Jade Dragon Mountain (12 page)

Dayan was behind him, and he could see the path ahead winding, empty, all the way to the low ridge. It would not be difficult to reach it before dark. He would camp there, and tomorrow he would follow the trail down to the banks of the Golden Sand River.

Sun pooled like bright liquid between the shadows of trees. Old oaks stood, tall and peaceful with crusty bark and bearded branches, like friendly philosophers enjoying a slow and eternal conversation. Limestone crags jutted from the ground to form sharp-edged mazes. Beneath his feet, firm-packed dirt alternated with spills of gray scree that slid and clattered as he walked across it.

At midday, he came to a side trail and followed it to a rocky promontory over a deep ravine. It matched the description he had read in his gazetteer, so, reassured that he was on the correct path, he decided to make himself a bowl of millet. He arranged his utensils on the rocks and left them there while he located a small stream to fill his pot with water. He returned, made a fire in a crevice far from any dry brush, and prepared his meal. When he had finished, he sat on a comfortable patch of moss to eat and to take in the view.

It was very quiet. After a while, a tendril of cloud drifted into the narrow gorge below the precipice where he sat. The cloud thickened into a winding, ponderous snake. It continued to expand, slowly filling the ravine until it rose to the level of the promontory and engulfed Li Du. The world around him became white, and he could no longer discern the shapes of trees or rocks, or the contours of the path on which he would continue. The south summit of the mountain, visible a moment before, was gone.

The quiet deepened into silence. Li Du did not move, but rested his eyes on the soft, white expanse. As he watched, the cloud shifted and broke. He saw, as if through a window, a tree on the opposite side of the gorge. It was a dead, hollowed oak, blackened by fire. Only one branch remained, reaching out perpendicular to the trunk. The vapor thickened, the window closed, and the tree was gone.

Another opening appeared. Through this new window Li Du saw movement, and thought he could make out the rounded back of a little bear trundling across a clearing into a copse of evergreens. Again the mist moved, erasing the scene. The next break in the cloud framed a waterfall, a still, silver column too distant for him to perceive its tumbling energy. That window closed, another opened, and he saw a tree. It was in the same place as the tall oak he had seen minutes earlier. Only this one was not hollow, but alive, its limbs and trunk whole and draped in garlands of lichen.

He imagined then that the shifting clouds contained thousands of years, and that he had seen the same tree in two different times. What if every moment of that tree's existence, the whole of its past and its future, existed at once, here in this blank and infinite cloud?

An eerie suggestion of his own insubstantiality pulled at him. He, too, was inside the void. If someone standing on the other bank of the ravine were to see Li Du through a window in the mist, what would that person see? Perhaps Li Du would appear as a child, an elderly man, a ghost, or a memory of an old poem. In this place, the present was of no consequence, and he was adrift. It was a feeling he had longed for over the years of his exile.

The entire cloud was beginning to dissipate, and Li Du walked to the farthest edge of the overlook. From that vantage point, the city of Dayan was visible in the distance. He could just see the long, walled rectangle of Tulishen's mansion, and the layered roofs of the pagoda on top of Lion Hill. It was impossible now to detect any movement on the streets or in the surrounding fields. It was like a model of a city, a cold replica in ceramic and paint.
And yet
, he thought,
today it must be more crowded than it was yesterday, the inn more raucous, the market bursting from its confines, spreading through the quieter streets.
He turned away.

It took him a little while to clean his pot. He dried it over the fire, then wiped it so that it would not dampen or soil his books. His pack was beginning to wear through in the places where the sharp corners of the volumes pressed, and he rearranged them slightly to preserve the newest set of patches. He hefted the pack onto a stone ledge, looped the straps over his shoulders, and pushed through the azaleas, back to the path.

*   *   *

When the sun began to sink, it tinted the green and gray slopes and cliffs with rich amber. Li Du was high enough now that he could see the spine of the dragon extending its sharp peaks to the north. The summits beyond the first one were all bare rock veined white with snow, impassable. Their western aspects were soaked in deep sunlight, becoming more saturated even as their eastern counterparts receded into cold shadow.

His eye was drawn to movement along a ridge as sharp and thin as a ripped edge of paper. Dotted at equal intervals, like round white beads on a string, was a herd of sheep. They moved all at the same slow speed, so that the spaces between them did not change as they traversed the ridge line. A little way down the slope, Li Du could see the shepherd, a dark spot with a hat and walking stick. They were so far away that Li Du would never have noticed that there was a person there, were it not for the bright white sheep at the junction of rock and sky.

According to the description in his gazetteer, once he reached the far side of the meadow the path would begin to slope down. At that point he would find a series of caves, large enough to provide comfortable shelter. The author urged the traveler to explore the caves in daylight, and in particular to observe the threads of sky through the stone at different angles. Li Du's feet were tired and beginning to ache, but the meadows were blustery and cold. He kept walking.

The trail had just begun to angle downward when he smelled fire smoke and heard the clang of bells and snorts of horses. Remembering the warnings of bandits in the hills north of Dayan, he paused, uncertain what to do. Ahead of him the path dropped, as promised, into a thicket of azalea trees. He remained where he was and tried to discern the exact direction from which the noise came. He scanned the darkening meadows for alternate routes, away from the strangers.

A rock clattered somewhere to his left, and he turned to look even as he took a small step backward away from the sound. It was too late. He had been seen, and the man who approached him now was tall, unsmiling, and pointing a musket directly at Li Du's chest.

*   *   *

There was no doubt that the man was a Tibetan Khampa. He towered over Li Du. His hair hung loose to his shoulders, framing high cheekbones and a sharp, straight nose. Despite his obvious youth, the skin around his eyes was creased with long, deep wrinkles, the result of enduring freezing wind and blinding snow. The hilt of the knife that was sheathed at his belt was wrapped with bright red yarn strung with silver and turquoise beads.

Li Du waited, very still, while the man evaluated him. When he saw the man's face relax slightly, Li Du said, “I am traveling alone. May I continue that way?” And he pointed behind him, away from the sounds of the camp.

The man shook his head and said something in Tibetan.

“Do you speak Chinese?” Li Du asked.

The man shook his head again, repeated what he had said, and gestured with his musket for Li Du to follow him.

They walked down a narrow path through dense, twisting azaleas, and Li Du began to glimpse firelight through the branches. In a few minutes the trail widened into a clearing.

It was a good site—flat, and tucked far enough below the ridge to be out of the wind. The horses and mules, thirty or forty animals, had been relieved of their cargo and their harnesses and were grazing. Four separate fires crackled in shallow pits, each ringed by neat stacks of baskets and wooden saddles. The caravan members were tending to the horses, gathering wood, adjusting leather covers over piles of tea bricks, and preparing food. They looked up curiously as Li Du and the guard passed them.

At the far edge of the clearing was a small hut, a bare structure built from trunks and branches and stone. These buildings were used and maintained by whomever happened to be there, whether a herder tending yaks or sheep, a hunter, a traveler, or a merchant caravan. Li Du had stayed in many over the years.

There was a fire inside this one, and the light shone through the cracks in the wood, warm against the violet and blue twilight. On the roof, fresh cuts of meat were arranged to dry. Pale smoke curled around them through the spaces between the roof beams. The guard had to bend almost double to pass through the leaning door opening, and Li Du followed him inside.

A man and woman were preparing food in one corner, and two men sat opposite each other on either side of the fire. At first Li Du did not recognize the young man who had exchanged his embroidered silks for homespun clothing, and who sat with rounded posture staring into the fire. But when he looked up, Li Du blinked in surprise.

“But you are not a stranger,” said Hamza, straightening from the fire. He beamed at Li Du, and Li Du felt himself returning the smile automatically. But he hesitated before speaking, and looked at the others in the cabin.

The man sitting across from Hamza began an exchange, in Tibetan, with the guard. While they were talking, Hamza gestured for Li Du to sit beside him, and spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “Do not be anxious. These are my friends, and they are only bandits on occasion. But they will want to know why you have come in search of them. Or”—he rubbed his unkempt beard thoughtfully—“did the magistrate send you after me?”

Li Du also kept his voice low. “I was not looking for anyone at all. I departed the city yesterday, and I was going to stay the night in one of the caves.” He proffered Xu Xiake's published journal.

Hamza took the book and perused it. At one page he stopped, and read: “
The local people speak of Mu Ring because he crossed a river in thick mist to win a battle. Curious, I made a point of visiting that river, and found it to be quite shallow. The histories record the bravery of Mu Ring's action, but it is not difficult to cross a stream. This shows how unreliable books are…”
Hamza grimaced. “Your snobbish scholars are very good at ruining stories. I would like to hear more about this soldier who crossed the river. Perhaps the mist was in fact a ruby-eyed demon writhing its vapor coils—but now I must explain to my friend who you are.”

The guard had left the hut, no doubt to return to his post, and the other man was waiting patiently for Hamza. Hamza began to talk to him in Tibetan, and when he had finished he said to Li Du, “Your brows are lifted. I have impressed you? I know most of the words uttered in this world. It is a particular skill of mine. Now I have told them who you are, and assured them that you are a traveler, not an official like your cousin. The two here preparing our stew are Norbu and his wife, Yonzheng. The innkeeper Hoh says that his bread is the best, but Yonzheng's is better. And this man is Kalden Dorjee. It is his caravan.”

Kalden acknowledged this introduction with a shy nod directed more at the fire than at Li Du. Nothing about his appearance suggested fearsomeness, except perhaps his hands, which were large and scarred and thickly callused. He had eyes that slanted down at the outside corners and a somber mouth, set naturally in a slight frown that suggested worry. For a few moments, as he prodded and rearranged the fire, he looked thoughtful.

“My Chinese is very bad,” he said, finally. “Please speak to my friend. I will listen.” He gestured across the fire at Hamza.

“Ah,” said Hamza, pleased. “Then I shall conduct an interrogation. We will pretend that I am a stern official—a magistrate, perhaps.” He affected a posture inspired by formal court portraiture, his back straight, his hands on his knees, his expression suddenly unreadable.

“What,” Hamza began, “can you tell us of the situation in Dayan? Is the magistrate sending soldiers in pursuit of these men?”

Li Du shook his head. “He is not. But you know that the magistrate has blamed the Khampa for the murder of Brother Pieter?”

Kalden's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Hamza answered, “We do. I left Dayan as soon as the rumor reached the inn. Kalden and I have been friends for many years. I came to tell him what had happened. Tomorrow I will go back to Dayan.”

“You have known each other a long time? But I was under the impression that you were from India.”

“Were you? That is strange. I am from Egypt, originally, but when I was eight I joined a ship's crew as cabin boy, and that is how I came to Tibet.”

“But you cannot sail from Egypt to Kham.”

“Rivers do change their courses,” said Hamza, slightly patronizing. “But I have more questions for you. Why does the magistrate suspect this caravan?”

Li Du paused, aware of his own part in the assignation of blame. But he was honest. “The magistrate ordered a search of Pieter's belongings, and asked me to itemize the Latin books. I found a leather purse filled with poisoned tea. The purse was just like that one.” He pointed at a purse hanging from a split in a wall beam.

Kalden made a comment in Tibetan, and Hamza nodded. “Kalden wants to know why you think that he is guilty of murder simply because you discovered poison in a purse that might have been placed there by anyone.”

“Your friend misunderstands,” said Li Du, firmly. “I do not think that he is responsible for Brother Pieter's death. There is evidence that someone who was inside the mansion that night was involved.”

“If that is so, why were the Khampa accused at all?”

“That was the conclusion the magistrate drew from the presence of the embroidered purse. He believes that someone on this caravan killed Pieter over some offense he caused.”

Hamza's expression darkened. “No one here would have done such evil. And no one made a gift to Pieter of any purse or tea. I would have seen it.”

“I went to the inn to find you, in order to ask just that question. How did you hear so soon that the Khampa were accused of the crime?”