Glistening in the firelight, a drop of sweat gathered at the tip of Yüen Su’s nose. It was a distraction, a thing of the world, and she strove to ignore it, to empty her mind of all thought as she knelt in prayer. Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa, she prayed over and over: I bow to you, being of wisdom, who hears the cries of the world. The drop swelled until it fell from her nose, landing with a small explosion of dust on the pounded-earth floor of the mud hut in which she knelt. It was followed by another, and another. But though the little hut was sweltering hot, when she finished her prayers she found herself hesitant to leave—unwilling to return to her master, General Zhang, and the noise and smoke and stink of death that surrounded him.
Su slipped the bracelet from her wrist. The air of Xian would calm her.
The bracelet was of bronze, and depicted the Dragon of the West with its tail in its mouth. Though not elegant, it had been carefully crafted for her by Shan the metalworker, and blessed by the Mother of her order with a special charm.
Su spoke a secret word of power, and the bracelet tingled in her fingers and grew cool, a shimmer like a desert mirage filling the space inside it. She brought her nose close to the opening and smiled at the cold air that blew from it. It was breezy this night in her favorite meadow, half a day’s walk from her home temple of Miao Feng Shan in the country of Xian.
The breeze smelled of high mountains and cold streams. It smelled of snow. It smelled of home.
She opened the neck of her robe and allowed the air from the bracelet to flow down inside, evaporating the sweat that pooled in the hollow of her throat and the space between her breasts. But after only a short time of this she sighed. It would not do to luxuriate too long when she had so many difficult tasks awaiting her. She spoke a second word. The bracelet tingled again, and then returned to inert metal.
It was still cool to the touch, though, as she slipped it back onto her wrist. A small reminder of the snows of Xian, so many thousand leagues from the wretched little town of Guang-xi.
Yüen Su stepped from the shabby little hut into the torchlit street. Barely deserving of the name “street,” it was only two paces wide and constructed of dirt, like everything else in Guang-xi. Even the walls that surrounded the town were simple bulwarks of rammed earth, not even faced with brick. They would offer little resistance to the siege engines of Yao Ming.
No townspeople were about at this hour; to defy the curfew imposed by General Zhang was to embrace death. But Zhang’s troops recognized Su, and bowed to her as she passed.
Zhang stood with his lieutenants in the great hall—such as it was—of the town’s magistrate, who cowered with his family to one side. Zhang had sketched a map of the town and its surroundings in the dirt floor, and indicated its various features with the pointed butt of a halberd.
Zhang himself was an imposing figure, with dark intense eyes and a long gray beard that suggested his many years of successful command. He wore a long purple robe, trimmed and tasseled in red; the armored surcoat with its many square bronze plates hung on a rack nearby. “Do not depend too much on the mountains to the north,” he scolded one of his lieutenants. “Yao will send at least three companies around to surprise us from behind. It may take them some days to get here, but we should be prepared. Post watchmen here, here, and here.”
“But they have been riding hard for days, my lord,” said a lieutenant. “For exhausted men to cross those mountains would be suicide.”
“Yes,” Zhang acknowledged with a grim nod. “That is why he will send three companies—to be sure at least one survives.”
The lieutenant gave a silent bow, conceding the truth of Zhang’s observation. Yao’s troops were untrained conscripts, but they vastly outnumbered Zhang’s remaining forces and Yao was willing to spend many lives for a successful attack.
“Priestess Yüen Su,” Zhang said, fixing her with a dark commanding gaze, “Have you prepared yourself as you require?”
“Yes, my lord,” she replied with a trembling bow.
Zhang pointed to a series of parallel lines drawn on the plain below the city’s south gate. “You are to scout General Yao’s camp. Determine the strength of his forces, and if possible his plans.”
Head still bowed, she stammered out, “But, my lord, I know nothing of military matters.”
Zhang sighed heavily and looked heavenward. “Honored ancestors, I thank you for saving me and these remaining men at the battle of Yu-min. But why could you not have seen fit to leave me more than this one miserable priestess?” His piercing gaze returned to Su. “Can your spirit hear, as well as see?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“The general’s tent will be in the middle of the camp. Listen there for any numbers. How many companies, battalions, divisions, horses. Times and places. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Begin, then. Waste no time.”
“Yes, my lord.” She bowed deeply, then knelt on the dirt floor and pulled her box of incense from her sleeve.
Su made her preparations, shivering beneath her robe despite the oppressive heat. As a priestess of Guan Shi Yin, the living expression of loving compassion, she had devoted her life to understanding and peace. Using the powers of her office for warlike purposes was abhorrent to her. But hers had been the poor fortune to be on an outreach mission to the court of Li when General Yao of the upstart state of Wu had attacked, two months ago. She had been placed under the protection and command of General Zhang, who had kept her safe and never before asked for anything in return. But the last of Zhang’s military magicians and priests—ancestor worshippers who practiced human sacrifice, but still human beings worthy of Guan Shi Yin’s love—had been killed by Yao’s forces at the recent, disastrous battle of Yu-min. Zhang had no one else, and she must carry out his orders not only because he was her properly appointed commander, but because he and his men had saved her life in the initial attack and many times since.
Even so, the thought of it made her sick to her stomach.
He has not asked me to fight or kill, she reassured herself. It didn’t help much.
She cleared her mind and prayed, struggling to block out the sounds and smells of an occupied town preparing for attack. After a long while, with a feeling like tearing silk, her spirit detached itself from her body.
It was always disorienting to look back on herself, yet now she found it strangely reassuring—a female Xian face, with its strong cheekbones, shaven head, and pigtail, alone among these shaggy Li men. It was almost as though one of her temple sisters were here.
Then she chided herself for delay, and sent her spirit out through the tile roof of the hall.
Su’s spirit soared above the town, with its courtyards glimmering with the torches of Zhang’s remaining troops. Quickly she flew over the walls, and the moat beyond them, to the plain below the town where Yao had massed his army. Thousands of fires burned there, in rigid rows and columns. Su knew nothing of armies, but she could count, and even she could see that Yao’s army vastly outnumbered Zhang’s forces.
But there, in the center of the camp, was one tent larger than the others, which swarmed with soldiers coming and going like an ants’ nest. Su swooped down upon it and through its fabric roof.
She recognized Yao Ming at once—she had seen his scarred, dark-bearded face in many scrolls and woodcuts. He wore an armored surcoat, fashioned of many palm-sized squares of rhinoceros leather, over a blue robe with black trim. At the moment he and his lieutenants were bowed in concentration over a smoking brazier.
The smoke from the brazier stung her eyes as she moved closer, trying to hear their conversation. But they were not conversing—they were praying. Foul prayers to the black demons worshipped by the Wu. She would learn nothing useful from this, so she moved behind Yao, to a low table where maps were spread out.
As she peered closer, trying to make sense of the maps’ rough markings, the prayers reached a feverish enthusiasm, the Wu men shrieking and swaying as they waved their hands over their heads. Finally they all shouted four words together, and Yao threw a handful of mulberry leaves into the brazier.
Su coughed in the choking smoke.
But... this was wrong. Smoke should not affect her spirit body.
This was no ordinary fire.
Panicking, she gathered her spirit self to flee. But before she reached the tent roof, a huge, taloned hand darted out of the smoke and grabbed her by the foot. “Ai!” she cried.
Helplessly she struggled as the rest of the black demon coalesced into being. It had the form of a huge, muscular man, barely able to stand erect at the center of the tent, but its face was distorted by enormous fangs and protruding eyes and its skin was charcoal-black. The hand that held her foot was hard as stone and ridged with muscle. “Release me, demon, in the name of Guan Shi Yin!” But her words had no effect.
“What have you caught, oh my demon?” asked Yao. He had heard nothing.
“A spying spirit,” the demon replied, in a voice like stones grinding together.
“Bring him here!”
“As my master wishes.” The demon reached up with its other hand and grabbed Su by the neck, then pulled her down to the floor of the tent.
Her boots thumped on the dirt, and then the demon forced her to her knees.
She gasped at the pain, then gasped again at the realization of what it meant. The demon had pulled her material body into the tent!
Yao stood, as did his lieutenants. “I see that Zhang is reduced to having Xian priestesses do his spying for him,” he said. “An excellent sign. Release her, oh my demon.”
The demon pulled her to her feet, then shoved her into the center of the circle. Yao paced around her, examining her as though she were a horse in the market. His nostrils flared. “You stink of magic,” he declared.
Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa, she thought over and over, willing her knees to stop their trembling. Trying to force herself to meet her end with dignity.
Yao leaned closer, stinking of sweat and blood. This was the man who had decapitated his own uncle to gain the generalship, who had slaughtered entire cities for the insult of opposing his will. So fearful was his reputation that even his most unwilling conscripts obeyed his orders instantly. He sniffed at her hair, her neck, her shoulder, then down her arm. Then he smiled, and pushed back her sleeve, revealing the bronze dragon bracelet.
“What is this pretty bauble?”
Su said nothing, clenching her teeth to prevent them from chattering.
He grabbed her queue and pulled back her head, leaning in close. “Answer me!” he roared, his foul breath hot on her face.
“It is just a souvenir!” she cried, the truth forced out of her by the press of fear. “A small magic to remind me of my home, nothing more!”
“Indeed?” He seized her forearm and pulled the bracelet off her wrist. It came easily. “I think perhaps you do not tell the whole truth.” He examined the bracelet, turning it over so the firelight glinted across the dragon’s scales, then squeezed it over his rough hand and onto his own wrist. “I shall hold this object for further examination.” He turned away from her. “Oh my demon, you may have this spy to do with as you please.”
Su turned and looked up, and up, at the demon’s leering face, then shut her eyes hard.
Then a great commotion erupted from outside the tent, shouting and banging and a fierce inhuman bellow.
A soldier burst in, eyes wide. “They send fire demons against us!”
Yao’s jaw clenched in anger, and he glared accusingly at Su, then turned back to the demon. “Defend the camp!” he shouted. The demon roared and plunged out through the tent flap, but the doorway was too small and the demon brought half the tent down behind itself.
Pandemonium ensued, inside and out, as the tent collapsed on Su, Yao, and his lieutenants. Su found herself struggling under the heavy fabric, blinded by smoke, while all around her men shouted and cursed. A crackling sounded, much too close. The tent had caught fire! Su dropped to the dirt and began to squirm blindly forward.
An eternity later, Su’s hand reached out and found... nothing. The edge of the tent! She dug her fingers into the dirt and pulled herself free, gasping in the smoky air. Fire flickered all around, and men ran shouting in every direction. Over all sounded the roars of the demon and the bellowing of the unseen attackers. Su gathered her feet under her and ran.
She ran only a few steps before colliding with a hard surface... a broad torso covered with small square plates of rhinoceros hide.
Yao Ming.
“I won’t let you go that easily, my little spy,” he panted, and seized the front of her robe.
Su tried and failed to pull Yao’s hand away, but her fingers recognized the dragon bracelet.
She spoke a secret word of power.
Yao screamed, and his hand released its grip... and dropped into the dirt with a sickening thud.
Su ducked away from Yao as he clutched his severed wrist, cursing, blood running down his sleeve. But as she turned to run away, she spotted a glint of bronze in the blood-stained dirt. She spoke the second word of power as she scooped up the bracelet and ran into the night.
The panicked camp was not concerned with stopping one small priestess; in addition to the general’s tent, other fires burned here and there, and the fire demons bellowed and clattered all around. Su kept low and scurried. Her previous flight over the camp, in spirit form, helped her to keep her feet on the right path.
Soon she escaped into the darkness between the camp and the town. After that she met no one until she came to the moat, gasping and holding her sides. “Yüen Su!” cried the lieutenant at the drawbridge. “Thank the ancestors you are alive!”
Immediately she was conducted to Zhang, where she reported what had occurred. When she described how the demon had captured her, Zhang nodded grimly. “So I surmised, from what you said just before you vanished.”
“But how did you summon fire demons?” she asked. “You have no other priests or magicians.”
“Fire demons?” Zhang snorted. “Yao’s foul habits are too well known to his conscript troops, they see demons behind every bush. No, we did nothing more than to tie burning lanterns to the tails of several bulls. But they do make an impressive noise, and do a most satisfactory amount of damage. Now go and rest. I will require your services again in the morning.”
“Yes, my lord.” But she did not leave. “My lord... thank you for rescuing me.”
Zhang gave her a curt nod in reply. “I would not abandon my only remaining priestess.” Then his face softened. “I am glad you were not harmed.”
She thanked him again, and bowed, then retired to her borrowed pallet. But though she was bone-weary and the hour was late, she barely slept. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the demon’s leering eyes and fearsome teeth.
The next day, after a wholly inadequate breakfast of thin rice gruel, Su was again commanded to survey the enemy’s camp. It took her half the morning to calm herself sufficiently to release her spirit from her body, and she hesitated for a long time beneath the hall’s tile roof before pushing through it.
When she arrived at the camp she found Yao at the top of a small hill, with his demon beside him and all his thousands of men gathered around him. Though his missing right hand was bound up by a blood-soaked bandage, his face burned with energy and determination. Su ducked behind a rocky outcropping before the demon could spot her.
Yao stood beside a large pile of clay pots. As she peered out from behind the rock, he took a mattock from one of his lieutenants and methodically smashed them all. Then, breathing hard and holding the mattock high, he stood on the pile of shards and began to speak.
Puzzled by this display, Su shifted closer, trying to hear what Yao had to say. But as she approached, Yao’s nostrils twitched and he paused, sniffing the air. Then the demon cried out and pointed straight at her. Rigid with anger, Yao ran to his war-chest and drew out a black spear that shimmered with power.
Su did not wait to find out how well the demon could throw. She flew back to the magistrate’s hall with desperate haste.
“Ah!” she gasped, drawing in a breath as her spirit rejoined her physical body. Zhang’s lieutenants immediately bombarded her with questions, but she had to close her eyes and concentrate on her breathing for a long moment before she could even speak coherently.
Once she had made her report, Zhang took a deep breath and turned away, hands gripping each other behind his back. His lieutenants were silent. “What does this mean, my lord?” she asked him.
“Yao has created a ‘death ground,’” Zhang replied without turning around. “Without cooking pots, his men now have only the food they have already prepared—perhaps three days’ worth.” He turned back then, and his face was as grim as she had ever seen it. “They know they must conquer or starve, and so they will fight without pause and without mercy.”
Zhang thanked Su for her report, then began discussing with his lieutenants the defense of the town. But as Su bowed and prepared to leave, he gestured for her to stay.
Zhang clearly expected an attack in overwhelming force within the day. Though his words about troop emplacements, fallback positions, and supply lines were meaningless to Su, she could see the desperation of the situation in the empty faces of his lieutenants. One by one they bowed and departed, to make what preparations they could.
After the last lieutenant had left, Zhang gestured Su close to him. He looked old, so old. “Su,” he said, “you are a priestess of Xian. You understand compassion, and peace. I am a man of war.” He took a deep breath. “Am I a bad man, Yüen Su?”
She considered the question carefully before replying. “It is true that many have died, on both sides of this conflict, because of your orders. But you have also saved many others who might have died. I believe you have been as good a man as you can be.”
Zhang sighed, and looked at his folded hands. “I have an opportunity to save many lives this day. But I fear that I will not have the courage to do so.”
Su waited for the words to come.
“Yao wants me. Only me. He knows that, while I live, the people of Li will never surrender, no matter how badly defeated. But if he can parade my head on a spear to all the cities of Li, they will accept his victory and allow themselves to be quietly absorbed into the state of Wu.” Zhang took Su’s hands. “I mean to surrender myself to Yao. If I do this thing, Yao may spare the lives of some of my men today, and thousands more will live instead of dying in a hopeless struggle against the Wu.” His eyes pleaded. “Help me to be strong. Help me to carry through with this plan.”
Su’s heart resonated with Zhang’s pain, as one gong will vibrate when another nearby is struck. But she damped it down. “No,” she said firmly. “I will not help you.”
Zhang dropped his eyes from hers. “Then all is lost.”
“No!” she said again. Then, more gently: “As long as you live, not all is lost.”
Zhang looked up again.
“I have seen the evil of Yao, and the black demons that Tang worships. I know that any lives you save today by surrendering yourself will be lives lost in misery and despair tomorrow. Even if you die here, the people of Li will know that you died fighting, and they will do the same in your honor.”
Zhang shook his head with a rueful smile. “Priestess, you understand too well how to motivate an old soldier.”
“I have learned from one of the best.”
Zhang bowed Su from his presence.
Outside the hall Zhang’s chief armorer, an aged craftsman with some knowledge of practical magic, awaited her with many pointed questions about the demon’s exact appearance and behavior. Finally he thanked her, though his expression was grim. “From what you have said, I believe it is a taloned demon of the Fifteenth Hell. These are vulnerable to certain charms, but they must be written on silk, and we lost our scribe at Yu-min.”
Su’s heart leapt with hope. “I can write!”
“Thank the ancestors!”
With the armorer’s help, Su wrote out the charms on dozens of strips of silk, which they tied to the shafts of arrows. She then blessed each one with a prayer to Guan Shi Yin. “I will accept the assistance of any god who is willing to give it,” the armorer said with a shrug.
After that Su set to work making bandages, blessing amulets, and praying with any soldiers and citizens who desired her assistance. As she was blessing a jade disk for a trembling young soldier, she heard horns and a distant roar like wind and surf.
The sound of an army at the charge.
Su’s station was at Zhang’s headquarters, and she hurried to him.
“I need you to be my kite,” Zhang said when she arrived. “Fly high over the town and give me the strategic view.”
“Yes, my lord.” As she bowed, their eyes met briefly. He did not say that will keep your spirit safe from Yao’s spear, and she did not thank him for it. But they both understood.
Exhausted and shaken as she was, it took Su a long time to send her spirit out. By the time she rose above the magistrate’s hall, Yao’s forces had already begun crossing the moat, the roaring demon in the lead. But as soon as it came within range, Zhang’s best bowmen let loose with Su’s charmed arrows. At their touch the demon screamed and burst into flame, and then it was no more.
But the demon was only one part of the attack; even as it burned, massive wooden fork-carts, catapults, and scaling ladders rolled across temporary bamboo bridges. Zhang’s men pelted them with flaming arrows from the tops of the walls, but Yao had prepared for this: the fork-carts were protected by wooden roofs covered with fresh oxhide, which trapped the arrows and refused to catch fire.
Su reported this development to Zhang, and a moment later her spirit eyes saw men with heavy crossbows charging to the defense. But they were too late. Under the protection of the hide-covered roofs, the first of the fork-carts had reached the walls. Thick braids of twisted rope sent wooden levers—each twice as long as a man and tipped with a three-tined iron fork—snapping down onto the town’s earthen walls like the striking claw of a great tiger. Two or three such blows were sufficient to bring down a large chunk of wall. Though Zhang’s bowmen fired rapidly into the gap, killing many of the invaders, more and more of Yao’s conscript soldiers were pouring over the moat. They soon began swarming over their comrades’ bodies, through the gaps in the wall, and into the town.
“Fall back!” Zhang ordered his lieutenants when Su told him the walls had been breached. Then he turned back to Su. “We too must retreat.” She found herself leaning heavily on his arm as they hurried out of the magistrate’s hall.
Zhang and Su moved in the midst of a flood of screaming, panicked townspeople, heading for the garrison where the town’s west wall met the mountains. The sturdy little building was not a castle, barely even a fort, but it was the most defensible structure in the town and it was large enough to hold all of Zhang’s troops.
But when they arrived, they found fewer than two hundred soldiers. “We have been taking very heavy casualties,” reported a lieutenant whose head was bandaged up with a blood-soaked rag. “The Wu men fight like trapped rats.”
“Let in five hundred civilians,” said Zhang, “then bar the door.”
While Zhang and the three lieutenants who had made it to the garrison prepared to make a last stand, Su sagged exhausted and worthless in a corner. She was too drained to send her spirit out again, and she would be no use whatsoever in a fight. All she could do was prepare her spirit for the afterlife.
But when she had finished her prayers, the final attack had still not come. “What is he waiting for?” she asked Zhang.
“I do not know,” he said. They pressed through crowds of terrified civilians and wounded soldiers to the outer room, where splintered furniture blocked the garrison’s only door, and peered out an arrow slit.
Outside, mobs of Yao’s troops crowded the street, but they had left an open space in front of the garrison. Yao himself stood in that space, his rhinoceros-hide surcoat stained with soot and blood. “Does Zhang yet live?” he called out.
“I live,” Zhang called back, though he stood to the side of the arrow slit in case one of Yao’s sharpshooters should make an attempt to change that. Su moved to another slit nearby, unable to take her eyes off of Yao.
“I would like to make you an offer,” Yao replied. “You have a Xian priestess with you. Do not deny it, I can smell her. Give the bitch to me, and I will allow you and your men to live.”
Zhang looked at Su, his expression unreadable, but he called back, “We would prefer to die, rather than live under Wu rule.”
Yao gave a swift curt nod that indicated he had expected no other response. “I will give you until dawn to reconsider your decision.” He raised his voice. “My offer applies to anyone in the building. Send out the Xian priestess, and all your lives will be spared.”
Su’s knees gave way. She slid down the wall, collapsing like a horse that has been ridden too far. But Zhang stood tall, and spoke in a general’s voice. “You will not be surrendered,” he said to Su, and stared around at the soldiers and civilians who crowded the room. “This I promise.”
The sun crept downward, and slipped below the horizon, but the garrison with its mass of people grew no cooler; Su blinked stinging sweat from her eyes as she prayed with a freshly-widowed civilian and her three small children. Then, when the prayer was done, she slipped her bracelet from her wrist. “This is a special charm,” she whispered to the middle child. “It is supposed to be a secret. But now... I suppose there is little reason to hide it any longer.” She spoke a word of power, and cool mountain air flowed from the bracelet.
The children gasped and cooed in pleasure, pressing their faces into the breeze, and the young widow smiled at their happiness. But then the youngest reached out for the shiny bauble, and thrust her tiny hand through the shimmering loop all the way up to the elbow. Su gasped at the memory of Yao’s severed hand, but the panic lasted only a moment; she had dabbled her own fingers through the bracelet into the cool air beyond many times. It was only at the moment the charm was invoked that it was so dangerous. Still, magic was always unpredictable, and she gently grasped the child’s arm and drew it back out of the bracelet.
The infant’s face bunched up as though to cry, but then relaxed into an expression of curiosity and wonder as she stared at her own hand, tightly clenched in a fist. Then the tiny fingers opened.
Su too looked on in wonder.
Sparkling in the child’s palm was a tiny handful of... snow.
“General Zhang!” Su called as she hurried to his quarters. “General Zhang! I must speak with the armorer immediately!”
Luck was with her: the armorer was among the survivors. But after he had inspected the bracelet, he shook his head and handed it back to her. “I am sorry, priestess,” he said. “If it were iron, I might be able to enlarge it as you request. But bronze is not so malleable.”
Su’s spirits, so recently raised, fell hard.
“Still...” said the armorer, tugging on his beard, “though the bracelet cannot be hammered out, perhaps the spell can be. What do you know of its construction?”
“It partakes of the Circle of Heaven, of course, and the power of the Dragon of the West, but my own memories are the focus of the charm. It will not work unless I am touching the bracelet.”
“Hmm. The Dragon can be invoked with the appropriate herbs, perhaps, but the Circle...”
Su, Zhang, and the armorer talked for a long time, while the torches burned down and were replaced. Soldiers came and went, calling out watches at intervals. Finally, at the beginning of the last watch before dawn, they agreed that no better plan could be devised.
“It will be dangerous,” advised the armorer. “The Dragon of the West is not easily tamed.”
“I understand,” said Su.
Zhang’s expression was serious. “Those who form the circle must remain behind. I cannot ask you to do this.”
Su matched Zhang’s gaze with her own. “I have no choice,” she said. “The charm is tied to me. All I ask is that you give me a sharp knife, so that I may choose the moment of my death.”
Zhang held Su’s gaze for a moment, then closed his eyes and bowed his head. Without a word, he drew the sheathed knife from his own belt and handed it to her. She bowed to him as she accepted it.
“Come,” said the armorer. “We have little time.”
They lit incense, and burned herbs, and spilled wine upon the ground. And then Su found herself kneeling before a large stone, trembling as though from cold though the night was still sweltering. Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa, she prayed, as she held out her bracelet in her two hands and placed it on the stone.
The armorer set his chisel on the bracelet, just where the Dragon of the West’s tail entered its mouth. “When you are ready,” he said quietly, and raised his mallet, awaiting her signal.
Su looked into his eyes, and took a deep breath. Then she gave a fierce nod, and as the armorer brought his mallet down she spoke a word of power.
The bracelet shimmered and tingled between her fingers for a moment before the metal parted.
“Ah!” Su cried out, as cold fire burned along her arms and across her chest. It was as though she hugged a huge, invisible tree of ice—her arms were forced into a circle by the pressure of the spell, and a cold blast of air blew upward into her face. But though the broken bracelet seared her fingers with its chill, she held on.
Then she felt warm fingers on her hands. It was Chen, Zhang’s youngest surviving lieutenant. All the lieutenants had volunteered for this duty, but Zhang had insisted that the skills of the other two could not be lost. Chen held tightly to Su’s trembling hands, his face impassive.
“I... I will release my left hand,” Su said through chattering teeth, and Chen shifted his grip so that his right hand held Su’s left and his left grasped the bracelet.
“I am ready,” said Chen.
Su squeezed her eyes tightly shut and let go with her left hand.
Then she screamed, as a burning-cold wall of wind forced her arms apart. Chen cried out at the same time, but he held her left hand with a firm grip.
Su opened her eyes. Her arms and Chen’s formed a nearly circular loop, the two of them grasping the broken bracelet on one side and each other’s hands on the other. Looking down, though her eyes watered from the chill wind, she saw—not her own feet and Chen’s, but a pure unmarked patch of snow. “It’s working!” she gasped.
Two more volunteers joined the circle. Soldiers. One cursed as the cold seared his hands; the other only clenched his jaw. The circle was now nearly a man’s height across.
Chen and the man to his right now lowered themselves to one knee and dropped their joined hands to the floor, while Su and the fourth man raised the bracelet as high as they could. The circle was now a tilted ellipse, and the fierce wind pouring out of it whipped the clothing of the men nearby.
“Go!” Zhang yelled into the gale. “Civilians first, then soldiers! Officers last! Hurry!”
Women and children stepped over Chen’s hand and ducked under Su’s, squinting against the wind and gasping as their bare feet touched the snow. But they pressed ahead, driven by the knowledge that Yao would soon attack. Old men followed, and more women, some carrying babies and leading children. The warmth of their bodies as they passed eased Su’s chattering teeth, a little, and they stepped through the circle quickly and in good order, but as the civilians went on and on Su’s trembling began to shake her entire body.
Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa, she prayed, not knowing how much longer she could hold on.
Then a warm weight settled on her shoulders. It was a horse blanket, and it stank, but it helped immensely. She looked over her shoulder and saw Zhang placing another blanket on the man to her left.
The parade of women, children, and men continued. Ice caked in the folds of the blanket, and Su’s hands ached from the cold. Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa.
Her prayers were interrupted by Zhang’s harsh, commanding voice. “This is too slow!” he said, and placed his hand on the bracelet.
“No!” Su cried out, but it was too late—Zhang had inserted himself into the circle.
“Two by two!” he yelled, and the civilians complied, walking two abreast from the heat and dust of Guang-xi into the cold and snow of the Xian mountains.
“Zhang, how could you?” Su called to him across the endless flow of heads and shoulders. “You cannot remain behind. The people need you!”
“The people need me now,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone. Snow was already accumulating in his beard. “And I could not allow myself to live, knowing that my brave priestess stayed behind to save me.”
Su’s head bowed, and her knees sagged. “Oh, Zhang...” The cold bit through the heavy horse blanket, and she began to tremble anew.
And then, impossibly, Zhang began to chuckle.
“What do you find funny in this situation?” she demanded of him.
“It reminds me of when I was a child,” he said. “Do you know ‘Little Mousey Brown’?”
Shivering, Su just looked at him.
“It is a circle dance the Li children do. You hold hands in a circle, and dance around, and sing.” And then he opened his mouth, and in a frog-like bass he began to sing:
“He climbed up the candlestick,
The little mousey brown,
To steal and eat tallow,
And he couldn’t get down.”
To her own astonishment, Su recognized the rhyme, though she hadn’t thought of it in years. She began to swing her arms gently back and forth as she joined Zhang in the second verse:
“He called for his grandma,
But his grandma was in town,
So he doubled up into a wheel,
And rolled himself down.”
She was nearly unable to finish the verse, she was laughing so hard. Laughing like a child in the snows of Xian. “Yes, we had this rhyme in Xian,” she gasped. “And at the end, when the mousey roooolled himself down, we would all...”
She stopped.
“Would what?” asked Zhang.
She explained how the Xian version of the dance ended. “Do you think...”
“I don’t know.” Zhang’s face grew thoughtful. “We can try.”
Newly invigorated, the circle waited while the last of the civilians stepped through and the first of the soldiers followed them. Soon only a handful of soldiers and one lieutenant remained in the wind-whipped room. But then the last two scouts hurried in and barred the door behind themselves. “Yao has broken through the blockade!” said one, sweat running down his face.
“He will find a surprise,” said Zhang. “Go!”
The scout ducked under Su and Zhang’s hands, joined at the bracelet, and vanished into the snow. “Good luck,” said the lieutenant as he followed, leaving the room empty save for the circle of five and the whistling wind.
Their isolation did not last long. A moment later came a heavy thud at the barred door, and the latch splintered.
“Shall we roll ourselves down?” said Zhang, but though his words were light his expression was serious. None of them knew what the consequences of their action might be.
“Yes,” said Su, and raised the bracelet high. “Let us roll ourselves down.”
A second thud, and the door crashed into pieces.
The man opposite the bracelet took a deep breath and, without releasing his grip on either side, ran under Su and Zhang’s hands.
The circle turned itself inside-out.
Su felt as though she, herself, were turning inside-out.
The last thing she saw in the garrison of Guang-xi was Yao’s face, livid with anger, his hair blown back by the wind from Xian.
And then she found herself standing in the snow—in a cold but gentle breeze. A natural, not supernatural, cold. The sun was just rising, causing the trampled snow to steam gently.
Su sagged to her knees, and the broken bracelet dropped to the snow beside her. It was only inert metal now.
“How far from here to the temple?” Zhang said to her.
“Half a day’s walk.”
“Then let us begin,” he said, and extended his hand.
General Zhang Hua returned to Li from Xian the next spring. With the support of the priestesses of Miao Feng Shan, the advantage of surprise, and the loyalty of the people of Li, he was able to not only re-take the Li territory lost to Wu, but overcome the conscript forces of Yao and capture the Wu capital. He went on to found a great dynasty, ruling for many years with the help of his chief adviser Yüen Su.
He is known to this day as the Compassionate Emperor.