Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$0.99				$0.84

eBook Category: Fantasy/Family/Relationships
eBook Description: The qin, or guqin, is an instrument filled with symbolism. It originally had five strings for the five elements: metal, water, fire, wood, and earth. Then two emperors, for different reasons, added one apiece, bringing the total to seven strings, each with its own symbolism. Which raises the question: does each string have its own use in magic?

eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Lace and Blade 2, 2009
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2010

8 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [24 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [56 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [8 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [346 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [7 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [85 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [78 KB] , hiebook (KML) [69 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [69 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [6 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [8 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [62 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [16 KB]
Words: 2252
Reading time: 6-9 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"He said that he loved me above all else in the world. He said if I agreed to marry him, he would build me a palace of gold." Jia looked at around her reception room. Walls hung with yellow silk were interspersed with polished hardwood pillars. She paced across the carpet, ignoring both its softness and the beauty of its design, to the window. It was raining outside, and the water dripping off the points of the tiles that edged the roof formed a beaded curtain. The wooden latticework in the window prevented anyone outside from seeing her, but it did not obstruct her view of the palace grounds - or the other portion of the women's quarters. "He did not," she snapped, "say anything about becoming Emperor and taking three thousand concubines!" She ran her hand along the smooth wood of the pillar next to the window. Wood was her element, and usually touching it soothed her, but at the moment she was feeling much too frustrated.

"Does he really have three thousand of them?" her maid Li asked. "He's been Emperor for only six years!"

"Three-thousand-fourteen," Jia replied, "with more coming in every month." She stopped pacing to sit on a barrel-shaped sandalwood stool and stroked the wooden body of the qin on the matching table before her. "I've been keeping track." She played a soft ripple of notes on the silk strings strung the length of the instrument. Jia was small with a deceptively fragile appearance, which she wielded - along with her beauty - as a weapon in the undeclared warfare of the harem. She regretted, however, that her small hands gave her trouble with the fingering of some of the classic repertoire for the qin.

"But it would take him more than eight years - assuming a rate of one concubine a day - to go through them!" Li protested.

"It's supposed to be more than one each day, but you're forgetting the 'more of them every month' part." Jia sighed. "I'm twenty-eight years old now. I haven't been with him often enough even to conceive, let alone bear the son he needs. And I do want at least one child of my own."

Li paused, obviously trying to find a delicate way to phrase her next question. "How many children does he have?"

"Fewer than one would suppose, given the number of concubines," Jia replied. "Also, all the children he has are daughters. Sooner or later he is going to need a son."

"All of his children are daughters?" Li thought about it for a moment. "You must be correct; we would have heard had anyone borne him a son. But surely the odds..." her voice trailed off as she looked suspiciously at the qin. "What did you do?"

"Almost nothing," Jia shrugged. "I invite them to my little gatherings, and I play the qin. Concubines are chosen for their youth and their yin essence. All I have done," she played a series of notes, plucking delicately at the strings, "is to enhance their yin. Perhaps that results in their having so much female energy that they give birth only to daughters. Who can say?"