Dragon Bones (Red Princess 3)

Following the map on the bottom of the flyer Wu had given them, David and Hulan crossed the Bashan Stream bridge and headed out of town toward Site 518. This was the same direction that Lily had walked last night, Hulan told David. They continued for another quarter of a mile before stepping off the road and onto a slippery path which led down to a rocky platform that rested about fifty feet above the Yangzi. They weren’t familiar with the vicissitudes of the river and didn’t know how much higher than usual it was running, but even so they could hear and see its fury. The water swirled and foamed, waves crested and splashed, and pebbles and broken tree branches rolled and collided along this rocky shoulder.

They followed the path east until they came to a secluded inlet. Like the cove where Brian had gone into the river, this one had a little beach and a cave. But surely this was a false beach, since the true water level was several feet lower. Even above the roar of the river they could hear the sound of chanting emanating from the cave.

They entered the dark maw. Lanterns lit the way deeper into the earth. With every step the sounds grew louder. They saw no one—no guards, no malingerers, no mothers taking their children back outside for making noise. The deeper they went, the cooler it got. Light from the oil lamps danced on the walls. A dank, musty odor filled their nostrils.

Suddenly the tunnel opened into a large cavern, where immense stalactites hung down from the ceiling. Close to a hundred people stood together, swaying and chanting, “Subdue the wild tribes in our hearts. Practice the abstinence of alcohol, tobacco, and fornication.” The words were in Chinese, and the tones in which they were chanted sounded beautiful and mesmerizing.

Perched above the people on a rocky ledge before an alcove stood a man in common peasant clothes. It was Tang Wenting, the All-Patriotic Society lieutenant

who had been in Tiananmen Square three days ago.

“Do you see who that is?” Hulan whispered excitedly. “Do you believe me now that there’s a connection?”

Tang Wenting led the chanting, which changed to “Give up material possessions. Cherish the sanctity of life. Advocate peace and peaceful means.”

“I won’t let him get away tonight,” Hulan said. Her eyes scoured the cave, looking for possible escape routes.

Tang Wenting held his hands up for silence. “We meet in the dark,” he said, “but we live in the light of Xiao Da’s blessings. Where Xiao Da sends me, I go. I am his sword.”

Then he moved aside, leaving the alcove completely unobstructed. A strange, melodious voice emanated from the shadows. “You all remember me. I am Xiao Da.”

“Can it really be him?” Hulan exclaimed over the crowd’s murmurs of “Xiao Da, Xiao Da, Xiao Da.”

“To the outside world, Xiao Da remains faceless,” Tang Wenting said. “In this way he can represent all the faceless people of China.”

Hulan whispered in English to David so that those around them wouldn’t understand. “Is that a recording, or is someone actually in that alcove?”

“I am a part of you and a part of China,” the voice proclaimed. “I see a world where the faceless will become the true voice of China.”

The voice didn’t sound electronic or distorted by any means other than the natural acoustics of the cave, but it didn’t sound of this world either.

“If that’s truly Xiao Da,” Hulan whispered again, “I’m going to arrest him.”

But as David looked around, an arrest seemed impossible. He saw no way to get up to the ledge other than scaling the cliff below it. This had to mean that the man wasn’t in an alcove but in another cave with its own separate exit. Xiao Da and Tang Wenting might not have anticipated that Liu Hulan would show up, but they had planned an escape route nevertheless. Putting that fact aside, the cave was also filled with All-Patriotic Society followers. They weren’t going to allow Hulan up to that higher cave even if she could master the cliff. Finally, and not insignificantly from David’s perspective, Hulan had not brought her weapon. It was tucked in a bag on the top shelf of the closet back at the Panda Guesthouse. There weren’t going to be any arrests tonight no matter how much Hulan wanted to make them. She must have realized this too, because her urgency had been replaced by a calculating stillness.

“One day—and I tell you it’s coming soon—China will be the dominant power in the world,” Tang Wenting announced. “Xiao Da is leading us to that time. He sees in us the future of our country. We are patriots.”

As soon as he left off, the voice from the alcove took up a more soothing refrain. “We don’t practice rituals that take advantage of the gullible. Our only ritual is to honor the spirit within. We are pure of heart. We are reverent.”

Then it was back to Tang Wenting. “Wherever Xiao Da leads us, we will be at his side. We will show the world our faces. We will show the world China’s strength.”

David understood the sentiment to a degree. Patriotism was a natural outgrowth of China’s newfound prosperity and its emergence after decades of isolation. Nothing was more “patriotic” in China these days than the dam, and nothing was more universally appealing to the downtrodden than the idea of a savior. So it came as little surprise that the men above began to combine these twin concepts, although their take was unique to say the least.

“They’ve told us to leave our ancestral homes to make way for the dam and its lake,” Tang Wenting declared. “They’ve told us to move up our mountainsides, but how can we do this when Premier Zhu puts a ban on any form of habitation on land steeper than twenty-five degrees?”

“What he says is true,” someone called out. “All the good land is already occupied.”

“And what about the fishermen who trawl the river for their livelihoods?” Tang Wenting asked. “What will they do in a city so removed from the life force of the river?”

“The river brings us life,” Xiao Da sang.

“The river brings us life,” his followers droned in reply.

“Nothing can change the great river.”

“Nothing can change the great river,” the followers repeated.

“They’ve told us to move to a New Immigrant City or one of the other big cities,” Tang Wenting continued, “but has anyone here received an urban residency permit?”