The Torrent

One circuit of the stars around the Sun made a year. When the Sun was near and large, it was summer; when small and distant, winter.¹ The year had these two seasons, and was further divided into sixty rounds. A Silver courier setting out from the Jade Capital, at the center of all beneath Heaven, needed twenty rounds to reach the world’s edge. Now the black tide was rising, cold and darkness were eating inward, and the edge lay only nineteen rounds from the center. A year had passed since the army set out to quell rebellion twelve rounds away. No word had come for ten rounds.

Even if the entire army had been wiped out, some news ought to have reached them by now. Wei Jushi was deeply uneasy. The affairs of the realm rested on his shoulders, and nothing mattered more at present than this campaign. If it succeeded, the prestige of victory would let him press on with reform. If it failed, everything was over. Decades of accumulated strength would be lost in a moment, the New Faction destroyed, the state brought low.

Wei Jushi was the regent and architect of the reforms. A presumptuous fool defying Heaven, a treacherous minister ruining the state, an upstart raised by favor: unable to bring him down, the Old Faction was unstinting in its private attacks. A man who could earn such bitter hatred was no ordinary figure. The late emperor had picked him out from the Silver Guard. He had won his way to court through service, becoming a great minister among the Jade and White, deeply trusted by his sovereign and sparing nothing of himself in the royal cause. When the black tide first threatened, he had been appointed in the hour of danger and given full authority to reform the laws. He had put the government in order with an iron hand, and at the emperor’s deathbed had been named first among the ministers entrusted with the young sovereign. He had reached the highest place a courtier could attain.

The first measure was to alter the tax system and raise new revenue. Without it, there would be no means of restoring order. But the Jade and White great houses were deeply rooted, their connections tangled and extensive. They could not lightly be shaken. Besides, under the ancestral laws the upper castes harvested nothing from the heavenly Sun. Why should they pay taxes? The Silver clans mostly served in the army, holding hereditary military offices and naturally monopolizing the lower and middle commands. Without their support, how could one control the army and turn the situation around? The system of military land grants might have fallen into decay, but nowhere in the realm was there a more effective fighting force. Wei Jushi himself came from these ranks and knew their circumstances well. He had to swallow his impatience and court them all the same. That left only the Turbid officials to squeeze, and the Gray commoners to suffer a little more. With the heavenly Sun so dim, this was how difficult it had become to govern the world. More taxes required harsher collection, which would naturally cost more. But as long as the court received more at the end, it was worth it. Whether the Turbid officials and their clerks used the occasion to line their pockets was something the court neither wished nor had the power to police. Call it mutual forbearance for the sake of the state, for now. This first measure had been implemented to considerable effect. More people were fleeing famine, certainly, and many in the Old Faction made that a pretext for attack, pleading on the people’s behalf. But what of it? What use to the court were people who paid no taxes? Take the darker view: with the Sun dimming, the number of subjects the world could sustain was no longer fixed. Someone would have to be driven into the darkness. If he did not force the Gray people to flee, was he to be cast out himself?

The second measure was to raise and train a new army. The system of military land grants had decayed beyond repair. Men at every level held places on the rolls while drawing pay for service they never performed. Among the rank and file were soldiers whose holdings had gone bankrupt, leaving them beggars, or had been swallowed up by others. Among the middle officers were men whose families had enjoyed the state’s bounty for generations, yet who ran their commands as private concerns and treated the troops as household slaves. Among the generals were men who sold offices and titles, built their own factions, and grew too powerful to control. An army like this was no longer His Majesty’s sharp blade. The late emperor had trusted Wei Jushi precisely because he could gather the wealth needed to forge it anew. Royal lands would be carved up into fresh military grants, a new establishment built, and heavy taxes used to maintain picked troops. This was the true foundation of the late emperor’s power. The new army’s commander, Wei Zhenxing, had likewise been raised by him from obscurity. With no powerful connections and no entanglements, he had owed allegiance to the late emperor alone. Now he belonged to His Majesty.

The third measure was to establish schools and recruit men into office. This provoked the fiercest reaction at court. Even the slowest of the hereditary White houses could now see the reforms’ ultimate purpose. Those too obtuse to understand would still react when their protégés and former subordinates began to be replaced. It was then that Lord Wei Jushi’s standing among the learned finally advanced from spineless sycophant and contemptible favorite to the greatest villain of the age, a reckless destroyer of the state. Reform needed people, preferably newcomers with clean records and no ties: pupils of the Son of Heaven, rather than former servants of great houses or private retainers of the powerful. Naturally, the first criterion was support for the new laws. Ability and virtue came second. This did bring in the bad with the good, and those appointed often acted rashly and pushed too hard. But the late emperor still held the greatest power. Opposition was soon silenced, the Old Faction lay low, and a good many useful men did find places in the government.

Only with money, troops, and men in hand could the late emperor’s ambition of remaking the order of the world be realized. The final measure would strip titles from the White and Silver upper castes and lower their ranks, until their numbers matched what could be supported after the great change in the heavenly Sun. That His Majesty’s power would become more concentrated in the process was understood by all and left unspoken.

But the heavenly Sun kept no order, and human affairs were unpredictable. Within the palace walls, the late emperor died suddenly. His ambition was never fulfilled. To preserve what he could, he had been obliged to compromise and leave a final charge entrusting his heir to the ministers. The Old Faction rose again. Ju Rongfu, veteran of three reigns and its standard-bearer, became the second of the entrusted ministers, dividing the government once more. Then the black tide quickened, and popular uprisings erupted throughout the land beyond the court. The new army had to put out fires everywhere, giving the Old Faction openings to intervene. A commander-in-chief would often find himself accompanied by a deputy from a powerful clan. The deputy now campaigning against the rebels was Kong Songguang, a young man of considerable reputation who led the Old Faction’s next generation. As for Wei Zhenxing, the actual head of the new army, since the regency began he had never volunteered to take the field. He spoke only of guarding the palace gates.

The state was already foundering. Its strongest military force was stranded far away, with all contact lost, making affairs within the Jade Capital still more volatile and inscrutable. The balance of power had long since changed, but Lord Wei’s decades of accumulated authority remained. The uncertainty surrounding the distant army made everyone hesitate, unable to decide. A storm was gathering. At the summit of the Jade Capital all was silent, the tremor of apprehension perceptible in the stillness.

Every round without news added another weight to the unseen scales. Once the balance tipped, it could never be restored. At last, past the critical point, everything burst open. Fear, desperate hope, delight, resentment, resolve: the reckoning boiled over, swiftly turning the Jade Capital into a sea of molten fire.

Wei Jushi was, of course, the first to be arrested. Facing the former pupil who had come for him, he was surprised to find none of the anger of a man stabbed in the back. With events moving as they were, such a traitorous disciple was hardly unexpected. Still, he could not help despising the man’s poor judgment. A lack of courage was one thing. How had he failed to notice such stupidity? Did the Old Faction recruit men as the New Faction did? To turn coat now was merely to become a stepping-stone, used and discarded. If sticking your neck out brought the blade, drawing it back would bring it too. For a few more rounds of wretched life, would you be vermin forever? The forces previously held in readiness were now converging. Among the defeated, some defected at the last moment, some fought desperately, some surrendered, and some cursed. Wei Jushi watched with cold detachment as he was swept along and escorted silently toward the center of the Jade Capital. Such was the heavenly Sun. Such was the tide of events. There was little left that could turn either around.

Looking back over his decades of service, Wei Jushi felt he had reached the utmost a subject could achieve. Affairs of state had been difficult, but he had never feared them. He had seen them as a ladder to the heavens. Fortunately, the late emperor had been determined to restore good government, and had recognized him as soon as his abilities began to show. Thereafter sovereign and minister had worked in perfect accord, cutting through thickets, reviving the court, sweeping one obstacle after another from their path. He had poured his heart and strength into the realm. But the heavenly Sun had dimmed, the imperial line declined. He could burn himself out and change nothing. If only Heaven’s decree could be defied.

It was Wei Zhenxing who presided over the settling of old scores; Ju Rongfu, whom Wei Jushi had expected to see in that role, stood at his side. Wei Jushi was utterly calm, and not particularly surprised. Such a swift reversal could only have come from their combined efforts. He had merely mistaken which would lead and which follow. The sentence came in vibrations through the ground: “Wei Jushi, traitor who forsakes Heaven and betrays his sovereign, fiend who disorders the court…” Wei Jushi would not dignify it with a sound. He seemed to be watching a farce, as though he were not its principal actor. Traitor? Fiend? A few rounds ago, would Wei Zhenxing not have been put in the same company? Now he had transformed himself into a pillar of righteousness. Wei Jushi had long been ready to be ground to dust, but he had never meant to meet his end in such a paltry fashion. How had he come to this, and the state to such decay? “…shall suffer the Sun’s immolation, his body burned and his entrails smelted within.”

Ha. They had actually dug through obscure historical records to find this torture for Wei Jushi. Stern in public, fearful within: they could only terrorize the people by such means. There was still no news of the army. Its prospects were grim, but until its fate was known, who could rest easy? The Jade Capital was cut off and short of troops, and fires burned on every side beyond it. If even he could not hold this situation together, how would this pack of petty men manage it? And the two parties to the coup had long been divided. Today they used heavenly fire to burn him; before the next round, they would be burning each other. Above all, Heaven was failing, the Sun declining. His fate had come to its end. Could they overturn Heaven itself? At this thought, Wei Jushi, now raised upon the execution ground, felt a certain pleasure. He regretted only that he would not live to see them undo themselves.

As the punishment proceeded, the silvery-white essence was slowly stripped from Wei Jushi’s body, its brilliant whiteness fading to gray. Deprived of his shielding, he began to heat up beneath the fierce Sun directly above the Jade Capital. Ancient accounts said that a victim’s whole body would boil, then turn to black smoke. But the heavenly Sun was less intense than it had been in ancient times. Wei Jushi had collapsed into a shapeless pool, yet he still fixed his gaze on Wei Zhenxing and Ju Rongfu a short distance away, like a ghost in the dark.

With their great enemy removed, the two men conducting the execution could scarcely hide their concern. If this was the state of the heavenly Sun, what came next? But for its great change, but for the black tide, things would never have come to this. A man could be brought down. Could Heaven be overturned?

At that moment, as though it had heard the unspoken thoughts and cries of countless beings below, the Sun at the zenith above the Jade Capital, eternal source of immense power, blazed suddenly brighter. Had there been some wondrous adept able to ascend into the highest heavens, he would have seen the black tide spreading inward from the rim abruptly pause, as though the light might even begin to drive it back.

Wei Jushi’s agony was almost over. In that instant he seemed to understand a great deal. His hesitation had long been visible. He had already lost the will to fight; otherwise why had he not struck first? Wei Zhenxing could have been won over. But once Wei Jushi lost the power to decide, Wei Zhenxing had only the other choice. Those around him had sensed precisely the dejection he himself had failed to notice, and it had brought him to ruin. The black tide’s long attrition had slowly drained him of any expectation for the future. Incessant blows had robbed him even of the instinct to survive amid disorder. Yet he still would not accept his defeat. Why had the heavenly Sun chosen this very moment to revive? In his shock, he finally felt the pain of sunlight burning through his body. He shook uncontrollably. After that long silence, he spoke his last words:

“O vast and distant Heaven, where is your constancy?”

Then he boiled, broke apart, and became ash.

The sudden change in the Sun and the destruction of their enemy loosened one restraint upon the hearts of Wei Zhenxing and Ju Rongfu. But nothing was settled. What had become of the army? Until that question was answered, their momentary security was not even security. It was only breathing space.

The army had won, then lost. It was already destroyed.

Against the refugees, blindly moving without leaders, the army swept everything before it. There was scarcely any proper resistance. Kong Songguang used the weight of his family to intimidate and the promise of advancement to entice, smoothly taking command for himself. He meant to take every scrap of credit. The commander-in-chief had no patron at court. He knew Wei Jushi only casually and was no confidant of Wei Zhenxing. He had belonged to the late emperor, and was now a truly isolated servant of the throne. Without that isolation, he would never have been sent out. He offered no strenuous resistance to Kong Songguang. They were still about ten rounds from the Jade Capital, within the heartland of imperial rule, where the official roads and relay service still worked. Even if things went wrong, the heavenly Sun here could sustain the army for a while—long enough to get it out of difficulty.

The army swept straight toward the rebellion twelve rounds from the Jade Capital. This was the place from which reports had come of commoners rising up and killing officials. By the time the soldiers arrived, almost nothing remained except the old, infirm, sick, and disabled who could not leave. Apparently the rebels had recognized that they could not win and had already fled toward the black tide.

Here the commander and Kong Songguang reached their first irreconcilable disagreement over what to do next. The commander held that the campaign had achieved its purpose. The rebels had fled blindly into the black tide, choosing their own destruction. It was time to return to court. An advance would require large additional supplies to sustain the army beneath an ever weaker Sun, and might well bring no further victory. The rebels were mostly dark-colored outcasts, better able to eke out a living in the gloom. If they fled deeper into it, catching them would be harder still. Kong Songguang wanted all the credit securely in his own hands. He invoked the higher cause to press his demands, then went over the commander’s head and bought off the subordinate officers. In the end he outmaneuvered the commander, seizing control outright and no longer troubling to conceal his disregard. The commander could only ask to stay behind with his own guards to maintain the road and the relay service.

Now that the breach was open, Kong Songguang dispensed with all restraint. He let his soldiers plunder the surrounding districts, intercepted every shipment of military supplies along the road, and set off with those provisions in pursuit farther outward. The displaced commander was bitterly resentful. Neither accompanying the advance nor returning to court afterward seemed likely to end well. He too abandoned the district with his guards, and vanished from the record.

Kong Songguang’s arrogance was not merely a matter of temperament. Some of it was deliberate, intended to drive the commander away. Who could not see by now that Wei Jushi’s day was over? A general without a patron was beneath Kong’s notice, not even worth winning over. Were a few refugees worth such trouble? Everyone knew that the late emperor had created the new army to deal with great houses like his own. Now he need only secure the officers below him and add a military victory that was already as good as won. His future would shine. Let the heavenly Sun grow as dim as it pleased: the place in the Jade Capital would still belong to the Kong family. All this talk of failing to catch rebel leaders, of gaining nothing further, was the evasion of a man who had lost his standing. Beyond twelve rounds, anyone who ran at the sight of the army was a rebel.

Kong Songguang’s march proceeded without a hitch, much like the earlier sweep. Supplies coming along the official road were dwindling, but that was expected; the army carried enough. He also decreed that beyond the twelve-round boundary, any official or commoner who failed to volunteer provisions for the troops would be deemed an accomplice of the rebels. In practice, his men plundered everyone, friend and foe alike, and gathered considerable stores. He had meant to stop there. Just then, however, word came of the rebels. They appeared to be close, only a little farther out. Scouts brought the same reports. Unfortunately, the local people had all fled or died, and there was no way to verify them further.

Trusting in his plentiful supplies, Kong Songguang decided to pursue them. At last he passed beyond the reach of the official road. By now more than half his provisions were gone. The scouts reported the rebels just ahead—and still holding together. These were clearly no ordinary wandering bandits. Kong Songguang found himself inspired, of all things, by the conviction that he was fighting for his country. Leave this danger intact, and even the Jade Capital could know no peace. He marched deeper into the dark.

Then the rebel army suddenly disappeared. Fear spread among the troops. The weariness of the long march wore away all the confidence their victories had won them. The unfamiliar surroundings and the journey with their backs to the Sun made spirits hard to lift. Kong Songguang accepted his subordinates’ advice and halted. Instead, he sent out more scouts. If no further news came within a round, they would withdraw.

The scouts did not return. Just as the army was about to retreat, a tremor came from the darkness. Its rhythm was familiar. Growing clearer, it resolved into a song that had been passed down for no one knew how many years:

“The Sun at the center, its light resplendent; noble as White and Jade, they draw their sustenance from the outer lands.

The Sun to one side, its warmth still fierce; life bestowed by Heaven, the Turbid and Gray sustained.

The Sun at the border, its splendor fading; the sky turns ashen—where can we make our home?”

An endless black tide swept in from the horizon. The Sun had not dimmed again: the advancing rebels had formed a torrent of black. They were darker even than those of Black rank, drinking away the already feeble light. Under a stronger Sun, bodies like these would plainly suffer worse burns. Here on the margin of the black tide they were in their element. These were no scattered refugees. Who had transformed them like this? Who had brought them together?

Kong Songguang was briefly lost in bewilderment. He tried to order a defense, but the army’s resolve was already shaken, and the vanguard began to break. Nothing could stop this onslaught. He fled with his guards toward the Sun. Yet the road they had emptied by slaughter now held figures like evil spirits barring their way. Black all over, wisps of dark smoke rising from them in the sunlight, they hurled themselves at the routed troops and their defeated commander.

Pinned beneath a demon, Kong Songguang felt his awareness of the Sun fade. The creature had cut away his stored reserves and was steadily drawing the heavy, turbid essence out of his body. He grew whiter and whiter. In the Jade Capital, this would have been the exquisite promotion from White to Jade of which he had always dreamed. But here, in the borderlands where the Sun was weak, to take in no sunlight was to die.

The Sun suddenly blazed, flooding the long-dark frontier with light. Hope of survival flared again in Kong Songguang. He tried to make one last effort. The demon gave him no chance. Its body grew still blacker in the radiance as it strained to suck away the heavy, turbid essence with which Kong converted sunlight. Dense black smoke poured from it beneath the Sun. Even if it drowned him, the burning looked sure to injure it terribly. Why? He had been so close… Before this avenger, as though come to claim his life from an endless black hell, Kong Songguang at last felt the soundless howl within the song: “…When will you perish, O Sun? We will perish with you.”

Black Two-Three’s senses slowly returned. The writhing crowd around him had stopped as well. Greedily they savored the long-lost light and warmth. Why keep fleeing? How miserable to die with one’s back to the Sun. Why not turn and feel a little more of this wonderful light? Even for a moment, it would be better than dying in the eternal frozen waste. The Sun’s radiance halted the darkness all around the land. Another black tide rolled like a flood toward the center of the world.

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1. Mercury’s orbit is highly eccentric, with its distance from the Sun differing by one quarter between perihelion and aphelion. It therefore has summer and winter even though it has no day and night.↩︎