The Silk Map

by Chris Willrich

  “I can understand your confusion,” said the monk. “It is safer for you and us if you acclimate to Xembala within the lamasery. You are not being allowed to leave, for now, in much the way that an honorable physician would not, in good conscience, allow a feverish patient to wander freely.”

  Haytham cleared his throat. “That implies that the fever will break.”

  “Indeed. And in the same way, you will acclimate and can explore Xembala without danger.”

  “What is the nature of this danger?” Steelfox said, scanning the valley with Qurca’s senses.

  “You have surely noticed that reality is more malleable here than elsewhere,” the monk said. “The goddess of this land is herself on the path to enlightenment, though it may take her millions of years to reach it. She sifts through the illusions that underlie reality. This sifting produces multiple aspects of the valley. Even as we walk here, a multitude of unseen others may walk beside us.”

  “Like mice in the walls?” Steelfox asked, with a look to Northwing.

  “There are indeed mice in the walls,” Rabten said, a quizzical look passing over his face. “We dislike the killing of beings, even those who may be pests. I have heard them now and then.”

  “Interesting,” said Northwing, and Steelfox hoped the shaman would be willing to spirit-bond indoors for once.

  “I suppose,” Rabten said thoughtfully, “one might compare those in the nearby realms to such mice. An important difference, however, is that those not acclimated may find themselves becoming such mice. And our valley is not without its cats. Ah, a disputation! You may perceive more.”

  They’d turned a corner and encountered an open balcony upon which a gathering of nuns and monks witnessed two nuns, a young one garbed in red and a middle-aged one wearing yellow, engaged in what body language suggested was a contest.

  The nuns bowed to each other, and the yellow-clad one sat down cross-legged beside a musical instrument.

  This was a stringed device, like the long-necked shanz of the steppes. However, it was much bulkier, with a gourd-shaped resonating chamber and a smaller resonating bulb on the neck. A musician would surely sit with it, rather than raise it up. Steelfox had a wistful moment remembering the plucking of the shanz, in the places where the sky was blue and the horizon not bound by stone.

  Zheng stood beside her own minder, eyes fixed upon the combatants. She looked at Steelfox. “Are the children done arguing?”

  Steelfox bristled, but Zheng was an elder. Even if she was from Qiangguo. “Yes.”

  “Good,” Zheng said. “Now we will see how the adults do it.”

  Steelfox did not know the language of the disputation. She suspected that even if she did she would not follow the intricacies of the argument. The red-clad nun began a diatribe that was half-spoken, half-sung. At last the red nun clapped and stomped her left foot. She raised her left arm as though holding shut a door while lifting a right arm draped with beads.

  The yellow-clad nun followed with a deep-voiced chant. The tones sounded calm and matter-of-fact, as opposed to strident and aggressive.

  Steelfox, using Qurca’s eyes, noted Jewelwolf’s balloons beginning to rise. They were still far off, but it was a worry. Using her own eyes, she noted that Northwing was staring at a nearby wall.

  Haytham said, “What is the topic of disputation?”

  Zheng said, “I’m told the red nun’s arguing that music inhibits progress to enlightenment.”

  “Strange,” Haytham said. “Our guide just said that music is one of the means to enlightenment.”

  Rabten broke in, “The thesis is specifically that ‘music is a transitory entity because it is a result.’ By extension, all results are transitory. It’s an old argument, but worth hashing out now and again. If the elder nun wins, she will keep her veena. If the younger one wins, she will destroy the veena.”

  “I will never understand the devout,” Haytham said. “Still, the fingers on the same hand are all different.”

  Rabten said, “There is a larger purpose here, which is to teach rhetoric. On a deeper level the nuns are in agreement that phenomena are impermanent. Indeed, the loss of the veena, if it occurs, may help the elder remain detached from possessions. Yet, she may go on to compose a song about the matter.”

  “Madness,” muttered Northwing.

  The sky darkened.

  “I take it back,” said Northwing.

  “At times reality distortions accompany disputations. It is nothing.”

  Wind gusted into the lamasery from the balcony. Steelfox blinked and felt Qurca adjust to the freak change in the weather. A storm cloud was descending from the golden mists above, like a god’s foot.

  Yet none of the Xembalans seemed to mind. The opposed singing and chanting continued. As the red nun clapped and stomped, lightning flashed in the valley, and soon after there came a crackle of thunder. The yellow nun’s counterargument was accompanied by golden light and a contrary wind, pushing the dark cloud mass away.

  Qurca spiraled down, unable to cope with the changes to the atmosphere; all at once, mid-descent, the link with Steelfox failed.

  Steelfox shivered, for the air was still cold, and she feared for her falcon. She risked speaking to Northwing, using Karvak. “I’ve lost Qurca. Did you find a rat?”

  “I did,” hissed Northwing. “I’ve still got her, but she’s skittish. She senses the world warping around her. Princess, this place is unnatural.”

  Light and darkness and more contested outside the lamasery. Now and then the sky appeared rent, and beyond it Steelfox could see first stars, and then comets, and now twisted and jagged red objects glowing like hot ingots.

  Strange changes came and went in the valley. Steelfox beheld rivers of lava flowing amid the fields, and walls of obsidian rising from the ground, and crystal ships crisscrossing the grass.

  “This is fascinating,” Haytham said. “Also, I am terrified.”

  “I confess,” said Rabten, “this distortion is stronger than most . . .”

  Zheng was rapt. As if not hearing what she was saying, she spoke as the red nun argued:

  “‘Can you bring me music? You cannot. The veena may bring music because of the interactions of its body, skin, neck, tuning pegs, strings, bridge, and the player’s skill. Thus music is a result, determinate.’”

  Then after clapping and thunder, Zheng spoke as the yellow nun chanted:

  “‘You leave out too much. For the gourd resonator is the sun, wisdom, and the female. And the strings are the moon, compassion, and the male. And the neck is the channel that brings together these energies. The Undetermined himself plucks the strings of compassion, resonating with wisdom. If you reject music as determinate, you must reject the message of compassion and wisdom as well.’”

  The transformations of the land increased in tempo.

  “It occurs to me, Northwing,” said Steelfox in Karvak, “that this disputation may provide an opportunity to escape.”

  “I have seen that possibility also, princess. Yet I would say the weather is poor.”

  “Dawn comes with or without the rooster. I think our moment is coming. Be prepared.”

  Snow Pine and Flint found the journey down the hallway of mandalas and statues somewhat harder going than expected. First, there were the gusts of wind emerging through the unbarred windows. Second, there was the shaking of the lamasery. Third, there were the strange apparitional figures flickering into and out of existence, mostly ghostly monks and nuns, but occasionally odder things—yellow-hatted pilgrims from the Plateau of Geam, hooded caravaners from Qushkent, even cousins of the Karvaks riding ponies from shadow to shadow and fading away.

  “I don’t like this place,” Snow Pine said. Lady Monkey’s staff tingled, much as it had during the dragon storm.

  “I agree,” Flint said. “It might be time to take our leave.”

  “We find Zheng first. And Bone if we can. Gaunt . . .”

  The fluctuations in reality increased in tempo.
Sometimes the ghost-things they glimpsed were from farther afield. She saw human beings with skin of ashen gray, their clothing muted, their steps shuffling. She saw ferocious yellow-furred sapient beasts with four eyes. She saw anthropoid otters dressed in immaculate blue uniforms, with the manners of courtiers and the eyes of killers. The staff was becoming hot.

  “I think we’re approaching the heart of it,” Snow Pine said. “Whatever it is.”

  “I can believe it,” Flint said. “Maybe we’ll find them here.”

  But what they found when they reached the balcony, open to the winds, was a crowd of ghosts, with only two real people within.

  “Flint!” said Quilldrake.

  “You lunatic,” said Flint with delight, clapping his friend on the back. “Where have you been?”

  “I’m not sure I have any idea,” Quilldrake said, turning to his companion. “Nor am I sure where we are now. Do you, my dear?”

  “I am not your dear,” said the Karvak beside him. “I am Jewelwolf, wife of the Grand Khan.”

  “I suppose you’re not my dear at that,” Quilldrake said. “Ah, your utter terrifying imperiousness, this is my friend Snow Pine.”

  Snow Pine bowed exactly the amount appropriate when meeting a prosperous businesswoman in Qiangguo. It was a calculated insult, but it seemed lost on the Karvak.

  Jewelwolf said, “You two have been traveling with my sister Steelfox. Can you explain this?”

  She gestured at one of the ghost-figures. It was Steelfox. Near her were all Snow Pine’s other companions, save for Gaunt and Bone.

  “I can’t explain it,” Snow Pine said. “On our journey we found that Bone was also a kind of ghost to us. Your sister’s shaman said that Xembala exists on many different levels of reality simultaneously.”

  Jewelwolf nodded. “I cannot claim to understand this land, but I see the effects. Something is disturbing the stability of this arrangement, I conclude.”

  Quilldrake said, “Seeing as the partnership of Quilldrake and Flint, Limited, has just been resurrected, I propose we celebrate by saving our fool lives.”

  “Flint and Quilldrake,” Flint said.

  “Of course. We have here a Karvak princess and a resourceful daughter of Qiangguo armed with a magic . . . somethingorother. I can imagine no better company. Let’s make our escape.”

  “No,” Snow Pine said. Once she’d told Persimmon Gaunt to seek the Iron Moths without her. Now she was ignoring her own advice. She had to help her friends. “Not without Zheng and not without Bone.”

  “I suppose you’ll want to find Gaunt as well,” sighed Quilldrake.

  “She is here?”

  “She arrived with us,” Jewelwolf said. “But that mad lama in charge took her aside. Perhaps she became a human sacrifice.”

  “Hardly,” called a voice.

  They all turned to find, standing beside them, an elderly Xembalan woman in orange robes.

  “She and her husband are safe—safe as anyone these days. But they are highly distracted at the moment. It is for the best. You will not be leaving.”

  “What?” Snow Pine demanded.

  “You must be healed of your various madnesses. Lust for power, Princess Jewelwolf. Lust for treasure, Arthur Quilldrake. Lust for violence, Snow Pine. Lust for fame, Liron Flint. For if in your current states you reach the Iron Moths, I foresee a world in flames.”

  “Your world will end in flames,” Jewelwolf said, “if you do not let us go.”

  “How long will this cure take?” Snow Pine asked.

  “Several lifetimes, I am afraid,” said the high lama. She looked around at the ghosts, and her gaze focused on Zheng. “Even I have not managed, after several lifetimes, to let go of the darkness within me. Witness what is happening outside. No, in Xembala we will all stay.”

  Persimmon Gaunt opened her eyes and stretched her naked body beside Bone’s upon a soft bed, thinking an extended stay in Xembala might be a pleasant thing after all.

  A rat nuzzled her foot.

  “Gah!” She kicked, shifted, threw a pillow. The rodent ducked away into a hole in the ornate room’s wall.

  “What what what—” said Bone, awake in a heartbeat or several, reaching for daggers that weren’t there.

  “Bone. Imago. It is fine. It is just a rat.”

  “Do they have rats in paradise?”

  “Well, you’re here.”

  “Ah. So I am. And so you are.” His gaze moved down her frame, and with one finger he traced its path. She shivered. However, the rodent audience was going to prevent the response Bone clearly hoped for.

  And besides, the lamasery was shaking.

  Bone uttered his fourth “What,” looked again at Gaunt, sighed, and walked to the window. He looked out at the valley.

  Wind howled outside, and the light changed erratically.

  “What do you see?” she called out, glancing at his form in the skittish sunlight before searching for her clothes. She sighed. True, they had made love between the day of Innocence’s loss and now. But never had she given herself as fully as she had today. Before now, anger at Innocence’s loss had stood between them. She’d known without Bone’s saying it that this had hurt him. Almost as good as the release she’d felt was the sight of his grin.

  He was not grinning now, however. “This . . . might take a poet to describe.”

  “Give it your best.”

  “We appear to be experiencing a lava flow, wall-building by invisible hands, an attack of crystal ships, a march of thundersome lizards, and the descent of the moon toward the Earthe.”

  “You are joking.”

  “You express my profound wish.”

  She hopped over, half-dressed, and looked out. All was as he’d said.

  “Reality is mutable at this juncture,” she mused, pulling on her shirt.

  “You see, this is why I needed a poet. You can say ‘what the hell is that’ so much more artfully than I can.”

  “I hate to say this, Bone, but I think you should get dressed.”

  “I suppose I am denying reality,” he sighed, looking at her, “mutable or no.” As he set to work, he added, “This room is different from what I perceived earlier.”

  “That’s true for me too. I think reality has been twisted for some time now. We are, I suspect, in the hands of the high lama.”

  “Chodak,” Bone said, taking care not to cut himself on his many weapons. “That’s one of her names, anyway. The teacher. I think she was giving us some instruction.”

  “That thought takes away some of the spontaneous delight of it all.”

  “Speak for yourself. Hey—”

  The rat had re-emerged. It was brown, raised on hind legs, sniffing, and gesturing at one of the doors.

  “Rats aren’t supposed to act like that,” Bone said. “I wonder . . . no.”

  “What is it?”

  Bone finished getting dressed with an angry air while the rat watched. He stepped closer and knelt beside the animal, glaring down at it. “Northwing. Is that you? How long have you been watching?”

  The rat defecated and proceeded into the hallway.

  “Yes, that’s Northwing. Lady Steelfox’s shaman. And she had the nerve to imply I was a voyeur.”

  “She may have only just arrived, Bone. Or do you think every woman wants to have a close look at you?”

  “Given her proclivities, I doubt it was me she was looking at.”

  “Oh. Well, at least she has taste. Say, what was the occasion of her calling you a voyeur?”

  “My goodness, is that Zheng up ahead? What is she doing?”

  “Changing a subject, probably.”

  “You might be right at that . . .”

  For down the corridor Widow Zheng was stepping onto a balcony upon which an argument between nuns seemed to rage. She was bringing forth a scroll of Living Calligraphy.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Bone said.

  “Hurry,” Gaunt said.

  They ran past statues o
f enlightened ones and paintings of paradises, skidding to a halt amidst the gathering. Bone was perhaps off-balance from his earlier delight, because he skidded into Zheng—

  —and passed through her.

  Now Gaunt could see that the figures on the balcony were transparent, suffused with a red glow—all except for four individuals who possessed a yellow glow. Glowing red were several Xembalan monks and nuns, Zheng, Steelfox, the shaman Northwing, and Haytham. Glowing yellow were Snow Pine, Flint, the high lama . . . and Princess Jewelwolf.

  Testing the situation, Gaunt ran her hand through Jewelwolf. The Karvak did not take offense or even appear to notice. “Three sets of ghosts, Bone. Red, yellow, and us.”

  “Yes,” said Northwing, red-tinged, transparent but looking directly at them. “We occupy different slices of reality, if you will. But my little friend lets me see you once again, Bone, you and your wife.”

  “And speak to us?” Bone said.

  “Yes,” said the rat, making Gaunt jump a little.

  “You might have said so before,” Gaunt said.

  “I did not wish to spoil the moment.”

  “Whose moment?” Bone said.

  “Never mind,” Gaunt said. “What is happening?”

  “Reality is being shifted,” Northwing answered.

  “We had figured out that much,” Gaunt said.

  “These mad folk live in a place where thought can twist the universe. So a serious argument can disrupt the fabric. They do so by means of ritual disputes. At first they seemed unconcerned by the distortions, but I think that’s changing. I think something else is going on, too. Your Widow Zheng’s been repeating the Xembalan argument without anyone translating for her. And she’s getting involved.”

  “That’s because she’s also Xia,” Gaunt said. “She must be. The young woman from the stories of the Silk Map. She remembers this land.”

  “Yes,” said a new voice, “and I remember her.”

  The high lama, Chodak, was looking directly at Gaunt and Bone. “Yes, I can see you. I had hoped to keep you occupied longer than this. I have to admit, the shaman of the north has considerable power! I will enjoy speaking with you at length, Northwing.”