The Silk Map (60 page)

Quilldrake said, “Seeing as the partnership of Quilldrake and Flint, Limited, has just been resurrected, I propose we celebrate by saving our fool lives.”

“Flint and Quilldrake,” Flint said.

“Of course. We have here a Karvak princess and a resourceful daughter of Qiangguo armed with a magic . . . somethingorother. I can imagine no better company. Let's make our escape.”

“No,” Snow Pine said. Once she'd told Persimmon Gaunt to seek the Iron Moths without her. Now she was ignoring her own advice. She had to help her friends. “Not without Zheng and not without Bone.”

“I suppose you'll want to find Gaunt as well,” sighed Quilldrake.

“She is here?”

“She arrived with us,” Jewelwolf said. “But that mad lama in charge took her aside. Perhaps she became a human sacrifice.”

“Hardly,” called a voice.

They all turned to find, standing beside them, an elderly Xembalan woman in orange robes.

“She and her husband are safe—safe as anyone these days. But they are highly distracted at the moment. It is for the best. You will not be leaving.”

“What?” Snow Pine demanded.

“You must be healed of your various madnesses. Lust for power, Princess Jewelwolf. Lust for treasure, Arthur Quilldrake. Lust for violence, Snow Pine. Lust for fame, Liron Flint. For if in your current states you reach the Iron Moths, I foresee a world in flames.”

“Your world will end in flames,” Jewelwolf said, “if you do not let us go.”

“How long will this cure take?” Snow Pine asked.

“Several lifetimes, I am afraid,” said the high lama. She looked around at the ghosts, and her gaze focused on Zheng. “Even I have not managed, after several lifetimes, to let go of the darkness within me. Witness what is happening outside. No, in Xembala we will all stay.”

Persimmon Gaunt opened her eyes and stretched her naked body beside Bone's upon a soft bed, thinking an extended stay in Xembala might be a pleasant thing after all.

A rat nuzzled her foot.

“Gah!” She kicked, shifted, threw a pillow. The rodent ducked away into a hole in the ornate room's wall.

“What what what—” said Bone, awake in a heartbeat or several, reaching for daggers that weren't there.

“Bone. Imago. It is fine. It is just a rat.”

“Do they have rats in paradise?”

“Well, you're here.”

“Ah. So I am. And so you are.” His gaze moved down her frame, and with one finger he traced its path. She shivered. However, the rodent audience was going to prevent the response Bone clearly hoped for.

And besides, the lamasery was shaking.

Bone uttered his fourth “What,” looked again at Gaunt, sighed, and walked to the window. He looked out at the valley.

Wind howled outside, and the light changed erratically.

“What do you see?” she called out, glancing at his form in the skittish sunlight before searching for her clothes. She sighed. True, they had made love between the day of Innocence's loss and now. But never had she given herself as fully as she had today. Before now, anger at Innocence's loss had stood between them. She'd known without Bone's saying it that this had hurt him. Almost as good as the release she'd felt was the sight of his grin.

He was not grinning now, however. “This . . . might take a poet to describe.”

“Give it your best.”

“We appear to be experiencing a lava flow, wall-building by invisible hands, an attack of crystal ships, a march of thundersome lizards, and the descent of the moon toward the Earthe.”

“You are joking.”

“You express my profound wish.”

She hopped over, half-dressed, and looked out. All was as he'd said.

“Reality is mutable at this juncture,” she mused, pulling on her shirt.

“You see, this is why I needed a poet. You can say ‘what the hell is that' so much more artfully than I can.”

“I hate to say this, Bone, but I think you should get dressed.”

“I suppose I am denying reality,” he sighed, looking at her, “mutable or no.” As he set to work, he added, “This room is different from what I perceived earlier.”

“That's true for me too. I think reality has been twisted for some time now. We are, I suspect, in the hands of the high lama.”

“Chodak,” Bone said, taking care not to cut himself on his many weapons. “That's one of her names, anyway. The teacher. I think she was giving us some instruction.”

“That thought takes away some of the spontaneous delight of it all.”

“Speak for yourself. Hey—”

The rat had re-emerged. It was brown, raised on hind legs, sniffing, and gesturing at one of the doors.

“Rats aren't supposed to act like that,” Bone said. “I wonder . . . no.”

“What is it?”

Bone finished getting dressed with an angry air while the rat watched. He stepped closer and knelt beside the animal, glaring down at it. “Northwing. Is that you? How long have you been watching?”

The rat defecated and proceeded into the hallway.

“Yes, that's Northwing. Lady Steelfox's shaman. And she had the nerve to imply I was a voyeur.”

“She may have only just arrived, Bone. Or do you think every woman wants to have a close look at you?”

“Given her proclivities, I doubt it was me she was looking at.”

“Oh. Well, at least she has taste. Say, what was the occasion of her calling you a voyeur?”

“My goodness, is that Zheng up ahead? What is she doing?”

“Changing a subject, probably.”

“You might be right at that . . .”

For down the corridor Widow Zheng was stepping onto a balcony upon which an argument between nuns seemed to rage. She was bringing forth a scroll of Living Calligraphy.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Bone said.

“Hurry,” Gaunt said.

They ran past statues of enlightened ones and paintings of paradises, skidding to a halt amidst the gathering. Bone was perhaps off-balance from his earlier delight, because he skidded into Zheng—

—and passed through her.

Now Gaunt could see that the figures on the balcony were transparent, suffused with a red glow—all except for four individuals who possessed a yellow glow. Glowing red were several Xembalan monks and nuns, Zheng, Steelfox, the shaman Northwing, and Haytham. Glowing yellow were Snow Pine, Flint, the high lama . . . and Princess Jewelwolf.

Testing the situation, Gaunt ran her hand through Jewelwolf. The Karvak did not take offense or even appear to notice. “Three sets of ghosts, Bone. Red, yellow, and us.”

“Yes,” said Northwing, red-tinged, transparent but looking directly at them. “We occupy different slices of reality, if you will. But my little friend lets me see you once again, Bone, you and your wife.”

“And speak to us?” Bone said.

“Yes,” said the rat, making Gaunt jump a little.

“You might have said so before,” Gaunt said.

“I did not wish to spoil the moment.”

“Whose moment?” Bone said.

“Never mind,” Gaunt said. “What is happening?”

“Reality is being shifted,” Northwing answered.

“We had figured out that much,” Gaunt said.

“These mad folk live in a place where thought can twist the universe. So a serious argument can disrupt the fabric. They do so by means of ritual disputes. At first they seemed unconcerned by the distortions, but I think that's changing. I think something else is going on, too. Your Widow Zheng's been repeating the Xembalan argument without anyone translating for her. And she's getting involved.”

“That's because she's also Xia,” Gaunt said. “She must be. The young woman from the stories of the Silk Map. She remembers this land.”

“Yes,” said a new voice, “and I remember her.”

The high lama, Chodak, was looking directly at Gaunt and Bone. “Yes, I can see you. I had hoped to keep you occupied longer than this. I have to admit, the shaman of the north has considerable power! I will enjoy speaking with you at length, Northwing.”

“Sorry, lama,” said Northwing, “but we'll be busy elsewhere.”

Those red-nimbused figures near Northwing stared at her but could not tell what she was talking about. Meanwhile the yellow-nimbused Jewelwolf said, “The shaman—you can communicate with her? Tell her that my sister must submit to me and the new khan, and now.”

Chodak said, “I have concerns beyond your family difficulties, Lady Jewelwolf.” She stared once more at Zheng.

Zheng was saying to the nuns, “I will resolve your argument—thus.”

She unrolled her Living Calligraphy, the last she had, and blazing characters surged forth.

The veena caught fire. The nuns in red and yellow gasped and went silent but refused to move away.

Zheng said, in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell, “When a person of skill studies the coming and going of speech and music, she comes to see every deliberate sound as a sort of echo, a shadow of what was in the mind, living briefly, then vanishing, without any essence of its own. But it is not only so with music. All we see and experience is in its own way an echo, transitory, ultimately empty. Even so, is fire.”

The veena burned, and in the light of the flames and the flickering of the sun, Zheng seemed someone other than the person Persimmon Gaunt had known.

The veena died.

Then the veena lived again.

It reappeared in the same spot. This time it was surrounded by a yellow nimbus.

“I sense you, Maldar Khan,” said Zheng. “Do you remember the song they played when the time ran out and I fled from you? If you remember the song, play it for me now, my prince of Xembala.”

And Chodak, in the light of ghost flames also looking like a different person, sat beside the veena and plucked.

The music was unlike any Gaunt had heard before. The deep intonation of the strings seemed to portend impending grace or destruction, awakening her to the immediacy of the life around her, even as Bone's love had played an equally arousing tune. Now she felt quickened to action, ready to fight.

But fight what? Chodak's playing was heard by all sets of ghosts, and Zheng/Xia and Chodak/Maldar Khan had turned toward each other, together and apart.

“I had meant to control this moment,” the high lama was murmuring. “But even my command of the veils of reality in this place is an illusion. For I cannot command myself. Ah, Xia! Why did you run! So long ago . . . just a moment ago . . .”

“Are you there, my prince?” said Zheng. “I hear the music, dimly, almost as though I were merely remembering it. Now you are sitting, and playing. And now I shall dispute you.”

She took the posture the red nun had assumed before and spoke in the language of Xembala, finishing with a clap and a stomp.

Her words were anger, accusation.

Chodak answered with music of remorse.

The sky was torn asunder.

The sunlight was gone, but the valley was lit by planets hanging in the heavens, a dozen discs like and yet unlike the Earthe. There was a world of purple desert and another of red ocean. There was a world covered with an intricate pattern of fungus, mushroom caps filling it like soap bubbles the size of nations. There was a world fractured like a porcelain plate filled with broken continents and seas, kept together by glistening spiderwebs with strands big as cities. There was a world whose entire face was a single titanic eye. There were worlds of flame and worlds of ice, and worlds of steel and ivory. They sent a kaleidoscope of shadows onto the balcony.

“Should we stop this?” Bone asked.

“I—I am going to guess, Bone. I am going to guess that a lover's quarrel is best settled by the lovers.”

More words of anger from Xia/Zheng.

More music of woe from Maldar Khan/Chodak.

And at last the high lama flung the veena away, weeping.

Two vast shadows fell across all the others, bringing the balcony into darkness.

One vast globe possessed a red nimbus, the second a yellow one.

For a moment Gaunt thought she was beholding two new worlds in the sky, worlds shaped like spheres. But that of course was just a fancy.

They were Karvak balloons.

“At last!” Jewelwolf called out. “Let us be gone from this place!”

But as the gondola came up to the balcony, the people who spilled out were not Karvak warriors. They were the hooded agents of the Fraternity of the Hare.

And with them came the blazing forms of Charstalkers.

Jewelwolf, Flint, and Quilldrake, by unspoken agreement, took places beside Snow Pine, who wielded Monkey's staff against the foes. Two Charstalkers found their substance disrupted, their eyes flickering into darkness. One robed agent was knocked out into the void, never to return.

Gaunt and Bone leapt into the fray, but they were as ghosts and could not connect with any foe.

One enemy paused, however, and removed her hood. It was Dolma.

She looked directly at Bone.