On the night of the third day, the twenty-four thousand people of Xinye (新野) at last crossed the southern river.

At the hour when the last person stepped upon the far bank, the oil lamp in the west room of the magistrate's office at Xinye wavered wide for the last time. Kongming (孔明) set a short slip beside the lamp and rose. Three characters stood upon it.

放火去.

Set the fire and go.

Liu Bei (劉備) received the slip at the south gate of Xinye. The ink had not yet dried in his hand. Kongming stood beside him, holding a light bundle from the previous afternoon and a single shard of the teacup from the previous evening. Those two small props were all he carried for the long road ahead.

"Master. Shall I set it?"

Kongming nodded.

"Your Lordship. This is the fire you leave behind. Once lit, a seven-year seat will burn away in a single motion. Yet its meaning is this: when, upon some spring morning twenty years from now, this seat returns beneath Your Lordship's name, it will be the origin of the first fire of that spring. The fire you leave behind is the origin-point of the first fire of your return."

Liu Bei clasped his hands and lifted the slip high. It wavered again lightly in the wind. Then his right hand took up a torch and moved slowly toward the map on the wall of the west room of the magistrate's office.

The cushion beneath the map was already empty. Kongming had risen from it. On the wall, the five-chi paper bearing the three slices in three colors still hung. The black dot of Cao Cao (曹操) in the north. The blue-gray dot of Sun Quan (孫權) in the southeast. The ochre dot of Liu Bei himself in the southwest.

Liu Bei brought the torch close to one corner of the map. Fire caught upon that corner and spread slowly toward the center of the paper. The three slices of three colors were each swallowed by the fire's tongue.

The black dot in the north burned first. Then the blue-gray dot in the southeast. Last, the ochre dot in the southwest — most slowly — burned. Just before the ochre dot was wholly consumed, Liu Bei lifted the torch from the wall and set it back again. Before the ochre dot vanished completely, he closed his eyes briefly and opened them again.

When he opened his eyes, the ochre dot was rising as smoke toward the ceiling. The map was now a single sheet of ash. The seat of the last name within the emptied city had turned to ash with it.

Liu Bei lifted the lamp a final time and set it against the north curtain of the west room. The curtain caught. Its fire climbed to the wooden beams of the ceiling. The west room of the magistrate's office rose into a single flame.

The three men — Liu Bei, Kongming, and Zhang Fei (張飛) at the door — passed the south gate of the office and came out beyond the city. Upon the wall, Liu Bei's banner still stood. It had not burned. When Cao Cao's great army arrived before the city the next evening, that banner would hold them beneath the wall for a night.

Outside the gate, he turned back. Within the magistrate's office at Xinye, the first strand of fire was already climbing upon the roof tiles. The sound of a single tile cracking came up. That sound was the last sound of seven years.

On the southern road, Guan Yu (關羽) was waiting. At the tail of the last column of the twenty-four thousand who had crossed the river, he stood holding the reins of his horse. When Liu Bei, Kongming, and Zhang Fei reached him, Guan Yu was silent. He bowed his head. Then he turned and looked north.

The sky over Xinye was red. The red was not the red of sunset but the red of fire. Upon Guan Yu's long beard, that red settled thin.

"Brother. Is this fire the first fire of the twenty years to come?"

"Yunchang. This fire is both the last fire of the seven years and the first fire of the twenty years. Two rhythms lie folded together within one fire."

Kongming bowed his head beside them. The four gazes of the four men overlapped upon the red of the northern sky above Xinye. That single overlapping gaze became the first gaze of the twenty years to come.

At the end of the southern road, the twenty-four thousand people were already sitting quietly upon the far bank of the river, waiting. When Liu Bei's party crossed over, they rose together at once. The eyes of twenty-four thousand turned toward the one man Liu Bei. His yard of seven years, three days before, had been a yard shared with twenty-four thousand; from this night on, it was a road shared with twenty-four thousand.

Behind them, Xinye's fire still stained the sky red. Ahead, the southern road stretched into the dark. The two lights from two directions came down in turn upon the two cheeks of Liu Bei's face. One cheek, for a short moment, wore the color of what he was leaving; the other, the color of what he was moving toward.

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