Portal of a Thousand Worlds

by Duncan, Dave

  A mere servant, which was how she saw Mouse, was expected to remain out of sight. The Firstborn permitted this discrimination for Mouse’s comfort, not hers. He had told Shard—in one of the very few direct orders he had ever given him—to teach Mouse to write. He had seen what Shard Gingko had missed, that the boy had natural abilities to overcome his lack of education. He had taken to writing as a lark to singing and was learning twenty characters a day. He knew more than a thousand already, and Shard rarely had to criticize his brushwork.

  Shard’s clumsy change of topic provoked the glance of tolerant amusement that he now knew so well.

  “I was not delirious that night, Grandfather. Wandering a bit, perhaps, but not delirious.”

  Lady Cataract raised her painted eyebrows but withheld comment.

  “Then you do believe the omens?” Shard said.

  “I believe great things happen. If they are messages from Heaven, I wonder that Heaven does not speak more clearly. It may be that our faithful Mouse, with Her Ladyship’s help, balked even the will of Heaven that night. If not, and if the Portal is still due to open, there is one essential sign that has not yet been granted, as I told you. That omen was one that Humble Voice did not know. Only when that event has happened can you be confident that the Portal will open next year.”

  He was almost certainly teasing his hostess.

  The knife-edge-thin eyebrows rose even higher. “The Portal of Worlds? You are certain, Urfather?”

  “No.” Sunlight explained about Humble Voice, his omens, and his own death.

  “You told me that the scholar knew of four certain omens,” Shard Gingko said. “I do not recall that you mentioned all four, just the broom stars, the demons, and the, um, change of dynasty.” That was not a topic to discuss outside close family circles, but Lady Cataract smiled approvingly.

  The Firstborn drank his tea and reached out to set the bowl on the table. His arms were still as thin as noodles. “No, I didn’t. I dread it as much as I worry about the Portal of Worlds itself, or even more. But it is one I know of my own experience to be a true foreshadowing. I told you that the Portal has never opened while I have been walking the Good Land, and sometimes, when I have been reborn in an area distant from it, I have heard nary a whisper of its happening in my next lifetime, either. But,” he added somberly, “every time I have been reborn just after an opening—and usually in the lifetime after that, even—people have spoken of a great earthquake.”

  Lady Cataract crumpled her lips together disapprovingly. “Earthquakes happen all the time, somewhere. There are little ones and big ones. Here, in Wanrong, we get a tremor or two every year.”

  “Most earthquakes are quite local, but I mean a Destroyer of Many Cities Earthquake. You have heard tell of the Lotus Moon Quake? Perhaps even of the Fog Moon Quake?”

  She nodded uneasily.

  “Those truly great earthquakes happen only once in many centuries, but always one comes just before the Portal of Worlds opens. This is the one true sending.”

  Shard Gingko shivered. In silence, the hostess refilled his tea bowl. A quake as great as those two might explain some of the dynasty changes that happened around the openings. People blamed the Emperor when Heaven displayed such wrath. He put it into words. “The Bamboo Banner will use a great shaking against the Son of the Sun. The rebels will say that the Golden Throne has lost the Mandate of Heaven.”

  “Indeed,” the Firstborn said. “And it is time I continued my quest. The Bamboo Banner will bring even worse disaster. No,” he cautioned, raising a hand to forestall Lady Cataract’s protests, “this time, I mean it. I have enjoyed your hospitality more than any I have met in many lifetimes, my lady. It has restored me as much as I can be restored in this incarnation. Perhaps even restored my faith in humanity,” he added with a smile that belied his words. If he, of all men, ever lost his faith in humanity, he must assuredly go mad. “But now I must be about my business.”

  “I was merely going to say that I fully intend to accompany you, Urfather. I have horses ready, and a litter for me. Your servant boy has advised my people on your needs and preferences, but if you wish to travel by litter, also, then that can be arranged. A party of a dozen or so will travel faster than you can alone.”

  The Firstborn smiled at her fondly. “My disciple has kept me advised of your nefarious plotting, my lady. Your kindness will certainly be rewarded in the Fifth World.”

  “And where we will go?”

  “I seek the Bamboo Banner. Scholar Shard Gingko, what is the latest news of it?”

  “Just what I told you two days ago, Urfather. That the governor of Kermang was preparing to meet it in battle if it entered his province.”

  “Other governors did not stop it, and that news must be at least a month old, so we must assume it is in Kermang and continuing north. The question is where the Imperial Army will try to—”

  The tea bowls on the table rattled.

  The ground quivered. The air was filled with a strange mutter of no discernible source, like some trouble very loud but far away. Birds swirled up from the trees.

  Lady Cataract laughed, a little shrilly. “What did I tell you? But this little shiver is not going to shake down a dynasty.”

  For a few minutes, nobody spoke. The noise grew louder. The trembling continued. It came in spurts, less and then more, but Shard watched the tea in the bowls, and how the surface rippled. That never quite stopped. He looked at the pinched face of the boy across from him and saw fear there. Would this sending never end?

  Eventually, it did, as it must, but by then, the servants in the house were wailing in terror and even Lady Cataract’s leathery face was pale under her face paint. The birds stopped circling and returned to their perches.

  “No damage,” she said, “or we would have heard it.”

  “It was far away,” Urfather said. “That is why it seemed faint to us.”

  “Oh, how can you, even you, possibly tell?”

  “Because it went on for a very long time. Small earthquakes are brief. I have never known one to last as long as that.”

  Never? In seven thousand years or more—never?

  So the Portal was going to open.

  Chapter 5

  Early in Fish Moon, the Bamboo Banner crossed the border into Kermang, where it met its first serious rebuff. Food was scarce after two poor harvests, and the provincial governor was in no mood to feed a rebellious ragtag of mystical brigands. He had spies in Dongguan reporting on the Bamboo Banner’s progress, and he knew that one of its divisions was advancing up the trading road that would bring it to Spires, the largest city in the province. Spires had guarded that road for centuries; it was built for war and siege, and the governor made sure that it was manned, provisioned, and ready for battle.

  The advance guard was the Jade Army, under the command of Leader of Thousands White Pine, who had professional military experience. As usual, the Bamboo Banner had sent distraction squads on ahead to persuade the inhabitants of Spires and some neighboring settlements that it was no more than a band of harmless pests: acrobats, entertainers, and preachers. In fact, these six cadres specialized in intelligence, recruitment, and subversion. The governor had prepared their reception, and not one of the two hundred or so men returned. Most were mown down by gunfire, and the rest were taken to the House of Gentle Persuasion for torture.

  The Bamboo Banner had other scouts, though, many of which had been put in place long ago. When the governor set up an ambush in Wind Chime Pass, including enough artillery to shred the entire Jade Army, the deployment was quickly reported to White Pine. He sent for reinforcements, but did not wait for them to arrive. The Jade Army ambushed the ambushers by night, a thousand men streaming down from the hills on either flank. The battle was fought by starlight and the flashes of guns. It was bloody, with no quarter given. By morning, the patriots had quit the field,
which would normally be a sign of defeat, but they took almost all the guns with them, and they departed in the direction of Spires, in hot pursuit of the imperial survivors.

  Within days, the Pearl, Agate, and Jade armies were all encamped around Spires and the siege had begun. Bamboo himself had issued an ultimatum, promising massacre if the “rebellious” city did not surrender. The messenger was hanged from the city wall. What very few people knew was that the Bamboo Banner had only three days’ rations and two days’ ammunition for the captured guns. The siege must succeed quickly or not at all.

  By then, Man Valor had been promoted to Leader of a Hundred, in command of Dogwood’s and Chinquapin’s cadres as well as his own. A hot and dusty afternoon found him directing a sapping operation at the northeast corner of the city, where a shallow gully let the attackers approach within a few hundred paces of the wall without being exposed to gunfire. Their mission was to dig three trenches up to the walls, and then mine the foundations.

  It was backbreaking work, with room at the face of each trench for only two men, one with pick and another with shovel. Behind them two more would pile the spoil on the city side of the dig. All four would work in a sprint for about ten minutes and then be relieved by four more. That was the plan, and it wasn’t working. The soil was mostly gravel, but it included boulders too huge to move and pockets of loose sand that caused the sides of the dig to collapse. Man Valor had no timber to brace the walls, and the three tidy, geometrical zigzags he had envisioned were developing as anything but. Near-surface bedrock was steadily forcing the Dogwood trench ever closer to the Man Valor trench. Soon, they would be close enough for a single mortar shot from the walls to collapse both together. Meanwhile, enemy sharpshooters took potshots at the men, and once in a while, an artillery piece would boom out a spray of grape.

  By midafternoon, Man Valor himself had done two stints at the front of the dig and was covered with filth. To inspire his men with contempt for the defenders, he sat on a conspicuous rock, chewing his yang cud and listening to the rumble of gunfire from the south, where the Banner was trying to open a breach in the walls. He could watch the cowards on top of the walls aiming their muskets at him. If they had rifles, he would be covered in bruises by this time, but so far, they were hitting every rock in Kermang but not him. Once in a while, a bullet would pang loudly off a pebble near him, but he ignored those.

  Then Chinquapin came wandering over and squatted down alongside him. He was a tall, skinny youth with a perpetually morose expression. Apart from that, Man Valor knew nothing about him, because he belonged to the Jade Army and Man Valor was in Pearl. Dogwood’s cadre was in the Agate Army. The three forces had been shuffled together, and would probably all have different makeups again when they moved on.

  For a while, neither man spoke, just chewed slowly and watched the dirt flying out of the far ends of the digs. Man Valor stood up on his rock and blew on his whistle to signal a change of shifts. He watched heads moving in the trenches. Then he sat down again with a despicable sense of relief.

  Chinquapin said, “Feeling especially bulletproof, are you?”

  “‘Swords and shot can hurt me NOT,’” Man Valor quoted with all the bravado he could summon. In truth, he was feeling the strain after so many hours of this.

  Chinquapin grunted. “The Pearl Army came in from the southeast?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, do you know?”

  “Mine not to question,” Man Valor said, meaning that it wasn’t the other man’s business, either.

  “Wind Chime Pass would have been quicker.”

  “I don’t give Bamboo advice.”

  “But then you’d have gone past the battlefield.”

  Pang! That had been a close one.

  After a moment, Man Valor said, “So?”

  Shrug. “Nothing. Wonder where all the birds are.”

  There were no birds. No doubt the gunfire had scared them all away, but without the battle, the afternoon would have been as silent as an oyster. The heat was ferocious for Fish Moon, the air completely still. Gun smoke hung over Spires like a gray cloud.

  Man Valor said, “I expect they’re over at Wind Chime Pass, feasting off the bitch Empress’s troops. Ravens, of course, but even little birds will peck at meat if it’s available.”

  “Me too. The congee was pretty watery this morning, I thought.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not a breath of fish paste in it and more sawdust than rice.”

  Man Valor turned his full attention on the kid. “Do you talk to your cadre like this?”

  Chinquapin was watching him carefully. “Of course not. But I got a lot of grumbles at breakfast. Didn’t you?”

  “My lads know better than to try that.”

  “What do you do? Hit them?”

  “Sometimes. Or throw away half their yang leaf.” Man Valor decided he would have to report this conversation. Young Chinquapin needed disciplining.

  Then the uppity kid asked, “How long have you been a cadre leader?”

  “Long enough to know that my job is to inspire my men to serve Bamboo, not to spread defeatist talk about battlefields and rations.”

  The youth sighed and fell silent. A bullet ricocheted off a rock between them and wailed away. They both jumped.

  Neither commented. Man Valor climbed up on his boulder again and blew his whistle to signal a change of shifts. He sat down faster than he meant to.

  Chinquapin noticed. “Have you ever conducted a second proving?”

  “Yes … You?” Now what was coming?

  “Two days ago. Did you take a real close look at the sword?”

  Man Valor hesitated, wondering what lay behind the question. A sword was a sword, wasn’t it? A sword that cut through a silk ribbon as if it wasn’t there was sharp enough to cut off a man’s arm, wasn’t it? Or at least cut it to the bone.

  “Why?”

  Chinquapin made a noise that sounded close to a chuckle, although his woebegone expression did not change. “Obviously, you didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?” Man Valor snapped.

  “Didn’t look. The point is sharp, right? Because some men like to nick their noses on it.” He had no scar on his nose; Man Valor did. “And the part close to the hilt is sharp, because the ritual requires that part to cut the headband—it’s held close to you when you lower the sword, yes? But the rest of the edge is rounded, not sharp. It wouldn’t cut bean curd. Next time, you look. You’ll see what I’m telling you.”

  Man Valor felt his belly chill. He recalled Leaping Serpent teaching his cadre to hit the candidate’s arm with the middle of the blade. … Then his anger flared up white hot.

  “Doubter! Defeatist! Of course the middle isn’t sharp any more. Someone forgot to sharpen it again, that’s all. If you chopped logs with it, or rocks, it would lose its edge after four or five strokes, right? That’s what happens when it bounces off a man’s arm. We’re sword-proof, you idiot!”

  “That’s one explanation, I suppose.”

  Obviously, Chinquapin was unfit to lead a cadre. “Traitor! Coward! It’s the only explanation. You’ve been through the second proving, haven’t you, and you still have both arms? And the third? You felt the bullets bounce off your chest?”

  The kid looked down at himself as if to point out scars or bruises, but he was too covered with dust for marks to show. “I felt something hit my chest.”

  “I will not listen to such chickenhearted whining. We follow Bamboo and Heaven. Heaven and the ancestors defend—”

  “If they’d brought you through Wind Chime Pass after the battle, you’d have seen—”

  “Silence! Heaven defends us! And Heaven will overthrow the she-dragon and set Bamboo on the throne of his ancestors. It may need a miracle or many miracles, but our cause is Heaven’s cause, and Bamboo has promised. Who’s your first
deputy?”

  Chinquapin seemed more amused than worried. “Lion Paw.”

  “Go and fetch him. I’m relieving you of your command.”

  The youth shrugged. “I wish you luck with your miracles, old man.” He rose in an insolently deliberate fashion and sauntered away.

  There was a great roaring sound, louder than thunder. Birds flew up from wherever they had been hiding. Chinquapin went about three steps, staggered, seemed to trip over his own feet, and toppled to the ground. Man Valor fell off the boulder. He was shaken and bounced on sharp gravel, rolling on his back, completely unable to stand. The tumult faded, then returned several times. Had Bamboo not warned the Gentle People that the Golden Throne had lost the Mandate of Heaven? Was this not proof?

  At long last, the noise stopped; the land steadied again. Man Valor sat up, mouth and eyes full of dirt. In the trenches, men buried up to their waists were screaming for help. Others might have been buried too deep to scream. Man Valor scrambled up and ran to see what he could do. He helped pull out a couple, both of them with broken legs. Another was buried almost head-down under a rock and obviously dead. It looked as if about a tenth of his hundred had disappeared completely and as many had been injured.

  A drum was beating. … Sounding the charge?

  He peered through dust-inflamed eyes at Spires. The northeast corner of the city wall had collapsed. The city lay naked and open.

  “A miracle!” he roared. “Heaven has delivered them into our hands. Patriots, get your weapons!”

  His men had not yet been issued guns, but they had their staves and they had picks and shovels. Red with dust, some already streaked with blood, Man Valor’s hundred began to run, with him in the lead. Thousands more swarmed over the plain toward the stricken city.

  He was not the youngest or the fastest, so he was not the first of his cadre to arrive, but arrive he did. Gasping for breath, he reached the jumble of stone blocks that had been an impregnable wall only minutes before. He could hear screams and frantic trumpets from inside the city, officers shouting orders to rally the dazed and demoralized defenders. He could see smoke billowing up from fires. Men with rifles were appearing at the top of the rock pile and on all the nearest roofs. They did not scare Man Valor. He went leaping up from block to block, waving a pick, yelling defiance. Gunfire crackled.