The Silk Map (35 page)

“I think there's one more thing,” Snow Pine said, looking at Gaunt.

“I'd prefer to draw Crypttongue as a last resort,” Gaunt said.

“I don't blame you—”

“Quickly, kids!” said Zheng. “If we're doing this, we're doing this. That map fragment must be buried here.”

“We can't possibly break into all these coffins,” Bone said.

“I have a feeling, Bone,” Zheng said, a wondering tone to her voice. “I have a feeling we're close.”

“How can that be?”

“We don't need a feeling, Bone,” Gaunt said, peering at the ghosts. “We just need to see which ghost's wearing the fragment.”

“Are you sure anyone is?”

“A beautiful item of clothing? Immensely valuable? I think yes.”

They advanced among the transfixed ghosts. Snow Pine peered here and there, rapping her staff against her left palm. It felt right and proper to wield the iron from the stars—

She saw it.

A female ghost, a proud-looking woman with a piercing gaze, wore a simple brown robe, but beneath it Snow Pine glimpsed a hem of shimmering silk. Upon it Snow Pine could see images of snow-capped mountains.

“I found her,” Snow Pine said in a hush, pointing with the staff. For a moment she imagined the hem must be real, so beautiful was the ironsilk. She stepped closer, squinting, finding that the fabric was in fact translucent.

Snow Pine searched for, and found, the twisting silver cord.

She followed it toward a distant coffin.

The light of the calligraphy dimmed. Zheng called out, “The spell is fading!”

A great hissing filled the chamber, and the light from the ghosts wavered as they shifted and began awakening from their reverie. “Stay close!” Snow Pine yelled, running up to the coffin. She slammed the staff against the wood. It shattered.

Screeching filled the chamber, and the light of the Living Calligraphy was gone. The ghosts whirled as one and flowed toward Snow Pine.

She looked into the gap, and there was enough crazy illumination to reveal the body within. The dead woman retained a grim beauty and dignity even after centuries, for all that her face appeared much as charred bark, and her hair as strips of dry cloth.

This body did not stir, and Snow Pine had a moment's regret at disturbing its resting place.

But only a moment. In the next, the ghosts were upon her.

It was all she could do to defend herself. One after another, she struck charging spirits with Monkey's staff. One after another they burst into flares of light, and with a blast of cold air they were gone. Yet there were always more.

Suddenly her companions were there, along with the magic carpet. Bone taunted and dodged and threw fragments of coffin-wood to distract the spirits. Deadfall threw itself against them, doing no damage but attracting much attention. Zheng cursed and prayed and reached into the coffin.

Persimmon Gaunt drew Crypttongue.

A strange whispering arose, audible even through the screeching of the ghosts. It seemed no louder than the spirits' cries; rather it had the timbre of dozens of voices whispering into Snow Pine's ears.

Gaunt struck.

Her target did not ignore the blade. Nor did it vanish in a burst of light. It rippled, distorted, and flowed into a gem upon the saber's pommel, like a reflection upon draining water.

Gaunt trembled and nearly dropped the sword. “It is . . . still with me . . . its knowledge is mine . . .”

“Watch out!” Snow Pine called and destroyed a ghost that reached out for Gaunt.

Gaunt's jaw was set as she slashed at a fresh target.

The two women—with a bit of assistance from man and carpet—kept the ghosts at bay. Yet the specters kept coming, and soon their guards would fall.

“I have it!” Zheng cried at last. “It's beautiful!”

“Let's go!” Snow Pine replied.

It was easier said than done. Luckily the coffin of the map fragment was on the side closest the entrance. Even so, they were too hard-pressed to move.

“Deadfall!” Bone said. “Gaunt and Snow Pine can fight their way out! But you'll have to haul me and Zheng, one at a time.”

“I do not have to do anything, O thief,” replied the carpet.

“Please, O wondrous and clever carpet.”

“Ah, very well.”

“Zheng first.”

“I can face danger as well as anyone, boy.”

“You have the map fragment. We need you safe.”

Zheng cursed. “Very well.”

“I will convey her to the entrance,” Deadfall said.

“Wait,” said Gaunt, frowning as though hearing a distant voice. “There is a better way out.
To the dark ship
. . .”

“Say again?” Bone said.

“The dark ship that sails under sands. Its magic is the reason this area stays clear.” Between sword strokes she nodded through the gloom, away from the entrance. “That way.”

“Intelligence from the ghosts?” Bone asked. “By way of the sword?”

“Yes.”

“Can you trust it?”

“I think so. Deadfall, do you sense a passage that way?”

“I do, O poet.”

“Take Zheng that way. If you are willing, Zheng.”

“Well . . . I've lived a full life,” Zheng said. “Let's see what we'll see.”

“Keep her safe!” Gaunt told the carpet.

As Deadfall carried Zheng through the dark, her cursing redoubled.

“I'm not certain travel with Deadfall qualifies as ‘safe,'” Bone muttered.

Gaunt and Snow Pine were too busy fighting to speak. In truth, despite all the danger, Snow Pine exulted in the power of the staff. It grew warm in her hands, and a crazy grin lit her face. Only dimly did she become aware of Bone's shout.

Snow Pine looked through the darkness and saw three wrapped, shambling figures moving through the ghosts toward her.

“We have to move!” Snow Pine said.

The three of them advanced along the wall after Zheng, but the ghosts kept them from making much progress. Bone threw a dagger at one of the wrapped mummies. It stuck between glowing red eye-sockets. The mummy kept coming.

“Almost there,” Bone began after a time. Then: “No . . .”

A fourth mummy blocked their path, standing within the passage Zheng and Deadfall had traveled.

“Very well,” Bone said, “I'll distract him. Run!”

“You're not allowed to die here!” Gaunt said, dispatching a ghost.

“No one stays behind,” Snow Pine agreed. “We stay together and trust to luck.”

As she spoke, the fourth mummy chuckled and reached into a pack at its feet. It pulled out some manner of discus and flung it at a nearby ghost.

The spirit sighed and crumpled, and its substance dispersed like a flock of doves.

Snow Pine heard the fourth mummy chant, in her native language, “‘Travel on, travel on, cross the river of perception, and know at last the other side.'”

The mummy—whom she was beginning to doubt really was a mummy—threw another discus, and another ghost dissipated. The group reached the thrower's side, and the stranger pulled the wrappings from its head. Snow Pine saw now that the wrappings were simply paper.

“Ah, this is enjoyable,” said the mummy, clearly a living man, “but we must be escaping. Deadfall and Widow Zheng await us.”

“Who are you?” Gaunt demanded.

“I've had many names. Dorje. Surgun. Yi. Perhaps you know me as Mad Katta.”

“Deadfall's master?” Bone said.

“Let's compare karma later, eh?” Snow Pine said.

“Follow me,” Katta said.

They retreated down the tunnel. Snow Pine struck its side, and collapsing sand sealed off the graveyard. Now they were alone.

“Unwise,” Katta said, though he kept walking.

“It buys us a moment. Who are you, really?”

“A friend. You need friends, if you are to escape the realm of the Engulfed. Come, our companions are already aboard the ship of glass.”

They reached a remnant of the buried village where timber posts formed the suggestion of a pier. Beyond it was a twisted monument of black crystal.

Snow Pine had seen many vessels during her time in Qiangguo's capital. She had seen great voyaging junks, sleek dhows, crowded galleons from places as far away as Mirabad and Kpalamaa. But she had never seen any craft like this. It was as though a three-masted ship had been assembled from leaves and thorns and branches of some brambly growth—and then transmuted to black glass. She felt lacerated just looking at it.

“Who made this?” she asked.

“Leviathan Minds,” Katta said. “Beings of nearly forgotten aeons, whose realm lies buried beneath the sands.”

“I remember,” Bone whispered. “When I was imprisoned in the crystal forest, I saw them. They were minds unlike ours, wise in magic, beyond human notions of good or evil.”

“The dwellers of the lost town remember them,” Gaunt said, raising Crypttongue and frowning at its pommel. “I hear them murmuring to me, warning me of the Leviathans' power.”

Snow Pine looked at her friends. “You two make me nervous.”

“Says the woman with Monkey's staff,” Gaunt said.

Snow Pine shrugged.

“You are an intriguing group,” said Katta. “Alas, we must postpone conversation.” He pointed down the way they'd come.

Howling ghosts were shimmering their way through the wall of sand.

He gestured toward a boarding ramp that lay before them like a giant obsidian sword. Striding up, he added, “I suggest the armed women stand ready. No offense, sir.”

“None taken!” Bone said.

As they reached the deck, Snow Pine saw Zheng kneeling before a blank scroll, ink block out, pen at the ready. Deadfall was swishing beside a ship's wheel that seemed fashioned of ruby, its eight jabbing points reminiscent of an oversized shuriken from the Five Islands.

“All is in readiness, Lord Katta,” the carpet said.

“I told you not to call me that, old friend.” Katta gripped the ruby wheel, hands landing upon two of the points. Snow Pine winced. Katta seemed unperturbed as his blood dripped upon the wheel.

Strange light, as of trapped fireflies, glowed within the red crystal.

“Intriguing,” said Gaunt.

“You've not seen the half of it.”

“Are you all right, Grandmother?” Bone said to Zheng with unexpected politeness, bowing in the manner of Qiangguo.

“Shut up and let me work, boy,” said Zheng.

“You said it takes weeks to make a scroll of Living Calligraphy.”

“And so you're preventing me from getting started?”

Bone raised his hands and backed away. Snow Pine turned away herself and stood at the top of the ramp . . . except that it wasn't a ramp anymore. Somehow it had silently been drawn up onto the deck, the jagged railing swinging shut against the opening. There being no obvious point to guard, she simply stood, waiting. Gaunt stepped beside her.

“I had not expected us to become like a pair of doomed warriors in some ballad,” Gaunt said.

“Nor I,” Snow Pine said. “You know, our stories about magical weapons usually end badly.”

“Ours too.”

“Well, however it ends, I'm glad to stand beside you, my friend.”

Gaunt squeezed her shoulder.

The ship shuddered, and crimson light flared behind them. Snow Pine would have turned to look, but at that moment the screaming ghosts arrived. The mummies weren't far behind.

Like a howling wave the spirits flowed up the side of the craft.

A proud-looking, transparent man loomed over Snow Pine. She bowed to him and disintegrated him. Beside her Gaunt stabbed a misty woman, whose form flowed into the gray sword.

“Sir!” Snow Pine heard Katta say. “You possess good aim! Employ the weapons in yonder pouch.”

Snow Pine swung the meteoritic staff, and ghosts erupted into light. But it seemed to her that some of the ghosts beyond her and Gaunt's reach began shattering like old ice.

All at once the ship lurched forward, and she and Gaunt tumbled. The ghosts wailed in sudden panic as the glass vessel surged toward a wall of sand. The spirits fled just as impact came.

Yet there was no impact as such, for the sand flowed around them like the dust of a sandstorm. In a moment the ship was entirely encircled by darkness; the feeling of movement did not abate but actually increased.

“A ship that sails beneath the sands,” Snow Pine breathed.

“A relic of lost aeons,” Gaunt murmured.

“Cakes!” Bone said.

The women turned and saw Bone scowling at an orange sweetcake. “They are cakes, and yet they destroy ghosts.”

“It is truth, not baking, that dispatches things of evil,” said Katta at the wheel. Now it glowed like a molten thing, yet the man still displayed no hint of pain. “The greater the ill-will, the greater the inner torment. I seek to reveal that reality to those who haunt the land. On the Plateau of Geam I learned the art of imbuing offering-cakes with blessings. Although,” Katta added with a hint of pride, “the discus shape is my own innovation.”

“All hail Great Katta,” said Deadfall.

Zheng dipped a bit of ink upon her scroll. “I thank you, Great Katta, for keeping the ship mostly steady. I will also thank you to explain what the hell is going on.”

“My name is not Great Katta,” said the man at the wheel. “Nor is Lord Katta or Mighty Katta or Holy Katta or any such elaboration. I will accept Mad Katta, because it has a certain charm, in a way that Blind Katta never did.”

“You are blind?” Bone asked. “That is surely not true.”

“It is. I am blessed, or cursed, with a form of second Sight, allowing me to perceive things awash in negative karma. In situations such as this, I am hampered very little! And yet, were I to throw myself endlessly against the monsters of this world, filling my Sight with horrors, I should in time fully earn the title ‘Mad.'”

“You are not mad,” Deadfall said. “You challenge evil, and I am forever in your debt. But how came you to survive the mummies near Qushkent?”