Five Odd Honors

by Jane Lindskold

  Okay, Brenda Morris, she said to herself. There’s got to be a way you can do this. Parnell’s played fair with you to this point. Trust that fair play, even though you’re pissed at him for stranding you.

  Something was nibbling at the edges of her mind, something about—She had it!

  When they’d made the Nine Gates, only one had been needed to take them into the first of the guardian domains. The remainder been necessary because of the odd nature of Chinese cosmography.

  “And the guardian domains,” Brenda said, speaking aloud in her excitement, “and this land under the hills have something in common. Both of them are border lands, lands that owe something of their nature to other places. Because of that shared nature, I shouldn’t need more than one gate to get me home, any more than we needed more than one gate to get us into Pai Hu’s realm.”

  Brenda brushed a fresh section of sand smooth and started sketching possible combinations, using arabic numbers and familiar letters rather than the Chinese because they were faster for her.

  If she was going to use a variant of the Nine Gates sequence, then her first decision needed to be which suit: bamboo, characters, or dots. Automatically, Brenda shied from using characters because she hated drawing the more elaborate numbers, but something made her go back and reconsider. What was it?

  The response came so instantly Brenda knew characters was the right suit to use. Characters were written words—the words for one through nine followed by the word for ten thousand. That the words and numbers were in Chinese didn’t change anything. She needed words to get back because USC was a place she went to school, a place, so to speak, of “letters.”

  “Okay. I’ve got my suit. Now, what number is best?”

  That was easy. One, because this would be her first and only gate.

  When they’d made the first of the Nine Gates, they’d inscribed the various symbols on an unfinished pine door Des and Riprap had picked up at a hardware store. Certainly there was nothing like that here.

  “But I don’t need a door,” Brenda said, mostly to encourage herself. “We were making a permanent gate. This one only needs to get me home. In fact . . .”

  She considered. The last thing she wanted to do was create a permanent gate between the sidhe’s realm and USC. College students saw enough weird stuff without her help.

  She was not only going to need to make a gate. She was going to need to figure out how to destroy it as she was using it.

  “Fun, fun, and more fun,” Brenda muttered.

  But she didn’t mind. Ideas were flowing fast and furious. For the first time, Brenda intuitively understood the appeal of the abacus the Exile Rat had created to assist him the way Thundering Heaven had created the sword Treaty, or the Rooster had made those nasty Talons Des was so good at using.

  Calculation was fun, filled with a thrill that set her blood buzzing in her veins and her thoughts quite literally racing each other to see which would be articulated first.

  “Doorways in the sand,” Brenda thought, remembering the title of a book she’d read a long time ago, something to do with kangaroos and not graduating college.

  Brenda cleared a larger section of sand and sketched a rectangular door on it, complete with a little round circle for the knob. Then she rose, stretched, and did her best to focus.

  It wasn’t easy. Whereas immediately after Parnell’s departure, she’d felt very alone, now Brenda was certain she was being watched by things just out of sight, or that moved as soon as she turned to get a better look.

  There was something in the shadows beneath the tree into which Parnell had vanished, something else moving with the light breeze that stirred a stand of wild flowers. She was fairly certain that the butterfly that had lofted by, orange, black, and brilliant gold against the blue sky, had been watching her.

  Face by face, eye by eye, unable to ignore the reality of the watchers, Brenda accepted those critical gazes, then accepted those that she had not glimpsed, but that were almost certainly there.

  She forced her mind to focus on something far more important: making the character symbols she must inscribe seem more real than anything else. The symbol for “one” was easy—a horizontal line with the character for “ten thousand” beneath it. Brenda wrote this four times in a row.

  When she moved to the number “two”—the same as “one,” but with an added horizontal stroke—Brenda began to imagine where she wanted this door to take her. Sweat beaded beneath her hairline as she envisioned the copse of trees on campus where Parnell had introduced her to Oak Gall.

  Brenda suspected that Parnell kept a semipermanent ward of some sort there, had sensed it in her desire to not look too closely at the place when she passed by during more usual business hours, in the fact that although the towering oak cast some very nice shade, she never saw anyone lounging there.

  That tree, then, would be her destination. With the number two, B rendaimagined the place. With three—two with yet another horizontal stroke—she began to imagine the oak glade as close as the other side of her door. Four, which turned the strokes vertical, shorter, and placed them within a box, was the number Brenda used to help her envision her door as more than a picture in the sand.

  Five and six were complicated enough that Brenda didn’t try to do anything but get them right, but seven and eight were stylized and simplified. Brenda used them to firm up her image of her intended destination.

  The beads of sweat had turned into streams, but Brenda didn’t do more than blink away the stinging droplets that found their way into her eyes. Nine, the final character, was where she must refine her image, and she did so, feeling growing certainty that she had the spell right.

  After she had drawn the last stroke of the final wan, Brenda allowed herself the luxury of wiping her forehead with the back of one arm. Touching the round circle that stood for the doorknob, she could feel the latent power of the spell, waiting to be triggered.

  The urge to open the door was strong, but Brenda held back. She was tired, but there was one thing more she must do.

  She needed something to wipe out her spell in case her using the gate was not sufficient. Winds were the simplest solution, especially since she’d drawn her spell in the sand.

  North was the Rat’s wind, but she must frame it appropriately. After consideration, she decided on a sequence called Windy Chow. It called for one of each wind, followed by a pair of the wind one wished to summon, these followed by a chow—or run of three—in each suit.

  The winds were complicated to draw, but Brenda remembered them pretty clearly. She’d make her chows out of the simpler versions of each suit: a one, two, and three of dots and characters, a two, three, and four of bamboo. One of bamboo was always drawn as a bird. Brenda worried that she wasn’t up to that level of artistry when her pen must be a stick and her paper a stretch of damp sand.

  Concentration was easier to achieve this time. The watchers had become as much a part of the surrounding area as the splash of the water and the softness of the grass. Brenda was also getting too tired to have attention to concentrate on more than one thing at a time.

  With firm strokes, she drew the winds, pleased that she did indeed remember them better than she had thought she did. Then she drew the first two sets of chows. With the third, she instilled not only the summons of the wind, but that it would wait to cut loose its force and smooth out the sand until after she had opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

  When she was done, Brenda’s limbs ached from crouching and she felt about ten thousand years old. She felt good, too. There was no doubt that both spells were “live.” All that was left was to use them.

  She looked around the green hills, and felt rather than saw the varied awarenesses that pulled back lest she notice them.

  “Maybe I’ll see y’all later,” she said, letting the lazy drawl of the land to which she was returning color her speech.

  Then she placed her hand over the drawing of a doorknob and felt it r
ound and hard in her hand. She pulled, and the door opened. On the other side, just as she had imagined, was that little copse under the spreading oak on the USC campus.

  Brenda walked through the door. Behind her, the north wind rose and scoured the damp sand clear of the last trace of her magical workings,

  The door closed behind her. For the first time, she noticed that it was quite dark. She wondered how long she’d been gone. Realized she was almost too tired to care.

  Brenda slid down against the rough bark of the tree trunk and sat heavily on the ground. One of the oak tree’s roots caught her at the base of her spine. The jolt of pain woke her up a little, enough to notice Parnell rising from where he’d been sitting cross-legged on the grass. He gave her a small bow, not in the least mocking, very much resembling, despite his casual tee shirt and jeans, the squire of those Arthurian-tinged dreams in which Brenda had first seen him.

  “Congratulations,” Parnell said. “I never doubted you could do it, and I shall enjoy gloating over those who did. So shall Aunt Leaf.”

  “What time is it?” Brenda asked.

  “About two in the morning of the day following that in which you let me take you into the Land Under the Hill. Dermott and Shannon both doubtlessly are wondering what we have been up to, and, if they are awake, are giggling at the idea that we might be entwined in each other’s arms.”

  Muzzily, Brenda thought that wasn’t the worst option she’d ever had, but a better one was falling asleep, maybe right here. The grass felt very soft.

  “Take this,” Parnell said, opening a sack he’d cached to one side of the oak. “I got you a present.”

  What he handed her was a large carton of yogurt, the container blazoned with the legend “with extra active cultures.”

  “A gift from the Tuatha de Dannon,” Parnell said, proffering a spoon. Brenda couldn’t have been happier if Parnell had given her a coronet of diamonds.

  She grinned at him, accepted his gift, and greedily fell to.

  It was even raspberry: one of her favorites.

  Pearl confided the situation regarding her nightmares to Albert. To Pearl’s surprise, Nissa insisted that they first do auguries to clear Albert of complicity.

  “Remember, Pearl. Albert spent some time not quite in his own right mind. While, according to the terms of our treaty, Righteous Drum and his associates had to remove any and all marks, sorcerous and otherwise, from those whose memories they had stolen, that doesn’t mean someone else didn’t take advantage of Albert’s lapse.”

  That thought had been chilling, for Albert had been Pearl’s student and protegé during his youth, and her trusted friend for many years now. Like her, he shared a semi-celebrity. That had created a bond above and beyond their shared heritage.

  Am I losing my edge? Pearl thought. Not too long ago, I could see everyone’s ulterior motives far more clearly than their ostensible ones.

  Auguries had cleared Albert, and, at Albert’s insistence, Pearl had told Righteous Drum and Honey Dream about her nightmares—but again only after a series of auguries had ruled out each and every one of the residents at Colm Lodge, separately and in combination, from culpability.

  Albert proved to be a considerable help in working the complex readings, adding both his ch’i and his expertise to the process.

  “We’re going to have to clear everyone,” he announced. “We’d better start with those who are currently physically closest. They’re the most likely to notice you’re holding back something.”

  Pearl had to admit that this was true. Their reduced group had continued meeting for daily martial arts practice on the grounds of Colm Lodge. Many days, Righteous Drum and Honey Dream would come to Pearl’s house to consult the materials in her library or simply to visit.

  The other three—Thorn, Shackles, and Twentyseven-Ten—had never established the same level of comfortable intimacy, probably because they were all too aware of their ambivalent position. Unlike the cadre of which Righteous Drum had been a part, they had not been trying to keep an emperor on his throne, but to unseat one.

  Given the chaotic succession to the Jade Petal Throne, this alone might not have been enough to create an uncomfortable situation, but the three former prisoners had also been forced to admit—to themselves, as much as to anyone else—that they hadn’t really known for whom they were fighting.

  Pearl thought that Twentyseven-Ten was a facile enough thinker to work himself around to justifying his actions, what ever they might have been, but the other two were more straightforward types. As a result, the former prisoners conducted themselves as something in between prisoners of war on parole and sinners seeking redemption. Neither attitude made them comfortable houseguests.

  When Shackles, Thorn, and Twentyseven-Ten met with the rest to spar and exercise, Pearl was polite to them, but did not press intimacy beyond what they invited, nor go out of her way to make them feel welcome.

  She rather enjoyed keeping them a little at a distance. It made impressing them easier.

  Even within her more comfortable relationship with Righteous Drum and Honey Dream, Pearl did not like admitting that she was being tormented by nightmares. It felt a little too much as if she were reverting to being a child who was having “bad dreams.”

  To Pearl’s relief, neither of the Landers took this attitude.

  “Communication through and attack via dreams are both well known in the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice,” Righteous Dream said. “Is it not the same here?”

  “I suppose it isn’t,” Pearl said. “Or at least not so common that we take such occurrences as matter-of-factly.”

  One great advantage of Pearl’s confession was that, with the help and considerable skills of Righteous Drum and Honey Dream at their disposal, the auguries went much faster. They continued to use the Orphans’ methods. Peculiar as they were, it was easier to teach Righteous Drum and Honey Dream something of the Orphans’ symbolism than it would have been to re-educate the rest of them. The materials were at hand, and, as Righteous Drum said when he understood the form, very efficient.

  “Easier on the turtles, too,” Honey Dream said with a glint of humor in her eyes.

  Pearl recalled how turtle shells had been among the items used for divination by the ancient Chinese. Apparently this practice had passed to the Lands as well.

  Methodically, they set about clearing various of the Orphans from complicity. They started with Shen Kung, the Dragon, because they might need his considerable knowledge and ability.

  Nissa had offered to have herself checked, and only smiled when Pearl admitted she’d already done the necessary auguries.

  “That’s okay, Pearl,” Nissa said. “I double-checked you, too.”

  Once Pearl would have been shocked by this, but by now she’d learned that despite her warm and maternal outer affect, Nissa was quite independent and decisive. Doubtless Nissa had decided that Pearl could not be trusted to be suitably critical of herself.

  They had cleared Shen and were working on Deborah when Honey Dream articulated what Pearl knew they all must have been thinking.

  “Desperate Lee is long past due for his report. Shouldn’t we be checking on him and the others?”

  “I’m not certain how we would go about it,” Albert admitted. “Righteous Drum, do you have any thoughts?”

  “If the Lands were the Lands I have known all my life,” Righteous Drum said, “I would have many, but regarding this transformed world of which we have been told, I am as ignorant as the merest apprentice.”

  “The scouts haven’t been out of contact all that long,” Albert said, trying to sound encouraging. “Five, six days.”

  “Six,” Honey Dream said firmly.

  Albert went on. “Des mentioned that they must cross those mountains of metal. He noted that he expected the passage to be formidable. Perhaps the scouts are still in the mountains. Remember, all their other journeys have been on the flat.”

  Honey Dream gestured toward the mah-jong t
iles spread on the table. “How about those? Can’t we use them to check?”

  “We could try,” Pearl said. “However, we’ve already found that the further realities are separated, the harder it is to make the tiles respond. The Orphans learned that from the beginning of their exile. They longed to check on the family and friends they had left behind, but they could not.”

  Nissa bounced in her seat, looking for a moment very much like Lani.

  “What about the mah-jong sets, though? I mean the specif c ones, the ones that are made from the bones of the ghosts who are part of the expedition. We have their sets. Surely the link would be stronger.”

  “That’s an interesting idea,” Albert said, stoking his small beard thoughtfully, “a very interesting idea. We were able to contact the ghosts using those sets.”

  “But they are not ghosts any longer,” Righteous Drum objected. “By the gracious will of Yen-lo Wang, they have been re-embodied.”

  “True,” Albert said, “but we’re not looking to summon them, just to make contact.”

  “It’s an interesting idea,” Pearl said, “but not one I think we should pursue today. I have a feeling we’re going to need all our ch’i.”

  Righteous Drum nodded, stilling what Pearl had a feeling was an incipient rebellion on the part of his daughter.

  “I agree. The guardian domains lie between the Lands and this place, so we will need to bridge not one but two degrees of separation.”

  Albert said, “The scouts are probably simply occupied with what they are doing, and haven’t had the opportunity to accumulate sufficient ch’i to contact us.”

  Pearl heard the note of uncertainty underlying his words. Judging from the expression in Honey Dream’s eyes, so did the Snake.

  Looking at how those slim shoulders squared and those dark eyes grew thoughtful, Pearl hoped that Honey Dream wasn’t planning to do anything impulsive.

  Loyal Wind knew that three days had passed since they had been taken prisoner by Thundering Heaven.