Chapter 9

The sun sank to rest beyond the paddy fields and a moon thinner than paper showed for a few moments in the rosy hem of the sky. Nightingale Moon! Shard Gingko turned his head and, yes, he could see a few bright stars starting to appear in the east. And a broom star, still faintly. A second would join it soon, when the sky grew darker.

He carefully cleaned his brush and placed it back in the box. He and the box were sharing a small jetty in a backwater of the Clay River—sharing it with a dozen small fishing skiffs and four million mosquitoes. It was Shard’s custom to withdraw to a quiet place in the evening, some empty corner where he could record whatever wisdom he had gleaned from Sunlight’s conversation during the day. The peasants were all preparing for bed, and the Firstborn himself always retired early, husbanding what little strength he had and resting up for another leg of his journey tomorrow.

Asked about the meaning of the broom stars, the Urfather said, “The Desert Teacher taught that changes in Heaven mean much to Heaven and little to us; for what good is a warning if you do not know to whom it is addressed? And again he taught, what is good for one person is often evil to another. So if a broom star presages a rich harvest, that may be good news to the fathers of many children and bad news to the rich merchant who has bought up much rice in expectation of a famine. Enjoy your own world, letting the Emperor worry about Heaven and Heaven worry about the Emperor.”

Shard laid the paper in the box also and closed the lid. He chuckled, remembering a fragment he had uncovered in Four Mountains when trying to find out everything he could about the Firstborn. It told of the great Sixth Dynasty sage, Cone Mountain:

Cone Mountain asked, “When so many books are filled with folly, why is the wisdom of the Firstborn not written for students to study?”

The Firstborn said, “I have no wisdom. I am not clever, I only repeat what I have heard from persons wiser than I and poems from fine poets.”

Then Cone Mountain said, “But what you say is so uplifting that this humble follower hungers to record the words he hears.”

The Firstborn said, “You may write if you wish, but few will read, for many will seek to destroy what you have written.”

Of course they would—mandarins who had spent lifetimes studying corrupted texts when the Urfather quoted the original versions, Emperors who did not wish to hear of their follies and ignorance, and even rebels who thought their cause was new and glorious. Of course, dozens or thousands of followers must have recorded the Firstborn’s sayings since the invention of writing. And now Shard Gingko had joined their number.

He was about to rise when he sensed a shadow between him and the western brightness. Looking up, he saw a barefoot male peasant in a cloth and straw hat. Surprisingly, it was Mouse, apparently seeking him out, which was unprecedented.

“Friend?” he said with a smile.

The boy squatted on his heels and his somber dark eyes scanned the old man carefully, for Shard must seem very old to him.

“Master, may I ask you a question?” His adult voice had grown in, deep and tuneful.

“You may ask, by all means, but the Firstborn will give you a better answer.”

Mouse shook his head. “It is his answer that troubles me. The villagers were asking him what the broom stars augur.”

“And he said he didn’t know, that no one knew, and maybe he told the questioners to enjoy them, because they are beautiful, like brush strokes in Heaven.” That was more or less what he always said, every day, in every village.

“But later, Master, I asked him what the broom stars meant for him.”

Shard said, “Hm.” The question had been impertinent, but he could not resist asking, “And what did he tell you?”

“He said that, for him, they were very bad news.”

Shard shrugged and rose to his feet. “If the Man of a Thousand Lives wishes you to know more, lad, I expect he will tell you more. How many more days to High Abode?”

“The villagers say two days, Master.”

Two more boat trips. And then what? How many more days to Sublime Mountain and the Emperor?

As he trudged back the few dozen paces to the village, Shard noticed that the smaller broom star was now brighter and closer to the larger than it had been last night. Two broom stars in Nightingale Moon in the Year of the Nightingale were a sure sign that the Portal of Worlds would open in the next Year of the Firebird. Sedge Shallows had told him that before he died, and Sedge Shallows had been a mandarin of very high rank.

The mood of the villages had changed as the Firstborn’s expedition neared High Abode. By then, Shard had stopped worrying about pursuit, for thousands of boats plied the great waterway, thousands of towns and villages lined its banks. Sublime Mountain would never find them now, unless some genius mandarin guessed that they were bound for the site of last year’s brief rebellion, and how could anyone do that?

It was easier to guess why nobody along the river wanted to discuss the place or even admit ever hearing of the mysterious Bamboo. His Banner had certainly not been seen or heard of anywhere else in Qiancheng Province. But the governor had been forced to send troops to High Abode, which was shameful, and a dangerous association to make.

Shard could piece it together as easily as the Firstborn could. No great peasant rabble had come marching through on its way north from Dongguan to overthrow the Son of the Sun. That was how dynasties fell. This had been some local dissident picking up the rumors of southern unrest and deciding to start his own reform movement before Bamboo himself arrived. Rash youngsters had joined in and overwhelmed the elders. The nonsense might have been stopped with a few beatings or executions, but the governor of Qiancheng had chosen to defend the dynasty.

Sunlight insisted on seeing for himself, which proved difficult, for the village stood on a high bench, too far back from the river for his misshapen legs to carry him. Eventually, Mouse found a farmer with a bullock cart and an independent turn of mind who agreed to take a day away from his labors to show the Urfather the remains of High Abode. At first, the road crossed paddy fields on the river’s flood plain, where every able-bodied man and woman was busily transplanting rice in the heat of early summer. Then it angled up the slope, much of which had been terraced into more fields, although the upper levels were deserted and already seemed forlorn and desolate.

Long before Shard saw the village, he smelled the stench of burned homes and the choking sweetness of decay. When the road leveled off, he saw heaped ashes of wicker and thatch, scraps of iron, broken pottery, and a few stark chimney tombstones marking houses of the wealthy. Much worse than those were human remains, scattered bones, scavenger birds too bloated to fly, waddling rats, scraps of clothing. High Abode had not just been massacred; it had been left to rot.

Mouse went chalky white with shock. Sunlight lost his temper. His outrage should have been the shrill complaint of an adolescent, but it came out as a thunderclap of celestial fury.

“Absolute Purity, he calls himself? Absolute Putrefaction, I say! Is the Son of the Sun mad? Does no one teach him history? Do they not warn him that such atrocities herald the end of a dynasty? Go! Go now! Go and bring honest people to give these wretches peace!”

The farmer was so overcome that he left his tortoise cart and ran off on foot, leaving Sunlight weeping in it. Shard and Mouse remained behind on the charnel ground, making vain efforts to drive away the vermin. The Firstborn continued to growl in tongues Shard did not know, although sometimes he recognized the names of infamous tyrants and celebrated battles.

Eventually, the youth’s frail strength gave way and he flopped down in exhaustion and misery. Shard waited a few prudent moments, then approached the cart. He had no doubt that an army of the local peasants would come running in answer to the Firstborn’s summons, eager now to give the dead proper burial as they should have done sooner.

“Master?” he whispered.

The boy looked up with eyes hollowed like caves by the cares of centuries. “I warned you that my disciples come to no good.”

“Yes, Master, and I do not flinch, not yet. We’ll go on to Sublime Mountain, now? So you can admonish the Golden Throne?”

The Firstborn shook his head. “We must go south. I must find Bamboo and stop him. He does not know what he is doing.”

Shard remembered something he had written only yesterday.

The Master said, “No folly have I not seen before, no sorrow have I not mourned many times, no warning is ever heeded.”