Bride of the Rat God

by Barbara Hambly

  “That not to use whatever power you’ve been given is not a neutral act. It’s a blow struck for evil. No, I’m not a wizard like Shang, but... when it came down to it, that didn’t matter. I have my own power, for whatever that’s worth: knowledge and... self, I guess. Just the willingness to be there. Besides...” He shrugged, at a loss for words.

  After a time he reached out with one bandaged hand and touched the half-fallen swag of her hair that she had not thought to do more with than pin carelessly out of the way. “One day I’ll take you out to the hills behind Moorpark, up in the valley where they film the Westerns. In September the grass turns exactly the color of your hair.”

  Five or ten minutes later Norah drew back a little from the circle of his arms, yawned again, and said, “This sounds like the most unromantic thing in the world, but I’m absolutely torn between carrying on and falling asleep. I love you, Alec—” She realized obliquely that it was the first time she’d said so, but somehow it felt like something they’d both known for a long time, “—but if I don’t get to bed, I think I’m going to go facedown in the syrup.”

  He yawned and picked up his glasses where he’d set them aside during the sudden frenzy of that first embrace. “I didn’t want to spoil things by saying so, but I think you’re right.” At some point in the past few minutes she’d transferred from her own chair to his lap; sunlight made a confusion of bright patterns over the blue plaid of his shirtsleeve, the white cotton of her blouse, the trailing river of her untangling hair. “You can have my bed.”

  “You take half of it,” Norah said as they tiptoed softly through the living room where Christine lay sleeping, surrounded by the folded-up towels upon which slumbered her tiny guardians. “I’m certainly not going to turn you out of your own bed after last night, and I’m too exhausted to deal with the proprieties now. And I think,” she added as she took off her sensible shoes, “that we’re both far too tired to be in danger of disgracing ourselves.”

  As it happened, she was wrong about that.

  On Tuesday night, by the misty light of the waxing moon, the Whatshername put out from Santa Monica Harbor for Catalina Island. From the end of the Santa Monica pier Norah could see the lights of the boat, riding some distance out on the dark sea. Below her in the darkness she heard Captain Oleson saying, “Naw, it’s no trouble, Ackey me boy. Next shipment isn’t due from Canada for a week or more, and what the hell have I got to do around here?”

  “So you just thought you’d do a little diving with me and every salvager and scrounge in Santa Monica yesterday, is that it?” asked Alec’s voice.

  “Look, you arrogant little shutterbug, if I have my own idea of what’s fun...”

  “You don’t think the police got him after all, do you?” Christine walked back to Norah through the clammy darkness. She carried Black Jasmine cuddled against her beneath the gray chinchilla of her coat, the diamonds on his collar twinkling, even as Norah held Buttercreme cradled in her arms, the long, singed cascade of her ivory-colored tail trailing down. Chang Ming, who was getting around quite well on a splinted leg, looked up from where he sat at Norah’s side, and his tail swept back and forth across his back. “He should have been here before this.”

  Norah wondered if the dogs remembered anything about the fight, anything about their transformation into the fu-dogs of legend, anything about the blazing horror of bones and fire. They seemed not to. Beyond the clinginess of injured animals and stiffness when they moved, they seemed to be their usual lively, happy selves.

  Perhaps they see no difference, she thought. Perhaps, in their hearts, they are always fu-dogs, ready to take on any number of animate saber-tooth skeletons and evil demons for the sake of those they love.

  “More than the police,” she said quietly, “I’m worried that he was hurt worse than he let on. Alec said he refused to remain at the hospital longer than it took them to bandage his back and his arm. He might have had other injuries.”

  I was hurt inside, Shang Ko had said. She remembered the torrent of fire and lightning striking the old man, remembered his cry of pain.

  He had been young when he had met Da Shu Ken the first time. Now, when he was old and brittle and frightened, how badly had the Rat-God hurt him when it had swept aside not only his body but all the magic he could summon up? She wondered how she could even inquire if he did not make an appearance tonight.

  In Christine’s arms, Black Jasmine turned his head and let out a gruff little yak. Chang Ming’s ears lifted, and he trotted a few clumsy steps down the pier, tail vibrating furiously. A moment later, in the thin moonlight among the rocking shadows of the fishing boat masts, Norah caught movement, the pale blur of faces, the gleam of moonlight on white hair.

  The Shining Crane—or perhaps one of his grandsons—had somehow retrieved his staff, stained with smoke but still intact, from the wreck of the pier. If he moved a little more slowly and stiffly than before and leaned a little more heavily, it was hardly to be noticed. With his other arm he supported a very small and very ancient Chinese woman who swayed a little on her deformed feet but moved with surprising sureness for one so old. The hair piled on top of her head, held in place with a couple of chopsticks thrust through it, was as white as the moonlight, and her eyes were as bright and black as a hen’s.

  “Miss Christine, Miss Norah,” said Shang Ko, a note of joy in his voice that told Norah exactly who this woman was even before the old man spoke, “permit me to make known unto you my most honored colleague Ni Kuei Nu, the Mud Tortoise, the lady of the Bayan Har Shan, the greatest of the sorceresses of the Middle Kingdom.”

  And other things as well, thought Norah, looking at them together, the tall old man and the fragile and beautiful woman on his arm. Other things as well.

  “Buen’ noches,” the Mud Tortoise said, holding out one brown-burned peasant hand. “Twenty years am I looking for this old brujo,” she went on in a strong Spanish accent. “Waiting and listening and reading the water and the fire, and does he use his power so I can find him? Does he work one single spell big enough to let me hear down in Ciudad Mexico? Pff!”

  “You came here from Mexico!” Christine stared at her with wide eyes. “I didn’t know they had Chinese in Mexico!”

  The Mud Tortoise’s eyes twinkled. “Everywhere there is a little money to be made, you find Chinese.”

  “And everywhere there are Jews,” added Alec, climbing up the ladder from the boat and stretching out his hand. “If it weren’t for Chinese restaurants, the Jews would starve to death. My lady.” He bowed awkwardly over her hand and turned to Shang Ko, who was regarding his colleague with a combination of pride and happiness, as if, even though he lived another fifty years, he could never get enough of looking at her.

  More quietly, Alec said to her, “You should have seen him the other night. Without him we’d all be dead—dead a dozen times, really.”

  “And without you,” Shang Ko said quietly, “I would also have been dead. Alive-dead in hiding and in fear. I was a fool.”

  “You were a fool not to have tried to reach me,” the Mud Tortoise said briskly. She stroked Black Jasmine’s head, nestled in Christine’s furs, and the little dog nibbled on her outstretched fingers.

  Norah shook her head. “You can’t call a man who breaks his leg a fool for not being able to walk,” she said. “Some wounds go deep.”

  The old wizard looked gravely across into her eyes, then at Alec by her side. “I am pleased to see,” he said softly, “that even the deepest wounds heal in time.”

  They dropped the demon trap in the deep water on the far side of Catalina Island, a dry and rugged scarp of rock a few miles in circumference. Shang Ko and the Mud Tortoise marked the black box, on every strap and seal of lead, with spells of holding and power, signs that the Rat-God could never pass, power that would act with the power of the ocean to hold him forever prisoner. The Moon of Rats, sealed in another compartment of the trap, would always be his. No one else would use it to summon him.
>
  “This is the place,” said Shang Ko, holding out his hands palm-down over the yacht’s rail while the Mud Tortoise knelt, drawing invisible signs on the box and now and then tossing her own three bronze coins or consulting her ivory luopan to fine-tune the magic and tie it to stars and tides and the currents of moving fate.

  “Wind over Water,” she said quietly, jingling the coins in her hands. “The sign of flowing water that shall cover the Rat-God forever. Earth over Wind—ascendance and the triumph of steadfast work. The signs are good to hold the demon here for eternity. Thunder over Lake...” She smiled in secret delight “Not a sign for the demon, that one...” Her eyes twinkled, and she straightened up. “Asi. It is accomplished.”

  Norah, Alec, and Shang Ko lifted the box to the rail. Shang Ko said softly, “Da Shu Ken, demon of the north, I consign you to lie between the farthest west and the farthest east. Spirit of fire and earth, I consign you to the deeps of the ocean forever. Come not forth ever again. Sleep quietly, knowing nothing, in the darkness of the deep.” They tipped the box over, and it was gone.

  “That’s Avalon.” The bandages on Alec’s hands were a white blur in the shadows of the deckhouse as he pointed to the lone sequin of light. “I’ll take you out there some day.”

  Norah turned her head slightly against his shoulder, the phrase catching at her: I’ll take you...

  Jim had said that. I’ll take you to New York. I’ll take you to Paris... Never saying, When the war is over. Never saying, If I live. She hadn’t let herself think about it, either. But neither had she entirely believed.

  For the first time she felt that she would in fact be taken, that circumstance would not conspire to strike the future from her hands. Her arm tightened around his waist, but she found that she could not speak.

  “Alec, don’t you dare drag poor Norah to that dreadful dull island.” A soft bulk of fur appeared around the corner of the deckhouse, punctuated by the occasional glitter of a diamond in the watery light of the moon. “The only thing out there is one casino and a dance hall, and they have only this sort of Hawaiian band with ukuleles, and they’re all positively ancient. We filmed Wolf of the Spanish Main in the bay around the other side of the island,” Christine added, “where all the bootleggers pick up their cargoes, and unless you like scenery and buffalo droppings, it’s the most howlingly boring place on earth. But I did get to wear this wonderful purple silk thing with a million petticoats, only I don’t see how women walked around in those days, and getting in and out of those silly rowboats was awful. No wonder they didn’t allow women on ships.”

  “Buffalo.” Norah shook her head. “Now I know I’m truly in the Wild West.”

  The tufted feathers on Christine’s brow band tilted with the tip of her head. Against the furs, Norah could see the milky fleck of Black Jasmine’s skunk streak and the star of his single eye. “California’s not so very wild, darling. I mean, we’ve got the Beverly Hills Hotel. And during the filming Frank was absolutely dog-sick... Norah...!”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re the scenarist for Colossus Studios now, aren’t you? I mean officially? You did take that job Hraldy and Frank offered you?”

  Norah nodded. She hadn’t been comfortable about it and intended to leave as soon as she found another, but at the moment, in Hollywood, she was an unknown quantity.

  Mr. Brown had questioned her fairly sharply about why Christine had not reported onto the set that morning or the morning before. When Norah had met his eyes and said, “They don’t quite know. It’s a rather mysterious illness,” the producer’s gaze had shifted, and again she’d had the impression that he was quickly sorting things in the back of his mind. Wondering, perhaps, about his dream, if he’d had a dream instructing him to have Shang Hsu Kwan arrested. Wondering about the promises he’d thought had been made. Maybe wondering about the necklace that had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

  He hadn’t pressed her and had given her surprisingly good terms: a hundred and fifty dollars a week and a bonus if a film she wrote did exceptionally well. For the first time in her life Norah realized she had an actual job.

  The house on Ivarene—to which she and Christine had returned the previous day, though Norah suspected she herself would be living in Venice soon—had smelled of Ambrose Conklin’s pipe smoke and coffee when she’d reached it again, and there had been two unwashed cups on the low table in the living room; later that evening she’d seen Christine trying on the pink diamond ring in front of the bedroom mirror.

  That diamond glittered now among the soft torrent of Black Jasmine’s fur. “Well, why don’t you write a story that takes place mostly on a ship, that will have to be filmed out here in Catalina? Frank’s absolutely been following me around, trying to find out what happened with the Rat-God without asking, hoping I don’t know he made a deal with that nasty thing to arrest Mr. Shang, and thinking all kinds of things about Ambrose and me. He’d be sure to follow me out here and get seasick and sunburned and get sand in his shoes and be miserable the whole time. And I do have one more film left in my contract with Colossus. Will you do that? And make it so good he can’t not film it?”

  Norah laughed, looking up at the tousled bundle of fur and precious stones and Pekingese at the rail beside her. “Of course. Anything will be better than trying to write a scenario about a six-foot specimen of the genus orthoptera for Hraldy’s cinematic masterpiece.”

  “What? Oh, that thing about the cockroach. You know he’s trying to get Hans to break his contract with Jasper Productions to come to Colossus and star in it? It’ll serve him right if Hans does: Hans has a terrible temper and will probably try to organize a union on the set. He left Germany because he was a socialist or something. He’s always going on about unions, and after working all day on one film and then going back and doing retakes for the last one all night, I’m not sure I don’t agree with him... Or wouldn’t if I was going to stay with Colossus.”

  There was a soft scrambling clatter of toenails on the decking. Raising her head, Norah saw the pale shapes of Buttercreme and Chang Ming trotting purposefully across to them from where Shang Ko and the Mud Tortoise stood by the aft rail. They had been there for nearly an hour, ever since Captain Oleson had put about for home again, the tall shape and the small looking very much like their namesakes against the phosphorous chop of the waves. Now and then their voices could be heard, a soft murmur of Chinese against the voices of the sea; once the Mud Tortoise had raised her hand to lay it against Shang Ko’s cheek.

  “Can I get you anything to drink, darlings?” asked Christine, turning back toward the cabin. “Captain Oleson has the most marvelous liquors down there.”

  “They all come out of the same vat,” warned Alec. He’d talked to Chaplin at United Artists that morning—Norah had the suspicion he wasn’t long for Colossus, either.

  “They do not, either,” Christine retorted. “They’re imported especially from Vancouver—he said so. Norah, that man has no sense of romance, and if I were you, I’d think twice about marrying him. We need to drink to the Rat-God’s disappearance, at the very least, and to me finally being able to sleep at night without wondering what’s going to be creeping up on me, completely aside from letting you two quit guarding me and get a little time to yourselves...”

  She paused, turning in the doorway of the cabin, a dark silhouette with her flashing diamonds and her dogs about her feet. Her voice was suddenly shaky. “Thank you,” she said softly and very quickly. Then, turning, she fled downstairs.

  She could face danger, thought Norah, and the wild demands of make believe; she could face exhaustion and producers and any number of incomprehensible directors. She could face crazed fans and rough fate and the black Rat-God of eldritch legend. But she could not yet face love.

  Perhaps, Norah thought, eventually the dogs would teach her that.

  She hoped Ambrose Conklin would be kind to her.

  She leaned against Alec’s shoulder for a time, gazing out ac
ross the midnight ocean that seemed to stretch behind them to the farthest reach of the world. Moonlight sparkled like the froth on bootleg champagne. From the cabin, Captain Oleson’s voice boomed out, “Don’t get saucy with me, wench! Nor your little dogs, neither! I’ll have you know I’m the captain of this boat!”

  Something in his voice told Norah that he was utterly captivated.

  “If he’s the captain of this boat,” Alec said thoughtfully, pushing up his glasses, “that means he can marry us, doesn’t it?”

  Norah glanced sidelong at him, small and comfortable and unprepossessing, solid as oak or bread or leather. A curious thing to find, she thought, in a place like Hollywood. She took his hand. “I suppose he can,” she said.

  A Biography of Barbara Hambly

  Barbara Hambly (b. 1951) is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century.

  Born in San Diego and raised in the Los Angeles suburb of Montclair, Hambly attended college at the University of California, Riverside, where she majored in medieval history, earning a master’s degree in the subject in 1975. Inspired by her childhood love of fantasy classics such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Lord of the Rings, she decided to pursue writing as soon as she finished school. Her road was not so direct, however, and she spent time waitressing, modeling, working at a liquor store, and teaching karate before selling her first novel, Time of the Dark, in 1982. That was the birth of her Darwath series, which she expanded on in four more novels over the next two decades. More than simple sword-and-sorcery novels, they tell the story of nightmares come to life to terrorize the world. The series helped to establish Hambly’s reputation as an author of intelligent fantasy fiction.

  Since the early 1980s, when she made her living writing scripts for Saturday morning cartoons such as Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and He-Man, Hambly has published dozens of books in several different series. Besides fantasy novels such as 1985’s Dragonsbane, which she has called one of her favorite books, she has used her background in history to craft gripping historical fiction.