The Silk Map (15 page)

“Talking to yourself, old friend?”

Katta rose. “Mazhar?” For a moment Katta's posture was unguarded, as the man stalked out of the night, black robe swishing against sand.

Although younger than Katta, he'd also passed the halfway part of life's journey, and the sword he held, curved like a living thing, suggested he'd cut more than a few others' journeys short.

The newcomer spoke in the manner of Anoka, so it took me an instant longer than it should have to recognize the entity who'd referred to the body it wore as
meat
.

“Katta!” I cried, skittering toward the assassin. “You're in danger!”

The would-be killer was as startled at my approach as I'd been at his. The sword-cut that slashed at my patterns was hasty, and I fluttered backward, unharmed but cursing my awkwardness. Katta's earlier words had stung because they were true. Something about me was botched, and I envied any creature with full command of its body.

Yet it seemed clear Mazhar could not be said to have command of anything. Rather, the entity that now billowed like a cloud of noxious smoke out of his nostrils and mouth and ears, taking up a position above the warrior, was in command.

Tendrils of darkness still linked the black blot to the orifices of Mazhar's head. The cloud itself formed three spectral eyes blazing like bonfires seen through a sandstorm.

“
You're tougher than the meat believed
,” the three-eyed thing spoke through Mazhar's throat. “
But you will still die.
”

Clearly the threat was not directed at me. I felt oddly offended by that. I also wondered just what Katta was up to while I was busy saving his life. Directing my senses his way, I was chagrined to see he'd pulled out what appeared to be a sweetcake. He leaned over it as if preparing to nibble.

“Nourishment later, O living thing?” I shrieked.

Katta smiled. “All things perish. To one who has released attachment and embraced compassion, death holds no fear.”

“The middle of a fight's no place for philosophy!” I replied.

Seeing as I'd get no help from Mad Katta, it seemed prudent to flee. Yet I'd gone to some trouble to save the fool, and I was loath to abandon him. And something about the story of Xia and the Iron Moths had tugged at my tassels.

But what could I do against a swordsman, let alone a possessed one? I am a carpet.

Yes
, I thought,
I am a carpet
.

As I was slightly upslope from Mazhar, I rolled myself up as if for delivery and tumbled downhill.

Mazhar stumbled. He didn't fall but lost a few moments regaining his footing. I unrolled myself and sprang.

I heard Katta murmuring a prayer, or at least what sounded like a prayer:

 

Being is as one with Nothing

Nothing is as one with Being

Being is Nothing

And Nothing is Being

This seemed to sum up what help he would be being: nothing.

I engulfed Mazhar, and also the darkness that engulfed him.

At least one of those things would need air.

My strength surprised me, and I wondered uneasily what tasks the wizard Olob had truly envisioned for his carpet. Mazhar fell. He flailed and jabbed, but he lacked the space to make a worthy attack.

The thing of smoke and blazing eyes had other resources, however. I felt a great dry slithering within, and heat blazed upon me in three places. Fresh smoke filled the air, and the spells that gifted me perception now filled me with pain. It seemed fate wanted me fed to fires.

I unraveled, and Mazhar laughed. He had risen, an ornate circular cap tumbling from his shaven head, sword tracing designs in the air. “
Know your place, rag.
”

As Katta's laughter had kindled my anger, the insult roused my pride. “I am a carpet of the kilim tradition! My kin were born upon the steppes thousands of years ago. We'll still be woven long after the rains have washed you away!”

Fiery eyes flashed at me. They seemed to truly regard me for the first time. “
Rag! Pus-cloth! How dare you display the image of the fiery mountain?
”

“How should I know!” I replied. “Do you think I wove myself?”

“
Who did? Blind Katta?
”

“Charstalker!” called Katta. “You rant like someone famished. Eat!”

Something flashed through the moonlight, to pass through the blazing-eyed black cloud.

The sweetcake landed near me, smoldering. I perceived that it had the shape of a discus.

It seemed to mean something to the demonic, smoky thing, however—the Charstalker.

It writhed outward like an inkspill, losing substance as it did. Its eyes smeared, weeping hissing red tears. “
It is imbued!
” it growled in Mazhar's voice. “
You imbued a cake with power?
”

“It might as aptly been a blade,” said Katta, a hard cheerfulness in his voice. He pulled from a pouch a second cake. “Flour and metal are both illusions. Yet I'm more a baker than a smith. And I lack sufficient enlightenment to eat steel.”

“
We shall see!
” snarled Mazhar and turned toward Katta with weapon raised. At the same moment he lifted an irregularly shaped lump of rock and flung it. It seemed this was to be a battle of strange projectiles.

In the next moment I realized just how strange. For when the rock fell, it shattered, and a blast of frigid air came forth, white wisps whipping toward the stars. The vapors wove together a form out of nightmares. It towered over us, a vaguely conical beast as large as a manse, with man-sized spikes for legs and similar spikes lashing the air above. In silence it bore down upon Katta.

He somehow seemed to perceive it, and he flung his second sweetcake in its direction. He could hardly miss.

One leg of the nightmare unraveled and became as morning mist. The beast hesitated. At that moment Katta was obliged to raise his staff as Mazhar swung his sword. The Charstalker's eyes blazed, and its puppet's voice gloated.

“
Behold a monstrosity of archaic times! Before the desert came, before the time of humanity or the fallen Karthagarians, before even the crimson seas of the Leviathan Imperium, there were nightmares in the Earthe!
”

Clearly the words were meant to intimidate. Yet through ragged breaths, Katta said, “It is but . . . a memory . . . of a dream . . .”

I rallied my tattered self. If Katta's insanity could keep him defiant in the face of such danger, surely I, with no internal organs to stab, could aid him.

Once more I tackled and smothered Mazhar.

This time I was ruthless, rolling tight to give him no room to strike and folding myself so the Charstalker couldn't billow forth. Dimly I perceived Katta flinging cakes at the vast prehistoric ghost, but I could spare no time for that. The Charstalker unleashed its powers, and once more I burned in three places. But this time Mazhar screamed and coughed most wretchedly.

“Enough!” Katta said, his staff striking the sand beside me. “Release him, carpet!”

Now I saw no titan of former times, but I did see Katta looking mad indeed. His face was covered in such frost he might have stepped directly from the arctic.

“He means to kill you,” I said.

“It was the Charstalker's doing. I will make reply. Release him. Please.”

I unrolled myself. By now Mazhar had ceased flailing. He lay quivering, breath ragged. But the Charstalker, as Katta called it, rose up beside the ordinary billows of smoke. It swirled as a dust devil does, eyes like distorted sunlight.

The Charstalker had no voice now. But soon the fiery light sketched words in the air, using the flowing script the Anokans adopted from the folk of Mirabad. THE MEAT DIES. GIVE ME THE MAP, AND YOU CAN SAVE HIM.

I recalled the Charstalker's counterpart speaking of a silk map, and I wondered how the Charstalker expected to carry it. But the entity had displayed many capabilities I would not have suspected of a smoke cloud.

“Come and get it,” Katta said.

The cloud rushed upon him like an oncoming sandstorm, tendrils lashing toward ears and nose and mouth.

At the last moment Katta tossed his sweetcake and swung his cane. The wood connected and spattered crumbs into the space before Katta.

When the Charstalker intercepted them, an agonized keening rent the air. The cloud dispersed like a clutch of snakes, hissing away into the sky. I glimpsed them re-forming, the fiery eyes weak as dying embers, as the whole mass shot off to the east.

Katta chanted, “
Travel on, travel on, cross the river of perception, and know at last the other side.
”

“I think it has indeed traveled on,” I said. “But your friend may soon go farther.”

Katta might have been mad, but he clearly cared for his friend. I wondered at the contrast between his graceful battle against the Charstalker and his cautious movements now. Though far from helpless, he was careful to use his staff to explore the ground. Yet in battle he might have been a sighted man at noon.

Katta knelt beside Mazhar and placed his hand first upon the warrior's twitching face, then the chest tormented with coughs. “Mazhar! My friend! Can you speak?”

I heard in Katta's voice something of the tone my initial owners had used with each other on the rare occasions when they showed affection. I wondered at the depth of the friendship that might be perishing now.

Mazhar made a valiant effort. “I—” Whatever he meant to say was buried by an avalanche of hacking.

“He requires a healer,” said Katta. The equanimity he'd displayed during the fight was now fraying like an old rug. “One dwells just within the city wall, beyond the caravanserai. If you could convey him—”

“Alas,” I said, “you were right about my capabilities. I would surely injure him in the attempt.”

“Alas indeed.”

“I could go myself and bring help,” I said, “but I do not know the way.”

“And I might go, but I fear every minute lost. Even were I not dog-weary . . . dogs . . .”

“What is it?”

“I have heard of barbaric lands where dogs are trained to guide the blind. I have my own resources and have never sought the truth of it. But you—”

“Yes!” I said, rising up. “Grab a tassel, and I will guide you.”

“We will return soon, Mazhar.”

Mazhar's weak reply was grateful but incomprehensible. I hoped we would be swift. Yet even through my concern I thrilled at the possibility of being useful, rather than the botched result of one wizardly scheme or another. After a shaky start, Katta and I fell into a pattern. I was able to control my quivering movements enough to avoid toppling him. I led him around boulders and warned him of ditches.

“I dare to hope,” Katta said, some of his earlier equanimity returning. “But once Mazhar is safe, we must depart.”

“‘We?'” I asked.

“The caravan. We'll leave a night early, for I will not further endanger Mazhar. In time we may leave the others as well. If the Charstalkers hunt the map, surely more fragments have come to light. The race is on.”

“What?” I said. I was ignorant on many points. I am a carpet. “And again, ‘we'?”

“All in good time. But I could use such a guide as you in the shadowed places I must walk. I will pay—once we work out what payment suits a magic carpet. And I sense you might like to leave this place.”

And thus I began leading my master through the darkness. There was much darkness to come. Yet the thought of being of value to someone set a light blazing through my mind.

And thus I confess how I set tassels on the road winding through desert and cave and mountain toward the wounding of Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone. Aye, and the world. But that is not the worst of it, O dread one.

No, the greatest confession is that I would do it all again.

Bone was still munching on a dripping slice of watermelon while carrying an uncut cousin of the original under his arm. He realized he looked like an idiot, and he played on that realization to buy himself more time. “Whaaaat?” he slowly uttered, while his eyes peered at the mysterious warriors and the treasure hunters they threatened. His mind raced.

The room was bare of useful materials; there was only a desk, behind which stood the threatened bearded man and a chest beside his compatriot. There were four assailants, all dressed in a manner foolish for hot country, for they wore close-fitting black tunics with cowls covering most of their faces. The faces themselves possessed an intriguing variety of hues. The one holding a knife to the throat of the bearded man had the look of a person of Qiangguo or its frontiers. One of the sword-wielders did as well, but a third figure's face was night-dark, and the last looked like another pale journeyer from the remotest West.

Though Bone had spoken in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell, this last assailant replied in Roil, the polyglot language of Bone and Gaunt's home territory. “Leave now, or their fate will be yours.”