to Sybil,
with love
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Taizu, the Son of Heaven, emperor of Kitai
Shinzu, his third son, and heir
Xue, his thirty-first daughter
Wen Jian, the Precious Consort, also called the Beloved Companion
Chin Hai, formerly first minister, now deceased
Wen Zhou, first minister of Kitai, cousin to Wen Jian
General Shen Gao, deceased, once Left Side Commander of the Pacified West
Shen Liu, his oldest son, principal adviser to the first minister
Shen Tai, his second son
Shen Chao, his third son
Shen Li-Mei, his daughter
An Li ("Roshan"), military governor of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts
An Rong, his oldest son
An Tsao, a younger son
Xu Bihai, military governor of the Second and Third Districts, in Chenyao
Xu Liang, his older daughter
Lin Fong, commander of Iron Gate Fortress
Wujen Ning, a soldier at Iron Gate
Tazek Karad, an officer on the Long Wall
Wan-si
Wei Song
Lu Chen
Ssu Tan
Zhong Ma
Sima Zian, a poet, the Banished Immortal
Chan Du, a poet
Spring Rain, a courtesan in the North District, later named Lin Chang
Chou Yan, Xin Lun, students, friends of Shen Tai
Feng, a guard in the employ of Wen Zhou
Hwan, a servant of Wen Zhou
Pei Qin, a beggar in the street
Ye Lao, a steward
West
Sangrama the Lion, ruling the Empire of Tagur
Cheng-wan, the White Jade Princess, one of his wives, seventeenth daughter of Emperor Taizu
Bytsan sri Nespo, a Taguran army officer
Nespo sri Mgar, his father, a senior officer
Gnam, Adar, Taguran soldiers
North
Dulan, kaghan of the Bogu people of the steppe
Hurok, his sister's husband, later kaghan
Meshag, Hurok's older son
Tarduk, Hurok's second son
With bronze as a mirror one can correct one's appearance; with history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of a state; with good men as a mirror, one can distinguish right from wrong.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
Amid the ten thousand noises and the jade-and-gold and the whirling dust of Xinan, he had often stayed awake all night among friends, drinking spiced wine in the North District with the courtesans.
They would listen to flute or pipa music and declaim poetry, test each other with jibes and quotes, sometimes find a private room with a scented, silken woman, before weaving unsteadily home after the dawn drums sounded curfew's end, to sleep away the day instead of studying.
Here in the mountains, alone in hard, clear air by the waters of Kuala Nor, far to the west of the imperial city, beyond the borders of the empire, even, Tai was in a narrow bed by darkfall, under the first brilliant stars, and awake at sunrise.
In spring and summer the birds woke him. This was a place where thousands upon thousands nested noisily: fishhawks and cormorants, wild geese and cranes. The geese made him think of friends far away. Wild geese were a symbol of absence: in poetry, in life. Cranes were fidelity, another matter.
In winter the cold was savage, it could take the breath away. The north wind when it blew was an assault, outdoors, and even through the cabin walls. He slept under layers of fur and sheepskin, and no birds woke him at dawn from the icebound nesting grounds on the far side of the lake.
The ghosts were outside in all seasons, moonlit nights and dark, as soon as the sun went down.
Tai knew some of their voices now, the angry ones and the lost ones, and those in whose thin, stretched crying there was only pain.
They didn't frighten him, not any more. He'd thought he might die of terror in the beginning, alone in those first nights here with the dead.
He would look out through an unshuttered window on a spring or summer or autumn night, but he never went outside. Under moon or stars the world by the lake belonged to the ghosts, or so he had come to understand.
He had set himself a routine from the start, to deal with solitude and fear, and the enormity of where he was. Some holy men and hermits in their mountains and forests might deliberately act otherwise, going through days like leaves blown, defined by the absence of will or desire, but his was a different nature, and he wasn't holy.
He did begin each morning with the prayers for his father. He was still in the formal mourning period and his self-imposed task by this distant lake had everything to do with respect for his father's memory.
After the invocations, which he assumed his brothers were also performing in the home where they'd all been born, Tai would go out into the mountain meadow (shades of green dotted with wildflowers, or crunching underfoot with ice and snow) and—unless there was a storm—he would do his Kanlin exercises. No sword, then one sword, then both.
He would look at the cold waters of the lake, with the small isle in the middle of it, then up at the surrounding, snow-draped, stupefying mountains piled upon each other. Beyond the northern peaks the land sloped downwards for hundreds of li towards the long dunes of the killing deserts, with the Silk Roads running around either side of them, bringing so much wealth to the court, to the empire of Kitai. To his people.
In winter he fed and watered his small, shaggy horse in the shed built against his cabin. When the weather turned and the grass returned, he'd let the horse graze during the day. It was placid, wasn't about to run away. There was nowhere to run.
After his exercises, he would try to let stillness enter into him, a shedding of the chaos of life, ambition and aspiration: to make himself worthy of this chosen labour.
And then he would set to work burying the dead.
He'd never, from first arrival here, made any effort to separate Kitan from Taguran soldiers. They were tangled together, strewn or piled, skulls and white bones. Flesh gone to earth or to animals and carrion birds long since, or—for those of the most recent campaign—not so very long ago.
It had been a triumph, that last conflict, though bitterly hard-won. Forty thousand dead in one battle, almost as many Kitan as Taguran.
His father had been in that war, a general, honoured afterwards with a proud title, Left Side Commander of the Pacified West. Rewarded handsomely by the Son of Heaven for victory: a personal audience in the Hall of Brilliance in the Ta-Ming Palace when he returned back east, the purple sash presented, words of commendation spoken directly, a jade gift extended from the emperor's hand, only one intermediary.
His family were undeniably beneficiaries of what had happened by this lake. Tai's mother and Second Mother had burnt incense together, lit candles of thanksgiving to ancestors and gods.
But for General Shen Gao, the memory of the fighting here had been, until he'd died two years ago, a source of pride and sorrow intermingled, marking him forever after.