“Do not trust him. He is not the man you knew. A hopping corpse must feed on the life force of the living. In the end, it will corrupt his soul. You must find a way to send him to the Netherworld.”
“He told me he feeds on the life force of plants.”
“For now that may be so, but in the end, to remain in his state of undeadness, he must seek the blood of the living.”
Zhu swallowed, marvelling at the strangeness of it all. He narrowed his eyes, worried. “He will not go. His soul has been betrayed.”
A dead man only became a hopping corpse if his death was unjustified. Tao’s time was unfairly wrested from him, but it was not for Master Yun to judge. Only Yan Luo could make that judgement. “You’re in great danger, Zhu, if Tao is not returned to the land of the dead. He must go to Feng Du where his sins will be judged.”
“What did he do that he must go to the Hell Master for judgement?”
“There are secrets. And then, there are secrets. Not unlike your sister, the secret of your paternity has been kept from the world. I only uncovered this mystery of late. But I have no more doubts. Tao is your father.”
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The dark shadows of the demon birds scattered; the sky turned black. The half-moon sat in the heavens like a white cup. Master Yun always knew that he would one day divulge this news to Zhu, but he did not know that it would be so soon or under these strange circumstances. He watched the face of the warrior-monk explode with emotions too complex to explore.
“Tao? Tao is my father? But Tao is a eunuch!”
“It wasn’t always so. When he left Eng Tong’s temple in Xian, he was a man, complete and whole, quite capable of siring offspring. He was taken into the palace as a teacher and advisor to the Emperor. It was only when he discovered forbidden love, and perpetrated the act that conceived you, that he turned to castration. He wanted to keep his place near your mother and near you. But in the end he could not protect her.
“He left you to the care of one he knew had your best interests at heart, one who was of your blood—me. As for himself, he thought the best way to keep you safe was to forget that he had sired you. He became a eunuch, and all in the palace forgot that he was ever anything else.
“So you see, Zhu, it is not so farfetched to place you on the throne. A woman cannot inherit an empire, but a man can. Li can’t take the throne, but you are the son of Ling She, the daughter of kings on her mother’s side. Did you not know that she is descended from First Emperor Qin’s line? You are the Empire’s lifeline until Wu reaches manhood. As the son of a blood empress, you are also of royal blood and the people will embrace you. But His Majesty must not discover the secret of your birth or he will seek your destruction. Only at the very last moment of despair can we show our hand.”
Zhu clasped his palms together and shut his eyes in frustration. He snapped his eyes wide. “His Majesty already has me in line for the chopping block. You forget. I rescued Lotus Lily in full view of His Majesty and his court. He wants us both dead, my sister and I, the same way he bestowed death upon his wife, the Empress, Ling She. Our mother was beheaded. I have no claim to the throne.”
Oh, but Zhu was wrong. Zhu was well loved by the Ming army, except perhaps by its leader Military Governor Zheng Min. There was no one more respected or loved than the common soldier’s soldier, He Zhu. He fought side by side with them, enduring the icy winters and the sweltering summers, the bad food and the shoddy equipment. Even Chi Quan was not loved in the same fashion as He Zhu. Zhu was one of the men. He slept on the cold wet ground and tore meat with them. Not once did he seek comfort or refuge inside the stone fortresses where the likes of Zheng Min made their fancy cups of tea while resting their fat behinds on purple satin cushions, ordering the soldiers to drink stagnant water while they watched. He Zhu was their man. When the Mongols or the Manchus came banging on Anding Gate, the Emperor’s hand would be forced. He knew who his champions were. And they did not wear the face of Military Governor Zheng Min. When His Majesty saw that the choice was dethronement or a faithful heir, he would accept Ling She’s first born.
“You can sit on the throne until Wu comes of age, guiding him, and leading the troops,” Master Yun said. “Or you can watch the Empire crumble to foreign hands.”
“His Majesty remains our emperor. As far as I know, there is no vacancy for a ruler as of yet. Let us pray that our sovereign still has a long reign.”
Master Yun nodded, but the all-consuming power that filled him rang ominous. More soldiers than he dared imagine had died defending the walls. He knew this even as he breathed and felt his Chi expand beneath his powerful rib cage. His victory over the Yeren—without bloodshed—was testimony to his strength. And as he questioned Zhu over the events of the past six years, he realized that he had stayed away too long. But the chink in the Ming armour had not mended. They still needed more soldiers.
His greatest fear was that the Emperor could not survive the humiliation of his army’s defeats. All of the Middle Kingdom, more than ever before, needed a strong and stable leader, or at least, the appearance of one. But His Majesty had never been a forceful man. With Jasmine by his side, it was she who gave his reign its irrepressible appearance. Now that she had abandoned him, his defect was ever visible. The formidable shell would soon crack and the paltry liquid that was his soul would spill and flow to merge with the spilled blood of his people.
Master Yun sent his gaze westward to the triple towers of Jiayuguan and its lonely garrison. How many remained to guard the westernmost pass? The three-tiered winged roofs cut against the dusky sky, silent in their vigil. No lights shone. No warning fires. No cannon. Jiayuguan was most certainly deserted and if not, it soon would be when more troops were withdrawn and sent westward to defend the walls of the Forbidden City itself.
Master Yun watched his former pupil struggle with his conscience.
“Sometimes I think I would rather die than to fail in my purpose,” Zhu said. “But I no longer know what my purpose is. I am at wit’s end. It seems to me it was easier when I was just a soldier. Before the Tiger’s Eye complicated my life. Instead of feeling empowered, I feel like the gemstone has crippled me. I can’t live like this. I don’t know what to do. It’s as though some part of me is missing and I will never find it. Like a vital organ has been removed. I function, but I do not function fully. How can this be?” He Zhu looked up at Master Yun with pleading in his eyes. “How can I have been given a gift that seems to have taken away my will?” Zhu sighed. “It is rather like a curse. For what have I accomplished since you burdened me with this accursed bauble? I chase visions. And when I catch up to the vision, I fail to choose the right course.”
“Who says that you have failed?” Master Yun inquired.
“Why, you of course. Your very act of preventing me from doing away with the foxling tells me unequivocally that I have failed.”
“You have not failed, Zhu. Only when you stop trying will you have failed. Do you honestly think that I know better than you which course you should take? I don’t even know which course I should take, but I follow my heart. I feel my Chi. It tells me which way I should go. I, too, have choices to make. I, too, bear the burden of owning one of the Gemstones of Seeing.”
“You are wiser than anyone I know, Master Yun.” Zhu paused, bowed and lowered his voice reverently. “My grandfather.” He lifted his head after absorbing that most solemn and honourable of thoughts. With that motion he also raised his voice, now with conviction. “But I feel I have no control over my life. Something drives me … I don’t know what. It pulls me against what my heart tells me is the right thing to do.”
“What do you feel you must do, Zhu?”
“If I cannot kill the foxling, then I must take her away from Jasmine and the influence of her evil.”
“And if the Emperor needs you? If the people of the Middle Kingdom cry out for a leader, a military man with the wisdom of a monk, what then?”
Zhu squeezed his eyes tight again to b
lock out the face of the warlock. “I will do what must be done when the time comes.”
“All you can do is live every day of your life as you see fit. None of us are in control of our destinies. All we can do is guide ourselves in the direction that we want to go. Trust me, Zhu. Your actions and the actions of your sister will change the outcome of the future. Take Peng to wherever you see fit to take her. My destiny is elsewhere. Then find Tao and convince him to enter Feng Du.”
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It was clear from their dress that they were not men of the camp, and Zhu looked up as a young Mongol woman approached from the cluster of tents. She seemed frightened or hesitant, and he got to his feet, as did Master Yun. “It’s all right,” Zhu said. “We mean you no harm. We have come for the fox faerie’s offspring.”
“Oh, thank the gods. Jasmine is seeking a new nurse for Peng. All of the women in the camp tremble before her. I would rather be captured and enslaved by a Ming warrior than suffer that fate. That’s why I’ve come to you, though my knees shake and my hands sweat like melting ice. But since you’ve come for the girl and not for any of our womenfolk, then tell me what I can do and I will help you. She’ll not allow you to take the foxling without a fight.” The half-light of the moon shone down on the woman’s long dark braids and broad ribbons. Her eyes were set wide apart and black, but the whites gleamed with joy. Her figure was very pleasing. She wore a long skirt of Chinese silk. For some reason, the fact that this dress must have been purloined or bartered for from Chinese merchants did not offend Zhu at all.
“What is your name, lady?” Zhu asked with respect.
“Alai. I am from the nomadic horse people of the northern Xiongnu. I married into Altan’s tribe only to have my husband killed by your people.”
For the first time, Zhu sensed what it must be to have been born on this side of the frontier. To the Mongols, the Chinese were the enemy.
“But the Ming are nowhere near as terrifying as the lady Jasmine. I offer my help if you can get rid of her.” She placed her hands together and lowered her head.
Zhu returned the gesture. “I would not put you in that kind of danger.”
“No,” Master Yun said. “We have seen what Jasmine is capable of, what she did to your predecessor. You say you’re from the Xiongnu?” When Alai cautiously nodded, Master Yun’s brow puckered. Zhu almost questioned him—he did not know that tribe—but whatever issue the warlock had with her answer, he did not pursue it. Master Yun sucked in his cheeks, looked sharply at her. “When we take the child we will require a nurse to care for her. Are you willing?”
“If it will take me away from this place? Yes,” she said.
“All right then. Stay here until we come for you and be prepared to travel.”
In the dark, all He Zhu could see of the warlock’s face was his long shadowy locks and the topknot at the crown of his head. The whites of his eyes gleamed ever so slightly. “How will you wrest the foxling from her mother?” Zhu asked.
“I think this time I will leave that up to you.”
“I don’t have your powers,” Zhu said. “And the gemstone will not open its eye to me this night. In fact, I do not understand why it has chosen me at all. I can’t seem to do anything right.”
Master Yun tossed a sideways glance at Alai. “You have already done one thing right—”
“Wait a minute. If I’m not being impertinent.” Alai bowed before continuing, not quite sure of their intentions toward her. “I have an idea. Jasmine will return to Altan at the battlefront tonight. She never stays here for long. I will offer to be the foxling’s new nurse. Meanwhile, you must pretend to leave. When she’s gone, we can take Peng and flee this place without violence.”
The warlock knit his brow. A voice shouted from Altan’s tent.
“You, Alai. Come here. I appoint you Peng’s new nurse. Don’t leave her alone. Do you understand? Or your fate will be a mockery of this!” Jasmine kicked the bloodied corpse that lay at her feet. “Your first task will be to arrange for the burial of your friend’s bones.”
Jasmine stepped across the encampment to where He Zhu and Master Yun stood, while Alai hurried to arrange for the dead nurse’s burial.
“What are you plotting, Master Yun?” Jasmine asked. He refused to dignify her with a reply, and a sly smile seeped over her face. “Whatever it is, stop it. I’m already one step ahead of you.”
In the moonlight, she transformed into her fox shape, and began to race around him and He Zhu in ever decreasing circles. Faster and faster she flew in a dizzying figure eight, surrounding them both. Dirt flew from her feet, her body transfigured into a silver-black projectile of soaring fur until a groundswell churned the earth into a gyro of shimmering, spinning loess.
Master Yun held out his hands, called out a spell of reversal, and flung a windblast into her face. Everything froze for a second. Zhu sucked back his terror. A burst of white light, then a flash of darkness and a tightness in his body that could only be explained as compression, before the grey, silver-black world of the Mongol night returned.
Zhu drew his bow too late. Jasmine was gone. “What was that?” he demanded.
“A sinkhole.” Master Yun lowered his hands and waited for the earth to settle. “Jasmine was trying to trap us in a sinkhole, a contortion of space and time that would send us into oblivion. Instead, I sent her there.”
Zhu frowned, still blinking his eyes in disbelief. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. She had almost succeeded. “You are powerful indeed, Master Yun.”
“I wonder,” he said aloud, although Zhu knew his thoughts were churning. The warlock pulled at his lips beneath his tangled beard, and raised his eyes. “No, it doesn’t add up at all. Jasmine’s power has grown immensely. It should not have been that easy.”
“She’s no match for you. If only I had half the power that you do.”
The warlock turned his eyes to his newly claimed grandson. “We are of the same blood, Zhu. You do have the power. And more. What we don’t know is how those powers will manifest themselves. You will not be the same as me, just as Li is not like me. How I long to see her again, grown, and powerful. I know she will surprise me, as will you. The only advice I have for you, right now, as you explore your new destiny is to allow it to happen in its own time. I suspect your powers will not be so blatant as mine, for I am a warlock. You on the other hand are a warrior-monk. You have fought with brute force and mastered weaponry and physical strength. And now you seek a pathway of yielding. Your mind and your Chi seek a gentler road. You are like water, Zhu, yielding as I have seen you with this Mongol maid, gentle and yet with great force. Water is soft and weak, but it can move earth and cut stone. This is a softer, more invisible power that will serve you well on the next stages of your growth. Remember that the Universe works harmoniously in its own ways. If you disrupt that harmony by imposing your own will, you will bring trouble not only to yourself but to those around you.”
Zhu stayed silent for a long time. Then Alai stepped out of Altan’s tent with Peng sleeping in her arms. “Where is Jasmine?” she asked, looking around warily.
“She’ll not trouble us for a while,” Master Yun said. “Do you have a horse? We must go swiftly before anyone notices we were ever here. Quick now, before the child awakens.”
Black smoke curled up against the silvery night. A plumpish woman met Zhu’s gaze from where she tended her fire, her distinctive Mongolian braids outlined against the sky. Zhu climbed the wall, took the sleeping Peng with him, and dropped to the ground. He adjusted her in front of him on the gelding and was about to call out to his accomplices that he would meet them at the next fissure in the wall, when Alai leaped the barrier mounted on a stolen horse, clearly born to riding. Master Yun followed on the stout back of Xingbar.
They rode into the night, east, along the wall, undecided as to where to take Peng. She slept like an infant, only waking occasionally to murmur, then falling back to sleep, her belly full. T
here was nothing much to see of the land. The white cup of the moon chased them. Past the black skeletons of mulberry trees they rode, their horses kicking up loess, and still they rode, directionless. Finally, Master Yun signalled for them to stop. He dismounted and motioned for them to do the same. Zhu drifted off his horse, taking Peng with him, and towed the gelding to the place where Master Yun and Xingbar waited. Alai followed, her step light and energetic, the unexpected escape into the night, not showing on her at all, except perhaps for a dark flush of excitement.
“I have never felt so wildly alive,” she exclaimed as she plopped down beside them. Her flight from the Mongol camp was like an elixir. “There was nothing there for me, but drudgery. My husband died without giving me children. I was born to ride and to fight.” She rose and stretched. She stood tall. And now, Zhu realized just how tall she was—a finger’s length shorter than himself. And he was very tall.
“You say you are Xiongnu,” Master Yun said. “Then, of course, you are a bowmaid. I could tell by the way you leaped that rampart to reach the south side.”
“Women of Altan’s tribe do not fight or ride,” she said, and grinned. “But Xiongnu girls are born with a bow in one hand, and we are raised on the backs of horses.”
“It is just as well,” Zhu said, a smile on his lips. “Or we’d be in big trouble. To fight your Mongol men with their crack bowmen and their expert horsemanship is enough of a challenge. It’s a wonder the wall still stands.”
Alai looked around her. “I’ve never been on this side of the wall before.”
“Nor should you ever have been. But now …” Zhu’s voice faded away. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say—that barriers between peoples couldn’t keep anyone in or out? He looked at her intriguing face, and at the thick black braids wrapped in wide ribbon—and decided he liked what he saw. “Master Yun,” he said, turning from Alai to the warlock. “Is it safe for Alai to be here?”
“You care about her safety?” Master Yun asked, smiling.
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