Chapter XIII - 'Sow the Wind'

Work in progress: excerpt from Sow the Wind - a novel.

Chapter XIII

China: 9^th Century A.D.

As night fell, it was snowing again in Chang-an. The air was thick with swarming flakes from a leaden sky. The city grew silent, muffled in a white shroud. Temples and palaces, stupas and watchtowers wavered, grew dim and vanished. His horse could hardly make its way through the deepening drifts. It bowed its head before the blast and floundered on, barely keeping its feet. Beneath the walls of the Imperial Palace, the rider was sheltered from the worst of the wind; but the moment he turned his horse’s head northwards, onto the storm-swept boulevard, the fury of the blizzard fell upon him. He gasped and crouched lower in the saddle, shielding his face with his shabby cloak. The wind from beyond the Great Wall cut through him like a barbarian sword. His ungloved hands were soon so numb he could scarcely grasp the reins; his feet, shod in sodden cloth shoes, could no longer grip the stirrups. High on either side the tall, blank walls of the great mansions hemmed him in like glaciers around a crevasse. He struggled on, along an endless, icy corridor. The world was dissolving in white. White! The colour of snow, jade, autumn, metal, mourning, death. Colour of the Frozen Hell.

            When at last his weary horse slipped and fell he knew he could ride no further. He seized the exhausted beast by the bridle, pulled it to its feet and led it trembling through an open gate into the haven of a courtyard. At first he though that the gate-keeper had not challenged him because of the storm. Then he saw that the lodge was roofless and the whole compound plunged in darkness. The mansion was falling into ruins. He tethered his horse to a rotting pillar, out of the wind, and stumbled through the drifts towards the icicle-hung veranda. As he did so, he noticed a gleam of light at the west end of the courtyard. If a caretaker was still living in this otherwise deserted house, he might find warmth and shelter there. A dog was huddled in a corner of the veranda. He approached it cautiously, but it did not stir. Its shaggy coat was stiff with frozen snow; it stared at him balefully, though sightless eyes of yellow ice. Shivering, he rapped on the door. Nobody answered, though he could still see the welcome gleam of light against the engulfing dark. He hammered on the carved wood with numbed hands, calling out loudly. Still no answer. In desperation, he lifted the latch and found the door unlocked. A moment later he was standing in a deserted room lighted by a single candle guttering in a bowl. The wind was whistling through a jagged tear in the paper window, the candle flame flaring and dancing in the draught, cast wild, ghostly shadows on the wall. His flesh crawled. Fox-spirits made their lair in places like this, lying in wait for unwary travellers. But not here, surely, for this was a shrine room where Amitahba Buddha and the Bodhisattva Manjusri gazed at him from a darkened altar, though their faces seemed curiously disfigured, and almost slyly malevolent. Snow had blown in through the torn window and lay in gleaming drifts upon the floor. The face of the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan-yin, was hidden by a white veil, for the sifting snow had covered half her shrine.

            Suddenly, he realised where he was. The shock was so great that he began to tremble violently. This was her house! Blinded by the storm, he had lost his bearing and had not recognised the now derelict mansion in its pall of snow and ice. The last time he had seen it, the trees had been decked in spring blossom, the courtyard athrong with grooms and carriages. No wonder that he had not identified this desolate ruin as hers. Yet he should have known it sooner, for in this very shrine room he had been accustomed to spend hours in meditation. But then the altars had been ablaze with light and the warm air thick with incense, where now all was darkness, cold and musty decay.

            When the candle went out he noticed a faint lightening of the darkness at the top of the staircase leading to the upper storey of the belvedere. He climbed the stairs cautiously, for they were slippery with frost. At the top he paused, shivering with cold and fear, before the closed doors of her chamber. For a long time he stood there waiting, not daring to knock. Then, above the howling of the blizzard, he seemed to hear the sound of laughter and the music of a lute, as though she was holding yet another party. Emboldened, he pushed open the door only to find himself in a darkened passage. Yet at the far end a glimmer of light was shining and the sound of the lute had grown louder.

            When he opened the door, he cried out in despair A Tocharian girl with amber eyes was strumming a pi-pa and singing a dirge. But the guests were not listening; they were watching Zhen-zhu dance. Clad all in white, she was hanging by her silken sash from a beam, face livid in death, swollen tongue lolling from her mouth, blue eyes glazed with ice. As the night wind howled and scrabbled at the torn windows, sending the snow-spume swirling across the room, she swayed to and fro like a broken puppet, dainty slippers almost touching the floor.

            Frantic with grief and horror he rushed to cut her down. But the moment he touched her, she threw her arms around him, while her guests watched silently and strangled him slowly with her long, black hair.

            As night fell, it was snowing again in the frozen hell. The air was thick with swarming flakes from a leaden sky. The city grew silent, muffled in a white shroud. Temples and palaces, stupas and watchtowers wavered, grew dim and vanished. His horse could hardly make its way through the deepening drifts...

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM