“It is a relief to see you, old friend. What is that you’re carrying?”
Gaunt gasped. “I have seen the like of that splinter before. Steelfox, please. I must follow your sister. You must take this splinter to Snow Pine.”
Steelfox looked toward a mass of the possessed Iron Moths and a lone woman battling them. “I will rank my bravery beside anyone’s, but I am not certain that’s wise.”
“You must trust me. Quickly!”
“No. You said you are in my service. Slay this Iron Moth who threatens Northwing and Zheng. Then I will do as you request.”
With a shout of anguish, Gaunt did as Steelfox asked, swinging Crypttongue with ferocity that rivaled a Karvak’s.
For Bone to fight the Iron Moths was not a happy proposition. Moving through them was something else. With reckless pleasure, Bone jumped, rolled, sprinted, vaulted. At one point he leapt upon the back of an Iron Moth and then off again, thus bypassing the river of lava. He was especially proud of that.
Unfortunately the only witness besides the Moth was pointing a serrated sword at him.
“At least I’ll have the pleasure, Imago Bone, of sending you to the lava.”
“Are you still protecting paradise, Dolma?”
“She failed us! The flaw within the high lama was too large. It was she who was responsible for the Silk Map leaving Xembala. I think she always hoped it would lead her lost love back to her.”
“And to stop that, you’d side with this fellow?” Bone pointed a thumb. “He’s not exactly what you’d call an equal partner.” He waved a hand toward Mad Katta, who stood staring at the Bull Demon, sweat dripping down his face, in the grip of some compulsion. “She who doesn’t want to be a wolf shouldn’t wear a wolf’s hide, as they say in our country.”
“It was the only way.”
“‘It was the only way.’ How often have I said that to myself, to others. And so rarely, Dolma, was it true! We imagine ourselves within a shadowed labyrinth when truly we stand upon a sunlit hill, the horizon all around.”
Dolma waved the sword toward him. “Back.”
“I cannot, Violante. I think I must help you return to the sunlight. Xembala is beautiful, yes, but perhaps it is too beautiful for some of us. Perhaps for some of us what’s needed are the fishing docks of Widdershins, where fish guts and swearing go along with glorious sunsets. Or the briny tidepools of Ramblefar Rim, where if you can tolerate the reek you will see starfish like jewels.”
“Stop.”
“Or if the West no longer beckons, what of the East? I have seen the harbor of Riverclaw, a thousand bobbing craft ready to take you to the ten thousand worlds that are all labeled ‘Qiangguo.’ I have seen the Ochre River, a serpent of muddy gold. There are places in the farthest North where ice twists into shapes of nightmare and wonder. There are seas in the South where the water is like stepping into a steaming Mirabad bath. None of these things are paradise. All of them await you. Better an egg today than a hen tomorrow.”
“Do not quote the proverbs of your homeland, Bone. It is not mine. I do not think I have a country. Except hate.” Dolma looked toward the maw of the Bull Demon. “Yes. To give myself to it, burn away everything that is weak, everything that snivels like a little girl. Yes.”
A new voice said, “No . . .” It was Mad Katta. Every muscle in the wanderer seemed to fight the Bull Demon’s hold upon him. His trembling hand was reaching for a bag upon his belt. “No, that is not right. . . . Even here, in a place so full of evil I can see every direction I look. . . . Even here, that is not right. . . . You can be free, Dolma . . .”
“You know nothing of me!”
She turned and ran toward the ruby fangs.
Bone chased her, even as he heard Gaunt’s voice crying, “Bone, Bone, don’t let her—” and a shadow passed over him.
You ask me, Greatest One, what happened that day, when the Bull Demon awakened and what was imprisoned was released? I will tell you. But you must understand first how I came by the great prize.
I am Deadfall, the work of the wizard Olob. I am only secondarily a flying carpet, I now know, for all that I am a good one. I have a primary function and rather a useful one. I am a demon-siphon.
In the vicinity of weaker demons, I can absorb some of their essence, making this power available to my master. Olob, a demonologist, relished the potential I embodied. He envisioned himself making forays into Bull-Demon Mountain, swooping in like a falcon claiming a mouse, returning with delicious power.
He was a fool.
His apprentice Op understood his teacher’s plans enough to be afraid for his master, himself, and the world. At best his mentor would become corrupted. At worst the Bull Demon might be freed from its prison-haven in lost Xembala. And so when Olob departed Anoka on an errand, Op attempted to complete me in a more wholesome fashion, so that I would drain power only from the vital breath of the land.
He was a greater fool.
Op’s motives were good, by his own lights, but better to have destroyed me than create such a conflicted thing. When Olob returned early and discovered Op’s treachery, only I survived the conflagration. But it was too late. Already did I think, and scheme.
Yet much of my nature was hidden from myself. The side I owed to Op was not aware how the side crafted by Olob hungered for demon-energy and craved wickedness.
I have murdered several times, never quite acknowledging it to myself, until that day in Qushkent when Charstalkers tried to possess me.
Instead, I ate them.
Poor Mad Katta. Exulting in my new power, I went to its ultimate source, as Olob had always intended. In the mountain of the Bull Demon did I leave him, trading him for a dose of that entity’s energies. Even then I was nearly overwhelmed by the Bull Demon’s power.
And so, trying to forget the screams of Katta, I hovered high in the atmosphere, unwilling to surrender my new powers, yet knowing that descending with Olob’s pattern dominant would be to surrender myself to the Bull Demon’s influence.
Sometimes, I have come to learn, the best action is no action. The world is larger than our perceived choices, and time may make other options known. So it was with me.
In Qiangguo, the energies playing at the edge of space are known as the Celestial Kingdom. If one’s perceptions are properly attuned, these forces can be twisted aside to reveal what minds of matter might perceive as palaces, gardens, wildernesses, inhabited by luminous beings who have long meddled in the business of the East. (The rest of the world has its own problems.) I did not enter those realms, but I sensed them, knew the subtle currents of energy. For although I was fashioned to absorb the stuff of demons, I was also made to sniff the life-stuff of the world. And so, over the days, I gained understanding.
I began to perceive the flow of what Qiangguo’s people sometimes call “chi,” moving through the lands below me. The major patterns revealed themselves first. I saw a gentle flow of energy circulating through the land of Xembala. I beheld a stately procession of power along the Heavenwalls toward Qiangguo’s capital. I sensed the network of crystal branchings that still underlay the great desert beside the Braid of Spice.
Later, less obvious but still fascinating patterns emerged. There was a city in the West shaped like a hand, clutching at the energies of the surrounding land. (Nearby was a great crater seething with strange powers I did not wish to look upon long.) Dragons slept as islands in the ocean east of Qiangguo. Dragons of a different sort slumbered as mountain ranges in the far West. And one collection of dormant dragons—in the form of islands like jagged mountains—butted heads in a cold northwestern sea. Their conflict was the work of millennia, and the longest-lived of the mortals who dwelled in those violent lands might only perceive one thrust or parry, thinking it merely an earthquake or rockslide or storm.
Something in that faraway land tickled at me, and I turned all my perception toward it. Yes. There was a great chain binding headlands of each of the three dragon-isles. Although far smaller than t
he Heavenwalls or the crystals of the Leviathan Minds, it too was a human work that rearranged the power of the land.
And it was seeking something.
A thread of energy—gold, to my perception—twisted across the world to a point deep in the eastern ocean.
I could sense nothing special about that spot, except for one thing. I noticed another thread of energy—purple, to my perception—also leading to that spot. Its far end was at the capital of Qiangguo, where the Heavenwalls met.
And now I recalled a thing that Princess Jewelwolf had discussed with me, about a matter important to her colleagues the Cardinals of the Compass Rose.
Now, if I dropped low to the land, the Bull Demon would surely claim me. But I had not considered immersing myself in water. I was not a swimming carpet, of course. But knowing exactly where I needed to go, perhaps . . .
Yes.
Luck was with me, for even as I arced toward the ocean, I sensed that the Bull Demon’s attention was divided. His influence was strong, but my will remained stronger. I found the spot in the ocean, near a shattered island, and I plunged in.
It was a mistake, I realized. The building pressure of the water was inimical to my enchantments. I could not stay down long enough to reach bottom and return.
But I was enjoying gambling, O greatest one, and I thought, if the stories are true, there is no need to reach bottom and return in one trip.
In the muck at the bottom of the sea, amid gaping fish, I found the scroll.
Wrapping myself around it, I wished myself inside.
Thus it was that I flopped out of the sky of another world and splatted upon a mountainside. It was raining, which did not much help things. But a kindly fellow, looking rather ratty in a torn robe and bark hat, took me to the pagoda near the mountain’s top.
He squeezed me out at the doorstep and set me beside a fire.
I dreamed. I saw cities burn. Oh, if you must know? Qushkent. Riverclaw. Palmary. Archaeopolis. Anoka. I forget all the names.
When I awoke I perceived many people. The ragged man who’d carried me. A girl of perhaps twelve with piercing brown eyes. An old monk with gold in his teeth. An equally old man in impeccable robes who carried a staff. And a boy around the same age as the girl, a pale lad who seemed somehow familiar.
At first they were talking amongst themselves, and I waited for them to address me. Then it occurred to me they had no way to know I was conscious. Indeed, this was the topic under discussion.
“It must be sapient,” the ragged man was saying. “The Sage Painter specified that only intelligent creatures could enter the scroll.”
“It’s a rug,” said the girl.
“A magic carpet,” said the man with the staff.
“Underneath all that gruffness,” said the monk, “you’re really a wide-eyed boy, aren’t you?”
“Nothing of the sort,” grunted the staff-man. “She is right; it is a rug. And he is right; it must be sapient. Therefore: magic carpet.”
“It seems somewhat un-lively,” said the ragged man.
“It’s a gift,” said the boy, in a devout tone. “It stinks of salt water, the way books describe the ocean. It was sent through the waters to us. Someone is trying to help us.” He looked at the girl. “Maybe our parents.”
They batted the problem around for a time. I saw no reason to enlighten them. They decided to maintain their watch upon me, but one at a time for now. The boy, whose name I now knew, chose first watch. He slept upon the floor beside me. I slid closer, awakening the power within me. A red glow suffused the room.
“Hear me in your dreams, Innocence Gaunt. Learn to trust me before you meet me while awake. I am Deadfall, and I am your truest friend. Your parents abandoned you. But I will free you and show you the greater world.”
The light swelled, as I absorbed a tiny fraction of his chi.
“But first, there is so much I must teach you.”
“I cannot believe you talked me into this.”
“So that’s how you’ll tell it.”
“Be serious, Art. Our friends are fighting for their lives up there.”
“One friend in particular, eh?”
“You’re more than a little fond of Zheng.”
“That’s more of an ad hoc mutual loneliness society. . . . Ah, here’s where we can cross.”
“Furthermore, if the Iron Moths find us, our guts will be scattered from here to Qushkent.”
“Precisely! Which is why now, when they and everyone else are busy elsewhere, we must be here. Don’t tell me you aren’t a little awed by the incalculable wealth that surrounds us right now.”
“I’m awed that I let you talk me into this.”
“Nothing odd about it. Do you have the bags?”
Gaunt ran ahead of her companions, fighting her way through the possessed Iron Moths in her way.
“Bone!” she was shouting. “Bone! She has the scroll! Bone!”
“Eh?” he was saying and looking up at the shadow of the magic carpet passing overhead.
For a moment Gaunt saw Jewelwolf landing beside the very maw of the Bull Demon and scrambling up to the teeth.
In the next moment, her view was blocked by more Iron Moths.
A voice scratched at her mind.
<< nullification of former brood-mates undesirable >>
It made so little sense, she simply swung with Crypttongue, trying to batter her way through to Bone.
<< alternative method desirable >>
“What!” she gasped. “Are! You saying?”
<< you saying: nzzt vlkzzt rzznnt >>
“What?”
<< nzzt vlkzzt rzznnt >>
“Nzzt . . .” she attempted to render the strange sounds. “Vlkzzt . . . ?”
<< rzznt! rzznt! >>
“Rzznt . . .”
Whatever she said, the nearest Iron Moths understood it. They visibly struggled against the grip of the Charstalkers. This moment of consternation allowed Gaunt the chance to slip through. She did not think anyone else followed.
Bone was engaged in speaking with one of the Fraternity, but he followed Gaunt wide-eyed. The one-eared woman stared after them, but Gaunt had no time for her.
“Is it?” he managed.
“Yes,” she said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Ask later.”
They did not know what to make of it when Jewelwolf reached out with her hand—until the scroll was thoroughly inside the maw.
A figure manifested within: a boy. Gaunt might not have recognized him but for seeing a vision of him in the garden of Mentor John.
“Innocence!”
The boy looked out between the ruby teeth and blinked. “You?”
Red light erupted within the maw. Innocence staggered.
“No!” Gaunt somehow found the strength to run even faster, but then she was slapped aside by a corner of the carpet Deadfall.
“Do not interfere,” came the carpet’s voice. “This is what he needs.”
Bone dove around the carpet but found himself confronted by Jewelwolf’s sword.
Gaunt yelled, “What, to be devoured?” She was on her feet and ready to cleave the carpet in two.
“No,” said Deadfall. “The Bull Demon is not the one who will do the devouring. . . . Wait, this is not right . . .”
Innocence was on his knees. He seemed to be resisting whatever the Bull Demon was doing, but losing. Bone was prepared to leap into that maw, but even Dolma was hesitating now. He suspected whatever the boy could struggle against would extinguish the likes of Imago Bone. He needed a weapon, something a demon would feel . . .
He remembered Katta reaching for his bag.
Bone rushed to the wanderer, who still shivered in the grip of the Bull Demon’s power, and grabbed the sack.
Into the maw of the Bull Demon flew Katta’s bag, a few blessed sweetcakes tumbling out as it arrived.
The entity roared in agony. Innocence cried out, sounding only a little less pained.
Jewelwolf yanked the boy out of the maw and onto the flying carpet. Strange crimson energies trailed from Innocence as though the boy were an oil-soaked torch. Yet though his face twisted in pain, his flesh was whole.
Before he could fully escape, the Bull Demon’s jaws clamped over Innocence’s leg.
The boy screamed. His leg was not severed, however, only trapped. The Bull Demon meant to keep him.
“No!” Gaunt and Bone shouted at once.
Jewelwolf tried to pull Innocence free, calling upon Deadfall to rise with all its might.
Bone reached between the vast teeth, trying to force them apart with the strength of his body.
Gaunt was there in the next moment, adding her strength.
“Help us!” Bone cried to the warrior named Dolma. “He’s our son!”
“But . . . it is clear they seek to steal him away . . .”
“He’ll die!” Gaunt said.
Dolma was there, then, also trying to force the teeth apart.
“Deadfall,” Jewelwolf said, “add your strength. Pull him free.”
The magic carpet shifted beneath her, until it wrapped itself around Innocence. It tugged.
It seemed impossible to Gaunt that Innocence could scream more terribly, but he did.
“You’ll tear his leg off!” Gaunt said.
“If necessary!” Jewelwolf said.
Gaunt snarled and gave up with the teeth. She raised Crypttongue and eyed the teeth holding Innocence.
Sword, we are bound together. Swan, forgive me and guide my aim. I will not lose him now.
Steelfox had wanted to aid Gaunt against Jewelwolf, but if Gaunt was certain the mineral sliver was important, then deliver it to Snow Pine she would. With Widow Zheng and Northwing beside her, she strode into the heart of the fray, passing Xembalans battling the Charstalker-possessed Iron Moths. Many times Zheng or Northwing drove back a Moth; Zheng with a gesture, Northwing with pained concentration.
Steelfox threw the Iron Moths her best Karvak stares, and Qurca shrieked, but she knew it was the oldsters who were keeping her alive just now. She promised herself never to forget to honor her elders, if she could get through this.
The Silk Map Page 44