The Stone of Wu Xing - Chapter 2

 

General Hu was tired. He had finally reached the Chengzi mountains that glowed in the distinctive orange colour, that gave them their name, as the sun set beyond them. He had been on the run for months now, crossing the empire with one goal in mind. Answers.

A tall, sturdily built man with his hair tied in a top knot he had a commanding presence and gave the impression that nothing could throw him off balance. His men had trusted him to make the right decisions, had trusted him with their lives and he had never risked them needlessly.

His wife and children had adored him as much as he adored them and there had only been two places in the world he had felt at home, with his family and with his men.

He had been well respected and unusually influential at court, especially considering his opinions had not always been popular and he had often been too outspoken for his own good.

His life had been perfect until the Emperor’s death, until he had caught the Empress’s eye.

With that fateful turn of events his life had changed and months later he still grieved for what he had lost and cursed the woman who had taken it from him.

General Hu had been a good friend of Emperor Qiang’s since their childhood, one of the very few people at court he could trust.

They had known each other since their youth, from the time before Qiang had been groomed to become Emperor.

Before his older brother, set to take the throne eventually, had died, Qiang’s life had been a lot freer from protocol and traditions to be adhered to.

But the death of the crown prince following a hunting accident had meant that young Qiang had had to learn what was expected from a future Emperor and his days could no longer be spent roaming the palace with Hu.

Despite that their friendship had endured and after Qiang’s ascension to the throne and Hu’s rise to general in Tianxia’s army they had been able to spend more time together again.

As a sign of that lasting friendship the Emperor had gifted General Hu the Jian he was now wearing, the Sword of Chang Shou or Sword of Longevity.

It was almost ironic that this symbol of endurance had been given to him only days before his friend had suddenly died.

 

Nobody knew exactly how the Emperor had passed but General Hu was certain that it had been her. The same woman who took his family from him because she was jealous; the Empress.

Before the Emperor had died there had been rumours at court that he had finally taken a concubine and possibly even fallen in love with her.

It was, of course, common practice for Emperors to have concubines but that had changed when Emperor Qiang had taken lady Guang as his wife.

He had been smitten with her and for years nobody could hold a candle to her, so when she forbid him to have concubines he had done as she had wished and forsaken all others.

They had seemed happy; happier than most royal marriages were said to be, until it became clear that Empress Guang could not have children.

General Hu knew that his friend had pleaded with her to allow him a concubine just so he could preserve his line but she would have none of it.

Over the months preceding the Emperor’s death his wife had been prone to jealous rages whenever her husband so much as looked at another woman.

Nobody, not even his closest friend from the days of his youth, knew for sure if she had had reason for this jealousy and it was unlikely that it would have mattered either way.

General Hu and others in the palace had the suspicion that her uncontrollable envy and bitterness had led her to eventually poison her husband.

How else could one explain, that one day the Emperor had, by all accounts, been healthy and the next he had died unexpectedly and mysteriously.

Within days of his death the Empress had sent assassins after anyone who could be considered a rival for the throne and only a few weeks later she had ascended to the throne herself.

And the Empress ruled with an iron fist. Fear and death were her weapons.

Where her late husband had been a benevolent ruler she was merciless and cruel.

Taxes had been raised for the poor but not for the rich, in an effort to appease them and earn her their loyalty.

Troops had been sent out to all the provinces to smother any spark of rebellion and the soldiers had been given free reign.

Often this lead to unprovoked killings of innocent people and General Hu was disgusted by the uncharacteristic degeneration of the soldier’s morals.

He adhered to the old ways and believed that the army was there to protect the empire and the common folk, as well as the nobility, so he had often argued against allowing this behaviour to continue but since the Empress obviously approved of the soldier’s actions and his unit commander was trying to ingratiate himself with her,  his efforts had been futile.

He guessed that it was during those arguments that her interest in him had been awakened. She had certainly never spared him a second glance before.

But then the Empress had suddenly invited him to dine with her in private. She had flirted shamelessly and had openly made advances.

There was no doubt that she was an attractive woman, beautiful in a cold kind of way but even without the suspicions he harboured over the Emperor’s death he would have rejected her.

He would never dishonour Emperor Qiang’s memory like that and was, after all, a married man who loved his wife dearly. No other could take her place.

And so he had rebuked the Empress’s advances in no uncertain terms but still, she had made it clear that she would have him eventually.

 

Then, one night he had walked through the palace.

He had been on his way home from a meeting with his officers and, passing the doors to some unused storerooms, had seen a light. General Hu had immediately become curious and having always had an inquisitive mind, he had had to find out what was going on. He had walked by these rooms many times and nobody had ever used them.

Carefully he had extinguished the dim light of his lantern and drawn closer to the door that stood ajar.

Standing behind the door, it had been difficult to see clearly through the slim gap in the doorway and his eyes had needed time to adjust to the difference in lighting but, standing quietly and breathing shallowly, he had eventually been able to make out a shape.

The person in the storeroom had seemed to be a woman. He had not been able to see a face, with the only light source positioned behind her, but he had been able to make out a complicated headdress and intricate hair sticks.

The woman had been moving about, handling large jars with practiced movements.

She had opened one of the jars and bent down, behind the storage boxes she had placed the jars on and when she had straightened, she had been holding tongs into the light.

In them she had, to his utter surprise and horror, held several vipers.

He had barely been able to suppress a gasp and still remembered the way his heart had seemed to want to jump out of his chest.

The woman had carefully placed the vipers in one of the jars and sealed it, seeming surprisingly calm, considering the deadly reptiles she had just handled. His own hands would’ve surely shaken.

General Hu had been puzzled by what she was doing and became even more so when she had opened the other jar and taken out a single scorpion.

It had been at that moment that she had turned slightly towards the light, inspecting the arachnid, and it was then, that he had finally been able to see her face.

He had gasped in shock, unable to control his reaction this time and had been momentarily frozen in place.

His mind had gone blank for a moment but then his instincts had taken over and, just as Empress Guang had turned towards the door, he had walked away hurriedly and as quietly as he could manage, hoping that she would not be able to identify him.

The rustling of his robes, as he walked had been deafening to his own ears, and his heart had been racing as had rushed to leave the palace, trying to remain unseen.

He had turned corner after corner in the dark corridors, not daring to light his lantern again, for fear of being discovered.

He had not been sure why he was so scared. He had feared for his life before, faced death on the battlefield, but none of this compared to the feeling of dread that had constricted his chest that night.

He knew , without a doubt, that whatever the Empress had been doing with those venomous animals, it was evil.

He had almost been able to feel a dark aura around her.

Eventually General Hu had reached a part of the place that was still busy at that time of night.

The hallways had been lit, guards had been patrolling and servants were still going about their business.

Hurrying along whenever he could be sure that he wouldn’t be seen, he had constantly been wondering if he was being followed. Several times he had felt like there was something or someone behind him but whenever he had turned around, he just seen empty corridors.

In an effort to stay clear of people who might question in presence in this part of the palace, he had had to hide in doorways or behind curtains on a few occasions, but eventually he had reached the palace gates.

Here he had not been able circumvent facing the guards but they would not find anything unusual in him leaving the palace this late.

He often had late meetings or was summoned at night.  And so the guards had not questioned General Hu’s presence and opened the gate for him without delay.

Only then, finally delivered from the palace walls, had he been able to breathe a little more freely again, but the tension had stayed with him even as he had entered his marital home and finally laid his head to rest on the ceramic pillow next to his sleeping wife.

 

Memories of that night haunted General Hu. It was not the reason why he had eventually fled from the palace, but it was the reason why he had started the long journey south to find answers.

What he had seen that night in the store room had scared him, but what had happened over the next few days had almost broken him.

The day after he had fled the palace he had been set to spend the day with his family. They were going to build kites and let them fly in the hills outside of the capitol.

But their plans had been thwarted by a mysterious illness that suddenly befell his wife and children.

His son and daughter had developed a high fever that morning and couldn’t keep any food down.

His wife had taken ill by midday of that day and and by the time he had summoned the healer in absolute desperation they were vomiting blood.

The man had been unable to explain the severity of their symptoms and when his family looked completely emaciated by the next day, General Hu had known that something sinister was at play.

Neither acupuncture, nor medicinal herbs had made any difference and the healer had feared that their Qi, their life force, was being drawn from their bodies by something dark.

The man had tried to stop the process but after only two days his son, the youngest, had succumbed to the mysterious illness.

A day later his wife and daughter had followed- General Hu powerless to stop his loved ones from dying.

He had been shocked, in utter disbelief at first, unable to comprehend or accept what was happening.

One day he had had a beautiful wife and children, had been planning to build colourful kites, had envisioned his daughter getting married to a good man one day and his son, who had been a talented poet, becoming a well a respected scholar and then, the next day, their lifeless bodies had laid in his arms.

When the realisation that his beloved family was dead had finally set in, he, a man who rarely showed emotions and was always in control of himself, had wept and pleaded with the universe to bring them back to life.

His servants, who had heard his heart-wrenching wails, had come and tried to calm him but anything they did had just made him angry, and he had lashed out at them.

They had never had reason to fear him but that day, knew they did and so, while he sank into a depression over the next few days, they had taken care of the funeral arrangements.

They had tried to get him to eat and bathe, but none of these everyday things had made sense to him anymore. He had cried and slept, then woken from nightmares about a scorpion killing his family with its stings, only to realise that the nightmare was, at least in part, real.

On the day before the funeral procession the general had been physically and emotionally exhausted but had finally allowed his servants to bathe him.

He had realised that this was his last chance to honour his wife and children and so he had dressed in white, as custom demanded, and had helped bathe their bodies.

The ritual had, at least for a while, given him some kind of peace.

But he had also finally been able to think a little more clearly again and with that ability came suspicion.

Had it been coincidence that his family had died so quickly and that the mysterious illness had struck the day after he had seen the Empress in the store room?

Had his dream about the scorpion been more than just a dream, perhaps a sign from the dead that what he had seen was connected to the illness?

He had tried to tell himself that it was nothing but superstition, that his exhaustion and grief were playing a part in making him see connections that weren’t there but doubt kept nagging at him.

And he knew, from experience, that there were powers in this universe that went beyond what one could see or rationally explain.

A secret he had not even told his wife about was proof of that.

 

The day of the funeral procession had come. The offerings had been burned and as the bodies of those that had been most precious to General Hu had been transported to the burial site, accompanied by prayers and soft music, he had been deep in thought.

He had followed the funeral procession in a daze, barely able to comprehend what was happening around him but at the same time his suspicions had slowly become an obsession.

He had kept going over the events of the past few days again and again, trying to figure out if he could have done anything to prevent the deaths.

Perhaps he had been to blame, had caused this?

But no matter how many times he had gone over what had happened, no answers had come to him.

Then they had arrived at his family’s final resting place and, as he had turned around to look out over the crowd that had followed the procession, he suddenly spotted a woman, dressed in a black silk dress, wearing a veil.

His eyes had inexplicably been drawn to her and then she had lifted her veil.

It had been Empress Guang.

She had looked directly at him, her eyes had locked with his and then this cold but beautiful face had broken into a triumphant smile.

It was in that very moment that General Hu had understood: the significance of his dream about the scorpion, why his wife and children had suddenly gotten sick and died.

This woman, whose eyes regarded him like a predator regarded its prey, had done this to him, had meant to break him.

Whether or not she had seen him that night did not matter, he knew this sad outcome had been inevitable from the moment she had taken notice of him.

Fear and anger, in equal measure, had gripped his heart then and he had wanted to give into his anger more than his fear.

He had wanted to walk right up to her and strangle her with his bare hands, make her pay for what she had done, but reason had taken over at the last moment.

He had realised that he would not even get close enough to touch her and would instead get executed for trying to harm the Empress.

It had taken all the strength he could muster to keep himself from doing something rash but he had had a funeral service to get through and neither his wife, nor his son or daughter would be helped by getting himself killed.

 

That evening, although the funeral rites set to last for another six days, General Hu had left the house that was not a home anymore and had gone on a journey to find the answers he needed to avenge the deaths of his loved ones