more than a few were seized by panic, tripped, and sank. The better sub-commanders, who had accompanied their men in, pulled these ones up and urged them on with words of encouragement. The worse ones yelled from the bank. Altan, his own horse chest-deep in the water, rode back and forth along the lines. His face shone with ire.

  Ouyang and Shao rode across, keeping a safe distance from the turmoil. When all the men had joined them on the far bank, and the unfortunates fished out and revived, Ouyang said, “Too slow. Again.”

  Upon their return to the near bank: “And again.”

  The men’s resistance peaked at the third crossing; having then grown exhausted, a certain mechanical compliance set in. Those with a tendency to panic had already panicked and been removed, and for the remainder, the terrifying novelty of immersion had become merely unpleasant. “Again.”

  At noon he called the exercise to a halt. Standing in front of his subcommanders, Altan regarded Ouyang furiously. Most of the subcommanders dripped with mud; a smaller number were dry. Ouyang gazed at the latter. “You,” he said to a particularly smug Mongol. “Your regiment did poorly, and you lost a number of men. Why?”

  The subcommander saluted. “General! The men are not used to these exercises. Fear makes them slow. The Manji are the problem. Manji are natural cowards. I regret that I have not yet had the opportunity to remedy them of this deficiency.”

  Ouyang made an encouraging noise.

  “They’re afraid of cold water and hard work,” the sub-commander elaborated.

  Ouyang adopted a considering air. Then he said, “Sub-commander, I noticed you remained on your horse the entire time.”

  “General!” the man said, puzzled.

  “You criticize them of being afraid of cold water and hard work, yet I see no evidence of the opposite in your own actions. You managed to keep yourself remarkably dry while a number of your men drowned. Did you see them struggling and not think to bestir yourself to save them?” Despite his control, some of his natural feelings seeped out; he heard the coldness in his voice. “Was their worth as natural cowards too low?”

  The subcommander opened his mouth, but Altan interrupted, “General, I only just promoted him. He is new to his position.”

  “Surely a promotion is on the basis of skills already possessed? If not, then for what, I wonder.” Ouyang smiled at Altan: a blade slipping beneath armor. “No, I think he is not leadership material.” He turned to Shao. “Replace him.”

  “You can’t just replace my officers!” Altan almost shouted.

  “But I can.” Ouyang felt a surge of vicious pleasure. He knew it was petty in the way that people considered characteristic of eunuchs, but sometimes it was difficult not to indulge. “Pick up the dead. Do the necessary to ready your battalion. Be ready to ride out in two days at Lord Esen’s order!”

  He could hear Altan’s muttered imprecations as he left, but there was nothing new in it. “Fuck eighteen generations of that bastard’s dog ancestors! How dare he act like that, when he’s nothing but a thing?”

  * * *

  The ger belonging to Lord Esen-Temur, the Prince of Henan’s heir and leader of the Great Yuan’s armies in the south, glowed at the center of the camp like a ship at night. Laughter emitted from within its round walls. Ouyang wouldn’t have expected anything else: his master was gregarious by nature, always enjoying company more than the contents of his own thoughts. He nodded briefly to the guards and slipped under the doorflap.

  Esen looked up from where he was lounging in the middle of a group of commanders. Tall and muscular, with a neat well-shaped mouth under his beard, he was so perfect an example of a Mongol warrior that he resembled the hagiographic portraits of the great khans even more than the real men themselves had. “About time!” he said, and waved an easy dismissal to the others.

  “My lord?” Ouyang raised his eyebrows and sat. As usual his movement caused a rush of air that made the fire in the central hearth lean away from him. Long ago a physician had attributed it to Ouyang having a surfeit of dark, damp, female yin energy, although that was a diagnosis any fool could have made of a eunuch. “Had you sent a summons?” When he reached for the bag of fermented milk airag at Esen’s side, the other passed it across, smiling.

  “Summons are fit for a minion who addresses me by title. But I was expecting the pleasure of a friend’s company.”

  The argument over informal address was an old one between them. During Ouyang’s rise from slave to bodyguard to Esen’s general and closest companion, Esen had pressed to change the language between them, and been resisted equally strongly by Ouyang on the grounds of what was proper. Esen had finally conceded defeat, but continued to use the matter for ammunition whenever possible.

  “Expecting?” Ouyang said. “You could have been disappointed. I might have gone to refresh myself first, rather than rushing to brief you. Or we could have spoken tomorrow, which would have avoided my interruption of your gathering.”

  “I don’t regret it; your company brings me three times the enjoyment.”

  “Should I expect three times the reward for providing it?�
�

  “Anything,” Esen said lazily. “I know you’re so attached to your armor that you’d sleep in it if you could, but it stinks. I’ll give you a new set.”

  Ouyang had a vain streak when it came to armor: the mirror plates he favored were uniquely recognizable, a bold declaration of his status as a feared general of the Yuan. He said tartly, “My apologies for offending my lord’s delicate sensibilities. It seems you would have preferred I change.”

  “Ha! You’d just be wearing so many clothes that they’d probably do as well against arrows as actual armor. Have pity and take off your helmet; I feel hot just looking at you.”

  Ouyang made a face and took it off. It was true that when he wasn’t in armor, he liked to layer. The easier reason was that he got cold easily, not having ancestors hailing from some miserable frozen steppe. The other reason he preferred not to think about.

  Esen himself was newly scrubbed. His deep outdoors tan concealed his naturally ruddy, fair-skinned steppe complexion, but his chest, visible through the gap in his robe, gleamed ivory in the firelight. He sprawled comfortably on the cushions strewn over the rug-covered felt floor. Ouyang sat upright next to him, less comfortable. Armor was not compatible with sprawling; in any case, it was beneath his dignity.

  “Heard you put fear of the ancestors into Altan this morning.”

  “He spoke to you?”

  “He knows there’s no point complaining to me, if there was anything to complain about. Was there?”

  Ouyang smiled thinly, remembering Altan’s anger. “The exercise served its purpose. There were a few deaths. Shanxi men. Will it cause problems for your father?”