Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  “But I bet,” Riprap said, “that there were some scholars who refused, weren’t there?”

  “There were many,” Pearl said. “Four hundred and sixty scholars are on record as having concealed their books. They were executed as a result.”

  “Four hundred and sixty?” Brenda said softly. “That many?”

  “That many and more,” Des replied. “History records the scholars, but there were many family members and retainers who died as well, rather than betray the principles of their head of household. These scholars died, but some did not. They succeeded in concealing their texts. Later they reproduced and recirculated them. Many of the scholars who managed to succeed in saving some of their documents were Confucian. This means that a majority of what survived were Confucian texts, which is why that philosophical point of view remained dominant in China right up to …”

  Pearl interrupted. “Des, please. What happened in China after Li Szu’s edict is fascinating, I agree, but we’re telling them about what else happened because of this edict.”

  “Sorry,” Des said, and looked as if he meant it. “I get carried away.”

  “Four hundred and sixty,” Brenda repeated, imagining four hundred and sixty men who looked like Des. “And those were the ones who tried to conceal their books. Hundreds, probably even thousands of libraries would have been destroyed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of scholars committed intellectual suicide.”

  “That’s right,” Pearl said. “As you have learned, the written word held—still holds—a very special place in Chinese lore. The written word itself is special, sacred, even magical.”

  “The written word,” Nissa said, “not just what is written, like the Bible or the Koran or some other holy text. The word itself. All those words burned.”

  “And all those people who were masters of writing,” Riprap added. “All those scholars executed.”

  “The Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice,” Brenda said, and felt her voice rising with excitement. “That’s what you’ve been talking about. Are you saying that our ancestors came from a land that was somehow created when those books were burned and those scholars murdered?”

  “That is what I am saying,” Pearl agreed. “That land is where my father was born. From what he told me and my brothers, it was a very strange place. Unlike histories in this world, where one event evolves from another, where events follow a somewhat logical progression, in the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice, things are jumbled together. Mythological creatures are as real as dogs and cats. Magic is as viable a science as any technique evolved from the scientific method. Remember, a few types of books were spared from destruction, and these were all the more practical texts.”

  “Agriculture,” Riprap recited, “arboriculture, medicine, and something else …”

  “Divination,” Nissa added. “Which seems impractical to me, but I guess they considered divination a science. And the histories of Ch’in were spared, too, so I guess Ch’in isn’t present there.”

  “I am not sure what is or isn’t there,” Pearl said. “My father hinted that once smoke and sacrifice created the land, then a conduit existed. I don’t think every book ever burned ends up there, but he gave me the impression that it was no more a closed system than our own Earth is. Just as falling meteors add material to our planet, so the occasional burning of treasured words brings more material to the Lands.

  “I wish I knew more, but I fear I was not always the best student. Once I realized all my lessons were—from my father’s point of view—meant only to make me a fitter conduit through which the Tiger’s abilities could be passed to some future male, I fear I grew less than attentive.”

  Brenda felt uncomfortable whenever Auntie Pearl talked about her father. It brought home how great her own dad had been, that he had been happy to have his daughter as his heir, even though he had two sons. But she had to face Pearl’s reaction. That anger was a real part of Pearl Bright. Brenda bet old anger had a lot to do with how Pearl treated Foster: Foster, whom Pearl had known was a Tiger because he looked like her father.

  Pearl smiled, perhaps aware how her anger made the others uneasy, and tried to be reassuring. She tapped her chin lightly with two elegantly manicured fingers.

  “I am surprised,” Pearl said, “how calmly all three of you are taking this. I have participated in the initiations of several heir apparents, and I can assure you, your reaction is hardly typical.”

  Brenda knew her own smile was tight and humorless. “Remember me, oh, two weeks ago, Auntie Pearl? Back in those dark ages when we were in Albert Yu’s office, looking at a messed-up mah-jong set you said he’d been using to tell fortunes? A lot has happened since then. I watched my dad have part of his memory stolen away. I’ve learned to make a few simple amulets. Des has shown us some interesting effects he can pull off, and no matter how hard I try to come up with other explanations for magic, I can’t. I’ve just about used up my ability to disbelieve.”

  Riprap fingered the bulky bracelet containing the Dragon’s Tail spell he wore around one broad, dark-brown wrist. “Like Brenda says, Pearl. We’ve seen a lot. What you’ve told us isn’t a whole lot harder to believe than that if I invoke the spell in these tiles a dragon is going to wrap its tail around me.”

  Nissa nodded. “I haven’t seen as much as these two. In fact, I think I’ve got some classes to catch up on, but I saw Foster come at you, and I saw what happened when you threw that Tiger paper at him. It’s easier to believe than disbelieve. I think I was already partway there, although I’ll admit, I figured we were talking about some outlying province in China, not Somewhere Else entirely.”

  Des nodded his approval. “I came out of a tradition that made a lot of this history easier to accept—and a whole lot harder, too. I asked my father if a new land got born every time a book was burned in China and got whacked. It doesn’t, of course. What happened during Li Szu’s purge was the combined effect of an attempt to wipe out almost all conflicting knowledge, whether it was contained in written form or in teachers. Even those scholars who obeyed the edict and let their books be burned were denied permission to teach.

  “There was a small handful of scholars, those who had achieved the rank of Scholar of Great Learning, who were permitted to keep otherwise forbidden books, but you can bet that after watching their friends and associates be executed they were very careful about what they said.

  “According to later histories, one of the elements that led to the downfall of the Ch’in Dynasty was that no one felt safe any longer. Demotions became common, not just in scholarly rankings, but in administration and the military. No one was immune to execution, even on trumped-up charges. So, in a strange way, Li Szu’s edict, which was meant to make Ch’in safe forever, was the beginning of the end of that dynasty’s prestige.”

  “But it was the beginning of a new world,” Pearl said. “A strange world, a world without order as we know it, but a world that my father and the other Orphans treasured so greatly that they went into exile rather than see their battles contribute to its destruction. When I was a little girl, I would listen to the survivors reminisce. Even though I cannot remember details, those tales color my dreams. I think that land must have been a beautiful place, although far from a safe one.”

  “Must be,” Des said with emphasis on the second word. “Must be, not ‘have been.’ Pearl, where else can our attacker have come from? I have had time to talk with Foster, and he speaks what I was taught is the peculiar dialect of that place.”

  “Dialect?” Riprap said. “You mean like accent?”

  “Not only accent,” Des said. “Word use. My father told me that in the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice they spoke Chinese, but a very strange Chinese. Words from different time periods are mixed up—even from different versions of Chinese.”

  Brenda said, “I know that there’s more than just Mandarin Chinese. There’s Cantonese and other versions, too, right?”

  “Right,” Des said. “Mandarin—o
r northern Chinese—was the language of scholars, but that doesn’t mean it was the only one spoken by scholars or in which texts were written. The dialect of Foster’s homeland is primary Mandarin, but with other words mixed in. What’s really strange is the mixture of expressions from various time periods and classes.”

  Des paused, obviously hunting around for a comparison.

  “Imagine if you were listening to the evening news, and all of a sudden the reporter started mixing in phrases right out of Shakespeare and Milton and a bit of street slang. That’s Foster, but it’s clear he’s not speaking an affected pattern. He’s just talking normally. He thinks Mandarin is odd. Limited. A bit lacking in nuance and color.”

  Brenda had a thought. “What does my dad talk when he talks Chinese? Mandarin or what Foster talks?”

  Pearl said, “I initially taught him Mandarin, but he learned some of the other form later. That’s what he used when he called me on the phone. Even if someone had tapped the call, they would have needed to be a linguistic historian to understand him.”

  “Back up,” Nissa said. “You’re saying that since Foster talks this other form of Chinese, that must mean he’s from this other land. What if he was tutored by someone who knew the language, like Gaheris Morris was? Then he could be from here.”

  “Possible,” Des said, “but Gaheris talks other languages. English. Mandarin. Foster talks only this. Seems to limit the options.”

  “I have been thinking something similar,” Pearl said. “During our drive, I tried to catch Foster out, but either he is a superlative actor, or his ignorance is real.”

  “But he talked English in the parking garage,” Brenda said. “I heard him.”

  “Obviously,” Pearl said, “we cannot yet resolve where Foster is from, and I think that Nissa is right that we should not be too quick to dismiss the possibility that his origin is local. However, this question of language also brings us around to the question of why Foster has amnesia. I believe I have a somewhat better understanding of why the others have amnesia as well.”

  She reached into her pocket and drew out a small silk-covered box, opened it, and displayed something Brenda had seen in the photos Nissa forwarded to her phone, but not in person: a crystal sphere, a bit larger than a large marble. Imprisoned in the sphere was an amazingly lifelike three-dimensional image of a tiger—lifelike, except that it was green.

  “This,” Pearl said, “is Foster’s memory, or rather, the memory of the Tiger.”

  Pearl watched the expression on each of the three young people’s faces as she displayed the crystal sphere. Riprap looked respectful, even apprehensive. Nissa looked fascinated, as if she’d just learned that what she’d taken for a bit of dime-store jewelry was a priceless heirloom.

  Brenda’s reaction was the strangest. She looked a little sick, but when she leaned forward to examine the sphere her expression flickered through a gamut of emotions: apprehension, loathing, interest, and what Pearl would have sworn was something like wistfulness. Maybe she was simply wishing that her father’s memory was so close to hand, but Pearl wasn’t sure. She’d seen how Brenda looked at Foster, and it was clear the young woman was fascinated by him—an unhealthy fascination, like that a bird feels for the serpent.

  “Foster’s memory, the Tiger’s memory,” Riprap said. He reached for his coffee mug, found it empty, and refilled it. His spoon clanked against the sides as he stirred in sugar. “You’re talking like they’re one and the same. In Mr. Morris’s case, they were pretty separate.”

  Des glanced at Pearl, and at her nod took it upon himself to answer the question.

  “Pearl and I have discussed this a little,” he said. “The theory we’ve come up with is that the spell in question—the one that we saw written on that piece of paper you gave us, Riprap, the same one Pearl used on Foster—is meant to separate all memories of Dogness or Tigerness or Roosterness from the current member of the Thirteen. In Mr. Morris’s case, being the Rat was important, but it did not touch many other aspects of his life. Moreover, because of the kind of man he is, outgoing, social, a bit—sorry, Brenda—opportunistic …”

  “That’s Dad,” Brenda agreed. “Go on.”

  “Because of that, Gaheris tended to make connections outside of their shared roles with those heirs of the Thirteen he knew. He did business with them, befriended them, whatever seemed most appropriate. That means, when his Ratness was taken, he didn’t forget these people, his mind simply bridged the gap. If he was really pressed for how he happened to know someone, he might get uncomfortable, but he’s facile. He’d come up with something.”

  Pearl took up the thread. “In Albert’s case, though, well, Brenda, even you who didn’t know him well saw that something was not right. We suspect that this was because so much of who and what Albert is … was … is linked with being the Cat. Unlike Riprap or Nissa, who knew they had an interesting heritage, but not much more, or you, who would have gotten something of a formal initiation, Albert grew up knowing he was the grandson of the exiled emperor of a fairy-tale land. It colored everything he did. When his Catness was taken from him, his personality changed.”

  “But Albert didn’t forget people,” Des added, “because he had manufactured excuses for him to know about the Thirteen and their families, to seek information about them. Are you with us?”

  “With,” Nissa said, “and maybe a bit ahead. You’re saying that Foster was reared to be the Tiger. He probably started training for his role when he was just a boy. Maybe he had an ambitious family, maybe the person he was to succeed was old and there was no time to waste. Whatever, he’s the Tiger and has always been the Tiger, and when you take that away, he can’t even remember his name. We’re probably lucky he can talk at an adult level.”

  “Just so,” Pearl said. “Moreover, like Albert, Foster may have suffered something of an alteration of personality. The man you and I met, Nissa, was willing to attack an old woman and a young mother with a sword. It is likely that the real Tiger is as vicious and ruthless as his namesake beast can be. We must not forget that, not for a moment.”

  Pearl tried not to look too pointedly at Brenda as she spoke these words, but she saw the younger woman color and look down at the table, avoiding anyone’s gaze. Fine. Brenda had been warned. Hopefully, that would be enough.

  Riprap was looking thoughtful. “I think I’m following why Foster would also forget how to speak English and details like who we are—although he must have known, in order to stalk us. Those things would have been tied very tightly to being the Tiger.”

  “Precisely,” Des said. “It might even be more than that. It is possible that Foster never really spoke English.”

  “We heard him,” Brenda protested.

  “I know. Hear me out. He may have learned English through a spell. That spell would have been on the Tiger, not on Foster—or whatever his real name is. If he was given information about us, our appearances, habits, et cetera, through a spell, that also would have been the Tiger who was ensorcelled. It’s completely possible that if Foster regains his memory, he still will be unable to speak English or remember us. The spells will have been broken.”

  “Regain his memory,” Nissa said. Pearl watched as she extended a finger as if to touch the crystal sphere. “Can we help him to regain it? Do we want him to regain it?”

  “That,” Pearl said, “is precisely what we need to discuss next. Before we discuss whether or not we should break the spell, I need to confess that neither Des or I are certain if we can even do so.”

  Pearl saw that while Nissa and Riprap accepted her words at face value, Brenda was less certain. Brenda didn’t go as far as protesting, but doubt flickered across her features, doubt mingled with concern.

  Des must have seen this as well, because he hastened to clarify.

  “Although both Pearl and I received some magical training, there is a difference between knowing a skill, and being able to adapt those skills creatively.”

  Riprap nodded. “
I’ve seen the same problem over and over again with the kids I coach. Most can learn the rules for whatever game we’re playing. Almost all of them can memorize plays. Fewer can evolve and adapt those plays when the circumstances change. The real geniuses are those who not only come up with their own plays, but see how their changes are going to affect the game—even the entire team.”

  “That’s it,” Des agreed. “Pearl and I are equivalent of your beginning players. We’ve memorized plays. We’re even good within those limitations, but we’ve never really had need to adapt what we know.”

  Nissa grinned mischievously. “I’d think that would be what you’d want to do right off … Spread your wings. Find your own way to do things.”

  “You’ll think differently once you’ve done some work with spells yourself,” Des said, glancing over at Riprap and Brenda, who nodded agreement.

  Brenda tried to explain. “One of the first things Des did with us was show us how working with magic attracts—attention is the only word I can think of. You can set up shields against anybody interfering …”

  “Anybody weaker than your shield, that is,” Des cut in. “Sorry. Go on. Pearl’s glaring at me for going off on another tangent.”

  Brenda went on. “But even those shields are noticeable, like if you erected a wall up around your house. Your neighbors wouldn’t be able to see in, but they’d sure wonder what you were doing behind that wall that you didn’t want them to see.”

  Nissa fingered her teacup, spinning it around and around on her saucer.

  “I understand,” she said. “Working in the pharmacy isn’t much different, really. You don’t mix pills and powders at random, just because you think they’d work well together, maybe even beneficially. You think about drug interactions, even with something as basic as calcium or iron supplements. I had a client who gave herself stomach problems taking aspirin with orange juice. Too much acid. Okay. I’ll admit that maybe experimentation isn’t as great a temptation as I thought it would be. What you’re saying is the spell to release imprisoned memory isn’t in your pharmacopoeia?”