The White Mirror (25 page)

Rinzen's room was to their right at the end of the hallway. It was an elegant chamber, luxuriously decorated. The walls were adorned with a border of painted blue flowers. Embroidered silk pillows and lacquered wood gleamed in the candlelight. In contrast to Campo's congeries of bags and boxes, Rinzen's baggage comprised a uniform collection of walnut-hued satchels neatly arranged beside the bed.

Rinzen was seated at a desk preparing ink. His sleeve of deep yellow silk was pushed up his arm, exposing a thin, veined wrist. Li Du could easily picture him among the courtiers in Beijing. In that setting he would be an elegant, serious dignitary carrying a petition from Lhasa, indistinguishable from all the other elegant, serious dignitaries carrying petitions.

With a nod at Li Du and a frown at Hamza, Rinzen stood up. He raised a finger to his mouth to indicate silence. From down the hallway they could hear the murmur of voices. Li Du recognized the cadences of Paolo Campo's Chinese, but the words were too faint to comprehend.

Rinzen picked up an unlit copper lantern. Then he crossed the room to a recess in the wall covered by a heavy silk curtain. He pulled the curtain aside, revealing a staircase leading upward. With a gesture for them to follow, he disappeared into the darkness. After quickly exchanging glances, Li Du and Hamza went after him.

The staircase led to a third floor, then to a fourth—a single, spacious room beneath the tower's roof. Rinzen set the copper lantern down on the table. He lit a pine taper, the light of which fell weakly across assorted objects arranged haphazardly across the floor. Li Du surveyed the collection of broken saddles, barrels, strings of bells, and rusted weapons. This was the discarded excess of a wealthy household.

Rinzen placed the taper into the lantern. Around it spread a starlike pattern of light. Rinzen studied the lambent diamonds and triangles for a moment before he spoke. “I expected you to come alone,” he said, lifting grave eyes to Li Du.

Li Du met his look. “Hamza has my complete trust.”

Light flickered on Hamza's stern, sculpted features. His oiled beard and black eyes gleamed. He addressed Rinzen. “Under the circumstances, you must agree my friend would have been foolish to come here by himself.”

With the barest incline of his head, Rinzen acknowledged Hamza's words. “I will not deny that I am a dangerous man,” he said. “But I pose no threat to you.”

Li Du took a moment to absorb this statement. “And what of Dhamo?”

Rinzen shook his head. “I did not kill him.”

“But you know something about his death,” said Li Du, his eyes still on Rinzen's face. “Something you have kept secret.”

“I know nothing about his death,” said Rinzen. “I did see him on that day, but I had good reason not to speak of it.”

“And we have good reason to think that someone else will die if we do not uncover the truth,” said Hamza.

Apprehension momentarily distorted Rinzen's poise. He looked suddenly older, more careworn. “Please understand my hesitation,” he said. “It is against my instinct to speak openly, however inclined I am to trust you, of all people.” The comment was addressed to Li Du.

“What do you mean?” Li Du was puzzled.

Rinzen's eyes moved to the dark stairway. He picked up the lantern and held it aloft, illuminating the passage. Satisfied that no one was there, he returned the lantern to the table. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I am inclined to trust you,” he said, “because it is known, in the innermost circles, that your actions in service to the Kangxi Emperor not only earned you a pardon from your exile, but elevated you to a position of trusted confidant and advisor to the Celestial Dragon.”

Standing in the dusty attic of a manor hidden on a mountain far from Beijing, Rinzen pronounced the Chinese Emperor's honorific in a tone filled with reverence. It was a voice from a different world. Li Du blinked. “How do you know who I am?”

“Word of your actions in Dayan has traveled through the networks.”

Suddenly Li Du understood. “You are a spy,” he said, reading affirmation in Rinzen's face as he pronounced the words. “You are a spy for the Kangxi Emperor.”

Rinzen nodded. “I never thought I would meet you, the librarian about whom so much has been said. What assignment brings you to this insignificant place?”

Hamza interjected smoothly. “We cannot reveal the private words that passed between the scholar and the Emperor.”

Rinzen lowered his voice to a whisper. “I occupy a position close to the throne of the king—of Lhazang Khan himself. If it was known that I serve the Kangxi—” Rinzen did not finish the sentence.

“But the Kangxi Emperor and Lhazang Khan are allies,” said Li Du. “The Kangxi facilitated Lhazang Khan's rise to power in Lhasa.”

Rinzen's eyes narrowed. “There is no need to test me. We both know that our Emperor has been positioning the pieces for many years. Lhasa is his manifest destiny, and he will acquire it. Lhazang Khan is a blunderer and a fool.”

In the silence that followed, Hamza lit another taper. Holding it in one hand, he began to pass the index finger of his other hand absently through its flame. “A dangerous position,” he said, “to be a spy in Lhasa, where the mosaic tiles are polished so bright that it is like a city of mirrors. There is always someone watching. I was once told by a blind magician that the walls of Lhasa are under an enchantment. They are empowered to listen, and to whisper their reports in cold stone voices to those who know the spells. The best way to keep a secret in Lhasa is to hope it goes unnoticed among all the other secrets.”

Li Du thought of the words Rinzen had uttered on the previous day as the wind pulled the ashes from the fire.
An invisible force may be inferred from the movement of the objects it manipulates.
Was it the Kangxi's hand that had reached across an empire to crush the life of a lone monk?

He addressed Rinzen again. “How is this connected to the hot springs, and to the day Dhamo died?”

Rinzen paused, appearing to gather his thoughts. “To explain to you why I needed to speak with Dhamo alone that day,” he said, “I must explain to you why I am here.” He watched Hamza place the fresh taper into the lantern. “There is a rumor moving through the trade routes,” he said. “It is being spread by pilgrims and spies. They say that the monks of Litang, a place almost as remote and difficult to find as this one, have recognized a child.”

“An incarnation?” Li Du's brow furrowed.

“The greatest incarnation. They are saying that they have recognized the seventh incarnation of the Dalai Lama.”

Li Du did not immediately understand. “But there is a living Sixth Dalai Lama in Lhasa.”

Rinzen nodded. “Lhazang Khan's puppet Dalai Lama. The deposed Sixth who came before may have flouted decorum, but the people were devoted to him. Most feel no loyalty toward his replacement. Many claim that the first Sixth was the true incarnation, betrayed and treacherously deposed.”

Here Rinzen paused, and waited as if in expectation of a response.

Li Du spoke slowly, remembering Sera's account. “The deposed Sixth died during his journey to captivity in the Forbidden City. If he
was
the true Dalai Lama, then he has been reborn.” Li Du raised his eyes to Rinzen's. “There is a Seventh.”

Rinzen gave a single nod that was tense with repressed excitement. “I am on my way to Litang to investigate this rumor.”

“And if it is true?” Li Du was still considering the implications.

“If the rumor is true,” said Rinzen, “then whoever has control of the boy born in Litang will be the most powerful person in Tibet. So you understand that my mission must be accomplished in absolute secrecy.” Rinzen's tone became more urgent. “Lhazang Khan and the Kangxi are not the only contenders for power in Lhasa. There are others. The Dzungar Mongols in the north want the city. They have not forgotten their humiliation when the Kangxi defeated Galdan. There are also the foreign monks and traders from the West, whose agenda remains mysterious. Every power has its own spies on these roads—each one looking for an advantage.”

“And Dhamo was involved in these conspiracies?”

For an instant Rinzen did not seem to comprehend the question. Then he shook his head. “Litang lies on the same path that runs through this valley,” he said. “When I heard that the Chhöshe intended to visit the place of his birth, I seized the opportunity to make the journey to Litang without raising suspicion. I have overseen the Chhöshe's progress for many years. It is natural that I would accompany him.” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “After so many years, I admit that I had forgotten about Dhamo. It was only when we arrived here that I remembered his identification of the Chhöshe, and his visionary powers.”

Li Du waited for Rinzen to continue.

“It occurred to me,” said Rinzen, “that if I could speak to Dhamo, he might produce a new vision that would guide me when I arrived in Litang.”

Li Du glanced at Hamza, but the storyteller's expression was shuttered. Li Du returned his attention to Rinzen. “Did you speak to Dhamo?”

Rinzen opened his hands palms upward and studied the wrinkles etched on them as if they held an answer. “Yes,” he said. “On the day of his death. I did not want to speak to him at the temple where I might be overheard. I glimpsed him crossing the pasture toward the forest, and I saw a chance to speak to him alone.”

“What happened then?”

“I joined him at the hot springs. I asked him questions. I asked him if he had dreamed of a child in Litang. But in the years since I had last seen him he had withdrawn more completely into his own mind. He would not speak to me. When I had said all I could to persuade him to help me, I left. And I swear to you—he was well when I left him.”

Li Du was keenly aware of his own disappointment. “But you must have seen or heard something.”

Rinzen raised his hands in a gesture of apology. “I did not. I was intent on my own errand. I noticed nothing unusual in the forest.”

“You saw no one?”

“I saw the woman—the traveler—as I passed near a small hut amid the trees.”

“Before you spoke to Dhamo, or after?”

“Before.”

“When you heard that Dhamo was dead, did you believe that he had killed himself?”

Rinzen looked down at his hands again. “When I spoke to him at the hot springs, Dhamo was not behaving like a man about to perform such horror upon his own person.” His gaze moved to the light that pooled across the table as if he was searching for a memory within it. “But as I have told you already, he had changed since last I saw him. Perhaps he was in the grip of madness, and I was simply unable to detect it.”

The pine tapers were burning low in the lantern. The room was becoming darker. Rinzen spoke again. “And yet,” he said, “when I heard what happened to the foreign monk, I became afraid. I do not know what danger threatens us here, but no one who travels these roads can be trusted.” He paused. “For my safety,” he said, “as well as for your own, I ask you to keep my secret.”

Rinzen picked up the copper lamp, now barely lit. As he started down the stairs, he turned, already lost in darkness. “Do what you can to pursue the truth of Dhamo's death, if the truth is what you want, but I urge you to be careful. In my life, I have learned to recognize danger. There is something dark here, something that existed before we arrived, something in this house.”

“Wait.” Li Du spoke the word quietly, still sensing Rinzen's presence though he could no longer see him. “What is the meaning of the white mirror?”

The silence was so deep that for a moment Li Du thought Rinzen was gone. Then the darkness answered in Rinzen's voice. “I think it wisest to see it as a warning.”

*   *   *

“For a broker of information, he had little to offer on the matter of Dhamo's death.” Hamza's voice was hushed. They stood in the barn beneath the guest rooms, toward the back wall, where the shadows were deepest. Across the courtyard, firelight still glowed through the windows of the kitchen. The animals, who did not seem to mind Hamza and Li Du's presence, shifted in the dark around them.

“Very little,” agreed Li Du. “He seems preoccupied with his efforts on behalf of the Emperor.” Li Du tried to imagine what it would be like to be the Kangxi's spy in Lhasa. For how many years had Rinzen served as the Emperor's eyes and ears in that city, seeking out faces the Kangxi would want to recognize and conversations the Kangxi would want to hear?

“True,” said Hamza. “For him, visiting this valley is only an excuse to go to Litang.”

“On a secret errand to find the Dalai Lama's seventh incarnation,” said Li Du. He paused. “It is interesting,” he said, “to contrast Sera's account with his. She allows for the possibility that the Dalai Lama who was deposed and sent to be imprisoned in China did not die. If there are others who believe as she does, that the Sixth is still alive, they will not believe that the infant in Litang is his reincarnation.”

“You are wise,” said Hamza.

“Am I?” Li Du raised his eyebrows, unsure how he had earned the compliment.

Hamza nodded. “To speak of belief, not of truth. These games are won not by the king who knows the truth, but by the king who controls the currents of belief.”

And kills those who resist,
Li Du thought. His mind went to Lumo. She had watched monks in crimson and saffron robes slaughter her family. Could she have carved out her pain on a member of the brotherhood responsible for that cruelty? “We have not considered Lumo,” he said.

Hamza tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the back of a mule. “That is true,” he said. “We know that Sera was not in Lumo's hut all morning. That means we do not know what Lumo was doing. She might have slipped out and waited for Dhamo at the bridge.”