The Silk Map

by Chris Willrich

  “Sorry, lama,” said Northwing, “but we’ll be busy elsewhere.”

  Those red-nimbused figures near Northwing stared at her but could not tell what she was talking about. Meanwhile the yellow-nimbused Jewelwolf said, “The shaman—you can communicate with her? Tell her that my sister must submit to me and the new khan, and now.”

  Chodak said, “I have concerns beyond your family difficulties, Lady Jewelwolf.” She stared once more at Zheng.

  Zheng was saying to the nuns, “I will resolve your argument—thus.”

  She unrolled her Living Calligraphy, the last she had, and blazing characters surged forth.

  The veena caught fire. The nuns in red and yellow gasped and went silent but refused to move away.

  Zheng said, in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell, “When a person of skill studies the coming and going of speech and music, she comes to see every deliberate sound as a sort of echo, a shadow of what was in the mind, living briefly, then vanishing, without any essence of its own. But it is not only so with music. All we see and experience is in its own way an echo, transitory, ultimately empty. Even so, is fire.”

  The veena burned, and in the light of the flames and the flickering of the sun, Zheng seemed someone other than the person Persimmon Gaunt had known.

  The veena died.

  Then the veena lived again.

  It reappeared in the same spot. This time it was surrounded by a yellow nimbus.

  “I sense you, Maldar Khan,” said Zheng. “Do you remember the song they played when the time ran out and I fled from you? If you remember the song, play it for me now, my prince of Xembala.”

  And Chodak, in the light of ghost flames also looking like a different person, sat beside the veena and plucked.

  The music was unlike any Gaunt had heard before. The deep intonation of the strings seemed to portend impending grace or destruction, awakening her to the immediacy of the life around her, even as Bone’s love had played an equally arousing tune. Now she felt quickened to action, ready to fight.

  But fight what? Chodak’s playing was heard by all sets of ghosts, and Zheng/Xia and Chodak/Maldar Khan had turned toward each other, together and apart.

  “I had meant to control this moment,” the high lama was murmuring. “But even my command of the veils of reality in this place is an illusion. For I cannot command myself. Ah, Xia! Why did you run! So long ago . . . just a moment ago . . .”

  “Are you there, my prince?” said Zheng. “I hear the music, dimly, almost as though I were merely remembering it. Now you are sitting, and playing. And now I shall dispute you.”

  She took the posture the red nun had assumed before and spoke in the language of Xembala, finishing with a clap and a stomp.

  Her words were anger, accusation.

  Chodak answered with music of remorse.

  The sky was torn asunder.

  The sunlight was gone, but the valley was lit by planets hanging in the heavens, a dozen discs like and yet unlike the Earthe. There was a world of purple desert and another of red ocean. There was a world covered with an intricate pattern of fungus, mushroom caps filling it like soap bubbles the size of nations. There was a world fractured like a porcelain plate filled with broken continents and seas, kept together by glistening spiderwebs with strands big as cities. There was a world whose entire face was a single titanic eye. There were worlds of flame and worlds of ice, and worlds of steel and ivory. They sent a kaleidoscope of shadows onto the balcony.

  “Should we stop this?” Bone asked.

  “I—I am going to guess, Bone. I am going to guess that a lover’s quarrel is best settled by the lovers.”

  More words of anger from Xia/Zheng.

  More music of woe from Maldar Khan/Chodak.

  And at last the high lama flung the veena away, weeping.

  Two vast shadows fell across all the others, bringing the balcony into darkness.

  One vast globe possessed a red nimbus, the second a yellow one.

  For a moment Gaunt thought she was beholding two new worlds in the sky, worlds shaped like spheres. But that of course was just a fancy.

  They were Karvak balloons.

  “At last!” Jewelwolf called out. “Let us be gone from this place!”

  But as the gondola came up to the balcony, the people who spilled out were not Karvak warriors. They were the hooded agents of the Fraternity of the Hare.

  And with them came the blazing forms of Charstalkers.

  Jewelwolf, Flint, and Quilldrake, by unspoken agreement, took places beside Snow Pine, who wielded Monkey’s staff against the foes. Two Charstalkers found their substance disrupted, their eyes flickering into darkness. One robed agent was knocked out into the void, never to return.

  Gaunt and Bone leapt into the fray, but they were as ghosts and could not connect with any foe.

  One enemy paused, however, and removed her hood. It was Dolma.

  She looked directly at Bone.

  “Always has the fraternity guarded Xembala,” she said. “But now we understand that there are threats both within and without. The high lama has grown weak. She cannot command herself or the land. We must isolate her from outside influences and bring her to her new teacher, the Bull Demon. Do not follow us. Be grateful you have one more chance of escape. For this is the hour of the Bull Demon of the Mountain.”

  The high lama said, “You! We thought your ilk had long since perished!” As she spoke, her raiment shimmered a bit, revealing that she wore on her back the sword Crypttongue.

  “It is fortunate for Xembala that we did not.”

  Dolma and two comrades grabbed the distraught Chodak and leapt aboard the flying ger.

  “Dolma!” Bone called out. “Violante!”

  Two more of the woman’s comrades leapt off the balcony to the ger, escaping Snow Pine, who was fully occupied with three Charstalkers.

  The balloons drew farther away.

  “Anything you care to tell me?” Gaunt said. “About Dolma?”

  “Can’t explain now. I could jump—”

  “Too far,” Gaunt said. “Help Snow Pine.”

  “Yes,” he said, seeing their friend tiring as she swung the iron staff at the three demons. “But I’d appreciate suggestions as to how.”

  “You could set fire to yourself. That worked for the musical instrument.”

  “Appropriate, but not my first choice. . . . Alas, Crypttongue! If anything could ignore these planar-reality-veil technicalities—”

  “Bone. Why didn’t the high lama fight?”

  “Confronted by lost love—I might lose heart too.”

  Snow Pine was weakening. Their friend was ferocious even at the edge of defeat, but sooner or later a demon’s fire-blast was going to hit her.

  “Think, Bone, think!” Bone made fists. “Northwing! Can you hear me? There are evil spirits here. You’re a spirit specialist. Can you make them go away?”

  “I would love to,” snapped the ghost-figure of the shaman. “But there are three!”

  “What about just one?”

  “Even one may be too much! But I will try.”

  The shaman concentrated. Gaunt did not wait for the result but sought another way to help Snow Pine. The weird shadows of the strange worlds had returned, and between them and the Charstalkers the balcony and hallway were awash with bizarre light.

  But the high lama was gone, and the argument over. Perhaps reality should return to what passed for normal here.

  Or was the argument not over?

  One Charstalker was flying out into the night, a blazing comet. Northwing was on her knees. Snow Pine had a reprieve, and though sweat poured down her face and her breath came in gasps, she kept fighting the two remaining demons.

  “Northwing!” Gaunt called, but to no avail. With the shaman’s concentration upon the Charstalker, the rat had fled too. Northwing had no way to hear her.

  “Bone!” Gaunt said.

  “I can’t think of anything,” he said. “We need magi
c, and we’re short on that.”

  “I think I have a way, but it’s a gamble. Trust me?”

  “Always.”

  Being a sort of ghost made the first part of Gaunt’s plan easy. She raced up to Snow Pine and put her hand through the iron staff.

  She felt it in her grip.

  “Wha—” Snow Pine said, losing her momentum, a dangerous development.

  “Snow Pine!” Gaunt said. “The veena! Settle the argument for good. Destroy that veena!”

  “Gaunt?” Snow Pine said.

  Then Gaunt released the staff, and Snow Pine was tumbling, barely escaping the fiery gout from one of the Charstalkers.

  Snow Pine reached the veena and swung Lady Monkey’s staff. The beautiful instrument came apart in a storm of fragments, keening one deep note before it died.

  Gaunt snarled to whatever powers might be listening, “The argument is over!”

  The new planets faded from the sky. The misty glow of Xembala’s daylight returned. And from Gaunt’s perspective, the nimbuses disappeared.

  It was a very crowded balcony and hallway. And among the crowd were warrior monks and nuns.

  Snow Pine raised her staff defiantly, joined by a small force of Xembalans who raised their fists.

  The Charstalkers retreated. Their fiery forms blazed east through the air like crimson snakes through grass.

  Snow Pine slumped to the floor.

  “What has happened?” asked a monk in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell.

  Gaunt reached Bone and sagged against him.

  “Your secret defenders,” Bone said, “have stolen your spiritual leader. They’ve given her over to the demon of the mountain.”

  Gaunt said, “I think this is bad for us all, wherever we come from. And I think all of us, Xembalans and Karvaks, Easterners and Westerners, had best work together to stop it.”

  Before she could finish, the Mother Mountain of the World erupted in a cacophony of ash and smoke.

  Qurca is enjoying freedom and thermals and lending his eyes to Kindgirl, when the world twists.

  Worlds should not do that. Qurca twists. Qurca glides. Qurca dives. Worlds should not do this. Spinning lurching weaving slashing—this is for peregrines. Worlds should stay out of it.

  But the world does not care what Qurca thinks. And the world cuts Kindgirl’s thoughts away from him. Kindgirl is down there in the stone tent army, and Qurca needs to find her. It is bad timing because he is hungry, but that is how it goes.

  Then there are winds from nowhere, and the light and heat can’t make up its mind, and Qurca is out of control and headed right for the stone tent army. He hates stone tent armies. Felt tent armies are fine. Hitting a felt tent by accident is not going to hurt that much. Even flying tents are fine, fun even, as long as you don’t fly into the demon-flame. But stone tents can kill you.

  Qurca flaps and strains and twists as the world twists. In lightning-light he sees the stone tent that will kill him.

  A black shape swoops out of nowhere and comes between Qurca and the stone tent.

  Qurca drops. The black bird drops. But both will live.

  They right themselves on a stone edge looking down at the green where the river flows to the pit. Qurca looks at the other bird. Not a falcon. Qurca does not think he can talk to this bird. There is something odd about it, even odd for a time when the world twists. The bird has three legs and eyes that glow like the vanished sun.

  Qurca can’t talk three-legged sun-eyed bird language. But with a twisting of its head and a flapping of its wings and a peep from its beak, the three-legged sun-eyed bird shows it can talk like a peregrine.

  “Special delivery,” it says. It steps forward and places on the stone another stone, this one very dark and sharp and glinting and thinner than a quill. “It’s for your mistress.”

  “For Kindgirl?” Qurca asks.

  “I suppose so. Tell her it’s a present from the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, and that it can’t save the world. Maybe just a continent. Cheers.”

  The bird flies away, eyes shining, before Qurca could say that he has no way of delivering a message from the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven or anybody else, not if they don’t write it down.

  But he can deliver a dark sharp glinting thin thing. Even if the world twists.

  He flies up again, looking around for Kindgirl, but she has not come out of the stone tents, and her mind has not found his again.

  The worst wind yet starts blowing him toward the end of the valley. He tries to fight it, but it’s too much for him, sending him spiraling out of control, falling east. This is not all bad because it lets him avoid the thunder lizards and crystal ships and rivers of burning rock.

  By the time the wind lets up and the daylight returns and the valley goes back to normal and the world stops twisting he’s on a boulder in the shadow of the great mountain, far from the stone tent army.

  And then the mountain shouts its anger at the golden sky, and much of the sky goes dark again. A dusting of ash even falls where Qurca perches, trying to turn him the color of the three-legged sun-eyed bird.

  And by now Qurca really wishes the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, would write his messages down.

  We have risen

  Once more we ride the sky.

  The hands that slew us

  And trapped us within gems

  Have given us up.

  New hands claimed us

  Hands which abhor spilling blood.

  Will they release us?

  Or will they use us in a dark hour?

  Some of us want to slay.

  Some of us want to use.

  Some of us dare hope this one

  Will be the one to set us free.

  If I am not telling my story to someone, do I exist? If I am torn in two directions, is there an I? Bull Demon at the heart of me, why did I not guess what the wizard Olob intended for me, what Op saved me from becoming . . . for a time.

  But if the version of me that Op wove is the weaker, is it not a sort of lie? The lie I told when I omitted my murders, when I told my story to Princess Jewelwolf. The lie I told even myself. Even then the stain was overcoming me. I wanted to believe I was good, I did—

  But that me was weak! I could not fly then, only stumble about like some three-legged pegasus with a broken wing! Now I soar! Do you understand, Katta? If someone could give you your sight, not the power to perceive evil but the ability to cast your gaze among trees—

  But you are not really there, Katta. For he has you, and he has his uses for you. Having delivered you up, I took my one opportunity and fled.

  I swirl around the upper atmosphere, where the air is thin enough to have extinguished the Charstalker that held me. I look down at the golden browns of the Braid of Spice, the dark greens of Qiangguo and the pale greens of the steppes, and at the waving gash of mist within the mountains, where lies Xembala. I stay here because it is between the living world and void, a fitting place for one who cannot decide if he will be free and broken or a servant of evil and whole.

  For only up here can I use my new powers and be free. If I drop lower, he will sense me again, and I will have to choose.

  I watch the cloud of dark smoke burst from one edge of Xembala’s mist. And I wonder.

  If I am not telling my story to someone, do I exist?

  “The good news,” Bone said as they descended the great stairway on the east side of the plateau, “is that we will not have any trouble finding the mountain.”

  The volcano rumbled anew, as if existing only to embellish claims made by Imago Bone. He wished that were true.

  “You said there were passageways within the plateau!” Gaunt shouted over the wind that whistled past the twenty travelers from seven lands who’d set out for the mountain.

  “Rabten said it would take considerable time to use them! This is much faster!”

  “Especially if we slip!”

  “Point taken!”

  Plunging to their deaths did not particu
larly worry Bone, however. There was a guide rope, the party itself was tied together, the Xembalans knew this stairway, and the winds had settled down from their fury of an hour ago. For that matter, he and Gaunt had handled more precarious passages than this.

  Although, he considered, looking down, there was rather a lot of distance without a safe stopping point. It would test their concentration. And aside from dust and ash, there was a perfect line of sight between their position and a number of caves upon the mountain.

  As if echoing his thoughts, Steelfox said, “This would be no spot for a battle!”

  This seemed eminently sensible advice to Bone, but Jewelwolf called out, “To you, sister, no spot is a good spot!”

  “We may have one right here, if you wish!”

  “No, you may not!” Gaunt called out. “If you wish to spill each other’s blood on the valley floor, go right ahead. But you will not endanger us in the process!”

  Both sisters were silent, which was surely the best outcome. Bone admitted to feeling a small sliver of sympathy for Steelfox.

  And she was right; a battle here would be a catastrophe. He looked again and again for signs of assault.

  At last, as they were a mere two hundred feet from the bottom of the stairs, the attack came.

  The light was ebbing, in a more natural fashion this time, but with it came strange flying creatures from the east. These were peculiar bird-lizards—not dragons, for dragons require their own innate magic to fly, and these seemed to rely solely on wings and muscle.

  And yet, Bone thought as they neared, magic was surely involved. For the winged beasts did not appear to belong to this age.

  “I count five, Bone!” Gaunt readied an arrow. She had lost her own bow, but the Xembalans had supplied new ones to her and the Karvak sisters, and even to Widow Zheng, who’d insisted on bearing some weapon.

  “We shall soon make it four!” shouted Steelfox and let fly.

  An arrow hit one creature in the eye. As it shrieked, Jewelwolf finished the work of blinding it.

  Gaunt’s shot didn’t hit a vulnerable spot, but it did stick into the beast’s hide. The creature made a sound not entirely unlike Steelfox’s missing peregrine as it flapped toward the ground.