Magistrates of Hell

who has freed himself from the cycle of rebirths – but has lingered behind in this world to save others? Yet this coldness is nothing I have felt before. When a man’s soul divides at death, and the upper soul is carried off to Heaven by the Spirit of the Dragon of Wisdom, the lower soul remains . . . but I understand that it usually disperses. Although, if one reads the writings of Wang Bi on the subject . . . Oh, yes, ten thousand pardons. You said you wished to speak to him . . .’

He returned to his stool, beside the bench where Asher sat. Closed his eyes.

Stillness filled the room, save for the keening of the wind around the temple’s eaves.

Then he whispered, ‘Under the mountain.’

‘You speak to him?’

Chiang moved his head a little, as if to say, No, then was still.

After another long silence he murmured in English, ‘Mistress—’

‘Are you all right?’ Lydia put her hand to her lips the instant the question passed them, probably realizing, thought Asher, what a useless one it was. But, he thought, she couldn’t not ask.

‘I am well.’ Even the timbre of that uninflected voice was the same.

‘We’re going to seal the mine –’ Asher kept his tone deliberately matter-of-fact – ‘after detonating cylinders of chlorine gas. Will that kill them?’

‘Most assuredly. They are not immortal, James. Twelve entrances. The farthest two are ventilation shafts on the north-east flank of the mountain.’

‘We know of all twelve.’

‘There is a thirteenth you must also destroy, the worst. Below the level of the mine tunnels lies a natural cave system. The old mine entrance, on the far side of the mountain; follow the tunnel to the great gallery on the left, filled with slag and broken rock. From there the tunnel slopes down sharply and breaks through into the caves below. This tunnel must be sealed. They do not go there yet, but if driven they will. I know not how far those caves extend.’

‘It will be done.’

‘Thank you . . .’ Lydia whispered.

‘I assure you, Mistress, that had I known what this information would cost me, you would never have had it.’

‘Could a vampire control these things?’ asked Asher.

‘This vampire cannot. Trust me, I have tried. The vampires of Prague have been trying for years.’

‘What about a vampire who was infected with their blood?’

Into the long silence which followed this, Lydia added, ‘Jamie found one of them. One of the old ones, it sounds like. He’s being kept prisoner by a criminal family who’s trying to get control of the Others.’

‘Prisoner?’

‘Tso—’ Chiang flinched, put his hand to his head again, opened his eyes. ‘A sound,’ he explained in Chinese, looking at Asher. ‘Something moving in the darkness. Where is this? Where is he?’

‘Western Hills.’

‘And you understood the words I said? Extraordinary.’ Chiang’s face was alight with fascination. ‘Kuo Hsiang writes that it is possible to completely detach the mind from one’s activities, to become utterly one with the Way; a most astonishing sensation. But he is afraid,’ he added. ‘Your friend. The things he fears, the things in the dark underground . . . I have heard stories of them. Now – since summer – when I go begging I hear of things here in the city as well, things seen in the night on the shores of the Seas—’

‘You try,’ asked Asher, ‘bid these things come, bid them go? Listen to minds, as you listen for speech of spirits?’

Chiang tilted his head. There was something in his eyes that told Asher that he’d tried.

In time he said, ‘No. There is nothing. Only madness, and hunger that cannot be assuaged.’

‘Tomorrow, next day,’ said Asher, ‘come with us to hills? We destroy these creatures, yao- kuei in Shi’h Liu mine. We need all help we can get.’

The old man was silent for a moment, studying Asher’s face. At length he said, ‘Yes. I will come.’

TWENTY-FOUR

On Monday, the eleventh of November, Asher, Mizukami, and Professor Karlebach took the noon train for Men T’ou Kuo. With them journeyed the bodyguard Ogata and four soldiers from the Japanese garrison, armed not only with rifles but with flammenwerfer – the new German flame-throwers – guarding a shipment of a thousand liters of pure chlorine. Two other soldiers, requisitioned – Mizukami said – on the grounds of a worsening infestation of rabid rats in the Shi’h Liu Mine, met them in the little town with horses, donkeys, and guns. They reached Mingliang village shortly before nightfall.

‘News of us will be all over the hills by moonrise,’ surmised Asher as he checked the action on his borrowed Arisaka carbine, preparatory to taking the first shift at guard. ‘We’ll have the Kuo Min-tang and every gang of bandits this side of the Yellow River coming to have a try at them. And, unless we’re really lucky, somebody will ride back to the city and let Huang and the Tso Family know there’s something afoot as well.’ Lydia had smuggled him his own clothes and boots from the hotel, so he no longer felt like a deserter from the chorus of Turandot. In addition to arranging for a squad of villagers to carry the cylinders of chlorine down into the mine, Dr Bauer had offered her clinic as a headquarters. But she was silent and uneasy, as if she guessed there was more behind the ‘rabid rats’ story than anyone was saying.

‘This is beyond our capacity to alter.’ Count Mizukami shut the small iron door on the kang that occupied a third of the room: their blankets were already spread out on the hollow brick platform that, in most Chinese farmhouses, served as both stove and bed. At the table, Karlebach said nothing. But every now and then he looked up from cleaning his shotgun, to regard Asher with a kind of aching wonderment, as if he couldn’t believe that one of his surrogate sons, at least, had returned from the dead.

Knowing his old teacher incapable of disguising either grief or joy, Asher had kept hidden from him until they were on the train out of Peking. He’d had Mizukami break the news to Karlebach that Asher was in fact alive, before walking into the compartment himself, but still the old man had clung to him for a time in tears. His first question, when he could speak again, had been, Does Madame know? To which Asher had responded with a smile, ‘Forgive me – but yes. She’s a much better actress than you are.’ This had lightened the air between them with laughter, but now Asher was interested to note that rather than ending Karlebach’s grim resolve, the reunion had energized him. Once in their headquarters for the night, he had gone lovingly over every millimeter of his shotgun, and he was now checking each of its glinting brass shells, stuffed with enough solid silver deer-shot to blow a living man to Kingdom Come.

‘Word could have gone out,’ Mizukami went on reasonably, ‘to Huang, or to the Kuo Min-tang, when Sergeant Tamayo arrived in Men T’ou Kuo yesterday and arranged for the porters and horses.’ He removed his glasses and set them aside, but kept his sword beneath the blanket with him. ‘If we set a guard openly, at least the small dogs of the hills will keep their distance for the night.’

With that, Asher had to agree, and in fact the night passed without incident. He returned from his watch at midnight to find his old teacher still awake, poring over the map which the priest Chiang had drawn for them the previous night in the Temple.

‘You’re sure this man’s information can be trusted?’ Karlebach looked up as he came in and brushed the map with his fingers. ‘You say he is familiar with these hills. But after all, if he has not seen the Others, how can he be sure where it is that they sleep?’

‘I know of no reason he’d lie.’ Asher kept his voice low, for Mizukami slept under a pile of blankets and sheepskins on the kang, and the table had been drawn up close to it for warmth. He pulled off his gloves, held his half-frozen fingers to the kang’s iron door. ‘For all I know he could be in the pay of the Tso Family, and this could be an elaborate trap to keep me from peaching on them to the British authorities about their nefarious deeds. In China you simply can’t tell. But—’

The old man chuckled in the depths of his white beard and waved the possibility aside. Asher didn’t want to tell him that Chiang had only been following Ysidro’s thoughts, like a spiritualist wielding a planchette.