The Marriage of the Living Dark

Lanier glowered at that, but Egan wasn’t having any of it

“You’ll scour the desert until you find him. And when you do - and it had better be alive and in one piece - you’ll bring him directly here, to Boston.” “Master.”

“Now is there any other bad news you have to relate to me, or are you finished for today?”

Lanier licked at his lips, then shook his head.

“Then get to it, man, at once!”

Egan cut the connection and turned. Li Kuei Jen was standing nearby, staring at him, his face filled with concern.

“Who could it be? Who would take my father?”

Egan came across and held his wife’s arms. “Don’t worry, Jenny. We’ll find him. And when we do, we’ll punish those who’ve taken him.””Unless they kill my father first” “Don’t talk like that Don’t give up. We’ll find him and we’ll bring him back here, and then all will be well.”

Li Kuei Jen looked up, meeting his husband’s eyes. That was the thing about Mark Egan. In essence, he was a child, with a child’s responses to the world. Oh, not a callous or whimsical child, yet still a child. His enthusiasms were as a child’s enthusiasms and he hoped and dreamed - and was disappointed - as a child was.

“Come now,” Egan said, smiling at him, “our friends await us.” The banquet was in full swing. Anyone of importance in Boston’s elite was there, to celebrate their victory.

Egan paused in the huge doorway at the top of the stairs, waiting while total silence fell at the tables in the great hall below. Then he proceeded down, Li Kuei Jen on his arm. As everyone in the hall stood, Han Ch’in, who had thus far deputised for Egan, hurried across from the top table to greet them at the foot of the steps.

Han Ch’in bowed low. “Welcome home to Boston, Master,” he said, loud enough for all in the hall to hear. “May I be the first to congratulate you on a historic victory.”

It was over the top, yet it was dearly working. All about the hall faces were beaming now, as if a victory really had been won. Eyes glowed with excitement. All there wanted to be associated with this great success. “Peace has been won,” Egan said, smiling as he looked about him. “Now we must work to subdue the barbarians of the south.”

A great cheer went up at that, but Egan raised his hands, begging for their silence once again. As he did, one of the stewards came across with a tray of drinks. Egan took two, handing them to Kuei Jen and Han Ch’in, then took one himself. He raised it “But first let us celebrate this great triumph. Let us drink a toast to our armies in the west And to victory!”

The roar was deafening, as a thousand glasses were raised. ‘To victory!”Egan drained his glass then turned and, whispering into Kuei Jen’s ear, said:

“I think you’re right, Jenny. I think we might ride the tiger yet!”

Isis was a place between rocks. A natural circle of rocks that hid a bowl of dark water some half a li across. And beyond that, a village was cut into the rock itself, ledge after ledge of it, climbing the rock face. It was morning, and the slopes above the village were in sunlight, but where Li Yuan sat in the cart it was still in shadow. He shivered, cold for the first time since he’d been taken, and looked across.

The men who had brought him were talking with other men; arguing, it seemed. Then, suddenly, it was resolved, and one he had not met before came across and, standing at the tail of the cart, stared at him as if to say, ‘So this is what a T’ang looks like, is it?’

Li Yuan stared back at him. “Who are you?” he demanded. But the man did not feel obliged to answer him. He turned away, walking back to those who had brought Li Yuan and making a dismissive gesture. There was momentary laughter.

People were watching now, from the ledges and from windows. If he could, he would have stood, defying them, but it was hard to be defiant when one’s hands and feet were tied and one could not even move without falling over.

He dosed his eyes, deciding he would wait, as the sages waited, with a patience born of inner strength. Yet after a moment he found he had to look again. Someone was standing nearby, whistling a tune. Li Yuan laughed softly, then tried to turn his head to see who it was, for he knew that tune.

It was “The Moon on High:’

Soft footsteps approached. The whistling stopped. “Are you ready for me now, Li Yuan?”He knew that voice. Knew it, but could not pin down whose it was. The same voice that had been in his head on the journey here.

“Unbind me,” he said quietly. “There’s nowhere I can go, after all.” A moment’s silence, then, “Not yet. The place must be prepared. Then we shall meet... and talk.”

“Who...?”

But the owner of the voice was no longer there.

The feast was going well. Very well. Indeed, from the air of celebration, no one would have guessed that at that very moment, on the far side of the continent, half of their once-proud army was in chains, being marched across the great desert that lay west of the Black Hills, towards Eugene, a thousand kilometres distant Four million men, of whom barely a third would reach their destination. Egan, whose mind could think of nothing else, looked up, a pained expression in his eyes. Kuei Jen had nudged him.

“I beg pardon, I was ...”

He saw who it was. The blunt, misshapen head could belong to no one else, nor that strange, disfigured torso.

“Colonel Chalker,” he said. “You have news?”

Chalker raised his head, his cobalt blue eyes - the coldest eyes of anything, man or lizard, Egan had ever seen - meeting Egan’s own. “Horton’s ours,” he said quietly. “I took him an hour back I have him in the cells downstairs.”

Egan stood, then sat again, his hands still gripping the arms of his chair. He wanted to go immediately; to tear from Horton what part he’d had in Li Yuan’s abduction, but there was still the banquet to think of. For once the public face mattered more than anything else.

“Well done,” he said, keeping his own voice low. “Keep him safe for me, Colonel.

And once things are finished here, Til come.”

Chalker”s eyes widened slightly. “Shall I begin without you, Master?” Egan considered, then shook his head. “This once, no, Alan. I want to hear every word he utters, every last inflection in his voice.” He paused, then. “We need to know who are our enemies, and who our friends.”