It started when Borias that sonofabitch threw me off his horse in the middle of a good fuck and galloped off like a puppy to meet with the mighty Laotse. He said that I would just mess up the negotiations. Well piss on that I thought. He wasn't going to leave me like a concubine while he went off to negotiate our fortunes. I grabbed my crutch and stumbled over to get on my horse, the only place I felt whole. On horseback I could ride and fight as good as any man, and I rode like a demon and caught up with Borias at the yurt camp just as he was meeting the ruler of Lao. I nearly fell off the horse again when I saw it was a woman.

I stepped into the yurt just as she took off her earrings. I thought it would be easy; she looked so delicate, like the groveling servants in the great houses of Chin. But she caught my knives faster than I could see, and threw me into the air. When I came to lying on the ground, she was staring at me the same way she stared at me that morning with Borias. She whispered some strange advice...that I should empty myself of desire if I was to know the way, but all it did was make me angrier. Did she really think she could teach me to not want anything after she had just humiliated me? I was fed up with humiliation and would have killed half of China to be free of it. Then, in case I thought things could not get worse, she walked out on the treaty she had made and Borias, who a few hours earlier that day had been between my legs, threw me out of the camp. Well, if that was the way he wanted it, so be it. I had my own plan anyhow, and it would bring him, humbled, back to me.

Kidnapping Ming Tien was a good idea I thought, and I pulled it off without a problem. Gods, it was the easiest thing I ever did. Ming Tzu had posted almost no guards around him, the fool, and I yanked his princeling up into the saddle with me and rode back into the hills. The boy never cried or spoke, but he pissed himself for fear. There was no one else for me to talk to, so I talked to him, and told him how to handle his enemies. "Kill them", I said, "and make a show of it, so that they learn to fear you. Kill them through your soldiers or your executioners, or with your own hands, if you have to. But kill them or, depend on it, they'll surely kill you". And I knicked him on his little head with my knife so he'd remember. It was a perfect job, no complications, and the ransom was delivered. It was a thing of beauty.

And then Borias betrayed me. That bastard handed me over to Ming Tzu like a pile of skins and left with half the ransom. Ming Tzu wanted to make an example of me to the boy, and had me beaten, but it was nothing more than I could endure. In cruelty, Ming Tzu fell far short of his heir and I think that even Ming Tien was a little disappointed. I had set a standard of ruthlessness for him that he couldn't wait to practice. I could see it burning in his eyes, all the time I was in captivity. I had taught him well, and now I was the lesson. In contrast, Ming Tzu was almost kind. For I slept those two nights in a dry stone cell rather than in a sewer, and in the morning they clothed me for the hunt. It was the ragged dress of the previous prey, a woman who they said died far too quickly, and they hoped I would provide more lengthy entertainment. It stank of dogs and death.

And so I was brought shivering to the hunting grounds in a bamboo cage bound to a rumbling cart. Odd the things you notice when you think you are about to die. It was a cool morning but the sun was shining brightly and birds were singing. It reminded me of childhood games in the woods, although the trees in the land of Chin were different from the ones I knew. Two men marched alongside the cart with bronze halberds, as if I needed escort. Two others walked behind leading strings of hunting dogs. I wondered which of the hounds would be the first to reach me, and how long I could fight them off with my hands before they pulled me down like a deer. The cart stopped and I gathered my courage and my thoughts. But just as our woeful group prepared for the ultimate bloodsport, Lao Ma's litter appeared. She stepped out and came towards us, to give the boy something which he threw back at her. Since I was, I thought, about to be torn apart by dogs, I wasn't paying much attention. But in that red coat – the Chinese color of good fortune -- she stood out against the woods like a flame. For a brief moment, when she looked back at me, I almost thought I felt her warmth.

I thought it was the end. I ran first with the stick and then I lost it and ran on, staggering on my aching crooked legs. I cursed Borias, and Ming Tzu, and every living thing that thrived while I fled from my tormentors. "I'll kill them all," I thought even then, even running for my life. I fled from the hunters, but slowly grasped that I was also running toward something in the distance. I stumbled and fell, and staggered again toward the spot that pulled me, and finally fell again. I felt the hound's hot breath on my heel, and I knew I would not get up again. My last thought was.....nothing. I had no last thought, and so when I saw her feet in front of me, and the hem of her red coat, her image filled up my consciousness, like water flowing into an empty vessel.

She quieted the dogs and helped me to my feet and when I could speak again I asked her why. I thought it was a trick, that someone had devised an even crueler kind of punishment, but she said she could see into my soul and she saw greatness. She seemed to always speak in mysteries.

She brought me to the house of Lao and hid me in the inner court in the pool. I crouched there in the water until we heard them coming and then I sank down under the surface. The court was dark and I was safe from their eyes but my life depended on Lao Ma getting them away in less than a minute. The minute passed and I opened my eyes watching for her signal but gods, it never came. I was at my limit and I heard a roaring in my ears. Then I saw her face in the water and I grasped what she intended. To give me a single breath of air. One small breath to keep me safe for half a minute longer. I turned my face to her and felt her lips. It took a second for both of us to realize that I had to breathe out first, before I could breathe in, and when I had, she pressed her mouth to mine again and gave me the air of her lungs. So strange to take that little bit of life from her. It was more intimate than anything I had ever done.

It was enough. I watched, and when she turned her head again I came sputtering up for air and she smiled at me. She kept me in the pool even after Ming was gone, but took my ragged clothing off. I must have been filthy, especially by her standards, after sleeping in a jail cell and then crawling through the woods. When I was naked she washed me and poured water through my hair. "Nothing is as soft as water," she murmured to me, in her lovely deep voice, "yet who can withstand the raging flood". She dried me with her own hands and dressed me in silk. I had seen such silk on the Chinese nobles but never felt it on my body. It was like being dressed in a breath of air, and I sat before her speechless while she combed my hair. She combed it smooth and bound it back in a sort of tail in the style of the Chinese women, and fixed it in place with carved wooden hairpins. It was her attempt to civilize me.

But I didn't want to be civilized. I had vengeance to wreak.

I was free again and had only one thought -- to get back to Ming and cut his arrogant head off. But, inexplicably, she delayed me. She had her reasons for saving me and I was faintly interested in finding out what they were I could hold off butchering Ming Tzu for a few days, or a week. I owed her that.

* * * * *

And so I let her pamper me and paint me like a doll. No woman had touched me that way, not since my mother, and I barely remembered that.

She knew exactly how to handle me. If she had restricted me the slightest bit, had locked the door or put a guard on me, I'd have gone in the blink of an eye. But she let me wander the palace and the gardens, showed me to the household as her "honored guest", and so I was held there by a sense of obligation--a sense that I didn't recall ever even having before. But I was not so obliged that I always stayed within her reach. On the second day I discovered the stables, and the stable boy Liu Ling. With Lao Ma's grudging permission, he showed me the finest horses and I chose a favorite, the roan stallion, Tai Feng. I rode him most evenings through the fields and woods of her land. I rode to the border with the Kingdom of Ming-- but did not cross it. It was both a way to feed my hatred of Ming Tzu and a way to test my patience. I knew he was over there, and I knew I would one day send him to his ancestors. It was a kind of comfort. I also knew that if I did not train and keep myself strong, Lao Ma's would 'gentle' me to my death. So I rode to the woods often where Ming Tzu's dogs had hunted me and, seething in the memory of it, I practiced leaps and fighting moves until I was exhausted.

When the sun was fully down and the sky dark I returned, as lathered as the horse. I handed Tai Feng over to Liu Ling, who cared for him, and after scrubbing down in Lao Ma's bath, I went for another civilized supper with her.

Their daily drink was tea, but they also had beer and a kind of liquor far stronger than the fermented mare's milk of the nomads. The Chinese foods were also new and pleasing to my taste, after two seasons of the nomads' mutton, goat and kasha. They were spiced in ways I had never tasted before, with cinnamon and pepper and a wonderful thing called ginger. The food was cut into little pieces that barely need chewing, but you were required to pick them up with little eating sticks. I did not get to eat much for the longest time.

For all the dressing up in silk and all the table games, I did not forget I was a fighter. A fighter with a plan, or the beginnings of a plan. I thought I might stay around awhile, gathering my strength, finding out who could be bribed, how horses could be stolen and what weapons could be used, to make another fighting force. I had a lot of retribution to extract. But I could bide my time. There was no hurry. I would wait, and learn. In the mean time, the Kingdom of Lao, and the Land of Chin, and Lao Ma herself fascinated me.

With its stables and gardens, and its army of servants, it was somewhat like the household of a Grecian king, with a notable exception. The highest males in the household staff were castrated. Eunuchs she called them, and at first I laughed, but then I saw that they were men to be taken seriously. They were scribes, and guards, and emissaries and household managers and were in many positions of authority, in spite of their sometimes odd appearances and unnatural voices. One of them Zheng Ha, was her chamberlain and often at her side. He had a soft voice and a soft body, and walked in a way no man should walk. I detested him at first, and thought of him as only half a man. I rarely spoke to him, and found it distasteful that such a man should be allowed to lurk about the household.

Yield, she kept saying. It is the yielding and the giving up of will which would be my salvation, but yielding was simply not in my nature. There was far too much I wanted, needed. I said I'd rather die, and she answered, cruelly, "You've been dead for a while now". But she was wrong. She had no idea how alive she made me feel when she stood close to me. How exquisitely aware I was of her in the morning sunshine. She smelled of sandalwood and of the mint we both had drunk that morning. Her Asian eyes were deep and dark and she held secrets behind those lids. I wanted to reach out and touch them, but since the day she had breathed a little of her life into me, she had not touched me, and so I didn't dare. But I think she knew something of my thoughts, of the urges, which simmered beneath the surface. Sometimes out of nowhere in a quiet room, she looked over at me with an expression of weariness and gently said, "Xena, you must learn the meaning of no."

Yielding and emptiness were the themes of her life, and they showed up even in the names she gave things. There was a cat, long-haired and sleek, that had the run of the house. Lao Ma called it 'Kiung' or 'emptiness'. She never asked its whereabouts or made a fuss over it, or even seem to notice its presence in the room, but she stroked it absentmindedly whenever it came near. It seemed to be her attitude toward all things, to take them as they came, to let the forces of nature move around her with neither attraction nor aversion. And the cat itself seemed to embody the peace she always spoke of, always finding the spot of sunlight in a room, or dozing in the garden.

And so the days passed and in the harmony of her house and of her presence I did learn a sort of superficial quiet, if not passivity. I watched her wield a kind of power I had never seen before. With deceptive lightness she issued orders, ran the household together with Zheng Ha, ran the kingdom, in the name of Laotse, and in spite of her softness, her authority remained unquestioned. I saw them often in consultation. She walked gracefully along the corridors or the terrace and spoke softly; he matched her steps, his hands clasped behind his back, nodding his head in agreement or shaking it in dissent. She clearly valued his opinion and his presence seemed to make the absence of her husband less obvious.

Her husband.

I saw him finally, at a distance, sitting at the other end of the garden. Zheng Ha stood at his side and seemed to be in conversation with him. But Laotse did not move, and if he spoke it was without gesture or animation. I thought I smelled conspiracy. Zheng Ha as a spy for Laotse, perhaps? I would soon find out.

I often watched Lao Ma writing her verses but the images in which she wrote them were a great mystery to me. These people have no alphabet! They paint with bamboo brushes and make jagged little splashes in the shapes of houses or stick figures, with wings and feet. The little splashes form a pattern, and the pattern is a word, or part of a word. And the scribes paint the patterns in a row, from top to bottom, in lines that cross the page from right to left like flowering vines hanging down a wall. They make an art of it, writing their poems on pictures, and they care as much about appearances as about the thought. I tried to learn a few of the brush pictures, just to please her, but always made a mess of it.

I wanted to make a gift to her and so I went one morning with a brush and ink to the garden, to practice the word pictures. I remember the way the sunlight fell on the side of my face and warmed me as I sat in our favorite place between the quince trees. I practiced diligently, laboring to make the character for water, with delicate sideways flicks of the brush instead of the hard downward strokes. In a way it was her character I painted, or tried to paint. I hoped Lao Ma would come to me and read her latest verses, or write them, or simply talk, but the only creature to join me was the cat Kiung. She came out regally from beneath a flowering bush and petals stuck to her furry head and shoulders as she did a long cat-stretch and then tiptoed toward me like a maiden garlanded for spring. She groomed herself with concentration and then curled up next to me, adding another layer of peace to the already quiet grove. But if the garden was peaceful, my mind was not. I had thought most of the night about what Lao Ma had said and felt torn between the two ways of thinking. She seemed so at peace, her kingdom prosperous and cultured – surely that was a worthy way of life. Why was it so difficult for me to give up struggling? What was I struggling toward?

I heard a sound behind me and spun around. Had I been carrying a weapon the fool who stood there might have forfeited his life. But it was just the eunuch Zheng Ha, carrying the bamboo scrolls of the household accounts. He bowed politely, looked over at the scroll on which I had made an inky mess and spoke in his womanly voice.

"I see the Lady Xena practices our writing. You honor us. Will you allow me to show you an easier way to apply the ink?"

I nodded, distrustful, and handed him the brush. "You simply have too much ink to start," he said. "And if you create the character from top to bottom and from right to left, the strokes will not run together. Here, try it again", and he gave me a nearly dry brush. To my surprise, a decent character for 'water' appeared. Then with his assistance I wrote 'earth' and 'heaven' 'man' and 'woman'. I was very pleased with myself.

"Show me the character for 'Tao', I said.

"Ah, yes. Lao Ma would like that, if you learned to write 'The Way'. But it is not difficult if you remember that it is an image of simplest life in simplest motion. Look, here is the cow." The brush traced out a vertical oblong shape, and two diagonal lines within. "Here are the head and horns". (Well, it looked to me like a roof with broken chimneys.) "And here on the left is the stroke for movement". He painted an L shape with a long curved foot. "You see, it is just the essence of things, a beast walking along a curving path."

"What a strange people are the Chinese", I said. "They can't even write a simple word without making a philosophy out of it!". But his instruction had made the character come to life and in fact, I copied it accurately.

"Splendid" Zheng Ha said. "Now you grasp the Tao!" Then he added, "I would not venture to write your difficult Greek."

"Oh, then you know who I am".

"I know only what Lao Ma trusts to tell me. She has told me of your origin, but she has not told me why you are so restless and angry -- and bitter."

"How do you know about my feelings? Have you been watching me?"

"Not in the way you mean. Not secretly, or with a bad intent. I know you are important to Lao Ma. What is important to Lao Ma is important to her chief servant."

"Well, I am restless from being in this quiet house. And I am angry because of my infirmity. I sense people watching me as I limp and smiling at me behind my back or worse, pitying me. I am bitter because of the harm done to my legs, to me, when I was helpless."

"I doubt that people laugh more at you than they do at me. But harm was done to me as well, when I was just a boy of ten. If I dwelled on that I would be mad. But you can accept your situation, not out of weakness but out of ....common sense. You can turn with it, as a fighter turns with a blow to the body, absorb the force and let it become part of the motion of your life. I have used my own...deficiency in such a way. I do not have a wife or children, but I have the House of Lao, and the trust of Lao Ma, and I have brought myself far from the village of my ancestors. "

"I've heard you're all conspirators."

He smiled. "Well, perhaps it's true. But conspiracies are treacherous only if you are not part of them. But the current conspiracy concerns your rescue and redemption. I believe that makes you a co-conspirator, does it not?"

I found myself smiling as well. "Well then you can end your conspiracy now. I needed to be rescued from Ming Tzu and that's done now. Redemption is not called for."

"Perhaps Lao Ma feels that your spirit needs rescue too. Why don't you give it to her for a while. Let her lighten your burden. It is clear that you love Lao Ma. I see the way you look at her. No one in the house would dare look at her that way. I don't know why she permits it. Perhaps she wants your love and has great hopes for it."

We spoke much longer sitting there in the garden, with Kiung dozing in the sun. I do not remember all of what we said, but I remember how the conversation ended. Zheng Ha said that I should stay a while, listen to Lao Ma's message and learn "to walk a different way". When I had gotten from her what she wanted to give me, I should go back to my own land.

Home? Back to Greece, on my twisted legs? I had not thought of Amphipolis for two years. And I was certain that it never thought of me.

Zheng Ha walked away, as gracefully as the cat which followed him, and I was left alone again wrestling with my thoughts.

* * * * * *

It was midday by then and still Lao Ma had not come to the garden. I became drowsy from the warmth and, tired of wrestling with my thoughts I laid my head back on my arm. My eyes wandered across the sky and over to the wooden gateway where Kiung often perched. I noticed a fringe of her long fur waving gently in the faint breeze. Of course, I thought to myself, she leaves bits of her luxurious fur on every pillow in the house, why not in the garden as well? I was about to shut my eyes when I noticed a bird light on the gate. It hopped along the wood gathering the fringe of delicate cat hairs in its beak and then fluttered off into a tree to line its nest with the fur of its mortal enemy. And its chicks would be warmed by the coat of the cat that might one day devour them. Perhaps that's what Lao Ma meant by the circularity of things. I sat up again, pleased with my new wisdom, and saw more cat hair on the grass. She has beauty enough to spare, I thought, and she leaves it everywhere. So did Lao Ma. Suddenly I wanted to be with her and I roused myself to go and look for her. I found her working miracles.

She was in the court yard where a mule drawn wagon led by a young man had pulled up before the door. An old woman was lying in it, coughing weakly with a sickness of the lungs Lao Ma pulled her to a sitting position and laid her hands on the woman's back, barely touching her. Over and over again she moved her hands over the stooping back, speaking murmurs of assurance. Gradually the woman seemed to straighten up a little, and her breathing was less labored. Finally she coughed a few wet and noisy coughs, and took a deep clear breath. Then without a word she climbed off the wagon, bowed politely and then left the courtyard with the mule, the wagon and the boy.

Then a man burnt on one side of his face and shoulder, hobbled over carrying a whimpering shivering child who was also burnt. Lao Ma took the child and held him, stroking her hand over the injured side of his body without touching it. She kissed the child's forehead and murmured to him. The change was faint at first, and only the blisters seemed to shrink. But then I saw that the redness also began to fade and when the child stopped whimpering she handed him back to his father. The father, himself clearly in pain, bowed gratefully, and asked if she could heal him too. But she only touched him delicately on the shoulder and told him to keep himself clean so the wounds could close, for she could not help him further. When they went out of the court yard I asked her, "How do you decide who to heal? Do you only heal the worthy?" Her answer surprised me, and after what I had just seen, I wasn't sure I believed her.

"No, I cannot heal everyone. Only those who have half healed themselves, who are in harmony and balance. Those I can bring along the path a little further. The father could not be healed by me. He was bitter and desperate because he had lost his wife, and soon he will sell the child because he cannot work. But the child himself was at peace, not knowing the problems that lie ahead, and I could bring him back to himself."

My next question was the obvious one. "Will you heal my legs?"

"I can't."

"You mean you won't".

"No. I cannot. You are not ready. Too much in you is broken and twisted with anger."

"When will I be ready?"

"I don't know."

That evening I went riding furious with frustration on the stallion Tai Feng. There was a bright moon to light the road and so I rode late into the night, not returning for the evening meal. On Tai Feng I felt powerful and I was sorely tempted to keep on riding. I could easily have killed a farmer and taken all I needed for provender, and killed a soldier for weapons. And while I was killing, I could settle matters with Ming Tzu, and then ride back to the steppes. Nothing to stop me. Nothing. Only a woman who spoke in mysteries.

The thought of her drained me of my murderous intent and slowly brought me to a halt. With a vague and haunting sense that there was unfinished business, I turned the horse around and rode back to the palace.

When I returned, I heard sounds in the stable. I dismounted outside, slipped in and saw by the light of a lantern Liu Ling with one of the servant girls. She sat on a sack of oats, straddling him as he leaned between her legs and thrust grunting into her. She faced me but her eyes were closed and what I had heard were her cries of pleasure. I watched for several minutes and remembered Borias, and as much as I hated him, I craved him urgently then, recalling us together on the back of his horse. I left the young lovers uninterrupted and crept into the house and into my bed. I fell asleep hating my loneliness, hating Lao Ma for somehow being responsible for it. I dreamt, of course, of sex, not out on the steppes, but under water. My lover thrusting into me, but not Borias. Someone in silk.

When the days were warm and bright, Lao Ma showed me around the Kingdom of Lao. She was proud of her land and people and had such hopes for them. For the shorter trips, such as to the grain fields, I walked with the other women alongside of her palanquin. But with my crippled gait we could not go far or fast, nor could I easily speak to her, so for the longer trips, we both rode mounted. Her status as a ruler's wife required an escort of cavalrymen which would not have bothered me. But they carried halberds and these reminded me uncomfortably of the armed escort to my almost execution in the nearby woods. It was another one of the vicious little circles that life seemed to be full of.

She showed me the industry of her kingdom, on the eastern side the silk farm with its mulberry groves, and the village of silk weavers. On the western side, the stone cutters and the foundry, where I saw a new kind of iron, heated in blast furnaces and hammered into axeblades and swords. Such blades were harder and finer than any I had ever seen, even in Greece, and I was determined to have one, no matter what it took.

We climbed to the top and looked out over the vast panorama of China. The day was clear except for distant thunderclouds, a blue-gray horizontal hovering over the green expanse. Lines of geese flew across the landscape, like a Chinese poem painted on the sky. Lao Ma stood slightly in front of me in her red coat and fur rimmed red cap. She pointed out the Kingdoms of Lao and Ming, and the other principalities farther off, and then she turned around to face me. The wind had reddened her cheeks slightly and blown stray hairs out from under her cap. After a moment I felt her finger tips touch mine and she said, "Stay with me, Xena. Be my warrior princess and rule this land with me." I looked at the land of Chin over her shoulder and then at her. She was China and China was Lao Ma. For long moments I looked, and wavered. And then I told her to stand behind me so that I could see the land without seeing her, without being tempted. Because the beauty of them together was too much and I feared losing myself to the mystery in both of them, and never going home.

I watched her write her wisdom and I thought, this woman does not recite epics before an audience, like the Greeks , but in her own way she is a bard. There is a common thread that ties them all together -- the ones who think and write. If any are to be cherished and trusted it is these, the caretakers of the language and history, and our best thoughts.

I admired her, and loved watching her, but as the afternoon wore on I became bored.

"Lets play a game of dice" I suggested, innocently, "and make a wager". She laughed softly. "What have you to risk, Xena? Everything you have is mine already. And for my part, there is nothing I have I wouldn't give you anyhow. What is there to wager?"

It doesn't have to be for objects. We can wager service. If you win I will hunt a tiger for you. Or steal horses from your enemies. Or steal your enemies and bring them captive".

"Xena, that's what got you into trouble in the first place, if you recall."

I shrugged, and you suggested that we simply wager service. The loser had to accept the demand of the winner, regardless of how distasteful. I agreed to the terms and rolled the dice.

And lost.

I had forgotten that she could control objects. What a fool I was. It must have been child's play for her that day.

So I asked, innocently, "What service do you demand? The tiger? Or the horses?"

Her answer sent shivers down my spine.

"My demand is that you stop hating for one afternoon and serve Ming Tzu."

" I had thought more of something personal, like washing your feet."

"My feet do not need washing, but that your anger needed resting".

Well, I was the one who suggested the wager in the first place, so I consented.

The next day he came, and I did serve him although I despised him. But for a brief time I stopped caring, and looking down at him from behind I simply saw a man ruling his kingdom by his best judgment and trying to teach his child how to do the same. I saw his flaws, the loose threads on his silk coat, the gray hair in his pigtail, his constant correction of the child. It allowed me to stand just inches from him with a sharp knife and not plunge it into him, in spite of his insults. This feeling passed, as soon as he was gone, and once again I recalled a sadistic man who had hunted me for sport. Still, for a brief period, I had held my hand and kept my will in check. Lao Ma was proud of me, and so pleased with her first victory that she decided to reward me.

She said: "I watched you struggle with yourself, but the softness, the quiet won out. Even if it was only because you lost the gamble, you served him. What would you have demanded of me if you had won? To serve you? I will do it, whatever you ask. I am not afraid of service, or of giving you any gift you might ask for." She was clearly not prepared for my answer.

"I would have demanded that you lie with me."

I recall she stood some distance from me, fearing to come closer, or even look at me. She just stared in the direction of the setting sun and answered, "That is an odd thing to demand".

"Why is it odd?" I asked. I remember the entire conversation. I can hear the trembling in her voice even now.

"That you should want a woman. You belonged to Borias."

"That was different. Very different."

"How?"

"A thousand ways."

She still would not look at me.

"I've never been with a woman. In my heart I have never even really been with a man. I was Ming Tzu's plaything. It was not very pleasant. And then I was sold to Laotse. That was...inconsequential. In neither case was I willing. Is that what you want?"

"No. I want you to want me."

"You can't have that. To desire you would be to destroy what I have worked so long for. You demand too much, Xena. " She ran her hand nervously down the front of her gown, as if wiping something from it. It was gesture I had never seen on her before.

"Then I withdraw the demand. I have no other. The game is over."

I walked out of the room, angry at her rejection, wanting to love her and hurt her at the same time. I was always the barbarian, even in silk and slippers.

I knew it all along. Since the day in the yurt camp I knew a demon lived behind those eyes of hers, and that night, by moonlight on the terrace, it took possession of us both. She threw me down and had me. Had me with a fury I never expected. No man had ever taken me that way; I would have killed him. But feeling her hunger, feeling her Asian composure give way to panting animal want,-- that excited me. I could not see her face, only the sheen on her black hair, and I heard her breathing through clenched teeth. I thrashed beneath her iron grip, but she was extraordinarily strong, and where she scratched me she drew blood.

But it was I who had called up her devils and I submitted to them. Her fury freed me from my; own, lifted the burden I had carried since Caesar. Zheng Ha was right. Submitting to her gave me the first peace I had known in the land of Chin, although she paid for it, I knew, with the loss of her own. When we came to our senses, I was filled with regret for what I had done, and I made love to her again in the quiet of my room in the way Greek women sometimes do. For a short time, for a brief morning hour, I felt release, like floating in water, timeless.

She knew it and not only did she make no recriminations, she took the peace of that moment to heal my broken legs.

I felt her hands flowing over me and it was like the return of air after suffocation. Air that I never noticed I was breathing. It was the nothingness of rightness, of normalcy, the quiet after pain. That was what she meant by the loss of illusion, by the finding of the Way.

I couldn't quite believe it and I leapt to my feet to feel them straight again.

It was incredible. I was healed, I was whole, I was myself again. I was dizzy with joy when she wrapped me in silk and spun me up into the air. We turned together in the air and I barely touched her, only putting my carved hairpin into her hair, but it was better than love; it WAS our love. I felt her aching happiness at the same time I felt mine. Light shone off her face as it must have shone off mine. So must the sun feel rising, and the moon emerging from behind night clouds. It was our truest consummation, the completion of the act that started with her kiss of breath to me.

When Lao Ma left, the peace left with her. Borias knelt in front of me bringing back all the old emotions, the old battles of the field and of the bed. If I couldn't beat him to a pulp, I could fuck him senseless. It always worked. He bent to my will in all his barbarian masculinity. Suddenly I wanted to go home. And Borias was as much home as I knew. He was without mystery or subtlety; he tried to teach me nothing. But an hour in bed with him was like a gallop across the steppes; climaxing was like slashing with the sword and lopping off enemy heads. I always did like a good kill, I had just forgotten how much like sex it was. Lao Ma had underestimated me. She said I was all wood, obstinate and hard. But she forgot about the fire.

Borias and I could have left immediately; there was nothing to stop us, but I felt I owed it to Lao Ma to straighten things out with Ming Tzu. I seemed to be the object of their dissent and I thought I could settle things before leaving. So I swallowed my pride, and groveled before him

But it wasn't enough. The whiny bastard wanted to reclaim me as his property, and rather than butcher him right away I offered the entertainment of a gamble. I thought by then I had mastered enough of Lao Ma's skill to control the dice, and if I couldn't, certainly she could. And so, of course, I won.

But rage feeds on rage and the more Ming Tzu protested the more he threw his life away. For I was free, uncaged and stood on healthy legs. Seizing the sword from where I'd hidden it, I closed my circle with Ming Tzu. One thrust was all it took, with fine Chinese steel. "Kill them all," I thought again as the old familiar bloodlust came over me, and if Lao Ma hadn't thrown me against the wall, I'd have gotten Ming Tien as well. But sometimes we are the lesser wheel and the greater wheel turns. Lao Ma protected her child, as she had to, – and saved the life of her executioner.

She made the choice she had to make, and I made mine. Xena the barbarian was back, with will and weapon, and powerful warrior's legs. And it was time to take them home.

Borias and I rode unhindered and unhurried out from the stable yard, I on Tai Feng and he on his own horse, Kahn. At the gate, as we passed Zheng Ha, he looked at me with an unreadable expression and slowly bowed. At first I thought it was sarcastic, but I knew that sarcasm was not his manner. More likely he simply bowed to my decision to leave. For a brief moment I found myself between them, on one side of me Borias, bursting with virility and on the other Zheng Ha, the eunuch. Lao Ma's emptiness. It was such an easy choice to make. I nodded back at him and thought I saw him smile, but who knows. I hoped he would take care of Lao Ma. I still cared for her deeply, and I was abandoning her to the consequences of the killing of Ming Tzu. Well, she had her army, and all her powers, and I was of no use to her now. I was still a savage compared to her, but I knew enough to love her and value what she did. She had just come into my life too soon. A few years later, maybe, I would be ready for the influence of a philosopher. But not just then. I had a lot of carnage left in me.

As Borias and I galloped together eastward, to the Yellow Sea, I felt a sort of animal freedom, blood pulsing through the veins of my healthy legs. The robust new part of me craved him, and every night we satisfied our lust. And afterwards, when we drank the airag, the fermented mare's milk, it's sourness seemed a part of his roughness and of the wild outdoors.

But my mind was in turmoil. What had I left behind? What was I returning to?

Dreams and images haunted me, night after night. Mostly of Lao Ma. Not of our lovemaking, but of our turning in the air and of her writing in her book, the delicate winged character of water. And I dreamt of the rounded doorway to her bedroom, with the pattern that came to be her pattern. Later, when I came to carry the chakram, my own 'vicious circle', I had it imprinted with that pattern.. I doubt she would appreciate the irony of my carrying her sign on a murderous weapon, but I keep it nonetheless and when I carry it she hovers at the edge of my consciousness like a guardian spirit.

And I dreamt of the faces of Ming Tzu and Ming Tien, the child whose voice I never heard. But in the dream he spoke.

The Chinese believe in ghosts. I do not, but the ghost of Ming Tzu, whom I had killed, seemed to visit me. His skin was milky white against the purple silk of his robe. He hissed at me "Destroyer of children!" and when I answered "But Ming Tien lives", he opened his robe to show me the child he sheltered there. I looked closer and I saw it was a little girl, with the round eyes of my own people. And the girl child spoke to me in my own language, sobbing in a little girl's voice, "Why?"

The last dream I had on shipboard out at sea, before China faded from my sight and my mind, was of a scene in the distance, far behind me; a cow lumbering along a winding country path.