The Year of Rice and Salt

A priest wearing a cape made of cobalt blue bird feathers came in, and performed a ceremony for the Emperor, and after that they feasted through the day, on a meat like lamb, and vegetables and mashes that Kheim did not recognize. The weak beer was all they drank, except for a truly fiery brandy. Eventually Kheim began to feel drunk, and he could see his men were worse. Butterfly did not like any of the flavours, and ate and drank very little. Out on the courtyard, men danced to drums and reed pipes, sounding very like Korean musicians, which gave Kheim a start; he wondered if these people's ancestors had drifted over from Korea ages ago, carried on the Kuroshio. Perhaps just a few lost ships had populated this whole land, many dynasties before; indeed the music sounded like an echo from a past age. But who could say? He would talk to I Chen about it when he got back to the ship.

At sundown Kheim indicated their desire to return to their ships. The Emperor only looked at him, and gestured to his caped priest, and then rose. Everyone stood and bowed again. He left the room.

When he had gone, Kheim stood and took Butterfly by the hand, and tried to lead ber out the way they had come (although he was not sure he could remember it); but the guards blocked them, their goldtipped spears held crossways, in a position as ceremonial as their dances had been.

Kheim mimed displeasure, very easy to do, and indicated that Butterfly would be sad and angry if she were kept from their ships. But the guards did not move.

So. There they were. Kheim cursed himself for leaving the beach with such strange people. He felt the pistol under his coat. One shot only. He would have to hope that I Chen could rescue them. It was a good thing he had insisted the doctor stay behind, as he felt I Chen would do the best job of organizing such an operation.

The captives spent the night huddled together on their blanket, surrounded by standing guards who did not sleep, but spent their time chewing small leaves they took from shoulder bags tucked under their chequered tunics. They watched bright eyed. Kheim huddled around Butterfly, and she snuggled like a cat against him. It was cold. Kheim got the others to crowd around, all of them together, protecting her by a single touch or at least the proximity of their warmth.

At dawn the Emperor returned, dressed like a giant peacock or phoenix, accompanied by women wearing gold breast cones, shaped uncannily like real breasts, with ruby nipples. The sight of these women gave Kheim an absurd hope that they would be all right. Then behind them entered the caped high priest, and a chequered masked figure, whose headdress dangled everywhere with tiny gold skulls. Some form of their death god, there was no mistaking it. He was there to execute them, Kheim thought, and the realization jolted him into a heightened state of awareness, in which all the gold sheeted white in the sun, and the space they walked through had an extra dimension of depth and solidity, the chequered people as solid and vivid as festival demons.

They were led out into the misty horizontal light of dawn, cast and uphill. Uphill all that day, and the next day too, until Kheim gasped as he climbed, and looked back amazed from the occasional ridge, down and down to the sea, which was a blue textured surface, extremely flat and very far below. He had never imagined he could get so far above the ocean, it was like flying. And yet there were higher hills still ahead to the cast, and on certain crests of the range, massive white volcanoes, like super Fujis.

They walked up towards these. They were fed well, and given a tea as bitter as alum; and then, in a musical ritual ceremony, given little bags of the tea leaves, the same ragged edged green leaves their guards had been chewing on the first night. The leaves also were bitter to the taste, but they soon numbed the mouth and throat, and after that Kheim felt better. The leaves were a stimulant, like tea or coffee. He told Butterfly and his men to chew theirs down as well. The thin strength that poured through his nerves gave him the qi energy to think about the problem of escape.

It did not seem likely that I Chen would be able to get through the mud and gold city to follow them, but Kheim could not stop hoping for it, a kind of furious hope, felt every time he looked at Butterfly's face, unblemished yet by doubt or fear; as far as she was concerned this was just the next stage of a journey that was already as strange as it could get. This part was interesting to her, in fact, with its bird-throat colours, its gold and its mountains. She didn't seem affected by the height to which they had climbed.