The Silk Map (48 page)

Gaunt and Bone shared a look. Gaunt said, “Zheng . . . I must confess something. This man . . .”

“Jamyang.”

“We cannot see Jamyang at all, nor hear him.”

“Nor are there footprints,” Bone said, “or disturbed foliage.”

“I get the point,” Zheng said. She began using the northern dialect again. She stood still afterward, nodding. “Jamyang says the illusion of reality is thinner in the valley. People may see things that are unreal, or they themselves may be perceived by others as unreal.”

“In which category,” Gaunt asked, “would he place himself?”

After a pause: “He says he is perhaps not the best person to answer your question, for as a follower of the Undetermined, he is accustomed to seeing nothing as real. Indeed, he cannot perceive you and Bone, but he is willing to accept that you exist for me, as he does. He sees no reason to privilege his own reality above yours.”

Bone rubbed his forehead. “Maybe I should give up and eat a mango, no liquor being available.”

“You may be right,” Gaunt said. “Perhaps eating the food here brings us more in tune with the processes of the valley.”

“The way you said that, it's almost as if you really understand what is happening.”

“I know! Isn't language fun?”

“I'm glad he can't hear you,” Zheng said. “You are being a little rude.”

“Zheng, you have a fever,” Gaunt said.

“I admit,” Zheng said, “I don't feel all that well . . . but I do think we should follow Jamyang.”

“Where is the fabled practicality of Qiangguo?” Bone asked.

“It's not gone, foreign devil,” Zheng snapped. “Let's suppose I made Jamyang up. He's just an aspect of my thoughts. We're no worse off, then. We're still stuck in the woods, trying to find a river. Maybe this is how my mind is trying to help itself. If Jamyang takes us anywhere crazy, you can say so. It's not like I'm asking you to trust a Karvak.”

“Who said anything about trusting Karvaks?” Bone objected.

“You did!”

“Did not!”

“Enough, you two,” Gaunt said. “Zheng, would you kindly ask your provisionally real friend the way to the river?”

Soon they were following Zheng through unexpected pathways, animal tracks with an occasional stone marker of great antiquity. At last they reached the shore of a wide blue river. The waters looked still and deep and hundreds of feet wide. On the far shore was a better-tended pathway, with a raft moored to a post beside it and a canoe sitting on the riverside mud. No one was visible.

“Could we swim this?” Gaunt said doubtfully.

“Jamyang does not advise it. The currents can destroy the unwary.”

“I don't suppose you or he see anyone on the far side?”

After a time Zheng shook her head. “Jamyang says that while it's possible to make one's own versions of the larger or smaller craft, it's best to rely on what the followers of the Undetermined have left us. But we have no guide.”

“We lack the equipment to make a worthy boat,” Bone said. “A simple raft, perhaps.”

Gaunt remembered the river crossing at Yao'an and the bargain-rate rafts of goat carcasses. “Perhaps all we need is something we can hold onto, something that will keep our heads above water.”

Bone rubbed his chin. “Steelfox wants ironsilk for her balloons, doesn't she? Maybe we can make air sacs. Wrap the ironsilk into bladders, seal them with sap . . .”

“Yes,” Zheng said. “That is interesting . . .”

With great effort they spent the morning and afternoon building a bamboo frame and attaching their makeshift bladders to it. A test proved it sufficiently buoyant to support one swimmer. They decided Zheng must go first, and Jamyang, who believed himself a sufficiently good swimmer to tag along with occasional grabs of the frame, would come along.

Into the water Zheng went. Gaunt feared for her, and once or twice Zheng struggled with a current but spun right again. The widow was surprisingly spry in the water. Eventually she was nearly at the far shore, when the strongest current yet tugged her downstream.

“Zheng!” Gaunt yelled helplessly.

Zheng, appearing almost dragged, cast away the frame and the ironsilk dress with it. She kicked and stroked her way to shore, clutching reeds.

The Silk Map, all they had of it, drifted out of sight.

Zheng poled her way back to them on the raft. Nothing untoward occurred, and soon Gaunt and Bone took up poles of their own. This trip was gentle, but the bamboo frame was long gone.

Zheng looked different, Bone thought, less careworn somehow. She told them, “Jamyang thought you'd do best with the larger craft.”

“I am glad you made it,” he said.

“So am I. It's easier to see the sunlight on the far side. I don't even regret losing the map. I think it will be all right. I am remembering . . . well, it's like recalling a dream. I do not quite believe it. But this land seems familiar.”

In the waters of the river, Gaunt saw her reflection and did not recognize herself. There before her was a hard-traveled desert wanderer, sun-bronzed, near to matching her name, and beside her was Bone, similarly road-worn, at the limits of his strength. She poled the water again, and the reflections changed. Now she and Bone fought Karvaks in Qushkent, but it was an idealized scene. It seemed she truly was the elegant dancer she'd pretended to be, hair lustrous as a courtesan's, tattoo gone, skin pale as if she'd never left rainy Swanisle. More ripples, and she and Bone climbed the Red Heavenwall far inland in Qiangguo, only there she'd been pregnant with Innocence, here she was clearly not, and able to simply enjoy an escapade with her lover in a far land. When the waters next whorled, she unaccountably saw herself as a tiny figure beside a diminutive Bone, volcanic fury blazing against a night horizon, the sky above painted with the colors of the aurora. All these scenes of her past selves, her dream selves, like and unlike the Gaunt she was. But could she know what she truly was, after all?

“Zheng,” she said. “This river is unnatural.”

“You don't say,” muttered Bone, and Gaunt wondered if he saw what she saw.

“My friend tells me the visions are a gift of the land,” Zheng said. “A sign that our identities are dreams, in a river of bubbling, transitory phenomena.”

“You haven't disagreed with me,” Gaunt said.

“I guess not,” Zheng said, chuckling, and for a moment Gaunt's companion seemed like her old self.

They reached the far side. Curiously, no sudden currents had afflicted them, as they had Zheng. As she tied the rope, Gaunt looked downstream, seeing no hint of the fragments of the Silk Map.

What she did see was the wreckage of a Karvak balloon, on the treetops perhaps a mile west. “Let's get away from here.” The three—or four—of them strode to the path.

“I . . .” said Zheng, “I am not sure . . . I can make it . . . I feel . . .”

“You can do it,” Gaunt encouraged her. “It's not far.”

“Should we investigate?” Bone said when they were once again under a green canopy. “Our friends may have been prisoners on that balloon.”

“I do not know if Flint and Quilldrake are really our friends anymore, Bone. And is that inventor Haytham a friend?”

“Ha! I'll have to tell you about him later. But what of Snow Pine?”

“She urged me to complete Monkey's task, with or without her. I gave my word.”

“What do you say, Zheng?”

Gaunt saw no one.

“Zheng?” Bone called out. “Zheng!”

“Zheng!” said Gaunt, returning to the riverbank. Bone peered into the underbrush. They continued hunting in this matter for several minutes.

Bone swore and kicked the red ground. “There are swift monsters in the world. But I cannot accept that something dragged Zheng off with us standing there.”

“Agreed. Something stranger has happened.”

“Perhaps we could ask our friend Jamyang.”

“That was not funny, Bone.”

“But it may be true. Zheng may have blended into the deeper reality of this place, to coin a phrase.”

“Hm. Perhaps we should indeed be eating mangoes.”

“I see what you mean, Gaunt, but I'm leery.”

“What if we pick a couple, the next tree we pass? We will keep them handy, in case we find ourselves at an impasse. Or starving.”

“You are wise, O wife.”

“Do not forget it, O husband.”

They followed the path. Although rough and interrupted with stones, fallen logs, and ditches, it was an improvement on the verdant maze of the other shore. Gaunt told Bone she hoped the temple she'd spotted was no apparition. Bone spoke similarly about the bejeweled palace.

In time they reached a rocky hill, seemingly identical to the one bearing Gaunt's pagoda. They saw no structure, but a winding path led up through the rocks.

“The altitude may provide a good view,” Gaunt said.

Bone sighed. “If I do have another incarnation, I may ask to return as a mountain goat.”

At the top they knelt from exhaustion; the gesture was perhaps not out of place. For a cluster of tents, akin to the ones suspended from the Karvak balloons, were arrayed in a loose crescent beside a stone statue of the Undetermined. This seated figure was missing a nose and both hands, but a gentle countenance remained.

In its lap sat the sword Crypttongue.

“The tents look old, abandoned,” Bone said.

“Time to eat the mangoes,” Gaunt said. “But just one of us for now. When that one fades, the other can eat.”

“I concur. I'll do it.”

“I was going to recommend myself.”

“I am—slightly—more adroit at skulking.”

“I think quickly. I have good intuitions.”

“You've used that sword successfully and can claim it without shifting realities. And if the mangoes bring madness, what of your intuitions?”

“I do not want to lose you, too.”

“You won't. Whatever is happening in Xembala, I believe it is not intentionally harmful.”

“Much harm can be done unintentionally.”

“I have survived much that was truly hostile.”

“Very well, Bone. Eat your mango if you're so hungry for danger.”

“Thank you.”

“Don't thank me. Just eat.”

He did this with a degree of gusto.

“Do you feel any differently?”

“Aside from slightly more sated, no.” He wiped his chin, peered around. “Nor do I perceive anything differently.”

Gaunt frowned. “Zheng slept before she was truly seeing the unreal.” She looked uneasily at the sky. “I do not think we'll have the same luxury.”

“Karvak balloons?”

“They will surely try to descend, and we are quite exposed.”

“Then, do we leave your sword, or claim it?”

“It is not my sword, Bone.”

“Then there is your answer.”

He gestured as if to go.

She hesitated.

“Ah,” he said.

Gaunt gazed upon the sword. “Imago, I have always shunned violence except at great need.”

“A wise policy.”

“Yet armed with Crypttongue I've been a more effective combatant.”

“So I've seen.”

“And were we to leave this behind, it might be used against us.”

“I confess, I cannot see a Karvak turning away from such a prize.”

“So. I am torn.”

“I do not think this is something I can decide for you, my love.”

“You will respect me? If I employ such a dread thing?”

“I would respect anyone who wielded such a weapon. Probably from a distance. Yes, be assured I will always respect you.”

“At times, I've felt ours an unequal partnership. You have skills honed over an unnaturally extended lifetime.”

“I would have been lost, many times over, without your wits. If you want this sword, take it. But you need no crutch to be an equal in my eyes.”

“I cannot trust my judgment in this.”

“Cannot, or will not?”

“You accuse me of cowardice? After everything? Have mercy. I am lost in contradictions. Every step seems to lead toward a precipice.”

“Very well.”

As if unwilling to consider for more than a breath, he raced toward the statue of the Undetermined, tumbled, and kicked the sword out of the holy one's lap.

It arced into the air and impaled the rocky ground like a spade cutting mud.

Bone reached out—and flinched backward as if struck. Blood dripped from his nose.

“Imago!” Gaunt called, approaching him with drawn dagger. “Is the sword—”

“Not the sword! I never touched it. There's someone here! Many someones.” He had a dagger out as well and was shifting backward, looking left and right. “I perceive them but dimly, like sputtery ghosts. . . . They are women, dressed in robes of bright colors. . . . They seem most determined, though I see no hatred in their eyes. . . . Back, I say! I do not wish to harm you!”