The Conspiracy in Luoyang (1)
I never meant to walk the path of a shaman.
I had only put on a possessed act so I wouldn't get thrashed for stealing Father's clothes and sneaking out. But living this hard at four years old must have looked unnatural even to Father — to Yufuluo.
"I always thought you'd make an outstanding heir. I never imagined it would go this far."
He kept muttering like that as he sat me on his horse and rode for my great-grandfather's encampment.
"Chanyu. He said Chanyu..."
The prophecy I had spoken was clearly eating at him.
Chanyu. The overlord of every Xiongnu. Their station had fallen; they were vassals of the Han emperor now. But there had been a time when the Chanyu split the world as an equal of the emperor himself. It was a great name.
Born into the Luandi clan, the Xiongnu royal house, a man could rise no higher than Chanyu. Was that why even Yufuluo's heart had begun to tremble?
"A child of barely four, delivering a prophecy that clear...? And dressing himself in swan feathers to do it? However you look at it, he must have truly heard Tengri's voice..."
Father muttered without cease as he led me on, and so I arrived at my great-grandfather's encampment — the Chanyu Court.
The Chanyu did not keep a shaman in his personal retinue, but one traveled with the Court. They said he was the oldest and most gifted practitioner in all Southern Xiongnu society. Yufuluo took me to a tent in a quiet corner of the grounds.
An old woman was sorting feathers and bones in front of it.
Was this old woman the shaman?
"What is it, Right Guli King?"
In Southern Xiongnu society, only three people could take that tone with Yufuluo. Great-grandfather, Granduncle, and Grandfather. Those three.
"This is my son. They say he hears the voice of Tengri..."
"Leave him and go."
The shaman cut Yufuluo off with a careless flick of her hand.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Didn't you hear me? Leave him and go."
"Ah. Yes."
Father released my hand without protest and gave me a little push between the shoulders.
"Tell her honestly what you saw, what you heard, and what you felt."
When religion holds this much weight, you really feel you are living in antiquity. Yufuluo strode off, apparently intending to pay his respects to Great-grandfather the Chanyu, and only the old shaman and I were left before the tent.
"Come in."
I followed her inside.
A smell like medicine hung in the dim tent. Belongings lay scattered everywhere, unsorted, yet nothing ever caught the shaman's feet. She sat. A stuffed wolf's head stood beside her place.
Wolves were rivals on the steppe, hunted because they preyed on livestock — and objects of worship for that same fierce strength. There were even myths among the Xiongnu that Tengri sometimes descended to earth in the shape of a wolf.
Stroking the stuffed head, the shaman studied my face at length. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized she was staring especially hard into mine.
"Strange. I thought no child favored by Tengri would ever appear again among the descendants of Modu."
I kept silent. Telling this shaman about the monkey demon that had sent me into the world of Three Kingdoms, or the hellscapes it had shown me, did not seem like it would do me any good.
What if I ended up under some bizarre curse?
"The likes of me would never dare curse you. Child who has heard Tengri's voice."
I flinched.
She read my thoughts...?
"B-but I..."
"The lie you told your father doesn't matter. Whether some monkey is playing the fool or not, Tengri sees you as nothing more than a darling child, running about in innocent play."
I was bewildered. First the monkey demon, and now this shaman. What were these people?
No. Something flashed through my mind.
That was right. Next year, during the campaign against Tanshihuai, I had planned to follow Lü Bu and win over both him and Sun Jian by playing the gifted shaman. But if a shaman who could truly read people's hearts actually existed?
The faith of Tengri. I had called it a religion, but it was still nothing more than shamanism — a folk belief. It had none of the structure of Zoroastrianism or Buddhism, which had come in from the west, or of the Central Plains' Daoism.
Which meant that if I...
"You lunatic."
The shaman said it and grinned. Between her lips I could see the few teeth she had left.
"And why shouldn't I?"
Spite rose in me. I was desperate. I had to do whatever it took to stay out of hell, and if I was going to accomplish anything in a four-year-old's body, I would need the respectable cloak of religion. That was right. Come to think of it, some faiths raised their leader's successor from earliest childhood.
I stepped up to the old woman and stared straight into her eyes. I felt I must not blink, so I held them wide until the tears ran.
At last, the old woman looked away first. She turned her head and flicked her hand the same way she had at Father.
"Go. And wait for word."
I left her tent. Yufuluo was waiting outside. I repeated the old shaman's words exactly, then followed him back to our own encampment.
A few days later, the old woman suddenly wasted away and died in her tent. Word came that her last will left every possession she owned to me.
Zhang Xiu, former Colonel Protector of the Southern Xiongnu, paced restlessly before the gate of Regular Attendant Wang Fu's residence.
He had deliberately not taken a carriage. Even a petitioner calling at a house of power usually kept a scrap of dignity and waited seated in his carriage. Zhang Xiu did not. He needed Wang Fu to see how desperate he was. And it was important, as far as possible, that this business not draw eyes.
He meant to meet Wang Fu even if, after a long wait, he was told the master would receive no more guests today — even if it took days. He was anxious, of course. Driven from the post of Colonel Protector of the Southern Xiongnu, would Wang Fu even bother to look at him?
The masters of the carriages lined up ahead of him and behind, and even the servants who drove and tended those carriages, seemed to look down on him. But Zhang Xiu thought only of Wang Fu. He had to meet the Regular Attendant said to enjoy, among all the eunuchs, the fullest measure of the emperor's favor.
How long he waited, he could not have said. Suddenly the great gates of the mansion opened, and a servant came trotting toward him — ignoring every carriage that had arrived before Zhang Xiu, coming straight to him.
"You said you were the former Colonel Protector of the Southern Xiongnu?"
"I am. Zhang Xiu."
"You are to come in."
Zhang Xiu followed the servant with his head held high. He could feel the stares of the guests who had come earlier — surprise and envy burning into the back of his skull — but he did not look around.
"This way."
He was led deep into the vast residence, to one side of a garden that was at once secluded and elegant. In the distance he could see the master of the house. And another guest seated before him.
Zhang Xiu's brow twitched.
So being summoned out of turn was nothing to celebrate.
They had called him because of that other guest. And that meant this eunuch, Wang Fu, was not a man who merely stuffed his vanity on the flattery of callers. He memorized every guest he was to see that day, and summoned them as need required. So in this seat, Zhang Xiu would have to prove his usefulness to Wang Fu. He set his mind to it and walked on.
As he drew closer, he recognized the other guest.
Tian Yan. What is Duan Jiong's lackey doing here?
The old general Duan Jiong. A commander of great merit in the suppression of the Qiang rebellions, he had risen from Protecting Qiang Colonel to General Who Defeats the Qiang, and from there to Grand Commandant — only to be abruptly dismissed. From the colonel who protected the Qiang, to the general who smashed them, to the highest military office in the empire, and stripped of it in that very year. Duan Jiong was a man who embodied the lurching history of Luoyang politics since Emperor Ling, Liu Hong, had taken the throne.
Why had Tian Yan, that man's subordinate, come to Wang Fu?
Regular Attendant Wang Fu turned his head and looked at Zhang Xiu. Zhang Xiu hastily bowed.
"Ah. Colonel Zhang, is it. Yes... if I am to continue the discussion I was having with Lord Tian here, I find I need the opinion of a man who, until very recently, dealt with the Xiongnu and the Xianbei. That is why I invited you."
The aged eunuch's voice was at once shrill and coarse. That was unpleasant enough, but Zhang Xiu had to work to keep his face still against the peculiar smell that hung around the man.
A young eunuch, newly cut, unused to controlling his urine, often reeked of it. The smell around Wang Fu was not that. But it might have been some other perfume he had worn since childhood to hide the stink. Or perhaps the inevitable disgust Zhang Xiu felt at the mere existence of a eunuch had brewed an imaginary stench in his head.
Zhang Xiu bowed to Tian Yan as well.
"I have heard the name of Colonel Tian, but this is the first time I have had the chance to speak with you."
Wang Fu had addressed him by the rank he had already lost — Colonel. He ought to return the courtesy and use Tian Yan's former office as well. However Tian Yan had been dragged into his superior Duan Jiong's affairs, he too was dismissed now.
Perhaps Duan Jiong stands behind Tian Yan. Perhaps this meeting is Tian Yan carrying Duan Jiong's words to Wang Fu.
Thinking that, Zhang Xiu sat in the seat Wang Fu offered.
"The truth is, it is a rather shameful story."
At the eunuch's sheepish laugh, both Tian Yan and Zhang Xiu looked at him in puzzlement.
"I cannot say I bear no responsibility for Colonel Zhang losing the post of Colonel Protector of the Southern Xiongnu."
"I— I don't understand what you mean."
He had already guessed, but Zhang Xiu put on an innocent face and asked as if he did not know.
"Among the eunuchs, men like myself, there are those who took bribes from the Xiongnu. Their slander is what drove Colonel Zhang out of Bing Province."
You ate your share too, you castrated bastard.
Zhang Xiu forced the words back down his throat. After Cao Teng, chief of the eunuchs, had retired, Wang Fu's standing was not quite Cao Teng's — but it was enough to keep the eunuchs in hand. Petty eunuchs could not have run a scheme like that behind Wang Fu's back.
Still. I really was a nuisance to you, wasn't I, Chanyu — and to you, Left Wise King, his son. If you drove me out because I was in the way, I'll make a place you cannot do without me.
He ground his teeth on the inside and arranged his face into a look of how-could-such-a-thing-be.
"My lord Regular Attendant! I need your help!"
Wang Fu smiled a leisurely smile, gestured for Zhang Xiu to calm himself, and spoke.
"As it happens, Grand Commandant Duan means to offer a plan for His Majesty. These past few years His Majesty has grieved deeply to see Bing Province groan under Xianbei raids. But Grand Commandant Duan is a man of such humility, and a dismissed official cannot present a memorial..."
So Duan Jiong had sent Tian Yan to convey his intent to Wang Fu, just as he had thought. Duan Jiong was an able general, but he was not a clean one. How much of what he had raked in from the Qiang campaigns had he paid Wang Fu in bribes?
"What plan?"
Zhang Xiu asked, if only to hear it.
"A plan to campaign against the Xianbei."
That was it. Zhang Xiu's eyes lit up like a hog's at the sight of slop pouring into the trough.