The White Mirror (34 page)

“Find a book.”

Li Du could hear Hamza's smile in his voice. “My dear librarian—I have come to appreciate your regard for all that is inked and bound. But in this moment, I question your priorities.”

“It is an important book.”

“And what is it that you carry with you?”

Li Du took the rolled silk from under his arm. “It is the thangka that was missing.”

“It smells of death.”

They were both startled by a light tread behind them. Sera-tsering emerged from the corridor and joined them. She tightened the belt around her long coat and slipped her hands into her sleeves. She looked at the rolled cloth Li Du held. He tucked it back under his arm.

“I have been given a task,” Hamza said to Sera. “If you would condescend to help me, you must allow me to practice my craft without criticism or interruption.”

“If it is important to the scholar, I will try,” she said.

“I thank you for it,” said Hamza.

As they turned to go, Li Du asked Sera to remain behind a moment. Hamza hesitated, nodded, and disappeared into the passage. Sera stepped forward to stand beside Li Du. They looked out at the brilliant expanse of night. Behind and above them came the sounds of footsteps, the lowing of barn animals, and the clack of Lumo's cane on the kitchen floor.

“You know who the killer is,” she said.

“I am almost certain that I do.” He turned to her. “Rinzen has the authority of the Lhasa throne, but we are very far from Lhasa. Doso has authority over this valley, but he will not act as judge. You are an official of Bathang. Will you claim this matter as yours to resolve?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No. I took my husband's position when he died because I did not want to be idle and because, at the time, it pleased me to do it. I did not want to marry again. And I did not want to go back to Lhasa.”

“Why not?”

She looked at him. “Have you not guessed already? I do not keep it a close secret.”

Li Du nodded. “Indeed I have guessed. Your family was allied with the regent who served the Great Fifth Dalai Lama,” he said.

“Closer than allied.” Sera's low voice was soft and controlled. She tilted her head back and searched the stars as if each were a memory and she was choosing from among them. “When I was a little girl, my uncle was trusted with a task. My mother and her sisters spoke of it in hushed voices. They whispered of a boy. I knew he was important, but I did not know why. They said he lived in a tower, and that my uncle guarded him, keeping him safe.”

“The hidden child.”

“By the time the boy came to Lhasa he was a young man, and I was almost a woman. My family had arranged a marriage for me to a Chinese official far from home. But I never forgot the boy in the tower. I hope—” She stopped and steadied her voice. “I hope that he did have adventures.” She shivered, and stretched her shoulders under her heavy coat. “But you asked me a question,” she said. “And I will answer. I am tired of being an official. There will be another to take my place. I will not go back. It is time for something new.”

*   *   *

There was no source of light in the barn. Around Li Du the animals stirred, warm shadows under the creaking ceiling. He stood just outside the pale glow that rolled down the kitchen stairs along with Hamza's voice, faint but audible. “Tales,” Hamza was saying, “to distract us from the evil that has visited this place, and help us pass the night until the sun comes to warm our thoughts.”

His words were met with unintelligible murmurs and questions posed in hesitant, uncertain voices. Li Du heard footsteps above and blinked as a fine cloud of dust fell from the ceiling, stinging his eyes. He waited until Hamza spoke again.

“… King Noe, one of the four fire-born kings and descendant of the destroyer of adversaries, who was brought into being by the prayer of a hermit in the mountains of Arbuda…”

The murmurs quieted and the footsteps returned to the fire. Li Du stepped lightly to a corner of the barn where three mules stood beside a pile of saddlebags neatly arranged against the wall, ready to be loaded onto the animals at dawn. He retrieved a copper lantern from a hook and set it on the floor. Then he crouched down, lit three pine tapers, and slipped them inside the lantern. A glow spread over trampled straw and oiled leather.

Quietly and carefully, he selected two bags and dragged them away from the wall into the lantern light. He untied the straps of the larger bag and reached inside, where his hand encountered silk so smooth and soft that his fingertips lingered of their own volition. He identified various sundry items, among them metal cups, wrapped ink sticks, and a roll of parchment, which he examined and discovered to be blank. He set the bag aside, and pulled the smaller one toward him.

“… city at the edge of the ocean. Near the port where the ships' sails gleamed was a beach where the children of merchants and sailors and servants played. Their favorite game was to race up the sliding sands of the tallest dune. Each day, the child who reached the top first was hailed by the others as the ruler of all the lands and all the oceans. And each day, the child who won the race appointed magistrates and ambassadors and storytellers and alchemists…”

Li Du's fingers cramped with tension. Every scrape of a boot on the floor above sounded like a footstep toward the stairs. He opened the second bag. He felt coarse wool and traced the curving, raised lines of embroidered flowers. There seemed to be nothing inside but cloth. Then his fingers found the hard corner of an object. It was not in the main compartment of the bag, but sewn loosely into its leather base. With some difficulty, he pulled out the stitches and drew the object free. It was a book.

“… a jewel with the property of attracting other jewels to it. The ship's captain took this jewel into a deep stone cave, and with it found so many treasures that he lost his reason and stayed too long. The tide rose and the cave filled with water. When the sailors returned for their captain, they found a man identical to him in appearance, voice, and manner. They brought him onto their ship, not knowing that he was a prince of the lower world who meant to pilot them to his kingdom of shipwrecks beneath the sea…”

Li Du held the book to the light. It was sturdily constructed with a stitched binding of doubled thread. The cover was made of durable paper, three sheets thick, its corners wrapped in rough silk. He opened it. Inside, there was no title slip or author's seal. As he flipped through the pages, he felt the displaced air on his face as if the book were breathing. The contents were not printed, but drawn.

He placed the book open on the ground and blinked down at the inked lines. Then he reached behind him for the thangka, and unrolled it. He set the lantern on the upper edge and his knee on the lower. The swaths of blue and green were muted in the dim light. The charcoal outlines were faint, but discernible.

“… and from the top of the highest dune the girl who was that day endowed with majesty saw the ship's tattered sails…”

Li Du turned to the first page of the book. There were five pictures, one below another, and beside each were one or more Chinese characters. He looked at the first picture. A bird with three legs. Beside it, the message
size and location of military forces.
Li Du scanned the sketched outlines on the thangka. There was no three-legged bird there. He looked at the second picture in the book. A frog impaled on a stick. Beside it,
notable deaths and their causes.
Again he searched the thangka, but the impaled frog was not there. Neither was the treasure box, which was drawn next to the word
strategies,
nor the trident with serpents wound around it, which appeared beside
names and roles.

He looked at the fifth picture. It was a scorpion. In its mouth was a flaming sword. Beside it was the word
warning.
Li Du looked at the thangka. The creature was there. He fanned the pages of the book until he reached the section titled
Warnings.
Then he set to work.

“… commanded the boy to bring her a water jug. When he had brought it, she turned to the sailors. ‘Whoever can fit into this jug,' she said, ‘is certainly not a prince of the underworld.' At once the false captain jumped into the jug, which she stoppered with a diamond seal…”

Li Du's task so absorbed him that he retained only a dim awareness of the shifting animals and the cadence of Hamza's voice. He labored on until finally, his fingers numb with cold, he closed the book and looked at the light from the kitchen. Silently he stood, adjusted his hat on his head, and returned the lantern, its flame extinguished, to its hook.

Holding the thangka and the book under one arm, he climbed the stairs up toward the kitchen. Just before he reached the top, he paused and set the two objects down carefully on a step, where, from the vantage point of the hearth, they would remain out of sight.

*   *   *

The guests and residents of the manor, including Yeshe and Lumo, were all gathered around the fire. While Rinzen occupied the place of honor and Doso controlled the most space with his height and broad shoulders, it was Hamza, sitting alone on a painted chair, who commanded the room.

Doso was speaking to Hamza. “—a welcome distraction. Will you continue? I expect most of us here would rather sit late by the fire than disperse into the dark.”

Hamza bowed his head to accept the compliment, the point of his gleaming beard barely touching his silk tunic. “It would be my honor to continue,” he said. “But my friend the librarian has just come in, and his expression suggests that, at this moment, his words are more valuable than mine.”

Attention turned to Li Du, and he felt the force of their thoughts and feelings stretching toward him. He nestled his hands into his sleeves, an action that settled his thoughts and slowed the rapid beat of his heart.

“When I came to this valley three days ago,” he said, “I saw a red-robed figure on the bridge. I thought that a monk had come to meet us. But he did not move or speak. When I went closer to him, I saw that he was dead. His posture was tranquil. The sheath at his side was empty, and he held the knife that had killed him as if he himself had delivered the blow. His fingers were coated in the same paint that marked his body. This lifeless man, it seemed, had not come to the bridge to meet us. He had not intended to meet anyone again in this world. He had come to take his own life.”

There were murmurs and stirrings from the people around the fire. Andruk finished his quiet translation.

“I understand now that it was my first impression,” Li Du continued, “and not my second, that was correct. Dhamo—that is, Dhamo's body—
was
on the bridge to greet travelers. It was there to be seen and to be remembered. But this was not by his own choice, and he did not go willingly to his death.”

The atmosphere of the room was heavy with an uneasy, expectant silence. Li Du took a breath and continued. “Dhamo was lured to the bridge, where he was murdered, painted, and arranged into the position in which he was found.” Li Du was aware of his own anger. It moved up his spine and shook his voice. “Dhamo's body was employed like a piece of parchment painted and mounted on a wall. It was used to convey a message.”

“What message?” The question was Doso's.

It was Hamza who answered. “The white mirror.”

Li Du nodded once. “Yes. But even as I began to discover what happened on the day Dhamo died, I could attach no definite meaning to that symbol. For Kalden and the muleteers, the painted mirror was the act of a man pursued by demons, a final, desperate token of protection. The Chhöshe spoke of the significance of the mirror in the context of his studies: the mirror teaches that objects are illusions. Paolo Campo called the mirror a demonic mark, a curse indicative of evil. Doso claimed that, while the action was inexplicable, it was easily attributable to Dhamo, a man unlike other men.”

Impatience resonated in Doso's voice. “If you know what happened that day, then tell us.”

Li Du raised his eyes to meet Doso's. “On the day he died, Dhamo rose at first light to continue his work. He was fulfilling a commission for a thangka. As with every commission he received, it was a task that occupied his whole mind. He had applied a foundation of white, blue, and green to the sketched drawing. By established rule, the next color to be added was red.

“But when Dhamo located the bowl of vermilion in his workroom, he found it empty of all but a few granules. This surprised him, for when he had asked Pema to check his supply of vermilion, Pema had reported the bowl to be full. Dhamo did not wait. His determination to continue his work consumed him, and he took immediate steps to obtain what he needed. There was, not far from the temple, a natural source of cinnabar.”

“The hot springs.” Pema spoke quickly, then flinched as eyes turned to him.

“Yes. Dhamo gathered what he needed, and left the temple. What he did not know was that someone, anticipating Dhamo's need for vermilion, had emptied the bowl. When Dhamo departed the temple that morning, he was following a course that had been determined by his killer. He was walking to his death.”

There were no questions now. The listeners waited, each seeing in their own way the scene that was being conjured for them.

“We know that Dhamo went to the hot springs,” Li Du went on. “In his crimson robes, he was conspicuous, and easily recognized. Yeshe witnessed him go down to the forest. Sera saw him climbing the path in the direction of the pools. Later, I myself felt the scoring on the stone where he had pried the cinnabar rocks away. Dhamo intended to return with them to his studio, but he never reached it. He died on the bridge.”

Li Du studied the faces of the people around the hearth. “Almost all of you had the opportunity to kill him,” he said. “That morning, Doso and Kamala both went to the village, but on separate errands. Andruk also went to the village, but there is no one to account for what he did during the time he said he was there.” Li Du addressed the three of them. “Any one of you could have gone to the bridge, returned to the village, and strode back to the manor in the falling snow as if you had been at the village the whole time you were gone.”