“Yet they’ve given it up?” Bone got the torch lit. Deadfall said nothing but shifted farther away, always looming in the darkness behind.
“The clue seems to point to a lost underground village,” she said, leading them into a side tunnel the Karvaks had marked with stakes and a banner. Within the hidden catacombs they beheld open-palmed images of the Undetermined, nimbus-crowned Thresholders, swirling mythical creatures, and vortices of pure color. “I . . . don’t know how to find the path downward.”
“Allow me to guide you,” said Deadfall, rustling ahead of Snow Pine. “My senses are different from yours.”
As they followed the carpet, Snow Pine said, “The Karvak leader thinks she doesn’t need the fragment down here. She thinks she knows enough, having glimpsed the one Gaunt bore. She claims to have the eyes of a falcon and the memory of a mastodon.”
“Then you’re sure Gaunt’s alive?”
“She was, and Zheng too . . . but we may already be too late, for them and for our children.”
“We have blood in our veins. There’s hope.”
They made many turnings, always descending. Snow Pine suspected they’d left the temple behind and had passed under the dunes.
“Pardon my question,” she said, “but were you damaged in some way, Deadfall?”
“There is more than one answer to that question, O traveler. I was damaged in my making, for more than one hand had a role in my creation. It is a difficult thing, having more than one loyalty.”
“That I can appreciate.”
“Further, in our battle in the balloon, I struggled with a Charstalker. It attempted to conquer my mind, to escape its imprisonment. I am not flesh, however, and foiled it. But the experience was unsettling, even more than the harm to my substance. It has awakened me to the presence of negative karma around me . . .”
A strange, hazy illumination filled a chamber ahead, as if moonlight had been captured and chained.
“I believe we are here.”
They entered a cavern that should not have existed, for its circular walls and domed ceiling were formed not of stone but of packed sand. A modest chamber Snow Pine might credit, but this one was the size of a small village.
And like a village it had its structures. Scores of gently bent timber posts rose beside oblong wooden shapes too small for houses, each guarded by a marker resembling the end of a paddle.
“Are they . . . boats?” Bone said.
“I do not think so, O thief,” said the carpet. “Perhaps they are places of storage.”
“I think that’s true,” Snow Pine said. “I think they’re graves.”
They approached the wooden graveyard beneath the sands, and there was utter silence save for their own breaths, and footfalls, and scufflings. And then a gasp from Bone—“Gaunt!”
Persimmon Gaunt and Widow Zheng stood near graveyard’s center, eyes shut. Beside them, two of the wooden posts were rising without visible cause.
As the posts escaped the sand, pointed tips emerged.
The shafts tilted backward, gentle as monks doing morning exercises. So elegant were the motions, Snow Pine was slow to understand their purpose.
The posts, in whatever giant invisible hands gripped them, had become giant spears.
“No!” Bone cried, running forward. Snow Pine did not know if this was the wisest course, but she followed. She lost track of Deadfall in the dark.
Still gripping his torch, Bone leaped onto a levitating post, knocking its point into the sand. Snow Pine did likewise with the other. Bone lowered his torch; dry ancient wood ignited. A vast angry hissing filled the air, and it was not merely the sound of popping and blazing wood.
Spectral figures swirled into view, a mob apiece for each of the spear-posts.
They were human, though of a folk unfamiliar to Snow Pine, wearing russet robes and, in some cases, feathered caps. Their expressions were those of murderous outrage, as though the intruders had broken some essential taboo simply by the act of living.
Snow Pine should have backed away from them; she’d lost her sword to the Karvaks. Yet should was a word that applied increasingly little to her life.
She ran along the fallen post toward the ghosts, screaming insults she’d learned among the thieves of Qiangguo’s capital. They surely had no idea what it all meant, but her tone was universal. Ghosts began flowing up the post. She saw that each had an indistinct silvery cord swirling through the air, linking it to one of the wooden ovals in the sand.
As she reached the nearest ghost, a transparent, bearded man with a misty spear, she kicked. Her foot went through the ghost’s face, feeling suddenly icewater-cold. She hopped backward as the spirit silently snarled and jabbed. The ghost-spear grazed her shoulder, and although it passed through her flesh without wounding, she felt a lancing cold. It was all she could do to keep her balance and retreat.
One of Bone’s daggers flashed through the ghost’s face; this seemed only to confuse the specter.
“I don’t like these odds!” he said, applying his torch to her post.
“At least they dislike fire . . . the coffins! Or whatever they are. Threaten the coffins.”
“These?” Bone waved the torch near one, then another. The ghosts ceased their advance. “Interesting.”
“Keep threatening them. I’ll try to free Gaunt and Zheng from their trance.” Snow Pine reached her companions and snapped her fingers before their faces. “Gaunt! Zheng!”
They remained transfixed. “Hey!” Snow Pine called. “Your poetry is pap and your calligraphy is sloppy! Wake up!” No result.
Snow Pine wondered about the coffin over which they stood. This was surely not a spot an experienced traveler would meditate if given a choice. Snow Pine kicked at the coffin, jumped on it, uprooted the nearby marker and whacked it. “I’m desecrating a grave!” she said in a sing-song voice. “I’m desecrating a grave!”
Gaunt and Zheng began trembling. Something was responding.
She saw Crypttongue in its scabbard, secured to Gaunt by its belt. Snow Pine considered taking the weapon, but Flint’s words about it left her uneasy. She hoped Gaunt wouldn’t mind if she borrowed a dagger. . . . Snow Pine jabbed the blade into the ancient wood. It splintered, and she coughed as dust filled the chamber.
She set the dagger down, grabbed, tore, widened the gap. There was something in there, a humanoid shape . . .
A hand reached up to grab hers. The fingers were desiccated, dry flesh peeling from bone. The rest of the hand was hidden by strange wrappings resembling snakeskin leather strips, covered with eerie glyphs.
“Naut! Yok Ysar!” sang a voice in a long-dead language, and Snow Pine was sure she’d have found the message terrifying if she could have understood it. As it was she reached for Gaunt’s dagger and began sawing at the dead hand.
A screech went up. Gaunt and Zheng fell to the shadowed sand. The weird illumination of the chamber brightened in Snow Pine’s vicinity. A ghost stood before her, a man in white robes covered in glyphs similar to those on the mummy’s wrappings. He had wild, dark-red hair, a silver octopus pendant upon his neck, and the expression of a prophet. A thin silver filament, twisting like a cord underwater, connected the ghost to the dead thing tugging at Snow Pine.
“Bone!” Snow Pine called out. “If you’re not busy—”
“Define ‘busy’!” But she heard his voice moving closer.
All at once something heavy thumped into the sand—the magic carpet had returned, slamming itself over the ghost.
The ghost passed without agitation through the carpet, smiling in a most condescending way.
“This strikes me, O spirit,” said Deadfall, “as perverse and unfair.” The carpet rolled itself into the grave.
There were sounds of struggle and snapping bone. The ghost shuddered and screeched. The dead hand released Snow Pine.
But the ghost compensated, grabbing her around the throat. It was as though frost surrounded her windpipe and ice crystallized within.
>
Her vision swam with colors. This might be It, the moment every gangster wondered about, the time every follower of the Forest hoped to meet, if not with equanimity, then acceptance. She felt heavy, ready to slump; strangely, she felt heaviest in her heart, as though a great weight there was pulling her down . . .
Choked by a ghost, it seemed to her that a ghost spoke to her. Wondrous, someone was saying. Wondrous Lady Monkey . . .
Flybait? she tried to croak. Husband?
Gift of the Great Sage . . .
She put a hand to her heart and felt a coldness there.
“The needle,” a voice was saying. “The needle from Lady Monkey! Try using it!”
It was Persimmon Gaunt. She’d snapped out of her trance and was vainly jabbing the ghost with a dagger. Widow Zheng was behind her trying to open a scroll.
Snow Pine reached up and found the needle that had once rested behind the Great Sage’s ear. She freed it. Once again she felt as though the weight of worlds lay within that tiny metal length.
She still had no idea how to invoke it. But with a great effort she raised it the few inches necessary to plunge it into the ghostly hand.
“Kwyall?” screamed the ghost, and released her. It staggered backward, its silver cord thrashing like a fishing line.
Snow Pine forced herself to rise, to raise the needle. It seemed longer now, but she had no time to consider this. She jabbed at the silver cord.
It parted.
The ghost vanished with a scream that was, all at once, cut off. It was as though a candle had been kicked over.
The carpet Deadfall emerged from the coffin, covered in dust.
“May I inquire what happened?” it said in its low-toned voice. “And what is that weapon you’re holding?”
Snow Pine stared at the unadorned metal rod she held. It paradoxically felt lighter than it had as a needle. “I truly do not know,” she said.
“Look out!” Gaunt said, as something grabbed Snow Pine’s ankles.
She looked down and saw that many of the inscribed wrappings from the dead man had snaked around her feet. They tugged her with unnatural strength toward the grave.
She whacked and jabbed. At each motion the rod grew longer, as though the bulk of its material had been tucked away in some unseen dimension. It felt lighter yet, and she felt more comfortable wielding it, yet she could not manage the leverage to injure the wrappings.
Gaunt was jabbing at the snakelike strips with her dagger, with little better effect. Widow Zheng’s scroll spilled out, and the words, including the character for wind, blurred and became a howling squall. Snow Pine fell, and the wrappings still coiled beneath her. Deadfall threw itself upon her, hopefully in an effort to crush the things.
“Off!” Snow Pine yelled. “Everyone, back off!”
There was such a thing as one’s companions being too helpful.
The carpet rolled away, Gaunt pulled back, and Zheng’s winds subsided. As the widow plucked out another scroll, Snow Pine clubbed the ground.
A concussion ripped the air, and the wrappings danced a bit from the vibrations in the sand. Snow Pine pulled herself free.
Now Bone was there, shoving a torch into the coffin. Fire licked up from the mass of wrappings, and, as though all were linked, the ones threatening Snow Pine retreated.
Crackling, hissing, and burning, they wriggled away through the far coffins.
Zheng unveiled her next scroll, and Snow Pine could read the whole proverb this time: Rein your anger for a moment, and you may ride contentment for a hundred days.
The words became a set of dancing lights, like fireflies. They spun about the chamber, and the ghosts beholding them ceased to advance but rather marveled at the Living Calligraphy.
“It will not last long,” Zheng said. “It can soothe one angry man for a day, but crowds dissipate the effect swiftly. Usually that’s enough to disperse a mob. But a mob of ghosts? We’d better get the hell out of here.”
“No,” said Snow Pine, and it was as if the strength of worlds flowed through her weapon arm. “No. For we are here to find a fragment of the Silk Map. And I have the weapon of Wondrous Lady Monkey in my hand.”
“That was the needle?” Gaunt asked.
“It affects ghosts?” Bone asked.
“Yes and yes.”
“It is the only thing we have that can affect the spirits,” Zheng said, “for that was the last of my scrolls.”
“I think there’s one more thing,” Snow Pine said, looking at Gaunt.
“I’d prefer to draw Crypttongue as a last resort,” Gaunt said.
“I don’t blame you—”
“Quickly, kids!” said Zheng. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing this. That map fragment must be buried here.”
“We can’t possibly break into all these coffins,” Bone said.
“I have a feeling, Bone,” Zheng said, a wondering tone to her voice. “I have a feeling we’re close.”
“How can that be?”
“We don’t need a feeling, Bone,” Gaunt said, peering at the ghosts. “We just need to see which ghost’s wearing the fragment.”
“Are you sure anyone is?”
“A beautiful item of clothing? Immensely valuable? I think yes.”
They advanced among the transfixed ghosts. Snow Pine peered here and there, rapping her staff against her left palm. It felt right and proper to wield the iron from the stars—
She saw it.
A female ghost, a proud-looking woman with a piercing gaze, wore a simple brown robe, but beneath it Snow Pine glimpsed a hem of shimmering silk. Upon it Snow Pine could see images of snow-capped mountains.
“I found her,” Snow Pine said in a hush, pointing with the staff. For a moment she imagined the hem must be real, so beautiful was the ironsilk. She stepped closer, squinting, finding that the fabric was in fact translucent.
Snow Pine searched for, and found, the twisting silver cord.
She followed it toward a distant coffin.
The light of the calligraphy dimmed. Zheng called out, “The spell is fading!”
A great hissing filled the chamber, and the light from the ghosts wavered as they shifted and began awakening from their reverie. “Stay close!” Snow Pine yelled, running up to the coffin. She slammed the staff against the wood. It shattered.
Screeching filled the chamber, and the light of the Living Calligraphy was gone. The ghosts whirled as one and flowed toward Snow Pine.
She looked into the gap, and there was enough crazy illumination to reveal the body within. The dead woman retained a grim beauty and dignity even after centuries, for all that her face appeared much as charred bark, and her hair as strips of dry cloth.
This body did not stir, and Snow Pine had a moment’s regret at disturbing its resting place.
But only a moment. In the next, the ghosts were upon her.
It was all she could do to defend herself. One after another, she struck charging spirits with Monkey’s staff. One after another they burst into flares of light, and with a blast of cold air they were gone. Yet there were always more.
Suddenly her companions were there, along with the magic carpet. Bone taunted and dodged and threw fragments of coffin-wood to distract the spirits. Deadfall threw itself against them, doing no damage but attracting much attention. Zheng cursed and prayed and reached into the coffin.
Persimmon Gaunt drew Crypttongue.
A strange whispering arose, audible even through the screeching of the ghosts. It seemed no louder than the spirits’ cries; rather it had the timbre of dozens of voices whispering into Snow Pine’s ears.
Gaunt struck.
Her target did not ignore the blade. Nor did it vanish in a burst of light. It rippled, distorted, and flowed into a gem upon the saber’s pommel, like a reflection upon draining water.
Gaunt trembled and nearly dropped the sword. “It is . . . still with me . . . its knowledge is mine . . .”
“Watch out!” Snow Pine called and d
estroyed a ghost that reached out for Gaunt.
Gaunt’s jaw was set as she slashed at a fresh target.
The two women—with a bit of assistance from man and carpet—kept the ghosts at bay. Yet the specters kept coming, and soon their guards would fall.
“I have it!” Zheng cried at last. “It’s beautiful!”
“Let’s go!” Snow Pine replied.
It was easier said than done. Luckily the coffin of the map fragment was on the side closest the entrance. Even so, they were too hard-pressed to move.
“Deadfall!” Bone said. “Gaunt and Snow Pine can fight their way out! But you’ll have to haul me and Zheng, one at a time.”
“I do not have to do anything, O thief,” replied the carpet.
“Please, O wondrous and clever carpet.”
“Ah, very well.”
“Zheng first.”
“I can face danger as well as anyone, boy.”
“You have the map fragment. We need you safe.”
Zheng cursed. “Very well.”
“I will convey her to the entrance,” Deadfall said.
“Wait,” said Gaunt, frowning as though hearing a distant voice. “There is a better way out. To the dark ship . . .”
“Say again?” Bone said.
“The dark ship that sails under sands. Its magic is the reason this area stays clear.” Between sword strokes she nodded through the gloom, away from the entrance. “That way.”
“Intelligence from the ghosts?” Bone asked. “By way of the sword?”
“Yes.”
“Can you trust it?”
“I think so. Deadfall, do you sense a passage that way?”
“I do, O poet.”
“Take Zheng that way. If you are willing, Zheng.”
“Well . . . I’ve lived a full life,” Zheng said. “Let’s see what we’ll see.”
“Keep her safe!” Gaunt told the carpet.
As Deadfall carried Zheng through the dark, her cursing redoubled.
“I’m not certain travel with Deadfall qualifies as ‘safe,’” Bone muttered.
Gaunt and Snow Pine were too busy fighting to speak. In truth, despite all the danger, Snow Pine exulted in the power of the staff. It grew warm in her hands, and a crazy grin lit her face. Only dimly did she become aware of Bone’s shout.
The Silk Map Page 23