The Red Plains (The Forbidden List Book 3) (22 page)

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At the top of the hill, Haung turned in his saddle to gaze down upon the port town. The grey clouds above reflected his mood and the cold wind that blew in off the water chilled his heart. In the space of a few weeks he had lost three companions who had become the closest thing he had to true friends. Gongliang in defence of the town, and now Liu and Gang to an ambush in another town. It was true, he knew, that the two masters had not died, but the past few years had taught him nothing if not how fragile life was, and now he was heading back to a battle.

If Sabaa was correct, and given her ability to keep them asleep, her skill in surgery and that she seemed to have lived for many more years than should be possible, he saw no reason to disbelieve her, the capital of the Empire was under siege.

“Two days?”

“Two days to the capital, yes,” Haung said, kicking his horse into motion once more and drawing up alongside her. She had not changed from the long black robes she had worn last night, but she had left off the head and face cloth.

“And is it always this cold in your country?” she asked.

“No,” he studied her for a moment, noting the tattoo once more and her dark eyes that were rounder than most in the Empire. Her skin was darker too, not by much, but Haung was determined to notice as much as possible and not to be fooled again. “It will get colder.”

“Interesting,” she answered. “The last time I was here it was much warmer.”

“You’ve been to the Empire before?”

“It was not the Empire then, but where do you think I learned to speak your language? I will say that I am finding some of it a little different than I recall, but things change over time.”

He studied her once more. She rode a horse as if it was an everyday activity and, for all he knew, it might be. Her skill with the sword was undeniable, she had been in fights and battles before and had made up for her lack of strength with speed. And then there was all the mention of age and years past. Now she was saying she had visited the Empire before it became the Empire and that was, he knew from his barracks education and that under his
Fang-shi
teachers, centuries ago, many centuries ago.

“My country, the one that is now, is much warmer than this.”

“But you wear those black clothes and the head wear too?” Haung asked.

“I do. The outer layers warm and draw cool air in from the bottom, it is surprisingly cool even in the heat of summer. The headwear, as you call it, that is new, only a hundred years or so. It has become a tradition and expected. I hate it, but to live in my country I must live as the all the women do.”

“Why?”

“Why do they wear it? The religion tells them it is right. A religion written by men and controlled by men. It preaches that women are somehow lesser and sadly they believed it. The rule became a tradition and the normal way of things. Change will come, but slowly. It is not so different to your friend, Liu, hiding her true sex from everyone. The Empire may allow women greater freedoms, but men are still in charge.” Sabaa spoke with statements of fact and Haung could find little to argue with.

“My wife considers herself in charge of me and our home,” Haung said.

“As it is in my country,” Sabaa smiled. “You watch. When women realise just how much power they have, things will change.”

“Jiao would agree with you,” he admitted.

“You see,” she laughed, “already it begins.”

“Maybe, but in two days we will be at the capital and change will be the last thing on my mind. Protecting the Empire and my family will be my focus. What can you tell me about the siege?”

“At the moment, nothing. When we rest tonight, I will look and tell you what I can. It takes time and some preparation,” she said.

“How do you do it?”

“In the Empire, you study the void between the realms?”

He nodded. “We call our magicians
Fang-shi
and they use the void to power their spells.”

“In my country we use a different realm to draw power and make magic. Our magic, if that term makes it easier to understand, comes from the air. It is all around us, enables us to live and breathe, it carries heat and moisture. Control the air and you control many things. Those very skilled in its control can ride the winds and see further than others.”

“Ride the winds? You mean fly?” He looked incredulous and could not keep the scepticism from his voice.

“Of course not.” She laughed louder and longer than anyone he had ever heard. When she finally calmed down she explained. “Our spirits leave our body and follow the air currents. We can see through them. It is not perfect and it is easy to miss things, but I have found it to be a useful skill.”

“The
Fang-shi
can see long distances, but I am not sure how,” he said.

“There are many ways to get the same effect,” she said. “We should be wary as we get closer to the city.”

“I agree, it is likely that the Mongols will have forces out on patrol, trying to keep reinforcements away.”

The temple was unlike those in Wubei. There were no priests to greet them at the door, no deep bows of respect, no red or saffron robes, no smell of incense, no prayer wheels or prayers embossed in bronze. Gone too, the imposing sense of scale, the high ceilings, the large rooms, that many temples used to impress their worshippers. Evidence of wealth, not just the embossed prayers, but the golden cups, the rich hangings and drapes, the art work, illustrating stories of the faith to the faithful, that would normally adorn the walls were missing too.

The corridors, narrow and winding, had been carved out of the mountain rock and the smooth floor spoke of the passage of many feet, over many years. Here and there another corridor would form a crossroads. Zhou followed Xióngmāo along the corridors, trusting her decisions at each turn. They walked along passages that were only wide enough for one person at a time, passages where he was forced to duck to avoid striking his head on the ceiling. At times it felt as though they were climbing a hill and at other times descending into the earth.

“I am glad I am not alone in here,” Zhou said, the closeness of the walls and the lack of sky above his head was making him uncomfortable. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his robes felt as though they were sticking to his back. “I would be totally lost by now.”

Xióngmāo stopped. “Zhou, I’ve been lost the moment we stepped in here.”

“You mean we are lost?” He felt cold.

“Yes. I have been choosing the corners at random, one of them must take us up to the fire or to a larger room where the priests worship.” She turned around and face him. “Have you not noticed there are no rooms on any of the corridors and passages we have walked along? There are no markings on the walls. No indication of correct path to take. We are in a maze and, at this point, I’d be happy to run into a dead end. At least it would be something different.”

“We are lost?” he repeated and the cold settled into his bones, chilling him from the inside out.

“Completely,” Xióngmāo agreed. “I think the temple was built as a test. Figure out the maze and you are worthy to be a priest, or to visit one at least.”

“But, but, we were invited,” Zhou stammered.

“No, I told you we had to reach the temple and meet someone inside. That is not the same as invited. Perhaps the person does not want to be found.”

“Not that,” Zhou said. “When the door opened, someone said we were both welcome. I heard them.”

“I heard no one. Maybe you imagined it. It was cold outside and you wanted to get inside.” Xióngmāo turned back and started walking again. Zhou followed.

“There was definitely a voice,” he said.

Xióngmāo turned left, then right at the next crossroads. The slope of the corridor increased and Zhou felt he was beginning to climb, at last, towards the promised fire and warmth. At the next crossroads she turned right again and after a twenty paces or so, round a corner, the corridor began to descend.

“What if we marked the walls?” Zhou said.

“I have been,” she replied. “At every crossroads I mark the walls with a dab of ink and our scent. So far, I have not found the mark or the scent again.”

“There cannot be this many passages in the temple. No one would ever get through them to the end.”

“You assume there is an end, and it would make sense if one existed. There is a trick to it, a secret and as yet I haven’t found it. Have you?”

“I do not know what to look for,” Zhou said, his voice echoing down the corridor.

“And don’t you find that strange too?”

“What?” Zhou looked around for whatever she was referring to.

“The echo, or rather the lack of it. Listen,” she said and when they were both still and quiet called out, “Hello.”

Zhou stood still, listened and noticed nothing, he said so.

“You do it,” she instructed him.

He took a deep breath and called out. The word echoed down the corridor, reflecting and bouncing from the stone walls.

“Do you see?” she said.

“No,” he answered. “We both called out and that was it.”

“Zhou,” she said and his name was filled with disappointment. “My voice does not produce any echoes, but yours does.”

“Is that strange?” He patted the wall next to him. “Maybe because I have a deeper voice, it echoes more?”

“Echoes don’t work that way,” she replied. “My voice should echo too. There is definitely something strange about this temple. Let’s try something different for a while. You lead the way.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Every time you get to a crossroads go with your best guess. Mine are not working, maybe you’ll have more luck.” Xióngmāo waved him forward.

Zhou gave her an incredulous look and when she indicated again, he moved forward, squeezing past her in the narrow stone corridor.

# # #

“My feet are really beginning to ache,” Zhou complained.

“We’ll rest at the next crossroads,” Xióngmāo said.

“I do not think we are getting anywhere. We have been walking for hours.”

“Then we need to do something differently,” she answered.

At the crossroads where four passages, all alike, joined and added to the confusion, the two
Wu
sat and drank from their canteens. Zhou dipped into his food pack and drew out some dried meat from their dwindling supply. They sat in silence, chewing and sipping. There was not much to look at apart from each other and the stress of being lost had frayed their tempers over the past hour. It could have been longer or shorter, Zhou thought, time was impossible to gauge in these passages. It was better, therefore, to look elsewhere for a time and Zhou fell to inspecting the composition of the rock walls.

It was grey, but with nothing else to occupy his mind and to draw his thoughts away from the fear of being stuck down here for the rest of his life, he carried on looking. The initial grey turned out to be a light coating of dust and he brushed it away with his sleeve. Underneath, the stone was still grey, but there were subtle differences.

The grey became less uniform. A tiny patch of dark grey appeared, on closer scrutiny, to be made of some flecks of black and some of grey. The patches of light grey were devoid of the black. Here and there, not often, but noticeable after a longer inspection, were little grains, it was the only word he had to describe them, of rock that appeared translucent, or at least, such a light, pale grey that they were almost invisible.

He started to try and count the translucent grains, and then to map their position on the section of wall he had chosen at random. It became a little game, a little test of his attention to details. Was there a pattern? Could he map a constellation onto them? Interest soon waned and the rock wall became just the rock wall again.

But, he thought, if I see all that with just my eyes, what will the spirit see? And with nothing else to do, he called the spirit.

Everything took on the familiar hue of blue and he focused his new vision on the patch of wall, resting his hands upon it to support his position. The greys were a little less grey, the blacks more black and the translucent were something else, something that glowed with its own energy. Not a spark like those Zhou had seen on the Wall, those he could see in people. Something else and he focused upon them, trying to see more clearly.

“Zhou,” Xióngmāo said, “it is time to move on.”

He waved at her with one hand, removing it from the wall and patting the air. Zhou stopped moving. The glow faded from the translucent crystals. He removed his other hand and the glow vanished. Turning both palms towards him, Zhou inspected his hands and saw nothing different. When his hands made contact with the wall once more, the glow returned.

“What have you found?” Xióngmāo said, peering over his shoulder.

The explanation did not take too long and straight away she tried to emulate his experiment.

“I see nothing different,” she reported.

“Really? But it is so clear. There is a glow here, like the flames we see in people, but it is different. I have seen something like this before. Something similar.” His voice drifted off into memory.

The cave on the mountain had been hewn from grey rocks, dappled with grains of white and translucent crystals. They were bigger than these and had not glowed or, in fact, done anything but hold the roof up. It was not that memory he sought.

Zhou dug deeper, seeking the memory of rock. Rock that glowed or did something other than its role of support. It was there. He could feel it tickling the edge of his mind. A tantalising taste of knowledge. Striving to find it, to reach it, only pushed it away so he did the opposite. He relaxed and let the memory find him, and it did.

On the Wall, before the battle, he had rested both hands on the stone work and been taken, in his mind, on a journey along the whole length of the Wall, from sea to mountains and to its desert end. He had swooped, soared, skimmed and bounced through the rocks at speeds that he could never match in the physical world. On the edge of that vision, the glow.

He took a deep breath and called to spirit once again, and more than that, let the green thread that linked him with the realm of life swell within him. The link between life and spirit that he had forged by the simple act of spearing his short staff into the ground of the Spirit realm, bloomed. He placed both hands on the wall.

# # #

He fell into the grey.

This time he let the colours come and, before he could strike the invisible floor, he was flying through the rock. It was a hint of colour, a brush of feeling, a suggestion of space that told him where the corridors were and he flew down them all.

He turned, left and right, up and down, he twisted and gave himself over the joy of being free. Though he was not without boundaries. The gaps in the rock, the corridors and passages, were the boundaries to the world and he sought ways around them. Rising up through the rock of the mountain, he realised he could see the pattern of the open spaces below him.

So simple and yet so complicated. In those passages, they had been lost and were unlikely to ever find the way to the centre or the path back out. But here, looking down upon the pattern he could see both.

Zhou smiled as he flew through the rock, back towards Xióngmāo and his own body.

“I will await your presence.”