Xanadu - A BRP Chinese Fantasy

Chapter Two: Ancient As The Hills (2)

You all know the legend of Lady Spider, of how she created all people and of the thread she attaches to each persons' head which she weaves into her web. This is how she determines what things happen to us in our lives. Both the good and the bad she knits into the cloth of creation. Hear now how the five worthies who were charged with building the Great Khan Kubilai's pleasure dome first met Lady Spider. It began the day following ....

Sung Il Tran accompanied by Baiju Gan, Tumen Subei and three hand-picked soldiers follows Corporal Zhao the tracker into the woods. The woods soon start becoming darker and gloomier. A sense of forboding overcomes the group. After a long march, Tumen Subei realises that they have travelled several miles. This means that they should have walked through the Brocade Hall, across the stream and into the steppe lands beyond. Soon, they enter a clearing in the dark forest.

Meanwhile, Mai Lan Dei finishes removing the immature spiders from the hundred pustules covering Qin Xianlin, the master mason. He hovers on the border of death and none of Mai Lan Dei's skills can wake him. Xiao Linyu, the architect of the summer palace project, begins work on a trap to capture the giant spider. She is not exactly sure what kind of contraption onme uses to trap a spider but constructs a machine she believes will do the job.

Int he clearing, the spider web cast between two stands of bamboo in the middle of the preter-naturally dark forest forms a tunnel stretching away into the distance. Sung Il Tran order his men to spread out around the clearing. It then that they notice that the far side of the spider web tunnel is a flat web between the two stands of bamboo.

"Dark magic is afoot," intones Tumen Subi solemnly.

Sung Il Tran, Baiju Gan and Tumen Subei decide to penetrate the tunnel. Along the way, Subei finds in the web the marked blocks of wood she threw into the Dragon Pool to determine where it empties. Many of her blocks seemed to have vanished for they never reappeareed beneath the waterfalls.

Eventually, they see a yellow flickering light further along to tunnel and march towards it. The representatives of Kubilai Khan emerge into a dimly lit drawing room in Victorian England. A woman wearing white is doing needle work in the near dark by the light of the thousand tiny candle flames which surround the room. There is no sign of a door or tent flap behind them.

She looks up from her needle work. "I have been thinking to redecorate. This parlor has of late taken on a decidedly dull aspect. What are your thoughts on the subject, my dear?"

"Who are you?" asks Sung Il Tran.

Tumen Subei opens the parlor door and is confronted by thick spider webs. She peers behind the curtains with the same result. Baiju Gan draws his sword and stands ready expecting attack from all quarters.

"Who are you?" asks Sung Il Tran again.

Tumen Subei looks at the woman in white in the fragments of mirror sewn about her robes. Rather than the Victorian lady, she sees a giant spider's purple and shiny chitin, it's mouth parts click-clacking as it speaks. The hundred tiny candles adorning the parlor are immature spiders in egg-sacs like those Mai Lan Dei has been digging out of the master mason.

"You understand that there will be war," the white woman says gravely. "The Great Khan cannot now allow his palace to remain unfinished and the tribesmen, terribly afraid and resenting their lower status in their own lands, refuse to finish it. I suppose that order versus chaos is the original conflict and it will ever be fought. Knowing how to untangle the twisted thread of fate is more than half the battle I am told. Your fortune hangs by this thread like a sword above your head. A woman has a sense for these things."

While no more than an hour has passed for those in Lady Spider's parlor, outside the web it is close to midnight and Xiao Linyu is getting worried. She orders her trap moved to the clearing and prepared in front of the spider web tunnel. Mai Lan Dei works on a antidote to the spider's venom from the samples she collects from the immature specimens.

Inside the parlor, Tumen Subei whispers what she sees to the others. She starts putting out the candle flames with her staff. The woman in white asks then warns her to stop. Sung Il Tran tries to distract the woman in white while Tume Subei continues extinguishing the immature spider horde.

Lady Spider's True Form

"Who are you?" demands Sung Il Tran.

"I am your wife. You know this," is woman in white's reply as she sheds her human form and strecthes her spindly purple legs.

Lady Spider lunges at Tumen Subei, who dodges nimbly to the side and raps her on the carapace with her shaman's staff. Beiji Gun leaps trying to land on Lady Spider's back but she skips to the side and he lands heavily behind her. Sung Il Tran swings but the blow glanges off Lady Spider's carapace. She nips at him and Tumen Subei as Beji Gun successfully leaps on her back and strikes off one of her legs. Lady Spider catches Beiji Gun with her web and starts to wrap him in her silk. Tumen Subei summons the element of fire and all things flammable in the parlor begin to burn. Enraged, Lady Spider strikes at Tumen Subei with her legs and knocks her unconscious.

Sung Il Tran and the dumbfounded soldiers grab Tumen Subei and flee down the tunnel. As the soldiers drag the shaman into Xiao Linyu's trap which sucessfully captures them, Sung Il Tran races back to rescue Beiji Gun. Mai Lan Dei looks to the injuries.

Returning to the parlor, he sees Lady Spider beating out the flames with her legs, her mouth parts chittering in fear and alarm. Sung Il Tran rolls the bound Beiji Gun to the exits from the spider's lair. As Beiji Gun attempts to break his bonds, Sung Il Tran helps Lady Spider beat out the flames.

"I'll make you a deal," he offers. "You leave us alone and we'll leave you alone.

After a moment's thought, Lady Spider answers.

"I will not make any move against you or your companions but we will meet again under different circumstances. The pattern of future is already woven."

With the flames most out extinguished and Beiji Gun's bonds broken, Sung Il Tran and the overseer escape back along the spider web tunnel as fast as they can. They emerge into the dawn light in the clearing.

Sung Il Tran orders the stands of bamboo supporting the web entrance cut down, destroying the tunnel.

... in the same way as the fates of the five worthies are already woven with silken spider thread into the fabric of creation. Your futures are also pre-determined. Yet that does not mean that we should not strive to find a way of making peace between our tribes and of making that peace last beyond this fire-side feast tonight. Let the discussions begin.

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