by Matt Weber
“Oh,” said Lin Gyat, “but she did not kill the Worm.”
Five faces swung to stare at him.
Lin Gyat looked around, a touch confused. “Did you hear the impact?”
“What impact?” said Lin Yongten.
“The impact of an immense mass of flesh meeting an even larger quantity of rock at a considerable velocity.”
“Our ears are not all as keen as yours,” said Datang, irritated.
“Dull ears hear silence as well as keen,” said Lin Gyat. “There was no impact. Not of a mountain-sized worm, at any rate.”
“You were deafened by the shot,” said Lin Yongten.
“The shot impacted hundreds of feet above my head,” said Lin Gyat. “My hearing was perfect. I saw the Worm fall, but I did not hear it land.”
Mother-of-Daughters dropped a hand to her belly. As though impelled by some mutual realization, she and Lin Yongten turned their heads to meet one another’s eyes, and both turned to look at Datang.
“I understand,” she said, drawing odd looks from Lin Gyat, Thoto, and Sonam. “The Eager Edge and I will protect your daughter, as gods and spirits have charged us to do, and we will gratefully accept all assistance. But, that established, a simple question ensues. Where do we go?”
“Through Degyen and south,” said Lin Gyat without hesitation. “Let us quit the vicious and insane gods who stagger about the Rafters of the World. My forebears of the River are scholars of peace, their deities scientists of tranquility; as stout a band as we would ride among them like lords, and they would shower us with gold to salve their terror.”
“Pah,” said Lin Yongten; “the yoke of faith is heavier in the River than ever it was here, and the craze for marriage more fervent. Sons barely leave the apron-strings until they are pledged to some woman—and daughters, likewise, to men. You and I are not the marrying kind, Envied of Snakes; and, were we, we could find no match of our caliber in the River. Let us seek out the Grass instead, where love and steel flash freely and Heaven hangs but lightly.”
“But the Grasslanders have no love for Uä’ns,” said Datang. “Whereas, to the east, there is wine, and a good kitchen, and if beds are not enough, they can be fashioned; and all of it under a roof that would welcome me and those who love me. And, should the wrong gods come a-knocking, the border of the Garden is not far, and the cities there are cordial to Uä’n émigrés.”
For a brief, vivid moment, Datang found herself back at the Flying Tiger’s kitchen—thin-slippered on the terracotta floor, the air thick and warm with the scents of garlic and yeast and barley dough, the soft chatter of her mother’s knife-work in her ears, and in her memory, the promise of new wine, to be sampled by all before shipping and selling. Lin Gyat and Lin Yongten, purple-footed and rough, regaling her gaping brothers with stories of questionable provenance; and over, under, and through it, the high, fine voice of a babe in Mother-of-Daughters’ arms—and, from Sonam and Thoto, perhaps another? And from herself—who knew?
“I left five little girls in Rassha,” said Mother-of-Daughters, “and there is no one to protect them now.”
Silence followed for a long while after that.
In due time, Lin Gyat pronounced the horses ready to run, and when they ran, they ran northward: to the southern extreme of the Bat Mountains, then along their eastern edge, and thence to the Cradles and the Khodon Pass, the ashes of the Great South Plain, and whatever might abide behind the Wind Horse Gate.
Spring into Summer, the Year of the Shining Carp
Three boneyards
“The directive stands,” the Judge spat through cracked and blackened lips. “The eighth King of Uä did not defeat me—nor the ninth, nor the new upstart. The priesthood’s champion has failed. Justice beckons. Your own edict proclaims it!”
“I know all this,” the White Umbrella Deity said coolly. “Justice beckons, then; why do you not go to meet it?”
“Feign not this sly coyness—”
“Mind your tone, demigod,” rumbled the Lion Rider Deity.
The Judge fell silent; had he been mortal, Netten sensed, he would have been filling his lungs deeply through his nose to forestall an undiplomatic response. “Forgive me, Deity.” The Judge abased himself with evident agony. “I simply mean that my present debilitation appears to me self-evident. I must be healed.”
“How, healed?” said the White Umbrella Deity. “Surely, even in your present condition, you could match any mortal unfortunate enough to face you; and you will recover swiftly.”
Again, the Judge took visible measures to retain composure. Netten found himself admiring the demigod’s forbearance in the face of pain and damage. “As to that, Deity, I cannot affirm it—not with certainty, not when other puissant mortals may come to the lamas’ aid. And certainly not in the face of the sort of weapons that brought me down. The potency of these machines is shocking.” He did not add, The machines you gave them, but Netten heard it in his head, as plain as stone. “Deific aid would expedite the execution of the sentence.”
“Now, Judge,” murmured a stooped god with a swarm of spindly arms flashing in and out of view, each writing on an equally evanescent piece of paper, or brushing characters on a scroll, or chiseling letters into stone, “you are our hand in the mortal world. We can hardly be expected to nursemaid you through every little setback.”
“When a hand is wounded,” said a black-skinned goddess with black eyes, tongue, and teeth, “the other bandages it. That is hardly ‘nursemaiding.’”
“Heal him, then, Blackmother,” said the White Umbrella Deity.
The black-skinned goddess grimaced; then her skin went blue, then green, then red and at last white, her physiognomy changing subtly the while, so that the white-skinned goddess who emerged seemed like a sister, perhaps a cousin, to the black. She looked at the White Umbrella Deity and shrugged. “I share the Thousand Arm Deity’s misgivings.”
“Come,” said the Lotus Deity, “Thousand Arm, compassion is your bailiwick. Exercise it. He suffered these wounds at our behest.”
There is no more formidable expression of indifference, Netten discovered, than a shrug from a thousand shoulders. “Compassion for one, or thousands? For the aggressor or the victims? I have fellow-feeling for all, but in a case like this… whom to favor? ‘Take no action that is not warranted…’ ‘Study the shapes of rightness ‘til they adorn all things like jewels in thine eye.’ Such a mixed adornment… no, the decision cannot be taken quickly.”
“Inaction is a decision,” the Lotus Deity pronounced.
“Come, is it a grandmother on her deathbed of whom we speak?” said the White Umbrella Deity. “The Judge will keep a year or three.”
“I will be lucky to heal from this in fifty,” the Judge said, with cracking equanimity.
Tension shot through the cave like steel girders, bright and unbending.
“A compromise, then,” said the Deity Who Waits. “Whitemother will heal him in twenty-five.”
“A quarter century for their machines to hunt me down,” the Judge said coldly. “It is a death sentence.”
“A bodyguard, a secretary, and four Louts ought to keep the rain off your back,” said the White Umbrella Deity. “But we will ensconce you here again if it would ease your mind. Between your forge and your writing desk, the time will pass like a hummingbird’s wingbeat.”
“With a thousand thanks, I will retain my mobility,” the Judge said through a partial set of teeth.
“Come,” said the Deity Who Waits. “We are divided—heal him instantly ourselves, or wait a half-century for his wounds to knit? The offer is a quarter. Whitemother, will you pledge it?”
“I will,” said Whitemother.
The Lion Rider, the Lotus Deity, and the Green Crescent Deity looked one to the other. “We accept the pledge,” they said, and as one they vanished. A moment later, three more presences vanished: the Thousand Arm Deity, Whitemother, and an invisible presence Netten knew, only in retrospect, for the Unborn Dei
ty. The Judge, Jangmu, and the Fatal Lout busied themselves in conversation, as though the remaining two deities were not there—but the sheer thereness of them now buried the words of Netten’s enemies as the roar of the ocean does a whisper.
“Thank you for your patience,” the White Umbrella Deity said to Netten, “and your service up to now. In compensation for both, I am pleased to offer you a mandarin’s post in the Snow Pavilion. With the scholar’s rank you attained in life, you would enjoy great freedom and influence. Legal and legislative matters in the Celestial Courts are cordial to men with nimble minds, and your political experience…” The Deity trailed off on noticing that Netten’s mouth had been working the whole time. “The venom in your soul would also be neutralized,” she said gently, “with your unyoking from the Wheel.”
Netten moved his eyes to the other presence in the cave.
“You know my vow,” the Deity Who Waits said simply. “You may join me in it, if you like.”
Memory caressed his cheek: Taut skin pushed out with seeking, a small hand or foot bending the edges of the world. His eyes moved to the White Umbrella Deity. With all his strength, he narrowed them just slightly, to crinkle at the corners in a smile. Then he rested his eyes on the Deity Who Waits.
“So be it,” the gods intoned, and sight faded to black and then beyond.
In the foothills of the eastern edge of the Bat Mountains lay a village, the remnant of a once-great monastery and the town that served and was served by it. If it was not truly on the path that the four travelers followed to Rassha, it was not so far either, and when Lin Gyat had asked to revisit the monks who had shown him such hospitality for the hundred hours of his novitiate, he had spoken with such meekness and gravity that none of his fellow-travelers had the heart to refuse him.
There was only one road allowing access to the village, and so it was that the companions came to it by the same route they had before; the dzo carcass that Lin Gyat had eaten on the way still lay by the roadside, though the bones were now polished to a high sheen, split, and sucked dry of marrow. The outbuildings could hardly have been more sepulchral than they had been on that first visit; but when the companions made the town center, the only sign of occupancy was the occasional scrape of cat- or rat-claws on the cobbles.
“Well,” Lin Gyat said into the silence, “mountain monks are made of hardy stuff. Doubtless they meditate even now on the problem of revitalizing their home. Abbot Bhupen always said that the edifice of good work was only as strong as its foundation in contemplation.”
“You knew Abbot Bhupen for two sunsets,” said Datang. “For all you know, he was mute until he met you.”
She had tossed the barb off without any great thought, expecting a creative inanity in reply— “I would sooner strike a man dumb than give the gift of speech,” or something of the kind. But Lin Gyat was silent, and from the corner of her eye she saw Lin Yongten shaking his head (with some effort, as all his gestures now came.) “Gou le, Left Hand,” he said. “Envied, shall we investigate the monastery?”
When Datang looked to Lin Gyat, she saw fear and sorrow on the giant’s face; but he nodded.
The courtyard gate hung open; the upper half of the statue of the Deity Who Waits yet lay by its base, surrounded by ropes and some crude attempt at a block and tackle. The great carved double doors likewise swayed, creaking, in the still mountain air. Even the capacious, vaulted entrance hall was not too great for the choking smell of rot, evidently emanating from the corpse of a nun in the very center. Datang was deciding which deity to thank that the woman was facedown, when the face itself swung toward them and words spewed from a flapping tongueless jaw: “Brother Gyat is back! Here to take your pleasure too?”
Lin Gyat frowned; Lin Yongten stretched an arm out in front of Mother-of-Daughters. “Lady Pema,” he said, not without strain, “this is no place for a woman in your condition. Please allow me or the Left Hand to escort you back to the square.”
“I am no stranger to the spirits of the dead, blue man,” Mother-of-Daughters said with some asperity.
“Then you know the danger they pose to the young, whose souls are not so firmly rooted as our own.”
The vaults of the hall echoed with an agonizing laugh, more scream than cackle. The corpse began to rise as a puppet might, head followed by shoulders. “I don’t want to be a baby. A mother, though, perhaps. If I were alive, I would be pregnant.” The corpse began to drift through the air toward Mother-of-Daughters. Datang and Lin Gyat interposed themselves; Datang had drawn her straightsword, and Lin Gyat held his monk’s spade at the ready. “I smell bereavement on you all, but most on her. What say, mother-to-be? Trade your pain for oblivion? I’ll raise it better than I would my own rape-child, I promise.”
Mother-of-Daughters took a step back, wide-eyed, but a clang filled the hall: The doors had closed, and the steel bar fallen across them.
“Sister Ananda,” Lin Gyat said softly. “What befell you?”
The corpse stopped its drift and snapped its head to fix its eyeless sockets on Lin Gyat. “Well spotted, oaf. What clue had you from this ravaged mechanical?”
“I am a keen connoisseur of natural sounds,” said Lin Gyat. “I never heard you shriek, nor speak such hard words, but even through the rigors of your death, your voice is as singular as any goat’s bleat or grouse’s croak.”
The ghost of Ananda examined Lin Gyat for a long while. “The Gong of Night brought panic. Some of your brothers saw fit to carouse at what they thought could only be the world’s end. Some of the sisters and I were trying to escape to the town. We made convenient sport. The others lived, but the brothers played too hard with me.”
Lin Gyat twirled the monk’s spade. “Which brothers?”
“I do not know their names,” said Ananda’s ghost. “I do not remember their faces. I do not wish to meet them in the afterlife in any case. Has the Worm been defeated, then?”
“Stilled for a time, in any event,” said Lin Gyat. “We are all saved—at least those of us who die before his next return.”
“Pain cannot die,” said Ananda’s ghost. “Didst know it? The lungs fold, but pain yet sings; the heart stops, but pain yet throbs. It is an infestation of the soul.” Her voice had become dominated by despair. “We were not taught this, Brother.”
“I was taught almost nothing,” said Lin Gyat. “I do not know what a senior sister might know of ghosts. I may not even marry a man and a woman, nor cast bones to name an infant. But I did learn one small thing.”
“Yes,” said Ananda’s ghost, and her horrifying face seemed nearly to throw forth light.
Lin Gyat walked up to the corpse—Datang’s stomach lurched at the thought of drawing any closer—and knelt, passing the bell-tipped end of his staff over the destroyed head like a wand. There was no ceremony in its collapse; the muffled crack of snapping bones echoed faintly from the vaults of the hall. Lin Gyat began to unlimber himself from his priestly vestments.
“Blackmother, Envied of Snakes, leave her be!” said Datang.
Lin Gyat transfixed her with a cool, clear stare. “I do not know where I will next find garments I may wear under the curse, wherefore I will not ruin these with corpse-stench. But I mean to bury her.”
Naked, he hauled Ananda’s corpse into the courtyard, heedless of the chunks and gobbets that fell from her with every too-ungentle motion. When he had placed her on the hard ground, he carefully collected the pieces of her that he could, then fell to with the spade.
Even for a giant, the foothills of the Bat Mountains were no easy place to dig a grave. Lin Yongten and Datang kept Lin Gyat supplied with provender and water; Mother-of-Daughters, wary of ghosts, stayed in the town with her daughter and son-in-law. The sun had lingered at noon and was hours into its descent when he was done. Before he resumed his vestments, he reentered the monastery in search of the icy freshet that the monks had used for bathing. Moans issued from the mountain while he bathed; but perhaps it was the wind, or the settling of rock
s, or some species of alpine bird only Lin Gyat would know.
Lin Gyat stayed in the monastery for shelter; Lin Yongten and Datang accompanied him in solidarity. They were a somber procession the next morning, out of the courtyard. The statue of the Deity Who Waits, straight and tall, bade them a half-smiling farewell; and if anyone other than Datang made note of its sudden restoration, they chose, like her, to let the matter lie.
Night tattered and whirled away, and the Ratter leapt bone to bone through the scattered skeleton of the Orchid Palace, looking for the tranquil eye at the center of the disarray.
But tranquility is famously elusive. There was, as the Ratter had anticipated, a circle of clear tile, three times a tall man’s height in radius and scoured so bare that even the blood of the man at its center had not cleaved to it. That man lay where the Ratter had left him, the mortal wound not even visible, so sharp the Ratter’s blade had been; the Cerulean Sword, it seemed, had forborne to tear apart his corpse, as it had so many others in its abandon. For all that, though, Gyaltsen’s bloodless hands grasped nothing. The Cerulean Sword was a mere yard away, of course, no great distance to the hand or eye, blade screeching and scraping on the tile. But its haft was in the hands of a little girl, a gawk of knees and knobs no taller than that strange-blue blade—and that distance, from dead hand to living, was immeasurable.
The girl looked up at the Ratter. “It can’t be left without a master. Papa told me. I remember. But who’s the master after General Gyaltsen?” She pressed her lips together and blinked back tears. “He didn’t tell me that. I would have remembered if he did.”
“Child,” said the Ratter, “I know who its master is. But I cannot tell you yet.”
“Why not?”
“She’s not yet ready to use it.”
The girl sniffed. “But we can’t just leave it for her to find it. Can we?”
“No, child, we can’t,” said the Ratter. “We’ll keep it safe for her. Until she’s ready.”