Читать книгу The Secrets of Jin-Shei - Alma Alexander - Страница 19

In less time than it took to blink, silence was a memory. Masonry groaned; things skittered across the surface of the lacquered table, or fell to the ground, leaving the floor strewn with debris. Above it all there was an indescribable sound that was half heard and half absorbed directly through bone and muscle – the roar of wounded stone.

Instinct had taken over in the first moment of terror, and Tai had streaked out of her room and into the garden, out under an open sky. She felt the ground shake under the soles of her bare feet, staggered to keep her balance, lost the battle, fell sideways into a bed of swaying flowers still closed in the pearly pre-dawn grey darkness. Before Tai’s horrified eyes the tiered Summer Palace folded into itself as though it had been made of sticks and leaves, walls falling inward, tiles falling in slow motion and tumbling end over end before shattering into dust, columns snapping in two or falling sideways and knocking out the next column in line, collapsing them in turn like dominoes. Graceful arched windows and doorways became piles of broken brick and crumbs of plaster; wooden window frames snapped like matchsticks. Glass was a precious thing and not often found outside the Imperial Palaces, and even there rare and used sparingly; now, with the wooden frames bending and breaking, the night was alive with the eerie sound of breaking glass, like fairy chimes.

A tree groaned and began to fall over, in slow motion, pulling its old roots out of the ground.

Lifting her eyes to the top of the mountain whose peak had always towered above the Summer Palace, Tai became aware with a shock that the peak had vanished. It was partly the huge rocks from the disintegrating mountainside that had helped wreak this havoc – smashing down on top of buildings, flattening structures in their path, rolling onward in destructive fury. One had levelled a fountain in the gardens, and the spilled water, still dark as the night it reflected, saturated the flowerbeds and flowed into the courtyards whose cobbles looked as though they had been ploughed.

Somewhere in the ruins of the Palace a spark started, then a fire. Then another. And another. Columns of smoke rose into the sky; the air tasted acrid with dust and ashes and fear.

When the noise of tumbling rocks and crashing buildings had subsided at last, leaving an echo ringing in Tai’s ears, she began hearing another sound – human voices, groaning, screaming, weeping. She became aware that she was herself uttering small whimpering sounds. Curled up in the middle of a once-graceful flowerbed, now sodden and blighted out in the shattered gardens, she was barefoot, an almost translucent nightrobe all that she wore – but she was whole, and unharmed, and still clutching the red leather-bound journal that had been Antian’s gift.

Those who had been deeper into the warren of the Palace and had no way to get out …; those who had not woken to the silence before the wrath of the Gods …; those who had tried to run but had not made it out fast enough …;

They were all still in there.

In the wreck of the Summer Palace.

In the piles of still settling dust and rubble, under the weight of a mountain.

Antian.

The sky was lightening in the east, and dawn crept over the ruined Palace, brighter, faster now that the mountainside which had reared up against the eastern sky was gone.

Dawn. Early morning.

The balcony on the mountain.

Her rigid fingers wrapped tightly around the red book that had been Antian’s gift, Tai scrambled to her feet and stood, indecisive, torn, in the shattered garden. Her nightrobe was streaked with mud, her feet and her face smeared with mud and with dust; she had an urgent need to go and do something – help those buried in the rubble, dig with bare hands until she found someone whom she could haul out of the wreckage – and knew that the only one she wanted to find was Antian, the Little Empress, lost somewhere in this chaos. And unable to move – because if she ran to the Palace Antian could be out on the balcony, and if she chose the balcony Antian might die buried under the weight of the broken Palace.

She saw someone running towards the buildings, a weeping servant, followed by another who clutched an awkwardly bent arm and had a face smeared with blood. It might have been this that decided Tai. There would be others coming to the Palace soon – not everything had collapsed, surely, and there had to be people who could move, who could help – but nobody else knew that Antian was going to the balcony that morning. If she was there, then nobody knew to go to her aid.

She turned, and ran.

Somehow the gate that led to the outer balcony was still intact – its capstone in place, the wall surrounding it deceptively innocent and peaceful in the early morning light. But taking a step through it, and looking up, Tai realized for the first time the extent of the catastrophe that had touched the Summer Palace that day.

The mountain above the Palace wore a different shape. Half of it was gone, vanished. The mountain peak had disintegrated, and a lot of it had fallen down into the buildings and the courtyards of the Palace. The rest of the mountainside had sheared off in a layer of stone and mud and simply slid down the slope, taking a large chunk of the Palace with it.

The lacy pattern of open balconies hanging over the river that flowed golden when the sun was setting was no more. The mountain’s face was a gaping wound of broken balustrades, platforms teetering over nothing, piles of shattered stone a long way below, all the way down to the river. Some balconies had been ripped off completely, and gaping holes in the walls opened from the Palace courts directly out into the abyss. Others were hanging on by a narrow ledge only a single flagstone wide, or by part of a balustrade. Yet others were crazy, broken, multi-levelled wrecks with holes where flagstones had smashed or been ripped in half, looking as though they were being observed with a mirror put together from glass shards, each reflecting a different angle, different aspect.

Tai stood at the edge of this devastation, eyes wide with shock. If Antian had been out here …;

She tried calling, but her voice seemed to have died in her throat, and all that came out was a soft wail. But the sound seemed to have triggered some response, for the broken stones sighed and whimpered and a familiar but very weak voice replied.

‘Who is there?’

Tai’s first reaction was a rush of relief, a fierce joy, the sheer euphoria of hearing that voice at all. And then that soft voice dropped, fading into almost a whisper. ‘Help me.’

No! screamed Tai’s mind. But she stifled it, tried to cling to the happiness she had felt a bare moment before, batted at the sudden rush of tears with the back of her hand. Almost unwillingly, not wanting to see what lay beyond the ruined balcony, not wanting to know the inevitable, Tai crept carefully forward towards the edge, peering over.

Just out of arm’s reach, on a ledge of broken flagstone caught on a rocky protrusion on the mountainside, lay Antian, the Little Empress. One of her long braids had curled on her breast in a long black rope, like a living thing that had come to comfort her; the other had slipped down her shoulder and now hung over the edge of her resting place, swinging out into the chasm below her. She held a hand – always graceful, still graceful! – to her side in a fragile kind of way, as though she was trying to staunch a wound with no strength left to do it with, and indeed there was a dark stain that was spreading into her robe underneath her fingers. Her hand was smeared with red; so was her face, with a gash on her forehead oozing a thin stream of blood into the corner of her eye and down her temple and another graze red and bleeding along the line of her jaw. One of her legs seemed bent at an unnatural angle.

But her eyes were lucid, and she tried to smile when Tai’s face appeared over the edge of the ruin above her.

‘Don’t move,’ Tai said, her voice catching a little. ‘I’ll go get help.’

‘Wait …;’

But Tai was already gone. There had been something about Antian that she could hardly bear to watch – a kind of brightness, an aura that was more than just the first fingers of the dawn’s golden glow, an otherworldly light that told her that Antian had already taken that first irrevocable step into the world beyond, the world of the Immortals.

Tai skidded into the courtyards, panting, her eyes wild, her feet bleeding from scratches and gashes delivered by the broken cobblestones she had stumbled over in her haste. There were people in the courtyards now, but only a few of them were actually moving about or doing something constructive. Bodies were laid out in the garden, and a handful of bloodied survivors had been taken to a sheltered area where one or two servants, themselves bandaged and bleeding from scratches or hobbling on makeshift crutches, tried to tend to them. Someone was crying weakly for water. Somebody else was weeping, a curiously steady sound, as though she did not know how to stop.

A young woman in a white robe streaked with dust and blood was leaning over a woman’s body, gently probing with long fingers, but even as Tai watched she straightened with a sigh, closing her eyes. Her expression told it all.

Her face was familiar, underneath its coating of grime, and Tai fought her own panic and fear to dredge the name from her memory – this was someone who could be useful – who was it – she knew her, it was precisely the person she had come looking for …;

Yuet. The name swam into her mind, followed by another – Szewan – the healer woman who had tended Tai’s mother that spring. Yuet had tagged at Szewan’s heels. Yuet was the healer’s apprentice.

Szewan was in Linh-an. Yuet was here. Yuet was the healer.

Tai ran to the older girl and snatched at the sleeve of her robe.

‘Come! Oh, you must come! It’s Antian – it’s the Little Empress – she needs your help.’

The young healer turned her head, blinked in Tai’s direction for a moment, the words not sinking in. Then, as she parsed the sentence, as she realized what had just been said, she sucked in her breath.

‘Is she alive?’

‘Yes. Yes! Hurry!’

Yuet drew a shaking hand across her forehead. ‘The Gods be thanked for that, at least!’ She showed no sign of having recognized Tai, although they had met several times during the spring, but right now Yuet would have been hard put to recognize her own mother. All she could see was the death all around her, the death written in the broken women they were scrambling to dig out of the ruins, the despair written in the faces of those who had come to the call for help, themselves bruised, cut, bleeding. The death written in the toppled mountain that had annihilated everything.

The Emperor and the Empress were both dead. The rescuers digging in the rubble of the Palace knew that much already. Oylian, the Second Princess, they had not found yet – and that could not be a good sign. And now, this …;

‘Take me to her,’ Yuet said, turning away from the body at her feet and starting out towards the ruined Palace.

‘This way!’ Tai, who had not let go of her sleeve, tugged her away and across the gardens.

Yuet stopped, confused. ‘Where is the Little Empress?’

‘She was on one of the balconies …; out on the mountain.’

What little colour was left in Yuet’s cheeks drained away. ‘What in the name of Cahan was she doing there? When this was all coming down?’

‘We were supposed to meet at the balcony this morning.’ Tai pulled at Yuet’s arm. ‘Hurry!’

Yuet followed, frowning, until her eyes suddenly lit briefly with recognition. ‘You’re from Linh-an, you’re her jin-shei-bao.’

‘Hurry.’ Tai seemed to have forgotten every other word she ever knew. All that was beating in her heart, in her blood, in her mind, was hurry. The broken doll on the ledge below the balcony, that was just the shell of Antian – but if they didn’t hurryhurryhurry the shell would melt and shred in the mountain winds like a cloud and disappear for ever …; and this was Antian, the Princess who laughed, who cared, who loved, who would be Empress one day …;

Yuet had the presence of mind to snag a relatively able-bodied male servant on their way to the balcony, surmising – rightly – that Antian would have to be extracted out of some unspeakable wreckage before she could be helped. But that hadn’t prepared her for the devastation of the mountainside when the three of them finally emerged onto what was left of the little balcony. Yuet gasped, her hand going to her throat.

‘She survived this?’ Yuet said breathlessly.

Tai had run to the edge of the chasm. ‘Antian? Antian, I’m here. I brought help.’

The manservant reached out and scooped the struggling Tai out of harm’s way, and peered carefully over the edge himself.

‘We would need rope, I think,’ he said.

‘There is no time for that now.’ Yuet had approached and was gauging the distance between herself and her patient. ‘I think there is space enough. Lower me down, and then go fetch a rope and another pair of hands to help you. This will need doing gently. Dear sweet Cahan, she is still alive. Princess? I am coming down to you.’

Antian whispered something, very softly, and Tai thought she heard, No, it is too dangerous. But Yuet had already grasped the manservant’s wrists with her hands, and he had wrapped his own fingers around her wrists and was trying to judge the most stable spot to lower her down on.

‘I don’t think there’s a good place,’ Yuet said at last. ‘There’s no time, there’s no time! Lower me down there and go get help!’

‘Yes, sai’an.’ He grasped her wrists firmly and the corded muscles in his arms knotted as he lowered her slowly, gently, down to where Antian lay. Yuet felt her feet touch something solid, then it lurched beneath her heel. She gasped.

‘Wait!’

‘I won’t let go, sai’an,’ the servant said, his voice tight with the effort of holding her suspended above the tumbled chaos at her feet. ‘Not until you tell me.’

Yuet felt with her foot, found a foothold that felt solid, tested it. It held. She brought the other foot closer, fitted her heel into the arch of the grounded foot like a ballerina, found her balance, stood. The manservant felt one of her long fingers tapping at his wrist.

‘You can let go now. Go, get a rope. Get help. For the love of Cahan, run!’

‘Yes, sai’an, I go!’ He released her arms, turned, and ran back the way they had come. Tai could hear him calling out urgently as he ran, but then he was dismissed from her mind and she knelt on the edge of the ruined balcony and craned her neck down to see what Yuet was doing.

The healer shifted her weight very gradually, very carefully, aware that a single false move she made could send both her and the Little Empress tumbling all the way down to the bottom of the chasm below.

‘I come, Princess. I am coming.’

‘It’s too late,’ Antian whispered, her voice a breath.

Yuet bit her lip, looking at the broken body at her feet. The fingers of Antian’s hand, lying over the spreading black stain on her robe, were slick with the blood that had seeped through. The cut on her forehead was starting to clot but was still seeping, and a thin stream of it had flowed past the corner of her eye and down her temple, soaking the glossy black hair. Yuet could read the signs, and the signs were all over the Little Empress – the pallor of her skin, the white shadow around her lips, the shallow breath that moved the thin ribcage beneath the blood-soaked robe. This was just one more face of the death that Yuet had found at every turn in the Palace that grim morning.

‘Oh, no,’ Yuet found herself whispering. ‘No, no, no, no.’

‘Do something,’ Tai said desperately from the edge of the balcony, just above them.

Yuet took another careful step, which brought her right up to Antian’s body, and went down gingerly on one knee. ‘Let me see, Your Highness.’

Antian allowed her hand to be removed from her bloodied side, her eyes closing. Her lips were parted, and she breathed so shallowly that Tai, staring at her from her perch on the edge, could not swear that she breathed at all. The breath came a little more sharply as Yuet’s gentle fingers probed the wound in Antian’s side and came away bloody. Yuet kept her eyes lowered, looked down the line of Antian’s hip and onto the unnaturally bent leg, allowed her fingers to linger there as well, drawing another sharp gasp of pain.

‘That’s just a broken leg, we can mend that,’ Yuet said soothingly. ‘I will make a splint, just as soon as we get you up.’

Antian’s eyes opened, cloudy but alert. ‘What …; happened to …;’

Yuet tried to look away but a sudden rush of tears she could not hold back betrayed everything, and Antian bit her lip.

‘They are dead, aren’t …; they? All of them?’

‘I …; I don’t know, Your Highness, but …; we have not found Second Princess Oylian yet.’

‘So she won’t …; be Empress,’ Antian said, and glanced up to catch Tai’s eye. It cost her something, because she could not help a soft moan as she tried to turn her head. ‘And neither …; will I.’

‘It’s just a broken leg,’ said Yuet stubbornly.

‘And this?’ Antian whispered, only her eyes flickering down to her side. It seemed that her eyes were all that she had the strength to move.

‘Where is that man with the rope?’ Yuet snapped, fretting.

‘I can help you,’ Tai said suddenly. ‘I can help you bring her up here.’

‘You can’t hold her weight,’ said Yuet sceptically, glancing up at the slightly built eleven-year-old on the ledge above her.

‘She is not heavy. And if you will hold her from below, I can catch her up here.’

‘We should not move her at all!’ Yuet said with an edge of despair in her voice. ‘Let alone a push-me-pull-you method like that! Her ribs …;’

Tai’s breath caught on a sob as she turned around and scanned the gardens behind her for any sign of the returning manservant with the rope and the reinforcements. ‘She’ll die.’

She is dying anyway. She will be dead by the time the man gets back here. The thought was as clear in Yuet’s mind as though Szewan, her mentor and the master-healer woman to whom she was apprenticed, had spoken them while standing right beside her.

She glanced up again, to where Tai had risen into a crouch, tense, weeping. Then down, at the fragile broken body at her feet. Then at the ledge where she stood, precarious, unstable. If she moved too fast, too carelessly, if she turned an ankle on a loose piece of rubble …;

‘All right,’ she said abruptly. ‘Wait there until I say.’

There was a long tear in Antian’s robe; she must have caught it on something as she was pitched over the edge and fell. Yuet took hold of the fabric and ripped it all the way, leaving herself with a ragged strip of silk in her hands. She folded this up into a thick wad, tucked it underneath the robe over the wound in Antian’s side, took off her own belt and tied the pad into place.

‘Can you hold on to that, Princess? Just so that it doesn’t move?’ She lifted Antian’s almost lifeless hand and placed it over the makeshift pressure pad. It was not going to help. Nothing was going to help, but she might as well try.

Antian’s hand landed with her usual grace. ‘I’ll try,’ she said weakly.

Yuet looked up.

Tai straightened. ‘I’m here. What do I have to do?’

‘I will try and lift her. Can you reach down for her shoulders? Oh, what are we doing?’ Yuet said, aghast. ‘We’ll all be down there in pieces in a minute!’

‘I can do it,’ Tai said. ‘I can do it!’

‘We’ll kill her,’ Yuet whispered despairingly, looking down at the girl at her feet.

Antian’s eyes opened again, and there was a shadow of a smile in them. ‘You cannot do that,’ she whispered. ‘It is out of your hands.’

Yuet was seventeen years old. She had had her Xat-Wau ceremony nearly three years before; she had been first apprentice and now assistant to Court Healer Szewan since she was seven years old. She was good. She saved lives. And right now all she wanted to do was bury her face in her hands and weep for the pity of it.

All her choices were doomed here. Antian was right. Yuet could not kill her – because, except for these last few breaths of pain, she was already dead.

‘Help me,’ Yuet said to Tai, waiting on the ledge. She checked the tie on the pad, made sure it was as secure as it could be, lifted Antian’s slender body as gently as she could. Antian let out a soft sob of pain and Yuet winced; she could feel the blood from Antian’s side seep warm and wet into her own robe as she held Antian against her body; she cradled the Princess for a moment, shifting her grip, and then slid an arm along her back, laying Antian’s spine against the long bones of her own forearm, straightening the Princess’s body as much as she was able. ‘Just keep your hand there, Princess,’ she said, anything, just to keep talking, for Antian to hear voices. ‘Stay with us. You …; what is your name?’

‘Tai. I’m Tai.’

‘Tai – catch her under the shoulders – gently, gently – slowly. Have you got her?’

Antian’s shoulders were on the edge of the broken balcony, her head lolling sideways. Tai had both hands under her shoulders, trying not to pull on the wounded side, using her arm and shoulder to keep Antian’s head from lolling down onto the stone. ‘I have her,’ she gasped, straining. Antian was a small-boned girl with a fragile build, but she was a dead weight in their arms right now, her eyes tightly squeezed, her face a mask of pain, her breath coming in short sharp gasps.

For a ghastly moment Tai thought her grip was slipping, that Antian’s silk-clad shoulders would slide from her fingers and that she’d have to watch her fall, all the way down, all the way into that river she had once watched flowing into the sunset and thought golden. But something gave her the strength and she managed to get Antian anchored on the edge of the solid remnant of the balcony. Then, miraculously, other hands arrived and somebody took up the slack, supported Antian’s body where Tai could not reach, helped lift the Princess up and lay her gently down against the wall of the balcony. Someone reached over and helped Yuet scramble back up; Tai, all of whose attention was on Antian now, heard something break and go tumbling down, crashing and crumbling against the mountainside, and a part of her shuddered at the sound, but that was all in the background.

Antian’s lips were white with pain; the pad against her side was soaked with her blood. Yuet herself looked like she had been stabbed in the heart, a dark red stain spreading across her robe, as she came to kneel on Antian’s other side.

‘They brought a stretcher, Highness, if we can just get you …;’

‘You have done,’ Antian whispered, ‘what can be …; done. Tai …;’

She tried to lift a hand, but it barely cleared her abdomen before falling back weakly. Tai reached for it, weeping openly.

‘What is it, Antian?’

‘Do …; something for me …; jin-shei-bao.’

‘Anything,’ Tai said. ‘You know it.’

Antian’s eyes closed. She squeezed Tai’s hand, once.

‘Take care of her,’ Antian said, almost too softly for Tai to hear. ‘Take care …; of my sister.’