Under the afternoon light, the three slices of the five-chi (尺) map grew clearer by one measure.

Kongming (孔明), with the tip of his fan, placed a dot upon each slice in turn. The three dots were each a different color.

At the center of the northern Central Plain (中原), a deep black dot of ink fell upon Cao Cao's (曹操) name. At the center of the southeastern Jiangdong (江東), a clear blue-gray dot fell upon Sun Quan's (孫權) name. At the center of the southwestern Jingzhou and Yizhou, a pale ochre dot fell upon the single character 劉, written for the first time this morning.

The three colors were also the temperaments of the three men. Black was heaviness and firmness. Blue-gray was clearness and the lightness of youth. Ochre was the color of quiet waiting.

"Your Lordship. The three colors of the three slices are the three rhythms of a single world. Within a single world, it does not happen that one color devours all three. When the three colors bear with one another upon one soil, the three slices of that soil become, at last, one world."

Liu Bei (劉備) looked long at the map. Accepting that the three dots were each a different color came first; only then could his own ochre dot take its seat. Until this morning, he had long carried inside him the desire (慾) to devour the black dot of the north in a single blow. Kongming's words this afternoon gently loosened one strand of that desire.

"Master. That the three colors revolve at three different rhythms — I shall receive, beginning this afternoon."

Kongming closed the fan. The empty space at the center of the map grew clearer by one measure.

"Your Lordship. The three colors of the three slices are not the same size. Today the black dot is largest, the blue-gray next, and the ochre smallest. Shift the difference of those sizes, Your Lordship, with the rhythm of your coming years. Until the day when the ochre dot stands level beside the black and the blue-gray, walk slowly. Do not try to grow all at once."

Slowly. That single word rang quiet inside Liu Bei. He remembered — no, he did not remember, because he did not know — the three characters Cao Cao had written last spring beside Xinye's dot upon his own scroll, 慢起 (Rises Slowly). He did not know those three characters. Yet Kongming's slowly this afternoon, and Cao Cao's 慢起 on the wall at Xudu, eight hundred li apart, rang with the same rhythm of the same word. The eyes of two enemies were turned toward each other, yet within their ears, strangely, the same word was ringing together.

The afternoon light fell long across the southwestern corner of the map, upon Jingzhou. Kongming opened his fan again and shifted that light, a little, over to the ochre dot. With the shift of the light, the ochre dot brightened, for an instant, by one measure more.

"Your Lordship. This afternoon's shift of light is the rhythm of the ochre dot's color for the next twenty years. Light does not move all at once; it moves only by one motion of a fan at a time. Your ochre dot too, Your Lordship, will grow only at the rhythm of one motion of a fan."

Liu Bei bowed his head. With his left hand he pressed, lightly, one corner of the map, to keep the paper from being scattered by the wind. Within that gesture, a handful of dirt from yesterday afternoon's yard lay still between his palm and the paper, a little present, into this afternoon.

Kongming rolled the map up slowly. He pushed the rolled map over to Liu Bei with both hands.

"Your Lordship. From this afternoon, this map is yours. When you return, hang it upon the wall of the west room of the magistrate's office at Xinye. Every morning, look at the three slices, and etch again into the inside of your heart the three colors, the three sizes, and the empty space at the center of this morning."

Liu Bei received the map with both hands. The map was lighter than he had thought. But within that lightness lay the weight of his own name, which had wandered across five yards for twenty years, settled, for the first time this morning, into a place.

"Master Kongming. When I return to Xinye this evening, I shall hang this map upon the wall. Beneath it, I shall leave a seat open for you. When you will come to Xinye, I shall not ask today. Only, your seat beneath the map shall wait for you, kept empty."

Kongming smiled. The smile was short but warm.

After the map of three slices in three colors had been rolled, the afternoon light in the yard of Wolonggang grew quiet again. The two men stayed long silent. Outside the brushwood gate, Guan Yu (關羽) and Zhang Fei (張飛) were also long silent.

This afternoon in the yard of Wolonggang (臥龍崗), one map passed from the hand of one man to the hand of another. That single move was the first beat of the rhythm of three slices in three colors for the twenty years to come.

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