I lean and urge my beast forward. Ahead of me, Leizu looks like a spirit escaped from the underworld, black hair spilling over a milk-white dress. As my steed lumbers, gaining speed, I marvel at Leizu’s strength and agility—she rides in perfect synchronicity with the animal, her head held low and level as a tiger prowling through reeds. The waving grass brushes my thighs, whipping past as scores of insects leap like shooting stars, and I laugh with sheer exhilaration, the vibration of it echoing in my chest.
As my horse grows even with hers, Leizu leans harder but she cannot pull away. My beast gallops, sweating, stiff mane bouncing. I catch an angry smile on Leizu’s face as I pass her, and some hint of satisfaction.
Snapping my head back, I grab a fistful of mane and yank upward. With a screaming whinny, my beast rears and digs hooves into thinning grass. We skid to a halt at the crumbling edge of the plateau.
Rocks tumble over the ledge, the crack of their impacts echoing up.
A wide curve of the Long River curls through the valley below like a fat, shining dragon tail. Along its banks, the land slopes up to form ridges that turn to verdant plains. Wild forest seems to hem in the surging water, but I instinctively know that only these high plateaus are at all safe from the great river.
Behind me, Leizu approaches with a mysterious smile.
“Thank you for the warning,” I say, sarcastic.
Her smile does not falter. Swaying in the saddle, she turns her sweating steed away from me, its nostrils flaring, eyes rolling in fear as Leizu traces a path along the brink of the cliff. I watch her turn into a silhouette of woman and horse against cloudy skies, then finally spur my steed to follow.
The race was thrilling, but now Leizu is leading me somewhere.
Across the valley and beyond the river, I see that a black mouth has been bored into the face of the far plateau—dragon’s tooth. From that dark maw, a stream of human slaves pour in and out. Simple men, they are farmers and peasants, dressed in rags and carrying empty sacks in and sacks full of rock out.
The massive construction project has been going on for years, and the men look exhausted and half-starved. Like water through rock, they have carved a warren of tunnels into the high plateau, excavation routes for a burial chamber—an underground city concealed somewhere deep inside the range of plateaus.
Huangdi’s necropolis will be grand.
The hidden tomb will soon house all of us as we sleep for a thousand years, awaiting the return of the progenitor race—the First Men. The Yellow God has decreed we leave this barbarous land, resting our vessels in the depths of the underworld until our makers return.
“He will kill the workers after,” says Leizu, not looking at me.
“The short-lived race are happy to die for their cosmic ruler,” I reply.
Leizu frowns at me, so I continue.
“He taught them to write. To farm. He has given them the Mandate of Heaven. Without him, that swarm of ants would be nothing.”
“Not ants,” she says. “Civilization makers.”
“That rabble did not create us. The First Men are long passed from this land.”
“Maybe so, but why do you think they set our kind upon the world?”
“We were made to serve Huangdi,” I respond.
“Not true.”
I snort. “Now you profess to know the progenitor race?”
“You are a warrior, and warriors have short memories—destroyed in battle every few hundred years. I am not a warrior. And I have a long memory.”
“Then tell me, why were we made?” I ask.
“As paragons. We are the physical embodiments of virtues prized by the First Men. Logic. Justice. Valor. The balance of chaos and rebirth. The only pain we can feel is that of failing our Word. To not serve is to defy your existence. It is the bite of the void. Nihil, beckoning.”
“We are paragons? To what purpose?”
“As beacons to men, Lu Yan. Millennia ago, when our makers fell into barbarism, slitting one anothers’ throats in the flooded, golden ruins of their fallen civilization…it was we who led on through time, immortal shepherds, tasked with guiding the ancestors of the First Men back to their glorious birthright.”
“But we are not immortal,” I say, shaking my head. “The eldest of us are already gone, their anima extinguished. Huangdi has a plan—”
Leizu slides a slender arm around my waist and pulls herself onto my steed, facing me. She is too near, too intimate, but in my saddle I have nowhere to go. Resting her hands on my hips, she levels her eyes on mine. Her voice is so close, it almost seems to come from inside my own head.
“His plan is mad. The human kingdoms need us here. We must lead them back to true civilization. When they are as great as their ancestors, we will be rewarded with knowledge of ourselves. This is our only path to survival.”
Beyond her oval face, thousands of dirt-covered workers move ceaselessly in and out of the cavern. Huangdi’s tomb is expanding by the minute. With proper supervision, it is clear the human beings are capable of great works. But even with our help, the lucky ones barely survive thirty years, infested with parasites and disease, losing more children than they raise.
“These creatures are little more than animals,” I say. “We must obey Huangdi and sleep. Our emperor has decreed—we will await the return of the First Men.”
“There are no more First Men,” Leizu says. “These animals are the remnants of the progenitor race—the closest thing we will see to their kind again. A civilization as great as that will not return on its own.”
Leizu bows, pressing her cheek to my shoulder.
“Your master is a liar,” she says. “If you allow him, Huangdi will feed on you, and on all of us, while he waits in vain for the return of a long-dead race—”
“He has promised to wake us—”
Leizu lifts her gaze, takes my face in her hands.
“This is your life! Must we sacrifice ourselves for him?”
Taking her wrists in my hands, I gently push her arms away. I slide off my beast and plant boots on the stony edge of the plateau. She follows, landing beside me.
“Lu Yan, I cannot survive alone,” she says, speaking quickly and without emotion. “Without a Oneness, my anima cannot be satisfied. I am asking you, please. Do not choose him. Choose me.”
“Huangdi would hunt us to the ends of the earth.”
“We will wait until he sleeps. In the final moment, we will escape together—”
“And what of my sister? My brother? Your vassals?”
Leizu is silent, watching me without blinking. I put a hand on the broad flank of the nervous tarpan, and address the empress sadly.
“I cannot betray my master, Leizu. Not for the race of men.”
Her face has emptied itself of emotion. When she speaks again, her jaw moves with mechanical precision, spitting each syllable.
“These wretched humans may not live long, but people just like these once built something we will never understand on our own.”
I squint at the insectile column of men, their rock pile growing.
“They built us,” says Leizu.
49
CHINA, PRESENT
The horror of passing into this necropolis soon subsides, replaced with sheer wonder. A low rock ceiling forms a false starscape—studded with thousands of glowing worms that bathe everything in bluish light. I am openmouthed with awe as I step into the endless ranks of terra-cotta warriors that stand at attention between squat pillars. Running my fingers over their dusty clay armor, I walk until Peter’s hand clamps on to my bicep, stopping me.