The Wandering God

3 A Name Not Found in the Classics

名不見經傳
míngbùjiànjīngzhuàn
A name not encountered in the classics.
An unknown person. A nobody.

*~*~*~*~*~*

In Sanli's dream, it was raining.

He lay on his back on the cold ground, naked, eyes closed. The rain fell upon his skin, cool in an unpleasant way. It pooled in the hollows of his eyes and ran down the side of his face in a mockery of weeping.

Something, a rock or stick, jabbed into his back beside the spine. A sharp pain cut his middle. He knew where he was. He knew what he would see if he opened his eyes. He'd had this dream before.

His eyes flew open.

Sanli awoke, breathing heavily. The leather pouch around his neck bumped against his bare chest as he sat up. He looked around, rooting himself in reality, comforted by the unfamiliar inn walls and the faint grey light just starting to creep in the window.

Beside him the sheets were rumpled but empty. The voluptuous barmaid had left shortly after they had consummated their acquaintance, hopefully returning to an empty bed and not a husband who could chase Sanli from the town.

He raised a hand to his brow. Cold sweat mirrored the rain of his dreams. He wiped it away and slid, still naked, from the bed.

His clothes were thrown haphazardly around the room. He found his shirt and belt and trousers, but his undershorts eluded him.

He was peeking under the bed unsuccessfully when a thought occurred to him. The barmaid took them with her....

He dressed without them. Just as he was pulling on his shirt, a familiar triple knock came at the door.

"It's almost dawn," Kageyama said softly from the hall.

"I know," Sanli replied, buttoning his shirt with hasty fingers.

He threaded his belt through the loops of his pants and cinched the buckle, checking with a touch the small knife sheathed at his back, hidden beneath his shirt. He gathered up his things, stuffing them into his nap sack. Before he left, Sanli lifted the leather pouch from around his neck and dumped the contents out on the bed for quick inspection.

There on the worn inn bedding lay scattered a selection of small tubes made from cut segments of bamboo. Inside each tube was a wound scroll of paper, filled with hundreds of fine zih, the pictorial characters that made up the old written language of the Inner Kingdom.

Each scroll was a powerful pre-written spell.

Sanli had spent an hour writing each scroll, carefully drawing each stroke in the correct order and size, waiting for the ink to dry before beginning the next row, for fear of smudging. Each cylinder had been sealed with wax to protect the precious paper from water, in case the leather of the pouch should fail as a first line of defense. Even a slight deviation in the characters could lead to the spell backfiring or miscasting in undesirable ways.

Sanli hurriedly counted the cylinders as he shoved them back into the pouch. Seven remained.

When all the bamboo tubes had been returned one object still lay on the bedspread; a short segment of wood, about the length of a man's middle finger and the same thickness: a seal. The wood had been polished to a dark shine over time, all imperfections smoothed away until the wood was so dark and smooth it could have been made from jade.

Sanli picked the seal up and peered at one end, where the characters for 'green' and 'king' had been carved in relief.

"Such a small thing," he murmured.