Chapter 121 — Strong Liquor

A group of Miao came down from the mountain. Ming Li and Xiaobai looked up and saw seven or eight sturdy Miao warriors escorting an old man who appeared to be a little past fifty.

That earlier shout had come from this old man.

The Miao warriors around him bowed one after another, and the excited crowd fell silent at once. Everyone lowered their heads in respect for the old man.

When the group drew near, the old man stepped out from among them and came to stand before Ming Li and Xiaobai, looking them over. The two of them were studying him in the same moment.

The old man was quite tall. Age had brought white hairs to his temples and the corners of his hairline, but his spirit was vigorous in the extreme, and his eyes were bright and piercing. Now he knitted his brows and examined the two of them closely.

Then the old man said, "Jili jili hululu, guala guala luluhu?"

Ming Li was taken aback. It sounded much like what the soldier had asked a moment ago, and was probably much the same question—asking who he was and what he was doing here.

But guess as he might, he still could not understand a word. He had no choice but to say, "We have urgent business, and we wish to—" As he spoke he was about to raise his hand, then caught himself and quickly put it down. "We wish to pay our respects to the great shaman of the altar."

Even as he said this, he was vexed at heart. These Miao could not understand a word he said—what use was speaking? Yet to say nothing would be even more discourteous, and he feared it would provoke them on the spot. For a moment he was desperately anxious.

But heaven seemed to grant his wish. Hearing Ming Li speak, the old man suddenly frowned, looked the two of them up and down once more, and then said abruptly in broken Central Plains speech, "You—you are men of the Central Plains?"

Ming Li and Xiaobai were both startled, then overjoyed. At that moment the sweetest sound in the world was surely this old man's heavily accented speech. Ming Li nodded hurriedly. "Yes, yes, we come from the Central Plains. We have urgent business and wish to pay our respects to the great shaman of your people."

The old man glanced at them. They were dressed in the garb of the southern border tribes, coarse in weave, yet the two of them carried themselves with uncommon bearing, plainly no ordinary merchants—especially the woman, whose natural beauty lent a distinctive charm even to clothes that a common Miao girl would turn her nose up at.

"Who are you? What business have you with the great shaman?" the old man said slowly.

Ming Li and Xiaobai exchanged a look. Ming Li cupped his hands and said, "Honored elder, a friend of mine was gravely wounded. Nine parts of her three souls and seven spirits were scattered, leaving only a single soul. For ten years she has lain like one dead, and truly—"

Here his voice caught. Into his mind rose the image of Bi Li as she lay now in the cold-jade stone chamber on Mount Huqi, and his feelings overcame him; his voice trembled despite himself. Most of the Miao around them could not understand his words, but from his expression and tone they gathered that he was pleading for something, and in that moment they began to feel a certain sympathy for him.

As for Xiaobai, standing at Ming Li's side, her bright eyes rested on him. At this moment she too let fall the faint, knowing smile that so often lingered at the corners of her mouth, as though she had seen through all the ways of the world, and her face grew solemn.

Ming Li steadied himself and composed his thoughts. "I was once told by a learned master that for an injury such as this, one must find a person versed in the rare art of soul-summoning, who can use the remnant soul as a anchor to work the spell and call back the scattered souls, and only then can she be healed. For ten years I have searched bitterly, yet vast as the world is, I could not find such a one. Fortunately, in recent days—" He glanced at Xiaobai and went on, "Fortunately, in recent days I heard that the great shaman of your people possesses this wondrous art of recalling souls. So I have come especially to beg your aid. If the great shaman would lend his hand, I would be grateful beyond all words!"

The old man listened, his brows knit tight, his face a welter of complicated feeling. But Ming Li's manner was so earnest that he plainly was not lying. After a moment's pondering the old man said, "It is rare indeed that men of the Central Plains should show such loyalty and feeling. But this is not a matter I can decide. Wait here a while, and I will go up to the altar and consult the great shaman, to see what he wishes. If he will not see you, there is nothing I can do."

Ming Li was overjoyed and nodded again and again. "Thank you, honored elder."

The old man nodded. After a moment's hesitation he turned and spoke a few words in the Miao tongue to the warriors beside him, and they all nodded. Then the old man went up the mountain path alone, while the remaining Miao warriors slowly closed in, their eyes fixed on Ming Li and Xiaobai—whether to watch them or, by order, to protect them, one could not tell.

As for the other Miao onlookers, they had only seen the old man exchange a stream of gibberish with these two outsiders (to their ears the Central Plains speech was equally a twittering of birds) and then order several warriors to keep watch over the strangers before turning back up the mountain to the altar. At once they fell to murmuring and whispering among themselves.

Under the gaze of so many eyes, Ming Li was heavy with his own thoughts, his mind elsewhere, and paid the other Miao no heed at all. Xiaobai, however, still wore her soft, alluring smile, gazing slowly about her, drawing countless looks—some lustful, some envious, some resentful.

Only little Hui on her shoulder looked this way and that, uninterested in the people, until at last his gaze fell on the stream nearby. He was greatly taken with the fish swimming there, watching them fixedly and grinning from time to time, his little body twitching as though he longed to leap into the water and play.

The Miao altar was built entirely of enormous blocks of stone, majestic and tall, bearing in itself a touch of the rough and the ancient. The old man climbed the mountain path to the altar. Before it lay a platform, paved flat with long rectangular slabs of stone, quite smooth and level. Beyond the platform stood the altar itself.

Two vast stone pillars rose high before the altar, and at a glance they must have stood a hundred feet tall. Not a single crack could be seen anywhere on them—they had been carved each from a single unbroken mass of rock. How the ancestors of the Miao had ever found stones so enormous, and then hauled them here and raised them before the altar, was beyond imagining.

Past these two great pillars stood the altar built of stone. The Miao altar of Qili Gorge had long been famed throughout the southern borderlands. Half of it was built of massive stone blocks; the other half was hewn directly from the mountain itself, hollowed out of the hard rock face.

The old man stepped inside, and at once the light around him dimmed. The air here seemed much colder than outside.

The old man was plainly a person of no small standing, and deeply familiar with this place held sacred in the hearts of the Miao. He showed no hesitation but walked straight into the depths of the altar. Now and then a Miao shaman appeared along the way, and the two would greet each other. Had Ming Li and Xiaobai seen this, they would surely have guessed the old man's identity.

For who but the other shamans of the altar could be greeted so by a man of a Miao shaman's rank—and the chief of the whole Miao people.

The old man walked on, through a broad passage, until he came to the innermost recess of the altar, the largest chamber within it.