by Duncan, Dave
“Well?” Watersprite said with a wry smile.
“Very impressive, but where is it?”
She pointed out the largest of the gable-end cliffs, almost directly across from them. “It shows up better at noon, when the sun angles across it.”
“Can’t see a thing.”
Wearing a cryptic smirk, Watersprite handed him a small telescope. It made very little difference. After several minutes’ search, he located Two Lakes Caravanserai down by the river. Then he raised the scope to look for the Portal of Worlds. Eventually, he made out a rectangular mark on the cliff. He was still unimpressed, until he remembered that he was still a day’s ride away from it. The scale of the landscape hit him like an ax. His shock scared Big Sponge, who neighed in alarm and tried to stand up straight. Silky slapped him down angrily.
“How big is that thing?”
She laughed, satisfied. “I’ve heard it said that it’s almost a thousand paces high. If you laid it flat, you could build a small town on it.”
“And it opens?”
“So the legends say.”
Silky could not imagine such a thing. He could just trace out a doorway surrounded by a complex design of pillars and vines. Absurd! What ancient race could have created such a thing, even if it was just a carving? What might emerge from a door that size if it ever did open? That was an utterly terrifying thought, and now he understood why the locals so stubbornly refused to worry about it. Let it open, they said. Even if it had opened before and might very well open again, the land would stay here and so would they.
The sun was setting behind the Western Wall as two weary horses trekked up the long ascent to Goat Haven. The riders had been quiet a long time while Watersprite studied her face in a small mirror. Then she turned in the saddle and said, “How do I look?”
“Very good, but not as good as before.”
She was a boy now, with his hair in a queue, weather-beaten cheeks, a shadow on his lip, and a thymus bulge in a neck as graceful as a swan’s.
“Promise me you’ll change back later.”
She smiled provocatively. “Depends how much privacy we have.”
When they reached the guard post at the base of the cliffs, Lord Silk Hand, senior secretary to His Highness Prince Luminous Aspect, showed his authority and begged leave to deliver a letter to His Highness Prince Sky Hammer 7. His Highness’s rules stated clearly that the gate must be closed one hour before sunset and no visitors admitted after that, but Lord Silk Hand and his companion were such honest-seeming young men that the gate commander made an exception for them. Having surrendered all their visible weapons, they were escorted up to the summit.
The climb was narrow and steep, although it had been greatly improved by the hand of man and was easier and safer than the track to Heaven’s Threshold. Not too safe, though—Silky noted gates and other barriers, and even giant stone cylinders ready to roll down the trail to turn invaders into harmless paste. Goat Haven was a fortress as well as a palace.
Most of the windswept plain at the top was divided into paddocks by dry-stone walls. There were more than a hundred horses in sight and no doubt as many again in the barns, for this was foaling time. The palace in the center was a sprawling complex of one-story masonry and timber buildings. It was obviously old, but would still be defensible against traditional weapons and perhaps even the Emperor’s guns, because it stood higher than any hill within range and the attackers would have to shoot blind.
Despite the unseemly lateness of the hour, the visitors were made welcome. Their horses were led off to be cared for, and they were given a room to wash and make themselves presentable. Nor were they left to brood for long before a steward came to lead them into the prince’s presence.
Complicated by centuries of alterations and additions, the palace mingled royal grandeur and working ranch house—barns beside stately pavilions, horse troughs here and ornamental pools there. The great hall, as the steward called it, was indeed great, but poorly lit and currently filled with people sitting cross-legged and eating—more men than women, almost all dressed as servants or ranch hands. None paid any attention to the newcomers being led through their midst. They were all chattering happily and gobbling what looked like generous portions of rice and vegetables, plus something that smelled like meat sauce, although scents were hard to distinguish in the thick medley of people and horses. Most couriers bearing letters from royalty would be mortally insulted at being taken to servants’ quarters, but Silky’s alleged royal master was a fraud, of course, and Silky knew what to expect because Watersprite had been there before, in the Year of the Vulture, when Sky Hammer’s wife died. No one was going to recognize the most junior of the Gray Sisters of then in the boy warrior of now.
At the far end of the hall, the mood switched to grandeur, with a gilded throne at the back of a wide dais whose walls were draped with numerous ink-on-silk scroll paintings of fanciful landscapes. At one side, a harpist played discordant foreign music, and at the other stood two guards heavily encumbered with pistols and swords that they would obviously love to use. The floor of the platform was covered with thick rugs from distant lands, on which sat the owner of the throne, eating rice out of what looked like a Ninth Dynasty porcelain bowl.
Prince Sky Hammer had the outlander round eyes and long nose often seen around Cherish. His robes were silk, intricately embroidered with images of horses. He was elderly and sun-dried, tall and rawboned, and he watched the embassy arrive with cold suspicion, not pausing in his eating.
Silky knelt. The steward announced him. Silky touched his head to the floor, which felt gritty and had not been cleaned in a very long time.
Sky Hammer wiped his mouth on a sleeve. “Never heard of any Prince Luminous Aspect.”
“His Highness’s estates are mostly located in Jingyan.”
His host grunted. “What’re you up to, coming here after sunset?”
Silky held up the scroll. “Delivering this letter from—”
“But you didn’t. You went sightseeing first.”
“As my master bade me. He wanted my reassurance that the Threshold was worth a visit.”
“What’s he doing here, so far from home?” Suspicion came easy to people living in borderlands.
“Will His Highness graciously read my master’s own words?”
Grunt again. The steward took the scroll and presented it. The prince broke the seal and unrolled about a third, but then he held it far from his eyes and scowled. He glanced around.
Another man wandered forward to step up on the dais—younger but just as sumptuously dressed. The barbarian features were less obvious in him and he was stockier, but almost certainly he was Sky Rider, who expected to become Sky Hammer 8 one day. He hung reading glasses on his nose, took the scroll from his father, and read it out, as though even his eyes had trouble in the poor light. Silky studied him carefully, because Sky Rider was a potential snag, one of the unknown factors in the plan.
Brother Luminous, in his princely guise, had written an expert harangue of pure fog. Traveling with his daughter, prior to delivering her to her future husband, he had heard that the noble Sky Hammer 7, the celebrated expert on Tenth Dynasty silk scroll paintings—which he also collected, but in a minor, humble fashion—lived in the district, and within sight, so it was said, of the legendary Portal of Worlds, which diviners and astrologers insisted was going to open in the near future … and so on.
The silk painting bait had come from the Gray Sisters, who took careful notes in rich houses. The caravanserais were not yet open, so how could one prince refuse hospitality to another?
The leathery old rancher showed signs of interest. “How many Tenth Dynasty scroll paintings does he have?”
“Thirty-three complete, Your Highness, and a few partial.”
“Any good ones?”
“Four by Agate Shining,” Silky said, �
��seven by Harmonious Bulrushes, twelve … I have the honor of being his curator … Twelve, as I was saying, by the Master of High Breezes …” If real, the fictitious prince’s imaginary collection would be substantial, but well behind Sky Hammer’s, of course.
“He must come and see mine.”
Bait taken.
Silky had expected to be assigned to a bunkhouse and intended to sneak out with Watersprite when the other occupants were asleep, but the visitors were given a room to themselves. That was annoying, because it implied that someone might be eavesdropping on them and the door would be watched. Both windows were covered by wooden lattice that looked tight enough to balk a cat. Fortunately, the wind was making enough noise that subtle whispers close to Watersprite’s fine porcelain ear would not be overheard.
“Don’t know about you, lad,” Silky said aloud, “but my ass aches all the way up to my ears.”
“As the venerable one says,” she agreed, and in very few minutes they were both wrapped in their blankets and the lamp was out.
As their eyes adjusted, a faint glimmer of starlight emerged from the gloom. Throwing off their covers, they rose and tiptoed over to the nearer window, with Watersprite in the lead, testing every step for creaky boards.
“Demons! Hardest floor I ever met,” she said for the benefit of listeners.
The lattice was tight as a drum skin. Whisper: “Hopeless!” They moved on to the next window. Here there was hope, for one of the slats was slightly loose in its the groove and they had brought a few tools, of course. They set to work, operating by sense of touch and keeping up a nonsensical muttering so that the listeners, if any, would know they were awake and not be suspicious of other noises.
“You quite sure you aren’t a girl, lad?”
“You want your balls ripped off?”
“Sure a pity. Been a long time since I got my jack in the orchard. My wife dropped a babe. Hadn’t got her going again yet before we left Jingyan.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“Good. What’s he called?”
“Wife wanted Silkworm, but I named him Thunderbot.”
“Did you say ‘Thunderbolt’?”
“No.”
There was a moment’s pause before Watersprite remembered that she was currently male and supposed to find that funny. While Silky exerted as much bending effort as he dared on the loose slat, she managed to pull one end of it free, then work it far enough out of the weave to leave a diamond-shaped hole.
“Big enough?” he whispered.
She was a skinny girl, but the gap still looked impossibly narrow to Silky, who would need to remove at least one more slat, probably two, before he would have a space big enough for himself. He would have to leave all the work to her.
“Think so.” She crept back to the pallets to change into burglar clothes. “Those pictures you were looking at, sir—are they really so valuable?”
“You wouldn’t believe.” He had been genuinely impressed by some of the scrolls the prince had shown him, both in the great hall and in several other rooms. The Gray Helpers were well aware that a man’s hobby was his most vulnerable spot after his groin. The mistrustful old rancher had probed hard at Silky’s knowledge; fortunately, his long days of cramming had given him as much expertise as a genuine collector’s curator would have. He would forget it all as soon as possible.
His accomplice was ready. He pecked her a good luck kiss and lifted her so she could put her feet into that impossibly small space. It seemed like a miracle, but somehow she made herself slim enough to squirm through, and he lowered her to arm’s length, which put her toes on the ground.
From then on, he was alone, dying a death of a million cuts. The day was highly auspicious for Watersprite, but for all he knew it might be pure poison for him. Life really was not fair. Since he did not know his birthday, no astrologer could cast his horoscope. He knew the good days he had experienced so far—his acceptance into the House of Joyful Departure, his first meeting with Jade Harmony, the days he had increased his tally—but there was apparently no way to work back from those to fix the day and hour of his birth.
The night was moonless, filled with sounds and movements by the wind. Sky Hammer must be assumed to have posted guards on the visitors’ cell. The risks Watersprite was taking were bloodcurdling, and if she were caught, both intruders would surely endure very unpleasant interrogation before they died. Once, Silky became so jittery that he went and tried the door, confirming that he was bolted in. He felt better then, for there might not be watchers outside after all.
But the old man might even have posted guards on his bedroom, where the muniment chest stood. The Gray Sisters had made a note of that two years ago, but had not established whether there were booby traps on the chest. Nor had they been able to take a wax impression of the key, which they would have done automatically had the opportunity presented itself. Watersprite had to enter the bedchamber undetected, pick the lock, and extract one essential document. It might be the only one in there, or there might be hundreds, and she could not read in the dark. Knowing only how weighty a document she wanted and the number of seals it bore, she would have to select a few and take them to wherever she could safely make light, check each one, and then wait until her eyes had adjusted again before reentering the bedroom to replace those and repeat the process. Only when she had found and removed the genuine will could she replace it with Silky’s forgery, which was an exact copy of the version he had “returned” to the governor’s archives.
Sky Hammer was old and the old sleep poorly.
But even a century does not last forever, and eventually, a small pebble tapped on the window lattice. Silky rushed over there. Her face was a faint blur below the sill.
“Done it!” she said softly.
Chapter 4
The winds of Wolf Moon had done with their howling and slunk away. The bitter cold of Ice Moon had glittered in the clouds, while in the palace of Lady Cataract, the Firstborn cheated death yet again. It was there that Mouse had found the help he sought during the great blizzard, and it was the lady who had sent her servants and supplies to the cave. She personally nursed the Firstborn back from the prospect of another reincarnation. She poulticed him, pampered him, fed him with her own hands, and spent an untold fortune on heating. She bullied him into living by sheer power of will.
No sooner could he stagger around on his own feet was he anxious to be off in search of the Bamboo Banner, but Death had breathed on him, and he was far from fit to travel. Shard Gingko suspected that he would never be a well man now, perhaps never live to maturity. Even if the Portal did open next year, as the Firstborn forecast, he might not be alive to see it. He was thin as a rice stalk, his hands trembled, and a feverish restlessness never left his eyes.
Lady Cataract refused to listen to his protests.
“Not in winter in these hills!” she decreed. “When you are strong again and the snow has fled, then you will make far better time. You will arrive as soon. Indeed, if you leave too soon, you will not arrive at all. A man who claims to have lived thousands of years should not be as impatient as a child. Must you relearn wisdom anew in every life?”
No one else would have dared speak to the Urfather like that, but he laughed and yielded to her bullying.
Cataract was old and at times—especially in the evenings—seemed as frail as he did, but her back was straight and her life flame still burned bright, despite many tragedies. She had borne children, all of whom had died. So the servants had told Mouse, who had told Shard, and silk portraits of three handsome young men hung on the wall of her winter parlor. There could be no greater tragedy than an ancestor burying descendants. Although the lady’s husband was never mentioned by name, there were hints that he had not died a natural death and that she bore no love for the late Emperor Zealous Righteousness. Her palace, it was whispered,
was all that remained of once great estates. It had been a hunting lodge of some long-dead Emperor, set high in craggy hills beset with waterfalls and forest, although the forests had mostly gone now and the game with them. She lived there year-round in decaying grandeur, kept company by ghosts and equally decayed servants. She was a daunting scholar, able to cap Shard’s quotes, verse by verse, and very often even test the Firstborn, who loved her dearly.
She owned a vast collection of antique books and scrolls, which fascinated both Shard and the Firstborn. Although Shard had no difficulty reading even the oldest, only the Firstborn could read them aloud with the original pronunciation, which was almost impossible to understand, but did make the poetry sound better.
Hare Moon had come leaping and dancing, all eager springtime and impatience, yet still the Firstborn lingered. For the first time since seeing the evidence of massacre at High Abode, he had recovered his previous tranquillity of spirit, the calm courage with which he had defied Sedge Shallows’s persecution. It was almost as if he had decided to wait for something. Not a sign from Heaven, of course. Shard knew the Urfather well enough now to know that he put no faith in those. Or not much. But Hare Moon departed, admitting Fish Moon, and still the Firstborn tarried under the approving eye of Lady Cataract.
One afternoon, Shard dared ease the conversation around to the subject of the Portal of Worlds, which had not been mentioned since that terrible night in the cave, months ago. The three of them were sitting in the water garden, soothed by its gentle murmurs and shaded by trees from a sun already unpleasantly hot. Cherry blossoms came late to the Wanrong Hills, but they had blazed in their brief glory and were now gone. Boisterous rhododendrons were blooming, ostentatious as ever. The hills were green, lambs and foals had been born.
Swathed in a finely embroidered silk gown, which Shard suspected might be almost as old as she was, Lady Cataract was providing tea. She approved of her celebrated guest and even of Shard Gingko. He wasn’t a true scholar, of course, and he was totally eclipsed in the presence of the Firstborn, but she must be so starved for educated conversation that even a clerk of records could be tolerated.