The White Mirror (6 page)

Li Du had thanked the man, bought the bowl, and managed to avoid being talked into the bracelets and chopsticks as well.

He was halfway to the manor kitchen before he realized that, in such a fine house, it was unnecessary to bring his own bowl to the fire. He turned around to take it back to his room, but stopped at the door that had blown open the night before. It was open again now, and someone had swept the stairs leading down to the courtyard. He stepped outside.

Below, the snow was crisscrossed with footprints, ridged and shaded blue in the half-light. Now that the view was clear, Li Du saw that two sides of the manor were defined by a high wall that connected to both ends of the long residential building, forming a square that enclosed the courtyard.

In the middle of the courtyard was a square tower. Li Du counted four stories, the top three of which boasted ornate exteriors. In the far corner was a smaller building, a temple with orange and gold pillars. Outside its open doors, a cauldron filled with lit incense sticks sent thin undulations of smoke into the air.

Still holding his bowl, Li Du descended the stairs carefully. It was no longer snowing, but a quick glance at the sky suggested that there was more to come. Hearing his name, Li Du turned to his left and saw, at the edge of the open barn, a fire cradled in an iron brazier with several stools arranged around it. One of these was occupied by Rinzen, the visiting dignitary, who raised a hand in a gesture of welcome and an invitation to sit with him.

“Please let me serve you butter tea,” said Rinzen as Li Du approached. “The others have gone, but I am making a fresh pot now.” Li Du thanked him and sat down. It was a large fire, built high with kindling to last through the morning. The flames rose around a pot filled with water, its rough, blackened sides clothed in flame. It rested on three stones, beneath which the hollow heart of the fire devoured itself in hungry gasps of white and blue. Flakes of ash fell away and were lifted into the air by imperceptible currents.

“Like many forces,” Rinzen said, his eyes also tracing the path of the ashes through the air, “the power that moves the ashes is invisible and must be inferred from the effect it has on those objects light enough to be moved by it.” He held out one hand and gestured for Li Du to hand over his bowl.

Li Du passed it to him. “Thank you.”

Rinzen took the bowl and set it down beside his own on the swept, cobbled floor. He drew out a small knife from a sheath on his belt and used it to chip a portion of dry tea leaves from the brick that rested, half wrapped in its paper, on a flat rock beside the brazier. The sign of the tea's maker was still visible in the middle of the brick, a raised seal that came from the mold into which the tea had been pressed. Rinzen dropped the clump of leaves into the pot. The water had reached a boil, and the leaves disappeared instantly, pulled down into the roiling bubbles.

Rinzen sat back. “I am happy that we are meeting at a time when our empires are in such good accord. It has not always been so.”

Li Du had heard little of the relationship between Lhasa and Beijing in the six years since he had left the Forbidden City. He had paid scant attention to news exchanged by travelers around hearths and wine bottles. He knew that in remote areas, reports were often just distorted echoes of events long past: rivalries, exchanges of power, concealed deaths, marriages, and murders. To distinguish true from false, current from outdated, was almost impossible. To do so successfully was the task of spies in search of information important enough to merit a king's notice.

“For six years,” said Li Du, “I have been almost entirely separated from discussions of empires and delegations and oaths of allegiance.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “I have floated down a different stream, with quiet trees and stones for company.”

Rinzen smiled, an expression that almost made his eyes kindly. They were eyes more intelligent than warm. “But you have heard that Tibet now has a king in Lhasa.”

Li Du tried to summon memories that were like neglected tapestries left too long to fade on a sunlit wall. “I recall that the regent to the Fifth Dalai Lama had the governance of that city after the death of his master.”

“He does not have it anymore,” said Rinzen. “The regent is dead.”

“And there is a new one?”

“Not a regent—a king. Lhazang Khan has ruled for five years.”

Li Du absorbed this information. “And he is allied with the Kangxi?”

Rinzen nodded. “Your Emperor has supported Lhazang Khan's claim against many challenges. Old grievances are forgotten. The ancient oaths between the empires have been renewed:
They shall not plot against us, and we will make no preparations against them.
” Rinzen raised his eyes to meet Li Du's. “The frontiers will no longer be garrisoned. Our empires are like brothers to each other now.”

It was possible to forget many things in six years away from the imperial court. Li Du had endeavored to forget as much as possible. But he knew with absolute certainty that the Emperor of China would never leave a frontier ungarrisoned. Deciding that a noncommittal response was more prudent than silence, he said, “That is good news for travelers. These roads are treacherous enough without armies marching across them.”

Rinzen peered into the bubbling pot and nodded briefly, as if satisfied. Using a thick cloth to protect his hands, he poured the tea into a cylindrical wooden churn, and slid the lid down the churning stick to seal it. “It does not surprise me that you have lost the thread of current events,” he said, as he began to mix the butter and tea. “In these hidden places, a village could go on believing itself sworn to a king even after the king, his son, and his grandson have been buried. Places like this connect empires, but they are too far from the centers to feel their power. These are the safest places, and at the same time, the most dangerous.”

Observing the old dignitary who had witnessed, Li Du was sure, a bloody change of power in his city of Lhasa, Li Du was reminded of the officials and magistrates he had known. He saw the travel fatigue in Rinzen's sun-burnished skin and beringed fingers stained with frost poisoning that hadn't yet healed. The bright yellow silk and fur was, on closer inspection, beginning to fray, though the colors remained a brilliant reminder of Rinzen's high status.

As if sensing Li Du's sympathetic gaze, Rinzen stopped churning for a moment and stretched his back. “I did not sleep last night,” he said. “Yesterday's events were heavy on my mind.”

“You spoke as if you knew the man who died.”

Rinzen nodded. “I did. I had not seen him in many years, but the delicacy of Dhamo's nature was obvious even then. Perhaps he should not have been allowed to stay here, alone, so far from the supervision and guidance that a monastery would offer.”

“It was my understanding that he wished for solitude.”

“He did, but if solitude meant that he kept company only with his visions, perhaps it would have been better for him to be with other monks. He wanted nothing to distract him from his work. He saw the world around him in pigments.”

There was a short silence between them while Rinzen removed the lid from the churn, placed a rough straw strainer over Li Du's bowl, and poured the butter tea into it. The dark leaves caught in the straw, lifeless and glistening. Rinzen filled his own bowl and set the strainer on the rock beside the tea brick. He handed Li Du's bowl to him with both hands, and Li Du took it. The opaque circle of liquid was velvety; its steam carried the fragrance of fat and musk and black tea. Li Du sipped and felt strength spread through his chest and limbs.

Rinzen picked up his own bowl. “You are wondering, perhaps, what brings an official from Lhasa so far from that city.”

Li Du's general dislike of questions about his reasons for going from one place to another made him less likely to ask those same questions of others. But he was curious.

Rinzen continued, “I am accompanying the Fourth Chhöshe Lama on a visit to the place where he was reborn.”

The Chhöshe.
Doso had uttered the name the night before, as had the boy in the courtyard. Li Du knew about tulkus. They were guides: reincarnated, discovered as children, and taught to embody the sacred lineage of a master, enlightened beings who chose to walk the earth in human form and lead others away from harm. The most powerful of all was the Dalai Lama, the one man whose existence had proved capable of uniting even the most belligerent northern clans. But there were hundreds of other incarnated lamas, some of older lineages, some newly discovered, some possessed of wealth inherited by rebirth rather than bloodline, others living in self-imposed poverty and solitude in mountain caves.

“I have not heard of that lineage,” said Li Du.

“It is a minor name, a wandering monk bound to no monastery,” said Rinzen. “But in this incarnation he shows promise of elevating the lineage to greater fame. Already his fellow students at the university follow his teachings. Even his instructors listen to him when he reasons through the most confounding doctrinal contradictions.”

Li Du tried to piece together what he had been told. “In the vast expanses of the mountain range, it is a strange coincidence that your journey with the Chhöshe should lead you to a temple occupied by a monk you knew long ago.”

“It is no coincidence. The Chhöshe was born in this house, and it was for him that Dhamo first came here.”

“I do not understand.”

Rinzen leaned forward to adjust a log. One end of it fell apart in a cloud of powder ash and blackened, charred flakes. “The Chhöshe was born Doso's son—his son by his first wife. Thirteen years ago, when word reached Lhasa of the death of the Third Chhöshe, the search began for the Fourth. It was Dhamo, then a painter in a Lhasa monastery, whose vision guided the emissaries to this valley. He saw a mountain pass and a boy climbing stairs cut into stone. When we arrived, Dhamo's visions were affirmed. The signs were very clear, and the boy was identified.”

Rinzen's gaze moved to the courtyard, where a thin eddy of snow had been picked up by the wind and scudded smoothly across the surface. His brow crinkled. “The Chhöshe has almost completed his education. He wanted to visit the place of his rebirth. I was sent to accompany him.” Rinzen finished his tea and set down his bowl with a clink on the stone. “Now,” he said, “I have told you why I am here. It is your turn to tell me about yourself. Why are you leaving China?” He asked the question lightly, but his tone did not match the piercing attentiveness of his gaze as he waited for Li Du's response.

Li Du felt his mind shrink from the question, as it always did. “I am drawn to travel,” he said. “I wish to—I find at this time in my life I wish to travel.” He paused, embarrassed by his own ineloquence.

“And your work as librarian?”

“There are many libraries to see in the world.”

“Of course,” Rinzen said, “but visiting a library is not the same as knowing one.”

Li Du was honest. “I will not deny that I miss the library at the Forbidden City.” He paused. “But I am fortunate to have a rough duplicate of it in my mind.”

An idea seemed to strike Rinzen. “There is a small collection of books in the mountain temple,” he said. “If you wish to study them, I see no reason why you should not. The Chhöshe has assumed the duties of the temple's care while the storm keeps us here.”

Li Du glanced up at implacable gray sky.

Rinzen reached out a hand. “Please,” he said, “allow me to refill your cup, and I will tell you the way to the temple.”

*   *   *

Li Du floundered through the snow to the caravan camp, around which the mules, now unburdened, stood unconcernedly in the drifts. Scraps of hay and grass littered the snow, suggesting that Doso had kept his promise and shared feed from his own stores.

Outside the hut, Li Du paused in the clearing that had been dug in front of the door. From within he heard the clatter of bowls and pots, and Norbu's voice. “So cold,” Norbu was saying, “that it makes this storm look like a bit of dust blowing through our village in the summertime.”

Li Du ducked inside. The muleteers had settled into their temporary shelter so naturally that the saddles and packs had become part of the building's structure, fortifying the weak walls inside and out, and insulating the inhabitants from the wind. Planks, branches, and rocks had been set up to accommodate the group seated around the fire. The place smelled of leather, wet wool, smoke, and dank boots.

Hamza was already there. He gestured toward an open space, and Li Du squeezed into it. Norbu was accepting bowls, filling them with butter tea, and passing them back to their owners. Hands reached across the fire. They were scarred, callused hands, the skin burned and frozen and healed so many times that they were impervious to levels of discomfort that would hinder others.
You must experience injury before you can develop resistance to it,
Li Du thought, as he listened to Norbu recount a storm from his youth.

“We were at the Sho La,” Norbu said. “You see this bowl of tea?” He held the bowl up. “It would be frozen in the time it took me to fill it. The snow was blowing, but it was too late to turn back. We had to continue forward, or stay where we were and die. Then the animals stopped walking. It was ice between the iron and the hoof.”

The others nodded and murmured acknowledgment of this disaster.

“The mules would not take another step,” Norbu went on. “And by that time the snow was up to our chests.” He raised a hand and held it horizontally across his heart. “So what did we do? We took the saddlebags from their backs. Each bag was as heavy as a man. I carried two of them on my own shoulders. Without the weight, the mules agreed to walk.”

Norbu handed a full bowl to Kalden. “Your brother was leading us,” he said. “We didn't lose an animal, a man, or a pack. That was a good year.”