Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  At the other side of the house, there came a muffled crashing sound as the door to Pearl Bright’s study was flung open. The older woman was coming down that hallway, stalking like the tiger she was, shouting something that Brenda couldn’t quite make out.

  Brenda lowered her hands from her ears, since with Pearl’s appearance the roaring sound seemed to have moved back a little. She wanted to quest after the sound, try to figure out its source, but she forced herself to concentrate on what Pearl was saying.

  “What have you been doing? Have you been showing anything to this boy?”

  Pearl snarled the last two words at Foster, who stepped back as if she’d slapped him.

  “No,” Nissa said. “We were just playing mah-jong.”

  “With Foster.”

  “With Foster,” Brenda said, moving around the table to put herself between Foster and Pearl. “It was my idea. I thought he might be able to play, and that it would be nice for him to play something other than Lani’s baby games. We’ve been playing for hours now, ever since Nissa came down from putting Lani to bed.”

  Pearl glanced at the discard tiles, at the pad of paper that they’d been using to score the hands, at the plate of cookies and the carafes of tea and coffee.

  She also turned a long, hard look at Foster, and must not have found anything to fear there, for something of the tightness around her mouth went away.

  “I must have fallen asleep,” she said, and her tone was no longer angry, although it was far from apologetic. “Or I would have heard the tiles. I came around when something tripped my wards.”

  “Is that what I feel?” Brenda asked. “The crashing sound?”

  “The crashing sound,” Pearl said, “is something trying to break through the wards. You say you weren’t trying to do spells?”

  “No!” Brenda said firmly.

  Nissa shook her head and added. “We weren’t even playing with limit hands. I mean, that would be dumb. Anyhow, how could we have explained those to Foster?”

  Pearl moved over to the table, assessing the tiles before each player’s seat with a quick, experienced gaze. Foster’s hand elicited a mild “He would never have gone out. Nissa has his last wind.”

  Nissa said almost inconsequentially, “I have so much trouble making myself discard honors.”

  Pearl didn’t seem to hear. She was staring at Brenda’s hand. “Brenda, you went mah-jong. Did you do it by drawing the last tile, and, by chance, was that tile one dot?”

  Brenda felt confused. “It was, but how did you know?”

  “I know what’s outside my wards,” Pearl replied. “You inadvertently completed a limit hand when you drew that last tile. It’s a very, very rare hand, so rare it’s probably not even on the list Des made up for you. If you complete a cleared hand with one dot and draw it as the last tile of the wall, that is called Picking the Moon from the Bottom of the Sea.”

  “You’re kidding,” Brenda said. “That’s so … obscure.”

  “Most limit hands are,” Pearl agreed. “It’s hard to believe you did this accidentally, but in a three-person game, it’s not as unlikely.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  “Pearl,” Nissa said, “you said you knew what was outside your walls. Is it dangerous? Should I get Lani out of bed?”

  Pearl shook herself from her meditation on the tiles.

  “Why? So the child can distract us further?” Then she softened. “No. Lani will be fine as long as my wards hold, and they should hold long enough for us to banish what Brenda has unwittingly summoned.”

  Pearl turned to Foster, but the young man seemed to have already gathered that he was less than welcome.

  “Foster go to bed,” he said. “I go. Good night.”

  Pearl hesitated, obviously uncertain whether Foster might be more dangerous here where he could see them do incomprehensible things, or alone in his room. Foster waited for her to accept his offer to leave.

  “Yes,” Pearl said, then added a few sentences in Chinese.

  Foster replied in the same language, and then he bowed formally to her. He waved more casually to Nissa and Brenda.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Good night.”

  Brenda looked at Pearl. “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him that he was to go to his room, but that I didn’t blame him for the commotion. He replied that he thought your play so incredible that he was glad to stop while he had some luck left.”

  “That’s it?” Brenda said. “He didn’t think we’d all gone nuts?”

  “I don’t know what he thought,” Pearl said, “but if he had any doubts about our sanity, he was too polite to voice them. Now, as to dealing with your inadvertent summoning … I promise I’ll give you the lecture on the moon and all its potentials another time. Right now, what you need to know is that the moon is a powerful symbol to have invoked. Another problem is that this summoning is going to be creating emanations that will attract the attention of others—both creatures and practitioners of magic. Are you with me?”

  As Des had repeatedly drummed into his students the need to set protective spells there were no questions.

  “Very good. What I want is your support while I do three spells. One will banish the summoning. One will misdirect any attention that it has brought. The last will reinforce the wards. Have you learned either Knitting or Triple Knitting?”

  “Knitting only,” Brenda said for both of them. “Des said we didn’t have enough control for the other.”

  “Fine,” Pearl said. “What that means is that each of you is going to need to feed me ch’i individually, rather than our being able to unite as a team. No matter. Do you need to get your notes?”

  Both women shook their heads.

  “Fine. Come down to my office. I’ll feel more secure there.”

  Brenda didn’t feel the need to ask “Secure from what?” Pearl was going to try something very complex, especially for someone who had already been tired enough that she’d fallen asleep over her books. This was not the time for a casual interruption, and, although Pearl was very good at what she did, comfortable surroundings would bolster her abilities.

  Before she left the kitchen, Brenda reached out and knocked over the rack holding her tiles, breaking up the accidental limit hand.

  “The power isn’t in that,” Pearl said, but her tone said she understood the impulse.

  “I know,” Brenda agreed, “But I feel better without it staring at me.”

  In the office, Pearl went to a closet and took out what Brenda recognized as her sword case. Then Pearl settled herself into a high-backed chair upholstered in red leather, opened the case, and settled the sword across her knees. As she did so, she waved Brenda and Nissa to chairs facing her own.

  “I’m going to start,” Pearl said, placing her hands on the sheathed sword, “with All Winds and Dragons for the banishing.”

  “That’s a powerful spell!” Nissa protested. “I asked Des about it just the other day.”

  “You don’t think the moon is powerful?” Pearl countered. “After that, I’m going to work Confused Gates. Then I’ll do Sparrow’s Sanctuary. Got that?”

  “And we just feed you ch’i?” Brenda said.

  “That’s right,” Pearl said. “Take time to focus, and I’ll let you know when to start the Knitting. Oh … Avoid dots in your mental imaging. They’re evoking the moon right now, and we don’t need that.”

  Brenda nodded. She thought she should have realized that without being reminded, but, in the corner of her heart where she was completely truthful with herself, she admitted that Pearl’s advice had saved her from what could have been a dangerous mistake.

  Brenda closed her eyes, and pressed the upper parts of her fingers to her temples, forcing herself to concentrate. Knitting really wasn’t a hard pattern. You simply paired a tile from one suit with its match from another suit, and repeated for seven sets. Des had said you could even use the same pair repeatedly—as long as you didn�
�t exceed four such pairs, since there were only four tiles of each type in a suit.

  Also, Brenda thought, then you’d have created kongs, and that would possibly create a different spell. Pongs would, too. Better not exceed one of each set.

  Since Pearl had ruled out dots, Brenda’s choice of suits was already made: bamboo and characters. Characters were the hardest for Brenda to visualize, since they showed actual Chinese words.

  Oh, well, she thought. If I forget one, I can move to the next. This spell doesn’t require sequencing the numbers. At least the bamboo will be easy. Except for one bamboo, they’re just sequences of canes.

  One bamboo was always represented as a bird, so Brenda envisioned a tile printed with a peacock, then set a tile with the character for “one”—a simple, horizontal line—next to it. Two was even easier: two bamboo canes, one above the other, and two horizontal lines, the higher somewhat shorter than the one beneath. Three was three bamboo canes, and three horizontal lines. Four characters wasn’t hard to remember, because it was a simple pictogram, almost like a face. Four bamboo, stacked two and two, went next to it.

  Brenda couldn’t remember five characters, and quickly skipped to six. Seven characters reminded her of an arrow set in a drawn bow, and came quickly to mind. When she finished setting seven bamboo next to it, Brenda wondered why she didn’t feel the little tingle that usually told her a spell was ready to be released.

  Of course! she thought, mentally counting through her row of tiles. I am a first-class moron. I skipped five, so I need one more set.

  Eight was one of the simpler numerical characters. Des had shown his students how it had been reduced from a much more complex design to end up rather like an abstract depiction of two legs, running independent of a body. Eight bamboo, by contrast, was the second most complex of the bamboo tiles, showing the eight canes arranged in two mirror image “gates.”

  When Brenda finished imagining the last cane on the lower gate and ran through her sequence again, she felt the now-expected tingle. She also felt her ch’i damming up behind the pattern. Des had warned them not to hold the flow back for too long, as it could cause injury to the physical body, but Brenda didn’t think that caution applied to that moment.

  She opened her eyes and assessed the situation.

  Pearl had risen to her feet and was standing a few paces in front of Brenda and Nissa, her sword stuck in the belt of her bathrobe. Her hands were shaping what Brenda knew was a Buddhist mudra, a hand form used to focus the attention in meditation. Brenda didn’t know this particular mudra, but it was pretty complicated, and she bet Pearl had built it as she had created her spell.

  Pearl might even have already invoked it. Brenda didn’t have the sophistication to tell without casting a spell of her own, and she knew all her ch’i must be reserved to assist Pearl.

  All Winds and Dragons didn’t mean that Pearl would be summoning all four winds and all three dragons, but that she would make up her pattern from a selection of those honors.

  Choose one menu item from Column A and one from Column B, Brenda thought, and stifled a giggle. She felt her control on the prepared Knitting spell waver, and forced herself to concentrate.

  There was no danger involved in losing control of this spell—not like with a summons—but if she lost concentration Brenda would lose all the ch’i she had prepared to transfer, as well as losing time as she set the spell a second time. From experience, Brenda knew that she always found it harder to shape a spell a second time in close succession. Her attention kept going back to the prior attempt, muddling the clarity of the images.

  Once she had her focus back, Brenda allowed herself to speculate as to which winds and which dragons Pearl would summon. There would be a mixture, or Pearl would have chosen Four Wind or perhaps Three Great Scholars, but what was the advantage to a mixture?

  Brenda’s attention was in danger of wavering again when Pearl unwrapped her fingers from their complicated pattern. Without looking directly at the two younger women, she said in a stern voice, “I am ready. Knit.”

  16

  Pearl didn’t want her two young partners to realize just how dangerous a creature lurked outside her house, especially since it was still held—if only barely—by her wards. If Brenda and Nissa realized just how great the danger was, they might panic and fail to feed her the ch’i Pearl would certainly need before this was over. Then, truly, they would be doomed.

  The moon had many occupants, but only one was likely to be attracted by the bright coin that Brenda’s unintentional spell would have flashed when she drew that final tile.

  The Three-Legged Toad.

  The Three-Legged Toad was always attracted by things that were bright and shiny. There were tales told about the Immortal Liu Hai who had ridden the Toad, luring it to unwilling servitude by dangling a string of shiny gold coins. Pearl had no desire to control the Toad. All she wanted was to make it retreat to its home in the moon.

  The Toad pawed with its one front paw against the wards and Pearl could feel them bending. The Toad was enormous, not simply by toad standards, but by any standards at all. After all, it could be seen up there on the moon by those who dwelt upon the Earth, so it must be enormous. And then Liu Hai had used it as a steed, so it must be at least the size of a horse.

  Immortals were shaped by myth and legend. That was part of what made them so powerful.

  “Pretty, pretty, pretty …” the Toad croaked, or something very like that. Pearl’s ward was one that granted unnoticeability along with protection from intrusion, but the toes on the Toad’s three legs had suction-cup pads and stuck to her ward as if it were a crystal globe and they the memories held within.

  “Want the pretty, pretty, pretty …” the Toad clarified. His mouth was very wide, and the warts on his bumpy skin oozed little droplets that Pearl knew were a poison that caused heart palpitations and paralysis.

  Pearl fed a little more ch’i to strengthen the wards, retaining sufficient to sustain her control over the winds and dragons when she summoned them. Then she ran her thoughts over the shape of her spell and found it ready.

  She planned to summon the red dragon of the center, since its symbol was the walls around the world. She would then augment it with all four winds. The fourth wind would be the weakest, since it would only be represented by a pair, but that couldn’t be helped. She chose east for this weak wind, because east was the gentlest of the winds, and because she had plans for the others.

  Pearl imagined her spell with the red dragon in the middle, an extra wall coiled around her wards, surrounded by the four winds. At her command, the spell came to life, and the Toad found itself buffeted. The cold of the north wind blew from above, making the Toad sluggish. The heat of the south wind dried the Toad’s damp flesh without warming, for the east and west winds dove between, creating a barrier between the extremes, rocking the Three-Legged Toad back and forth on its now unsteady footing.

  With the casting of her spell, Pearl also brought herself out of awareness of the office room where her body stood and into a place where she could direct what she envisioned. This was not something she did often, for it was easy to become quite lost, forgetting the connection to one’s own body until one lacked the ch’i to return. This time Pearl felt she must take the risk. This was not a battle to be directed from the rear.

  She steered her winds, causing the north to nip harder, the south to burn hotter, but the Toad did not give up and permit itself to be driven away. Banishment was all Pearl dared hope to achieve. The Three-Legged Toad was an immortal creature, and as such had remarkable tenacity, even against banishment.

  Destroying an immortal was not only beyond Pearl’s powers, but also would probably have repercussions so horrible that she’d wish that the Toad had devoured them all in the first place.

  The winds were doing their best, but the Toad was not about to give up on its prize. Pearl stirred the red dragon from its passive role as protector of the house. It glowered at the Toad and
breathed scalding steam, but the Toad only pawed more fiercely against the wards.

  “Home! Home! Home!” it wailed, its croaking voice full of fear and longing. So potent was its despair that Pearl’s wards began to buckle.

  Pearl had feared this very problem might occur as soon as she had realized what Brenda had inadvertently summoned. The Three-Legged Toad was only one of the denizens of the moon. Perhaps of the most powerful of all the moon’s inhabitants was the Hare who pounded out the Elixir of Immortality with a gigantic mortar and pestle. The Hare’s skills were so great that almost everything that came from the moon ended up immortal, a fact that had caused considerable trouble to gods and heroes throughout the ages.

  Prolonged existence did not guarantee great intelligence, however, and the Three-Legged Toad was far from the most brilliant of creatures. Its early attacks had sufficiently weakened Pearl’s wards so that now it could sense Nissa within. It mistook her Rabbit aura for that of its familiar friend and neighbor. Why should it travel through the fearful void when the moon was so close? The moon must be close, the Toad’s logic went, otherwise the Toad would not scent the Hare.

  Bitterly, Pearl realized that far from driving the Toad away, so far all she had succeeded in achieving was to make the Toad all the more desirous of getting through her wards to where, in addition to something fascinating and shiny, it would find itself safely at home.

  Pearl did not dare drop the All Winds and Dragons spell and try another, for the Toad had perforated her wards in countless places. As of now, the only thing that was keeping the Toad out was the entwined coils and snapping jaws of the red dragon.

  Up to this point, Pearl had used only her own ch’i, planning to save Brenda’s and Nissa’s for the other two spells that must be worked. However, there was no helping it. If she did not succeed here, there would be little need for the other two spells. Not only would her wards fail and let the Toad through, but before long the mystic disturbance was certain to bring others. Some would be kept away because they would not wish to challenge the Toad, but others would lurk around the fringes, ready to pick at whatever was left.