inflamed by the ever-mounting burden of population pressures, threaten to tear Chung Kuo itself apart…
PROLOGUE
THE SOUND OF JADE
SUMMER 2206
‘At rise of day we sacrificed to the Wind God,
When darkly, darkly, dawn glimmered in the sky.
Officers followed, horsemen led the way;
They brought us out to the wastes beyond the town,
Where river mists fall heavier than rain,
And the fires on the hill leap higher than the stars.
Suddenly I remembered the early levees at Court
When you and I galloped to the Purple Yard.
As we walked our horses up Dragon Tail Way
We turned and gazed at the green of the Southern Hills.
Since we parted, both of us have been growing old;
And our minds have been vexed by many anxious cares;
Yet even now I fancy my ears are full
Of the sound of jade tinkling on your bridle-straps.’
—Po Chu-I, ‘To Li Chien’ (AD 819)
It was night and the moon lay like a blinded eye upon the satin darkness of the Nile. From where he stood, on the balcony high above the river, Wang Hsien could feel the slow, warm movement of the air like the breath of a sleeping woman against his cheek. He sighed and laid his hands upon the cool stone of the balustrade, looking out to his right, to the north, where, in the distance, the great lighthouse threw its long, sweeping arm of light across the delta. For a while he watched it, feeling as empty as the air through which it moved, then he turned back, looking up at the moon itself. So clear the nights were here. And the stars. He shivered, the bitterness flooding back. The stars…
A voice broke into his reverie. ‘Chieh Hsia? Are you ready for us?’
It was Sun Li Hua, Master of the Inner Chamber. He stood just inside the doorway, his head bowed, his two assistants a respectful distance behind him, their heads lowered. Wang Hsien turned and made a brief gesture, signifying that they should begin, then he turned back.
He remembered being with his two eldest sons, Chang Ye and Lieh Tsu, on the coast of Mozambique in summer. A late summer night with the bright stars filling the heavens overhead. They had sat there about an open fire, the three of them, naming the stars and their constellations, watching the Dipper move across the black velvet of the sky until the fire was ash and the day was come again. It was the last time he had been with them alone. Their last holiday together.
And now they were dead. Both of them, lying in their coffins, still and cold beneath the earth. And where were their spirits now? Up there? Among the eternal stars? Or was there only one soul, the hun, trapped and rotting in the ground? He gritted his teeth, fighting against his sense of bitterness and loss. Hardening himself against it. But the bitterness remained. Was it so? he asked himself. Did the spirit soul, the p’o, rise up to Heaven, as they said, or was there only this? This earth, this sky, and Man between them?
Best not ask. Best keep such thoughts at bay, lest the darkness answer you.
He shivered, his hands gripping the stone fiercely. Gods but he missed them! Missed them beyond the power of words to say. He filled his hours, keeping his mind busy with the myriad affairs of State; even so, he could not keep himself from thinking of them. Where are you? he would ask himself on waking. Where are you, Chang Ye, who smiled so sweetly? And you, Lieh Tsu, my ying tao, my baby peach, always my favourite? Where are you now?
Murdered, a brutal voice in him insisted. And only ash and bitterness remained.
He turned savagely, angry with himself. Now he would not sleep. Bone-tired as he was, he would lie there, sleepless, impotent against the thousand bitter-sweet images that would come.
‘Sun Li Hua!’ he called impatiently, moving the curtain aside with one hand. ‘Bring me something to make me sleep! Ho yeh, perhaps, or tou chi.’
‘At once, Chieh Hsia.’
The Master of the Inner Chamber bowed low, then went to do as he was bid. Wang Hsien watched him go, then turned to look across at the huge, low bed at the far end of the chamber. The servants were almost done. The silken sheets were turned back, the flowers at the bedside changed, his sleeping robes laid out, ready for the maids.
The headboard seemed to fill the end wall, the circle of the Ywe Lung, the Moon Dragon, symbol of