Sighing deeply, he looked out over the edge of the pit.
The sun had dropped. Bright light from the day now became muted and thick. A hint of pink and orange touched the horizon. A short distance away a small aeroplane taxied down the runway and took to the air. The roar of a modest engine followed seconds later.
Early model Russian cars sparsely dotted the highway that ran near this place. Wheezing engines coughed and sputtered black exhaust. A rare bus passed, filled with passengers. The crowd of people bulged from open windows, others barely clung to handrails that lined the steps to the open door.
Nearby a baby cooed.
He turned his attention to a slender young woman making notes on a clipboard some feet away from the edge of the pit. Her foot gently rocked the tightly bound baby, but her work continued. She never made a sound.
The child was a boy. A son.
He was a son of a long line of sons that had created this place. And he was bound. Swaddled in tight cloth for warmth and safety on this day, he was also enclosed by culture and necessity for a lifetime.
It was a legacy of the ages to be enclosed, walled off by others. Qin Shi Huang Di was the first, having built the Great Wall. Now he rested with his army. There had been another in history who built a line of walls and fortresses for protection. But unlike the creator of the Great Wall, this leader and his followers had coveted the dark. Until now.
Liu turned back to glance into the pit.
While the army of Qin Shi Huang Di for ever rested, perhaps the figures of Jing Di only slept.
He stroked the medallion.
There, in the shadow of the waning day, were the first few. Liu spied row after row of heads led now by a few tiny exposed figures
Good fortune.
and walked the narrow path to them.
They were small, much smaller than the terracotta army, and stood only two feet tall. Unlike the sculpted and painted clothes on the armies of Qin Shi Huang Di, these smaller figures had worn garments of silk and other fine materials.
Liu stroked the cold face of a small soldier. Its eyes revealed compassion, the mouth remained upturned ever so slightly in an embarrassed smile. And that one. Here the cheekbones were high, the eyes direct, mouth set. This one was a fighter, determined in a personal goal. Each face was different in their beauty and their varied range of human emotion. There was pride, innocence, high-spiritedness, and there was something else.
Youth.
Liu gasped in recognition and sudden joy.
They were children.
Children. All of them. Offspring. And more important, if he were right, they were descendants. Fathered in mission by Jing Di, these were the minions Liu and the others sought.
The children had waited. Waited for over 2,000 years to come out of the dark.
Liu licked his dry lips and swallowed hard. He had to know if his intuition had steered him correctly this time. The discovery in this pit was far from complete, so if these children slept, they did not sleep alone.
Individually, and collectively — only when they were completely exhumed, brushed free from dirt, and the tiny instruments put away — would they awaken to take their place. Then they would join the vast population of this continent, and the world, to hide in plain sight. And he would be their new leader.
He had to know.
Now.
Reaching into his pack, he produced the four purple candles, arranged them in the star-like shape, then lit them. He pulled a deep breath, stepped back, and called once again upon the four directions to bring these figures to wholeness.
Nothing.
He kept his breath, and whispered soundless hope.
A stirring came then.
An exhalation like muted wind arrived from a distance, but ever so close that he could feel it brush against his cheek.
Far away the howling began. From the four directions a keening travelled close, closer, then converged on a point between the candles. The flames flickered, then went out. Small tendrils of candle-smoke rose and spiralled to the roof of the pit. The sound echoed through the excavated site, then died.
The new cycle had begun.
Liu tempered the small smile on his lips, but in his heart was exaltation. This time he had been right. Still, there was work to be done.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he reached deep into a pocket for a knife. It glittered with the captured lowering rays of sun that would bring about dusk. Closing his eyes, and breathing deep the musky scent of the tombs and newly extinguished candles, he slashed the knife across his open palm. Like the statues void of but one fixed emotion, he clenched his fist, dropped the blade, and approached the figure of the child fighter.
A drop of blood touched the fighter's lips. Then, a second. He moved to the compassionate child, repeated the act, then waited.
