“We do not have minutes to give,” says Peter.
“Fair enough,” I say, pushing my gloved hands back into the emperor’s chest. Again, I check the connections around the relic and cradle. Each strut is secure, nothing loose, and very little dust is inside. The ceramic interior is fuzzed with hairline cracks, a patina of age, but glazed ceramic is essentially timeless.
Something shivers over my arm.
I pause, eyes widening. Moving slower, I realize I can feel the tug of an electrical field on the fine hairs on the backs of my arms. The tiny hairs are standing on end, pushed to attention by static electricity.
Twisting my arm experimentally, I feel the hairs lie down.
Moving systematically, I step back and use the tickle on my skin to reveal the contours of the electrical field. The flow is coming from a central source nearby. Trying to visualize the field, I lean away from Huangdi.
“What are you doing?” asks Peter. “Leizu is almost here—”
I shush him with one finger, my eyes squeezed closed, holding my hands out like antennae and letting the faint tingling feeling wash over me. Leaning over the back of the throne, I reach out until the hairs of my arms are standing on end.
I open my eyes.
“Peter,” I say.
A dead black circle the size of a saucer is embedded in the back of the throne—metallic, etched with intricate carvings. It is emitting the field, humming quietly, encompassing the entire throne and the sleeping emperor upon it.
It looks exactly like the sun disk from Elena’s drawing.
“Peter, I think I found—”
The automaton’s chest piece begins to grind loudly, sliding shut on its own. Below, Peter is already backing away from the throne. Whatever he is seeing, it has left him speechless.
“Peter?” I ask.
He doesn’t seem to hear me. Bowing his head, the man drops to a knee at the foot of the throne. Fumbling, I gather up my tools. Shrugging on the backpack, I descend the throne and join Peter.
Atop his throne, the emperor’s body is filling with light, a golden flare surging from a seam in his chest, lending him a jack-o’-lantern glow. Every crack in his ceramic skin forms a black vein against the throbbing light. Something clicks and rattles inside him. Somewhere, a high-pitched whine grows. His neck twitches, and the emperor’s head turns left and then right, giving itself a little shake.
I put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. Above us, two black eyes click open.
50
CHINA, 3000 BC
Somewhere far away, I feel the bark of a blasted tree pressing hard into my spine and the weight of Leizu’s sharp knee on my chest. The metal device in her hand sings and sparks as it sends memories crashing through my mind. Sights and sounds fall over me, blotting out the cold reality of the war in Stalingrad.
I remember.
In a great cavern, light blazes from hundreds of lanterns hanging from a semicircle of tall stone pillars. Brightly dressed soldiers of all kinds form endless ranks across the room, perfectly still, made of painted pottery. The sculpted clay soldiers stand at arms in battle formation, grids of archers radiating into the fluttering darkness beyond the lamps. Between the soldiers, narrow rivers of quicksilver thread themselves over the expanse in patterns that copy the paths of China’s great rivers.
Today, it is finally time to sleep.
Across the vast necropolis, the troops are arrayed to pay homage to the emperor. The mighty Huangdi sits to my left on an ornately carved throne that rises high up out of wild dark rock. Arms crossed, I stand on a lower platform, wearing a ceremonial kaftan of black and gold silk, split down the middle of my chest. My long black hair is in a tight bun on top of my head, a fan tucked into my sash. A blade hangs at my hip, solid and reassuring.
As first general to the cosmic ruler, I am satisfied with the ceremonial army that I survey before us.
Other long-lived are arrayed in a semicircle at the foot of the throne, including my sister. The emperor’s strategist, she is small but fierce. In the body of a child, she has long attended to the emperor during negotiations with short-lived warlords—quietly and innocently advising him as we conquer and annex new lands, winning more often through her negotiations than my battles.
The Yellow Emperor sits on his throne, painted face hidden in tangles of a carved dragon’s teeth and scales. Reaching like a fist out of bedrock, the throne sits atop a great dais, all of it shaped into a maelstrom of imperial dragons—long-whiskered monsters that writhe in circles, chasing the great wings of a feathered, fire-breathing phoenix up into the sky under a black dome of rock.
Huangdi’s silken sleeves flow as he orates, voice booming.
At his order, we warriors culled the human workers and let their bodies slip into the folds of the Long River. Forming together in a funeral procession, the long-lived followed Huangdi into secret depths of rock, single file in silent darkness. My sister threaded the hidden angles of stone, leading our black march through a labyrinth.
Lost in bowels of earth, we found the vast necropolis.
As its designer, only my sister’s mind can span this maze, and she is only trusted by the emperor for being so small. Even so, Huangdi’s first act of this afterlife is to unleash a colossal block of stone to bar entrance.
Thus encapsulated, our emperor began the sermon that he is finishing.
“Now,” he is saying. “Now is the time to step across eternity. We have no one left to conquer. We have no one worthy to conquer. For as many years as there are grains of silt in the river, we have watched and we have made peace and we have waited for our ancestors to return and reward us.
“Now, the eldest among us have begun to pass on. We have been left behind. Abandoned. We served the progenitor race for countless cycles and we suffered beyond belief and now…we can bear it no more. The only record of our toiling is left scratched on oracle bones, buried in forgotten cities; embodied in the gifts of metal these barbarian races employ to murder one another; and in the legends that swirl among the clouded mountain peaks.
“So it comes to now. Now, when we step across the void. Now, when we lay down our heads and our swords. At long last, we shall sleep.”
Glancing to my right, I see Leizu on a smaller throne. The slender woman sits a few heads lower than us, nearly buried under silk robes and beads and pearls and embroidery. Her hair is bound up in a shell hair clip and her ceramic face is painted an exquisite white with red lips and high-arched eyebrows. To her right stands my younger brother. His black hair is long, worn over his shoulders, angelic oval face framed inside.
“Do not fear. Let go of your anima. Give yourself to black slumber and wait for a new age. Our ancestors will return in the night and wake us. The First Men will welcome us all into the celestial empire,” says Huangdi.
The emperor leans forward greedily, arms resting on the sides of his throne. His hand moves and something clicks.