by Liz Williams
“Yes,” Miss Qi said, when Inari pointed this out to her. “Someone must have stolen the city.”
“Or destroyed it.” Inari could still feel Singapore Three, but it was like an echo, or a fading dream.
“I don’t think it’s been destroyed,” Miss Qi said. “I can sense it, but it’s in the wrong place. That’s what made me think it must have been stolen.”
“But who would steal a city? And why?” The main problem with Miss Qi’s hypothesis, Inari thought, was who would want it.
“I grow tired,” the Roc said, and soared downward toward the little hummock of an island.
“Wait!” Inari commanded. “Land on shore. Please. We need to find out what’s happened.” This new shore might prove to have unknown dangers, but they stood more chance of discovering the truth about the changes if they weren’t marooned.
“I could just turn around and take you back to my Hell,” the Roc pointed out. “Since there appears to be little for me here.”
“You said you wanted land of your own,” said Inari. “Maybe this is your chance to take it.”
“Yes,” said Miss Qi, with a cunning that Inari had not expected in her. “There might be new prey.”
The Roc did not reply, but their comments had evidently given it food for thought, because it glided over the islands and headed for the coast. Inari looked down as they passed above the harbor: no boats now rode at anchor in the bay, nor was there any sign of the typhoon shelter.
“There’s a plane!” Miss Qi said, suddenly. Inari looked ahead. The Celestial warrior was right: a jet was streaking across the sky, leaving a vapor trail behind it. With the Roc still circling, they watched as it headed downward to a flat piece of land close to the bay. This was not, Inari knew, where the airport was situated in her own day.
“That doesn’t look like a fighter plane,” Miss Qi said, frowning.
“It isn’t.” Inari didn’t know much about aircraft, but she recognized this one from the red symbol emblazoned across its fuselage. It was one of the Paugeng jets; Jhai’s private craft. She leaned forward in excitement.
“The woman who owns that plane has a lot of power. She’s the one I was telling you about. Can you land us near it?”
“Very well,” the Roc said, in slightly more conciliatory tones now that there was a chance of getting what it had come for. It headed inland, toward the rudimentary landing strip. The plane had landed now and was slowing. The Roc took them down to a slight rise and Inari scrambled gratefully from its back. The badger shook himself. Miss Qi took Inari’s arm.
“Are you sure that Jhai’s in there?”
“I can’t be sure.” Inari looked around her at the desolate coastline. “Things have altered so much …”
But she had to take the risk. Leaving the Roc ruffling its feathers on the rise, they headed for the aircraft, which had now taxied to a halt. It was with considerable relief that Inari saw the door open and Jhai herself swing down a ladder to the ground.
“Inari! What the hell?” Jhai spotted her Celestial bodyguard. “Miss Qi! And what’s that bird doing there?”
“We were kidnapped. Ended up in someone’s Hell. Got rescued,” Miss Qi said. Jhai appreciated brevity, Inari knew.
“Oh. Sorry to hear that. I’ve just been working, out West, then in Beijing. Had to leave Zhu Irzh—he got involved in a case. Left Beijing airport earlier and as we were halfway here, something happened.”
“The city’s gone,” Inari said, feeling that she was stating the obvious.
“Let me tell you, it’s not the only thing that’s disappeared. The whole of China’s changed. One minute I was looking out of the window at urban sprawl, the next, it wasn’t there.”
“Is this really Earth?” Miss Qi asked. “Or some kind of parallel world?”
“That would seem to be the obvious explanation,” Jhai said. She looked up, to see a passenger jet heading over the hills. “Anyone up in the air seems not to have been affected, though. I’ve tried to get hold of Zhu Irzh but I can’t reach him.”
“And Wei Chen?” Inari faltered.
Jhai shook her head. “I’m sorry, Inari. No sign of him. But this world isn’t entirely empty. As we flew in I saw villages—even some little towns. So it isn’t completely unpopulated.”
And as if to punctuate her words, her cellphone rang.
36
Zhu Irzh watched the stars as they flew, galaxies whisking by. The city was speeding up, taking him into the past: he could feel the years rolling back, affecting him at the cellular level. This was not the subtle transition that he’d experienced when he’d first slipped into the Tokarian village, but was swift and brutal. It took him a moment to realize that the city had stopped moving, and then he felt windswept and breathless.
“Are we nearly there yet?”
The city did not reply. Instead, it began to fade, the stars flickering out one by one, the walls folding down into themselves. It was a calm process with an air of unstoppable authority about it: Agarta had done this before. It reminded Zhu Irzh of watching a computerized image slowly dismantle. When it was over, he stood alone in the desert, a bright sun golden above him and the scent of incense on the light breath of the wind.
The demon followed it. Whereas the southern part of the desert had featured those huge dunes, this terrain did not: it looked more like another planet. Black grit crunched beneath Zhu Irzh’s boots and a line of old red hills broke the horizon. Then he heard singing. It was so unexpected that Zhu Irzh stopped dead and listened.
It wasn’t human. He could tell that much. And it was coming from above. The demon looked up. Overheard, perhaps at a height of some thirty feet, a group of women soared in flight. Their long, trailing garments floated around them as they flew in brightly colored streamers and each one wore a conical hat, like a small beehive.
Then one of them spotted Zhu Irzh. She gave a scream and a second later, all of them were drifting down to cluster around him.
“Ladies, ladies,” the demon said, not displeased. “There’s no need to be quite so enthusiastic.”
“But what are you?” There didn’t seem to be any linguistic barrier, although Zhu Irzh could tell that he was not speaking, or hearing, his native tongue.
“I am a demon. From Hell.”
One of the flying women frowned. “I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“I can assure you it exists,” Zhu Irzh said, conscious of some unease. Perhaps it no longer did, in this timeline, or perhaps its gateways were much less clearly marked than they were in his own world. “And you—you are akashi, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” There was twittering, and a certain amount of giggling. “How did you know?”
“I’ve—met your kind before.” But he was not sure whether this was really true. None of them looked quite like the akashi he had encountered, and so maybe none of them were. Could the spell alter appearance in addition to—well, everything else?
The akashi laughed behind their hands, which were slender and clawed. “Are you going to visit the Enlightened One?”
“Who is he?” Then Zhu Irzh hastily amended, “Or should I say she?”
More laughter. “He lives in the cave. Over that ridge.”
Well, why not? It wasn’t as though he had a clue what he was doing, after all. “I’ll go there, then,” the demon said.
The akashi rose into the air in a flock, like birds, their streamers fluttering around them. Zhu Irzh watched them go with a faint regret. Maybe they’d come back later. In the meantime, he might as well see who this Enlightened One was.
Over the ridge lay a grove of acacia. Wherever he was in this timeline, he didn’t think it was where he’d been previously. He could see what were clearly caves: a long, high line of rock, interspersed with dark hollows. But the air was sparkling. A crystalline stream ran between the trees.
It felt like Heaven. And that made Zhu Irzh nervous. He kept walking toward the caves and as he did so, he became aware that t
here was someone within. He was being watched. At the foot of the cliff face, he paused and looked up.
“I am here,” someone said.
“Are you the Book?” Zhu Irzh asked with some trepidation. He wasn’t sure that he could give an account of himself to that particular entity.
“Which book is that? We have many books here. Come and see for yourself.”
“How?” The cliff face rose sheer before him.
“Step upon the air,” the voice said. Frowning, the demon did so and found himself hovering a foot or so above the ground.
“I’ve never done that before!” Perhaps this was how the akashi managed their flight: an invisible staircase. Experimentally, he continued to climb and found himself standing in front of a narrow ledge, some hundred feet up the cliff face. He stepped onto it and said aloud, “Where to now?”
“Here.” There was a cave entrance some few yards along the ledge. Inside, it took the demon’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. Then he took a step back.
The face was huge and golden, the eyes elongated. It was smiling.
“Buddha?”
“One of my avatars.”
“Wait a minute,” Zhu Irzh said. “You were a living being, weren’t you? And as far as I remember, you weren’t contemporary with the Tokarians—they were much earlier.”
“That is so. But in fact, my spirit has always been around, staking a claim on certain places. This visage you see before you is not me as I truly am, but only the face that humans have put upon me.”
This was something that Zhu Irzh understood. He nodded.
“You, however,” the Buddha said, “truly do not belong.”
It was said courteously, but with a query. And the divinity had not known about the Book. Zhu Irzh decided to explain.
“I have never heard of such a thing,” the Buddha said, wonderingly. “And you are a demon.”
“Ah, yes. That.” His origins had embarrassed him before, Hell knew, but rarely so much as now. Then he remembered that Agarta had taken him in and he stood a little straighter. “But I am not on a demonic errand.”
“You’re speaking the truth,” the Buddha said. “I can hear it. How odd.”
“I need to find the Tokarians,” Zhu Irzh told him. “Can you help me?” He didn’t see why the Buddha should do so, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“One of the girls will take you there,” the Buddha said.
Zhu Irzh perked up. “Fine with me.”
He didn’t expect her to be a deer, but in retrospect, it made a certain amount of sense. The akashi, she explained, were animal spirits: deer and birds and butterflies, anything gentle and lovely. It reminded him of the Indian Hell belonging to Jhai’s cousin, from which he had recently been obliged to escape.
“And you can go where you please on the face of this world?” Zhu Irzh asked, just to make sure.
“Yes, of course. Often, we go to the mountain forests to visit our friends the tiger spirits.”
Tiger spirits. Hmm. Best not mention that other close encounter with tiger spirits, or even that he was engaged to one.
“How nice.” It was just like Heaven, Zhu Irzh thought. No matter how long ago this might be, he didn’t think Earth had ever been so pleasant. He wondered what else the Book had managed to achieve. The deer skipped ahead, darting through the long grass. It might be that this was simply her natural form for a journey, or that the Buddha had asked her to take this shape to remove temptation from visiting demons. Easy to be cynical. Easy to be right, though.
“Is it very far?” he asked.
“A little way, but the journey is so pleasant,” the deer replied, pausing to munch on some flowers. This was not like the desert he had known, either: closer to steppe, with miles of gently waving grass dotted with spring blossoms. The air smelled sweet and fresh. Zhu Irzh sighed. It was like stepping into Disneyland. Despite the charms of this place, he preferred the Earth as it had been, in all its multifarious complexity. And if the Tokarians were as pleasant as the akashi, would they actually be any help? He might have to end up frightening people to get answers out of them, and in that case, would the Book’s new rules simply write him out of existence?
These questions reached a head of concern as they stepped over the next rise and a small settlement came into view. There were vestiges of the village which Zhu Irzh had so briefly glimpsed before the sand came in and he and Nicholas were rescued. It was low, but the defensive clay wall that had protected it from enemies and the desert was no longer there. Sheep grazed on sloping pastures and a child was running down the slope. Her fair hair streamed out behind her like a banner; it seemed the Tokarians—if these were indeed they—still retained their Celtic appearance.
“Here we are,” the deer said, unnecessarily. “Do you need an introduction?”
“That would be helpful,” Zhu Irzh said. He didn’t think the sudden manifestation of a demon in their midst would please the villagers all that much. But if he was in the company of a friend of the Buddha …
“Then I will go with you,” the deer said, scampering ahead. Sighing again, the demon followed.
The villagers came out to meet them as they approached. One woman—a tall girl with long, light brown braids—bent to speak to the deer and the akashi metamorphosed back into her human form, streamers twirling. But when they saw Zhu Irzh they grew silent and fearful.
“It’s all right,” the akashi reassured them. “He was sent by the Buddha.”
“I’m looking for something,” Zhu Irzh told them. “A book.”
“What’s a ‘book’?”
Ah. He’d been afraid of this.
“Something that’s written down.”
“Written?”
Whatever form the Book had taken on its return to this time, it wasn’t the one he’d been hoping for. Damn. Zhu Irzh decided, uncharacteristically, not to engage in subterfuge. He seemed to be growing more naturally honest as the years went by. Another of those depressing signs of maturity and age, no doubt. “What I’m actually looking for is a piece of magic. Creation magic.”
The woman with the braids was frowning. “You’ll need to talk to the shaman, I think.”
“Is he available?”
“She.” And at this Zhu Irzh’s heart gave a bound. If this proved to be the woman he’d last seen perched on the edge of a parapet, about to leap onto a crane’s back …
And when they took him in among the huts to a low cottage near the well, his hopes were realized.
“It is you!”
The woman crouching over the fire looked up and frowned. “Have we met? Oh. You’re not human.” She straightened up and ran a hand through indigo hair.
“Can we talk?” Zhu Irzh said, with a glance at the woman with the braids. “Alone?”
After a pause the woman nodded. “You can go, Cealta,” she said. The braided woman was clearly reluctant, but after a sharp glance from those blue eyes, she did as the shaman wished.
“You ride a crane,” Zhu Irzh told her. “I last saw you many thousands of years in the future. You’d been brought back to life by a man who calls himself the Khan.”
The shaman was staring. “This is an extraordinary tale. But you are right about my crane.”
“I know it sounds odd.” Then Zhu Irzh gave her a brief account of events.
After he had finished, the shaman sat staring into the flame for a moment. Then she said, “You’re telling the truth. The fire says so.”
That was a relief, at least.
“But here, things are well. I have visions that they have not always been so. Visions that I don’t understand. This is a healed world, but I don’t know what it has been healed from.” Then, as if the word had been forced out of her, she added, “Almost healed.”
“Almost? Are you sure?”
“There is one remaining wound,” the shaman said slowly.
“A wound?”
“In the world. It is recent, too.”
“What do you
mean by a ‘wound’?”
“I’ll show you,” the shaman said. “My name is Raksha. Or at least, that is what you may call me.”
“Zhu Irzh. I’m—of supernatural origins.”
“That,” Raksha said, “is fairly obvious.”
They rode on horseback to the place that the shaman spoke of as a wound. Zhu Irzh’s mount was nervous: with a demon on its back in this revised paradise, he could not blame it. Nor could he see any sign of anything amiss—the steppe was a peaceful place, with a serene blue sky and clouds floating overhead. Raksha spoke little, but spurred her horse on at a swift pace. At length they came to a narrow valley, winding between low hills, and Raksha brought the horse to a halt.
“It’s here.”
The demon looked down the valley, but could see nothing wrong. “Where?”
In answer, the shaman dismounted and led him into the valley, to a spot that overlooked the wound. As she did so, a cloud passed over the sun and the valley fell into sudden shadow. Even the scent of fresh grass seemed muted. Zhu Irzh could hear running water. A small spring bubbled up, halfway along the slope, and spilled down onto the valley floor. Close to it, there was a gouge in the earth.
At first, it looked as though someone had drawn a plough through the soil. It was perhaps ten feet long and a foot wide. Zhu Irzh stepped closer but Raksha grabbed him by the arm. “Be careful.”
“What made this?”
“I don’t know.”
As he drew closer he could see that there was, indeed, something very wrong. The sides of the gap looked more like flesh than soil, and a stench rose from it that made even the demon blanch. “What the hell—?”
Something fluttered up from the depths of the crevasse, something small and scattered. Black moths? Or flakes of ash? Whatever it was, there was nothing natural about it.
“When did this first appear?” the demon asked.
“Only a few days ago. I will tell you honestly, when I first set eyes on you, I thought you had come from the gap. But the fire told me otherwise.”