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.