The Iron Khan (Detective Inspector Chen Series)

by Liz Williams

  “Why is this so constricted?”

  Inari sighed. “So that we don’t enjoy it.”

  “How typical.” Jhai opened the door to the first carriage they came to and discovered it was already occupied, if not full. A sullen range of faces turned in their direction and stared.

  It was some time since Inari had visited her native realm and after the uniformity of human countenances, she found the diversity of Hell had become disconcerting. Flat, squashed faces vied with long, pear-shaped ones. Crimson, yellow, and jade eyes regarded her with substantial disfavor. And the carriage smelled even worse than Singapore Three, which might generally be described as ripe. The odor of stale sweat and dried blood rose to meet her. Pregnancy made one nauseous, Inari discovered, or perhaps it was simply the unfamiliarity lent by distance. She had not remembered Hell as smelling quite so rank. Meanwhile Jhai’s elegant nose was also wrinkling.

  “Delightful. Mind you, I’ve seen worse. I hardly dare ask whether they serve food on this train.”

  Inari stared at her companion in horror. “You can’t be hungry!”

  “I had some congee at Robin’s. That’s it. What can I say? I’m a carnivore. Let’s find a seat, Inari. Then I’m going in search of the buffet car.”

  They found two adjacent places, sitting opposite an elderly spirit in a hat. She gazed at the two visitors for a moment, then busied herself by rummaging in a capacious handbag. Inari slid gratefully into her seat and pressed her face to the grimy window. Hell’s plains slipped away in a blur of dust; Inari closed her eyes and thought of the child within.

  When she opened them again Jhai was shoveling sticky rice into her mouth with a pair of chopsticks, and the landscape of the plain had changed to a rockier, wilder scene, with mountains rising shadowy in the distance.

  “Want some?” Jhai asked, pointing to the rice. “It’s not bad.”

  “No thanks,” Inari said automatically, but she thought she might see if the buffet car served tea. Jhai offered to go for her, but just as she was rising from her seat a spirit appeared at the front of the carriage, shoving a large and ancient cart before her. Served tea without having to move cheered Inari up somewhat.

  “See if you can speak to Miss Qi,” Jhai suggested sourly. “Ask her if they’d be willing to do a swap.”

  Inari laughed. “I doubt it. Even if it was possible.” She took a sip of strong tea. “How long was I asleep?”

  “A couple of hours. It’s difficult to tell here.” Jhai leaned across and looked out of the window. “On Earth, it would take a couple of days to reach Tibet from where we are. Here, it’s harder to say. The trouble with the other realms is that they’re folded in a way that Earth isn’t.”

  “Those are quite high mountains,” Inari ventured. She had visited relatively few places in China itself, and those had mainly been on the South Coast, although Chen had once taken her to Hawaii. Inari heaved a nostalgic sigh.

  “Yes, they are. Not the Himalayas, though. But I don’t know whether they’d look — ah!”

  “What have you seen?”

  “I thought those were clouds. They’re not. They’re peaks.”

  Inari craned to see. Jhai was right. Behind the shadow hills lay a line of whiteness in the sky, and when she scrubbed at the filthy window with her sleeve she was able to see that this was, indeed, a line of glaciers. Shortly after this, the train began to slow and then pulled into a remote halt on a high platform of rock.

  “Is this it?”

  “You want Tibet?” the old person sitting opposite them asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This isn’t the border yet. You’ll know when you come to it.” She gathered up her numerous bags and got up. “Hope your documents are in order, young ladies.”

  Inari hoped so, too. She helped the elderly person off the train with her bags, earning a suspicious glance and a muttered, grudging thanks. Here, the air was colder: almost Earth-normal, and unimpeded by the grubby glass, the sky was a pure, chilly aquamarine. Not very much like Hell at all, Inari thought, and her spirits rose.

  When she got back to the carriage, slackening the cord between their wrists, she found Jhai speaking into it.

  “Heaven’s transportation system is apparently delightful,” Jhai informed her with a roll of the eyes. “Miss Qi and Robin are progressing across flower-strewn meadows and almond groves in a carriage pulled by does.”

  “Lucky them.” Normally made happy by the happiness of others, Inari felt that there were nonetheless limits on one’s charitableness. Jhai gave a sardonic grin. The train roared on, into the darkening evening.

  Toward what Inari estimated to be midnight, they reached the border. The train stopped for an hour, with no sign of action, then a pair of guards got on. Scions of the Ministry of War, they had bristling, tusked faces and carried assault weapons rather than the more traditional swords and spears. Tibet had such an unfortunate relationship with China on Earth that Inari wondered what the state of the place was in Hell: not good, from the look of things.

  “Papers,” the guard demanded. Jhai shoved them forward, giving the guard a glittering smile. Inari felt a brief pang of envy: she was too shy to flirt like that. The guard preened. “In order, madam. By the way, should you grow bored during the night, there’s a card game in carriage three. We’d be happy to welcome you to it.”

  “I might just join you,” Jhai said. “Thanks.”

  Thus the border was crossed without incident and the train speeded into the mountains. Inari dozed. She woke once, to find that they were crossing a narrow bridge of rock over a great chasm. A river snaked far beneath, lit by glancing fires. There was no sign of Jhai; presumably she had sought the buffet car once more, or perhaps the card game. Inari shut her eyes again.

  When she next woke, it was close to Hell’s vague dawn. Jhai was back in her seat, curled neatly asleep. The train was trundling around an immense bend. Inari looked down and wished she hadn’t. The drop fell away beyond the thread of the rail, thousands of feet to an invisible below. The mountains were all around, the icy summits looking close enough to reach out and touch, and far across the chasm Inari spotted the first sign of life, a tiny temple, perched doll-like on the side of a cliff. She wondered if this, too, had its counterpart in the world of Earth. Then the train whisked around the curve and the temple was gone.

  Jhai blinked awake at a tug on the cord. Miss Qi’s voice came faintly out of the air. “Our guide says we’re nearly there.”

  “Thank god,” Jhai muttered. She stretched, stiffly. “I could do with a wash. I hope Roerich’s city has running water.”

  After a sojourn in Hell, Agarta sounded like paradise indeed, no matter what its hygiene might be. Jhai and Inari got to their feet and made their way to the door. The train was pulling into the side of a temple complex, Inari saw, that stepped up the steep mountainside in a series of levels. It did not look like a building of Hell and this in itself was hopeful. Once on the platform, she watched the train haul away without regret.

  “All right,” Jhai said into the cord, “what now?”

  It was the temple of a shepherd god, appropriate in this mountainous region. When they walked through the door, Inari turned to look back, and had the sudden disorienting vision of a mountain pasture, soft with blossoms. A high-sided carriage stood beneath a flowering tree. Miss Qi was talking to a golden-horned deer — and then both Miss Qi and Robin were standing by her side. Inari blinked. The pastoral scene, a dusty hillside, and the sharp terrain of Hell were all visible, overlayed upon one another, glimpsed from the open doorway of the temple. Deliberately, Inari turned her back on the triple scene and followed her companions through to the courtyard, where a man was waiting by the side of a fountain.

  •

  “It will come to us,” Roerich explained. He smiled at Inari. “No more traveling.”

  “I’m not sorry.”

  “I am — but not for your lack of journeying. It’s in part due to my negligence that has led yo
u to these straits.”

  Inari smiled back at him, feeling safe with this calm-faced, austere man. “I don’t think you can blame yourself too greatly, from what you’ve told us.” They were sitting in a side chamber of the monastery. Roerich had drawn the shutters closed against the triple view and the room was plunged into a comforting, cool gloom.

  “Besides,” Miss Qi said, “we were in enough trouble of our own already.”

  “You didn’t see your boyfriend when you were in Heaven, did you?” Jhai asked Robin.

  The ghost shook her head. “No. It was like traveling through a channel. Everything on either side was just mist. Anyway, I have the feeling that if we’d sought Mhara out, you’d have found yourselves in the middle of Hell’s capital. I’ve never journeyed when connected like this.”

  Inari repressed a shudder. At least they’d stayed together, in a manner of speaking.

  “And now,” Roerich said, “I need to summon Agarta.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Chen and Li-Ju had spent the night patiently examining every inch of the room, while the Empress continued to glower in the corner. There was no obvious way out: Banquo was, it seemed, taking no chances. Toward morning, Chen became aware of a further disturbance from the corner: the Empress was mumbling again.

  “What’s she up to?” Li-Ju whispered, uneasily.

  “I don’t know.” It sounded like the earlier spell, but Chen could tell that this one was of greater potency. The words sizzled through the air, striking sparks from the paneled wood. A faint smell of burning became evident.

  “If she sets fire to the room — ” Li-Ju began.

  Quietly, Chen started to form the beginnings of a counterspell, one against fire. His own magic was not strong enough to break out of a room, but it had some impact, all the same. Something water-summoning… Just as well they were on a river, although Chen did not like to think of what he might be bringing up alongside the spell.

  But it seemed that destruction was not, after all, the Empress’ intent. The sparks fizzed out, hissing into spirals of smoke, which began to thicken.

  “Madam — ” Chen warned, but the Empress was not listening. Through the thickening smoke he could see her eyes roll back into her head, making the beautiful face look even more masklike. Her mouth fell open as though her jaw had become suddenly unhinged. Beneath Chen’s feet, the boat gave a violent lurch. Thrown to one side, he grasped the windowsill. Through the tiny porthole, a treetop sailed by.

  “My god! We’re flying!” Li-Ju breathed.

  Rather than escaping from her prison, it seemed that the Empress had simply decided to steal it. Footsteps thundered down the corridor and the door was flung open.

  “What — ?” Banquo roared. He hurled a spell at the Empress, a glistening conjuration of gold-and-blue, but it was too late. The Empress was changing, no longer a statue-still, disdainful figure, but a spinning confection of magical threads, weaving out from her form like a spider. The room reeked and stank of magic, something truly ancient, from a time of sacrifices and war. Chen coughed as rancid spellwork tore into his throat. The river was now a line of dull green far below, the trees themselves left far behind. The boat was spiraling up through the rainforest canopy, passing the distant summits with their spinning coils of birds, up into the blueness of sky. Ahead, as the boat turned, Chen could see a thin, dark crack.

  “What’s that?” Li-Ju asked. Drawn by the motion of the Empress’ magical engine, the boat was speeding up, no longer turning like a twig caught on an eddy, but arrowing straight for the gap.

  “I don’t know.” Yet Chen thought he did. The boundaries between the worlds were breaking down, allowing magic to bleed between systems, allowing rifts and ruptures. The pirates had taken advantage of one such, and now their captive was turning the tables on Banquo and his crew.

  But where was she heading? Surely not back to the limbo of the Sea of Night? And Heaven would hardly welcome her. That left, to Chen’s mind, a handful of unappealing alternatives.

  •

  It wasn’t long before they found out. The boat sailed straight for the crack and as it approached, there was a roll of thunder. Lightning shot out from the crack, forming a web in the heavens and merging with the threads of energy generated by the Empress. She was drawing her power from somewhere, Chen realized: this was more than she could possess herself. Besides, it felt different — more like the magic of Hell, but with an added foreign quality that he was unable to place. All he and Li-Ju could do was hang on while the boat hurtled through the lightning storm. Beside them, Banquo was cursing.

  The gap now filled the air ahead. Through the little window, Chen kept getting glimpses of its darkness, shot with lights: scarlet and jade and a fiery white. Then the world beyond the window was blotted out as they soared into the gap.

  Immediately, all the sound and fury ceased. A vast quietness fell upon the boat. The Empress, now a wadded mass of magical threads, continued to spin like some silent generator. Li-Ju turned to Chen and spoke, but no sound emerged from his mouth. Chen felt as though his ears had been packed with cotton wool. Inside his chest, his heartbeat slowed to a painful, thudding pace. His breath seemed to be congealing in his lungs.

  “What?” But he couldn’t even hear his own voice.

  Gradually, the circle of darkness that was the window began to lighten. Chen saw a drift of cloud, then a strip of sky in between the swirling mist. A moment later, the Empress’ gyrating figure began to slow down. Her eyes reappeared within the mass, two malevolent black sparks. Far beneath the boat, a green curve appeared.

  It was Earth, and yet it was wrong. As soon as they were through the gap, Chen knew that he was back home, but there were subtle differences. Nothing obvious in the air through which the boat was descending, no clue in the land below them — but the magic was wrong. Or was that — right? Chen felt a surge of unfamiliar power through his fingertips, as if a bolt of lightning had arced up from the earth itself. He felt connected; he could almost have described the land that was now speeding by under their feet even if he was still unable to see it.

  Across the room, the Empress’ eyes widened. The spell came to Chen’s lips almost before he had time to think about it. He threw out a hand, a gesture which was normally accompanied by slicing a spell into his palm. But now the magic shot through him effortlessly. He had a sudden, disconcerting vision of himself from the outside, a figure of light, one hand outflung, and then the magic was coursing out of him and striking the Empress full on.

  It sent her into a spin and the boat spun with her. Chen reached down into the land, found the threads that made the link, pulled, tugged, twisted….

  Li-Ju and Banquo were staring at him wide-eyed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the pirate demanded.

  “Taking us in,” Chen said, humming with magic. He spread his fingers wide, pointing away from his adversary now and taking the boat into a long glide. They were now perhaps twenty feet above the ground. A grove of trees rushed past. Chen took the boat lower until the grass brushed its sides, and then he stopped it. The boat sank to a gentle, lurching halt.

  Immediately the Empress rose in a rustle of skirts and magic and rushed at the door.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Banquo said. He reached for her but Chen was quicker. He picked up the trailing threads of the Empress’ magic and bound them around her. The Empress toppled like a cut sapling, hobbled by her skirts and the remnants of her power. Banquo hauled her upright and bound her hands behind her with a fragment of rope. The Empress cursed and spat, but suddenly she grew limp and sagging in the pirate’s grasp.

  “Where are we?” Li-Ju threw the door wide and started down the corridor. Chen followed him, ignoring the pirate.

  The grasslands stretched as far as the eye could see, a soft rolling land starred with flowers in all shades of yellow and mauve, blurring the landscape into an impressionistic watercolor. A few groves of low trees broke up the steppe. In the distance a herd of what mi
ght have been deer grazed peacefully.

  Li-Ju was staring, with a frown. “This is Earth. But it feels like Heaven.”

  “Earth’s changed,” Chen agreed. He was still aware of the aftermath of unaccustomed power; aware, too, of the force of it coursing underneath his feet, as swift and smooth as uninterrupted water, there for the taking. Quickly, he brought Li-Ju up to speed.

  “And you don’t normally have that kind of power?” the captain asked.

  “No. All my magic has been hard won,” said Chen. He saw no need to be macho about it, not at this stage of his life. He gripped the rail of the grounded boat, looking out across the sea of grass. “I had to study hard. It didn’t come naturally. The only time I’ve ever had that sort of magic available so readily was when I was still under Kuan Yin’s protection and that was just borrowed. It wasn’t like this.”