Chapter 5
At the end of that day, I asked Shaosi:
“When you entered the palace, the High Diviner foretold your fate as well.”
“Have you not always believed his words without question?”
The diviners had declared that Shaosi would wear a queen’s robes and be the king’s last woman.
She believed the prophecy so completely that after I left the palace, she could not wait to put on my robes and headdress.
At my words, pride appeared on her pale face.
“Of course I believe the gods have decreed it,” she said. “But the diviners may not understand their meaning every time.”
Her health gradually improved.
By the king’s birthday, she could wear brocade and nestle in his arms, watching the ceremonial dance offered in the hall.
Brilliant palace lamps shone on the dancers as they held feathers and played their flutes.
The young priestess was among them.
She stepped to the ancient beat of the drums, a flute in her left hand and a pheasant plume in her right.
When the feather swept across her cheek, she turned her face slightly, revealing eyes clear as dew as she cast an intent glance toward me.
After the dance, Shaosi filled the king’s cup with warm wine, then suddenly smiled.
“The High Diviner knows Heaven’s decrees so well. Has he never foretold his own manner of death?”
A single airy remark stopped the murmur of conversation.
The nobles stilled their cups and turned to look.
At the center of their gaze, the old man set down his drumsticks. After a silence, he replied quietly, “A diviner does not divine for himself.”
But Shaosi clapped her hands softly.
Palace attendants filed in carrying lacquer trays and laid the implements prepared in advance before him, one by one.
“Your eyes are so keen that you can see through the kingdom’s fortunes,” she said with a smile. “Why should your own life and death elude them?”
The High Diviner said nothing.
He stroked a tortoise shell and carved an inscription with his knife. His hands were no longer what they had been.
Then they had been heavy, strong, immovable, lifting my daughter in his arms and carrying her into the wooded hill…
He had grown old. Very old. Trembling, he set the measuring rule in place and suspended the shell over the fire.
Tongues of flame licked it. A faint cracking sounded.
Everyone held their breath. Even the court officer pouring wine stared, letting it overflow the bronze goblet and spill all over the table.
“I shall die by mercy,” he said.
The gathering remained bewildered. I covered my face with my sleeve, unable to suppress my laughter.
The mercy of gods and spirits? Or the mercy of the king and Shaosi?
Both were equally absurd.
“The High Diviner’s words are never so ambiguous when he foretells the kingdom’s fortunes,” Shaosi said softly.
This was the trap she had set for him.
Whatever result he divined, Shaosi could ensure it failed to come true.
The kingdom’s fortunes were beyond her control. An old man’s death was as easily managed as snuffing out the last flame of a candle.
The king drank in silence, saying nothing, his gaze never leaving the old man.
The flames still flickered.
The High Diviner took another shell.
I had never understood how he glimpsed Heaven’s decree in those tangled cracks.
All I could see was a violent twitch of his gray brows, then a dreadful light bursting from his deeply sunken eyes.
His twiglike hand trembled. The shell fell into the fire and was scorched black in an instant.
He must have seen something. He closed his eyes and slowly bowed to the ground.
“The spirits have shown me: a sacred bird shall peck out my eyes, and I shall bleed to death.”
This strange death stirred even the king’s interest. “When?”
The High Diviner pressed his forehead to the floor and did not raise it again.
“Tonight.”
No one in the hall spoke for a time.
Shaosi gave a little exclamation. “Naturally, what the High Diviner foretells cannot be wrong.”
Gently, she begged the king to keep him in the palace that night, shut all the windows, and have court officers take bows into the woods to kill the birds and preserve his life.
I knew the king, too, was uncertain. That was why he agreed to Shaosi’s wishes.
If the gods’ will had been misread even once, then the earlier oracles might not all have been true.
As the banquet ended, Zisui came quietly to my side. He gripped my wrist and whispered into my ear, “I will send someone to kill him…”
I turned to him. “Do you not believe, either?”
Zisui looked back at me, his face pale, his pupils trembling.
“The spirits have made their will known. My child will bring the four corners of the realm to submission and become sovereign of all under Heaven.”
“Zisui, do you doubt that this is your destiny?”
I raised my hand and laid it gently over his taut one.
“Go and rest.”