Alternate Generals II

"What?" Old One snapped like a turtle at this imperial interference with her meditations.

The Empress had not expected the presumed corpse to speak. She gasped and tottered back a few steps, her hands on her stomach. "Oh! Praise all the gods, you're still alive. For a moment, I thought- Don't ever do that again. Whenever I'm scared, it goes straight to my belly, makes my insides shake liketofu. Bad enough I've had morning sickness three years' ru

Old One's eyebrows twitched just the smallest degree. The three silver hairs that sprouted from the wart on her chin quivered. It was all the outward sign she gave to acknowledge that her prayers had been answered: She had her weapon.

Swiftly she clapped a look of the utmost concern over her face and shuffled forward on her knees to seize the Empress' hands. "A thousand pardons, august lady!" she wailed, swaying like a willow in a gale. "May the gods forgive me! What hideous harm have I perpetrated upon your royal beneficence? Oh, what have I done? What have I done?"

"Whathave you done?" the Empress asked, yanking her hands free of Old One's grasp. Although she had demanded an apology, she hadn't expected anything on this scale. She still looked worried, not so much for Old One's sake as for her own safety in the presence of a demented creature.

"The shock, my lady! The shock that I have inadvertently caused you. Do you not know how dreadfully bad it is for the unborn when the mother suffers any sort of emotional upheaval? I have lived long; I could tell you stories. My great-aunt's neighbor's brother's third wife was frightened by a wild monkey, and her son was born with the longest arms you ever saw. Thenher father's nephew's sister-in-law was startled by a rampaging stork, and so her son was born with the longest legs you ever saw. Andher sister's husband's cousin's bride was surprised by a runaway rooster, so her son was born with the longest- Well, they're not all tragedies, but still, can any woman take a chance when it is the very body of her child that may be unalterably altered?"

The Empress' eyes grew wide and wider as Old One's words played upon her fears. The aged seer contained her glee. Although she still could scarcely believe Jingo's tale of her amazingly extended pregnancy was real, the younger woman certainly was behaving like other first-time mothers: She was crossing unfamiliar territory and she was afraid.

"The gods-" Jingo faltered. "The gods would not allow any harm to come to my son."

Old One pressed her palms together. "What do the gods consider to be 'harm'? Health is one thing, appearance another. Do they view matters of mortal beauty as we do? Are all of them pleasing to the human eye?"

"Raiden… Raiden, the god of thunder, has fangs," the Empress admitted. "And Fujin, lord of the winds, has a most… astonishing aspect. His skin is the color of pitch, his feet and hands are taloned, and his face-his face is- Ah!" She covered her eyes and moaned. "Oh, my child, my child!"

Slowly Old One got to her feet and patted the Empress' back. "Do not fear, my lady. It has been proven that the unborn is only marked according to the nature of the thing that frightened its mother. It's not as if you were scared by the wind-god; just by me."

Jingo's head jerked up. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that if any change has befallen your child, he will enter the world looking no worse than this." Old One spread her arms wide and gave the Empress her broadest smile. Every wrinkle, every missing tooth, every bald patch, every brown spot and gnarled knucklebone and sag of slackened flesh on her body stood out in dreadful relief. Jingo gaped, then groaned.

Hmph! Thank yousomuch, Old One thought.Think you'lllook like a little plum blossom if you live to be my age? Keeping her resentment to herself, she reassured the Empress, saying: "Gracious lady, never fear! Your case is not hopeless. I can help you."

The Empress looked suspicious. "Why should I trust you or your remedies?"

"Think I'd poison you? Leave your troops without the one leader willing and able to fight a bloodless war? They'd run wild, burning crops, destroying villages, taking indiscriminate vengeance for your death on men, women, and children. Am I fool enough to make such a bad bargain for my people? The choice is plain: Trust me or trust to luck for your child's fate, O Empress."

Jingo rubbed her chin in thought for awhile, then said, "Tell me what you need."

The clay bowl nested amid the glowing charcoal cakes, smoking and sputtering. Old One knelt beside it, stirring it with an iron spoon. Seated on a low stool, attended by her captains and once again wearing full armor for its imposing effect, the Empress Jingo watched.

Her men watched too, but with more hostility than interest. Their Empress had explained the cause of these unca

"Perhaps no harm has been done to him," she told them. "That is what Old One seeks to learn first, by summoning a vision of the child. If all is well, why kill her? And if he has been affected, she will create a potion to set things right. To kill her for that would be ungrateful."

"No killing, no killing, that's her answer to everything," one of the captains grumbled. He glowered ferociously at the seething clay bowl and demanded: "What have you got stewing in there?"

"A measure of vinegar, another of water, the skull of a fieldmouse, powdered fine, fishbones and scales, a pinch of red earth, a dribble of pine sap, and a sliver of dragon's toenail: Nothing fancy." Old One gri

"Andthat mess will let us see our Emperor-to-be?"

"That mess-" Old One sniffed the steam rising from the bowl, then let her long sleeves slide forward to cover her hands as she removed it from the tripod and set it at Jingo's feet. "-and you." She bowed, then said, "O Empress, my lore can summon my gods, but your unborn babe is the descendant of your own divinities. To invoke a vision of the child, both companies of deities must aid us."

"But I've told you: This is the Month Without Gods! Thekami are in faraway Izumo-"

"Then you'll have to call upon themloudly, won't you?" Old One said. "You and all your troops together. When I give the sign, shattering the clay bowl, raise your voices and shout: O great kamiAmatasa- Amarusa-"

"Amaterasu."

"That's the one. Thank you. So it must go: O great kamiAmaterasu, with your blessing we beg to behold this unborn child as he truly is. Have you got that? It is vital that you speak these wordsexactly — you know how it is with magic-otherwise I couldn't be held responsible for the consequences."

The Empress repeated the seer's invocation several times, to make sure she had it down pat, then directed her captains to relay the words and instructions attending them to her troops. Signalmen were placed as the word ran through the length and breadth of the Japanese encampment. Old One watched it all, and while the commotion was at it's height she managed to steal a word with Snow Moon.

"Beloved child of my grandson's daughter," she murmured. "Very shortly, a small clay bowl will smash into a hundred pieces at the Empress' feet. When that happens-"

"— you want me to clean it up?"

"I want you to run."

Snow Moon was a good girl, biddable, raised to say yes first and to ask why twenty-third. Satisfied, Old One waited for the Japanese encampment to settle down. Then she bowed again to Jingo and simply said, "We begin."

It was a very impressive ceremony, one of Old One's best. She swayed and sang and made all sorts of fascinating gestures. She threw pinches of this and that into the smoldering coals, raising little spits of colored smoke. She chanted words in a tongue so ancient and arcane that even those Japanese fluent in Korean had no idea what she was saying. Neither did she. She let down her hair and used the wooden combs to trace strange patterns in the dirt, then danced over them. She carried on in this ma