The White Mirror Read Online Free Page A

wide belt at his waist. Then he slipped a bridle over the head of a sturdy mule and turned to Kalden. “Let us go now,” he said, “before we lose the light.”
    *   *   *
    Li Du’s mule was a gentle, steady animal not in her first youth. He had a rule that whenever he enjoyed a comfortable room he did his best to secure her a place in a dry barn. He led her to an open corner. Once he had unburdened her of bags and saddle and examined her hooves, he used the blunt edge of a blade to scrape the melting snow and water from her back. He looked for signs of injury or inflammation where the saddle had rubbed.
    Who was the man on the bridge, and how had he come to such an end? In these mountains, from what Li Du had seen, village monks and lamas were present at every birth, at every death, and on all the ritual days between. They were there to celebrate the beginning of the harvest and the end of it. To lose by violence someone so integral to family life would, Li Du thought, be devastating. Yet neither Yeshe nor the manor lord had displayed the emotional reaction that Li Du might have expected.
    Over the years, Li Du had learned to enter each unfamiliar village, inn, and estate with a flexible attitude and an acceptance of his own ignorance. No books he had read had prepared him for the variety of traditions scattered through the hillsides, valleys, mountains, and forests of the borderlands. Each high pass or wide river was a barrier behind which languages changed and religions evolved. And then there were marriages and wars and traveling teachers to change everything like a child shaking a jar of colored pebbles.
    He removed a pot of mayvine salve from his bag and smoothed a layer of it over a raw spot on his mule’s flank. He glanced around for a cloth to wipe the thick oil from his hand. Behind a small bamboo screen where he expected to see barrels or bales or stacked saddles, he found himself instead in someone’s room. A low bench covered with furs was balanced on large stones. A butter tea churn and a bowl rested against a wall beside a blackened, dented pot. There was a basket full of rawhide strips on the floor. On the bed, among the furs, were several lengths of twine braided and tied into knots. Aware that he was intruding, Li Du stepped away and returned to his mule. He knelt and wiped the salve from his hand on a bit of clean hay.
    For an isolated manor that did not often see caravans passing through, the barn was well stocked, filled up with sacks of barley, maize, and peas, and tea bricks wrapped in bamboo sheaths. A bright row of pots sat against one wall ready to be filled with fresh milk each morning. There were racks of saddles on the wall beside the numerous bows, arrows, and blades of various sizes.
    Li Du was just about to climb the stairs to the upper floor when a young man, stooped under the weight of bundled firewood, hurried into the courtyard. He dropped his hands to his knees as he tried to catch his breath. His hat fell into the snow, but he did not pick it up. He made his way to the barn where Li Du stood, hidden from the young man’s view by the animals and the thick painted columns.
    As soon as the young man was under the shelter of the roof, he let his burden fall to the ground. It was only then that he caught sight of Li Du and stopped. Confusion competed with distress in his expression.
    â€œI am a guest here,” Li Du said quickly, silently amending his first impression. This was not so much a man as a boy. He was thin, the last roundness of childhood just recently gone from his cheeks, the left of which was twisted by a long scar. His eyes, when he was close enough for Li Du to see them, were very dark, the expression in them elusive. His hair was roughly cut and stood up from his head in matted clumps.
    â€œYou came with the caravan?” he asked nervously.
    â€œYes.”
    The young man’s hands toyed with the fraying cuffs of his