Under Heaven

He gestures again for her to follow, turns to take them back towards daylight.

She approaches closely, behind him. And at the edge of the tunnel that will lead them out, in the moment when he bends low to enter it, Li-Mei stabs him in the throat from one side with the knife she’s carried in her sleeve all this way.

She drives the blade in then rips it towards her with all her strength, knowing she’ll have only this one chance, not knowing how to kill a man, where the knife must go. She tears it out and stabs him again, and a third time, sobbing. He grunts only once, a queer chest sound.

He falls with a clattering noise, right at the entrance to the tunnel.

Still weeping (and she is not a woman who weeps), Li-Mei strikes again with the knife, into his back. It hits metal, twists in her hand. She is frantic, terrified, but he lies where he’s fallen, and now she sees how much blood there is.

She scrabbles away, clutching the marred blade. She backs up against the cave wall, eyes never leaving him. If he gets up, if he even moves, she knows she will begin to scream and not be able to stop.

Nothing, no movement. Her rapid, ragged breathing is loud in her ears. The light in this chamber falls as before. It is the light that saved her, that told her. If she is right in this. Her hands are still shaking, spasms she cannot stop. She puts the knife down beside her. She has killed a man. She is quite certain she has killed a man.

It is not Meshag. It is not him. She says that last aloud, shocking herself with the sound, the harshness of her voice. It cannot be him, must not be.

She needs to know. Can only do that if she looks. That means going back to where he lies, face down, before the tunnel. It requires courage. She has more, in fact, than she knows.

Holding hard to inner control, she does crawl back, bent knife in hand. There are stones on the cave floor, they hurt her knees. Her wrist hurts, from when the knife twisted. Why did it twist? She thinks she might know. Needs to touch him to be sure.

She does that, too. Drags him by his legs from the tunnel’s entrance. More light where he lies now. With an effort, grunting, she pushes him onto his back. Into her mind there flashes a horrifying image of this man rising up as she does so. Rising to …

He is dead. He will not rise. And he is not Meshag.

An older man, lean face, thin grey hair. He looks nothing at all like Meshag, son of Hurok. Now. But he had before. Had looked exactly like him, in all but one respect. Which tells her what this man is. What he was, she corrects herself. He is dead. She killed him.

She rips through his tunic, chest to belly, with her reddened, twisted blade. Tears it open with both hands. Metallic mirrors appear, strapped around his body, glinting in the pale light from above.

It is a truth about the nature of human beings that we seek—even demand—order and pattern in our lives, in the flow and flux of history and our own times.

Philosophers have noted this and mused upon it. Those advising princes, emperors, kings have sometimes proposed that this desire, this need, be used, exploited, shaped. That a narrative, a story, the story of a time, a war, a dynasty be devised to steer the understanding of a people to where the prince desires it to go.

Without pattern, absent that sense of order, a feeling of randomness, of being lost in a world without purpose or direction can undermine even the strongest man or woman.

Given this, it would certainly have been noted as significant by any such philosopher or adviser that the second son and the only daughter of General Shen Gao, honoured in his day as Left Side Commander of the Pacified West, each killed a man on the same morning, a long way from each other.

The son had done this before. The daughter had not, had never expected to.

As to the meaning to be attached to such a conjunction, a pattern discovered embedded in the tale …

Who can number, under nine heavens, the jewel-bright observations to be extracted from moments such as these? Who will dare say he knows with certainty which single gem is to be held up to whatever light there is for us, in our journeying, and proclaimed as true?

Eventually Li-Mei begins to think about the horse sound she’d heard: she fears an animal will give her away, reveal the cave, if it is still out there.

It might not be. The wolves might have driven it away. Or killed it. It leaves her feeling oddly passive, after the hideous spasm of action before: someone is lying not far away, blood thickening on stone. It is as if she’s exhausted her reserves of force, her ability to play any further role, help herself, can only wait to see what will follow. It is an unexpectedly peaceful state.

You sat, leaning against a wall, legs extended, in the midst of stones and animal bones and the smell of wolf and the sometimes flutter of a bat or bird overhead, and you waited to see who—or what—would come for you. You didn’t have to do anything, there didn’t seem to be anything left to do.

There is no point going outside to be seen. Where will she walk from here, or even ride, alone? She has no adequate clothing, no food, and the wolves are out there.

So there is a curious measure of tranquility in her when she hears the sound of someone else coming into the cave through the tunnel. She looks over, but she doesn’t stand up, or try to hide. She holds her bent knife in her hand.

Meshag enters and straightens and looks around.

She can see him absorb what has happened. She looks at him closely, of course, though she is very sure the deception isn’t happening again.

He kneels beside the fallen man. She sees that he avoids the blood on the cave floor. He stands and comes towards her. She looks at his eyes.

“He was a shaman?” she asks, though she knows the answer.

He gives his short nod.

“He made himself look exactly, almost exactly like you. He never spoke. He was taking me outside when I …” She doesn’t finish.

“What was not me?”

She stands before answering. Brushes at her leggings and tunic to remove some of the rock dust. There is blood, too, she sees. That isn’t going to disappear so easily.

“His eyes,” she says. “His … yours couldn’t have been so bright.” She wonders if this will be wounding, for what it implies.

But it looks as if he smiles. She is almost sure she sees it before the expression goes away. He says, “I know. I have seen my eyes in water. In … pools? That word?”

“Yes, pools. This is since what happened to you?”

A stupid question but he only nods again. “Yes, since. My eyes are dead.”

“No, they aren’t!” she says with sudden force. He looks surprised. She feels surprised. “Your eyes are black, but they aren’t … you aren’t dead!”

No smile this time. “No. But too nearly something else,” he says. “Before Shan … before Shendai came. That day.”

That day. “And it was your brother who …?”

“Yes.”

“You know this?”

“I know this.”

“And this one?” She gestures at the body. “He was sent by him?”

Unexpectedly, he shakes his head. She had thought she was beginning to understand. “No. Too soon. I think he sees me when I leave to find horse. Or before, as we came here.”

“He just saw a chance to take me?”

“For himself, or for reward, might be. He sees me to know me. Who I am. Watching the wolves might have told him. Then it takes time to make a spell to shape-change.”

Li-Mei is thinking hard.