Suddenly there was a rustling, and everyone but Mouse flinched as the bamboo near the tomb parted. Two women appeared, thin as wisps and plainly dressed, one in a white robe trimmed in black, the other in grey and black. Both had fair skin and black hair tied back from their face and neck. They looked at Mouse as if she were the only one there.
“I am Nuying,” said the one in white. “This is my sister, Ehuang. No one has called to us in centuries. We thought that power had been lost.”
Mouse held out the white stone, almost as an offering, but neither of the women reached for it. It was merely proof of what Mouse had done.
“Come,” said Ehuang. “You must help us prepare tea and tell us why you are here.”
Barrett, Yaozu, Sean, and Bren stood dumbstruck as Mouse followed the two women back into the bamboo. Had she really just summoned two spirits from the grave? Bren was the first to snap out of it when he saw Mouse disappear, urging the others to catch up lest they never find her again, carried off by these specters to the land of the dead.
But there she was, following the women up a gently sloping hill covered in small trees with pale green leaves. Mouse alone helped the sisters pick buds from the trees—long, narrow things that reminded Bren of green beans, each with a delicate fuzz that gave them a silvery cast. When they had collected enough, the sisters led them all to a small grotto, where they wrapped the fresh-picked buds in cloth.
“Men huan,” said Nuying. “A resting period. Those will replace the leaves we brew tonight.”
As she said this her sister brought forth a cloth package and set it on the floor in front of them, unwrapping it to reveal buds that had already been allowed to “rest.” These had a slightly yellow color to them.
There was a well near the grotto, and Ehuang went to it and pulled up a bucket of water to brew the tea. The sisters had a tall, narrow glass vase, into which they put the prepared buds, and then they slowly poured the well water over them.
“Now, we wait for the leaves to dance,” said Nuying.
The leaves had floated to the surface of the vase as Nuying had poured in the water. But as each leaf absorbed water, it sank to the bottom. Then, for mysterious reasons, the leaves began to rise to the top again. It took more than an hour for each leaf to perform this “dance,” but Bren didn’t care. There was something enchanting about it. Even Sean seemed mesmerized.
“This is silver needle yellow tea,” said Nuying as she poured the steeped tea into small porcelain cups for each of them. “The rarest tea in the world. Drink now and tell us your dreams.”
Bren put the delicate cup to his mouth, his eyes darting from Mouse to Yaozu to Barrett to Sean as he took his first sip. It wasn’t like anything else he had ever tasted—far less bitter than coffee, and with some of the intoxicating sensation he had felt when sneaking some of his father’s cabbage wine. It was delicious, and he took another eager sip, and another, and another, and then he remembered nothing.
They all awoke, seemingly at once, upon a hill of yellow-grey. The wind was blowing, warm and dry, and Bren could feel fine bits of sand on his lips. He looked at the others, shielding their faces from the gritty wind, and thought he saw Yaozu smile, just a bit. He had explained that Fenghou was a place where winds came charging like horses through narrow mountain passes, and where Silk Road traders could carve shelter for themselves in the porous dirt.
This had to be that place.
The five of them stood up in various postures of weariness, soreness, disbelief, and hopefulness.
“Where are we?” said Barrett, looking around at the desolate landscape.
“We’re near the tomb, aren’t we?” said Bren.
“I believe so,” said Yaozu. “I only know for certain we are not in the middle of Lake Dongting.”
“How on earth did we get here, Mouse?” said Sean.
“The tea,” she said.
“I remember drinking the tea,” said Bren. “Does anyone remember anything after that?”
One by one they shook their heads.
“I remember Nuying asking us to tell her our dreams,” said Barrett. “And I pictured myself finding the rest of the magic artifacts, or at least, I tried to, but all of a sudden I could think of nothing but my father.”
“It has been a long time since you’ve seen him?” said Yaozu.
“Yes, and for good reason,” said Barrett. “We hate each other.”
“Aye, I remember what I said—or thought,” said Sean. “That I wanted to bloody get back to Britannia in one bloody piece.”
“I thought the same thing,” said Bren. “Maybe not with as much bloodiness.”
Sean laughed. It was the first time Bren had seen him smile that broadly in a long time. But the truth was, getting home was not what Bren had thought about as he sipped the tea of silver needles. He had thought about Mouse, and how he wanted to find out what she was really after. He wanted to know how their two stones fit together, learn her whole story . . . whether she really was keeping something from him. And in doing so he might even learn why his mother had once owned a black jade stone that, according to Yaozu, might contain half the soul of one of the Eight Immortals.
“And here we all are, together,” said Yaozu. “It can only mean that our various ambitions intersect and depend on one another.”
Sean pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth to deflect the wind. The rest of them gathered their meager possessions and followed Yaozu down the hill, to a dirt road barely recognizable from its windswept surroundings.
“Which way?” said Barrett.
Yaozu looked at their map again. “I’m not sure. We left the well-traveled path, you might say.”
“This way,” said Mouse, walking east. The rest shrugged and followed her. At this point no one doubted her instincts.
As darkness approached, they made camp in an abandoned cave. It was a relief to be out of the wind. When they had built a fire and eaten a small meal of dried fish and rice, Bren asked Yaozu, “How much do you know about the tomb itself?”
“What anyone knows comes from a book called Records of the Grand Historian,” Yaozu explained. “The oldest history of China, from before the time of your Christ. According to the book, Qin began preparing for his death as soon as he came to the throne. Later, when he had unified the empire, nearly a million men from all over China were committed to the task. The tomb is alleged to be deep underground, filled with both treasures and dangers, and yet despite being underground the stars shine and the rivers flow, and candles made from whale fat burn and never go out. If you will permit me a page in your journal, I can draw a diagram of what I know.”
Bren ripped out one of his few remaining pages and handed it and his graphite stick to Yaozu.
“It was modeled after Qin’s capital, Xianyang,” he said as he began to draw. “The outer city has a wall with a perimeter of three point seven eight miles. The inner city wall has a circumference of one point five miles.”
“Good heavens, that’s close to twenty acres!” said Sean.
Yaozu nodded. “Not just that. The whole site is a necropolis. A city of the dead. All of Qin’s consorts who had no male sons were buried there.”
“Alive?” said Bren, horrified.
Yaozu nodded. “Furthermore, it was suggested that it would be a serious breach if the craftsmen who constructed the mechanical devices and knew of the tomb’s treasures were to divulge those secrets. Therefore, after the funeral ceremonies were completed and the treasures hidden away, the inner passageway was blocked, and the outer gate lowered, immediately trapping all the workers and craftsmen inside. None could escape.”
“He thought of everything, didn’t he?” said Barrett.
Yaozu drew other chambers around the outside of the page. “Once the burial complex was sealed, any remaining officials and soldiers who might have knowledge of the site were buried in pits all around the outer wall. As you can see, the cost of secrecy was quite high.”
“This Grand Hi
storian who described all this,” said Sean. “He didn’t know where the tomb was?”
“Doubtful,” said Yaozu. “Qin would have wanted the splendor of his tomb known, but not for it to be ransacked.”
“And the tomb itself?” asked Barrett.
“A pyramid, at the southern end of the complex, within the inner wall,” said Yaozu. “There I do not know what to expect to find, except traps and other defenses against pillaging.”
“Fantastic,” said Sean.
“Mind you, this is based on the Records,” said Yaozu. “Things could end up looking completely different. The last thing recorded by the Grand Historian was that trees and grasses were planted on the tomb mound so that it would in time resemble nothing more than an ordinary hill. But I trust we have the resources to identify it.”
Barrett started to douse their fire when Yaozu stopped her. He then did something very curious. He removed a single long scroll of parchment from inside his bag and spread it out along the ground, holding it in place with a stone at each end. The scroll was perhaps two feet long and four inches wide. He then collected a small pile of ash that had already formed in the fire, dipped his finger in it, and drew a row of stick figures from one end of the scroll to the other, side by side with their arms overlapping. Above each of their heads he wrote Chinese characters, then tore a piece from the scroll containing the first man and threw it into the fire.
This he did over and over, until each of the paper men had been incinerated.
“A prayer to your ancestors?” said Barrett.
“A summons to allies,” said Yaozu, but he explained no more than that. He spread out his bedroll and was soon fast asleep.
The next morning Bren awoke to find a small army of men standing outside their cave. He grabbed Yaozu by the shoulder and shook him. “Yaozu, wake up. I think someone answered your call.”
There were at least a hundred of them, all dressed in full-length gowns of blue with black trim, but no other decoration. No embroidered dragons or lotus flowers or birds. Each had a sword strapped to his waist on one side and a dagger on the other. All had dark hair, and beards and mustaches of various lengths, but Bren couldn’t tell how old or young they were. None were elderly, but none were as young as him, either, or even Sean.
As the others woke up, they each reacted with alarm—Barrett grabbing her sword, Sean drawing his small dagger—but Yaozu assured them their weapons weren’t necessary.
“Friends, not foes,” he said.
“Where did they come from?” said Sean, reluctantly putting away his dagger.
“These are members of the Society of Paper Men,” said Yaozu. “An ancient fraternity of spies. They can help us in the event of armed resistance.”
“How could there be resistance?” said Sean. “If no one knows where the tomb is?”
“Not the sort of army you are thinking of,” said Yaozu. “I must ask you to trust me, Sean. Perhaps assistance will not even be necessary.”
Sean opened his mouth to argue but then took stock of all the men standing outside the cave and thought better of it. “We should get going,” was all he managed.
The dusty road they followed passed dozens of rolling hills, little wrinkled hounds sleeping at the feet of the surrounding mountains, and Bren wondered how they would possibly find the hill they were supposedly looking for. But Mouse and Yaozu seemed to know just where they were going, and around midmorning, after the landscape had turned green again, Mouse stopped in her tracks and pointed to what looked like an ordinary mound of vegetation in the distance.
“I think that’s it,” she said.
When they got closer, Yaozu said, “The Records mention an underground entryway. But of course there will be no obvious way in. Just like there was no obvious bridge across Big Rattan Gorge. But there must be a way.”
They all instinctively looked at Mouse, as if she possessed some magic key to all this. Bren had seen her pick many locks. The problem was, you had to have a locked door first. But she did have the white jade, and none of them—including Mouse—had yet figured out the limits of its power.
“Maybe there’s a tree branch we pull down and a door in the earth opens up,” said Sean. “I’d believe most anything at this point. Or maybe your magic mirror can unlock this, too.”
“I wish it were so,” said Yaozu, slowly scanning the area, his face pained with concentration. “As I explained, I’ve tried the jade tablet, too, but either knowledge of the tomb doesn’t exist to be divined, or perhaps counter-magic is blocking access.”
“Or there is no knowledge because there is no tomb,” said Bren. “Couldn’t that be it?”
“Mr. Graham’s been a bad influence,” said Barrett. “Yaozu, what about your friends there?”
The Society of Paper Men had been noticeably silent since appearing at their cave.
“I think I can find the entrance,” said Mouse.
“How?” said Bren.
“A mole or an earthworm might know,” she said.
Bren pulled her aside and whispered, “Mouse, have you ever traveled into a creature that lives underground? If you were afraid of becoming a fish, or a bird, I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“I have to try something,” she said. “We’ve come this far.”
“I don’t want you to do it,” said Bren.
“Do what?” said Barrett.
Mouse told the others her plan. Yaozu and Barrett were willing to let her try. Bren and Sean weren’t.
“The truth comes out,” said Sean, glaring at Barrett. “You don’t care at all about these children.”
“Mouse is the one leading this mission now, as far as I’m concerned,” said Barrett. “I’m not forcing her to do anything, and I don’t believe any of us has the power to stop her, do you?”
Sean didn’t answer, but Bren knew Barrett was right. Mouse was on a mission, whether he understood it or not.
“How can I help, Mouse?” said Bren.
“Find me a worm,” she said.
He dropped to his knees and began digging into the soft dirt with his bare hands. He kept at it until he had turned enough soil for a four-inch-long worm to wriggle to the surface. He picked it up and held it gently between his fingers. “Will this do?”
“I’ll try,” she said, and she sat down next to Bren and closed her eyes. When she appeared to lose consciousness, Bren put the worm down and watched it tunnel its way back through the dirt.
There was nothing to do but wait, and that was the worst part—there was nothing Bren could do to make sure Mouse was okay. After what felt like hours, a worm wriggled back to the surface and Mouse opened her eyes. They all crowded around her.
“I know where the entrance is,” she said.
CHAPTER
22
THE ARMIES OF PAPER AND CLAY
She led them to a spot north of the hill and pointed to the ground. “Dig here.”
“With what?” said Sean. “Do either you or Yaozu have a magic shovel?”
“Before shovels came hands,” said Yaozu, turning to the Paper Men. “They will dig for us.”
Without a word one of the men dropped to his knees and began to dig through the grass and weeds with his hands. Several others joined him, forming a circle around the hole they were making.
“Mouse, does something seem funny about them?” Bren whispered.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “I don’t know what, though.”
It took a dozen of them two hours before the bottom of the hole they were digging gave way, the loose dirt falling into a large open pit below. It wasn’t too deep, and Mouse led the way, sliding down the edge of the hole and dropping feetfirst to the bottom.
She motioned for them to follow, and one by one they did, into the pit and down a set of stone stairs to a tunnel, or hallway, that went on forever, Bren thought. When they finally emerged, what he saw astonished him—it was as if all of London’s Hyde Park had been buried underground. There was a large, open law
n with an enormous pond at the center, populated with bronze cranes, swans, and ducks. Except the lawn was moss or some sort of algae, and the metallic taste in Bren’s mouth told him that the pond wasn’t water, but quicksilver. All of it was lit with glowing lanterns hung from the roof, as if they had come upon the park at night, just before a celebration. A river cut through the far end of the park, also quicksilver, Bren assumed.
“Absolutely astonishing,” said Barrett. “More amazing than I even imagined.”
“Just the beginning, if the stories are true,” said Yaozu.
“Did anyone notice those?” said Sean, pointing up to the lanterns. “Someone must come here to tend to them. They couldn’t have remained lit from the time the tomb was sealed.”
“Remember what it says in the Records of the Grand Historian,” said Barrett. “Candles were made from whale fat, to burn forever.”
Sean smirked. “Literally?”
“I appreciate your skepticism,” said Barrett. “But by now I should have thought you’d quite believe the Chinese could have kept a light burning for a couple of millennia.”
Bren had wondered how the five of them and the hundred or so members of Yaozu’s secret society would ever cram themselves underground, but they had plenty of room to roam around the park, examining the bronze animals and other artifacts, like a small boat on the “pond” and stone benches surrounding the shore. Across the water they discovered a band of bronze musicians, along with jugglers and acrobats and strongmen posed in various athletic postures.
“Entertainment for the emperor?” Barrett asked.
Yaozu shook his head. “Not sure. Why would they not be within the tomb?”
“Maybe acrobats and strongmen were bodyguards back then?” said Bren.
“And musicians, too?” said Sean.
Bren thought about it. “A girl in my grammar school hit me in the head with her flute once. It hurt.”
Sean laughed. “I’ve no doubt you deserved it, yeah?”
The Dragon's Gate Page 17
