BAF 64 - Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, page 30
part #64 of Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
“They have penetrated to the very heart and treasure of the citadel and taken what they would. Without doubt the garrison is all put to the sword and the ineffectual Shang now cast in chains or slain,” exclaimed Wen-yi. “Get me four bearers and an emblem of surrender so that I may hasten to eat dust and make what terms I can with this new line of kings.”
“The flat-stomached Wen-yi has failed again—as usual,” remarked the ill-starred Shang in an accent of refined despair, at about the same time and inspired by a like sequence of events; “and without doubt he has been taken in the snare. As our last hope is thereby brought to voidance, the hostile camp restocked, and their road to Hing-foo clear again, nothing remains for this much-depreciated sovereign but to put on an appropriate robe of sackcloth and to suffer himself to be deposed without further ceremony by the morally deformed Wang Tae.”
“Chieftain,” reported a lesser captain to Wang Tae, as Wen-yi and Shang set out, “two separate groups approach the camp, one from the north, the other from the south, with banners of submission. What is your iron word concerning them?” -
“At the peril of incurring each one of the seventy-five recognized ways of inflicting pain, let them be kept apart,” replied Wang Tae.
Thus it came about, Shang’s band by this time being brought into camp, that a message reached Ching-kwei, who had stayed within his tent alone, of one who sought his ear.
“Suffer the messenger to pass the guard,” pronounced Ching-kwei, for the word brought in had seemed to speak, though darkly, of the time which he knew must now approach, and they led one in whose face was masked by a visor of worked steel.
“Omnipotence,” pronounced a low but very golden voice, “I have a name to speak that merits your private ear.
Furthermore, I bear no weapon anywhere while you have a notorious sword beneath your ready hand.”
“If I disclose my ear to you,” replied Ching-kwei, motioning to the attendants so that they withdrew, “it is no less fitting that you should reveal your face to me,” and he indicated the covering which the other wore.
“Your magnanimity is itself a better shield than any I could wear,” was the gracious reply, and what he asked for being done, they stood there for a poise of time, facing each other.
“Shen Che!” whispered Ching-kwei, falling back a step in wonder. “You who are now a queen!”
“I recognize in you the one who loitered in the glade, that day the holy anchorite warned me that we should meet. But wherefore do you call me by my sister’s name, and why greet me a queen?”
“Your sister’s name?” replied Ching-kwei, with a great and sudden happiness singing like a nest of radiant birds about his head. “Are you not then that Shen Che who should become a queen?”
“I am Mei of the lowly house of Kang, and to me no other name was ever given. For her of whom you speak I come to plead, that being my errand here. Of your illusion that I was other than I am—doubtless it grew from this: that we encountered only once and that but for a single passing glance. Let it not weigh against my cause, high excellence.”
“Not once but many hundred times, O dazzling one, have we two met, for every day that meeting is renewed within my heart; and though it was a single glance, so deep the image cut that the stone of life itself must be destroyed to wear away a line.”
“Benevolence!” pleaded the maiden, who had not expected to be involved in so abrupt and emotional an arise- ment. “The one for whom I crave your countenance—”
“The fault lay with that hoary soothsayer,” continued Ching-kwei, who was by no means concerned about Shen Che now that he had learned that this one was no longer she. “I described you beyond the possibility of doubt, and he then played me false.”
“Great majesty,” murmured the bright vision, advancing more than the single step that the other had gone back, and gazing into Ching-kwei’s eyes beseechingly, “by what feeble attributes did you chance to depict this in-no-way-striking one?”
“How else than by the glory of your matchless presence, by the pearly splendour of your lustrous being, which at every point outshines that of all other dwellers upon earth, by the constant wonder of your deigning to remain among mere mortal things at all—there could be no mistake. Further, as the venerable necromancer’s polite attention seemed to begin to wander at this point, I added that you wore a high-born cloak, your sister having none.”
“In this then, not the hermit but the very fates themselves have conspired toward a surreptitious end,” exclaimed the one henceforth to be described as Mei. “Know now, all-powerful chief, that until we left the pious Ng-tung’s cell, it was the more-admired Shen Che who wore that distressing cloak of plaited straw, which presently, to dance for joy at what the seer foretold, she cast about my form.”
“Then you indeed are not a queen, nor married to a king?”
“I am married to none,” replied Mei, indicating by a refined gesture that a contingency had been reached when it would be more suitable if she replaced the concealing mask, but to this Ching-kwei did not accede. “Nor am I likely now to encounter so forlorn an end, for the divination ran that my destiny lay with a guileless one who herded goats and led a tranquil life. Thus I stand secure, for such a man could not be found in camps or capitals.”
“Yet I have herded goats and led a tranquil life,” maintained Ching-kwei. “So that in me the prophecy takes root.”
“But can never come to fruit, esteemed, for from that life you have cut yourself irrevocably away, while to it I must straight return, like a homing swallow to its ingrained thatch.”
“Would you not instead become a queen, fair Mei, and found with me an undying line of kings?”
“Against that I am sworn. One queen from the inglorious house of Kang exceeds the moral limit, and having marked that same one’s upward flight, I trim my own wings now into a lowlier atmosphere.”
“Why, then, I also would not be a king,” declared Ching-kwei, approaching her. “And yet,” he added gloomily, “the iron line remains—to ’end a sovereign’s life and by the same act terminate a dynasty,’ was the unbending fate. How else than by setting up my own?”
“Ching-kwei,” exclaimed a stem voice from the door, as Wang Tae threw back the fold, “what note of doubt is this? The day is ours, gained by your stratagem. Shang and Wen-yi have both made full submission and recognized your claim. The army of the ‘Restoring Ying’ only awaits the sight of you to raise an overwhelming shout of triumph and to carry you upon the impulse of its valour to any misty height. This is the very apex of your destiny, but though the point is here for you to grasp, the sides are smooth and steep. Fail to assert your right at once and all may yet be lost. Miscarry now, and you end your sovereign life and by that act now and for all time terminate the dynasty of your imperishable Line.”
For such a space of time as wherein one might count a score the three chiefly concerned stood in their different moods. Then Ching-kwei answered back, and his voice rolled like a ceremonial drum.
“There spoke the several voices that conjoin in me to piece my destiny and to reconcile all things! This is the kingship that I put an end to now and ours the dynasty which I thereby terminate. Wang Tae, your words have been inspired and you at last have cut the knot of all my difficulty.”
“Yet what remains?” demanded Wang Tae darkly. “Can the people be left to revert to savagery, and Tsun, deprived-of every royal hand, become a vassal state?”
“Still less so than before. To-morrow, in the Temple of the King within the Capital, Ching-kwei will voluntarily abdicate, and turning to his right will crown Wang Tae first of a martial Line. That is what Tsun requires to-day—a strong and vigorous ruler of natural force, not one whose kingdom is a dream and his chosen throne a chimney-seat.”
“This is what generally happens sooner or later when a capable general and a weak-minded sovereign are concerned,” declared Wang Tae, not wholly reconciled, “but in our exceptional case I certainly did not expect it yet.” Then, as he turned to leave the tent, Ching-kwei unsheathed his sword, and raising it before his face he very gladly cried: ’Ten thousand years!”
“Yet what remains?” repeated Mei, as they again stood there alone. “You have lost all, nobility, and for—for a vagarious thought renounced a jewelled crown.”
“Not all,” replied Ching-kwei; “I still have what I value most,” and from an inner sleeve he took some faded flowers. “These I have kept unharmed through the dust of weary marches and the shock of furious battle, hoping perchance that if I bore them worthily, when we should meet, you of your own free will might requite me for everything with one.”
“One is a very little to expect, high prince,” said Mei, turning away her face as she received the flowers, “though certainly more might seem to be too much. Therefore the two I offer you are now but one, and the one that you receive has hitherto been two,” and in a tumult Ching-kwei perceived that in the hand held out to him were two stems tightly bound together by the crimson thread of mutual betrothment. “What more,” she continued with a still averted face, “what more can one to whom all initiative is rigidly denied say—or even do—Ching-kwei?”
As Ching-kwei, leading Mei by the hand and at the same time controlling a wandering goat of his own flock that he had recovered by the way, neared his door, his grandmother came out to gather wood and, seeing them, awaited their approach.
“What is the latest apophthegm from the front just now, Ching-kwei?” she asked. “And how does this new gear of martial glory fit about your limbs?”
“Those who cover themselves with martial glory appreciate a homespun robe at last,” was his reply; yet even as he spoke the thought went up: “Wang Tae would certainly have produced something more keen-edged than that.”
“At all events, the maiden whom you sought has found you, it appears,” remarked the ancient, nodding sagely. “Perhaps it was as well that you should have returned—another goat has cast off his allegiance and gone hence upon us.”
When Kai Lung, having thus successfully disposed of Ching-kwei, looked up, he discovered that he was there alone, not even one of the three whom he daily instructed in his art having lingered.
“It is doubtful if circles were quite so destitute of true refinement in the golden days of Tou-fou and Li-tai-pe,” he murmured; “though the comparison is admittedly vainglorious. What call is that?”
It was the voice of Hwa-mei, seeking him in the darkness of the garden, and as Kai Lung went at once toward her, they very soon encountered.
“There were nine of our neighbours here with me but now, to whom I owe some reparation,” he explained. “In the nature of analogy I pressed sour fruit upon them, so that now I would offer them both food and wine. Are they, perchance, awaiting me within?”
“There are none within, neither have there been any with thee here in the garden, save only Hoo Tee, who has already tasted bamboo for leaving thee alone, musing by the arbour. Hast thou slept again, O dragon-hearted one, and dreamed a dream of ancient valour?”
“I may have mused somewhat,” confessed Kai Lung, “as I sat there by the arbour. But I can hardly, as you say, have slept, for a Bringer of Good News has sought me with a message.”
’Truly so,” replied Hwa-mei, with a ripple in her voice of both laughter and affection. “Your evening rice awaits you.”
THE END
Lin Carter (ed.), BAF 64 - Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat
