Path of the Eclipse (20 page)

“No one heard but me,” Saint-Germain assured her as he followed her, his light step awakening another such sound. “There. You see how quiet?”

She nodded automatically. “I ordered all of Gei’s people into the hills,” she said after a moment. “The inn can’t be saved, so I have ordered that the building be filled with barrels of pitch. Four men took the barrels down yesterday, and carried Gei and all his family away, concealed under sacking. The barrels were old meat and grain barrels so that if there were men watching, they will have seen nothing remarkable.” She studied him shyly. “Hsing is gone.”

“Thank you,” he said, relieved for the girl, but more moved by Chih-Yü’s generosity.

“Then you do care for her,” Chih-Yü declared with an unexpected flash of jealousy, which confused her. She told herself sternly that had she married, she would have shared her husband with other women. But a husband would not have stirred her as Saint-Germain did, would not have freed her close-held desire.

“So do you, or you would not have sent her away,” was his kind response. “Naturally I have been fond of her. I cannot treat her as I did and not experience some sort of tie. But you know yourself that her pleasure in me was mild. Of necessity, then, I felt the same mildness for her.” He was standing behind her, and he put his small hands on her shoulders, drawing her back against him. “There is nothing mild between us, Chih-Yü,” he said in a deeper voice, uncannily echoing her own thoughts. “If you had wanted it, you could have had that from me—a pleasant satisfaction, a dream of easy gratification, nothing more. Hsing never understood what passed between us, either from her sensuality or her fear. Oh, yes, in part she was afraid of me, though I tried every way I know to ameliorate it.”

“How could she fear you? How could anyone fear you?” She was astonished at the idea.

His chuckle was oddly sinister. “I am not always … courteous,” he said dryly, his memories scalding through him.

Chih-Yü recalled the cold skill with which Saint-Germain had fought Jui Ah. Perhaps he could be frightening. “But fear, in this?”

“It has a kind of power. I would rather not use. it, but if I must, I will…” He stopped, for this would accomplish nothing. “Hsing should not concern you, Chin-Yü. She has nothing to do with what happens between you and me.”

“I suppose it is silly. Without doubt you have known others.” She was not distressed.

“Many others,” he murmured, sensing a new excitement in her.

“And did they all fear you?” She raised her arms and reached behind her head to touch him.

“Not all.” His hands moved from her shoulders, under her arms to her breasts. He was not hurried.

“What became of them?”

He hesitated, then said, “Some of them died. Some of them changed.”

“Changed?” She felt that strange tightness in her body that marked the beginning of her desire.

“When there is understanding, there is a change, eventually. You know what I am, what my love is, and in time that would change you.” Had there been no order for silence, he still would have spoken quietly. His hand cupped her breasts, unmoving.

“How would it change me?” The thoughts of battle were distant now: his voice and his hands were real.

“It would make you what I am, in time.”

“A vampire?”

“Yes.” He lifted her hair with one hand and bent to kiss the nape of her neck before continuing. “When I am truly known, something of my nature passes from me.”

“But a vampire?” The myths haunted her. She heard her nurse’s voice telling her of the rapacious p’o seeking endlessly for a body to possess so that it could plunder the living. To her shame, she trembled.

“It need not be terrible,” he said, and the ancient loneliness was in his tone. “For those who have changed, death has little hold on them, and they cannot be bound by it, even as I was not.”

“But how does it occur?” She felt his hands on her hips, gentle, persistent. Her head went back and her breath came more deeply. As she listened to him, she watched the moon sliding through the clouds, and she let her mind drift with it.

“It … evolves. We have been together three times. If you were to let me love you three times more, you have sufficient … experience of me. Then, unless your head was struck off, or you were crushed or burned, there would be no death for you.” Slowly he opened her sheng go and felt the warmth of her flesh in his hands.

“There are no other ways?” Her body was alive with his touch, eager for him. His small, beautiful hands encountered no resistance as they delved further, reaching to find the source of her pleasure. She sighed languidly, glad to give herself over to this intense moment.

“There is a way,” he murmured to her hair as he stroked her intimately. “Those who taste my blood are made like me. If you would wish that…” He did not want to offer false hope. “It will not make you invulnerable to steel and flame, but it is some protection.” He dared not admit, even to himself, how little defense vampirism would be against the hazards of battle with so implacable a foe as the Mongols.

Her back arched suddenly and she shivered ecstatically. A cry escaped her before she could stop it, but her joy was so profoundly private that the sound was not very loud. She felt flushed, and her feet, which had grown colder, were pulsingly warm in the sweeping delicious frenzy coursing through her. Her fingers were sunk in his dark, loose curls that pressed her cheek as he bent his head against her neck. Though her breath was unsteady, she longed to be able to speak, to tell him that never had she anticipated such complete fulfillment. But words were pallid, tenuous things compared to the immensity of her desire’s culmination. Surely, surely there could be no greater satisfaction, yet she was aware that his hands were not idle, and to her amazement she was responding to an evocation of greater joy. Only when she felt as if the very earth moved under her did he begin to calm her, to lead her roiling, glorious senses to inmost peace.

“Chih-Yü,” he said out of the soft stillness with such compelling longing that she listened to him with her whole soul, “if there had been time, I would have wanted you with me. You have renewed me.”

It was some little time before she was able to appreciate fully what he had said. By then they had drawn apart: the exquisite elation which had possessed her had given way to tranquillity and she was reluctant to surrender that quiet. Finally she met his penetrating eyes. “You speak as if we’ll never have the chance to love each other again.” Though she had meant to chide him only slightly, the prospect of losing the splendor of their passion tinged her words with bitterness.

He could not reply to her at once, but the pressure of his hands on her own told her how deeply that dart had struck. “Do you think,” he said with some difficulty, “truly think, that there will be no more time?”

She looked away. “I don’t know.”

He touched her face. “Chih-Yü, no pleasant little mendacities. That isn’t worthy of you. There is a battle not many hours away, and you know enough of war to know your odds are poor.”

“That’s why I want to fight in the valleys,” she said, sighing as the world closed back in on her. “If we wait here, the valleys will be destroyed, we will be completely disheartened, and in the end, in spite of our defenses, we will go down in flames. There are too many Mongols and far too few militiamen. In the field we might be able to hold them off for a day, or two at the most, and can do enough damage to give these people who live here, who will lose all that they have, a little time to get away.” Her voice dropped and she moved to fasten her sheng go.

“You sent a messenger to Tan Mung-Fa yesterday, didn’t you?” He opened his arms to her, holding her as she came to him.

“Yes.”

“Do you think he will send soldiers?”

Her eyes were distant a moment; then she said, “No.”

“And you will not accept the little protection my blood will give you?” There was anguish in his voice. The moonlight was almost gone as the clouds thickened, and only his extraordinary eyes were able to penetrate the darkness.

This time she actually considered the matter. It struck her then that she knew very little about this foreigner, about his life and the gift that he offered her. She answered him with care. “If I am alive at this time tomorrow, I will welcome your blood.” He started to protest but she silenced him. “This is my land, its safety has been entrusted to me. If it is defeated, then I must fall with it. But if it is saved, then I will not refuse your salvation.” It was difficult to move back, but she did, staring up at him. “Shih Ghieh-Man, don’t try to dissuade me. It would take little to weaken my resolve and that would be…”—she frowned, searching for a way to express her feeling—“ultimately disgraceful.”

Saint-Germain wished that he could protest, that he could remind her how many other Warlords had left less desperate conflicts than this one and were still regarded as heroes.

She hesitated, then said, “My father followed the teachings of Kung Fu-Tzu, and taught me to revere them. I am acting in his stead, and if I were to fail now, in the face of this tribulation, then I could not face the souls of my ancestors, or bear to have my name entered in the annals of my family.”

He heard her out, then said, “I could wish you would prefer life, even my life. Your honor is not at fault. There are fools in Lo-Yang and K’ai-Feng who are too caught up in that ritual of court to know in what danger they all stand. Another ten years of their inept handling and all of this empire will be on her knees. How do such creatures as they deserve your life?”

“I don’t know,” she said solemnly. “But the people in the valleys have trusted me, and I will fight for them.” Her father, she thought, would have wanted her to fight, not for the farmers and their holdings, but for the family reputation. “My brothers are no help to me, and most of my uncles find me an embarrassment. But the farmers here have always respected me, and have provided this fortress with militiamen. Kung Fu-Tzu believed that those in power should be deserving of it.” She turned away from the window and from Saint-Germain. “I should be dressing. My men will muster in another hour. If I fall, see me buried.”

“Shall I stay? Would you like my help?” There was so little she would accept from him and it stung him.

“No, I’ll see to it myself. The housekeeper set out my things before she retired. My steward will rise shortly to arm me.” She looked toward him. “Forgive me. This is difficult for a foreigner to understand. I’m grateful that you have so much regard for me…”

“Regard?” he echoed, knowing that she was trying to take the pain out of their separation.

She could not meet his eyes. “More than regard, then.” And she looked up, and for one enduring instant their passion flared between them.

“Chih-Yü…” he began, but before he could move to reach her, she fled the room, leaving him to stand alone in the darkness.

A letter from Kuan Sun-Sze to Saint-Germain, never delivered.

On the occasion of the Festival of the Harvest Lights in the Year of the Ox, the Fourteenth Year of the Sixty-fifth Cycle, from Lo-Yang:

My excellent foreign friend, I trust that the terrible predations of the followers of the Mongol Temujin have not touched your district. News here is very poor, and so I know very little of what has occurred more than a day’s ride from the city gates. In the last few months I have thought of you, and have hoped that the advice I gave you at the time I brought you to the attention of the Warlord T’en Chih-Yü was wise. There has been much change here, and it distresses me greatly to see how different Lo-Yang has become in so little time.

Though there are no armies at the gates, we are like a city under siege. There are always soldiers in the streets, and the talk one hears in the taverns is most distressing. No one has any faith in the Empire. Just the other afternoon I actually heard one of the officials of the Magisterial Tribunal refer to that Mongol butcher as Jenghiz Khan!

The reason I am telling you this is so that you will understand when I inform you that you must not return here. Foreigners are in the most grave danger from the people. Three days ago, two Korean scholars were stoned by the women at the vegetable stalls in the Street of the Bending Willows. You, being so much more obviously foreign, would be the target for greater outrages than that. Were it possible to travel with any reasonable margin of safety, I believe that I would accompany this letter to the Shu-Rh District and ask for a place of my own at the Warlord T’en’s stronghold.

Your acknowledgment of the receipt of those items I sent you earlier this year was delayed for some time on the road, but a Captain of Archers brought it to me not so very long ago. I was pleased to learn that you did not hold me responsible for the destruction of your house and compound and that you did not intend to petition the Magisterial Tribunal for restitution. Ordinarily I would have insisted that you demand such reparation, but at times like these, it would be folly to do so.

I understand from a cousin of mine at the Tribunal that the army expects little difficulty from the Mongols so far west as you are. The generals believe that the greatest thrust must be at the heartland and the capitals in order to paralyze the empire. How fortunate you are! Here we worry day and night when those frightful barbarians will appear. Where you are, there is protection from their invasions. Should I learn of any developments that might prove dangerous to you, I will be certain that you are notified. Doubtless you will want to be informed before the Mongols actually come into that district that they are on the move, not only so that you may warn Warlord T’en, but so that you may provide passage for yourself and your servant to more secure areas.

How inelegant my expression has become. I have not inquired into the progress of your studies, or the delights of the Shu-Rh District. I suspect that I am too much of a city-dweller, and though I often repair to the country estates of friends, still my heart secretly yearns for the bustle and rush of Lo-Yang. Therefore you must excuse my lack of enthusiasm for your current situation, though I find with the advancing threat of Mongol attack, my taste for the remoter parts of the Empire is growing. Though I write most informally, I know that you will perceive it in the spirit of good fellowship, for to tell the truth, I miss those conversations that we so often enjoyed while you lived here and did me the honor of having me at your house. Also, I find that I am sufficiently prejudiced against country life that I have great difficulty imagining that anyone can work there, and so I have been unpardonably rude in that I have asked nothing about what you have done.