DEDICATION
For Jennifer Rofé
For all these years.
MAP
EPIGRAPH
And when the childe had come to the Vale of Tears
In place of his fallen master,
For the final battle against the Armies of Dread,
Dread spoke, and said: Fear not, childe;
For today I will show you something
More precious than gold,
Rarer even than the Snow White Ram.
I will show you the Impossible Black Tulip.
—FROM THE FINAL STANZA OF “THE EPIC OF ARBUTHNOT”
CONTENTS
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Prologue: The Jewel of Cashmere
Part One: The League of Blood Chapter 1: Beware Monks with Red Sashes
Chapter 2: The Leopard’s Nest
Chapter 3: The League of Blood
Chapter 4: Fugitives
Chapter 5: The Black Gravel Pass
Chapter 6: The Lady Vanishes
Chapter 7: The Queen of Cashmere
Chapter 8: A Princely Rescue
Chapter 9: Enemies of the Blue Sky
Chapter 10: Decamping
Chapter 11: The Vale of Cashmere
Part Two: The Ends of the Earth Chapter 12: The Imitation Mandala
Chapter 13: The Road to Samarkand
Chapter 14: Survival Lessons
Chapter 15: A Map of Fevered Dreams
Chapter 16: A Fork in the Road
Chapter 17: The Well of Wisdom
Chapter 18: Ghost Cat
Chapter 19: Murmansk
Chapter 20: Ice Haven
Chapter 21: Monster Island
Chapter 22: Icebreakers
Chapter 23: Skulls, Bones, and Liver
Chapter 24: Trapped
Chapter 25: Ship, Abandoned
Chapter 26: Under the Ice
Chapter 27: The Belly of the Beast
Chapter 28: Paradise Found
Chapter 29: Through the Gates of Ice
Chapter 30: The Tunnel of Swords and Axes
Chapter 31: The Impossible Black Tulip
Acknowledgments
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About the Author
Books by Barry Wolverton
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
THE JEWEL OF CASHMERE
The Minister of Wit fussed with his clothes and beard for an hour before leaving his house, changing his trousers, tying and retying his jama, picking out just the right turban, and grooming his beard with cola nut oil until it shone like a brand-new rupee.
As if he wouldn’t be dead before the night was over.
He shrugged on his choga, an expensive, heavily brocaded silk coat that always reminded him of a sofa cushion, and took a good look in the mirror. His wife caught him admiring himself and teased him. “You will make a fine nawab of Cashmere, Mullah,” she said. “Everyone knows the primary requirement is vanity.”
“Pshaw,” said the minister, kissing his wife good night and turning to leave.
“Where are you going, fatso? The front door is that way.”
“I’m going out the back,” he said, flustered. “I want to check on the garden.”
“It’s still there,” his wife said.
“Yes, yes,” he said, hurrying out before she teased the beard right off his face.
The garden was fragrant with spring blooms, jasmine and hyacinth and poppy, and the overwhelming aroma calmed him. He took in every scent and buzz of insect, touched the leathery leaves of a rubber tree, moistened the tips of his fingers with the stray drops of a recent summer rain.
And then, a shock: he opened the garden gate onto the pitiful scene of a young girl slumped against the wall across the alley, petting a rat.
“Urchins!” he said, disgusted. “Be gone from here!”
The girl raised her eyes to him, and he received another shock—they were pale green. Not the irises, but the eyeballs themselves, cupping a pair of huge brown pupils, like an avocado sliced in half. She just stared at him and continued to stroke the rat, and the Minister of Wit felt sure he would lose his nerve and run back inside. But then he thought of having to explain to his wife that he was frightened of a little orphan, and so he stamped his foot in the alley and shouted, “Be gone, I say! Are you deaf?”
The girl turned to set the rat aside and slowly stood up. When she wobbled a few steps toward the garden gate, the minister felt his ample stomach clench. What if she tried to lay hands on him? But to his relief she turned and shuffled up the alley into the darkness.
The minister let out a great gust of air and turned the opposite way, following the alley to Dhari Street and then walking briskly through the heart of Jammu until he saw the sign for the Broken Camel.
The man he knew only as Lord Thursday was waiting for him, his white hair like a boll of cotton and his white eyebrows a pair of billowing clouds. Despite being dressed in a wool jacket and trousers and wearing a tweed cape, he had picked out a spot near the fireplace and apparently made the owner start a fire. That was a Brit for you—always fearing a chill, even in India. And was he drinking hot cider in June?
“Grab a seat, Minister,” said Lord Thursday, offering his hand but not bothering to get up. “You’re looking splendid as usual. Everything in Cashmere looks splendid, come to think of it. The streets, the gardens, the temples . . .”
“Yes, the great Akbar is quite the aesthete,” said the minister, eager to avoid chitchat.
“So what it is you wanted to see me—”
The minister slapped his hand down on the table before Lord Thursday could finish his question. If the Brit was startled, or offended, he didn’t show it. The minister peeled his hand away, leaving behind a small piece of paper, neatly folded. “Go ahead, read it.”
Thursday picked up the paper, studiously unfolded it, and read. The wind seemed to catch his eyebrows.
“A poem?”
The minister nodded. “They’ve been left all over Cashmere, allegedly by a woman known only as Habba Khatoon.”
“A lady poet?” said Thursday, astonished.
“I’m sure you have lady writers in Britannia,” said the minister.
Lord Thursday thought about it for a minute, becoming distracted.
“Anyway,” said the minister, “the problem is obvious.”
“Is it?” said Thursday, marshaling his eyebrows toward the paper again, looking for clues. He mumbled aloud:
Where now is the day’s delight?
And where the night’s romance?
In garden paths the cobras sleep,
In flowered beds the widows weep
And the nightingale sings of revenge.
Our mourning dress shall be woven air and evening dew;
We pluck out our eyes and
Replace them with gemstones.
In henna I have dyed my hands;
In blood I will dye yours.
Thursday’s lips kept moving as he read and reread the poem to himself, until the minister realized that the problem was not obvious. “Khatoon is known as the nightingale, you see, and the revenge she speaks of is for the Mogul takeover of Cashmere, which many feel was accomplished with deceit.”
“Ah, yes,” said Thursday, waving a hand at the poem. “The cobras and such.”
“‘Woven air’ and ‘evening dew’ describe two different kinds of muslin used in Mogul clothing, suggesting that the aggrieved shall mourn by taking back from us.”
“And this bit about plucking out their eyes?” said Thursday.
The minister sighed. Was this really a member of British intelligen
ce he was sitting across from? “Akbar’s nine ministers, of which I am one, are known as his navaratnas—his nine gems.”
Suddenly Lord Thursday’s eyebrows leaped upward like a pair of startled cats. “You mean all this talk about a conspiracy to steal the nine gems . . . it’s not a jewel heist?”
“No,” said the minister. “It’s an assassination plot.”
All Lord Thursday could do was shake his head. “Dear me, dear me. What can we do?”
“Prevent it?” said the minister. “Just an idea.”
“But how?”
The minister stared at Lord Thursday, wondering how much pain he could inflict by plucking out his eyebrows one hair at a time. “The other ministers and I might have dismissed all this as mere poetry, but then I got wind of something called the Lapwing Conspiracy. I have it on good authority that this is the group planning to turn the nightingale’s songs of revenge into action.”
“Nightingales, lapwings,” said Lord Thursday. “Why the preoccupation with small birds?”
“Is that really important?” said the minister, struggling to remain polite.
“Perhaps it’s a clue!”
“I assume they take their name from a speech Akbar made a few months ago,” the minister explained. “He described the protests against Mogul rule in Cashmere as the screeching of so many lapwings. Regardless,” he added quickly, before Lord Thursday could get off track again, “we’re all on guard until the identities of these people can be ferreted out. I myself am afraid to show my face in public. Akbar says he can’t spare extra security right now, but he’s offered the help of the British, per his arrangement with Queen Adeline.”
“Well, you’re in good hands,” said Lord Thursday. “Tell me everything you know, and I can assure you that the Britannic Secret Service will do the rest.”
The minister decided not to ask why the BSS didn’t already know everything, and proceeded to spend the next hour giving Lord Thursday a detailed rundown of the situation. He was so frustrated by the time he left that he marched straight home by the main roads and walked right up to the front of his house, lapwings be damned. He was going to enter his house by the front door.
His sudden bravery didn’t stop him from stealing glances up and down the street before unlocking the door, or from closing and locking the door behind him as quickly as possible.
“You wouldn’t believe the night I’ve had, Wife,” said the minister, shambling back to his bedroom as he unwrapped his choga and tossed his turban aside. “Britannia will forever be stuck in the Middle Ages if this ancient dimwit they sent to me is supposed to be one of the queen’s finest.”
The minister filled his wash basin with the pitcher of water and washed his face. He looked in the mirror and noticed how quiet the house was. “Where are you, Wife? Shveta?”
“Here I am, Mullah,” she said, coming into the bedroom and wrapping her arms around her husband from behind.
“And what did you get up to tonight?” said the minister.
“I just sat here and thought about how much I worship you,” came her reply.
“Funny. Perhaps you should be the Minister of Wit.”
“Perhaps,” she said, moving her hands up his back and gently massaging his shoulders. The minister closed his eyes, the tension from his meeting melting away. “The neck, Wife, the neck. Ah, yes.”
Her agile fingers worked her husband’s long neck with the skill of one playing a musical instrument. In fact, the minister never realized he was having trouble breathing until he began to feel lightheaded and wobbly, his legs going out from under him. And perhaps, before darkness overtook him, he was able to catch a glimpse of the slight smile on his wife’s lips as he collapsed to the floor, sputtering his last words: “Deceitful cow.”
The creak of a wooden door made Shveta Do-Piyaza look up.
“Is he dead?” said the girl with the avocado eyes.
“As a doornail,” Shveta replied.
PART ONE
THE LEAGUE OF BLOOD
CHAPTER
1
BEWARE MONKS WITH RED SASHES
Anyone who saw the boy tearing down the hill would be forgiven for thinking that he was running for his life. For one thing, there was his reckless, breakneck pace, heedless of the steep slope of the mountain, loose rocks, and the power of gravity. For another, he obviously wasn’t from this part of the world, and this was a part of the world that didn’t welcome outsiders. And finally, even from a distance you could tell he was spindly—all arms and legs and baggy clothes, like a scarecrow light on the stuffing. It was clear the boy couldn’t defend himself; fleeing from trouble was his only option.
He wasn’t far down the hill when his feet went out from under him in a shower of rocks and dust, putting him on his backside. But not for long. As soon as his rear end hit the ground and he began sliding, the boy quickly tried to regain his feet, planting his right heel and pushing off with his hands, thrusting himself upright for a few steps before pitching forward and falling hard on his face. He slid down the mountain for at least twenty feet before slowing to a stop with his nose about six inches from a boulder.
Bren didn’t try to get up. He just lay there, one cheek in the dirt and his arms spread wide in surrender, and listened to the crunch of boots on gravel coming down from behind him.
“What was it this time?” said Sean, squatting next to him. “Chipmunk? Frog?”
“Rabbit,” said Bren, his mouth filling with dust.
“A rabbit,” Sean repeated. He stood up, hooking a hand under Bren’s arm as he did so and helping him to his feet.
Bren flashed back to his first time on the deck of the Albatross, when the rocking boat pitched him off his feet. It was Sean who had helped him up then, too. Bren brushed away the dirt from his trousers and cinched up his tunic, a short brown coat that closed across the front with a yellow sash.
“And what did this rabbit do to send you chasing after it?” Sean asked.
Bren said nothing at first, embarrassed. “There was just something about the way she . . . it . . . came near me when I was out getting firewood, like it wasn’t afraid of me or anything. Like it wanted me to notice it.”
“And what did you think when it took off running down the hill?” said Sean. “Away from you?”
“I don’t know,” said Bren, kicking at a loose rock and taking a few steps uphill, away from Sean, who followed him.
“Lad, listen. I’m not going to pretend I understand half of what you told me back in Khotan. About what happened under that tree, and what happened to Mouse. But you sure made it sound like she was gone for good. I know that doesn’t stop you missing her something awful. I know I do.”
Bren took another few steps up the hill. What happened under that tree. He didn’t half understand it himself, even though the memory of their last conversation had been replaying in his mind over and over in the weeks since he’d lost her.
There’s something you need to know about the girl we found in the cavern, on the Vanishing Island, Mouse had said. She was never a sorceress, or an heir to anything. She was a pawn of the magician, Anqi Sheng, who sacrificed her to protect the identity of the true heir to the Ancients and their powers. I was the true heir. Anqi Sheng had to keep the white jade far away from everyone until I could find it. His decision fated me not to grow up until I made it to the Vanishing Island. He also needed to buy time—centuries, millennia, whatever it took—for the black jade stone, which had been lost through the ages, to reappear. It’s the two stones together where true power lies.
Mouse had reached up to touch the black stone around Bren’s neck, and he tried to remember the way her hands looked before they had turned to dust. She gave him the secret to opening the Dragon’s Gate, but told him not to.
That’s what Anqi Sheng wanted, to open the gate and release the full power of the Eight Immortals back into the world. But I refuse to honor the prophecy.
She had grabbed Bren’s hands, which is when he
had noticed that Mouse was aging right before his eyes.
My white stone and your black one. They represent a wound as old as time. They are the key to the gate, Bren, but you mustn’t open it!
He could remember the words, but when he tried to remember Mouse—the way she had looked as a child, the sound of her voice, the depth of her black eyes—that’s where his perfect memory nevertheless failed him. All he could see was the old woman with the frail skeleton, her skull showing through wisps of grey hair.
The Ancients lost power for a reason, and they are no more deserving than Qin, or Kublai Khan, or the Netherlanders, nor any of the religions that have tried to lay hold of the East. Whoever comes to power, there will no doubt be a prophecy about their downfall.
He had hugged her, tried to hold her so tight she couldn’t leave him, but the harder he squeezed, the lighter her frail body felt. And before he knew it, he was grasping at nothing but the wind, and a swirling mass of dried leaves and bare twigs. Mouse was gone.
He kept hearing her last words to him, whispered in his ear: Those who seek immortality find only death. There are greater rewards elsewhere, if you keep looking.
She had told him how to open the gate. She also told him he shouldn’t. But Bren had to make his own decision, and he had chosen wrong. He had been foolish and selfish and caused terrible destruction. And beyond that, what? His mother—or the ghost of his mother, or a memory of her?—had told him to take back his stone and close the gate before more damage is done.
Something told him she wasn’t just talking about the earthquake. He reached into his pocket to make sure the black jade stone was still there. If he were to lose it, he would never be able to convince himself that what happened on the mountain had really happened. Even grasping the small, cool stone in his fist, he wasn’t entirely sure.
“Bren,” Sean called after him. “I know this might not be the best time to tell you that you’re going the wrong way.”
Bren, who was near the top of the hill now, turned and looked back at Sean. And then, perhaps out of spite or embarrassment, he continued on to the top and paused before turning around. Sean, trying to catch up, took a false step and fell to his hands and knees. When he looked up, Bren was tearing back down the hill again, right at him.
The Sea of the Dead Page 1
