The Concubine's Daughter (71 page)

It always began with the same dream. Cloud pictures skimmed over the lake from the Rock of Great Strength: Plank boats sailed peacefully beneath their piles of reeds; sampans sat still as grasshoppers in midsummer. Farther up the slope, the breeze sang to her through the bamboo like the harps of heaven. This place was the home of her soul. She stood transported by the joy of it.

The pale outline of the mountains suddenly darkened. The tree peonies closed their petals, to wither and drop as if in the path of a great fire. Birds lost their song in the groves. A shadow cast itself across the lake,
black as oil, swallowing her perfect world. She stood at its edge, safe at first, spellbound by its menace. Venom crept like acid, devouring the fragile lace of lichen on the ground. Her feet were bare, the feet of a child, firmly rooted upon the rock, connected to its hidden forces as they leaped and flew, spun and and turned, at one with the air. The voice of Abbot Xoom-Sai spoke to her clearly, calmly, telling her to stand her ground, reminding her that all things lived and were one in the Way of the Tao, that their energy was her energy, their strength, her strength.

At first the dreams were short and the blackness easy to repel, inching toward her and then slipping away like the tide of a dark sea. With every disciplined muscle in her body, she clung to the safe, sun-warmed surface of the rock. As if it sensed her power, the oily mass would withdraw, shrinking to become the glistening coils of
yan-jing-shi
.

Sing would see the poisonous white of its belly against the bile-green scales rising before her. Another voice would reach her … the voice of a boy, harsh with impatience to become a man. “See! I have tamed the foot well … faster and more deadly than the king of all snakes.” She saw the snake’s flicking shoelace tongue, the toadstool yellow of its gaping mouth, the blood-smeared jaws of the herd boy as he tore the spearhead-shaped head from the flailing body. “You owe your life to me, Red Lotus. One day I may claim it.”

Suddenly, as though stabbed by a pin, Sing would wake up, her eyes wide and her senses sharp as an executioner’s blade. The words of Ah-Keung lingered in the dark, the rock hard and cold beneath her whirling feet. The dreams came every night—closing in on her, cold as death against her feet, sucking the chi from her legs until they grew numb and she could no longer feel her connection to the rock. She was back in the typhoon, exposed to the sheets of lightning and the screaming winds; seeing the bloodied face of Ruby, her plastered hair and frightened eyes reaching out to her as they tumbled into darkness in each other’s arms.

Ah-Keung seemed to float before an altar in a windowless room. The two yellow flames from the candles were motionless, lighting the contents of
a tray, as the Forceful One concentrated on the revenge he had carried in his heart for much of his lifetime. No matter how much the upstart girl had learned, the arts of Black Oath Wu had shown him more.

The force of the black Tao transformed night into day, light into darkness. It could turn quietude into chaos, poison the strongest mind with steady drops from the prettiest snuff bottle. It could weaken and devour the bravest heart, capture and possess a human soul.

Ah-Keung’s lips moved soundlessly as he recited words from the suspended tablet only he could read, its characters long lost in the dungeons of a violent history. He was naked. The candlelight illuminated the intricate tattoo of the striking cobra that climbed the length of his spine, at its head the symbol of yin and yang turned upside down; on his chest the snarling face of a charging tiger.

He lost all sense of weight, transported in a state of mental levitation. In the tray of ash, drawn in the blackened remains of a flaming curse, a single character appeared: Red Lotus. Stretched across it, gleaming in the yellow buds of light, lay the strands of his enemy’s hair. His body shook as they flared to flame, then curled to nothing. From the surrounding blackness a gust came, whirling the ash, obliterating the name forever.

A smudge of light began to appear in the horror of Sing’s nightmares. The pale shape grew closer until she awoke, her heart racing as the face of Ah-Keung invaded her mind with the gold-ringed, lidless eyes of a cobra. Sing knew she was in grave danger. She heard the words of Master To:
Only you can break the link. You must withstand. To fall in the path of the Tiger is to perish
. She called upon all she had learned to combat the fear that threatened to wrap her in the sticky silk of the bird-eating spider, to feed upon her sanity as it had drawn the vivid colors from the hummingbird.

Food had become unnecessary, and when sense told her she must try to eat she could not force it past her throat. Her body lost all trace of energy. Inside, she turned to ice, but her skin was slick with sweat.
Dragging everything she could find to cover herself, she lay shaking in every nerve and muscle, every toughened sinew in her body disconnected from her wasting limbs. She could not rise, feeling the creeping warmth of her urine turn cold. At last she felt her link with the Rock of Great Strength snap like a single strand of silk; and she fell, silently screaming, into the maelstrom of Ah-Keung’s making.

The elders carried Sing’s unconscious body to the Pagoda of the White Pearl to do battle with the powers of darkness. The Abbot Xoom-Sai watched as she was carried up the narrow stone steps to the eighth and topmost chamber, and laid upon an ancient tapestry of mystic signs in the center of the circular space. A setting sun cast orange light through a small diamond-shaped window set in its walls.

Prayer cloths hung like flags from the high, domed ceiling. From a corner, lit bright as bronze by the fading sky, a statue of the Buddha in meditation looked down on the bed where she lay. On the small altar before it, an iron incense burner bristled with burned-out joss sticks. The abbot replaced them with eight fresh sticks, lighting each in turn, then passed thick candles to his trusted elders.

“She must be surrounded by light at all times, the flames lit with our prayers. It is in darkness of hidden forests that this evil dwells.” Abbot Xoom-Sai began to pass his hands inches above Sing’s shivering body. Through half-closed eyes he conjured her aura: The colors of her life-force were dimmed, oppressed by a malignant shadow. “This one has been cursed by the darkest of powers. It is filled with a great hatred. A powerful evil.” His hands stopped above her forehead and his fingers began to tremble. “She has great strength, but her enemy is also great.”

His low voice seemed to fill the chamber with faint echoes, his purple robe to blaze in the last of the daylight. One hand, still trembling with the force of the vibrations it had detected, moved to her throat, reaching to touch the jade amulet around her neck. The abbot’s fingers closed around it until his fist shook violently and he let it go as though burned. Carefully, he unfastened the chain and held it dangling for them to see.

“The evil began here. It is this that has been used as a key to the doorway of her soul.” He took it to the altar and laid it at the feet of the Buddha. “Send for the hook-maker … ask him to come without delay.”

Sing remained in the Pearl Pagoda for thirty days and nights before she became conscious of her surroundings. It seemed to her that she had never known anything but the blackness of the pit, felt anything but its slimy walls, or seen anything but the eyes of the cobra. The darkness echoed only with the taunting laughter of Ah-Keung: “Tell me, Red Lotus, where are the powers of the White Crane now?”

Then, slowly, the blackness began to fade and the eyes of the snake grew dim. A pinprick of blue light appeared above her and gradually increased in size until it surrounded her in a bright bubble of pure light. She could feel it dry the damp chill of her sweat. The patch of summer blue became framed by a dome-shaped window. A single puff of white cloud floated in it, light and soft as a blown feather.

Sing felt the hot flow of tears and lay for a long time looking only at the little cloud. It seemed to grow bigger, to have movement of its own, coming closer and closer until she saw it was a great white bird whose wings rose and fell with dreamlike slowness. It soared and dived through the sky with majestic grace and boundless freedom.

She heard the voice of Master To calling to her and tried to rise. To her joy, she found she could move lightly as air. The pain that had come with the darkness was gone. The nun who sat beside her, spooning the foul-smelling mixture patiently into her mouth, saw the eyelids flutter and open. The taste of the herbal medicine was rank in Sing’s mouth and nostrils. The nun wiped it from her chin and set the bowl aside. Even the slight rustle of her movement was comforting to Sing after the bedlam of the pit.

The abbot leaned over Sing, his brown arms and shoulders bare as he spoke to her quietly. “The worst of the battle is over, Red Lotus. Soon you will be strong enough to defend yourself. This is the one who will show you how.” The abbot stepped aside.

The face that was lowered close to hers was so masked in wrinkles that only the searching brightness of its eyes showed life. “I am the hook-maker,” a voice said in a thin whisper. “You are returned to the light. The amulet is purified. When you are ready to meet your tormentor, it awaits you at the feet of the deity in my hut by the sea.”