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individuals – blind, wicked, greedy creatures who see their blindness as strength,
     their
     wickedness as necessity, their greed as historical process.’
    ‘That’s so…’
    For a moment the two men fell silent, their faces solemn in the flickering light from
     the fire. Before either could speak again, the door at the far end of the room opened
     and Ben’s mother
     entered, carrying a tray. She set it down on a footstool beside the open fire, then
     leaned across to take something from a bowl on the mantelpiece and sprinkle it on
     the burning logs.
    At once the room was filled with the sweet, fresh smell of mint.
    The T’ang gave a gentle laugh, delighted, and took a long, deep breath.
    Ben watched his mother turn from the fire, drawing her long dark hair back from her
     face, smiling. ‘I’ve brought fresh
ch’a
,’ she said simply, then lifted the tray
     and brought it across to them.
    As she set it down the T’ang stood and, reaching across, put his hand over hers, preventing
     her from lifting the kettle.
    ‘Please. I would be honoured if you sat a while with us and shared the
ch’a
.’
    She hesitated then, smiling, did as he bid her; watching the strange sight of a T’ang
     pouring
ch’a
for a commoner.
    ‘Here,’ he said, offering her the first bowl. ‘
Ch’a
from the dragon’s well.’
    The T’ang’s words were a harmless play on the name of the Longjing
ch’a
, but for Ben they seemed to hold a special meaning. He looked at his mother, seeing
     how she
     smiled self-consciously and lowered her head, for a moment the youthful look of her
     reminding him terribly of Meg – of how Meg would be a year or two from now. Then he
     looked back at the
     T’ang, standing there, pouring a second bowl for his father.
    Ben frowned. The very presence of the T’ang in the room seemed suddenly quite strange.
     His silks, his plaited hair, his very foreignness seemed out of place amongst the
     low oak beams and
     sturdy yeoman furniture. That contrast, that curious juxtaposition of man and room,
     brought home to Ben how strange this world of theirs truly was. A world tipped wildly
     from its natural
     balance.
    The dragon’s well. It made him think of fire and darkness, of untapped potency.
Is that what’s missing from our world?
he asked himself.
Have we done with fire and
     darkness?
    And you, Ben? Will you drink of the dragon’s well?’
    Li Shai Tung looked across at him, smiling; but behind the smile – beyond it, in some
     darker, less accessible place – lay a deep disquiet.
    Flames danced in the glass of each eye, flickered wet and evanescent on the dark surface
     of his vision. But where was the fire on the far side of the glass? Where the depths
     that made of Man a
     man? In word and gesture, the T’ang was great and powerful – a T’ang, unmistakably
     a king among men – but he had lost contact with the very thing that had made – had
     shaped – his outer form. He had denied his inner self once too often and now the well
     was capped, the fire doused.
    He stared at the T’ang, wondering if he knew what he had become; if the doubt that
     he professed was as thorough, as all-inclusive as it ought to be. Whether, when he
     looked at his
     reflection in the mirror, he saw beyond the glass into that other place behind the
     eyes. Ben shivered. No. It could not be so. For if it were the man himself would crumble.
     Words would fail,
     gestures grow hesitant. No. This T’ang might doubt what they had done, but not what
     he was. That was innate – was bred into his bones. He would die before he doubted
     himself.
    The smile remained, unchallenged, genuine; the offered bowl awaited him.
    ‘Well, Ben?’ his father asked, turning to him. ‘Will you take a bowl with us?’
    Li Shai Tung leaned forward, offering the boy the bowl, conscious that he had become
     the focus of the child’s strange intensity; of the intimidating ferocity of his stare.
    Hal was right. Ben was not like