“I wonder,” Snow Pine said, “if he, she, or it can hear us.”
“Or read our minds,” Gaunt said.
The thought dampened his musings like mountain mist.
Now the steps strained for the vertical—practically a ladder carved into the mountain. Mist made it impossible to determine how far up it went.
They roped themselves together and ascended. Bone wished he had ironsilk; hemp would have to do.
A chilly half-hour blew past.
Breaking the cloud layer, they saw a wall of granite to one hand, a seeming infinity of blue on the other, and a floor to the world composed of golden, churning fluff.
He whistled.
This was why he had to succeed. To bring the boy back, to make his mother fully live again, so they could enjoy all these moments. The truest treasures any mortal could pinch from life’s treasury.
“Bone,” Gaunt said, voice all business. “Do you see it?”
Up there was a glinting of a more mundane treasure. Gold, or he was a guardsman.
“I see it. I think we’re on the doorstep.”
The alcove turned out to be big as a country teahouse, and Bone could not imagine how so much gold had gotten up here. There were gold plaques, and gold benches, and a golden doorframe with embossed characters in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell.
The door itself was of iron, with a peculiar wooden knob, and a stone seal was set in its midst. There was also a window in the door, filled with translucent ice; through it, a dark passage was dimly visible.
“‘Om Mani Padme Hum,’” Gaunt said, squinting at the inscription on the doorframe. “This is gibberish.”
“It’s not from my language,” Snow Pine said, “but I’ve heard it. I’m not sure what it is, but the priests of the Undetermined use that phrase.”
“The Undetermined?” Bone asked.
“You in the West may have heard of him as the ‘Dust on the Mirror?’ A legendary being of enlightenment who broke through the illusions of this world.”
Bone remembered now. “He ended his own suffering and showed the way for others to end their own?”
Snow Pine nodded. “It’s said about him:
The Undetermined
Who won by losing
Who is free of the chain of causes
And has had great effect.”
“Paradoxical,” Gaunt said.
“Yes,” Snow Pine said. “I don’t really understand the Undetermined. And I say that as someone who’s bashed her head against the Way of the Forest! But legends say he still appears now and then, with unmatched power and compassion.” She pointed at the door. “Now, speaking of compassion, this phrase supposedly comes to us by way of a goddess of kindness and empathy. A holy man once told me it calls upon her name, but in our province we called the same goddess ‘Guanyin.’ So I don’t know. A holy woman told me it means . . . aiya, can’t remember. Something like ‘generosity, patience, wisdom.’ You know. Enlightened stuff.”
“This door is most peculiar . . .” Bone reached out, and the stone seal blazed with a red inscription. Pain lashed his fingertips. “Ah!”
“‘Monkey,’” Snow Pine murmured, looking at spindly red lines resembling a bamboo forest twisting in a fiery wind. They were already fading. “It means ‘Monkey . . .’”
Gaunt studied the door. “There’s a reason for the peculiarity, I think. Qiangguo’s sages speak of five elements: metal, wood, earth, fire, and water. The door’s of metal, wood, and earth. Bone has just discovered the ‘fire’ aspect.”
“Thank you for the sympathy,” Bone said, sucking his fingers.
“Poor thing. Now, if we interpret the ice as ‘water,’ we have the full set. There’s some magical aspect to this door.”
“Hm,” Snow Pine said. “Is it to keep us out? Or keep the Great Sage in?”
“What do you know about him, again?” Bone said. “It may be important soon.”
“I know only what Lightning Bug told me when she was teaching me this and that. There were so many things I only got pieces of, like shards of porcelain after an earthquake.” She shut her eyes, remembering. “Once there was a great disturbance in the celestial court. An outsider came claiming to have power equal to anyone, including the August Personage in Jade. He, she, or it declared the title ‘Great Sage, Equal of Heaven.’ There was great commotion until the Jade Emperor gave the Sage the job of stablekeeper for the cloud-steeds. For a little while all was well. But at last the Sage understood the position was a lowly one and returned to mischief. Storms crackled in the sky. Meteors streaked and crashed. Heaven’s angry generals at last won the day. Yet the Sage proved indestructible. Luckily the Undetermined himself was on hand. I don’t know how the deed was done, but the Sage was kicked down to the mortal realm to dwell within this mountain.”
“Hm,” Gaunt said. “Kicked down to the ground. Five-Toe Peak.”
“It’s suggestive, sure,” Snow Pine said. “There are always stories of wise folk on mountains, but maybe this folk is trapped in one.”
Having already burned his hand, Bone saw no harm in trying the knob. It would not turn.
“Do you ever think before acting?” Gaunt said.
“I think while acting,” Bone said. “And I think the door is locked. Moreover I think the lock is of the metaphysical, not the pickable, kind.” He scratched his head. “Five elements. Perhaps we must match each element to its opposite. No, no, that only works in the Western system, where there are four . . .”
“Maybe,” Snow Pine said, “we can use the hot stone to melt the ice somehow, and then . . .”
“The stone’s already faded.”
“Well, you could set it off again.”
“Thanks so much for your encouragement.”
“‘Om Mani Padme Hum,’” Gaunt said while touching the knob. It turned smoothly, and the door groaned open. Although Gaunt needed give only a gentle shove, the noise suggested tremendous weight.
When the echoes had subsided, Bone cleared his throat. “Think before acting?”
“Well, you’d already tested the waters.” Gaunt patted him on the shoulder. “The fires, rather.”
They stepped into the Sage’s realm.
Bone pulled out a torch, ignited it with one of Qiangguo’s ingenious fire-starting devices, and led them into the passage.
The tunnel corkscrewed deep into the mountain, changing character as it went. At first it appeared hewn, a tomb-like passage. Later it seemed the result of natural processes, with a rugged floor and irregular walls, but with an improbable downward curve.
“I do not trust the geology,” Gaunt said.
“I’m mistrustful of many things,” Snow Pine said. “Governments, sorcery, criminal organizations larger than three, people who smile too much, men—”
“Ah, you wound me,” Bone said.
“Should I trust you, master thief?” Snow Pine said. “As a general principle?”
“Point taken.”
“But it’s never occurred to me to mistrust rocks.”
“You should,” Gaunt said. “This mountain has the outward aspect of granite. But this tunnel has the look of limestone. Worst of all, we walk among stalactites and stalagmites, which in a limestone cave are the work of dripping groundwater. I doubt the ice of the summit could be responsible.”
“It’s wise to heed my wife,” Bone said. “Geology is something of a hobby of hers. Along with trailblazing, tavern songs, polemics, practical mythology, wizard-taunting, and morbid poetry.”
“Not true,” Gaunt said. “Morbid poetry is a passion, not a hobby.”
Bone smiled, yet Snow Pine tugged at her hair in a way that worried him.
She said, “You think the tunnel is some sort of sham?”
Bone wondered, with a fresh wince of guilt, how Snow Pine managed. We’re stronger than you Westerners, Snow Pine had said once, when he’d tried to broach the subject. You’re tough, you know how to fight. But we’re tougher, we know how to suffer.
“The whole mountain, perhaps,” Gaunt was saying. “There is a degree of unreality about the proceedings, a mutability. I think some mind guides this environment, even if it doesn’t dictate everything.”
“The Great Sage perhaps?” Bone said.
“Or the thing that locked up the Sage,” Snow Pine said.
“Wait,” Bone said, halting. There came a distant, rhythmic noise in low tones, and in time to the rhythm a wind that fanned the torchflame. “It seems to me,” he observed, “wandering about through underground passages was quite frightening enough when I knew the local folklore . . .”
“Well,” said Snow Pine, “I may know the local folklore, but I have no idea what this is. But I can tell you one thing. It’s snoring.”
Snow Pine might have known her friends would find a way to turn anxiety into argument. Albeit a friendly one this time.
“I hadn’t expected snoring,” Bone said.
“I grow more annoyed with the Great Sage by the minute,” said Gaunt.
“You snore as well.”
“I have annoyance to spare.”
“It’s very delightful snoring . . .”
“I think we’re here,” Snow Pine said.
They entered a cavern that was a spelunker’s dream. Vast blades of crystal stabbed all colors in all directions. Smaller cousins glinted in corners and jabbed underfoot. The travelers crunched gleaming wonders. Many crystals had a mirroring effect, and the trio were endlessly multiplied as they wove among the facets and edges.
From time to time Snow Pine glimpsed in the crystals a furry, simian face. “There is a beast in here. Be on your guard.”
The snoring stopped.
“Beast?” someone murmured sleepily. The chamber echoed Beast-Beast-Beast!
They crept closer, their faces multiplying. Soon their three was joined by a fourth.
It was a monkey, such as Snow Pine had once or twice glimpsed in the forests. Yet those monkeys had possessed black fur and tan faces; this monkey was all gray. Its eyes were closed, and it breathed in time with the fantastic snoring.
Sharing a silent look, the three proceeded until they came to the chamber’s heart. The gray monkey lay upon the cave floor beneath a vast mass of crystal, granite, obsidian, limestone—a conglomeration of minerals fused with the ceiling. Snow Pine had the uncomfortable sense that a giant foot, complete with jutting crystal toenails, had pinned the monkey in place.
She crouched low, craning her head.
“I think the monkey’s trapped,” she whispered. “There’s no room for it to move.”
“Is it made of stone?” Gaunt exclaimed.
The monkey snorted and shifted at the sound, but its eyes remained shut.
“I think so,” Snow Pine murmured.
“Is this the Sage?” Bone said, voice hushed.
“And should we awaken it?” Gaunt added in kind.
Snow Pine shut her eyes, thinking of a distant sea. “I think we have to. But I also think this is a creature of power. We may regret this one day. We should all agree.”
“I say awaken it,” Gaunt said. “We have come this far.”
“I go where Gaunt goes,” Bone said.
“No,” Gaunt said, a distant look upon her face. “No, I don’t think that is enough this time. I think you must choose.”
Bone smirked. Snow Pine could sense he wanted to make light of the situation and could not, quite. “We can’t command events,” he said at last. “We can only do our best and hope our children prosper within the future we shape. Let’s awaken the monkey.”
Snow Pine said, “I’ll do what I must. To give my daughter the world.”
She stepped forward. “Monkey! Hello! Monkey!”
The snoring stopped and became set of agitated screeches, such as she’d heard in the forests. The bizarre creature sounded like a chimpanzee.
“I had heard the Sage referred to as a ‘monkey,’” Snow Pine marveled to her companions, “but I never took that literally. I figured it was a nickname, or he was born in the Year of the Monkey, or something like that.”
The screeching stopped. Gray eyelids rolled across onyx eyes. “Year of the Monkey!” called the stone simian. “Is that what this is?”
“No,” Snow Pine said, wonder in her voice. “Actually it’s the Year of the Snake.”
“Feh! Missed it again! I can’t stay awake longer than half a year at a time, and when I fall back asleep it’ll be for at least half a cycle.”
“You stay awake for six months at a time?” Bone said.
“Hey, hairy wildman, you try staying awake longer with a mountain on top of you.” The mineral monkey sniffed the air. “No, I’m wrong. I thought you might be a fellow Monkey. But you’re a Rat.”
“I could have told you that,” said Gaunt, unable to suppress a laugh.
“And a Snake! Hey, this is your year, young lady. Use it well.” Another sniff. “Aha! There is a Monkey here, and it’s you, girl of Qiangguo.”
Snow Pine blinked. They’d never tried determining where Gaunt and Bone fell in the procession of years, because the calendars didn’t match, and in any case Bone had forgotten the year of his birth. Western folk supposed their personalities were set by the stars, and that wasn’t for her to argue. Yet she did not doubt the Sage’s pronouncements. Like many people, Snow Pine scoffed a little at the old notion that personality was driven by the animal of your year.
But she did see something wise in Gaunt, and surely there was much that was opportunistic about Bone. As she recalled, Rat and Snake were not the best romantic match, and not the worst. Maybe that fit as well.
She herself never minded being a Monkey. Girl, however . . .
“Woman of Qiangguo,” Snow Pine said.
The Great Sage laughed. “Who am I to deny a fellow Monkey her proper title? And a fellow female. But I would like it if you strangers would use one of mine. I think I deserve a little better than ‘you,’ don’t you think?”
“Apologies, Great Sage,” Snow Pine said.
“Equal of Heaven,” the Sage added.
“Equal of Heaven,” Snow Pine agreed uneasily.
“Wondrous Lady Monkey.”
“Wondrous Lady Monkey . . .” Gaunt said.
“She Who is Aware of Vacuity.”
Bone coughed. “She Who is Aware of Vacuity . . .”
“O Glorious Bedmate.”
“What?” Bone said.
“Just seeing how far we could go with this,” the Great Sage said.
“He has his faults,” Gaunt said, “but he is spoken for.”
“Ha!”
“Lady Monkey?” Snow Pine asked.
“Can’t sages be female? Or simian? Or made of stone? Or dashing and gorgeous?”
“Apparently they can,” Gaunt said.
“So, since you’re clearly under-informed, what are you doing here? I haven’t been awakened in a thousand years that I can recall. Must be something big. Is the Undetermined springing me?”
“I don’t think anyone here qualifies for that title,” Gaunt said.
“Ah, I had suspected,” said the Great Sage. “Anyway, having been imprisoned in a mountain, I’d expect my release to be similarly dramatic. I deserve no less.”
Snow Pine crouched beside the stone monkey head. Every time the Sage stopped speaking and assumed a distant look, it was easy to assume she was a statue. But swiftly enough she would blink, or sniff, or smirk. Each hair on her head was a separate mineral formation, like darker versions of the smaller quartz blades in the surrounding cave. Her eyes were black stones with clear impurities for pupils, like comets.
The comets swung toward Snow Pine. Granite lips revealed agate teeth. “You wonder how I can awaken. Surely I’m an artwork of sorts, you think, so how can I live? I concede it’s a bit of a mystery to me also. Long ago, when there were many more moons in the sky, the quarrelsome god-clans of the Arctic and Antarctic warred over control of the sun and in the process changed its course.”
“I have never heard of a pantheon in the far north . . .” began Gaunt.
“It became a pantheon of the far west, long before your people again emerged from caves, once the sun bent to its new path,” said the Sage. “But that is beside the point, for the point was about me. Strange energies were unleashed in those days, and they fell upon a certain boulder in a magical place far beyond the Starborn Sea. I hatched from that stone, much as you see me now. And wonderful as I am, I’m no doubt not the most wondrous thing to be born when the sun changed course. Now. Tell me what has brought you so far to awaken me.”
“Great Sage,” Snow Pine said, glancing at her nodding companions, “we awakened you because we are in great need. We’ve lost our children.”
The Great Sage frowned. “Children? Lost?”
“Our son,” Bone said, taking Gaunt’s hand, “and the daughter of Snow Pine here.”
The Great Sage snorted. “Surely you don’t need me to resolve this riddle. Haven’t you considered that they might have eloped?”
Snow Pine strove to maintain her temper. “You are unaware of the circumstances. Our children are very small . . . were very small when we left them.”
“Left them, lost them? Make up your mind.”
“They were left in a safe place,” Bone said, “so their mothers could join me in fighting a dreadful assassin from the West. The assassin is dead, but that haven is now lost . . .” His voice trailed off, and Snow Pine could see, for once, the guilt that lined Bone’s face.
But the Great Sage was squeezing shut her stony eyes in exasperation. “I had thought people would only brave the wasteland to ask me matters of import! How to become immortal. How to vault through the clouds. How to assume the forms of animal, mineral, or vegetable. How to do battle with the Archon of Night, or rescue the Lost Moon, or face the Starwolf on the Day of Its Return. Lost children? Am I a village constable?”
All this time Persimmon Gaunt had been studying the Sage with narrowed eyes. Now she spoke. Fury lit her words.
The Silk Map Page 3