Читать книгу The Secrets of Jin-Shei - Alma Alexander - Страница 22

Although she’d been coming to the Temple since she was a babe in arms, it had been only in the last year or so that Nhia’s presence had begun making a real impact there. She had barely turned fourteen when she and a young acolyte she had been in conversation with had been approached by a politely deferential older woman who posed the question – to the acolyte – as to which deity she should approach with her problem. ‘Help me, blessed one, for I am not certain which of the Gods would be best to approach – I am not worthy of what is being asked of me, I need to know …;’

It had been Nhia, aged only fourteen and not bound to the Temple hierarchy at all, who had responded to this plea, with a story of Han-fei, the hapless adventurer whose encounters with Gods and Immortals were such a fertile ground to harvest good advice from.

‘When Han-fei met with an Immortal beyond the river Inderyn where the Heavens are,’ Nhia had spoken into the expectant silence, while the Temple acolyte was still pondering the question, ‘he threw himself at the feet of the Blessed Sage and would not raise his eyes from the hem of the robe that the Immortal Sage wore. “I am not worthy, O Blessed One, I am not worthy!” The Sage said, “What do you see when you look into the mirror, Han-fei?” And Han-fei said, “I see a man with no beauty in his face and no wisdom in his mind and no humility in his spirit.” And the Sage bade Han-fei take a mirror from his hand and said, “Then look again, for what I see is a man with the beauty of face which is a reflection of the modesty of his soul, with the wisdom of mind to know what he does not know, and with the humility of spirit to spend his life in trying to learn and understand the things he is ignorant of. Rise, Han-fei, for you are worthy.”’

The woman had taken Nhia’s hand and kissed it, in silence, and backed away, bowing. The acolyte had stood and stared at Nhia for a long moment.

‘Where did you learn that tale?’ he had asked.

‘I hear many of them, in these halls,’ Nhia had said. ‘I see the teaching monks with the children in the courtyards sometimes. I listen, and I remember them.’

‘That is good,’ the acolyte had said carefully, ‘except that the one you just told has never been one of the teaching tales. For all I know, it has never been recorded as having happened to Han-fei.’

‘I didn’t just make it up!’ Nhia had protested, her heart lurching into her heels. ‘I must have heard it.’

‘You invented it, Nhia, and it was perfect,’ the acolyte had said.

Nhia’s first reaction was a rising panic. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she pleaded. ‘I won’t do it again. I just meant to …;’

‘But why ever not?’ the acolyte had asked. ‘You’re a natural teacher. Perhaps one day you will even be a real part of this Temple; you already know more than some who have been pledged to it for years.’

Whether or not the acolyte told anyone about the incident, Nhia never found out – but only because events overtook her. Even if the acolyte had held his tongue, the woman to whom Nhia had told her Han-fei tale obviously had not.

Haggling over a fish at the marketplace, perhaps a week or so after the encounter at the Temple, Nhia turned to a gentle tugging on her sleeve and was surprised to recognize the seeker from the Temple. The woman was accompanied by a brace of small children, one of them only a few years younger than Nhia herself, all of whom stared at Nhia inscrutably. Nhia stared back, nonplussed.

‘I wished to thank you, young sai’an,’ the woman said in a low, deferential voice. ‘You have helped me understand. My husband’s mother is in need of your wise words, also, but she is bedridden and cannot go to Temple often. Perhaps if you would come?’

‘But I am not one of the blessed ones of the Temple,’ Nhia had said helplessly.

Just for a moment, the woman looked surprised, and then her expression settled into certainty again. ‘Maybe you are not one of the ones wearing the robes, sai’an, but you have the wisdom of the Immortals in you. My mother-in-law would be grateful if you would come. If only for a few moments. We live in ZhuChao Street, in the yellow house on the corner. If you please, sai’an.’

Nhia had wanted nothing more than to bolt into the midst of the marketplace and to lose herself in the crowds – but she could not run. She could not ever run. Not from this; not from anything. The irony of this made a wry grin touch her lips. The woman interpreted this as acceptance, or dismissal – in any event she had backed away, bowing, accompanied by her brood.

Several other customers at the fishmonger’s stall had been witness to this exchange, and the fishmonger himself, who had known Nhia from babyhood, stood with her intended purchase still in his hand.

‘So you are a Sage, now, young NhiNhi,’ the fishmonger had said. There was an attempt at levity there, but there was something else also – a curiosity, a careful interest. The marketplace lived by gossip and rumour, this was how the news was spread from one corner of the sprawling city that was Linh-an to the next. There was, maybe, a story here.

‘I am no such thing,’ Nhia had said, very firmly, and had brought the subject of the conversation back to the fish.

But another woman had stopped her in the street two days later, asking a very specific question. The question concerned the child whom she held by the hand and who stood staring at Nhia with the blank obsidian gaze which was very familiar to her. She had worn that mask herself. The child’s other arm and hand, not the one held by her mother, were thin and withered, her fingers bent into a pitiful claw which she held folded into her belly. This was another Nhia, a cripple whose mother was driven to ask for help where she thought she could find it.

Perhaps it was this that made Nhia speak to her. There had been a parable to fit. Then she had told another tale, directly to the child, another Han-fei story but one aimed at the old pain so familiar to herself, trying to ease the little one’s burden. She had been rewarded with a softening of the eyes, a shy smile. The mother noticed, and her own eyes lit up. She took the incident away with her, cherished it, spoke of it.

After that, more came.

Somehow, before she reached her fifteenth birthday, Nhia had found herself sitting in an unoccupied booth in the First Circle one morning, telling teaching tales to a gaggle of children at her feet. At first it was an irregular thing, just every so often – when sufficient numbers of young disciples accumulated around her, Nhia would sit down somewhere, they would all subside on the ground around her, and the cry ‘A story! A story!’ would be raised. But it quickly grew into something more. Something that became striking enough to warrant the attention of the Temple priestly caste. Several times, in the middle of one of her tales, Nhia would look up and catch the glimpse of a discreet observer, an acolyte draped in Temple robes, who would stand with eyes downcast and hands folded into his sleeves and listen intently to what she was saying. When she caught their presence, Nhia tried to be careful and tell only the tales she knew she had heard before here in the Temple, told by the Temple Sages and teachers. But it was sometimes hard to remember which ones she was sure about. All of the stories she told sounded so old and familiar to her. Which ones were old and venerable teaching parables, and which ones had she just invented?

Li, Nhia’s mother, had been wary of the whole thing, and afraid that the Temple would take exception to Nhia’s activities – especially since she often told her stories in the Temple’s own precincts.

‘These are games,’ Li had said, ‘and they can be dangerous. You are setting yourself up above the people. You have had your Xat-Wau, and you are no longer a child, Nhia – think about what it is that you want to do with the rest of your life.’

‘But perhaps I am already doing that,’ Nhia had said slowly.

No marriage; no children; she had come to terms with that. But perhaps these could be her children, the ones who came to her and whose lives she knew she could touch, could sometimes heal. She had much to learn – but already, it seemed, she had much to teach, also. A part of her gloried in it. Her body could not run – but her spirit could fly.

But Li had not been entirely convinced of her daughter’s calling. She had even gone so far as to approach one of the higher-ranked Temple priests, and ask for absolution if Nhia presumed.

‘We considered chastisement,’ the priest had told Li, ‘but first we listened to what she had to say. She makes the children hear her. She has said nothing to which we have taken exception. We think that it has gone far enough that, if she did not do it here, she would do it elsewhere – out in the marketplace, or in the streets.’

‘Not if you forbade it, sei.’

‘But why would we forbid it? Those she touches come straight home to us. She does the Temple’s work,’ the priest had said. There had been something complacent in his smile, but the priests of the Temple had always been pragmatic about their religion. A Temple which had an entire thriving outer Circle devoted to the commerce of faith could not be other. ‘But I understand your concern – we will make sure she is taught.’

So Nhia’s life had started to turn around the Temple, more and more. She taught the young, and in her turn she learned the meditations and the mental purifications of the zhao-cha, reaching out to touch the edges of the luminous, following Han-fei into the gardens of the Gods in search of the Fruit of Wisdom.

Khailin, daughter of Cheleh the Chronicler, had made it her business to keep the crippled girl who had attracted the attention of Sage Lihui under observation. In the months following that encounter in the Temple, Khailin had found out that Nhia frequented the Temple Circles, and had many friends there. She also found out that she and Nhia had more in common than she had thought. Although their focus and their ultimate desires were different, coloured in part by their differing stations in life and their place in Linh-an society, they shared an interest in the Way and in the manner in which it functioned. Nhia’s interest was more in the wisdom and the purity of the path – the zhao-cha, the internal alchemy of the mind and spirit, the calling of the sage, the seer, the wise-woman. Khailin was more attracted to the yang-cha – its rituals, its mathematical magic, its chemistry, its eminently practical nature. They had both been driven to learn, to understand. This was something which Khailin could build on. This could even be part of the reason the Sage Lihui had been interested in Nhia; perhaps he had been drawn to the fierce flame of curiosity, intelligence, yearning to learn. Perhaps, Khailin thought, she and Nhia could be useful to one another.

So she had started keeping an eye out for Nhia at the Temple. A part of Khailin marvelled at how Nhia had found a way of gaining access to all the disciplines of the Way. And she had done it all without reading a single hacha-ashu manuscript about forbidden things. Khailin was uncomfortably aware that her own time was running out.

She had already rejected several suitors whose representatives had come bearing the so ji, the carved jade marriage proposal token. All it had taken, as tradition had it, was her refusal to accept the small sculpture into her own hands from the formally attired elderly aunts and cousins who had been entrusted with its delivery. As my beloved wishes, the words had originally meant. If the bride or groom being courted accepted the token, the marriage proposal was deemed to have been accepted, and the betrothal was official from that moment. Khailin’s suitors had not been to her liking – one had come from a large and tradition-hidebound family, which would have trammelled her like a wild bird in a cage; another had been a man quite a few years her senior, with whom she already had a passing acquaintance at Court and whom she could have accepted except for her utter inability to get past his constantly sweaty palms which, upon reflection, she decided she could not bear near her on a regular basis.

When two emissaries of a prince of Syai came calling just before her Xat-Wau ceremony was due to take place, Cheleh had made it clear to his wayward older daughter that another refusal would have been severely frowned upon. The Prince was young, positively callow, precisely the kind of vacuous young man Khailin had no wish to marry. She could see herself delivered into the soft life of the noble houses, being an obedient young wife, having to obey endless rules of protocol and decorum, having to endure the hated ritual baths with the rest of the pampered ladies – perhaps never again to have access to the kind of arcane information she craved or the opportunity to test her knowledge …; but, on the other hand, she would be a princess, which was a kind of power in its own right. And the young husband-to-be might be sufficiently mouldable into the kind of husband Khailin could live with. The kind of husband who could, if necessary, be hoodwinked into closing his eyes to her study of the yang-cha.

Khailin had accepted the Prince’s token, gritting her teeth. The wedding would take place the following summer, but in the meantime Khailin had done her best to make sure that her betrothal did not interfere unduly with the last year or so of freedom. It could turn out well – it might have been for the best – but sometimes she wished savagely that her body was crippled like Nhia’s was – that a good marriage had been harder to arrange. That she had been given more time.

But perhaps Nhia herself would open a few doors.

So Khailin made sure that their paths crossed in the Temple, that Nhia learned to recognize her face, that they started nodding at one another in passing, that they finally exchanged a word of greeting, and then of conversation. Khailin the courtier had cultivated Nhia with all the precision and cunning of any seeker in quest of favours from a higher-ranked aristocrat or sage.

For once, the things that Nhia was being told were not because someone instinctively trusted her with the information, but rather because this was the information that somebody else wished her to know. Since she had never had to field such an approach before, she had not recognized it as artificial; she had accepted Khailin’s overtures, after a startled wariness that such a one would seek her company, with pleasure. She had found a companion of her own age with whom she could discuss the things that interested her.

They spoke of many things, and Khailin, despite the initial venal motives with which she had approached this relationship, found herself growing to like Nhia. She was surprised by a stab of jealousy when Nhia inevitably spoke of Tai, her only close companion before Khailin herself had appeared on the scene.

‘She is so small and delicate,’ Nhia had said to Khailin as they walked in the Temple, less than a week before the Emperor’s funeral procession was due to take to Linh-an’s streets. ‘She wanted so much to say goodbye, but she won’t even see it, not if she is out in the street, behind the crowds.’

Nhia had not mentioned the exact nature of Tai’s connection with the Imperial family, but Khailin’s curiosity was aroused, and she was nothing if not practised at extracting the information she required.

‘We will all mourn,’ Khailin said. ‘This summer has brought great loss to Syai.’

‘No,’ Nhia said, shaking her head, ‘for Tai it is more.’

‘She spent summers at the Palace?’ Khailin asked. ‘With her mother? You said her mother was the Court dressmaker?’

‘Rimshi is the seamstress, yes – and she has taught Tai well, too.’

This was straying too far into minutiae. Khailin brought it back to the Palace. ‘How old is she now – she is a few years younger than you?’

‘Eleven,’ Nhia said.

‘A few summers at the Palace, and she is but a child. It’s been a tapestry to her, a living dream. I can see why it would be hard to let go.’ But then Khailin had suddenly trailed off, her eyes becoming thoughtful. Her family was part of the Court, and she and her sister, although they did not attend the social occasions at the Imperial Palace frequently, attended often enough for someone like Khailin to pick up on Court undercurrents. And one of those undercurrents, in the past year or so, had been a connection forged by Antian, the Little Empress. The Princess who had been killed in the summer’s earthquake.

Tai had wanted to say goodbye.

For Tai, the mourning was more than that of the land for its anointed.

‘But I can understand,’ Khailin said, taking a chance. Putting two and two together and coming up with a conclusion that was tenuous but of which she was suddenly very certain, she made her voice sound compassionate and deceptively assured. ‘It would be hard to come to terms with such a loss. Losing even just a friend to a calamity like this would be difficult. A sister …;’

Nhia’s head had come up sharply, but she said nothing for a moment, watching Khailin’s face. Khailin allowed her features to soften into a small sad smile. ‘There was talk in the Court. The Little Empress and a companion she had taken to spending time with. That was your Tai, was it not? I thought I heard mention of jin-shei.’

‘Yes,’ said Nhia after a pause, ‘they were jin-shei.’

‘But that should be enough to ensure that Tai is given a place of honour, if only she spoke up that she wished to be there.’

‘You don’t know her,’ Nhia murmured. ‘She was First Princess Antian’s jin-shei-bao, but she would never take advantage of …;’

She might have manipulated Nhia into offering up the confidences, but the sudden brightness that crept into Khailin’s eyes was genuine. ‘I have never had one,’ she said. ‘I have never had a sister who understood me, who knew me. Yan does what our lady mother tells her to do, without looking right or left – if she were told to walk off the edge of a cliff she would do it and never question why. She would go into the marriage they have planned for me, and be utterly content with it, as she would be content with everything.’ She glanced at Nhia, and veiled her eyes, suddenly afraid of showing too much of her emotion. ‘If I were to die,’ she blurted, unable to keep the words under control as firmly as her features, ‘there would be nobody to mourn me.’

‘Your parents …;’ Nhia began, but Khailin cut her off with a sharp motion of her hand.

‘Nobody,’ she said with conviction.

‘I would be sorry,’ Nhia said after a pause.

‘As you are my friend?’

‘Yes, as I am that.’

‘Would you be my sister if I asked you?’

‘Are you asking for jin-shei?’ Nhia said, suddenly sitting very still.

It had not been quite what Khailin had intended. Her emotions were still high, though, and even as they washed over her and made the blood rush into her cheeks she was also thinking, with a rational part of her mind, that this was what she had wanted, exactly what she had wanted, when she had set out to draw Nhia into her circle. For jin-shei sisters, it would be easy to twine lives and fortunes together – and Nhia could be the only thing left to Khailin, the only source of knowledge, of that power that she needed to keep within reach if she were to remain herself and whole. It would not be the first jin-shei bond which had been born out of a more prosaic need rather than of a purity of heart – but even those, according to Khailin’s mother’s stash of jin-ashu literature, were overcome by the power of the vow. However it began, it always ended as a powerful binding. Someone would care. Someone would be required to care.

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

Nhia reached out hesitantly and took her hand. ‘If you wish it.’

Khailin felt a weight she had not known she was carrying slip off her heart, and she sat up a little straighter, leaving her hand in Nhia’s for a moment.

‘Tell Tai,’ she said abruptly, ‘that she is welcome to watch the procession from the balcony in my family’s house. They will pass along our street.’

That had been the third gift.

Instead of trying to find a way to see past the shoulders and the elbows of the crowds in the street, Tai and Nhia had ascended the spiral staircase in Khailin’s home and had stood on high, Linh-an’s crowded, mourning streets below them, and the three of them had watched the Imperial funeral procession from Khailin’s balcony.

First came the drummers, their instruments fluttering with white ribbons, beating a slow marching pace. They were followed by the carts piled high with the offerings for the dead. The first few carts carried the intricate copies manufactured in paper and papier-mâché of the items the dead would require in the afterlife – there were three life-size sedan chairs, draped in cloth-of-gold; an intricately painted and folded miniature paper carriage complete with figures of horses, intended to transport the spirits to Cahan; a number of full-sized human figures with folded hands and painted faces, servants to take care of their needs; cups, fans, musical instruments, writing tablets, a paper replica of the Imperial Diadem, all meticulously crafted, created, painted, ready to be set to the flame as the bodies of the dead were given to the fire, the ashes of all these necessities mixing with the ashes of the dead, taking form in Cahan where they would have need of them. These carts – and there were a number of them, each carefully compiled for each one of the four dead – were followed by others, bearing ingots of gold and silver, draped with white banners inscribed with prayers and blessings and others extolling the virtues of the departed, and then still more, glowing with shimmering white candles, bearing plates and bowls laden with stacks of ceremonial honey cakes, pomegranates and peaches, and flasks of rice wine.

It took a long time for this all to pass by, but finally a long sigh out in the crowded street heralded the arrival of the first of the four bodies in the procession.

Grief had set Tai’s shoulders as she watched the four caskets pass by, each placed on a cart drawn by a single white horse and piled high with white flowers – some real, some artificial silken creations. The horses paced slowly, each led on a rein by an Imperial Guardsman cloaked in white, each cart surrounded by an honour guard – twelve Guardsmen for the Emperor and for the Empress, six for the Little Empress Antian, four for Second Princess Oylian. Behind the last cart, Oylian’s, walked the remnants of the Imperial Court.

They were led by Empress-Heir Liudan, walking alone, her feet in simple rope-soled sandals, robed in a plain white cotton gown. Her hair was dressed in two long looped braids, and banded with white ribbons; she wore no make-up, her eyes untouched by kohl, staring fiercely in front of her as she paced behind her sister’s cart. She looked neither right nor left, seeming to concentrate on just putting one foot in front of another, her head held high. She had never looked more regal.

‘She always wore formal dress, even in the Summer Palace,’ Tai murmured. ‘She was always so – so royal. Now she looks …;’

All three girls looked closely at Liudan as she walked in Linh-an’s streets to lay her family to rest, and each of them saw a different thing.

Khailin saw the future Empress, the high royal pride of the small tilted chin, the nobility of carriage and posture. Nhia saw past all that, looking deeper, and saw flickers of fear beneath the haughtiness. Tai saw her through a beloved ghost, and saw the loneliness, and the pain, and that same sense of loss with which she had once looked at Tai herself when she had first believed that Antian was turning away from her.

And Liudan saw nothing, heard nothing, walked in white silence behind her dead, her spirit a fierce emptiness, an empty vessel waiting to be filled with her life’s destiny.