Movement IV · The Three Kingdoms

I. The Name of Lü Bu · A Substitution He Could Not Avoid

In this era of the Three Kingdoms, he was Lü Bu.

(Counting from his rebirth in the Western Zhou, he had now been wandering some one thousand two hundred and twenty years; and between him and the last era he had lived through — the Han — lay several centuries. The mandate of the Han was spent, and warlords rose on every hand; on the eve of Dong Zhuo's wrecking of the court he happened to come to rest in Bingzhou.)

That name was far too loud, loud enough that even he found it absurd. "Among men, Lü Bu; among horses, Red Hare" — the foremost fighting man of the Three Kingdoms. And yet in the beginning none of this was meant to be his. What was more absurd still: at first no one knew who it was who had killed him, and he himself least of all.

That year he had followed the scent and come to rest in Bingzhou. There was then in Bingzhou a swaggering soldier-chief who let his men loot and slaughter the innocent at will; his name had not even reached Chenyu's ears — Chenyu took him for one more bully of a broken age who preyed on the weak. Until the day when, chasing a thread of scent, he wandered into a village that was being sacked.

Of the villagers, some had fled and some were dead. The chief rode a fierce horse much like the Red Hare and carried a painted halberd; at the very centre of the village he laughed aloud, flicked an old man's head into the air on the point of his halberd, and said, "Such base creatures — kill them and be done with it." Chenyu stood behind the broken wall at the mouth of the village, and what he smelled was not only blood but that thread of scent — very faint, very frightened, leaking out of a huddle of driven women and children. It was the scent he had been hunting for most of his road through the Three Kingdoms: cold and clear as a winter river, and wrapped round with terror.

He had not meant to interfere. But before that halberd fell he saw a woman fling herself over a small child to shield it, and the chief kick her over. In that instant he forgot the rule against changing history, and thought only of Wan at Muye, Zhao Heng at Handan, Heng at Gaixia — in every life he had come one step too late. This time he did not mean to be late again.

He struck.

No one saw that fight clearly. Chenyu's strength was the speed and the cruelty that three thousand years had honed and the undying body conferred; brave as the chief was, he was no match for a man bent on killing him who could also take every wound he dealt. The painted halberd snapped against the broken wall, the fierce horse screamed and would not stop, and the chief lay down in the dust with disbelief still in his eyes. Chenyu said, "You killed the innocent without cause; you do not die unjustly." — He stooped and drew once at the side of the neck, and took that body's blood together with his provisions of "three days without hunger."

But the killing was only the beginning of the trouble — and it began worse than he had imagined.

He had not known, at first, whom he had killed. Not until he crouched down and, by a secret art, reached into the severed head — "reading memory." It was a means he used very seldom, and only to learn what manner of man he had killed and what trouble would follow. The moment the memories entered him, a flood of broken images and feelings poured into his mind: Bingzhou, Ding Yuan, foster father, Red Hare, painted halberd — and that arrogance which came out of the very bone, the arrogance of a man who counted human life as straw. This man was Ding Yuan's foster son. He was the Lü Bu of the histories, "among men, Lü Bu," the foremost fighting man of the Three Kingdoms.

From the reading he learned more than who the man was: that temper of arrogant slaughter soaked through him once as well — Lü Bu's last overbearing pride before death, his contempt for the innocent, the unthinking relish he took in killing, all of it settling into Chenyu's own mind like a dream he could not wake from. After that, when he played "Lü Bu," even the arrogance came as if born in him, and needed no acting.

The first time he stood before the army in the name of "Lü Bu," a general who did not believe the tales rode out to provoke him. Chenyu levelled the painted halberd; in a single pass the point had stopped three inches from that man's throat — his soul all but left him, he reined about and withdrew, and the whole army fell silent. Chenyu lowered the halberd, and felt hollow: all this majesty had been won on a dead man's behalf.

And then the true terror came: if Lü Bu vanished into the air, the army of Bingzhou would fall into chaos, and this stretch of the histories would have to be written anew — and to alter the great currents of history was to put his immortality in peril. He stood in the wind and shook, for the first time, at his own rashness. To keep history from slipping, someone had to carry the name "Lü Bu" through to every ending the histories had already set down.

And so he killed Ding Yuan.

Not for power. To close a mouth: if Ding Yuan lived, he would surely inquire into his foster son's death, and Bingzhou would surely fall into disorder. He carried Ding Yuan's head to Dong Zhuo, exactly as the histories record — "he slew Ding Yuan and gave his allegiance to Dong Zhuo." From then on he stood at Dong Zhuo's side in the name of "Lü Bu" and played out everything the dead man had been meant to play: the swagger on the slopes of Hulao, the overbearing ways in the streets of Chang'an, the look in the eye that feared Dong Zhuo and hated him at once. The House of Han was toppling; Yuan Shao and Cao Cao each held a corner of the world, and Dong Zhuo kept the Son of Heaven in his hand and commanded the lords through him — and the balance in all their hands was quietly sliding toward the house of Cao.

This was the truth behind how famous "Lü Bu" became, and how strange it all was — not that he had any wish to be famous, but that he had no choice but to be; not that he was born a hero of the age, but that on behalf of a fighting man who ought not to have been there at all, he filled the fates of three thousand men back into the histories, stroke by stroke, in the shape they had always had.

Late at night he would sit before a bronze mirror and look at the face in it that was not his own. It was at such an hour that Zhuo Sheng came.

That scent of aged sandalwood mixed with rust — he knew it too well. Zhuo Sheng stood in the shadow of the locust tree beyond the window, as though he had never aged. "You have taken Lü Bu's place."

"If I do not, the histories will be crooked."

"They will not be crooked." Zhuo Sheng's voice was the voice of a man lecturing a junior who would not learn. "Remember this. Since you have taken that name upon you, you must walk every stroke the histories have written for Lü Bu: his arrogance, his suspicions, and his last binding at the White Gate Tower. If you cling to life, or change the ending, it is the same as altering the great currents of history with your own hand. Lose your immortality then, and you will not even have the right to watch over her."

"I will remember."

"You will not remember it well enough." Zhuo Sheng left him that, and dissolved into the dark. "But the histories will remember for you. Play it as it is written, and do not think too much. And one thing more — you have read what was in that man's head. Do not let the killing in it cover over your own nature."

II. Hulao Pass · Three Heroes Against Lü Bu

Dong Zhuo wrecked the court, and the lords marched against him. At the two passes of Sishui and Hulao the levies of eighteen powers gathered like cloud. Chenyu rode out beneath the name of "Lü Bu," laid his painted halberd level, and unhorsed general after general; the shouting rose to the sky. He had to make good the title "foremost fighting man of the Three Kingdoms" on a corpse's behalf.

On this day the three brothers Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei came out together. The histories make a fine noise of it: three heroes against Lü Bu, fifty bouts of hard fighting, and in the end Lü Bu "fled, defeated." Facing the three of them before a whole army, Chenyu understood that these "three heroes," before the eyes and hands of an undying body and three thousand years of killing, could not in truth stand a single pass.

He tried them with the first pass: the halberd turned aside Zhang Fei's serpent spear, and he used only three parts of his strength in it. When Guan Yu's Green Dragon blade came splitting down he leaned aside, and with the same motion thrust him back with the halberd — but drew the edge deliberately. Had he used his full strength, those two would even then have fallen together beneath his halberd. Liu Bei's twin swords need no speaking of; to Chenyu's eye they moved as slowly as a child waving a fan.

But he could not change the histories.

If the three heroes died here, the campaign against Dong Zhuo, the balance among the lords, and many a stroke written after would all run off the track. He set his teeth and pressed back into his body, inch by inch, the strength that could have ground the three of them to powder. And so the scene the histories required was played: he "fought hard and could not prevail," was hemmed in by the three, feigned exhaustion, wheeled his horse and withdrew into the pass. He played it to the life — even the beat of Red Hare's hooves carried panic in it.

Back behind the lines, he lay along the horse's neck, his heart beating like thunder. Not fear — the fear that comes after. If his hand had itched a moment ago and he had used one part more, this whole road would have been walked for nothing. He understood suddenly the weight of Zhuo Sheng's words: since you have taken that name, you must walk every stroke the histories have written for Lü Bu — even the stroke that says "driven back by the three heroes"; even though it is false, you must play it true.

II-ii. Xiaopei · The Halberd Breaks the Encampments

At the siege of Xiaopei, Cao Cao sent Liu Bei and Xiahou Dun to join their forces and pen Lü Bu in. Chenyu rode out of the city beneath the name of "Lü Bu" to give battle, his painted halberd laid level. Xiahou Dun levelled his spear and thrust; Chenyu turned the shaft aside and, following the motion, slapped the flat of the halberd against Xiahou Dun's shoulder-plate, forcing that fierce general, horse and all, back several paces. Liu Bei's twin swords struck from the side; he brought the halberd round like a wheel and swept the wind of the swords wholly aside — but drew the edge deliberately. None of these men, in the histories, was to die by his hand. The shouting below the wall shook the sky, and in the confusion he stooped and drew the red bloom of a soldier of Cao who had been unhorsed; it would serve him a day. On the wall above stood Diaochan — he still believed she was the one — and watched "Lü Bu" break the encampments with his halberd, her eyes holding a fear and an admiration she could not have put into words. He reined about and rode back into the city, and felt hollow: all this majesty was only a dead man's part, played for the histories to read.

III. The Phoenix Pavilion · The Error of a Likeness

In the house of the minister Wang Yun, he saw Diaochan for the first time.

The woman came forward with a cup in her hand, and the glance she turned on him was the colour of a river in winter: clear, cold, too deep to see the bottom of — the very likeness of those eyes he had thought, each time, that he had caught and held: at Muye in the Western Zhou, at Handan in Zhao, at Gaixia among the songs of Chu. He stood at the edge of the pavilion with his heart beating like a drum; the solitude of the whole road seemed, in that one turning of her eyes, to have somewhere to go home to. That thread of scent was unmistakably on her, thick enough to set his fingertips trembling.

"General," said Diaochan, with a gracious courtesy, in a voice so soft it seemed it would melt into the wind.

He very nearly stepped forward, very nearly said, I have been looking for you the whole of this road. But he thought of the line he must not cross, and held himself back, and let Wang Yun arrange it, let this "chain of stratagems" play itself out upon him. The meeting at the Phoenix Pavilion, that stroke in the histories, he played for "Lü Bu" to the life: a feigned breach with Dong Zhuo, and in the name of a "fair face," the killing of a foster father by his own hand.

Only he knew that those nights were not for hatred of Dong Zhuo, but for the woman in his arms whom he had "found again at last." Diaochan nestled against him, her eyes bright with tears, her fingers knotted in his battle-robe. "General, this life of mine was always the general's." He believed her. The long bitter wait of the whole road found somewhere to go home to in that one sentence. He told her the story of himself that he could not tell: that he had walked through many dynasties, that he was always looking for one person, that he was afraid of finding her and afraid of not finding her.

Diaochan lay against his chest and wept without a sound, as though she had taken it in, and as though she had heard nothing at all.

He did not know that this "love" was itself the cruellest link in Wang Yun's chain of stratagems. And he did not know either that the scent which made him think "it is she" came of a mistake: Diaochan and another woman were twins. The blood of twins is joined, and their scent is close by nature; following the scent, he had taken the elder sister for the one his soul was bound to.

The true she was Diaochan's younger sister.

III-ii. Chang'an · The Assassination of Dong Zhuo

Wang Yun laid the chain and lured Dong Zhuo to court. Chenyu stood with his halberd at the side of the Weiyang Hall. When Dong Zhuo's carriage arrived the axle snapped, and he tumbled into the dust and cried out in fright, "Fengxian, my son, where are you?" Chenyu stepped forward, and the painted halberd went into Dong Zhuo's throat. This, in the histories, is written as Lü Bu slaying his foster father with his own hand; for that corpse he played it without a hair's difference. Dong Zhuo dead, Li Jue and Guo Si turned back on Chang'an, and fire rose above the walls. Chenyu fought a way out of the south gate with Diaochan, flicking several pursuers down with the halberd, and in the confusion drew bloom as he always did. At the moment he passed out of the city he looked back, and the fire over Chang'an was the very image of the fires of Xianyang, of Gaixia, of Xiapi — in every life he had seen people off through fire.

IV. White Gate Tower · Getting Away

At the siege of Xiapi the army of Cao broke the dykes and drowned the city. On the night the water covered the foot of the wall, soldiers of Cao came pouring in through the breach on rafts, their torches lying on the water like a million swimming red serpents. Chenyu stood in the breach with his painted halberd, the eyes of the undying body shining terribly in the dark. An officer of Cao charged him behind a shield; Chenyu flicked the halberd up and the point slid in past the rim of the shield and found his throat. Another general of Cao came swinging a great blade; the wind of it split the air at his face, he leaned aside, and the halberd ran down the back of the blade and nailed that general, man and armour together, to the city wall, the blood running down the plates of the armour into the water. A third soldier levelled a spear at the small of his back; without turning his head Chenyu drove the butt of the halberd backward into the man's breastbone. The spear fell, the man sagged. In the confusion he stooped and drew the enemy's red bloom; it went down his throat cold, and nobody noticed. His "peerless under heaven" was half true skill and half the speed and the strength the undying body gave him — and Red Hare, of all creatures, never knew the secret.

The White Gate Tower. Cao Cao had taken Lü Bu.

The histories record that Lü Bu was taken, and begged for his life, and that a word from Liu Bei — "does my lord not recall the affairs of Ding Yuan and Dong Zhuo?" — and he was strangled. Chenyu knew better than anyone that this ending could not be avoided: if Lü Bu lived, the Three Kingdoms would have to be written again, and the rule he had kept the whole of this road would be broken. And so on the night before the execution he slipped away by virtue of the undying body, leaving behind only a corpse of a shape much like his own, to be put to death; and let "Lü Bu" die in the wind at the White Gate Tower.

At the moment of his going, Diaochan called him to a stop where no one was near, and said in her own voice, very softly: "The one you are waiting for — it has been hard, hasn't it. But that scent is in the blood and bone of us twins — you mistook me. I am not her. I am her elder twin."

He stood where he was, stunned. The wind at the Phoenix Pavilion, the fire at the White Gate Tower, rose up in him together. At last he understood: this "reunion" on this stretch of the road had been an error of twins. And yet he was relieved — at least the true she was still somewhere in this world, carrying that thread of cold clear scent, waiting for him to know her.

V. The Madman Who Had Lost His Memory · Ma Chao's Sworn Brother

After the glare of the fire at the White Gate Tower died, the world said that Lü Bu was dead.

Chenyu was not dead. He chose a road harder than dying: to play the man who had lost his memory.

He dirtied his face and loosed his hair and "crawled" out of the ruins of a village the army of Cao had burned, scorched all over, his eyes empty, his throat too ruined to shape a whole sentence. Some broken soldiers of Xiliang came past; seeing this half-mad fellow still gripping half a broken halberd in his fist, they took him for a comrade out of some scattered camp, threw him a ragged coat, and took him along.

From then on there was no Lü Bu in the world, only a mute madman called "Ayu."

In Ma Chao's army he served as an unremarkable personal guardsman. This time he had beside him an old brother who had followed him from the camps of Han — Zhao Hao. Zhao Hao passed as a Xiliang man who fought with a lance and was, like Chenyu, "mute and mad," but in truth turned aside blades for him and for Ma Chao at every turn. Those who grew familiar with him in the camp were Xiao Yan and Qin Ge, two old soldiers of Xiliang, who knew the mute for a silent and dependable man, a friend to give one's back to. Ma Chao at that time was in the fiercest years of his life: his father and brothers dead by Cao Cao's hand, his army broken at Tongguan, his blood wept into the Wei River, a rage for vengeance burning in him red to the eyes. Chenyu looked at the young general and saw himself beneath the walls of Handan, fighting to the death to shield Zhao — except that in this era he stood to one side.

Ma Chao was a man of fierce temper, and few in his following dared to come truly near him. Chenyu said nothing; he only turned aside, in every mêlée and without a word, the cold arrows that came at Ma Chao's back, and kept watch outside his tent on every night's encampment. In time Ma Chao asked him, "Who are you, in the end?" He only shook his head and pointed at his own throat. One night, drunk, Ma Chao clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Since you will not say, then take me for your brother. From this day on you are my elder sworn brother." Chenyu was startled. On all this road there had been almost no one who had called him "brother" in such earnest; and he nodded, and from then on was Ma Chao's sworn elder brother.

After that, at the second battle of Tongguan and the second crossing of the Wei, he still guarded Ma Chao's side as "elder sworn brother." At Tongguan, when Ma Chao levelled his spear and charged the line, Chenyu and Zhao Hao covered him left and right; a fierce general of Cao's camp swung a blade to cut him off, and Zhao Hao's lance-point took the horse in the eye, and the general came down, and Chenyu finished him with a thrust of the sword, and Ma Chao drove through the enemy formation on the momentum of it. At the Wei, Zhao Hao's lance took several soldiers of Cao who had broken into the line, and held Ma Chao's back — and of all this the histories record not one word. The art of his halberd he hid inside an ordinary blade, his strength gathered into his footwork, and he never took the glory from Ma Chao. The old rule held: red bloom for food, a stoop and a draught in the thick of the fighting, leaving no more trace than the print of a wild goose on snow, and no one the wiser. This time he had learned better — fame is a calamity, and to stay hidden behind other men is the way to a long life.

Once, when a stray arrow grazed Ma Chao, Chenyu turned aside the second arrow without a change of face; Ma Chao never noticed, and thought only that his luck was strong. Zhao Hao saw it clearly enough, and back in the camp only clapped Chenyu on the shoulder. "Brother, that hand of yours is steadier than mine." Chenyu smiled and said nothing — on this road he had shielded more people than he could count, and to be remembered so by a man who called him "brother" in earnest was something like extravagance.

In the battle of Tongguan, Ma Chao fought Xu Chu stripped to the waist, and Chenyu stood behind the line with Zhao Hao beside him carrying his lance. Xu Chu's strength was great and his axe heavy; Ma Chao's spear was like lightning. When the two came to the turn of the fight, Xu Chu cast aside his blade and grappled with Ma Chao, and Ma Chao levelled his spear at Xu Chu — and Chenyu, unseen, turned aside with his scabbard the axe Xu Chu swung back at him, and got his sworn brother out of the danger. It was done very lightly, very fast; the others thought Ma Chao had dodged it himself, and only Zhao Hao glimpsed it, and turned and met Chenyu's eyes, and nothing was said.

He could guard Ma Chao's life, but not Ma Chao's fortune. In the end Ma Chao was beaten — beaten by Cao Cao, and beaten by the falling-away of Liangzhou from within. Watching his sworn brother fall again and again from the height into the mire, Chenyu understood for the first time: there are histories that will not be turned by any willingness to spend your life.

VI. Xuniang · The Younger Twin, the True Her

Drifting with the routed armies, he went south with the scattered men, and outside Chang'an, before a half-ruined nunnery, he met her.

The woman was drawing water at the well, in a plain gown of undyed cloth; there was in her brow and eyes something of Diaochan — and yet not Diaochan. Diaochan's eyes held tears hidden inside calculation; this woman's eyes were a clean, bare fright, like a startled deer. The others called her "Xuniang"; she was Diaochan's younger twin, they said, who had lost everyone she leaned on in the broken age and was hiding here to keep herself alive.

In truth, before he ever came near the nunnery he had already caught that thread of scent by the well — cold and clear as a winter river, of the same vein as the one he had mistaken at the Phoenix Pavilion, yet purer, quieter, with not a grain of calculation mixed into it. He had followed the scent, and so had come upon the woman drawing water. When Chenyu heard the words "Diaochan's sister," his steps stopped. The wind at the Phoenix Pavilion, the fire at the White Gate Tower, rose in him together — and this time there was no mistake. This thread was the true one.

"General ... you must be hungry too?" Xuniang raised her eyes to him; she did not know who he was, only saw a man covered in the dust of the road with a ruined throat, and asked him softly.

That one word, "general," soured his heart. She did not know that the mute madman before her was the "Lü Bu" her sister had driven to his death by stratagem, and did not know either that the thread of scent on her own body was the only evidence he had had to go by the whole of this road.

He did not leave.

This time it was not the wild joy of "thinking he had found her," but a slow, warm drawing near. Xuniang had no art of calculation and never fished for a man with her eyes; she only slipped an old coat over him quietly when he was cold on night watch, and when his wounds healed and itched, thought him in a nightmare and patted his back lightly. For the first time on this road he did not have to be a fierce general beside a woman, did not have to be without feeling; he was only the "Ayu" who could not speak.

Later they left the nunnery and made their way toward Shu to escape the troubles. On the road he stopped playing the madman, and little by little could speak a few words again, but he never breathed a syllable of Lü Bu. Nor did Xuniang ask. In a broken age, who has not a few old matters he dares not think back on?

VI-ii. Flight South · Night Raid on the Mountain Road

They left the nunnery and turned toward Shu, fleeing the troubles. One night, on a mountain road, a dozen or so bandits broke out of the trees to rob and kill. Zhao Hao had gone off alone to look for a strayed horse and was not at his side; Chenyu did not want to show what he was, but when he saw the bandit chief's blade come down toward Xuniang's cart, he could not bear it any longer. The sword slid out of his sleeve like lightning in the night, and before the chief's blade reached the curtain of the cart there was a line of coolness at his throat. The rest, seeing their leader go down without a sound, came shouting on; his shape was a ghost's, and with every pass one man sagged, and all the blood was his, and no one marked it. Xuniang lifted the curtain and saw only the bandits falling back, and did not know that in that half cup of tea death had circled her once. He sheathed the sword and said only, "There are wolves on the night road. Let us go," as though nothing had happened.

VII. The Dough Sculptor and the Patron Saint of Pastry

One day, passing through a market, they saw an old craftsman kneading dough into little figures of generals, his fingers flying, beard and brows all there to the life. Xuniang stopped, and bought a small white rabbit, and held it in her hand. Chenyu stood beside the stall and listened to the talk: this craft of dough figures, the common people held Zhuge Liang for its patron — it was said that Zhuge Liang, meaning to sacrifice to the river, made figures of dough in the place of men, "rice men," and in later ages it became this small skill of trifling cunning; even the pastry trade honoured Zhuge Liang as its patron, saying that the mantou had first been the "barbarian head," used in sacrifice to the river, and that the custom of wedding cakes began with him too, and that those who live by the trade still make offerings to him.

Chenyu looked at the "general" inside that lump of dough and thought of the real Zhuge Liang of these Three Kingdoms — the man who borrowed the east wind and set out the empty city, who had never once set eyes on this "Lü Bu" of his. A craft that began as an offering to the dead had passed down a thousand years and ended as a plaything in a child's hand. It struck him suddenly that beside these small skills, which men remembered, his own undying body was the shorter-lived thing.

VIII. The Eyes of a Commoner · Watching the World's Injustice (and One Correction He Could Not Avoid)

The fires of the Three Kingdoms did not burn themselves out.

He and Xuniang settled in a small city and passed as an ordinary brother and sister; he took what odd work there was, she spun thread and mended clothes. From Lü Bu, whose name shook the world, to sworn brother of Ma Chao, and now to a commoner not even permitted to carry a weapon — he had walked the whole length of the longest fall there is.

It was only by becoming a commoner that he truly saw the Three Kingdoms. In the old days, in the tents of generals, his eyes had held only victory and defeat, only cities and renown; now, walking the lanes, he saw the things the other book of history will not write in detail: warlords carving up the land, taxes like knives, the dry wells of a sacked city heaped with women and children; in a year of great drought, men eating men, a mother pushing the last mouthful of grain into her child's mouth and starving to death on her own threshold; routed soldiers passing through, good fields turned to ash in a night, an old farmer kneeling on the ridge between his fields and weeping, and no one hearing him.

He had been the Lü Bu who could turn back ten thousand men alone. Now he stood to one side and watched injustice happen with both hands empty.

Once, when routed soldiers outside the city meant to massacre a village, he could have laid the whole troop low in a single night — with his strength it would have been as easy as turning his hand. But he had sworn an oath: not to change history, not to show what he was. If he struck, the record of this village would run off its track, and the course of the Three Kingdoms would put out branches he could not measure. He ground his teeth to splinters, and only kept Xuniang behind him, and watched the soldiers who did evil trample the fences down, and watched the crying of the neighbour's child crushed under hooves.

Zhao Hao was there that night. A dozen or so mounted stragglers burst through the fences; Zhao Hao's lance swept the two leaders from their horses, and Chenyu passed through them like a ghost, and with every pass one straggler went down without a sound; Xuniang was kept behind the haystack at their backs. And yet it was only because the two of them struck so cleanly that the village escaped a great disaster — and still Chenyu hated himself afterwards: he could plainly have protected them, and had protected one village, and could not protect the ten thousand times ten thousand villages of this broken age.

That night he sat on the roof and for the first time hated this undying body of his. And it was precisely then that the business of the turned came to trouble him again.

There was a boy in the village called Ayan who threw himself in front of a stray arrow meant for Xuniang and hung by a thread. Chenyu could not bear it, and gave him a mouthful of blood, and turned the dying boy into his own kind. He knew too well that it was wrong — in former lives he had put to his own sword how many good friends for this very thing. But Xuniang was there beside him, and he could not hide that softness of heart. Ayan became an undying body; at first he was only glad of it, and then, presuming on the fact that he could not be killed, he tried to gather the young men of the village about him and set himself up as their lord, and very nearly altered the record in the direction of Ye. Chenyu's grasp of the history of the Three Kingdoms was hazy to begin with, with only two or three parts in ten of his memory left; by the time he noticed, the outcome of a battle had very nearly run off its track. He sought Ayan out and ended him where no one was near, and afterwards quietly wiped away every trace of him. In the histories those years kept the shape they were meant to have. The correction, once again, had made itself while he was not attending — he knelt before the body, and only after a long while remembered Zhuo Sheng's words: "you will not remember it well enough, but the histories will remember for you."

Later, on another of their wanderings, Xuniang fell ill. In a broken age there are no physicians; herbs held her life in them a while, and in the end she went. At the last she held his hand. She did not know him for Lü Bu; she knew only the "Ayu" who had walked half of China at her side, and she said, smiling, "In this life, meeting you — I was not wronged."

He did not turn her into his own kind — this time he did not dare. He was afraid that if she became an undying body she would have to carry, as he did, the emptiness of this road, and watch one crop of people after another go. He would rather she went cleanly, into the unknown next stretch and the next after that, and perhaps in some dynasty or other would at last meet the one who was truly hers.

After Xuniang was buried, he was alone again.

The fires of the Three Kingdoms were still burning. Under his own name, Chenyu, he went on, folding the halberd of Lü Bu, the brotherhood of Ma Chao, the coat of Xuniang together into the deepest place in his memory. The red thread still drew him on ahead, but he was no longer in such haste as at the beginning — he had understood: the search for a person cannot be hurried, and cannot be altered; you can only walk, only wait, only, after thinking once and again that it is she and once and again finding that it is not, still be willing to go on.

He followed the red thread toward the next stretch the scent drew him to. In the next era he would meet another woman like her, one he would have to shield with his life, and he would meet a man of ambition called Ran Min, and an order to kill the Hu that left the rivers running with blood.

But that is the next story.

*The end of this movement. Continued in Movement V · The Sixteen Kingdoms.*