by Clark Bolton
It was a disguise spell from the book. She had never cast it, and wasn’t sure it was near her competency level to safely use. Nonetheless, she had prepared herself mentally for this inevitability since they clearly couldn’t walk around as dragon-mage and Seechen.
“You should eat first,” Narween scolded.
Yi-La chuckled pitifully for a moment before sitting up and pulling out the spell-book. It took her some time to get confident with the spell, particularly since she kept glancing up at the sky to guess the time. They had been gone nearly a day now, which could possibly mean her master was looking for her already.
The spell needed to be cast twice: once on her and once on Narween. Yi-La chose a fashionable look that came close to the gowns she had worn under Me-Ta’s patronage, but got the impression from Narween’s sour face that it was a poor approximation. Narween she disguised as a handmaiden, and thought she did a halfway-decent job of it.
It took a lot of courage on their part to step out onto the garden path. Once moving, Yi-La tried hard not to look like she was searching for something. With a slightly reluctant handmaiden trailing behind her, she eventually located Me-Ta’s palace in the distance, which reminded her of just how large the Forbidden-Gardens were. There would be yellow-guards at nearly every building entrance along the way, she knew, but thought it possible to avoid them.
“I know where Chusey and Rooch like to sit and chat,” Yi-La said as they began their long trek. “There is a garden for eunuchs alongside Me-Ta’s palace. Hopefully we won’t be stopped.”
The first group they passed seemed to snicker at them, which made Yi-La sweat even more. There wasn’t a consort in the group of women, nor a eunuch, which made her thankful. When they got near Me-Ta’s palace, she made sure to give it a wide birth until reaching the far side. Huge trees sheltered a small area here, and it was filled with eunuchs, as she expected.
Finding one of her targets, Yi-La signaled for Narween to wait behind. It wasn’t unheard of for non-eunuchs to visit this little grove, but she could see she was drawing more than her fair share of attention. When she reached an oblivious Chusey, who was chatting away, she found the eunuch didn’t recognize her at first.
Leaning into the man’s face slightly, Yi-La craftily showed her ring as she winked several times. Chusey’s jaw dropped, followed by a girlish squeal. “Sweet-water!”
“Shhhhh!” Yi-La hissed as she pulled the eunuch away from his friends, who were now laughing at them. “No one must know!”
“Uh-huh!” Chusey exclaimed a bit too loudly, Yi-La thought.
It took a while to get her urgent needs across to Chusey, who kept wanting to know details. They needed to somehow get back to the mage-quarter without drawing attention to themselves, and they needed to know more on the subject of dracomons.
“Why did you come, sweet-water?” Chusey asked again.
“We didn’t think it would be this hard,” Narween replied impatiently.
Yi-La could tell that her friend’s resolve concerning Ich-Mek’s troubles was waning. It was due to today’s difficult times, she was sure. Yi-La did have to admit that if she had known how dangerous the wards would be, and the difficulty they would have in those filthy tunnels, that she wouldn’t have attempted it. A dracomon was somehow to blame for her questionable judgment, she was sure.
This part concerning dracomons drew obstinate refusals from Chusey, who kept asking when he should go get their mutual friend, Rooch. Relenting finally, Yi-La sent the eunuch to retrieve her friend, but not before Narween requested food for the second or third time.
“We have fishcakes?” Chusey happily suggested as he pointed back toward the group of lounging eunuchs.
“Yes,” they both said in unison after a pause.
Rooch wasn’t far away, so soon they were sitting on some secluded benches deciding how best to get them out of the gardens.
“Who summoned you?” Rooch asked innocently. “Not Lady Me-Ta?”
“No…we snuck in…through the gate,” Yi-La lied as she glanced at Narween.
“And we can’t go out the mage-gate,” Narween added.
Yi-La knew she couldn’t open the gate herself, and even if she could the yellow-guards were very unlikely to simply let them walk out. The two eunuchs seemed to understand what needed to be done, though warned them it would not be safe.
“We know.” Yi-La replied. “Now, tell me about the succession.”
“You mean…?” Rooch asked with disbelief.
“Yes! Is there a noble dracomon?”
The looks on the two eunuchs’ faces made Yi-La think she had overstepped her friendship with them, but then came an unending flood of information and speculation. She was starting to think she should be taking notes, but decided just to listen. When sunset approached, she stopped the conversation and stood up.
“When will they close the gates?” Yi-La asked with great concern.
“Anytime now,” Chusey replied. “We’ll have to go through the Imperial-Chancellor’s palace. That’s the only gate that’s normally open.”
Yi-La got goosebumps as she stared at Chusey. Another dracomon was in her way; what’s more, once past this one, she would likely have to deal with Lu-Pok next.
“Why are you so worried, Fu-Sa…?” Rooch asked before apparently recalling the reason she needed help. “…Ohhh! You’re not in the registry.”
Yi-La quickly made them all start walking toward the Imperial-Chancellor’s palace as she asked, “What will happen when the yellow-guard finds out?”
“But you have to be in there!” Chusey insisted.
“I told you we snuck in the gate!”
“But you didn’t tell us how, sweet-water.”
Yi-La was getting the impression either these two didn’t understand the depth of the situation, or had been involved in something like this before. “I can’t say,” she told them.
“Well, then…We won’t tell you the solution.” Chusey then turned his nose up and away before leading on.
They walked quickly and silently for a time until they came to the main garden side-entrance to the Imperial-Chancellor’s palace. “I’ll tell you someday, I promise!” Yi-La said as her knees threatened to give way.
“Promise on your ring?” Chusey said in a voice that for a eunuch was suddenly very low.
“Yes!” Yi-La whispered as she eyed the yellow-guards not a stone’s throw away.
Rooch took ahold of Yi-La’s ring hand at this point, and held it up to Chusey. “Swear?” Rooch asked in a more upbeat tone.
“I swear,” Yi-La said reluctantly as she felt her face turn red.
These two had gotten the best of her, she realized as she was led past guards into a vast hall. This hall led to others, and still others, until they arrived at the exit hall to the Forbidden-Gardens. The whole time, Yi-La kept glancing nervously from side to side for signs of the Imperial-Chancellor. In this final hall it looked like the workday had come to an end, but despite the eunuchs and guards alike preparing for the close of the gates, they were in fact still open.
“Chuckle…laugh,” Chusey insisted as he came to stand with his back to the gate, while Rooch headed straight for a large table where several eunuchs, both administrators and guards, where standing.
“Ohhh!” Rooch yelled out loudly as he hurried across the vast hall. “I need to see the registry, please!”
It took Chusey a few more attempts to convince Narween and Yi-La that they best pretend to be having a pleasant goodbye conversation. After a few moments Yi-La could tell the eunuch didn’t think she and Narween were very good at this kind of acting, and so began overcompensating visually.
Beyond worried now, Yi-La was able to watch a bold Rooch, out of the corner of her eye, inspecting a vast ornate book, which Yi-La was sure was the registry. In it would be a record of all who entered and were allowed to leave the Forbidden-Gardens. She couldn’t believe Rooch had the nerve to blatantly pick up a quill and write something in the book.
Chapter 31
“I think of you as a friend, Ich-Mek,” Nugh told him sincerely. “This is why you must not walk in front of me.”
Ich-Mek smiled apologetically then stepped back once again to let the monk lead once more. He was used to going out in front occasionally, and these monks really didn’t like that. Ich-Mek absently did it whenever As-Cheen was out of sight, which she had a knack for. Turning around, he glanced back at the two other monks behind him, Xep, and Buo.
Oddly, their names translated as one, two, and three in Ibu-Jek. Ich-Mek hadn’t made the connection to their ages until toward the end of the first day. Buo meant one, and he was clearly the most senior monk, then came number two, Xep – again, senior-looking to Nugh.
“It’s a joke, isn’t it?” Ich-Mek said as he glanced over his shoulder at Xep. “Those really aren’t your names!”
“They are, for this journey,” Xep assured him. “Next journey I can’t say. It may not come.”
The monk was smiling at his back, Ich-Mek was sure. They did this often and appeared to mean no insult by it. Still, it was off-putting since both he and As-Cheen weren’t used to such humor.
“Your lady friend reaches the Ju River, I think,” Buo told him as the monk pointed down upon a distant valley filled with trees.
“I hope she is not that far ahead,” Ich-Mek exclaimed as he scanned the horizon.
There had been no sign of Shu-Whet, the snow-master, since they had left Shrindala nearly ten days ago, and this Ich-Mek attributed to his strategic use of rune-sets that masked one’s location. He had them on all his possessions, and those of As-Cheen, as well on various parts of both their bodies. Without them he was convinced Shu-Whet was a capable enough mage to scry them out.
“Will there be a boat down there?” Ich-Mek asked innocently.
“Not big enough, I think, for us all,” Buo replied, “but the river will grow.”
Ich-Mek found it refreshing that they didn’t make use of titles since this could give him away on the road. At first he had expected these three to behave much like Tass had on the journey to Shrindala, but clearly they had nothing much in common with the highland folk of the mountains behind them.
The monks carried everything on their backs, but for some reason the monks always refused his offer of magical aid that would lighten the loads to almost nothing. Tass had never refused once – he had seen the advantage of it – but these monks wouldn’t even give it a chance.
When they descended into the valley Ich-Mek got his first taste of real trees since before he could remember. The trees on the high plateau of Key-Tar-Om were always short and stunted, and the ones in the highlands of Shrindala weren’t much bigger. Here, though, they towered over head.
“Hmm?” Ich-Mek asked innocently when the three began to smirk at him, then he heard whistling which caught his attention.
Looking about, he tried to find the source of it, figuring it was some bird or perhaps a squirrel. Nothing was obvious so he continued down the narrow trail until a pinecone struck him in the head. The monks thought this was hilarious, which made him question their competence for some reason. They hardly seemed capable and worldly men when they behaved this way.
“What is that?” he snapped irritably as he rubbed his head.
“Mana,” Xep suggested from the rear.
“Tree-chi,” Nugh suggested from the front.
“Pinecone!” laughed Buo.
Getting upset now at being the butt of jokes, he seriously considered shooting an arcane-missile up into the trees to frighten off whatever it was. The monks hadn’t seen him cast such magic yet, and he was a bit eager to demonstrate to them why he was called the dragon-mage.
When another pinecone hit him he screamed irritably up into the canopy: “Arrrgh!” Then he smiled to let everyone know he really wasn’t as upset as he appeared to be.
“Arrrgh!” came the reply down from the trees, followed by a mocking voice: “What is that?”
Stopping in his tracks he looked around with a snarl to see where it was As-Cheen was hiding. He couldn’t spot her though, which the monks found uproarious. A third pinecone to the head finally gave away her position.
“Get down!” he called up at her incredulously. “You’re going to fall!”
“No, come up here!” she said obstinately.
“No!”
“You are weak.”
He very much wished now he was alone with the stubborn elf. She was impossibly high up in a tree, he thought, and when she suddenly leaped across to another tree his jaw dropped. Looking to see the reaction of the monks, he found them pleasantly surprised. They all watched her move through the trees until she was almost out of sight.
“Why are you doing that?” Ich-Mek asked when she finally came down so they could start walking again.
She shrugged, then asked, “Are these the biggest trees in the world?”
A laugh from Buo behind them told her the answer. “Thought you were an ice-elf,” he said rudely to get a rise out her.
“I did not choose to be,” she replied.
“Sorry, I know the Cold-Mother didn’t give your people a choice.”
“It suits me, I think.”
Ich-Mek turned to look at her to see if the humor of the monks was catching; she was serious, he realized. “Too late to change, I guess,” he suggested.
“You are the dragon-mage, can you change?”
Grinding his teeth to prevent a remark he would regret later, Ich-Mek kept walking.
“Where does the water go?” As-Cheen asked seriously.
They had followed the Ju River now for a few days, and here it finally widened and deepened enough to allow small barges to move along the river. One such barge was hosting an energetic negotiation between Buo and its apparent owner. The plan was to pay for passage on such a barge.
“It goes to the sea, like all rivers,” Ich-Mek replied as he watched the men barter.
“You have seen this sea?”
“No, my family lived about as far from the sea as yours.”
As-Cheen seemed unable to accept that he knew much about seas. “Dragon-mages never cross the sea?”
“Well, no, I…”
“But this goes there?”
“Yes!” he said definitively. “Water goes to the sea, then it snows…and more water goes to the sea.”
“This I already know,” she said dismissively.
“We are going to the sea,” he announced forcefully.
“Where there is ice?”
“Yes, ice!”
“Good…ice!”
“For some of us.” He muttered under his breath as he lurched forward to join in on the negotiations.
The barge-master was named Qing-Dut, and for a silver-piece a day – or nothing, if they agreed to work – they would be welcome to ride along as far as the river would take them. This would be all the way to the Grand Canal, Ich-Mek hoped. Once in the canal, the monks informed him, they could take it toward the southeast. He made sure not to tell them his final destination, as Neeq had suggested.
As-Cheen was looking proper enough, he decided as he motioned her to come down and step onto the barge with him. The monks had cleverly disguised her with a head-covering that they had stitched themselves. It was skilled work, Ich-Mek concluded. In fact, most of what the three did seemed deliberate and precise. Their methodical preparations of meals, including their choice of drinking water sources, all seemed aimed toward the future. He found the approach mage-like in its attentiveness, thus very pleasing.
“We should walk,” As-Cheen declared as the tiny barge bounced up and down slightly as they walked across it.
“It’s safe, and a lot faster,” he assured her.
“Faster than you,” she replied as she pointed to anoth
er small barge that was moving slowly into the small village dock they were on.
Ich-Mek avoided looking toward any of the monks, figuring they were smirking at him. “I suppose you have never been on a boat,” he mused. “It will be restful.”
As-Cheen was now forcing the barge to jiggle a little as she squatted up and down in a very unladylike manner, he thought. “You have been on a boat?” she asked him.
He found himself quickly searching his memories of such an event. There must have been one, he thought, but he could only come up with a vague and very short memory of fording a small river on his journey to Key-Tar-Om as a small boy; a river smaller than this one, he suspected.
“Many times,” he told her. “Now, quit churning things!”
“You don’t learn right.”
“I learn from scrolls, not boats.”
“Not right,” she declared.
“They are not like you or me,” As-Cheen told him as they watched the monks walk along the barge with impossibly long poles to help propel it along. “They are a part of this place. They accept this. You do not.”
Ich-Mek shrugged as he thought deeply for a moment. “You don’t either, As-Cheen.”
“I will on the ice,” she assured him.
He felt the need to suppress a shiver at the thought of what an icy sea would be like. The barge was pleasant enough, and he suspected they would make good and easy time. He just didn’t want to think about seas as he watched the shoreline roll by.
“I don’t think Shu-Whet will find us on a barge,” he told her confidently, “or even think to look on one.”
“You don’t know,” she told him.
He glanced out of the corners of his eyes to catch any smirking monks. They had never taken her literal remarks offensively, which he would have found to be perfectly reasonable. When he noticed the current here seeming to double in speed, he began to lose confidence in the craft they were on.
“Can you swim?” he asked as he got up nervously on his knees to grab ahold of some crates.