"To divorce Fei Yen? Yes. But the child . . . Well, I'll be frank—that puzzles me somewhat. I've thought about it often lately. He's your son, isn't he, Li Yuan?" Li Yuan nodded. "Then why disinherit him?"
Li Yuan looked down, thinking back to the evening when he had made that awful decision, recollecting the turmoil of his feelings. He had expected the worst—had steeled himself to face the awful fact of her betrayal—but when he had found it was his child, unquestionably his, he was surprised to find himself not relieved but appalled, for in his mind he had already parted from her. Had cast her from him, like a broken bowl. For a long time he had sat there in an agony of indecision, unable to see things clearly. But then the memory of Han Ch'in had come to him—of his dead brother, there beside him in the orchard, a sprig of white blossom in his jet-black hair—and he had known, with a fierce certainty, what he must do.
He looked back at Ben, tears in his eyes. "I wanted to protect him. Do you understand that? To keep him from harm. He was Han, you see. Han Ch'in reborn." He shook his head. "I know that doesn't make sense, but it's how I felt. How I still feel, every time I think about the child. It's . . ."
He turned away, trying for a moment to control—to wall in—the immensity of his suffering. Then he turned back, his face open, exposed to the other man, all of his grief and hope and suffering there on the surface for Ben's eyes to read.
"I couldn't save Han Ch'in. I was too young, too powerless. But my son . . ." He swallowed, then looked aside. "If one good thing can come from my relationship with Fei Yen, let it be this: that my son can grow up safe from harm."
Ben looked down; then, patting the shell familiarly, he stood. "I see." He walked back to the edge of the pool, then turned, facing Li Yuan again. "Even so, you must have sons, Li Yuan. Indeed, you have taken wives for that very purpose. Can you save them all? Can you keep them all from harm?"
Li Yuan was staring back at him. "They will be sons . . ." "And Fei's son, Han? Is he so different?"
Li Yuan looked aside, a slight bitterness in his face. "Don't tease me, Ben. I thought you of all people would understand."
Ben nodded. "Oh, I do. But I wanted to make sure that you did. That you weren't trying to fool yourself over your real motives. You say the boy reminds you of Han. That may be so, and I understand your reasons for wanting to keep him out of harm's way. But it's more than that, isn't it? You still love Fei Yen, don't you? And the child . . . the child is the one real thing that came of your love." Li Yuan looked at him gratefully.
Ben sighed. "Oh, I understand clear enough, Li Yuan. You wanted to be her, didn't you? To become her. And the child . . . that's the closest you'll ever come to it."
Li Yuan shivered, acknowledging the truth of what Ben had said. "Then I was right to act as I did?"
Ben turned, looking down, watching the dark shapes of the carp move slowly in the depths. "You remember the picture I drew for you, the day of your betrothal ceremony?"
Li Yuan swallowed. "I do. The picture of Lord Yi and the ten suns—the ten dark birds in the fu sang tree."
"Yes. Well, I saw it then. Saw clearly what would come of it."
"To the bone."
Ben looked back at the young T'ang, seeing he understood. "Yes, You remember. Well, the mistake was made back there. You should never have married her. You should have left her as your dream, your ideal." He shrugged. "The rest, I'm afraid, was inevitable. And unfortunate, for some mistakes can never be rectified."
Li Yuan moved closer until he stood facing Ben, his hand resting loosely on Ben's arm, his eyes boring into Ben's, pleading for something that Ben could not give him.
"But what else could I have done?"
"Nothing," Ben said. "There was nothing else you could have done. But still it isn't right. You tried to shoot the moon, Li Yuan, like the great Lord Yi of legend. And what but sorrow could come of that?"
IT WAS DAWN in the Otzalen Alps and a cold wind blew down the valley from the north. Stefan Lehmann stood on the open mountainside, his furs gathered tight about him, the hood pulled up over his head. He squinted into the shadows down below, trying to make out details, but it was hard to distinguish anything, so much had changed.
Where there had been snow-covered slopes and thick pine forest was now only barren rock—rock charred and fused to a glossy hardness in places. Down where the entrance had been was now a crater almost a li across and half a li deep.
He went down, numbed by what he saw. Where the land folded and rose slightly he stopped, resting against a crag. All about him were the stumps of trees, charred and splintered by the explosions that had rent the mountain. He shuddered and found he could scarcely catch his breath. "All gone," he said, watching his words dissipate into the chill air.
AM gone . . .
A thin veil of snow began to fall, flecks on the darkness below where he stood. He made himself go on, clambering down the treacherous slope until he stood at the crater's edge, looking down into the great circle of its ashen bowl.
Shadow filled the crater like a liquid. Snowflakes drifted into that darkness and seemed to blink out of existence, their glistening brightness extinguished in an instant. He watched them fall, strangely touched by their beauty. For a time his mind refused to acknowledge what had been done. It was easier to stand there, emptied of all thought, all enterprise, and let the cold and delicate beauty of the day seep into the bones, like ice into the rock. But he knew that the beauty of it was a mask, austere and terrible. Inhumanly so. For even as he watched, the whiteness spread, thickening, concealing the dark and glassy surface.
At his back the mountains thrust high into the thin, cold air. He looked up into the grayness of the sky, then turned, looking across at the nearest peaks. The early daylight threw them into sharp relief against the sky. Huge, jagged shapes they were, like the broken, time-bared jawbone of a giant. Beneath, the rest lay in shadow, in vast depths of blue shading into impenetrable darkness. Clouds drifted in between, casting whole slopes of white into sudden shade, obscuring the crisp, paleocrystic forms. He watched, conscious of the utter silence of that desolate place, his warm breath pluming in the frigid air. Then, abruptly, he turned away, beginning to climb the slope again.
The rawness of the place appalled some part of him that wanted warmth and safety, yet the greater part of him—that part he termed his true self—recognized itself in all of this. It was not a place for living, yet living things survived here, honed to the simplest of responses by the savagery of the climate, made lithe and fierce and cunning by necessity. So it was for him. Rather this than the deadness of the City—that sterile womb from which nothing new came forth.
He reached the crest and paused, looking back. The past with all its complex schemes was gone. It lay behind him now. From here on he would do it his way; would become a kind of ghost, a messenger from the outside, flitting between the levels, singular and deadly.
A bleak smile came to his albinic eyes, touched the comers of his thin-lipped mouth. He felt no grief for what had happened, only a new determination. This had not changed things so much as clarified them. He knew now what to do; how to harness all the hatred that he felt for them. Hatred enough to fill the whole of Chung Kuo with death.
The cloud moved slowly south. Suddenly he was in sunlight again. He turned to his right, looking up toward the summit. There, at the top of the world, an eagle circled the naked point of rock, its great wings extended fully. The sight was unexpected yet significant; another sign for him to read. He watched it for some time then moved on, descending into the valley, heading north again toward his scantily provisioned cave. It would be hard, but in the spring he would emerge again, leaner and hungrier than before, but also purer, cleaner. Like a new-forged sword, cast in the fire and tempered in the ice.