Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) 📕

The temple of the Ch’in-cha was near the top of a steep, forested hill. They were exhausted when they got there. The journey began before sunrise, continued through a pleasant summer day, and ended with their horses climbing a steep mountain path long after dark with the aid of the seventh full moon of the Year of the Ape.

That night, for a change, there was none of Szechwan’s usual mist. Tall pine trees concealed the temple until they were almost upon it. It was dug into the side of the hill, the only external structure a carved stone entrance with a tiled roof.

Taking a tinder box and an oil-soaked pine-knot torch from his saddlebag, Taitaro made a light for them. Inside the temple entrance was a surprisingly large room, carved out of solid rock. It was five-sided, and in each side there was a triangular opening to chambers beyond. Taitaro led the way to the further opening on the left side of the entrance. They entered a tunnel.

“This temple was here when the ancestors of the first Emperors of China were village overlords,” Taitaro said.

“Is it deserted?” Yukio asked.

“At the moment, yes.”

“What happened, did the Mongols sack it?”

“No,” Taitaro said. “The Mongols respect the holy places of all religions. In this land the Ch’in-cha have long since given up living in communities of their own. The temple is used only when there is a need for it.”

Jebu had to crouch to walk through the tunnel, though the rounded roof was high enough for Yukio and Taitaro. The cool air around him had the pleasantly dank smell of a cave.

The chamber at the end of the tunnel was spacious. The scraping of their footsteps echoed from the dome-shaped ceiling. Looking down, Jebu saw that there was a mosaic design in the floor. Taitaro placed himself in the centre of the design. The intertwining lines were worked out in the six colours of the rainbow, against a background of concentric rings of black and white. So rich were the colours that the entire design seemed to vibrate under Jebu’s torch.

He noticed something on the wall of the room opposite to where he was standing. It was an eye painted on the rock wall of the chamber, the paint fading with age. In the centre of the eye was a red and white version of the yin-yang symbol. A bunch of wilting flowers was set in a small jade vase on a pedestal before the painted eye. Someone had been here a day or two ago.

Jebu looked back at the mosaic on the floor. Now he recognized it. It was the Tree of Life, the intricately knotted maze he had seen in a vision with Taitaro, a version of which was carved on the precious stone he carried concealed in his Zinja robe. This version of the tree seemed to radiate from the centre of the circular room, as if one were looking down upon it from above its many-coloured branches.

Taitaro seated himself on the floor in the centre of the mosaic, dropping down easily and gracefully despite his age. “Do you know how to meditate, Lord Yukio?”

“I spent a good many years in a monastery, sensei. Though I never could see the point of sitting on one’s buttocks and thinking about nothing.”

“I understand,” said Taitaro. “But there is a point tonight. Please seat yourself and try to meditate. Jebu, give me the Jewel of Life and Death.”

Jebu set his torch in a holder beside the entrance and reached inside his robe for the Jewel. He walked slowly to Taitaro, holding it out before him.

“What is that?” whispered Yukio.

“A shintai,” said Jebu.

“Have you been carrying it with you as long as I’ve known you? Why haven’t we had better fortune?”

Taitaro took the stone from Jebu. “It is the belief of our Order that fortune is neither good nor bad, Lord Yukio, and that in any case neither prayers nor spells nor deeds can affect it.” He held the Jewel up between his thumbs and forefingers and gazed into it.

After a moment he said, “Put out the torch.” Jebu stamped out the torch in the tunnel outside the room.

The chamber was not totally dark. Jebu noticed a shaft of soft, white light falling from the ceiling, striking the mosaic floor near Taitaro. It was moonlight, entering through a small circular opening in the centre of the dome. The moments when the moon was in precisely the right position to send its light through the opening must be rare, Jebu thought.

The three sat in silence until Jebu lost track of time. Erom long habit, he kept his eyes fixed on the Jewel in Taitaro’s lap, feeling that he could see its intricate pattern even though it was across the room. He seemed to be floating in a sea which had no surface, no bottom and no shore in any direction.

Gradually the shaft of light changed position as the moon moved across the sky. It struck Taitaro’s knee, then his forearm. At last the light fell upon the Jewel, which seemed to blaze up instantly like a newly kindled fire. A cool, green radiance filled the room. The eye painted on the wall was fixed on the back of Taitaro’s head. Taitaro’s eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the Jewel.

Jebu expected the Tree of Life to spring up before him in all its glory. But he saw only the burning seed in Taitaro’s palm. At last, as the light moved on with the passage of the moon from east to west, the Jewel ceased to glow.

Taitaro spoke, and his voice was calm and pleasant, but Jebu felt that he was hearing the voice, not of his father, but of the Self.

“You will go into the north, where the Wise One contends with the Keeper of the Hearth. You will join the Wise One, who has gathered men from many lands to serve him. You will fight for the Wise One, then you will return to the Sacred Islands. One of you will be betrayed by his own blood. The other will seem to die but live. The jewels created by Izanami and Izanagi shall be protected by the Hurricane of the Kami. Each of you will be worthy of his father.”

Taitaro’s voice died away. The three sat in silent meditation again for a long time.

“Take the Jewel again, Jebu,” Taitaro said. Jebu stood and took the Jewel from Taitaro’s hand. Taitaro rose fluidly to his feet and stretched himself casually, as if he had only been napping.

“Come,” he said, “let’s camp outside for the night.”

Their horses tethered to a pine tree, they sat on the ground a short distance above the entrance to the temple. Eog was beginning to fill the valley below their hill, so that they seemed to be on an island rising out of a pearly sea.

“What happened to you in there?” asked Jebu.

“It was as if I were dreaming,” said Taitaro. “The words I spoke were not mine. They came to me.”

“Who are the Wise One and the Keeper of the Hearth?” Jebu asked.

“Two members of the Mongol ruling family are preparing to claim the title of Great Khan-Kublai Khan and his brother, Arik Buka. Kublai Khan’s grandfather, Genghis Khan, called him Sechen, which means the Wise One. Arik Buka is ruler of the Mongol homeland. His title is Keeper of the Hearth. The first part of the prophecy means that you will serve Kublai Khan. He gives high place to foreigners and has adopted many foreign ways. You will be welcome among his Banners. One wing of his army is moving westwards, south of the Great Wall. You can meet them at Lanchow, directly north of here.”

“How kind of the gods-or whoever it is who prophesies with your tongue, sensei-to arrange things for me,” said Yukio bitterly. “I need only get to Lanchow and there join the army of this Kublai Khan. How simple.”

“What is it, Yukio?” asked Jebu softly.

Yukio shook his head. “Only twice in my life have I felt in control of my own destiny. Once when I escaped from the Rokuhara. The other, when I decided to lead this expedition to China. Whatever mistakes my father made, they were his mistakes. He was no one’s plaything. I did not know what a glorious feeling that could be until the night I went over Sogamori’s wall.”

“And now?” said Taitaro.

“Since we left Kweilin, sensei, I’ve been following your son blindly. And now I am following you. Jebu decided that we must wander through Szechwan. Now you tell me I must go and fight for this Kublai Khan.”

“Not must, Yukio. The path has been suggested to you, nothing more. You will find Kublai Khan a wiser and more generous lord than the Emperor of China.”

“To serve Kublai Khan now is simply the best choice open to me, as you see it?”

“I thought so before,” said Taitaro. “But I could not be entirely sure of it until tonight, when I had the opportunity to read the Jewel of Life and Death in this temple. Now I know. If you choose this path, Lord Yukio, it will ultimately lead you back to the Sacred Islands and to glory.”

Yukio’s large brown eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight. “That is the road I want to travel, sensei. I left the Sunrise Land only with the thought that I might return one day to avenge my family and overthrow our enemies. I may die on that path, but as long as I know I am on the path, I don’t mind. These past months I felt I had lost my way.”

“My vision tonight tells me you are on that path.”

Yukio shook his head. “And yet my father told me that a military commander who pays attention to the flights of birds or the cracks in a tortoiseshell is sure to lose. He used to tap his forehead and say, ‘The only auguries worth listening to are in here.’ “

Taitaro nodded. “But you came to China not only to escape the Takashi and make your fortune, but to learn more about the art of warfare. In today’s world the Mongols are the masters of war. Of Kublai Khan, the Mongols say he has the military genius of his grandfather, Genghis Khan. How could you learn more than in the service of Kublai Khan?”

Yukio smiled wryly. “How foolish you make my notion seem, of getting involved in the wars between Nan Chao and Annam.”

Taitaro patted Yukio’s arm. “You are no man’s plaything, Muratomo no Yukio. You’re only twenty-five years old.