"Impossible," she had said when he repeated it. "You know the law, Li Yuan."
"You slept with him? Is that what you're saying?"
"What?" She had turned, flustered, shocked by his impropriety. "What do you mean?"
He seemed obsessed with it; insistent. "Did you sleep with him? Before the wedding? It is important, Fei Yen. Did you or didn't you?"
She swallowed and looked down, flushing deeply at the neck. "No! How could I have done? There was never an opportunity. And then . . ."
Her tears made him relent. But in the breathing space they earned her, she began to understand. The law said that a man could not marry his brother's wife. But was a wife really a wife until the marriage had been consummated?
She had looked up at him, wide eyed: astonished both that he wanted her and that he was prepared to challenge the law itself to have her.
"You understand me, then, Fei Yen?" he had said, and she had nodded, her whole being silenced by the enormity of what he was suggesting to her. His wife. He wanted her to be his wife. But they had had the chance to say no more than that, for then the old servant had come and brought the summons from his father, and he, suddenly more flustered than she, had bowed and gone at once, leaving things unresolved.
Your son will be T'ang.
Yes, she thought, tears of joy coming suddenly to her eyes. So it shall pass. As it was always meant to be.
HIS FATHER'S Chancellor, Chung Hu-yan, met him before the doors to the Hall of Eternal Truth. The huge doors were closed and guarded, the great wheel of the Ywe Lung towering over the man as he bowed to the boy.
"What is it, Hu-yan? What does my father want?"
But Chung Hu-yan was not his normal smiling self. He looked at Li Yuan strangely, almost sternly, then removed the boy's riding hat and turned him about full circle, inspecting him.
"I was going riding . . ." Li Yuan began to explain, but the Chancellor shook his head, as if to say, Be silent, boy.
Yuan swallowed. What had happened? Why was Hu-yan so stern and formal? Was it the business with the maids? Oh, gods, was it that?
Satisfied, Chung Hu-yan stepped back and signaled to the guards.
Two bells sounded, the first sweet and clear, the second deep and resonant. Slowly, noiselessly, the great doors swung back.
Yuan stared down the aisle of the Great Hall and shivered. What was going on? Why did his father not meet with him in his rooms, as he had always done? Why all this sudden ritual?
Li Shai Tung sat on his throne atop the Presence Dais at the far end of the Hall.
"Prostrate yourself, Li Yuan," Ghung Hu-yan whispered, and Yuan did as he was bid, making the full k'o t'ou to his father for the first time since the day of the reception—the day of the archery contest.
He stood slowly, the cold touch of the tiles lingering like a ghostly presence against his brow. Then, with the briefest glance at Chung Hu-yan, he moved forward, between the pillars, approaching his father.
Halfway down the aisle he noticed the stranger who stood to one side of the Presence Dais at the bottom of the steps. A tall, thin Han with a shaven head, who wore the sienna robes of a scholar, but on whose chest was a patch of office.
He stopped at the foot of the steps and made his obeisance once again, then stood and looked up at the T'ang.
"You asked for me, Father?"
His father was dressed in the formal robe he normally wore only for ministerial audiences, the bright yellow cloth edged in black and decorated with fierce golden dragons. The high-tiered court crown made him seem even taller than he was; more dignified, if that was possible. When Li Yuan addressed him he gave the barest nod of recognition, his face, like Chung Hu-yan's, curiously stem, uncompromising. This was not how he usually greeted his son.
Li Shai Tung studied his son a moment, then leaned forward and pointed to the Han who stood below the steps.
"This is Ssu Lu Shan. He has something to tell you about the world. Go with him, Li Yuan."
Li Yuan turned to the man and gently inclined his head, showing his respect. At once the scholar bowed low, acknowledging Li Yuan's status as a prince. Li Yuan turned back, facing his father, waiting, expecting more, then understood the audience was at an end. He made his k'o t'ou a third and final time, then backed away, puzzled and deeply troubled by the strict formality of his father's greeting, the oddness of his instruction.
Outside, Li Yuan turned and faced the stranger, studying him. He had the thin, pinched face of a New Confucian official; a face made longer by the bareness of the scalp. His eyes, however, were hard and practical. They met Li Yuan's examination unflinchingly.
"Tell me, Ssu Lu Shan. What ministry is it that you wear the patch of?"
Ssu Lu Shan bowed. "It is The Ministry, Prince Yuan." From another it might have seemed cryptic, but Li Yuan understood at once that there was nothing elusive in the man's answer.
"The Ministry?"
"So it is known, Excellency."
Li Yuan walked on, Ssu Lu Shan keeping up with him, several paces behind, as protocol demanded.
At the doorway to his suite of rooms, Li Yuan stopped and turned to face the man again.
"Do we need privacy for our meeting, Ssu Lu Shan?"
The man bowed. "It would be best, Excellency. What I have to say is for your ears only. I would prefer it if the doors were locked and the windows closed while I am talking."
Li Yuan hesitated, feeling a vague unease. But this was what his father wanted; what his father had ordered him to do. And if his father had ordered it, he must trust this man and accommodate him.
When the doors were locked and the windows closed, Ssu Lu Shan turned, facing him. Li Yuan sat in a tall chair by the window overlooking the gardens while the scholar—if that was what he was—stood on the far side of the room, breathing deeply, calmly, preparing himself.
Dust motes floated slowly in the still warm air of the room as Ssu Lu Shan began, his voice deep, authoritative, and clear as polished jade, telling the history of Chung Kuo—the true history—beginning with Pan Chao's arrival on the shores of the Caspian Sea in A. D. 94 and his subsequent withdrawal, leaving Europe to the Ta Ts'in, the Roman Empire.
Hours passed and still Ssu Lu Shan spoke on, telling of a Europe Li Yuan had never dreamed existed—a Europe racked by Dark Ages and damned by religious bigotry, enlightened by the Renaissance, then torn again by wars of theology, ideology, and nationalism; a Europe swept up, finally, by the false ideal of technological progress, born of the Industrial Revolution; an ideal fueled by the concept of evolution and fanned by population pressures into the fire of Change—Change at any price.
And what had Chung Kuo done meanwhile but enclose itself behind great walls? Like a bloated maggot it had fed upon itself until, when the West had come, it had found the Han Empire weak, corrupt, and ripe for conquest.
So they came to the Century of Change, to the Great Wars, to the long years of revolution in Chung Kuo, and finally to the Pacific Century and the decline and fall of the American Empire, ending in the chaos of the Years of Blood.
This, the closest to the present, was, for Li Yuan, the worst of it, and as if he sensed this, Ssu Lu Shan's voice grew softer as he told of the tyrant Tsao Ch'un and his "Crusade of Purity," of the building of the City and, finally, of The Ministry and the burning of the books, the burial of the past.
"As you know, Prince Yuan, Tsao Ch'un wished to create a Utopia that would last ten thousand years—to bring into being the world beyond the peach-blossom river, as we Han have traditionally known it. But the price of its attainment was high."
Ssu Lu Shan paused, his eyes momentarily dark with the pain of what he had witnessed on ancient newsreels. Then, slowly, he began again.
"In 2062 Japan, Chung Kuo's chief rival in the East, was the first victim of Tsao Ch'un's barbaric methods when, without warning—after Japanese complaints about Han incursions in Korea—the Han leader bombed Honshu, concentrating his nuclear devices on the major population centers of Tokyo and Kyoto. Over the next eight years three great Han armies swept the smaller islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, destroying everything and killing every Japanese they found, while the rest of Japan was blockaded by sea and air. Over the following twenty years they did the same with the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, turning the 'islands of the gods' into a wasteland.