Under Heaven
An epic historical adventure set in a pseudo 8th century China, from the author of the 2008 World Fantasy winner, Ysabel. Under Heaven is a novel of heroes, assassins, concubines and emperors set against a majestic and unforgiving landscape.An epic historical adventure set in a pseudo 8th century China, from the author of the 2008 World Fantasy winner, Ysabel. Under Heaven is a novel of heroes, assassins, concubines and emperors set against a majestic and unforgiving landscape.For two years Shen Tai has mourned his father, living like a hermit beyond the borders of the Kitan Empire, by a mountain lake where terrible battles have long been fought between the Kitai and the neighbouring Tagurans, including one for which his father - a great general - was honoured. But Tai's father never forgot the brutal slaughter involved. The bones of 100,000 soldiers still lie unburied by the lake and their wailing ghosts at night strike terror in the living, leaving the lake and meadow abandoned in its ring of mountains.To honour and redress his father's sorrow, Tai has journeyed west to the lake and has laboured, alone, to bury the dead of both empires. His supplies are replenished by his own people from the nearest fort, and also - since peace has been bought with the bartering of an imperial princess - by the Tagurans, for his solitary honouring of their dead.The Tagurans soldiers one day bring an unexpected letter. It is from the bartered Kitan Princess Cheng-wan, and it contains a poisoned chalice: she has gifted Tai with two hundred and fifty Sardian horses, to reward him for his courage. The Sardians are legendary steeds from the far west, famed, highly-prized, long-coveted by the Kitans.
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Under Heaven
Guy Gavriel Kay
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
Copyright © Guy Gavriel Kay 2010
Guy Gavriel Kay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 978007242913
EBook Edition © 2006 ISBN: 9780007342020 Version: 2018-08-07
to Sybil, with love
With bronze as a mirror one can correct one’s appearance; with history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of a state; with good men as a mirror, one can distinguish right from wrong.
—LI SHIMIN, TANG EMPEROR TAIZONG
…peace to our children when they fall in small war on the heels of small war—until the end of time…
—ROBERT LOWELL
Table of Contents
The Imperial Family, and Ta-Ming Palace mandarins
Taizu, the Son of Heaven, emperor of Kitai
Shinzu, his third son, and heir
Xue, his thirty-first daughter
Wen Jian, the Precious Consort, also called the Beloved Companion
Chin Hai, formerly first minister, now deceased
Wen Zhou, first minister of Kitai, cousin to Wen Jian
The Shen Family
General Shen Gao, deceased, once Left Side Commander of the Pacified West
Shen Liu, his oldest son, principal adviser to the first minister
Shen Tai, his second son
Shen Chao, his third son
Shen Li-Mei, his daughter
The Army
An Li (“Roshan”), military governor of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts
An Rong, his oldest son
An Tsao, a younger son
Xu Bihai, military governor of the Second and Third Districts, in Chenyao
Xu Liang, his older daughter
Lin Fong, commander of Iron Gate Fortress
Wujen Ning, a soldier at Iron Gate
Tazek Karad, an officer on the Long Wall
Kanlin Warriors
Wan-si
Wei Song
Lu Chen
Ssu Tan
Zhong Ma
Artists
Sima Zian, a poet, the Banished Immortal
Chan Du, a poet
In Xinan, the capital
Spring Rain, a courtesan in the North District, later named Lin Chang
Feng, a guard in the employ of Wen Zhou
Hwan, a servant of Wen Zhou
Pei Qin, a beggar in the street
Ye Lao, a steward
Beyond the borders of Kitai
West
Sangrama the Lion, ruling the Empire of Tagur
Cheng-wan, the White Jade Princess, one of his wives, seventeenth daughter of Emperor Taizu
Bytsan sri Nespo, a Taguran army officer
Nespo sri Mgar, his father, a senior officer
North
Dulan, kaghan of the Bogü people of the steppe
Hurok, his sister’s husband, later kaghan
Meshag, Hurok’s older son
Tarduk, Hurok’s second son
Amid the ten thousand noises and the jade-and-gold and the whirling dust of Xinan, he had often stayed awake all night among friends, drinking spiced wine in the North District with the courtesans.
They would listen to flute or pipa music and declaim poetry, test each other with jibes and quotes, sometimes find a private room with a scented, silken woman, before weaving unsteadily home after the dawn drums sounded curfew’s end, to sleep away the day instead of studying.
Here in the mountains, alone in hard, clear air by the waters of Kuala Nor, far to the west of the imperial city, beyond the borders of the empire, even, Tai was in a narrow bed by darkfall, under the first brilliant stars, and awake at sunrise.
In spring and summer the birds woke him. This was a place where thousands upon thousands nested noisily: fishhawks and cormorants, wild geese and cranes. The geese made him think of friends far away. Wild geese were a symbol of absence: in poetry, in life. Cranes were fidelity, another matter.
