The Sea of the Dead

by Barry Wolverton

He glanced at Lady Barrett. She hadn’t mentioned Bren’s now-powerless stone, sensing that he might not want to tell his father and Mr. Black about it. And she was right. He didn’t. He couldn’t.

  “I opened the gate, but I didn’t actually go through,” he lied. “I was too afraid.”

  His father stared at him in anticipation for a few more agonizing seconds before lowering his eyes and nodding. “I would have been afraid, too.”

  “You’re all fools,” said Shveta, standing up and towering over them. “To have that kind of power and just lose it carelessly. It’s why magic began to leave our world. Wasted by fools.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t waste it?” said Lady Barrett. “If you had real power, you would only change the world for the better?”

  “Better as I see it,” said Shveta. “Now I suggest you all go to bed. We’ve a long way to go yet.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  SURVIVAL LESSONS

  Samarkand looked every bit the city where modern magic would have begun. Where Bren had been so awed by China’s natural beauty, here it was the architecture that overwhelmed him—perfectly formed marble buildings shimmering with intricate, colorful tile mosaics, gold-domed mosques, mausoleums the size of Rand McNally’s Map Emporium. It didn’t seem possible that all this was manmade. It had to have been raised out of this bleak landscape by powerful magic.

  Black obviously was awed as well. “Do you remember, Bren, when I let you read my copy of Marco Polo’s Travels?”

  “Of course,” said Bren.

  “He passed through here, describing it as a large and splendid city. In my estimation, a huge understatement from the man who exaggerated everything.”

  “Where are we going to stay tonight?” David Owen asked.

  “An inn nearby,” said Shveta. “The two goons will be with me, Ani will stay with you.”

  Sean laughed. “She’s going to keep an eye on us?”

  “Yes,” Shveta replied flatly.

  Bren, his father, Sean, Black, and Ani shared a room with five beds and wooden shutters that let in the cool night air. It was pleasant, and Bren was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking about what he’d told his father about the Dragon’s Gate. Or rather, what he hadn’t told him. Why had he lied? He told himself it was to protect his father, to keep him from nursing the same aching hope Bren had that his mother wasn’t lost to them for good. But had he lied out of selfishness? Because he didn’t want to share those few moments he had with her with his father?

  He got up and quietly left the inn to walk the streets of Samarkand alone. He didn’t know if that was a good idea or not, but he had to try and clear his mind. He didn’t even know if he had seen his mother. It was probably an illusion. A delusion, more like it. He had the black jade, yes, but for all he knew he never completely let it go when he dipped his hands into the river.

  He’d only walked a few blocks before sensing he was being followed. He got suddenly cold and instinctively reached for the stone, as if it might protect him the way it had against those two cutthroats in Map. He had no sooner touched the stone when he remembered it was powerless to help him anymore, and he broke into a run. He had gone maybe a block when a small figure stepped out of an alley right in front of him.

  “Where are you going?” said Ani. She brushed her hair back with one hand and gave Bren a double dose of her catlike eyes.

  Bren caught his breath, feeling relieved and then annoyed. “Wait, you are keeping an eye on us?”

  “Of course, dummy,” she said. “Why else wouldn’t I stay with my mother?”

  “Shveta is your mother?”

  Ani shrugged. “She’s like a mother to me.”

  “Except she treats you like one of her servants,” said Bren, which wasn’t exactly true, but he thought he would try getting under her skin. It worked. Ani half-lowered her eyelids, the way Mr. Grey used to when Bren tried to get him to do something.

  “You take orders from a chakka,” said Ani.

  “I heard Shveta called Lady Barrett that,” said Bren. “What does it mean?”

  Ani thought about it for a second. “What do you call a man who has been . . . unmanned?”

  Bren was confused at first, until Ani made a cutting motion. “Oh! You mean a eunuch?”

  “Whatever you call it,” said Ani. “It means Shveta thinks your woman wants to be a man.” Ani pulled her hair back to mock Lady Barrett’s cropped hairstyle.

  Bren laughed. “No one would accuse Shveta of that.”

  “Shveta is a queen,” Ani replied fiercely. “Don’t talk about her with disrespect.”

  “Okay!” said Bren, and this time Ani opened her eyes so wide Bren was afraid they might be some sort of weapon. But she regained her composure and said simply, “Let’s go back.”

  Bren wanted to argue, but he decided he was ready to get some sleep. His walk, while it hadn’t gone as planned, had served its purpose.

  On the way back, he kept trying to get more information out of Ani. “Is Shveta really afraid we’ll try to escape? Why? Where would we go?”

  No answer.

  “What if I had been running away and tried to resist you just now? Do you have more weapons up your sleeves?”

  Stony silence.

  “Do you like cats?”

  Ani glanced up at him but quickly looked away and kept up the silent treatment until they arrived back to the inn.

  “I could just sneak out again, after you fall asleep,” Bren said smugly. “I lived for more than a year on a ship, sleeping less than four hours a night. I can outlast you.”

  “I never sleep,” said Ani. She turned and left, and Bren watched her go with a sort of wonder. Somehow he didn’t think she was exaggerating.

  It had taken them less than two weeks to travel from Srinagar to Samarkand, even having to cross the Hindu Kush. Shveta had pushed their horses fifty miles a day, as if they were military grade rather than mounts more suited to merchants and tinkers. Samarkand to the Caspian Sea was twice as far, so before they set off again, she traded their weary horses for new ones, aiming to arrive on the sea’s eastern coast by the harvest moon.

  A group traveling together for fifteen hundred miles has a long time to get to know one another better. But as Bren had discovered since first leaving Map, being stuck together often had an isolating effect on people. Most of the crew of the Albatross had remained complete strangers to him. Those he thought he had gotten to know well, like Mouse and Yaozu and Lady Barrett, ended up confounding his expectations, which hurt even worse in a way.

  Bren never expected to grow close to Shveta or her followers, but he had been away from his father for more than a year now. Despite how difficult their relationship had been since Bren’s mother died, he had hoped they could forge a new relationship. A better one. But if you have nothing in common with someone, being with them day and night does little to change that.

  If anything, Bren and his father spoke even less after their awkward exchange about the Dragon’s Gate. Bren didn’t know if his father suspected him of lying to him or whether his normally melancholy father had simply sunk deeper into his sadness, but they barely exchanged words for days on end.

  Bren was just as reluctant to talk to Mr. Black, his oldest friend in the world (though Black hated it when Bren phrased it that way). Bren had always enjoyed the luxury of having Mr. Black and his father exist, for all practical purposes, in different worlds. His father had always known that Bren spent hours at Black’s Books, and that Bren considered Black more like a father. But as long as the three of them were never together, Bren could pretend it wasn’t so, that his father wasn’t hurt by his being close to Black in a way that he wasn’t close to David Owen. Bren even secretly suspected that his father thought Black had been closer to his mother than David had.

  With the three of them here together, there was no illusion—just the harsh reality of so many lost years with his father. He didn’t want to throw it in his father’s face
by chatting it up with Black.

  Black seemed instinctively to understand. He hardly tried to speak to Bren, either.

  Most of what passed for entertainment day in and day out was the conversation, if you could call it that, between Lady Barrett and Shveta. Sean called it a pissing match. While Sean enjoyed it, Bren got the distinct impression that he missed his own sparring matches with Lady Barrett. Sean had thought of himself as Bren’s protector, and he had saved Bren, many times. But now Bren’s father and friend were here, and Lady Barrett was back. Did Sean feel like he wasn’t needed anymore?

  What Bren did want to do was get to know Ani better. She fascinated him, in many of the ways Mouse had. Here was a girl, around his age, who seemed to be second in command to a woman aspiring to be queen and to overthrow the entire Mogul Empire. Of course, Mouse hadn’t been a girl, strictly speaking. But what were the odds of Ani also being a thousand-year-old demigod trapped in a girl’s body? Ani’s unusual eyes made her seem more uncanny than Mouse, and less like a young girl.

  Bren sighed. He was so tired. He rested his hands against the withers of his horse and let his eyes fall shut, the rhythmic trotting rocking him to sleep, until something abruptly woke him.

  “Ow!” He opened his eyes to discover that Ani was behind him, poking a knife into his lower back.

  “Sleepy boy,” she said. “In five seconds I could slit you open and feed your kidneys to the wolves.”

  “Okay!” he said. “Your point is made!”

  She leaned around and showed him her “knife”: the top two fingers of her hand. “You thought I really had a weapon, didn’t you?”

  Bren nodded.

  “Funny how fear does that, isn’t it?” said Ani. “Your enemy’s fear is one of your greatest weapons.”

  “Just so we’re clear, I am not your enemy,” said Bren, trying not to sound afraid.

  “I know,” said Ani, hopping off Bren’s moving horse and springing onto the back of her own, which was being led by Aadarsh. “Just thought it might be useful to teach you a few lessons, since you appear to know nothing.”

  Bren could have sworn that Sean and Lady Barrett were trying not to laugh. Mr. Black arched an eyebrow at him as if to say, See what we were dealing with before you arrived?

  When they made camp that night, Bren resolved to make the best of it. He had been embarrassed by Ani, but she obviously could take care of herself. Maybe she could teach Bren a thing or two.

  “So where did you learn to use weapons like those throwing darts? Did someone teach you? Do children in Cashmere and India typically learn to fight?”

  “The most privileged don’t have to learn to fight at all,” she said. “The defenders of the privileged can proudly display their large, gaudy weapons.” She glanced in the direction of Aadesh, who was playing chess with Black, his almost comically large sword by his side. “The rest of us have to be sneaky.”

  “I am not privileged,” Bren said stiffly. “My father and I live in a clapboard house in one of Map’s poorer parts of town. I ran away from home and lived in the bowels of a ship. And I did beat a man twice my size in a fight with loggerheads.”

  “When I was six years old,” said Ani, her voice like a flint, “a man kidnapped me and sold me to a dealer of comfort girls. I escaped and lived on the street for four years before Shveta rescued me. I lived like a rat. I became a rat.”

  Ani quickly turned away. The fierceness she had shown up to now had been fired by pride, but this time it seemed to come from humiliation as she admitted to Bren how she had been forced to grow up.

  Bren didn’t know how to respond. Here he was complaining about home—a home he’d been yearning for, trying dearly to return to, for months now—and this girl had grown up on the streets. He decided not to say anything. That’s probably what she preferred anyway.

  Later that night, Ani woke him from sleep for the second time that day. Although this time, it wasn’t by threatening him.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Would you like to learn a few survival tricks?” she asked. “For when you are back on the rough-and-tumble streets of Map?”

  Bren’s first thought was, Good heavens, she really doesn’t sleep. But he nodded his head and let Ani pull him away from their camp behind a small hill of scrub grass and gnarled, leafless trees. There she laid out three different weapons: a sharp metal ring; a two-sided dagger; and a short, thick dagger with an unusual handle—a crossbar framed by two long pieces of metal.

  “This is the chakram,” said Ani, pointing to the metal ring. “I can wear several of these on my arm, like jewelry, or hide them up my sleeves.”

  Bren tried to pick it up and immediately cut himself. “Ow! How do you hold it?”

  “From the inside, dum-dum,” said Ani, demonstrating by lifting the chakram with her index finger and then letting it slide down her arm. “Not for beginners.”

  “So you throw it?” said Bren. “Like those darts you hit me with?”

  “We usually tip those with poison,” said Ani. “You’d be dead right now.”

  Bren grabbed the two-sided dagger by the handle in the middle that joined the two blades, each of which was about six inches long and shaped like a wave. “Why aren’t the blades on this straight?” he asked.

  “Better to destroy your insides,” said Ani, who took the dagger from him and demonstrated how you could thrust forward and then backward at someone sneaking up from behind. Or swipe at attackers from each side. “It’s called a haladie.”

  “Can I have that one?” said Bren.

  “No,” said Ani. “You’d stab yourself before tomorrow.” Finally she picked up the thick dagger with the spade-style handle. “This is the katar. This you can use, because it protects you while you’re using it.” She showed Bren how to hold the crossbar, which let the other parts of the handle guard your forearm, and then thrust with the blade. “Not as versatile as the others, but at least you won’t hurt yourself.”

  Bren jokingly stepped in front of the chakram and haladie and brandished the katar at Ani. “Now who has the advantage?” he said.

  Ani looked at him as if she had just heard a chicken speak, and then she slowly undid the belt holding her robe closed. Before Bren knew what hit him, Ani had lashed out with the belt, knocking the katar out of his hand with a loud clang.

  “What the . . .”

  “My most valuable weapon,” said Ani. “The urumi. Essentially a flexible piece of metal, and perhaps the most challenging weapon to master in kalaripayattu, the Indian martial art.”

  All Bren could say was “Wow.” It was like a combination of a whip and a sword.

  “I could have slashed your throat open,” she said.

  “Thank you for not doing that.”

  She smiled at him. It was the first time he could remember seeing her show any sort of emotion, and it made him happy.

  “How about some tea to help us sleep?” she said. Bren eagerly agreed; he was tired of the cold, windy nights. Ani had him wait where he was, and she prepared the tea away from camp, so as not to disturb the others. Whatever it was, it was delicious. An intoxicating mix of spices and just barely sweet. Bren drank greedily.

  When he went back to his bed, he fell asleep almost immediately and slipped into a wondrous dream. He was on his back, in a place that felt very familiar. It felt like home. He heard purring and felt a warm body on his chest. He opened his eyes and saw Mr. Grey lying there, staring at him with half-closed eyes. This was what he wanted, so badly. It felt so real it was painful.

  And then Mr. Grey spoke.

  “Are you in danger, Bren?” he purred.

  “I don’t know,” said Bren. “I may be.”

  “There’s something you didn’t tell your friends about the mandala, isn’t there?”

  Bren didn’t answer at first. Lady Barrett and Sean knew the whole story, but he hadn’t even told his father or Mr. Black. As Lady Barrett had said, easier to keep a secret if fewer people know it. And h
e didn’t know if he could trust Shveta. But this was Mr. Grey. His old friend.

  “A group of monks called the League of Blood wants it back,” he began. “They believe in a secret group called the Nine Unknown, who guard nine sacred books of knowledge that would be dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands.”

  “What’s so important about the mandala, then?” said Mr. Grey.

  “I don’t know,” Bren replied honestly. “Ali-Shir said tangkas were used as teaching tools, like books, but he was just guessing.”

  “Why did the monk who gave it to you want you to take it?”

  “I don’t know that either,” said Bren. “But I wish he hadn’t.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  A MAP OF FEVERED DREAMS

  Bren woke up feeling uneasy. He was well rested for a change, but he vaguely remembered having strange dreams. He couldn’t remember the details, and yet he felt like he needed to. That he had remembered something important, but now had forgotten it again.

  As they traveled, he kept looking at Ani. Something about her was strange. Not her eyes—he was used to them by now. More or less. He kept thinking about the night she told him about her childhood, how terrible it must’ve been. And then it hit him: she used the word rat twice. She called herself a rat.

  Was Ani trying to tell Bren she was Mouse?

  The rest of the day Bren could barely contain himself. When they finally made camp, he kept looking for openings to talk to Ani alone. Finally, when it seemed that everyone else had drifted off to sleep, he got up and crept quietly to her small wad of blankets, relieved to learn that she did actually sleep occasionally. He whispered “Mouse!”

  She shifted but didn’t wake immediately, so Bren put his lips practically on her ear and said again, “Mouse!”

  Ani bolted upright and had Bren on his back, a chakram bracelet at his throat, almost before he could get the one word out.

  “Are you crazy? Sneaking up on me like that?” she said, wild-eyed. “I could have killed you! You deserved to get killed!”