by John Wilson
Chen grunted in reply.
“If we follow the base of it around the shoulder of the mountain, we might find a cave or a wide overhang. We’ll be out of sight of the road, but we should still be able to see what’s happening out on the plain. Come on.”
Ting led her pony off the road and up the hillside, with Fu, happy to be let go, frolicking at her feet. Chen forced his stiff muscles to move and stumbled behind her.
“Come on,” she repeated. “We have to hurry!”
With Ting’s encouragement and Fu rushing back to see what was keeping him, Chen forced himself to increase his plodding pace up the slope. He had never felt less like a wushu master. Every step hurt. But the more that he took, the more his stiff joints eased. By the time they’d reached the foot of the cliff, he could almost believe he would be able to move normally again one day.
“Here they come,” Ting said, looking back at the road.
Chen turned to see the first mounted riders in the distance. “I hope there’s a big cave,” he said as he tried to hurry on and ignore his pain.
“I think we’re far enough around now,” Ting said after a few minutes. “We can’t be seen from the road, but we’ll be able to see the army when it comes out of the valley and onto the plain.”
“That won’t do us or Sanxingdui any good,” Chen said wearily. “We needed to stay in front of them. We’ve failed.”
“We have no choice,” Ting said. “We’ve done our best, and who knows what will happen tomorrow. Let’s at least make ourselves as comfortable as possible.” She led the way to an overhang that was already in deep shadow. They encouraged the horses in with coarse grass pulled from the hillside and collected enough to build a small pile in front of each animal.
“I wish I ate grass,” Chen said wistfully as he watched the horses eat. “I’ve had nothing but a few berries for days.”
“At least Fu and I got fed. We can go days without food, and we’ve had plenty of water today, so we’ll be okay.”
“If being incredibly hungry and in great pain is how you define okay, then yes, we are.”
Ting laughed. It made Chen feel happier than he had in days. “At least we’re together and away from Shenxian,” he said.
“Yes,” Ting agreed. She clasped his hand. “Thank you for coming to rescue Fu and me.”
Chen blushed in the cool evening air. “The emperor suggested that I follow Shenxian and spy on him, but I saw it as a chance to rescue you. How did you learn to ride a horse so well?”
“I didn’t grow up in Sanxingdui,” Ting explained. “My parents were Ma Zhang. All the Ma Zhang learn to ride almost before they can walk.”
“How did you end up in Sanxingdui?”
Ting hesitated. “When I was six years old, my father got into an argument over a horse with the clan leader. There was a fight, and my father was killed. My mother took me and my brother, Jian, and fled across the mountains.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Jian was older than me and never settled in Sanxingdui. One night he just disappeared. Mother said he went back over the mountains to avenge Father’s death, but I don’t know. We never heard anything from him again.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was, but I grew to love Sanxingdui—and I got to meet Fu and you.”
Ting squeezed Chen’s hand, and they sat in companionable silence, listening to the comforting sounds of the horses chewing and Fu snoring. Soon the more distant sounds of the army passing on the road became audible. Later, in the darkness before the full moon rose, they saw the flickering lights of fires being lit on the plain below. The army was setting up camp beside the river flowing down from Min Lake.
Chen was thinking of asking Ting if they should try to sneak past the army in the dark, but he fell asleep in a huddled heap before he had a chance to put his thoughts into words.
He was woken by Fu, who was yapping insanely and running around in circles outside their overhang. Chen rolled over and stretched, noticing a few new aches from sleeping on the ground.
“What’s the matter, Fu?” Ting asked as she stirred beside him. “What’s upsetting you?”
Chen hauled himself upright and stepped out onto the open slope, worried that Fu had sensed some of Shenxian’s soldiers approaching. But in the pale predawn light, he could see that the slope was deserted in all directions. The army camp was too far off for anyone to hear the noise Fu was making, but Chen could see activity as soldiers prepared for the march on Sanxingdui.
“There’s no one here,” he said. He had just taken a step toward Ting when the horses whinnied loudly and bolted out from the overhang, knocking him aside. They set off at a gallop across the slope. Fu stopped yapping, stared for a moment at Ting and Chen and then set off after the horses.
“What’s the matter with them?” Chen asked.
“I have no idea, but we should go after them. They’re our best hope of getting back to Sanxingdui.”
The pair set off to retrieve the fleeing animals. They hadn’t got far when Fu returned at top speed to see where they were. He led them to a flat area on the hillside where the horses were shuffling about nervously and whinnying.
“What’s the matter with them?” Chen asked.
“I don’t know.” Ting moved forward to try to calm the jittery animals. “I’ve never seen this kind of behavior for no reason.”
As Chen followed Ting to the horses, he began to hear a low, grumbling roar. It seemed to be coming from the ground below him—and it was getting louder. He only had time to ask, “What’s that?” before the ground beneath his feet dropped away. He lurched forward and fell, colliding with the ground as it jumped up to meet him.
Chen tried to get to his feet, but it was impossible. It was as if waves were passing through the solid ground. He began to feel seasick. He saw Ting curled into a ball with Fu beside her. The horses looked as if they were dancing as they struggled to stay on their feet.
The noise was deafening, and the air was becoming thick with dust. Chen was convinced he was going to die. The earth was trying to kill him. He had done something to offend the gods, and now the mountains were about to shake him off.
Then it stopped. The roar died away to a low grumble, and the ground returned to doing what it normally did—nothing.
Breathing hard, Chen stood up. The horses were standing still. For a few moments they looked around and sniffed the air, and then they began placidly cropping the grass at their feet. Fu was lying on his belly, panting.
Chen stepped over and helped Ting to her feet. “What happened?” he asked.
“Earthquake,” Ting said.
The pair looked down the slope through the settling dust. The army camp was a chaos of collapsed tents, panicked men and stampeding horses.
“This is our chance,” Chen said. “It’ll take them a while to catch their horses and get organized.”
When Ting didn’t answer, he looked at her. She was staring, openmouthed, over his shoulder. “The mountain’s falling,” she whispered.
Chen spun around to look at the mountain across Min Lake. It was falling. A huge wedge of earth and rock was sliding in slow motion down the mountainside, leaving a raw scar of bare rock above it. Large trees were being snapped like matchsticks and carried along as the slide grew and sped up. Rocks splashed into the lake. Then the main body of the landslide hit it.
The blue surface of Min Lake foamed white, and an enormous surge of water swept across it. As more earth and rock crashed down, the surges became bigger. They crashed against the ridge blocking the valley and holding the lake in place. Soon the surges overflowed the ridge, cutting great gouges through it. Immense jets of muddy water, thick with rocks and trees, ate away at the gouges until they joined to form a single thundering torrent that hurtled down the valley toward the plain—and the army camp.
The soldiers had seen the landslide and the water spilling over the ridge. Chen and Ting watched in silence as those
who could grabbed horses and fled. The rest ran for their lives away from the river. The flood tore through the abandoned tents, creating a deeper river valley and sweeping far out onto the plain.
“I think the mountain just saved Sanxingdui,” Chen said when he had recovered enough to speak.
“I think we’ve been given a chance,” Ting agreed, turning back toward the horses. “We must take it.”
AYLFORD
READING LESSONS
Kun Zhuang—emperor of Sanxingdui, the City of Masks, and all the surrounding lands that can be reached on a galloping horse in five days, lord of all creatures from the largest elephant in the royal menagerie to the tiniest mite in the straw bed of the poorest peasant, and keeper of the Golden Mask—sniffed.
A young servant boy, dressed in a gold-trimmed green uniform with a twisting imperial dragon on the front, scuttled forward from his position behind the emperor and offered him a silk handkerchief. Kun wiped his nose on the richly embroidered sleeve of his dressing gown and waved his arm dismissively.
“Thank you, Chen,” he said, “but I would prefer if you brought Jingshen and me some tea.”
The boy bowed and turned away, but he skidded to a halt when he realized the emperor was still talking.
“And make certain that foul-smelling dog is nowhere near the royal tea urn. Last time you served tea, it smelled as if you had drawn the water straight from the drinking trough in the imperial kennels.”
The boy bowed even more deeply and fled.
“He’s a good boy,” Kun said to the tall, elegant woman seated cross-legged on the other side of the low table. “But his mind is always on either that kitchen girl, Ting, and her pet dog, or on his crazy dream of becoming a wushu master.” He smiled at his guest.
“One day he will do great things,” the woman predicted. Her snow-white hair hung straight over her shoulders, framing a gentle, high-cheekboned face. She returned Kun’s smile with gray eyes that hinted she could read his most intimate thoughts.
“This is just a story,” Howard said. He and Cate were sitting side by side on her cushions. Cate was translating the brittle yellow pages of The Golden Mask.
“What were you expecting?” she asked.
“I don’t know…spells and things? It’s supposed to tell us ancient secrets about other dimensions and the Elder Gods, and it’s a cute little story.”
“What better place to hide secrets?”
Cate resumed reading, but Howard was after more than a simple tale of emperors, sorcerers and serving boys. “Okay, I get the gist of the story, and I’m kind of fond of Chen, Ting and Fu, but it happened thousands of years ago on the other side of the world. What does it have to do with us?”
“The Golden Mask on the jade pillar beneath the city was incredibly powerful—powerful enough to keep the portal to other dimensions closed.”
“Or to open it,” he suggested.
“Exactly. When the Realm of the Elder Gods swirled close to our world, Kun and his city were safe only as long as the Golden Mask was in the Chamber of the Deep and protected by spells.”
“But Shenxian was powerful enough to break the spells.”
“Yes, and if he had succeeded in wearing the mask, the Elder Gods would have come through the portal and destroyed our entire world.”
“Okay, but it still happened thousands of years ago. The people in the story are long dead, and the Golden Mask’s lost. What does this have to do with us?”
“We live in a time very similar to that in which the book is set.”
“How so?”
“I think someone—or something—is trying to get the mask today, just as Shenxian tried all those years ago.”
“To open the portal?”
Cate nodded.
“But that would mean the end of the world!”
Cate nodded again.
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Power has a way of seducing people into doing stupid things. The book told us that about Shenxian.”
“What does all this mean for us?”
“Remember when I told you that I’d been having dreams about you? That I sensed there was something malignant hiding in the darkness, watching?”
“How could I forget?”
“I think that whatever is watching is trying to manipulate you through your dreams.”
“Why me? I’m still just a high-school kid who’s scared of the dark. I have no control over any of this. There’s no point in anything manipulating my dreams.”
“Chen and Ting were just a couple of kids with an annoying dog, and yet they saved the world.”
“You’re saying that you, me and your cat have to save the world?”
“Maybe,” Cate said. She was staring so intensely at Howard that he was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “Actually, I think you’re the key to everything that’s happening. I think you have much greater power than you imagine.”
“I don’t!” Howard shouted. “I’m not the key to anything. I’m just an ordinary kid who doesn’t want to go crazy like his dad.” He jumped up from the cushion and started pacing up and down the room. “I don’t believe you. We’re not ants. There are no other dimensions or monsters. The world’s not in danger. It’s just the same place it has always been. The Golden Mask is just part of a story. I don’t have special powers, and I’m not a superhero. Leave me alone!”
Howard’s outburst drained him and left him shaking. He collapsed back on the cushion and stared at Cate, who looked at him calmly. Heimao stretched, slid off her own cushion and settled herself on Howard’s lap.
“Be calm, Sheepherder,” a voice inside Howard’s head said.
“What?” he asked, staring at Cate.
Her lips hadn’t moved.
“Be calm,” the voice repeated.
Howard looked down at Heimao. The cat stared back with those unsettling eyes. “No,” Howard said.
“Yes,” the voice insisted.
“You’re a cat. You can’t talk.”
“And yet, Sheepherder, you hear me.”
Nothing about the cat moved, and still the voice entered Howard’s head just as if the words were spoken aloud.
“What’s happening?” Howard asked Cate.
“It’s simply one more impossible thing, Sheepherder,” the voice said.
“Stop calling me Sheepherder.” He looked pleadingly at Cate.
“Heimao is not exactly what she seems,” Cate explained. “She has been my companion for years and has helped me many times. She’s very good at interpreting dreams.”
“She’s a cat!”
“And you are merely a sheepherder,” the voice said as Heimao hopped off Howard’s lap and returned to her cushion.
“You must forgive her,” Cate said. “She sometimes has a bit of an attitude.”
“A talking cat with an attitude. Am I suddenly in a Disney movie?”
“Yesterday you accepted that I was a witch and that there are things in the world you don’t understand. Why can’t you accept that Heimao has her share of talents?”
Howard held his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He concentrated on his breathing until he had calmed down. After everything he had been forced to believe over the past twenty-four hours, what difference could a talking cat make? Either at least some of what Cate—and Heimao—had told him was true or…well, he didn’t want to think about the alternative. That led to a room in the AIPC.
He raised his head and opened his eyes. “Okay, I’m calm.” He glanced at Heimao, who appeared to be asleep. “Let’s say I agree that the book gives us background. How does that help us? It doesn’t tell us what to do now.”
“Oh, but we do know what to do now. We must go to Leon’s party. Everything points to that.”
“And what then?”
“At the beginning of the book, the only bit of the ancient prophecy that Jingshen doesn’t understand is the reference to the Ivory Ark. What does that remind you of?”
“I
don’t—” Howard began to say, but then it suddenly came to him. “The white ship that I keep seeing.”
“It must be important. And it’s closer to the beach every time you dream of it.”
“And you think we can somehow get to it from Leon’s?”
Cate shrugged. “It worked for Madison.”
Howard couldn’t think of an argument against that, but he wasn’t thrilled by the idea of deliberately trying to get back to the beach with the creatures that had terrified him so much. “Assuming we get to the white ship, what do we do then?”
“Madison gave us the answer to that as well.”
Howard ran through the things Madison had told him. “No way,” he said finally. “She told me to go through the arch. I can’t do that. That’s worse than going back to the beach. I was terrified just looking at it.”
“Maybe we won’t have to go through it. But we have to do something, and the only place we can start is at Leon’s party.” Cate retrieved a folded sheet of paper from her pocket. “Maybe this will help. It was inside the back cover of the book.” Carefully she unfolded it. Curved black lines and odd geometric shapes almost filled the yellowed page. “I think it’s a map.”
“It’s not a map to anywhere I’ve ever been.”
Cate raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, okay,” Howard held up his hands in mock surrender. “I know that’s not saying much, and there are entire dimensions that I’ve never seen, but what is it a map of, and how will it help us?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but I think it’s important, just like the book. We have to get to the white ship.”
“Okay. Let’s go crash the party of the year.”
AYLFORD
MOVING UP THE SOCIAL LADDER
“It’s too early to go there yet,” Howard said. He, Cate and Heimao were climbing Hangman’s Hill, and the houses around them were growing larger and fancier. “I mean, I assume they were partying hard last night and it’s only late morning now. Most people will still be asleep, and we’ll really stand out among those who are up.” As much as anything, Howard was looking for an excuse to turn around and go back to somewhere safe and comfortable. The trouble was, he wasn’t sure there was anywhere safe and comfortable anymore.
