Chapter Five: Ancestral Voices Prophecying War
We rightly judge others by their actions. What a man does is in the world determines what the world thinks of him. But we judge ourselves not by what we do but by what we think. We may do such disgraceful and hurtful things while fully beliving that we do good by our fellow man. This thin veil of self-deception is exactly what the five worthies are toying with in this story from the Red Book. Do they penetrate the veil or erect other veils to hide them from the revelation? Listen now and decide for yourself.
To recapture lost time, the five worthies decide to tackle two areas at once. The easiest two, they figure, are the Scholars' Garden and the Rose Bridge as both require only decorative touches. The Scholars' Garden needs to be planted and a morally uplifting saying from a wiseman painted in finest calligraphy on the wall. Xiao Linyu decides upon a saying fully in keeping with the Mongol tendency to action before contemplation - 'Just do it!' The Rose Bridge needs only its bare trellises planted with roses that are trained to climb and cover the bridge with their delicate scent.
By the end of the first day, the work has progressed far. The planting of both sites is well underway and Xiao Linyu has painted the outline of the characters that make up the saying on the wall. All that remains to be done is to supervise the staff as they finish the planting and fill in the characters.
The contrast between the beauty of the gardens and the rose bridge and the malicious ugliness of the hideously deformed tribesmen becomes increasingly difficult for Baiju-Gan and Mei-Lan-Dai to handle. Sung Il Tran regards them with his usual stoic grace. Tumen Subei, who is used to dealing with the disfigured demons of the sky realms, barely bats an eyelid at the sight.
The next morning, Tsongba seeks an audience with the five worthies and demands the annual tribute promised the villagers by the Great Khan Kubilai in return for their work - five eight year old children hand delivered by each of the five worthies. The children are to be sacrificed to the god of the village who dwells at the centre of the universe. Shocked, they refuse such an outrageous demand and call for the original contract to be brought forth and examined.
Tsongba warns against withholding the sacrifices. Not only will he refuse to allow his tribesmen to work for the five worthies but he will end the spells of protection which were cast over the area to protect the Great Khan's summer palace. Tsongba also claims to know the secrets each of the five worthies keeps hidden and any of the that refuse to hand over a sacrificial child will force him to reveal the secrets of all to the world. In short, he says, they must all pay the sacrifice or they all suffer. He gives them one day to make a decision.
They examine closely the document. Xiao Linyu can find no fault in the lettering - she knows the scribe at court who lettered the contract. Mei-Lan-Dai finds no fault with the parchment - it is intact and shows no sign of erasure or alteration. Baiju Gan can detect none of the usual tamperings which signal a forgery. Tumen Subei, however, invokes divine sight and reads a different document on the paper:
"The ears were webbed and tentacled, the trunk terminated in a huge flaring disk at least a foot in diameter. Its forelimbs were bent stiffly at the elbow, and its hands - it had human hands - rested palms upward on its lap. Its shoulders were broad and square and its breasts and enormous stomach sloped outward, cushioning the trunk. Chaugnar Faugn squats in a cave in mountainous Asia, guarded day and night by subhuman thralls only vaguely manlike, who hold rites so foul that none dare describe them. Usually Chaugnar Faugn remains immobile on his pedestal, a grotesque statue. Legends say that one day the "White Acolyte" will come to bear Chaugnar to a new land."
Sung Il Tran orders his sargeants to prepare their troops for a punitive expedition against the rebellious villagers.
At this moment, one of the Mongol overseers burst into the room. The saying on the wall of the Scholars' Garden has re-written itself before his eyes. It now says:
"Persist in this manner and the Society will have no choice but to blackball you."
By the time the five worthies reach the Scholars' Garden, the message is in the process of changing for a third time. The letters fade and swirl, impelled by some magical force, and reform to state:
"I will never lend you money for such a ridiculous enterprise."
The Han and Mongol workers watch in stunned amazement. They have never seen anything like this before. The village tribesmen laugh in their own hideous croaking fashion at the bemused foreigners. The tempers of both Sung Il Tran and Baiju Gan begin to rise.
During the day, while the five worthies debate the meaning and significance of the words, several other messages appear on the wall of the Scholar's Garden.
"Daydreaming! Such a place has never existed."
"But, darling, for how long will you be gone?"
"Father will never agree to those demands."
"I show them. I'll show them all! They will soon recongise my discovery."
"I wish you had never found that damned book."
"What can primitives in the heart of Asia know of the secrets of the universe?"
"Some were the figures of well-known myth. Others were drawn from darker and more furtively whispered cycles of subterranean legend."
"One to Southhampton, please. One way. Thank you."
While the others debate their course of action, Tumen Subei decides to see what is under the Dragon Pool. She sits beside the pool below the waterfall and calmly meditates to prepare herself for the journey. When she opens her eyes her serenity is shattered. Her reflection in the water is not of that face she usually sees but of a man dressed in the manner of those beyond the portal in the other world. The reflection of the man copies her actions and she casts her spell to see through illusion which convinces her that she is seeing her true form. She knows that the man in the reflection is her.
After more meditation, she transfers her consciousness into that of one of the fish swimming in the pool and forces it to journey through the waterfall, up into the cave behind and deep into the darkness leading, she believes, to the space beneath the Dragon Pool.
Meanwhile, the debate rages and a number of points are made. Is the protective spell that Tsongba claims the villagers are maintaining the cause of the recent supernatural activity or is it protecting the summer palace from all but the worst effects? Opinion is divided. Mei-Lan-Dai suggests that one cannot maintain a spell for months on end without one's concentration lapsing. They now see the villagers' true form and see their motives clearly. It is not so much a spell of protection nbut a trap to lure the unwary into a false sense of security before the hideous creatures attack.
Since the Great Khan Kubilai made a valid agreement with the villagers, can the five worthies ever be correct in unilaterally breaking the agreement. With some reservations they agree that they can. Some actions are intrinsically wrong and cannot be taken. Sung Il Tran speaks most vocally against this opinion and proposes an alternative solution - slaughter the villagers, man, woman and child. They have shown exactly how evil they are and cannot be allowed to live. Baiju Gan gleefully agrees.
As the afternoon draws to a close, they notice that Tumen Subei is not with them. Searching, they find her in mediation at the pool below the waterfall. Xiao Linyu catches sight of her reflection in the water. Like Tumen Subei, she sees a man from the other world staring back at her. He mimics her every action. When they others notice Xiao Linyu's capering, they look at see the same image, not four reflections as one would expect. Even when all of the four worthies gaze into the water, they see only one reflection, a man from the other world.
At this moment, Tumen Subei wakes from her meditation screaming like a mad woman. It takes them several minutes to calm her down enough to tell her tale.
She casts a spell which transferred her mind into that of one of the fish in the pool. She made the fish swim behind the waterfall and into the cave lurking there. The stream flowing through the cave is cold and dark. She has trouble controlling the fish's fear. Eventually after what seems like hours of travel, she sees through the exhausted fish's eyes a light ahead. Once in the light, Tumen Subei commands the fish to the surface to better see the origin of the light. By the time she has determined that the fish is in a cave directly under the Dragon Pool looking at an enormous and loathsome statue of an elephantine god from beyond space and time, the fish is speared by a native attendant of the foul deity and thrown into a basket of other offerings lying in the lap of the god.
The five worthies stand in silence for several minutes absorbing Tumen Subei's tale and the puzzle of the reflection in the water. At length, Mei-Lan-Dai speaks.
"I believe that we are all aspects of the soul of this man reflected in the water. How and why? I do not know. What this means for our own souls I also do not understand. But the evidence points in this direction only."
The others are unsure of Mei-Lan-Dai's conclusion but none can suggest an alternative theory to explain the situation in which they find themselves. The one thing that all agree on is that the villagers present and clear and present threat to the viability of the project to build Xanadu, the stately pleasure dome and summer palace of the Great Khan Kubilai. They are evil and must be eliminated. As Sung Il Tran speaks these words, the other nod gravely.
As the villagers emerge from their disgusting hovels into the pre-dawn light, they see the entire company of the Khan's soldiers arrayed on the ridge line above the village. Panic seizes them as Sung Il Tran gives the order to advance. The thundering of hooves, and the screaming of those who rose early wake the rouse of the villager in time to be speared by lancers or pierced by arrows fired skilfully from horseback. Baiju Gan and Tumen Subei stride into the villager. Baiju Gan strikes left and right killing the helpless with every blow. Tumen Subei searches the living and the dead for Tsongba the villager headman.
She finds him cowering in the filth-ridden rubble pile he calls his home. Grabbing him by the collar, she draging the disgusting mutated creature to his feat and demands him tell her of the god at the centre of the world. He laughs, revealing row upon row of teeth filed to fine points in order to better rip at the flesh of child sacrifices.
"If you know nothing about Chaugnar Faugn by now, you cannot understand how to avoid your fate. You are doomed. Doomed!"
She throws Tsonga's twisted body into the open where Baiju Gan slices and hacks at it under the corpse is an unrecognisable piece of bloody meat.
By late afternoon, the houses are pulled to the ground and no two stones remain touching each other. A plume of dark smoke stains the sky. The corpses are left to rot where they fall and the company rides slowly and sombrely back to Xanadu where they begin preparations to assault the cave-temple beneath the Dragon Pool.
Somewhere dark and lonely, an elephantine elder god hears the screams of his followers and slowly bestirs from the Lotus position in which he sat. He was meditating on whether he dreams the universe into existence or whether the universe has dreamed him into being.