The Silk Map

by Chris Willrich

  “We are not all King Younus material, Lady. And tools that involve demons are invariably tainted by demons.”

  “I will take your advice to this extent. I will not wield the sword. But if you will do so on my behalf, freedom is only the first of your rewards.”

  “And Snow Pine too?”

  “Of course.”

  Snow Pine said, “Free us first. As a matter of good faith. And then let us discuss.”

  “That is somewhat more trust than I’m willing to extend toward someone who’s called me a murderer.”

  “Then the two of us are in a similar place,” Snow Pine said.

  “I think it is Flint’s decision.” Steelfox’s voice turned a trifle mocking. “Or do you have a special claim on him?”

  Snow Pine found nothing to say that would not make things worse.

  “How many walking dead are we talking about?” Flint asked.

  Steelfox paused. “Hundreds.”

  Flint nodded. “I don’t think you are lying. Thank you. I will have to think about it.”

  “There are still hidden areas to explore, so I can wait. But I intend to leave before dawn tomorrow, map or no map. We’ve lingered too long as it is. Sadly I’ve already had to kill two people who stumbled upon the temple.”

  “People from Shahuang?” Snow Pine asked quickly.

  “I believe so.” Steelfox studied Snow Pine for a moment before returning her gaze to Flint. “If you don’t answer by midnight, or answer no, I must choose another champion to wield your sword, risk or no risk.”

  When Steelfox had gone, they commenced a strange afternoon. The yelling was done, and all that was left was the impassive warriors, and the unnervingly beautiful paintings, and talk. They shared worries about their comrades. They talked of lands they’d seen. Snow Pine spoke of Qiangguo and a girlhood of defiance and danger. Flint spoke of the distant city of Amberhorn and a boyhood on the docks. Neither was a stranger to rough company. Each had somehow managed to encounter scholarship and learning, less as a trophy and more as a prize thrown at their heads to keep them quiet.

  Only as the air cooled did she broach the subject. “Will you fight the walking dead?”

  “I still don’t know. I may not know until midnight.”

  “I’ll fight beside you.”

  “Snow Pine, the only comfort in that battle would be knowing you weren’t in it.”

  “I may have my own surprises.”

  “What—”

  “No, I can’t speak of it. I’m not even sure what I would say.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “What?”

  “No matter. I think we should sleep. Unless there is more arguing to do?”

  “Ha. Later.”

  “Later, then.”

  They were awakened when the demon-statue started glowing and screaming.

  Even with all she’d been through, Snow Pine was startled to see fiery pinpricks in the demon’s eyes and an unearthly howling that nonetheless seemed dimly familiar.

  She put her hand upon Lady Monkey’s needle and nearly called upon it (with what result, who could say), but suddenly the bloodcurdling screeches echoed in her memory.

  It was Widow Zheng’s sales voice.

  She put her hand on Flint’s shoulder and hissed into his ear, “Friends!” To his credit he simply accepted this and followed her lead. “Aiya! Save us!” she cried, backing toward the door, and Flint did similarly.

  The Karvaks, she had to admit, were courageous. They charged the demon-statue to protect their charges, with only the slightest hesitation. She and Flint, likewise, did not hesitate to depart.

  Unfortunately, there were two more Karvaks outside.

  Fortunately, so were Gaunt and Quilldrake.

  Quilldrake was wielding a dao-sword so adroitly, it took Snow Pine a moment to realize that it was her own.

  That meant the sword in Gaunt’s hands . . .

  “Crypttongue—” Flint said.

  “I know!” Gaunt said. “Bar that door!”

  The door was surely not of the same vintage as the rest of the temple; perhaps it was the work of the caretaker. The Karvaks had hauled a boulder to block it at need, and Snow Pine and Flint rolled it into place. A pounding commenced on the far side, but the courageous demon-fighters were stuck.

  Gaunt wielded the strange, silvery-glowing sword with skill Snow Pine would not have credited. Nonetheless the poet was no swordswoman. The Karvak slashed at her, slicing her travel robe and exposing the shining section of the Silk Map. He froze.

  “Surprise,” Gaunt said, and whacked his head with the flat of the blade. Her foe fell, groaning.

  “Help, please?” Quilldrake said.

  Snow Pine kicked the Karvak in the side, Quilldrake tripped him, and Gaunt hit him with Crypttongue’s jeweled pommel.

  Gaunt, panting, knelt and leaned on the sword as if upon a staff.

  “Yes,” Flint said, leaning beside her. “It is disorienting. Have you slain . . .”

  “No,” Gaunt murmured. “I restrained it.”

  “Good.”

  “You should have this back, Flint.”

  “Wait a moment. Letting it go can be disruptive.”

  “How did you come by such a thing?”

  Quilldrake said, “That’s not a question for now. Our plan was effective, but noisy. We must be moving.”

  “Art,” Flint said. “There’s an underground village accessible from the temple. I think the map’s down there. There’s an access near the entrance.”

  “I think there’s also one back whence we came,” Quilldrake said. “No time to explain. I suggest you come with us—”

  There came a sudden whump of a dagger-hilt connecting with a skull, and Quilldrake toppled like a log.

  Behind him, unhooded, stood the one-eared woman from Yao’an.

  Snow Pine grabbed the dao-sword and slashed; One-Ear leapt smoothly over the blow. Flint tried to tackle her and slammed into the wall.

  Gaunt rose and jabbed at One-Ear as though some invisible puppeteer yanked her exhausted limbs. But even with Crypttongue on her side, the poet was overmatched. One-Ear advanced and slashed. More of the Silk Map was revealed, dotted with Gaunt’s blood. Gaunt stepped backward.

  “It goes with me,” One-Ear said. “And you will never leave—”

  A Karvak arrow hit the mysterious woman from behind. She staggered, with a shaft in her shoulder. A second arrow flitted to Gaunt, and jerkily Gaunt knocked it out of the air.

  As Flint recovered and approached, a third arrow struck him in the leg. He toppled onto Snow Pine as a group of Karvaks, led by Lady Steelfox, advanced.

  “The map!” Steelfox said.

  “Gaunt!” Snow Pine called. “Run! Don’t forget! Innocence! Joy!”

  Gaunt hesitated.

  “Go!”

  The poet turned and ran.

  Snow Pine managed to rise, sword in hand, to confront Lady Steelfox.

  Before either could speak, One-Ear snarled and threw herself into a flying kick at the Karvak princess. Without thinking the matter through, Snow Pine got in her way. The impact slammed her against the same wall that Flint had involuntarily kissed a moment earlier.

  When she recovered, she saw One-Ear in the grip of three Karvaks, and Steelfox staring at Snow Pine as though at a two-headed falcon.

  Snow Pine put her hand upon Lady Monkey’s needle.

  I call upon your power!

  “Why—” the princess began.

  Do something, needle!

  “Why would you help me?”

  Stupid needle!

  “Just—help my friends,” Snow Pine managed to say, before sliding down the wall.

  Bone spent a fitful night at the inn, for he worried about Gaunt and about the little noises that haunted the night. Many times he leapt out of bed, dagger drawn, thinking an intruder had entered, but he saw nothing more sinister than the rolled-up Anokan carpet.

  In the morning he set himself up in the town
square between the two wing-shaped lakes and began selling their goods.

  “Sabretooth powder!” he called. “Good for one’s nocturnal energy! Silk, from a distant land, my weary feet hope to tell you! Tea, of the same variety that emperors have sipped! Five-spice blend, whose ingredients are a well-guarded mystery!”

  “Can you verify the truth of your claims?” asked a skeptical townswoman.

  “Do I look like a dishonest person?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have never done anything dishonest as a businessman.”

  “Twenty silver for the carpet.”

  “Honestly I tell you, that is not enough.”

  In all honesty, he was reluctant to sell the carpet, which was to his eye worth all their other goods plus the camels. He did manage to sell some bricks of tea. Knowing that he only needed to cover expenses allowed him to bargain harder than he might have. As the morning progressed he was beginning to have a little fun, though the ire of the townsfolk cut at his pride, and worry for Gaunt nipped at his heart.

  The town’s children were more willing to engage him, though rather less able to buy anything. “Roll out the carpet!” they pleaded, and he did so, cautioning them not to get it dusty. Its appearance, fully spread out under the sun, struck his eye as beautiful and jarring all at once. The clash of motifs, one cool, one hot, seemed the work of an argumentative partnership or one highly conflicted mind. The children perceived the dichotomy immediately and began hopping from one side to the other. Bone watched them and scratched his chin. The carpet rippled in the wind (perhaps a little more than he would have expected). Bone peered at a dark stain in the midst of the design, where a swirling vortex of red and black dominated. He began to suspect the stain had some violent origin.

  The children eventually tired of this business, and of asking him about his homeland, and older siblings distracted them with paper tricks. Bone was somewhat relieved, as he’d already explained how his house had perched upon the head of an absent-minded giant, how his first occupation had been to polish the setting sun at day’s end, and how only the male Westerners really hatched from eggs. He was running out of tall tales and missing Gaunt all the more.

  When the children left the carpet he flipped it over. He watched the older siblings fold paper animals and craft paper darts that soared upon the desert wind. Once again the carpet seemed to ripple. It almost seemed a companion, it had such personality. “It would be quite something to fly,” Bone said out loud. “I mean, deliberately. Clinging terrified to a dragon’s leg is something else altogether.”

  He could not feel the breeze, but one corner of the carpet slapped the dust.

  Now a girl lit a candle and held a tube of paper over it; the paper rose into the air. It kindled a vision in his memory.

  “Haytham ibn Zakwan,” he murmured. “Whatever became of him. . . . Shapes in the sky . . . oh, no.”

  He looked this way and that, but of course nothing in the great bright blue confirmed his suspicions. He bowed to the children, packed his remaining wares, threw the carpet onto a camel, and returned to the inn. From there he marched to the tower of the magistrate.

  There was at least one advantage to being a bizarre outlander: people were interested in talking to him. In short order he was in the magistrate’s presence.

  “You mean to tell me,” the man said, frowning beneath white whiskers, drops of perspiration gleaming upon a spotted bald head, “that we are menaced by paper balloons?”

  “Not paper, eminence. These will be spheres of cloth, filled with hot air, suspending baskets. Such contrivances are at the mercy of the wind, but Karvaks have Wind-Tamers, I’m told.”

  “I do not think this is the hot air we must worry about.”

  “Eminence, hear me out. I have heard of such things from . . . a friend.”

  THE TALE OF THE THIEF,

  HA, I MEAN MERCHANT, OF COURSE

  Far away, beyond Anoka, beyond Efritstan and the Sandboil, there stands beside the sea the city of Palmary, a city in the shape of a hand.

  (A sea is more than a vast lake. Imagine those moments in the desert heat when we see a mirage of water shining in the distance. Imagine that water becoming real and filling everything, that the vastness of the sands becomes the vastness of the waves, that an oasis is now an island, that mountains are mainlands. I do not lie in this.)

  Even as your town is shaped as a butterfly, giving your people, I suspect, a free spirit, so my Palmary is a place of trading, of building, and grasping. By ancient edict the city cannot grow beyond the outline of the five fingers and palm, save for a ragged dockland we call the Sleeve. And as our city thrives, so its inhabitants build upward rather than out. A thousand towers spear the skies over Palmary. Knowledge and learning thrive in the looming shadows. A steady stream of iconoclasts, philosophers, heretics, and madmen come to this place. And likewise inventors.

  Haytham ibn Zakwan was one such. A striking figure, he was garbed in the gilded robes of a Mirabad noble. Rumor had it he’d been chased away from his family’s haunts for unorthodox ideas and raucous living; he certainly lived up to the reputation. Haytham rented the upper two floors of a six-story tower on Lifeline Road. It had to be the upper floors because of the nature of his research. From time to time observers saw smoke rise from that place by day and dark shadowy orbs by night.

  Certain whispers reached a man I knew. Let’s call him Osteon. A gentleman thief, you might say. The sort of person who had stolen a fortune many times over, yet always managed to spend it in free living and reinvestment in his schemes. You frown, that I would know such a person? I’ve heard it said that a holy man might know all manner of persons without shame or defilement, for the light travels with him. And I have also heard it said we should imitate holy men. There you have it.

  Truth to tell there was a certain zest to Osteon’s criminality, and his reputation grew. He liked a challenge. Certain individuals professed curiosity about Haytham’s activities and offered Osteon payment for the intelligence. In good confidence, he commenced the work.

  The tower of Haytham’s residence was in the respectable middle of Lifeline Road, not the rowdy or decrepit ends, and greenery surrounded it, affording Osteon an arboreal ascent to the third story. An ironsilk strand tied to a hook dipped in ur-glue facilitated his progress.

  He reached the fifth floor and discovered a window ajar. He coated the hinges with olive oil (a fine variety from a grove down the Sleeve) and widened the gap with great patience. An odor of soot greeted his nose, and Osteon understood why the inhabitant would want fresh air. The inventor was about his work, whatever that was. This also meant the man was on hand.

  Had this assignment been of Osteon’s own choosing, the expedition would have ended there. An empty dwelling was a puzzle to be solved at leisure; an inhabited one was a gauntlet. Osteon far preferred puzzles. He’d never killed a householder, though there were guards in their graves who had cause to curse him. To triumph over enemies was never his joy. To revel in storied objects snatched from the chambers of the mighty—that was glory.

  Still, although the inventor’s presence was unwelcome, the mission was one of intelligence, and Osteon would honor his contract.

  The thief believed in preparation, and in his lair hung cloaks fashioned to match the stonework of every tower in the city. He raised his sleeve, hoping the inventor’s eye would overlook the sudden widening of the sill. He peered around the cuff. Firelight spread fluttering illumination around the shadowed room like the caressing fingers of a collector. Its source was another chamber, and from time to time the muttering shadow of a turbaned man sliced the light.

  Osteon had hoped to glimpse a treasure-chamber out of desert tales, like a cave crammed with pearls and sapphires, golden goblets, bejeweled scimitars, bags of dirhams and dinars, magic lamps awaiting a rub. What slowly came clear was another class of treasures—telescopes from Kpalamaa, sextants from Swanisle, mechanical clocks from Loomsberg, mathematical treatises from Mirabad, ev
en abaci from Qiangguo. Vials of crystal bearing varicolored powders stood near candles like soldiers at their liege’s camp. A slender glass tube held an attenuated clump of quicksilver. Charts and notes were strewn over every flat surface, covered with diagrams and notes in the flowing script of Mirabad. And upon an easel stood a sketch of a basket with a man aboard, suspended by ropes from a flying sphere. Thus did Osteon see his first balloon.

  A curious sensation came over Osteon as his eyes swam with wonders. Even the most wholesome sorcery aroused an itch of unease within him, for the suspension of the world’s usual rules seemed to deny the worth of stealth and wit. Yet this was a form of learning equally baffling yet somehow bracing. If sorcery was a dank but glittering cave, the inventor’s craft was a windy peak revealing the lands all around.

  Thus dizzied, he stepped silently into the room.

  Immediately there came the itch of unease.

  It was far from reliable, but a long association with magic had given Osteon some sense for its presence. It served him that evening, for he rolled to one side even as a shape descended from the ceiling like some cocooned snack dangled by a giant spider. The shape was humanoid and hulking, yet touched the floor with a gentle, dry creaking. Wrapped in what resembled rune-inscribed bandages, the thing tugged at the white strip still connecting it to the ceiling; it came loose, and the entity whirled the arcane wrapping through the air like a whip. Ancient writings glowed with a green phosphorescence, a match for the radiance that spilled from the sockets where a living man’s eyes might have been. Haytham ibn Zakwan might have been a natural philosopher, but he guarded his work with the unnatural.

  I had already come too far.

  “I must interrupt your story,” said the magistrate in a regretful tone.

  Bone sighed. “I neglected to maintain the pretense of ‘Osteon,’ didn’t I?”

  “That is true, but it is not the problem. Rather, the nature of your supposed inventor’s defense indicates you may have knowledge of the Leviathan Imperium.”

  “Eh, the what?”

  “The aeons-old inhuman realm of cephalopods whose eldritch ruins yet underlie our sands.”