The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (30 page)

The Tale of Snow Pine

Perhaps from unthinking transmission of tradition, perhaps because of dislike of his mother, Meteor-Plum had constructed a scheme of ritual that gave women a secondary role. There had been female rulers in Qiangguo but they had been exceptions—widows, or firstborns in families with no sons. One reason for the system of multiple wives and concubines was to improve the odds of a male heir. Even if the Son of Heaven had trouble siring a boy, he could be given many opportunities to try. Yet Meteor-Plum had always assumed that the Wall-marks on the mother’s belly would unerringly signify the new ruler.

It simply had not occurred to him the new ruler might be a girl.

In the end, though he knew the private truth of the girl’s power, he could not go against tradition and the very amplification of tradition that he’d authored himself. He believed it would cut his own legs out from under him. And so, weeping, he conspired to have the girl killed, and the story put out that she’d died in childbirth.

Some of the sages of his own Garden were aghast at this decision. They secretly broke with Meteor-Plum. With their help, the concubine escaped the Forbidden City and fled to the wild woods of the provinces, taking the girl with her.

That day was born the secret society of the Forest.

Human order had failed—so believed the Forest. Only meditation on natural order, and on the Way that lay behind it, could bring humans to their proper state. Thus the Forest sages lived in the wilderness, as Meteor-Plum had once done. And his daughter Snow Pine climbed her namesakes, raced animals, fished with her hands, and seemed at times a wild animal, at times a cultivated maiden. She learned fighting arts and the mysteries of chi. She dared to put some of the Forest’s beliefs into words.

The Way that can be walked on foot is not what we call the eternal Way. Even the name “Way” is far removed from the eternal Way.

The spokes of a wheel all yearn toward its center, yet the true center of the wheel is but the emptiness reserved for the axle. Thus nothingness is the most important part of the wheel. Nothingness and being are intimately acquainted.

Consider water. It benefits all, yet does not strive for the high places but flows toward the low. It moves aside if pierced, yet in time carves holes through the mountains. Likewise, to forego high station for anonymity is in accord with the Way. To move in accord with the flow of the world brings success.

Those who have the greatest skill should not be employed in the workings of the State, for they will engender envy. Let them live anonymously in the woods, and let word of their deeds trickle to humankind like water flowing downhill.

Honesty is stone, rhetoric is silk. Those knowledgeable in the Way have no need to preach it, for they have withdrawn and are anonymous. Thus, if one speaks fine rhetoric to sway the mass of people, one is far from the Way.

Snow Pine learned and grew strong, and her words were stone and not silk.

Yet, striving not, she felt her path drawing inevitably toward her father’s. And the day came she went to see the Emperor.

Meteor-Plum was old then, having often retreated to his scrolls to ponder the endless cares of empire. And when he saw Snow Pine approaching along the highway of the Red Heavenwall toward his position above a bamboo forest, he sighed, dismissed his retinue, and ordered the nearby garrison to march east.

“I know you,” he said as he met her beside the empty battlements, for he sensed the pattern of her chi.

“I am here,” she said.

“What would you say to me?”

“Words are not needed, Father. I wish simply to stand here and breathe the same air as you.”

“You may not have the Empire.”

“I have sufficient Empire already, having nothing.”

“You speak like one of the Forest. I have heard of those rebels.”

“The Forest rebels against nothing. We seek only accord with the Way.”

“So you admit it! They know nothing of the Way, child. The Way is to be sincere and fair, nothing more.”

“Benevolence and righteousness are but echoes of the Way, Father. They arise as a counter-force to villainy when the true Way is neglected. But best never to forget the Way in the first place.”

“I think we are two people divided by the same word. The Way is simply the path of human affairs.”

“Human affairs are simply one product of the Way, which gives rise to all of nature.”

“Hm. We are perhaps reading different classics, daughter. That bodes ill. Again, you cannot have come to me just wanting to breathe the same air—though you are welcome to it!”

“I do just want to breathe the same air.”

They stood thus, she leaning on a battlement, he standing in a relaxed, yet attentive pose.

“You needn’t posture on my account, father.”

“I am quite comfortable. Yet an Emperor must have a degree of pomp about him, or he will fail to inspire awe. That is the Way. You, by contrast, seem slovenly and thoughtless.”

“If I seem dull and unkempt, it is because I travel with the Way, letting it take me where it will, rather than using it as a tool.”

“And it has taken you here. To breathe the same air, you say.”

“Yes. If you would be silent, you might understand why.”

“You command your Emperor to silence?”

“I command nothing. Do as you will.”

The Emperor went silent. Meteor-Plum stood with Snow Pine, breathing. His awareness began taking in things he normally missed, the play of light upon the Wall’s stones, the chirping of birds in the distance, the vibrations underfoot . . .

Vibrations. Yes, something in the Wall was shaking, as though an earthquake had begun. He might have spoken, but an intuition told him to continue stretching his awareness, taking in the flow of chi.

And he understood. The chi currents coursing through the Wall were beginning to eddy here, where two of the Walls’ chosen stood side-by-side. The Walls could not sustain the presence of them both. Soon the flow would build to a destructive level.

“Ah,” he said.

“You cannot flee far enough, Father.”

“This will kill us both.”

“It is better thus, than to have such power so concentrated.”

“You claim to follow a Way. I say your way is revenge.”

“Then kill me, Father. That is the only way you can prevent the calamity. You cannot flee far enough, fast enough, even by descending the Wall.”

He smiled. “You are incorrect, daughter.” He took her hand, and ceased smiling. “I am sorry.” He let go and leaped from the Wall.

“Father!” Snow Pine jumped after him.

Did she mean to save him? If so, had she repented her actions, or did she merely mean to keep him alive until the detonation of chi could disrupt the Wall? Had his self-sacrifice changed, in an instant, something between them?

In any event, she who could defy gravity by application of chi could also assist gravity by propelling herself more rapidly downward. Her father, however, was her equal in this, and he too hastened to his doom.

Both perished upon the hard ground, even as she got her arms around him, even as the eddy of chi built to its catastrophe.

Snow Pine had meant by this meeting to shatter the Wall, but this would not now occur. The Wall was deeply cracked but remained intact. Even so, the excess of chi burned off in a manner that shook the land, and it had an effect unforeseen.

The life essence of Meteor-Plum and Snow Pine roared across the world like a thunderclap, and the gift or curse of the Wall-marked went likewise. From that day forward, a new Wall-marked child could be born in any province of the Empire . . . or indeed in any part of the world.

Sometimes the Garden seeks these children. And always the Forest is there to prevent such a finding. To date, no Emperor of the Wall-mark has risen since the great Meteor-Plum.

The clouds beyond the treetops had grown darker, and the air cold.

“You were wrong,” Walking Stick said at last, “to break with the Garden and join the Forest. Yet you were right, too. Part of me always thought you would return. Abandon your ideals. Abandon your barbarian mate and children. What I fool I was.”

“I can admit, now,” Lightning Bug said, “that I broke with the Garden in part because I was angry. Angry with you for obeying the rules so strictly. Who would have cared if we indulged our desire in secret? It had happened before. In a few years we would be initiated as full Gardeners and have the right to marry, so who would mind?”

“Indeed. A few years only. Not so long for us to wait . . .”

“Here we are again! The difference. Perhaps we are cursed to incompatible perceptions of time. I have always yearned for the Now, you for the Later.” She laughed. “And in the end I settled with Tror, lover of books, who cherishes the Bygone.”

Walking Stick gave a dry chuckle. “It is amusing. We call him barbarian, you and I, yet we fight and rage, while he studies and publishes.”

“And cares for my children. While I leap at another mad adventure.”

“He is a good man . . .”

She looked away. “You are a good man . . .”

“I have longed to hear you say it. Allow me to prove it.”

He walked a pace away from her, standing straight, staring eastward.

She nodded, eyes wet, imitating his stance.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said.

“Yes.”

“A barbarian madman has captured the mother of the Emperor-to-be. This seems to me intolerable. This seems to me a concern of both the Garden and the Forest.”

“I concur.”

“Perhaps, until this problem is rectified, we might forgo our usual arguments.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps, given a certain . . . agitation . . . between us two, we might direct those frustrated energies toward kicking an evil sorcerer’s hindquarters.”

Walking Stick bowed. “I concur.”

Rain fell. It would be an inauspicious day to travel. Good, Lightning Bug thought. That would be something else to fight.

Once every week, regardless of exhaustion, Persimmon Gaunt had sat at the topmost room of the temple and taken her tea with the sunrise in the manner the monks had shown, reaching out to the world beyond the scroll.

Each time she had perceived the presence of Hackwroth.

Each time she withdrew in haste, wondering why the Night’s Auditors did not follow her into
A Tumult of Trees on Peculiar Peaks
. Perhaps they were concerned about what resistance she might muster, what allies she’d found. Yet surely those factors could only strengthen with time. Why delay?

The reason had to be Bone. If Bone did not endure, there would be no reason to wait.

So she clung to hope, and spoke every day to Innocence of the boy’s father.

At first such speech was mainly a patter Gaunt maintained to keep herself company, for the baby understood only the texture of her voice, not the meaning.

She invented stories that might have been cruel had Innocence understood. As the boy cried himself awake for perhaps the three hundred and fiftieth time, Gaunt said, “What’s that? What happened since I saw you last? You were kidnapped by underlurks and wrapped as a pastry? You escaped by boring to the surface with a dull weepfruit spoon? But balloon-pirates stole the spoon and you chased them riding in the mouth of a roc? And the bird swallowed you up and if it hadn’t belched you right back into the tower you’d be in its belly now? Oh, baby, poor baby!”

This whimsy did not calm the crying but did console Gaunt.

She was informed by Next One, who had attached herself to Gaunt as the closest thing to a confidante in this place, that Innocence had the “night crying.” This was, Gaunt suspected, a shortened version of “inconsolable anguished night crying that might also occur in the morning or noon or afternoon but whenever it happens surely drives hot steel daggers into a mother’s heart.” However, “night crying” was easier to say.

“You can’t cure night crying,” Next One said. “You can change their position. You can wrap them tightly. You can give them warm baths. You can stop taking milk, or avoid eating those vegetables that resemble trees. You can make whooshing noises as if you were a windstorm or a river. You can jiggle them gently against your chest—but resist the urge to shake them. Mostly these efforts just keep you busy, so you don’t notice the crying as much.”