When the reader had finished, the new Emperor, who had just named himself the Hongxi Emperor, spoke for himself. 'We have spent too much on extravagance. The capital will return to Nanjing, and Beijing will be designated an auxiliary capital. There will be no more waste of imperial resources. The people are suffering. Relieving people's poverty ought to be handled as though one were rescuing them from fire, or saving them from drowning. One cannot hesitate.'

Bold saw Kyu's face across the great courtyard, a little black figurine with blazing eyes. The new Emperor turned to look at his dead father's retinue, so many of them eunuchs. 'For years you eunuchs have only been thinking of yourselves, at the expense of China. The Yongle Emperor thought you were on his side. But you were not. You have betrayed all China.'

Kyu spoke up before his fellows could stop him. 'Your Highness, it's the officials who are betraying China! They are trying to be as regent to you, and make you a boy emperor for ever!'

With a roar a gang of the officials rushed at Kyu and some of the other eunuchs, pulling knives from their sleeves as they pounced. The eunuchs struggled or fled, but many were cut down on the spot. Kyu they stabbed a thousand times.

The Hongxi Emperor stood and watched. When it was over he said, 'Take the bodies and hang them outside the Meridian Gate. Let all the eunuchs beware.'

Later, in the stables, Bold sat holding the half tiger tally in his hand. He had thought they would kill him too, and was ashamed how much that thought had dominated him during the slaughter of the eunuchs; but no one had paid the slightest attention to him. It was possible no one else even remembered his connection to Kyu.

He knew he was leaving, but he didn't know where to go. If he went to Nanjing and helped burn the treasure fleet, and all its docks and warehouses, he would certainly be continuing his young friend's project. But all that would be done in any case.

Bold recalled their last conversation. Time to go home, perhaps, to start a new life.

But guards appeared in the doorway. We know what happened next; and so do you; so let's go on to the next chapter.

At the moment of death Kyu saw the clear white light. It was everywhere, it bathed the void in itself, and he was part of it, and sang it out into the void.

Some eternity later he thought: This is what you strive for.

And so he fell out of it, into awareness of himself. His thoughts were continuing in their tumbling monologue reverie, even after death. Incredible but true. Perhaps he wasn't dead yet. But there was his body, hacked to pieces on the sand of the Forbidden City.

He heard Bold's voice, there inside his thoughts, speaking a prayer. 'Kyu my boy, my beautiful boy,

The time has come for you to seek the path. This life is over. You are now Face to face with the clear light.'

I'm past that, Kyu thought. What happens next? But Bold couldn't know where he was along his way. Prayers for the dead were useless in that regard.

' You are about to experience reality In its pure state. All things are void. You will be like a clear sky,

Empty and pure. Your named mind Will be like clear still water.'

I'm past that! Kyu thought. Get to the next part!

'Use the mind to question the mind. Don't sleep at this crucial time. Your soul must leave your body awake, and go out through the Brahma hole.'

The dead can't sleep, Kyu thought irritably. And my soul is already out of my body.

His guide was far behind him. But it had always been that way with Bold. Kyu would have to find his own way. Emptiness still surrounded the single thread of his thoughts. Some of the dreams he had had during his life had been of this place.

He blinked, or slept, and then he was in a vast court of judgment. The dais of the judge was on a broad deck, a plateau in a sea of clouds. The judge was a huge black faced deity, sitting potbellied on the dais. Its hair was fire, burning wildly on its head. Behind it a black man held a pagoda roof that might have come straight out of the palace in Beijing. Above the roof floated a little seated Buddha, radiating calm. To his left and right were peaceful deities, standing with gifts in their arms; but these were all a great distance away, and not for him. The righteous dead were climbing long flying roads up to these gods. On the deck surrounding the dais, less fortunate dead were being hacked to pieces by demons, demons as black as the Lord of Death, but smaller and more agile. Below the deck more demons were torturing yet more souls. It was a busy scene and Kyu was annoyed. This is my judgment, and it's like a morning abattoir! How am I supposed to concentrate?

A creature like a monkey approached him and raised a hand: 'Judg ment,' it said in a deep voice.

Bold's prayer sounded in his mind, and Kyu realized that Bold and this monkey were related somehow. 'Remember, whatever you suffer now is the result of your own karma,' Bold was saying. 'It's yours and no one else's. Pray for mercy. A little white god and a little black demon will appear, and count out the white and black pebbles of your good and evil deeds.'

Indeed it was so. The white imp was pale as an egg, the black imp like onyx; and they were hoeing great piles of white and black stones into heaps, which to Kyu's surprise appeared about equal in size. He could not remember doing any good deeds.

'You will be frightened, awed, terrified.'

I will not! These prayers were for a different kind of dead, for people like Bold.

'You will attempt to tell lies, saying I have not committed any evil deed.'

I will not say any such ridiculous thing.

Then the Lord of Death, up on its throne, suddenly took notice of Kyu, and despite himself Kyu flinched.

'Bring the mirror of karma,' the god said, grinning horribly. Its eyes were burning coals.

'Don't be frightened,' Bold's voice said inside him. 'Don't tell any lies, don't be terrified, don't fear the Lord of Death. The body you're in now is only a mental body. You can't die in the bardo, even if they hack you to pieces.'

Thanks, Kyu thought uneasily. That is such a comfort.

'Now comes the moment of judgment. Hold fast, think good thoughts; remember, all these events are your own hallucinations, and what life comes next depends on your thoughts now. In a single moment of time a great difference is created. Don't be distracted when the six lights appear. Regard them all with compassion. Face the Lord of Death without fear.'

The black god held a mirror up with such practised accuracy that Kyu saw in the glass his own face, dark as the god's. He saw that the face is the naked soul itself, always, and that his was as dark and dire as the Lord of Death's. This was the moment of truth! And he had to concentrate on it, as Bold kept reminding him. And yet all the while the whole antic festival shouted and shrieked and clanged around him, every possible punishment or reward given out at once, and he couldn't help it, he was annoyed.

'Why is black evil and white good?' he demanded of the Lord of Death. 'I never saw it that way. If this is all my own thinking, then why is that so? Why is my Lord of Death not a big Arab slave trader, as it would be in my own village? Why are your agents not lions and leopards?'

But the Lord of Death was an Arab slave trader, he saw now, an Arab intaglioed in miniature in the surface of the god's black forehead, looking out at Kyu and waving. The one who had captured him and taken him to the coast. And among the shrieks of the rendered there were lions and leopards, hungrily gnawing the intestines of living victims.