My name is Baosang — Funeral-Call. Ugly name, isn't it? The demon king gave it; he says when I shout, rabbits ten li out soil themselves.
I'm the cavern's patrol chief. Every day I take seven or eight little yao and circle the den three times, singing as we go. How did our ancestor Little Drillwind sing it in the old book? "The king sent me to patrol the hills—" That's the tune. The ancestral tune, passed down three hundred years.
You think patrol songs are for courage? Wrong. They're for reporting.
Wherever the song carries, that's where we've reached. The den hears the verse and knows the front is quiet. That's the ancestor's rule. But half a year ago the king summoned me and said: Baosang, add a verse.
The new verse came from the king's own mouth: "The stone heart won't return, the Monkey King won't come home; when he's near the wind goes wrong — when the chimes sound, sing the funeral."
The king said: sing this on the last patrol of every night. For the guest to hear.
Who's the guest?
I asked. He said: don't ask what you shouldn't. So I sing. Six months of it, my throat's grown calluses. And then last month, it happened.
I was singing that verse, at "when the chimes sound, sing the funeral," when on the old locust tree by the front post, the wind chimes rang.
There wasn't a breath of wind.
Seven rings. I counted. Every hair on my body stood up, and I bolted for the den to report. The king heard me out, silent for a long moment. Then he said one sentence I still can't fathom:
"He's here. Earlier than I thought."
Here. Who's here? The chimes were hung for the guest; the chimes rang; the guest arrived. But nothing happened after that night — the den is the den, the patrols are the patrols.
Nothing is the scariest thing of all. Because since that night, the king himself stands the front watch-post every night, all night.
Our king hasn't stood a watch in three hundred years.
If you mean to fight your way in, don't come through my sector. Give me a jar of wine and I'll tell you which path skips three guard posts. I'm not cowardly — I just want to see the guest our king stands watch for.
I want to see his face.