Portal of a Thousand Worlds
Page 43
“Do not be afraid!” Mouse cried. He alone was on his feet, holding the dying man, dribbling blood, yet balanced against the trembling of the ground. “They do not come for you.”
Who didn’t? What did he know about it?
Shard slid off the log he was sitting on and sat on the trampled grass instead. He couldn’t fall any further, although he could foresee himself being bounced if the earthquake grew any stronger. The Portal was wider now, and the valley southward was an unbearable blaze of reflected light.
Somebody—probably Ominous Scroll—was muttering “Bamboo!” over and over. The rebels must be more exposed to the intolerable glare than the Imperial Army to the north, but no one in the Great Valley could be unaware now that the Portal of a Thousand Worlds was opening. The glow must be visible as far away as Cherish.
The ground shuddered when the great door stopped moving, standing at right angles to the mountainside. The ground stilled, but the music grew louder, closer, denser. Shard had never been so frightened in his life. He was infinitely glad that he wasn’t just a mile or so farther south, where he would be able to see inside that gigantic opening.
Something had emerged. It was hidden for a moment by the door, but the light had grown even brighter. Then the new source of that light moved forward and was visible—except that human eyes could not bear to look at it.
It … He … She … The figure was as bright as the sun and stood as high as a mountain, impossible to comprehend. And yet, squinting through a slit in his eyelids and a narrow gap between his fingers, Shard had a sense of shining feathers, or iridescent tiles, or butterfly wings, all the colors he knew and more beside, but not clothes. Nothing so gorgeous would hide its beauty under garments. It was bipedal but not human. Every step it took made the world move slightly, giving under its weight like a cheap wooden floor, and the forest crunched below its feet like grass. It seemed to peer around, as if looking for something, and it uttered great choirs of sound, not a voice or music or birdsong and yet somehow all of these and sweeter yet. But even at that distance, Shard had to clap his hands over his ears or be deafened. Echoes roared back as the mountains sang in chorus.
“Come!” Mouse shouted. “He is here at last.”
The Firstborn was trying to speak, apparently protesting what Mouse was doing, but clearly in terrible pain.
“Peace, Master,” he said. “The time has come. You are forgiven!” Mouse alone was upright, and only he seemed able to stare right at the vast apparition towering over the valley. He began to run, carrying his burden as if it were weightless.
He grew larger, shouldering his way through the trees.
The gigantic visitor’s music became unbearably sad and began to fade as she, or he, turned away, back toward the Portal, as if giving up. Tears ran down Shard’s old cheeks and he wanted to shout to the vision not to leave.
But now both Mouse and the Firstborn were changing, their clothes flying away in shreds, their skin shining like opals or pearl. Mouse ran toward the Portal, growing visibly, shining brighter, towering over the treetops until he trod the forest like turf, and the world shook with his every step. The rhythm changed; there were two of him, the Urfather running at his side. They called out in the same gigantic song-voice-music as the visitor had used.
It heard, and turned, and the three of them flowed together in an unifying embrace. Their glorious chorus soared to the stars. Still singing, they went in through the Portal clasped together, all three of them. Then they were gone.
The light began to fade.
The world trembled again as the Portal swung and reverberated as it shut. A moment’s pause, then the whole side of the mountain collapsed in a gigantic rock fall, like a curtain falling. Boulders rolled and bounced through the forest, almost as far as the caravanserai. A brief gale swirled dust through the camp.
At last, the night was still again, but darker than a cavern. Yet Shard’s vision was full of shapes and colors. His eyes hurt. It might take days for them to recover, he thought. But his writing could wait until they did—he would never forget what had happened.
Mouse? He thought how Mandarin Sedge Shallows had so conveniently found a boy who could pass as the Urfather, even if only at a distance. He remembered the death warrant that disappeared so that Sedge Shallows never got to read it. He thought of the cave, where the Firstborn almost died before Mouse brought help, and how Mouse’s strength had brought them here.
Everyone was still blind, of course. No one was talking. Eventually, Fair Visions began muttering about Bamboo again. The rebels would have seen more of what lay behind the Portal. It would be astonishing if they had not fled in a terrified mob from that intolerable brightness. Perhaps the Imperial Army had done the same. The inexplicable absence of historical witnesses was explicable now.
And then two powerful hands grabbed Shard Gingko’s shoulders and hauled him upright. He was helpless in the grip of Prince Silk Hand.
“What happened?” Prince Silk Hand bellowed, right in his face. “What did I just see?”
“I don’t know, my lord! I saw it, too, but …”
Prince Silk Hand shook Shard Gingko like a rug. “You’re the scholar, you must know. Tell me what I just saw.”
“I saw it also … It’s just … Just that … Some questions have no answers in this world.”
“Ah.” The viselike hands released him. “Who said that?”
No one had. Well, Shard Gingko himself had, but he was nobody. … “The Humble Teacher, my lord.”
“Then I suppose it must be so.” His Lordship turned away.
But Shard Gingko would write it all down and his name would be remembered for it.
V
The Year of the Firebird
In Hare Moon, His Imperial Majesty Absolute Purity returned to his capital after a progress through more than half the provinces of the Good Land, an imperial inspection not matched since the previous dynasty. He was hailed everywhere as a warrior Emperor, conqueror of the Bamboo Banner, and the people rejoiced when he promised that he would be making similar tours in future.
Half his army had fled when the Portal opened. These men were rounded up, sentenced to death under military law, pardoned by imperial clemency, and marched off to work on repairs to the Grand Canal.
The Bamboo Banner dissolved in the light of the Portal, and few survivors returned to their homes. Bamboo himself was found about five li from his final camp with his throat cut.
In Fish Moon, a year after the great earthquake, Prince Silk Hand and his wife, with an armed escort of twenty men, rode into the village of Tutu to reclaim their son, Prince Silkworm. The young prince was not happy with the transition at first, but soon became reconciled to his new mother, father, and baby sister, and also his new home in Goat Haven. Many years later, he was to take the name of Prince Silk Hand 2.
In Harvest Moon, Clerk of Records Shard Gingko ascended on the ladder of worlds. His passing was peaceful, and Prince Silk Hand himself sang the farewell at his pyre. The scholar’s final request, made to Lady Verdant as he lay on his deathbed, was that his account of his travels with the Firstborn and of the opening of the Portal should be sent directly to the Emperor.
Few mortals could have honored that plea, but Prince Silk Hand had many influential friends, and the scroll was indeed laid before the imperial eyes undamaged. None of the multitudinous mandarins circling the throne had a chance to eviscerate the text to match traditional beliefs, for the Emperor read it in the original and ordered it printed that way by the new steam presses. The light it shed on much traditional scholarship caused a literary revolution, but its description of the opening of the Portal was dismissed as a poetic conceit.
Silkworm-Thunderbot lived to inherit Goat Haven from his father and his descendants ruled there for over a century, until Prince Silk Hand 5 lost it in a poker ga
me.
Millennia will roll on, but the Urfather will never be reborn. The Portal cannot open again, for obviously it could never have existed, except in folktales. Mouse will be forgotten, the Firstborn will become a legend, and Shard Gingko remembered as a poet who collected the stories and created the epic.
Only Emperor Absolute Purity, founder of the Twelfth Dynasty, will be accepted as genuine.
About the Author
Dave Duncan was born in Scotland. After graduating from the University of Saint Andrews, he moved to Canada, where he worked as a petroleum geologist for thirty years. He is the author of many science fiction and fantasy novels, among them A Rose-Red City, Magic Casement, and The Reaver Road, as well as the historical novel Daughter of Troy, which he published under the pseudonym Sarah B. Franklin. Under the name Ken Hood, he wrote the Longdirk series, which includes Demon Sword, Demon Knight, and Demon Rider. Children of Chaos (2006) was nominated for both the Prix Aurora Award and the Endeavour Award. Duncan is a founding and honorary life member of SF Canada. He continues to live in Canada with his wife, children, and grandchildren. Visit the author at daveduncan.com and openroadmedia.com/dave-duncan.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Dave Duncan
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
978-1-5040-3874-4
Published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
DAVE DUNCAN
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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