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.
“Careful,” he says, nodding at the ground.
The roughhewn stone floor is coated in dust and veined with streams of mercury. Peter nudges a small rock into the calm silver surface and it slips under silently, disappearing without a ripple.
I pull my arm away, stepping more carefully now.
This dead city is trapped in suspended animation—hibernating out of time as the progress of civilization has gone on frenetically overhead. It is a world that has grown at the speed of a stalagmite, insulated from earthquakes and floods and fire, while empires outside have risen and fallen over the ages.
And every one of these dark warriors is oriented in a single direction. Thousands of sightless eyes are trained on a single point in the distance. Moving slowly in the crisp white beam of my headlamp, I let the unspoken posture of an eternal army guide me.
I stop when I see the black chaos of dragons rising, carved from the bare rock. Placed at the head of the room, the royal throne is an unfathomably complex sculpture that rises two stories high, the ceiling carved into a cupola to accommodate.
A ring of tall stone pillars surrounds the frightening structure, supporting the raised portion of ceiling over the throne. And sitting at the top, I can make out the small figure of a man.
“My old master,” says Peter, voice echoing.
A distant boom rolls through the cavern, like a giant knocking to be let in. Leizu must be using explosives to breach the collapsed excavation tunnel. Peter and I share a look.
It’s time to work.
Approaching the black throne, I see the emperor’s eyes are closed to the vast necropolis. He has been waiting here for thousands of years. His elaborate silk robes have turned brittle, collapsed mostly to dust. But the angles of his body are untouched, preserved in the cool, dry cave, under the soft glow of bioluminescent stars. At his elbow, a rusty iron bar rests on the arm of the throne—a ruyi, the scepter’s head forged into the shape of a blooming flower.
I climb the dais until I’m at the emperor’s feet.
I lay Batuo’s leather tool roll on the automaton’s lap and flip it open. A motley array of instruments, both futuristic and prehistoric, gleam under my headlamp. As I snap on a pair of blue latex gloves, I think again of the girl of Saint Petersburg. It seems so long ago now. That little doll had a message locked inside her, waiting to be released.
This old man isn’t so different.
I peel the stiff robes away from its chest, the fabric disintegrating under my touch. Beneath, intricate ridges and bumps are painted onto a half-open chest plate made from thick ceramic layered with metal filaments. I could almost mistake him for another terra-cotta sculpture but for the ingenious hairline gaps around his face, chest, and joints that once allowed his limbs to articulate, each sheath of pottery sliding over the other.
Pulling out a canister, I clean him with short hisses of compressed air. Puffs of rock dust mushroom away from the emperor’s body. Below the layers of grit, a golden sheen begins to appear.
“Do you remember him?” I ask.
Peter stands in the empty semicircle of space at the foot of the throne, running a finger along the face of a terra-cotta statue. “Some things,” he says. A slight waver under his voice betrays how deeply he is affected. “Please be careful.”
“Does this mean you’re not really Russian?” I ask, half joking. “Are you Chinese?”
Peter smiles up at me in the dim light, his cheek torn.
“Perhaps both. Or neither,” he says. “Avtomat belong to the first race of man, whoever they were. Nobody is alive to tell us.”
Under the eye of my headlamp, I notice a strange rock. Next to the emperor’s hip, the pale stone has been wedged into an intricately carved niche. A stippled spine of dots run like a rash over its surface. Cautiously, I dislodge it.
For some reason, I think of my dedushka.
Another boom echoes through the cavern.
“Hurry,” says Peter.
Quickly, I jam the odd stone into my pack.
Turning back to the automaton, I press my rubber-gloved fingers against the ceramic chest piece. Dragging right to left, I slide it the rest of the way open to reveal an empty cavity. The interior is simple and clean. There are no fake lungs, no digesting apparatus, no circulatory system—none of the artifice that makes Peter and the other avtomat seem like walking, talking human beings. There is only a simple pedestal, like a cradle, connected to clockwork struts.
“He didn’t even pretend to breathe…” I muse out loud. “Anybody would have known he isn’t human.”
“They thought he was a god,” says Peter, and he sounds almost bitter. “And they may have been right.”
Illuminating the vessel with my headlamp, I make out an indentation in the cradle—the familiar shape of a crescent moon. After two hundred generations, my relic has finally found its way home.
Sliding the relic over my head, I hold it in both hands and snap off the chain. The same old labyrinth of etchings coats its surface, glinting in the harsh beam of my headlamp. I trace the contours of a teardrop with a dot inside. The ancient elemental symbol of yang.
When I first held this artifact as a girl, my grandfather watched me realize what he already knew—a riddle was locked in the fractal folds of metal, a mystery that he felt, too, the moment he plucked it from a snowy battlefield. The old man carried this relic for forty years. He kept its secret as loyally as Peter ever did.
I share a look with Peter, take a deep breath, and reach into my tool roll. With a fossil brush, I sweep dust off the cradle, trying to expose any connectors that might be inside. I finish the cleaning job off with a few more blasts of compressed air.
This automaton is both more ancient and advanced than anything I’ve ever laid my hands on. Unique, but with similarities to the mechanisms I have seen in Talus, Batuo, and Peter. Holding the relic in both hands, I press it to my lips.
Then I push my hands into the automaton’s chest.
Eyes closed, I use my sense of touch to determine the perfect configuration. As the relic finally clicks into place, a buzzing kiss of electricity washes over my fingertips.
Stepping back, I snap off my headlamp.
The relic is locked into place, occupying the heart of the old automaton. In the darkness, I watch the still figure.
Some part of my mind is waiting, poised on the starting line and anticipating the fire of a starter pistol. But it doesn’t come. The roar of a distant, invisible underground river echoes through the miles of blackness around us. Dust motes drop silently over the sepia skin of a frozen army.
This world is empty and still.
“Nothing is happening,” says Peter.
“He’s been sitting here for millennia, Peter,” I say. “Give him a minute.”
I flinch as an explosion from the back of the room rolls over us. Rocks are rattling down from the ceiling, some splashing into the rivers of mercury. Streaks of blue light—dislodged glowworms—are dribbling down over the army like falling stars.
“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 fill
ing 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.
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