The Silk Map

by Chris Willrich

  “Dress?”

  “If you cannot send me to Innocence,” Bone said, “can you find me someone who can?”

  “The pool could find such a one, if their karmic connection with you were strong enough.”

  “But such a person would likely be someone we already know.” Bone scratched his chin. “Well. I know many people. Try. Please.”

  Chodak looked troubled, but she chanted and made a waving motion of her arm.

  In the water Bone beheld the cavern within Five-Toe Peak.

  The Great Sage herself was there, still trapped, whistling. She seemed to cock an ear, look this way and that, and crane her head to look directly at Bone and Chodak.

  “Hey!” came the rumbling voice. “Couldn’t you knock?”

  “Ah,” said Bone. “Hello?”

  “It’s the Rat!” Monkey chortled. “Have you found what I asked?”

  “We’re working on it. The Silk Map has led us to Xembala.”

  “Really, now! Good, good . . .”

  “I have been wondering a thing. I have been asking myself if you can, or will, really honor your part of our bargain. Now I know this much: you can.”

  “You don’t trust me.” Monkey sounded sad. “Well, really, who would? Hello there, Thresholder! That is a Thresholder, isn’t it?”

  Chodak said, “I am the high lama of Xembala.”

  “Right—you guys. You borrow a lot of practice from the Plateau of Geam. Instead of just meditating your way to the Absolute, you kind of mentally project your way there by visualizing higher powers.”

  “We diverge from the Plateau in many respects.”

  “It’s hard for a simple monkey to get.”

  “I would be glad to explain it to you, should you ever wish to journey west.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, lama. Your doctrine isn’t my problem. My problem is a mountain on top of me. Until I deal with that, I’m not even making a journey to relieve myself.”

  “I wish you luck.”

  “Bone,” said Monkey, “I figure you’ll want to be getting my delivery to me soon. I can only keep myself awake so long.”

  “You said six months. It’s been perhaps two.”

  “It was an estimate, friend Rat.”

  “Stay awake, Great Sage. Or I swear, I will find a way to wake you up.”

  “Be careful. If you wake someone rudely, you should be prepared for the reaction.”

  “You be careful yourself. How can you truly threaten a man on the verge of losing everything?”

  Monkey frowned. “I think we’re done here.”

  She sneezed, and the scene disappeared. The pool was just a pool.

  Chodak said, “I would be wary of that one’s anger.”

  “Demigods. Wizards. Monsters. Toothaches. Life is full of trouble. You can’t flee from it all.”

  “Indeed not. I merely question your means of confronting these sufferings. A good heart and an analytic mind can accomplish much that a dagger and a treasure map cannot. Come to think of it, you spoke of a Silk Map?”

  “So that is the long and the short of it,” said Gaunt, “and the hem and the sleeve of it. The Silk Map, and some scraps of legends, got us here.”

  “I may have heard something of these matters.”

  “Can you help us, lama, in any way? Not to talk me out of my anger, nor deflect me from my quest, but to help me in my journey. My journey, not yours, not the path of the Undetermined.”

  “I understand what you are saying. And yes, I can help you on your quest, and I will not talk you out of your anger. I will show you the way to your husband.”

  “He is nearby?”

  “He is very near. We are seeing to his well-being even now, for his arrival was close in time to your own. Let me show you.”

  Chodak chanted and moved her arms in complex spirals. The pool showed a new scene.

  Imago Bone sat upon a golden couch in a room of red mandalas, red woodwork, red tapestries. Attending him with grapes and wine and bread and cheese were three nubile women of Xembala. These were clad in bright silks that, while not actually scandalous by Gaunt’s standards, were rather more revealing than necessary.

  Leaning against Bone was Snow Pine, laughing at some unheard joke he made.

  “I see he is unharmed,” Gaunt said. She paused. “Our friend too. I am happy they found each other.”

  Snow Pine, grinning, nuzzled against Bone’s shoulder. Gaunt’s husband looked as pleased as a cat who’d caught a bird mid-leap, fallen three stories, and landed on his feet.

  The scene faded.

  “Yes,” Gaunt said, her fist clenched. “It is good they are well. Very good.”

  “You may enter the lamasery and speak with any monk or nun you find,” Chodak said. “Many speak the language of Qiangguo. Describe the room, and they can bring you there.”

  “I’m certain I can give a good description.”

  “I lack Gaunt’s skill at tale-telling,” Bone said, “but that is the gist of our adventures with the Silk Map.”

  “A great ordeal.”

  “It was necessary.”

  “You feel considerable guilt, Imago Bone, at leaving your child behind.”

  “Should I not?” Bone stared into the pool and thus into the churning, golden sky. “It was selfish at the core. Both my son and my wife had a claim on me. But shouldn’t I have remained with he who was young and therefore at more risk?”

  “As I understand it, you were reasonably sure of his safety, not at all of hers.”

  “But that is not really why. I sought Gaunt for me, Chodak. I had lost her, briefly found her again—and now she was to be snatched away once more. I could not accept that. And now I pay the price.”

  “Your quest.”

  “If it fails, I lose her. Maybe I lose her in any case. For I have seen my son, halfway to manhood. When she sees him, how she lost his childhood, how can she forgive me?”

  “That loss would have occurred regardless, would it not?”

  “She will also remember I could have been with him.”

  “Thus, guilt. But also, fear.”

  “I cannot lose her. The only one who has ever truly understood me. Without her I’d be lonely in a harem.”

  “She helps you to understand yourself.”

  “Yes . . . yes, I suppose that’s true. I am . . . complicated.”

  “Are not we all?”

  “Yet not everyone is a century old in a young body. Not everyone has spent decades thieving, or been a conversation partner to angels of death.” He chuckled. “I am acquainted with two forms of underworld.”

  “Fair enough. To find one who can understand is a great blessing. Do you wish to see her?”

  “I—of course! What a fool I am. Babbling when I could be seeking. Yes!”

  Again Chodak chanted and waved. The pool rippled.

  There was a room of gold, suffused with sunlight. Persimmon Gaunt stood there in a saffron robe, garbed as a nun of Xembala. She was speaking with a group of young children, much younger than Innocence or A-Girl-Is-A-Joy. The boys and girls laughed at something Gaunt said, and she laughed too, and hugged one. There was a radiance about her face, a pure bliss that Bone felt he should be glad to witness. Yet gladness was not his emotion.

  “What . . . what is she doing?”

  “It would appear she has decided to take up the robe.”

  Bone coughed. “She what?”

  “She will have to explain her own reasons, of course. But when she came to us, I showed her what I showed you just now: your son approaching manhood. I know the vision shook her.”

  “Enough to abandon her son? We are on a quest . . .”

  “We are all on a quest, Imago Bone, to understand existence and to win free of the brokenness that characterizes it. You may find your answers in seeking your lost son. But she, perhaps, has realized she will find it elsewhere. Perhaps in the instruction of young children. She could teach language, poetry, geography . . .”

&nb
sp; “But . . . all this time, she has blamed me for abandoning him. And what was it all about in the end? Not her son as such, but her mothering instincts? And now she rejects him because he is a baby no longer?”

  “Only the Undetermined, the Seekers, and the Thresholders are truly free of karmic burdens—or instincts, as you say. The desire to care for a small child is a powerful one.”

  “Is that all I was to her, in the end? A means of securing such a child? And now to become a teacher, a nun, is sufficient for her?”

  “Nuns of our order can marry, Imago Bone, or remain married—”

  “For what? When loyalty to individuals no longer matters, what is the point of marriage? Where is she? I need to speak with her.”

  “If you enter the lamasery, most anyone can show you to that room.”

  “Fine!”

  And Bone was off, so intent upon his goal he took little notice when Chodak said something peculiar.

  “Xia,” the lama said to the pool. “Show me Xia.”

  Gaunt had never explored such a vast building as the lamasery of Xembala. There had been great cities, of course. And there had been magical places that gave the impression of immensity, though she couldn’t trust the perceptions she’d experienced in such structures. The lamasery, even falling into ruin, impressed her with a sense of generations of folk intent upon a search for enlightenment. Though she understood neither the people nor the project, she did have a feeling for ruins. This was a place she could respect.

  It was good to have something she could respect.

  The directions from the monk she’d confronted (he’d raised an eyebrow at the tone of her voice but had not commented upon it) were clear enough. At the far end of this gallery, tiger-striped with sunlight cutting through the gaps, she would turn left, then right, then right, and there would be Bone.

  She did not know if she preferred to find him with Snow Pine or “alone.”

  “Swan help me,” she said to herself, “when all’s said and done, men are just men, aren’t they?”

  Bone had abandoned their son—her son—and for what? Because he’d calculated there’d be no women within the scroll?

  She entered the red chamber. Bone stood there alone, looking out a window at the great northern cliffs with their waterfalls and veins of ruby rock. There was a contemplative smirk upon his face, such as he often wore when planning heists.

  “Why, Gaunt!”

  “Bone. You are looking well. And Snow Pine is too, I’m sure.”

  “She is! She’ll be glad to see you.”

  “No doubt. So. Were you planning to make her Number Two Wife? Or were you even going to give me that much dignity?”

  “I—”

  “Oh, don’t even hide it, Bone. Honestly, I’m less disappointed with you than with myself. I should have seen it long ago, but I’ve been so distracted by my oh-so-knowledgeable yet oh-so-young-looking rogue. It is so obvious now. You do love your younger women, do you not?”

  “Gaunt, don’t talk like this.”

  “So it all disappears if you don’t talk? Maybe we should be talking to Snow Pine. How will she feel when she’s just a few years older and you’re on the hunt again? But you know, Imago, even that’s not what makes me angriest. What’s worse is that all this time I thought Innocence mattered to you. I thought you genuinely cared what happened to your son. But what really motivated you was staying with your women. Because you don’t care about family at all, just the nighttime tumbles that lead to family. And once the journey gets too difficult, why, you’ll just be gone, won’t you?”

  “You’re not yourself.”

  “Oh, but you are so completely yourself, it’s like you’ve been cloaked all this time. So many feints and disguises. I’m done with skulking in the shadows, Imago Bone. I will walk in the light now. You’re lucky I don’t leave you bleeding.”

  As she turned to go, he said, “Why not, then?”

  A dagger clattered beside her feet. She stopped.

  “Why not enact in deeds what you’ve painted in words?” he demanded. “You claim to be done with shadows and disguises. What are words but disguises, poet? For once in your life step out of my shadow and commit some deeds. Take a piece out of me, if that’s what you want.”

  “I will not give you the satisfaction.”

  She took a step.

  “Then I know you for a coward. I’m ashamed I kept you so long. You know, Snow Pine may be younger than you, but at least she acts. She is more a real woman than you will ever be, coward.”

  In a single motion she was hardly aware of, Gaunt was advancing in his direction, dagger in hand.

  “Call me that again,” she said. “Go on.”

  “Why?” he sneered. “It is just a word, poet.”

  “Here’s a poem, thief,” she snarled, and lunged.

  Down the gleaming, polished hallway with its banners and statues, all the way to the end, then right, left, left . . .

  Bone strode into the yellow room and beheld Gaunt raising a giggling Xembalan boy into the sunlight, a beatific look upon her face. A charming boy, no doubt, worthy of love.

  But not theirs.

  “Gaunt.”

  She turned—and it would have been a great wrong to say she showed no joy at his appearance. As she set the boy down, releasing him to run about the chamber, Bone could see it: she loved him still. Within that love, however, he caught a flicker of regret. Something in her had changed. The keen blade of her mind had been beaten into a ploughshare. Perhaps there was honor in that, but only if the choice were really hers.

  “Bone. Imago. Swan be praised. I’m so relieved.”

  They embraced. He ached to hold her, and more than hold her. But he felt as if he lacked the right, as if he needed to locate her father and ask permission. They withdrew, holding hands.

  “Can you truly swear by the Swan,” he said, afraid to ask more urgent questions, “wearing that robe?”

  “The Xembalans do not deny the Swan,” she said. “They recognize many ways to the Absolute, and they honor Swanisle’s goddess as an embodiment of mercy.”

  “Gaunt. Would you truly abandon Innocence?”

  She shut her eyes, breathed in, breathed out. “I knew you’d find it hard to understand. I saw him, Imago.”

  “I too.”

  “My head had contemplated the flow of time within the scroll, but my heart had not quite believed it. Not until I saw Innocence and A-Girl-Is-A-Joy in the pool. I realized then that the attempt was a vain one. Oh, not because it was doomed, Imago—you and I are resourceful people, and there’s little we can’t do. But time had already snatched my baby away. He would be a stranger, not someone I’d shared the years with.”

  “Stranger or not, Persimmon, he’s your blood. Our blood.”

  “Blood. That’s alley talk, boondocks talk.”

  “Real talk.”

  “This is a higher place, a higher calling.”

  “It’s a long fall from here, yes.”

  “Be serious, Bone. For a time you turned my head, made me a giddy youth again. I could conquer all! But I am growing up now. I want a family, not the dream of something lost. Here, I think I could make one.”

  “Perhaps thieving has rubbed off on you, if now you’re planning to steal children.”

  “Don’t be absurd. You and I could make a child—the right way, this time, with a true community to support us, and it.”

  “That is it? You wish to abandon Innocence?”

  “You have the gall to accuse me of that? It’s not I who left him there.”

  He looked away. “I know you’ve been angry. I confess I’ve sometimes wondered if we shouldn’t simply start anew. I ask, who would blame us? But I’ve seen him now, heard him speak. He is haunted, Persimmon. He has friends, I believe. But he could use family. We are the only ones who can give him that.”

  “What about what I need, Bone? I want what was taken from me—the chance to know a child, through all his growing years.”
r />   “I see. And if I go without you?”

  “I will mourn you. But I will carry on. There are men here. I’ve seen them out this window. Men who work an honest living. Men who are dependable. Men who have genuine lives.”

  “You say these things to torment me.”

  “I say them because they are true. We’ve had too little truth, Imago Bone. Only dreams and fancies that turn to nightmares. If you can finally be a man, my love, you can be my man. But I have no more time for the boy who never grew up.”

  She turned her back on him and commenced a song with the children.

  Before he knew it, a dagger trembled in his hand.

  Gaunt lunged—and at the last moment stayed her hand.

  Bone’s dagger was out now, and he snarled at her, “Do it, weakling! Do it!”

  But she could not. Something was wrong here. Perhaps at his worst Bone might act in this way, but he was growing more and more like a mask, not a man.

  There were shadowy shapes in the red room, barely glimpsed. They had proportions of two adults and several children. The adults had a familiar look to them.

  She stepped closer to the woman.

  Bone raised the dagger. For a moment he thought his impulse was just to startle Gaunt, to shock her out of her cruelty. But as he drew his hand back, an old tickling sensation prowled the skin of his neck. Perhaps Gaunt would truly change in this way, but would she say these words so perfectly calculated to wound him? As though she were a weapon, not a woman?

  And why was he aiming directly at her? What could possibly goad him into becoming such a monster?

  He was being manipulated. He looked around for the manipulator.

  Elsewhere in the yellow room stood two shadowy figures. His suspicions aroused and his anger already alight, he edged toward the taller.

  Gaunt peered into the shadow’s face and saw herself. She saw her own mouth moving. She leaned closer and heard the specter say, “A real man would fight to keep me.”

  Bone stepped beside the shadow and squinted close.