Tblonen stopped on the edge of the inner arch, squinting into the darkness at the center, trying to make out the shape of his master.
"Heavy-handed monsters, weren't they?"
Li Shai Tung stepped out from the next archway. At a signal from him the lights were raised and the central amphitheater was suddenly revealed. It was huge, monstrous, barbaric. It spoke of a crude brutality.
Tolonen was silent, waiting. And while he waited, he thought about the pain and death this place had been built to hold. So much raw aggression had been molded into darkness here. So much warm blood spilled for entertainment.
"You understand, then?" said the T'ang, turning to face him for the first time. There were tears in his eyes.
He found he could barely answer him. "What is it, Chieh Hsia? What do you want from me?"
Li Shai Tung drew a deep breath, then raised a hand, indicating the building all about them. "They would have me believe you are like this place. As unthinkingly callous. As brutal. Did you know that?"
He wanted to ask, Who? Who would have you believe this? but he merely nodded, listening.
"However ... I know you too well, Knut. You're a caring man. A loving man."
Tolonen shivered, moved by his T'ang's words.
The T'ang moved closer; stood face to face with his ex-general, their breaths mingling. "What you did was wrong. Very wrong." Then, surprisingly, he leaned forward and kissed Tolonen's cheek, holding him a moment. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "But thank you, Knut. Thank you, dearest friend. You acted like a brother to my grief."
Tolonen stood there, surprised, looking into his master's face, then bowed his head, all the old warmth welling up inside him. It had been so long; so hard being exiled.
He went down onto his knees at Li Shai Tung's feet, his head bowed in submission. "Tell me what you want, Chieh Hsia. Let me serve you again."
"Get up, old friend. Get up."
"Not until you say I am forgiven."
There was a moment's silence, then Li Shai Tung placed his hands on Tolonen's shoulders. "I cannot reinstate you. You must realize that. As for forgiveness, there is nothing to forgive. You acted as I felt. I would need to forgive myself first." He smiled sadly. "Your exile is at an end, Knut. You can come home. Now get up."
Tolonen stayed on his knees.
"Get up, you foolish man. Get up. You think I'd let my ablest friend rot in inactivity?" He was laughing now; a soft, almost childlike laughter. "Yes, you foolish old man. I have a job for you."
•IT WAS a hot night. Nan Ho had left the door to the garden open. A gentle breeze stirred the curtains, bringing the scents of night flowers and the sound of an owl in the orchard. Li Yuan woke and stretched, then grew very still.
"Who is it?" he said, his voice very small.
There was a touch of warmth against his back and a soft, muted giggle, then he felt her pressed against him—undoubtedly her—and heard her voice in his ear.
"Hush, little one. Hush. It's only me, Pearl Heart. I'll not bite you, Li Yuan."
He turned and, in the moon's light, saw her naked there beside him in his bed.
"What are you doing here, Pearl Heart?" he asked, but his eyes were drawn to the firmness of her breasts, the soft, elegant slope of her shoulders. Her dark eyes seemed to glisten in the moonlight and she lay there, unashamed, enjoying the way he looked at her.
She reached out and took his hand and pressed it gently to her breast, letting him feel the hardness of the nipple, then moved it down, across the silken smoothness of her stomach until it rested between her legs.
He shivered, then looked to her eyes again. "I shouldn't. . ."
She smiled and shook her head, her eyes filled with amusement. "No, perhaps you shouldn't, after all. Shall I go away?"
She made to move but his hand held her where she was, pressing down against the soft down of her sex. "No ... I..."
Again she laughed, a soft, delicious laughter that increased his desire, then she sat up and pushed him down, pulling back the sheet from him.
"What have we here? Ah, now here's the root of all your problems."
She lifted his stiff penis gently between her fingers, making him catch his breath, then bent her head and kissed it. A small,
wet kiss.
"There," she said gently, looking up the length of his body into his eyes. "I can see what you need, my little one. Why didn't you tell Pearl Heart before now?" She smiled and her eyes returned to his penis.
For a moment he closed his eyes, a ripple of pure pleasure passing through him as she stroked and kissed him. Then, when he could bear it no longer, he pulled her up against him, then turned her over, onto her back, letting her hand help him as he struggled to find the mouth of her sex with the blind eye of his penis.
Then, with a sudden sense of her flesh parting before his urgent pressure, he was inside her and she was pushing back up against him, her face suddenly different, her movements no longer quite so gentle, her legs wrapped about his back. He thrust and thrust and then cried out, his body stiffening, a great hot wave of blackness robbing him momentarily of thought.
He slept for a while and when he woke she was there still, not a dream as he had begun to imagine, but real and warm, her body beautiful, naked in the moonlight beside him, her dark eyes watching him. The thought—the reality of her—made his penis stir again and she laughed and stroked his cheek, his neck, his shoulder, her fingers moving down his body until they were curled about the root of him again.
"Pearl Heart?" he said, looking up from where her fingers played with him, into her face.
"Hush," she said, her smile like balm. "Lie still and close your eyes, my little one. Pearl Heart will ease the darkness in you."
He smiled and closed his eyes, letting the whole of him be drawn like a thread of fine silk into the contact of her fingers with his flesh. He gave a little shudder as her body brushed against his own, moving down him, then groaned as he felt her tiny rosebud lips close wetly about the end of his penis.
"Pearl Heart," he said softly, almost inaudibly. And then the darkness claimed him once again.
CHEN leaned on his hoe, then looked up into the sky and wiped his brow with the cloth Pavel had given him.
"This is harder than I thought it would be," he said, laughing.
The young man smiled back at him. "Would you like some water, Tong Chou?"
He hesitated, then gave a small bow. "That would be good. I've a thirst on me such as I've never had before."
"It's hot," Pavel said kindly. "You're not used to it yet, that's all. You'll get the hang of it soon enough."
Chen rubbed at his back then laughed again. "Let's hope so. I've a feeling I'm not so much breaking the earth as the earth's breaking me."
He watched Pavel go, then got down to it again, turning the dark, hard earth, one of a long line of workers stretching out across the huge, two-li-wide field. Then, only moments later, he looked up, hearing raised voices from the direction Pavel had gone. He turned and saw the youth had been stopped by two of the guards—the same two men who had met them on the path the day before.
"What is it?" he asked the woman next to him, then realized she didn't speak English, only Mandarin. But the woman seemed to understand. She made a drinking gesture with one cupped hand, then shook her head.
"But I thought..."
Then he remembered something Pavel had said earlier. They were only allowed three cups of water a day—at the allotted breaks. Curse him, the stupid boy! Chen thought, dropping his hoe and starting across the field toward the noise, but two of the field workers ran after him and held his arms until he returned to the line.
"Fa!" one of them kept saying. "Fa!" Then, in atrocious English, he translated the word. "Pah-nis-men." Chen went cold. "I've got to stop it."