Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 9

Winds and Clouds Turn Without Warning, a Rain of Blood Tasted; the Goose Cut Off, the Fish Sunk Deep¹—Where to Seek Them? (Part 1)

When Ling Cheng finally, slowly opened her eyes, stone-green curtains on every side shut out the light, and she found herself still inside the carriage—and began to suspect she had dreamed it all.

An utterly laughable dream.

            

She swept the curtain aside in a rush and stepped down from the carriage. Starlight glittered across the whole sky; beneath the boundless night, mountains and ten thousand trees stood in shadowy silhouette. The many guards who had followed at her side all this way were nowhere in her sight. Her gaze searched a long while, and she saw only Su Ying, standing alone beneath a poplar, a long saber cradled in her arms. In an instant the laughable dream turned into a nightmare. Her lips parted, her heart all but leaping into her throat:

“Why… why is it only you? Did they… did they all go home…?”

“I relayed your mother’s words to them. They wavered a long time, but in the end they scattered, each fleeing to save his own life.”

            

Su Ying had long since worked out how to speak with Ling Cheng once the girl woke—first, she had to make her believe that none of it was a jest. So she paused a moment, then repeated everything Lady Ling had told her, from beginning to end, word for word, leaving nothing out.

By the time Ling Cheng had heard half of it, the blood in her veins had gone cold.

She knew her mother. That was, beyond any doubt, her mother’s voice—beyond any doubt, the words her mother would say.

            

By now Ling Cheng could no longer deceive herself. And yet her mind was pure chaos, still unable to grasp how any of this had come to be. She had left the capital for a mere five days, only to see Shejia off—five days, gone in the blink of an eye—so how had her family’s sky fallen without the faintest warning? Bewilderment, dread—every manner of feeling churned in the depths of her heart. Just as she stood there helpless, her father’s words rose abruptly in her ears: “A commander must keep his composure when disaster strikes—Mount Tai may collapse before his eyes, and the color of his face must not change. With a temper as rash as yours, you still dream of taking a battlefield as a general?”

—Stay calm.

Yes. I should stay calm. She bit down hard on her lower lip; the flash of pain jolted her mind clear, and at once she asked, “Where is my mother?”

            

Su Ying asked in return, “Do you wish to see her now?”

Ling Cheng nodded without a heartbeat’s hesitation.

“Then from here on, you will do as I say.”

            

Midnight. The four gates of Chang’an were barred fast—which, if anything, made things easier. Su Ying carried Ling Cheng in her arms, put her Lightness Skill to work, and slipped soundlessly over the walls into the city. The long streets were hushed and still; not one commoner showed on the road, only the occasional patrol of Jinwu Guards. Holding Ling Cheng close, she skimmed toe-tips along the rooftiles, staying clear of their eyes and ears, and before long they reached Zhiren Ward.

The vermilion-lacquered great gate had been pasted with paper seals crossed in X patterns, yet no mass of soldiers stood watch before it. Clearly, most of the Imperial Guard who had earlier sealed Ling Mansion off watertight had already withdrawn. Su Ying was faintly startled at the sight, and thought: the soldiers are gone, which means the household must have been moved elsewhere and put under guard.

Just as she expected. She vaulted the wall and, with Ling Cheng in tow, made a careful circuit of courtyard after courtyard, room after room, and made certain: Cui Langzhen was not there; neither were the servants and staff. Instead, several soldiers sat on the stone steps beneath the corridor, chatting idly. Su Ying considered a moment, then hid with Ling Cheng behind a corner wall and listened in on their talk.

            

They, too, it seemed, could not believe that Ling Bingzhong would ever raise arms in rebellion; their words brimmed with sympathy for Vice Director Ling.

Ling Cheng knew her father’s standing in the army was supreme, that officers and men loved him dearly. Yet hearing him praised under these circumstances, she could not have said whether her heart held joy or grief. Then one of the soldiers heaved a sigh:

“How unfathomable the ways of the world. Who could have imagined that overnight, the Four-garrison Military Commissioner—a man beneath only one, above ten thousand—would become a caged prisoner on a charge of treasonous rebellion?”

            

“Aye. At first I thought the case might still take a turn. After all, His Highness the Crown Prince is the Sage’s own son, and Vice Director Ling, he too…” The other man’s voice sank without his realizing it, faintly betraying his fear. “Who’d have thought the Sage could truly bring himself to bestow death upon them.”

The moment those two words—bestowed death—struck her ears, Su Ying reacted with lightning speed: one hand clamped over Ling Cheng’s mouth, the other pressed down hard upon her shoulder.

Then she felt the child trembling through every inch of her body.

            

Had Su Ying not been standing behind her, bracing her, the girl’s body could never have held itself up.

These past days Su Ying had turned over no few plans to rescue Ling Bingzhong. To receive such news at this instant left her shocked, stunned, and grieving all at once. She stood benumbed for a moment—then felt a point of chill on the back of her hand. A tear from the corner of Ling Cheng’s eye had fallen onto it. She bowed her head, sighed without a sound, and led Ling Cheng away from that place.

The rear courtyard was empty, and quiet at least. They entered a room at random. Su Ying hesitated a long while, at a loss for what more to say to Ling Cheng. In her roving years through the jianghu she had seen too much of life and death; that was precisely why she understood all too well the pain of losing one’s dearest forever—consolations like “restrain your grief and accept what cannot be changed” were pallid, powerless things. She looked in silence at Ling Cheng—and suddenly found that in only this little while, no glimmer of tears remained in the child’s eyes. Nothing but a scorching hatred burned there, though her voice was still choked, still quavering with sobs:

            

“Your martial arts are plainly stronger than theirs—why are you still afraid of them?!”

“It is not fear,” Su Ying said gravely. “But once they discover us—even were we to knock every one of them senseless this instant, come daybreak the court would send far more soldiers to cordon off the city and hunt us down, and our movements would grow far more difficult. Your father may already have… but your mother’s whereabouts are still unknown. Do you not want to find her?”

At the mention of her mother, Ling Cheng drew a deep breath and steadied herself. “Didn’t you say my mother was being held in our house?”

            

Su Ying frowned. “It seems she has been taken elsewhere. We will have to wait—once day breaks, we’ll ask among the common folk of the city.”

Ling Cheng stared blankly, thinking it over—then, without another word, she turned on her heel.

“Where are you going?”

            

“Mapan Ridge.”

Mapan Ridge lies in the wild outskirts east of Chang’an. No hills shelter either flank; no channel of water rings it round. By the reckoning of fengshui it is, in truth, a rank and ill-omened tract. Our dynasty keeps an unwritten rule: when princes, nobles, or great ministers are convicted of capital crimes, their bodies after death are buried here all together—and even should some descendant of theirs escape the calamity by fortune, the family’s fortunes will lie crushed beneath this ground forever.

Su Ying guessed that a last thread of hope still lived in Ling Cheng’s heart, that she meant to go to Mapan Ridge and verify with her own eyes whether those soldiers’ words were true. In truth Su Ying harbored more than a few doubts herself. She stepped forward at once, gathered Ling Cheng up, and set her Lightness Skill loose once more.

            

It was the third month, the very season when grass and trees grow lush—but the deep night lay upon everything like ink too thick to thin. A person standing amid it heard the night wind sighing past, and saw the thousand boughs and myriad leaves of Mapan Ridge swaying like huddled ghosts. In days past, however bold Ling Cheng might be, she was after all only a child of ten; never would she have dared walk such a place. But now she had gone numb, and beyond father and mother nothing else could enter her heart. Had ghosts and ghouls truly appeared before her, she would not have spared them a glance—one pair of eyes stayed fixed on the grave mounds studding the ground.

Then, all at once, on a fresh grave not far ahead, a single character—”Ling”—faintly carved into the wooden board standing there caught her eye. She hurried forward, whether worn hollow by grief or with the rugged mountain path wrenching her ankle she could not tell; after only a few steps she fell to both knees with a thud before that grave, and there saw clearly the other two characters on the board.

It was her father’s name, in full.

            

Her chest felt as though a fist had been driven into it. Hands braced against the earth, she stayed silent a moment—then abruptly rounded the wooden marker and began to claw open the grave mound before her with her two bare hands.

Foul as Mapan Ridge’s fengshui might be, once a person was in the earth, to dig the dead out of the ground for no reason—unless one were moving them to some blessed plot—was a grave dishonor to the departed. Su Ying was briefly taken aback; but she had spent two years at this child’s side, and none knew her obstinate nature better: whatever Ling Cheng set her hand to, she would not relent until the very end. Quickly Su Ying understood—the girl would never believe Ling Bingzhong truly dead until she had looked upon his remains with her own eyes.

The sandy soil had caked into clods, harder the deeper it went, and shot through with stones besides. Never mind a child like Ling Cheng—even the strength of a grown man, bare-handed and without tools, could scarcely have dug it out. Su Ying frowned and said one thing: “Your hands will bleed.” It went unheeded. Left with no choice, she funneled strength into her palm—with a bang, her palm smote the ground, and the stone-laced soil went soft at once.

            

Then the two of them dug down together. In little more than a moment, a face darkened to purple-black gradually emerged before their eyes.

So General Ling had died of poison bestowed by the emperor? Su Ying’s grief only deepened—yet she understood that another person’s anguish at this moment must be a hundredfold her own, and her first instinct was to look toward Ling Cheng. The child’s expression was wooden. She knelt over Ling Bingzhong’s body and made no move at all.

And Su Ying suddenly realized: the girl had shed two tears, and only two, at that first instant of hearing of Ling Bingzhong’s death—and after that, she had not wept once.

            

Grief too vast, pain too deep, knotted in the heart—if it is never loosed, it must harm the body. Su Ying did not know how to counsel her; she could only pat her shoulder gently and murmur, “Fuli… you should weep, just weep…”

But Ling Cheng, at this moment, said nothing, made no sound, shed not one more tear.

For a flame of hatred was burning in her heart.

            

Hate, now, had crushed her grief and anguish beneath it.

The wind soughed across the ridge. Seeing her silence, Su Ying grew only more anxious and called once more, “Fuli…”

Ling Cheng’s lips parted slowly, and at last sound came out. “Why did you not save him? Did you not say you came to my house to repay a debt—that he was your great benefactor? Why did you not go into the prison and save him?!”

            

Word by word, pressing and unyielding.

An utterly unreasonable accusation.

Su Ying understood her heart and did not blame her—indeed, she thought to herself, the matter truly was strange.

            

That day, when the massed soldiery had surrounded Ling Mansion, Su Ying had first meant to rely on her Lightness Skill to carry Cui Langzhen out. But Cui Langzhen had said that as the mistress of this household, whatever befell, she could never abandon the others under her roof. So Su Ying had been forced to plan otherwise: find Ling Cheng first, settle the child somewhere safe and secure, then contrive the rescue of Ling Bingzhong, Cui Langzhen, and the rest. After all, the crime Ling Bingzhong “committed” was high treason—and treason meant joint trial by the Three Judicial Offices². Surely such a case would take a month of hearings at the very least?

A month, at least—time in which she could devise a surer plan of rescue, or call upon friends of the jianghu. Who could have dreamt the court would claim their lives with such unseemly haste? Was it the emperor’s will? As she weighed the question, a rustling scrape of sound came suddenly from the grass to the east. She wheeled about in an instant, hand gripping her saber hilt:

“Who’s there?!”

            

Ling Cheng started and raised her eyes, following Su Ying’s gaze—and out of that grass, before long, came walking a man in dark clothes, some thirty years of age. At the sight of Ling Cheng, astonishment and delight sprang over his face. He considered a moment, then said:

“Might I ask—does this young lady bear the surname Ling?”

A white gleam flashed out: Su Ying’s saber left its sheath in an instant, its edge settling against the man’s neck. “Who exactly are you?”

            

“Mercy, Heroine! Mercy, Heroine!” The man jumped in fright and hurried to explain himself. “This lowly one is Zheng Qi, a minor clerk within the Court of Judicial Review. Because I revered Vice Director Ling for the man he was, and knew he would never do a thing so monstrous as treason—and because, by chance, the few jailers guarding him thought exactly as I did—I was able to meet with him privately in the prison and speak with him. Alas, this Zheng’s position is low and his words carry no weight; I could not save Vice Director Ling’s life. All I could do was ask whether he had any last wish: whatever lay within my power, I would surely try to fulfill. When he had heard this Zheng out, he was silent a long while, then sighed that in all his life he had looked up to heaven and down to men without shame—only toward his wife and daughter did he feel he had failed. So he told me: he has a daughter named Ling Cheng, not at present in the capital. But if the young Lady Ling should return to the city and learn he was dead, she might well come to Mapan Ridge to look upon his body, and he entrusted this Zheng with words to carry to her. Just now I saw this young lady, and her age seemed close to young Lady Ling’s—that is why I asked whether she bore the surname Ling.”

It was true enough that few outsiders would know Ling Cheng’s given name. By the end of it, Su Ying believed him and drew back her saber. A spasm of grief wrenched Ling Cheng’s heart, and she asked at once, “What did my father ask you to tell me?”

Su Ying put another question first. “When was death bestowed upon General Ling?”

            

Zheng Qi answered her question first as well. “Yesterday.”

“And you are only here now?”

“By day this Zheng is swamped with public duties, and by night one may not simply go out. I had no choice but to wait until the night was full dark, slip past the Jinwu Guard patrols, and steal quietly to Mapan Ridge for a look.”

            

An ordinary man with no martial skill, braving such risk—it had truly been hard on him. Su Ying clasped her fist toward him at once and gave her thanks.

Zheng Qi sighed. “All under heaven know Vice Director Ling was wronged; this Zheng is not the only one who wished to do something for him. After Vice Director Ling was thrown into prison, the Sage decreed his household searched and confiscated. One of the soldiers charged with that task is this Zheng’s friend; through him I was able to ask Vice Director Ling whether there was anything he wished kept from the seizure. Vice Director Ling thought for a long time, then said that if it could be done without peril to us, there was one thing he hoped we could retrieve.”

Here his voice paused, and he reached into his robes and drew out a dagger.

            

Its scabbard was two cun longer than a common dagger’s, pitch-black from end to end, carved of bog-wood³, with not a single gemstone to ornament it.

“Vice Director Ling asked this Zheng to tell the young lady: if you come through this unharmed, do not avenge him—above all, you must protect yourself.”

Ling Cheng’s hands trembled faintly as she slowly received what Zheng Qi held out.

            

This was the dagger she had wanted for so very long.

Never had she imagined it would come to her like this…

Mapan Ridge fell quiet. For a long while, none of the three present spoke. Ling Cheng pressed the tightly clutched dagger against her heart, then said abruptly, “You are a clerk of the Court of Judicial Review—then you know of my mother…”

            

“Rest assured, Lady Ling. Your lady mother still lives.”

“You know where she is now?”

Zheng Qi hesitated a long while before he finally nodded. “I know.”

            

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