by Liz Williams
The demon blinked. “You know who I am?”
“Why, of course,” the woman said. It was hard to place her. Her hair was a steely gray, bound in a long braid, and her flat, calm face and folded eyes could have been Chinese, or something entirely different, Siberian, perhaps, or Native American. “The city told me you were here.”
“There was a sandstorm,” Zhu Irzh explained. “I was with someone — a man. Nicholas Roerich?”
“I know him.”
“We were separated. I’m worried about him.”
“The city will have collected him,” the woman said. “The desert is riven with storms — some natural, some not.”
“What makes the unnatural ones?”
“The ifrits conjure the sand.”
“But someone conjures the ifrits, am I right?”
“You are not wrong.”
“If Roerich’s here,” Zhu Irzh said, “I’d really like to speak to him. And there was someone else with us — he went missing.” Perhaps not tactful to mention that he’d done so because he’d become besotted by the city itself. “A young warrior, named Omi.”
The woman gave a slight frown. “If he is here, the city has not told me.”
That defused the demon’s suspicion that this person might be the city, an avatar, but maybe she was dissembling. “I need to find him,” Zhu Irzh said.
“Why?”
“He has something that’s important to me.” Zhu Irzh didn’t want to tell this woman any more than he had to — from what Roerich had said, the city was clearly on the side of light, but that didn’t mean they shared an agenda. It felt weird to be here at all; it didn’t make him as uncomfortable as being in Heaven had done, but it was certainly similar.
“I will try to find him for you,” the woman said. “But for now, come inside.” She rose in a watery swirl of robes and led the demon into a small pavilion. In it was a table, set with a number of plates and a large metal jug.
“Tea?”
Tea. In a supernatural, timeless city in the middle of the night. What the hell. “Shall I pour?” asked Zhu Irzh.
It occurred to him that it might not be wise to eat or drink anything. Mythologies of all the lands cautioned against doing so, and the fear that one might be trapped in such a world, anchored by physical desires. But Zhu Irzh had not heard of demons being so snared, and anyway, he was thirsty after all that sand. He sipped his tea, which was perfumed with jasmine, and waited while the woman went off on some unknown errand. Though she knew his name, she had not given him her own. Perhaps she did not have one.
Then someone walked quickly through the hangings of the pavilion and the demon looked up to see Roerich.
“Nicholas!” It surprised him a little to realize how pleased he was to see the man: it was like having Chen around, the feeling that somehow, everything would be all right.
“We seem to have been taken on board,” Roerich said. “Omi is here.”
“Is that a good thing? I mean,” the demon said hastily, “obviously I’m glad he’s okay. But isn’t it a bit like giving someone a drug to which they’re addicted?”
“I don’t know how it will affect him,” Roerich said. “I share your unease. It’s more likely to be a problem when he has to leave, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s at the Council chamber, apparently — I haven’t seen him yet. We’re to join him there.”
“The Council?”
“The Council of the Masters. Which includes Mistresses, by the way — you’ve met one of them, Nandini.”
When they stepped outside the pavilion, Zhu Irzh saw that it had become significantly lighter, with a morning softness to the air. “Nicer than the desert,” he remarked, as they walked through the rose garden.
“It’s got its own microclimate,” Roerich said. He pointed to a distant turret. “That’s the Council chamber.”
Now that dawn was coming, the demon was able to get a better sense of the city itself. Its harmoniousness was still evident, but its construction was certainly curious: it possessed no one form of architecture, but seemed assembled from all manner of buildings. Low-roofed cottages sat side by side with towering fortresses; pagodas sat next to humble dwellings. It should not have worked and yet, it did.
“The Masters are from all over the planet, remember,” Roerich said when the demon pointed this out. “They have the homes they knew in life.” He gestured to a temple held up by Grecian columns. “It mirrors our own history.”
“Weird.” But it worked, which was more than Zhu Irzh could say for Hell.
The way to the Council chamber led down a long, narrow street lined by marble walls. At the end of this, steps climbed in a semi-spiral up toward an ancient door: it looked like the medieval turrets Zhu Irzh had seen in pictures. Nandini stood on the steps, smiling.
“You’ve found it, good. I’m glad my instructions were adequate, Nicholas.”
Zhu Irzh was aware of a sudden, acute nervousness, occasioned, he was sure, by being in the wrong place. He told himself that he’d hung out with the Emperor of Heaven; after all, they were friends. So why feel so uncomfortable now? Nandini was watching him with a penetrating dark stare.
“You can’t help what you are,” she said. “You can help what you do with it.”
“Did you just read my mind?” Zhu Irzh demanded.
“I didn’t need to. It was clear from the expression on your face,” she said gently.
That obvious, eh? But the demon felt that whatever he tried to hide, these people would see through it. Nandini was different from the Celestials he had met — sharper, despite her outward serenity. More human, probably. Just be honest, the demon told himself. It didn’t come naturally, but anything less would be a mistake.
“Are you ready to go in?” Roerich asked.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
It was hard to see, at first. Nandini led them up a wide stone staircase, plain and without ornamentation, and this was clear enough. But then they were shown into the Council chamber itself and Zhu Irzh found it impossible to focus on any one thing. Later, in memory, it became a little clearer. He thought there were tall windows, arched and looking out onto a vista of snow-capped mountains, even though he knew that the city had been sitting in the middle of the desert. He thought, too, that there had been stone flags beneath his feet, and a round table, surrounded by high-backed chairs. And he seemed to remember that sitting in the chairs had been a variety of people, of many races and ages, but in memory their faces were blurred, like the photos used in news reports to protect people from being identified.
Nandini was clear enough, and so was Roerich — and so was Omi, sitting in a chair beyond the Council table, underneath an open window. He approached Zhu Irzh, smiling, and the demon was surprised to discover how relieved he was to see the young warrior.
“I owe you an apology,” Omi said in an undertone. “I shouldn’t have gone off like that — I put you both in danger.”
Zhu Irzh could tell that the young man was genuinely ashamed, so to save Omi face he said, “No worries. It turned out all right in the end. And if you hadn’t gone off, then we might all be under several feet of sand by now. Who knows?”
“Even so,” Omi said, but fell silent at a glance from Roerich. Zhu Irzh blinked, ducked his head, but still could not see the Council properly. He felt suddenly very small, like a child allowed at an adults’ dinner party. It had been a long time since Zhu Irzh had been a small child — several hundred years, in fact — and he did not relish the sensation.
A voice came from the Council table. “Demon, ghost, warrior.”
“That would be us,” Zhu Irzh said, overcompensating for nerves by flippancy.
“You’re carrying a spell,” the voice said.
“I won it in a fair fight,” Omi said, defensive.
“Can you help us take it to its rightful place?” Zhu Irzh said.
“You don’t u
nderstand,” Nandini said. “You see all that is around you, and you know that we saved you from the sand. But our power is limited.”
“That wasn’t what I understood,” the demon said.
“That is because you don’t know the wider picture. We are being rewritten.”
“What?”
“The Book of Heaven has come to Earth,” Nandini told him. “Omi has spoken to it, done its bidding.”
“Was that wrong?” Omi asked. “I thought it was helping us against our enemy?”
“It is. But it has its own agenda. It has become displeased with its home in Heaven. It thinks that things need to be — revised. The spell that you’re bearing will accomplish that — when you release the spell, it will enter reality and change it. Like throwing a stone into a pond — ripples will spread outward through time. The Khan may be removed, he may not, but what is certain is that the relationship between the worlds will be altered. The free concourse between the worlds will no longer be so open. You’re likely to find yourself back in Hell.” This last comment was directed at Zhu Irzh.
“Let me get this straight,” Zhu Irzh said. “This spell is our best chance of defeating the Khan, and you’re telling me that it’s likely to permanently alter the entire world?”
“Effectively, yes.”
Across the room, Omi shifted uncomfortably.
“Great. You said it could close the ‘concourse between the worlds.’ Why would this book want to do that?”
“Because Heaven’s become corrupted,” Roerich said. “The Book is one of Heaven’s guardians.”
“But I know the Jade Emperor. He’s a friend.” Too late it occurred to Zhu Irzh that having a demon as a personal acquaintance might not reflect all that well on Mhara, in the view of either the Book or Council. “Anyway, whatever. He’s an exceptional person.”
“But he has changed things,” Nandini pointed out. “And the Book doesn’t seem to approve of change.”
“Neither did the old Emperor. Look what happened there.” The demon stole a look at the Council, but found that his gaze slid off them, as if gliding on ice. His thoughts were moving too quickly for him to organize them properly, but one thing seemed relatively clear. “If the spell will have the effect that you think it will, then we can’t use it. We’ll have to think of something else.”
Without your help. Zhu Irzh had the wit not to express this thought aloud, but the whole situation reminded him of Chen’s dealings with Kuan Yin, in the earliest days of their working partnership. Then, Chen had only recently been cast out from the Goddess of Compassion and Mercy’s protection — a punishment for marrying a demon — but it seemed to Zhu Irzh that it was a similar issue. All of these deities, these masters and mistresses, wanted you to do their dirty work for them, without actually sullying their pristine hands. And if you failed, or didn’t conform to the strict dictates that they set, then you were history, even if it hadn’t been your fault. Hell was at least more honest, the demon thought, as he had considered on a number of occasions before.
Roerich wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, though. Zhu Irzh turned to his companion. “Nicholas. What do you think about all this? The best thing would be not to use the spell, yes?”
“I’d have agreed with you,” Roerich said unhappily, “if it hadn’t been for the fact that, as Nandini has just informed me, it’s already too late.”
THIRTY
“You’re sure that’s it?” Chen lowered the telescope from his eye. The war-junk rode at anchor, behind the lee of a reach of rock.
At his side, Li-Ju nodded. “I’ve only seen it once before, but it fits the specifications. It’s the Empress’ ship.”
Chen didn’t have a problem believing this. The black boat slid over the sparkling surface of the sea like a spectral vessel. Even in what was clearly a Hell, it did not belong in this world of sunlight and ocean. If he squinted slightly, it was almost possible to see the islands through its form.
“She’s found a way out,” he remarked.
“Yes. But with what end in mind?”
“She’s also found allies, it would seem,” Chen said.
“Or coerced them.”
“Inari’s on that ship. And Miss Qi, and the badger. We need to have a plan of action.” It was all Chen could do not to suggest that they immediately storm the vessel, but impatience had proved the parent of disaster on more than one occasion. They needed a strategy.
“Not knowing the lay of the land — or sea, in this case — makes things difficult,” Li-Ju said. “I suggest we follow, at a safe distance. If we can do so out of sight then so much the better.”
“If she does see us,” Chen asked, “is there anything that will mark this as a Celestial boat?”
“No. We stripped it of its banners before setting out from Heaven.”
“So unless she’s got someone on board who knows all the craft of this Hell, this could be just another ship,” Chen said, aware of the triumph of hope over experience. They were clearly a warship, after all.
“Only one way to find out,” Li-Ju said, with a fierce and un-Celestial grin.
They kept close to the shore, hugging the island as closely as they could without running afoul of the sharp rocks that fanged out from under the surface of those deceptively calm azure waves. The black ship sailed ahead, also curving close to shore. Chen wondered what its ultimate destination might be. The island itself showed no signs of habitation, although a skein of immense birds wheeled around its craggy summits. Had the Empress found her way here by chance, or had she sailed here by invitation? There was nothing about the ship’s course to indicate where it might be bound.
Then the black ship started to tack out from the coast, her sails veering into the wind. They had a choice: either skulk beneath the cliffs and hide, or follow her out into the open ocean. Li-Ju chose to follow.
“The boat’s not armed, although the Empress has her own spellcraft.”
“Have you taken precautions against that?”
“Yes. The boat’s heavily warded. But then, so was Kuan Yin’s boat. This is a warship, however, and has more effective protection.”
At least, we hope so, Chen thought. They pulled out from under the cliffs, fully visible now. But the black ship did not falter in her course. She continued to tack out into the wider ocean, her sails hissing in the wind of an unknown Hell.
THIRTY-ONE
“A land of our own,” the Roc said. “Or it’s no deal.”
“I can’t promise you that,” Inari told it, leaning perilously out of the window. She did not like being so close to the Roc’s ferocious bronze beak; nor did she like the gleam in its molten eyes. But the great bird was, thus far, their best chance of getting out of captivity, if not this Hell itself, and it had proved more willing to negotiate than the shark-demons.
The Roc ruffled its metal plumage. “In that case…”
“Wait,” Inari said, anxious that it would simply take off and not return. “Don’t go. We can’t contact our friends. But I am close to the Jade Emperor. My husband’s colleague is the stepson of the Emperor of Hell and about to marry a demon who has connections with the Hindu levels. She’s also wealthy in her own right,” Inari added, thinking of the acres that Jhai owned in China, the places where her secret labs were said to be situated. “Why, even now she’s in Western China, buying land.”
She did not hope to convince the Roc, but it seemed that she’d done a better job than she’d thought.
“Indeed?” the bird said, with bright-eyed interest. “In that case… They will be happy to have you back, will they? They didn’t decide to dispatch an inconvenient little demon down to somebody else’s Hell in the first place, did they?”
“Certainly not! We were kidnapped,” protested Inari, but Miss Qi added icily, “Besides, I am a Celestial warrior. If you know anything of my kind, you know that we cannot lie. My friend is telling you the truth.”