by Liz Williams
“You killed my hens,” Mrs Soi said, strangely devoid of shock. The young person jumped down and spread out his long taloned hands.
“So sorry.” He took a fluttering step across the yard; ochre robes swirled about his ankles and she saw that he had a tiger’s eyes, the color of the sun. He smiled charmingly. “And now, you.”
Yin Deng Soi had left her husband snoring in the communal bed. She opened her mouth to cry for help, and then her husband’s face rose up before her memory: his mouth open, the smell of old beer, one hand groping for her just as she was falling asleep, the constant demands for food, drink, sex, everything that was wearing her out before she even turned forty. She looked into the demon’s golden glowing eyes and closed her own.
“Go on, then,” she muttered, and she felt him pick her up and soar high above the Bharulay slums, her slippered feet catching for a moment in the branches of the japonica tree, and when she at last dared open her tired eyes, she saw the rim of the sun, yellow as an eye, engulf the horizon’s edge.
54
The spell was not, according to Chen, a complicated one. He arranged everyone in a four-quarter pattern: Zhu Irzh in the south, Robin in the west, Mhara in the east and himself in the north.
“A bit Western, isn’t it?” the demon remarked disparagingly.
“So? Who says we can’t take the occasional idea from other cultures? As long as the underlying magical structure remains intact. Besides, think of it as a disguise. We’re less likely to get noticed this way. Anyone watching will think we’re just a bunch of students or something.”
Zhu Irzh thought that this confidence might be somewhat misplaced, but he went along with it anyway. He watched as Chen once more scored a bloody line across his palm, scattering a few red drops to the four quarters. The blood flared up as it touched the floor, as though Chen’s veins were filled with hot coals. Then Chen began to chant, long strings of syllables that were vaguely familiar to the demon as a spell. Chen did not, Zhu Irzh noticed, use his rosary: presumably Chen had had enough of gods, for the moment. And who could blame him? He could feel the tension in the room ratcheting up through the soles of his feet and tingling up his spine.
On the wooden boards of the floor, a pattern began to form, congealing out of blood and air. There was a familiarity about it and, after a moment’s puzzlement, Zhu Irzh realized what it was: a map of the city. The meridians glowed beneath it, blood red, and Zhu Irzh found himself wincing as he understood for the first time what a battering the city had taken. There seemed to be focal points, nexi of light, and the demon began to work them out: the foremost of them was the abandoned temple of Shai. Chen’s strained voice continued to chant and as Zhu Irzh watched, a face began to manifest above the little configuration of lights. It was not human, and no longer divine. It was the horned head of a great cow, but instead of the flat teeth of cattle its long jaw was full of needles and its eyes were black as the Sea of Night. It snapped at Chen and spat fire. Chen dodged back and the demon felt the spell falter and fall apart. There was a momentary wrenching sensation within him, as though someone had taken hold of his guts and given them a swift, sharp tug. He heard Robin cry out in pain and then the room was dark.
“Well,” Chen said. “At least we know where she is.”
Zhu Irzh frowned. “But why has she gone to Shai?”
“I could tell you that,” a voice said. Someone stumbled out of the shadows, someone bruised and singed. It took the demon a minute to recognize him.
“Dowser Roche!”
Paravang Roche stared at him with hatred. “It’s taken an age to find you. I had to call your captain and everything. My feet hurt. You want to know why she’s gone to Shai? You want to know what she’s doing there?”
“I’d appreciate it if you could tell us,” Chen said, ever polite.
“Oh no. There’s a price.” Paravang Roche was glaring at the demon. “I want my license back.”
“You’ll have it,” Zhu Irzh said quickly. If that was all the man wanted … but then some humans were notoriously lacking in imagination.
The dowser nodded with grim satisfaction. “All right. What guarantee do I have?”
“I’ll give you a written guarantee,” Chen said. “Will that do? Although I feel bound to point out that you might find it a bit difficult to find work, after all this is over. The Feng Shui Practitioners’ Guild isn’t going to be terribly popular.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Paravang Roche said. He accepted Chen’s scrawled note, set with the bloody imprint of Chen’s personal seal, and stowed it away in his pocket. “Very well, then. That bitch has gone to Shai because it was originally her temple.” Mhara was watching the dowser, Zhu Irzh saw, with no surprise. He had known, then. But one would expect him to. The dowser went on: “The Practitioners’ Guild doesn’t advertise it. Why would we? Senditreya’s come down in the world over the last couple of hundred years. She was human first, but then she used to be one of the primary goddesses in this region—not just of feng shui but of agriculture and herding—but then technology started taking over and people began to migrate to the cities and, slowly, her worship became eroded. Her priests made the decision to move out of Shai to a smaller temple. Then the land got bought up by the franchise committee and the city developed around it. Shai was just a big, empty space.”
“I’m surprised no one bought it for redevelopment,” Chen said.
The demon saw Robin shiver. “It leads to the Night Harbor.”
“Yes, that’s part of the problem,” Paravang Roche said, looking at Robin for the first time. “When the temple was abandoned, it started to fall into ruin and then it started to leak. Literally—gaps opened up between the worlds. It’s my opinion that it was never sealed properly, but perhaps that’s not the case. Any one entering it risks becoming lost in the hinterlands of the Night Harbor, even a member of the Practitioners’ Guild. The meridians warp as the worlds meet.”
“So the goddess has returned to her old temple,” Zhu Irzh said. “Do you think she’s planning a last stand?”
“I don’t know what she’s planning,” the dowser replied. “She’s raving bloody mad.”
“Well, she has to be stopped,” Chen said. “Her presence here is causing the city itself to leak—you must be more aware of this than any of us.”
Paravang Roche nodded. “The meridians have become hopelessly disrupted. All sorts of things are coming up from Hell, through the breaches.”
“And that’s not all,” the demon said. Briefly, he brought the dowser up to speed on the matter of Senditreya’s demonic virus.
“She was planning all that?” Paravang Roche said, startled. “I didn’t think she had the wit.”
“You don’t think much of your patron deity, do you?”
“Would you?”
The demon was forced to agree.
“Very well,” Chen said. “We’re wasting time. Mr Roche, do you know a way into Shai that won’t get us hopelessly lost?”
Paravang Roche looked very shifty. “I believe so. I might have glimpsed an old map somewhere …”
“I’m not asking you to spill all the Guild’s secrets. Just get us into Shai.”
And after a pause, the dowser nodded.
55
She ran swiftly, swerving to avoid the festive people, her feet taking her unerringly down the alleyways of the portside. Later, when she was herself again, Jhai wondered what they had seen: a young woman, half-known from TV interviews and the burgeoning shrines, the famous face panting and distorted by running, dressed conservatively in a crimson jacket and black trousers. Their faces streamed past her, meaning nothing, their mouths opening and closing as though they were underwater, their hair trailing in the wind from the sea, which suddenly seemed so slow, a mere trickle of air.
The currents ran strongly beneath the port. She could feel the Great Meridian, straining to keep to its appointed bed, remaining only because the unlucky sha from the Trade House had been inadvertently remo
ved. Jhai did not know this, but she felt it, an inexplicable lightness in the north of the city. But the Great Meridian would not hold for long; already its foundations were loosened and soon, soon it would tear free and take the city with it, opening all the doors to Hell and they would all be washed through on the changed tide. This unspoken understanding lent urgency to her. Dimly, she could sense Zhu Irzh’s presence in the city; he was a little blurred around the edges, but still recognizable. She paused for breath, leaning heavily against a doorframe, sought outward for her bearings, and then she was off again.
Hands caught her wrists and twisted.
“Where are you off to, girlie?” a voice said in her ear. Jhai heard the words, but did not understand. The smell of cheap Japanese whisky was bitter on the man’s breath. She snapped his hold downward and broke free. “No, no,” he mumbled. “You’re going to come back here …”
Jhai growled, deep in the back of her throat. Uncomprehending, she saw his face slack above her and she struck up at it. His head flicked to one side, easily moved, and she hit him again. Rage grew in her, tiger-hot and filling her mouth with saliva. She beat at him, and he went down on his knees, and she could reach his eyes then. He screamed as her hand stabbed, and flung up his arms to protect his face. Jhai grasped him under the chin, pulled up, and twisted. There was a sudden limp heaviness in her arms. She set him down, quite gently, and ran, her tail flickering about her ankles as she did so. The moving presence of the demon drew her on, surely, as though to a fixed star, her magnetic north.
56
They were standing outside the back regions of Shai. The journey through the city had been distressing, at least for those folk who weren’t Zhu Irzh. The demon had been alternately entertained and puzzled: Hellkind were certainly coming through, but not in any ordered way. Typical, Zhu Irzh thought: no strategy, no planning … He supposed that all of that had gone into the intended invasion of Heaven. The city was responding in a variety of ways, chief among them incomprehension, panic and partying. The demon supposed that was as good a reaction as any.
The temple rose above them in a great arc, a dome of darkness. To Zhu Irzh, it looked impenetrable, but Robin was saying to Mhara, “There! That’s where we went in.” She was pointing in the direction of the canal.
“I happen to know,” the dowser said, “that this particular route will take you right into the Night Harbor. We won’t go by water. Come with me—I’ll show you where to go.”
He led them around the building, to a rubble-strewn courtyard. It looked to Zhu Irzh as though part of the side wall of the temple, perhaps one of the buttresses which supported its squat bulk, had collapsed into the courtyard. A series of fissures and holes were apparent in the wall of Shai.
“Look!” Chen said sharply. “Who’s that?”
Zhu Irzh turned to see someone crouching by a pile of fallen mortar. The woman was rocking to and fro, arms wrapped around her waist, murmuring something in an erratic rhythm. With a distinct sense of shock, he saw that it was Jhai Tserai. She was wearing a crimson jacket and dark trousers, the same costume in which he had glimpsed her earlier, and she was perfectly made up, but there was an empty wildness behind her dark eyes, and her face was a mask of strain with a peculiar slackness about the mouth. Beneath the hem of the jacket, a long, striped tail twitched to and fro and her eyes were as golden as Zhu Irzh’s own. She said something, but it made no sense; the words were slurred and unformed, coming from deep in the throat. Her devic self had emerged, probably conjured by weariness and fear and the proximity of Hell. It didn’t take more than a quick look to inform the demon that whatever control she might have had over it, was gone. The disrupted day might have meant that she had forgotten the suppressant drugs, but whatever the explanation, she was all tigress now.
“Jhai,” the demon said, soft and encouraging. “Jhai, come here.”
“Be careful,” Chen murmured.
“I plan to.” The demon crouched down on his haunches and called to her, an alluring sound, compelling her to rise and stumble forward. He rose and caught her and her arms went around his neck. He felt her link her clawed hands. As she did so, she turned unseeing eyes on Chen and smiled, a peculiar, lipless grimace. Zhu Irzh stroked her spine, murmuring in her ear.
“What’s the matter with her?” Robin said uncertainly.
“Shock,” the demon said over Jhai’s shoulder. “She’ll be all right in a moment.”
“She doesn’t look all right to me. She doesn’t look human.”
“Well …” Zhu Irzh had to admit that it was pretty obvious. “Perhaps she’s been experimenting,” he said lamely. This did not cut much ice with at least one member of the party.
“She is a deva,” Mhara said, out of the darkness.
“Did you know before?” Zhu Irzh asked.
“No. Only in dreams, but I didn’t know if they meant anything real. I was drugged, and she hid it well.” Mhara spoke neutrally, but Zhu Irzh could sense trouble ahead. Letting go of Jhai, he grasped her wrist.
“Come with me, Jhai,” he said, and it was perhaps more his tone of voice than the uncomprehended words that made her follow, docile.
“Inside,” Chen said with a wary glance at Jhai Tserai.
Within Shai, it was much colder, a bitter, wintry cold that Zhu Irzh had only ever felt in the Night Harbor, up in the high mountains, and this was the heart of the summer in Singapore Three. Frost rimed the broken floor and the ceiling glittered. Above them, though they were now inside, the stars shone like lamps in a clear sky.
Zhu Irzh looked back. Through the fissure, which seemed much bigger from the inside, he could still see the shattered column of the Trade House and, beyond it, the high structures of banks and the Pellucid Island Opera, with the lights of Tevereya floating beyond. As he watched, the lights died a block at a time, and the city was silent. Surely, a few minutes ago, people had been running through the streets, laughing and shouting and letting off firecrackers and fireworks? From the sky a single flake of snow brushed Zhu Irzh’s cheek. It felt like a hot, floating coal. His shoulders hunched in a sudden shiver. Jhai pulled fretfully at his arm.
As soon as she saw that Paravang Roche was leading them toward the iron doors of the inner temple, Jhai whimpered and pulled away. Zhu Irzh was having a hard time reconciling this wreck of a demon with the flippant, ruthless young woman of recent acquaintance. She was agitated now, pawing at his arm and pointing. Zhu Irzh was straining to see into the shadows about the portals of Shai. He was almost sure that someone was there, waiting by the doors, a hovering presence.
As they neared the great double doors, someone rose fluidly from the steps and turned to meet them. It was a tall person, dressed in a swathed dark robe, with prominent eyes and a long braid of hair. The feet, which were bare, were the feet of birds, knuckled and covered with thick rumpled skin. It smiled, displaying a dual row of sharp teeth. The end of a tail switched about its ankles. It took a long look at them, and then bounded up onto the portal roof, where it crouched, rattling its head from side to side. Jhai looked up at the creature and gasped. It let out a peal of laughter, shaking its pointed head. Zhu Irzh grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the doors.
INTERLUDE
The emergency services had been working throughout the festival, in Bharcharia Anh, to repair the damage done by the earthquake. Gardeners moved silently through the green, moist gardens mending the torn soil, replanting the uprooted thousand-flower, bamboo, maple and cryptomeria, pruning and replacing. Now, the gardens were once again serene, wet with dew in the early morning, a light mist rising from the damp grass, and throughout the gardens the air held the scent of flowers and rain.
Iso Matabe preferred this time of day to all others, save perhaps the early evening, those times which were neither one time nor another, halfway between darkness and daylight, the times when the veil which separated the worlds drew thin and the beloved dead could be glimpsed. Matabe was now in her forties; a grave woman with a melancho
ly gaze. She was held to be one of the greatest poets of her day, hiding behind the walls of her house, walking in her green garden, a recluse who shunned performance. She could not bear to see anyone ever again, except the mute servant who drifted like a ghost around the house. She had lost too many: her beloved sisters, her mother, her lover Arei, and where once the house had resounded with the soft voices of the women, there was only a ringing quietness. Legends had grown up around her in the last twenty years.
Every four or five years she would submit another work to her publishers; long, intricate works, revealing a tormented soul.
The veil was very thin today. Matabe had seen it from the window, and rather than changing into the dark robe that she favored, had hurried down the stairs in her stiff morning kimono and straight out into the garden. The grass was damp beneath her slippers, and a single bird was singing: the canary that she kept in an ancient bamboo cage on the verandah. The door of the cage was always open, but like its mistress, the bird preferred sanctuary. The long, liquid song ran down the morning air, cold as snow.
“Tayu?” she called uncertainly into the rising mist. Through the veil she could see an identical garden, with a dark house beyond, its eaves glistening with frost. In the garden a woman was walking, dressed in a green kimono, almost her mirror image. A few moments after Matabe had called to her, she looked up: the time lag was slight but noticeable. She smiled.
“Tayu? You can hear me?” The mist was rising now, like smoke about her bare ankles, and she could see the veil itself, a gleaming brightness laid across the air, and then it was suddenly gone, as if someone had snatched it up into the sky. Her sister stood before her in the garden, her face a pale oval against the dappled background of the trees. Matabe, after an astounded moment, ran to her and clasped her cold hands. Tayu’s composed face crumpled. When they both looked back, Matabe’s home was no longer there. The canary still sang, a drift of change in the air.