The Silk Map

by Chris Willrich

  Three persons, in fact, if not four. For there, out of breath, was the priest from the Market temple where they’d battled; and there on a pallet dragged by two acolytes was a large oblong bundle shrouded in white cloth.

  “There you are, Imago Bone,” said the holy man. “You asked me what you might do to compensate us. You vanished before I could give you an answer. Perhaps you did not wish to disturb my meditations.”

  “I have great respect for the power of silence,” Bone said. The camel licked him again. “Blkk.”

  “Here is your answer. Nine Thunderbolts requested his body be disposed of in the Karvak manner. Preferably abandonment to the animals of the steppe.”

  “The steppe,” put in Quilldrake, “is weeks away from here.”

  “His instructions indicated he would accept the desert as an alternative. Would you do this thing?”

  Bone looked at the pallet. In death the shrouded Karvak seemed even bigger than he had in life. Bone wanted to say no. But Nine Thunderbolts had been a valiant comrade, even if only for a minute or two. And Gaunt would surely step on his foot again. He nodded.

  Corpse disposal added one more complication to the business of getting proper papers from a nearby official, one who moonlighted, in broad daylight, as a counterfeiter. Bone found the contrast with parts farther east intriguing. Those provinces had been less regimented, yet their civilian officials were proudly honest. But perhaps he should be grateful; without corruption he, Gaunt, and Snow Pine might not have been allowed in Yao’an at all.

  He felt relief like a cool breeze when the travelers grandly waved their papers and set out through the gate.

  It was not truly made of jade. That lovely substance did clink through the stone tunnel in great quantities, however, along with the rustle of cloth, the glint of gems, the aroma of spices. The tunnel ran through an exceptionally thick portion of the city wall, with provisions for archers to fire through murder-holes.

  “Good-bye, Yao’an,” Gaunt said. “I don’t know if I love this city or hate it.”

  “The going consensus,” said Quilldrake, “is that the answer is ‘yes . . .’”

  Verses interrupted him, crooned by a performer on the Yao’an side of the tunnel.

  Blossoms of pears, like the white desert moon.

  Willow branches green like the steppe.

  One day willow fluff will blow west like mountain snow.

  Beyond the Jade Gate where spring is forgotten.

  Light swallowed them, and they were on the Braid.

  The desert did not immediately confront the travelers, for a river lay in their path, bordered by willow trees. Wheels spun, churning up the flow for thirsty irrigation ramps. Rafts bobbed, ready for hire, yet another fee. But it was that or give up the camels and ride on cheap bamboo floats buoyed by goat corpses. They hired two rafts.

  “Aiya!” Gaunt said, employing a generalized term of exasperation—for as they poled off she lost her balance, until Bone and Snow Pine caught her. She laughed a little. “That expression . . . you know, I don’t know how I got by without it.”

  Snow Pine said, “Do you not swear, away in the Far West?”

  “Of course. But to my ear we do it with less music. I’m glad to have more curses in my quiver.”

  “You’ll have cause,” Widow Zheng said, staring out west at the brightness as though reconsidering her choice, “to use them all.”

  They left the river behind, bells tinkling on their camels, their corpse-pallet dragged behind the last. Beyond was not a road but a track worn smooth by countless hooves and feet. The land soared to their left, dry scrub giving way to lush bushes and trees with increasing altitude, before bowing before rocks and snow, peaks and sky. The land to the right was an empire of tan sands, save for a line of vegetation following the river and the Heavenwall northward, farms and villages tied to it like knots on a green cord. River, wall, and green diminished in stature with remoteness from Yao’an, and not simply because of distance. However, this was hard to judge, for the desert air shimmered with heat. Here on the road it was comfortable enough, as breezes flitted down from the mountains, and occasionally their feet were sloshed by the waters of short-lived, desert-bound streams.

  “Perhaps it’s time to speak, Quilldrake,” Zheng prompted after they’d traveled several li.

  “Not yet,” Quilldrake said, looking around carefully at the various travelers within a stone’s throw.

  Several farms, a few villages, and a pair of wayside shrines lay within a day’s travel of Yao’an, and as the hours passed, most of the walkers peeled off toward one destination or another. As the day waned, there remained only their own caravan and a more ambitious train of thirty camels, both nominally bound for Madzeu. Quilldrake kept casting anxious looks backward at the larger caravan, though Bone could see nothing worrisome about it.

  As the sun reddened, Quilldrake groaned and called for a halt. “Bad melons!” he kept repeating as he lay upon the ground, but he waved off the other caravan’s offer of aid as they passed. Once their last camel had disappeared around a bend of the southward hills and the last bell’s tinkle had vanished into the whispers of the wind, Quilldrake had an immediate recovery.

  He led them at a crawl until they’d passed around the bend and encountered a dome-shaped roadside shrine. Here Quilldrake halted again, made a perfunctory bow before a stone image of the Undetermined, and unsecured the corpse-pallet.

  “Um,” Gaunt said, “what are you doing?”

  “An important observance.” Grunting, he dragged the pallet into the shrine.

  “I had not heard,” Widow Zheng called from her camel, “that the Karvaks had converted to the ways of the Undetermined.”

  “Truly?” the unseen Quilldrake called. “I could have sworn I heard differently. At any rate, I’m hot and tired enough to convert to anything . . .”

  Feeling an inconvenient responsibility to Nine Thunderbolts, Bone followed, but Gaunt was faster.

  The structure was cramped but cool. Quilldrake and the pallet were on the other side of a pillar inscribed in languages Bone could not read.

  “Quilldrake—” Gaunt began, and then gasped.

  The shroud was moving.

  It never ceased to astonish Persimmon Gaunt how monster-prone she and her husband’s lives had become. “Bone?” she called, her voice giddy. “Everyone? Walking dead!” She drew a dagger and prepared to throw. Behind her, unable to see clearly, Bone cursed and found his own weapons.

  The body was moving more emphatically now, as if enraged at being found out. Well, good. Gaunt threw. The dagger connected with a thunk at a part of the shroud nearest the floor, yet the thing only moved more swiftly.

  “Swan’s Blood,” she said, finding a second dagger, “Quilldrake, you should take burial customs more seriously—”

  “My dear—!” Quilldrake began.

  But all were silenced by the corpse’s next action.

  A sword blade transfixed the shroud, and with a sound of rending cloth a figure burst forth, armed with a saber whose metal shone like moonlight.

  She heard one of Bone’s daggers clatter to the stone floor, but she could not spare time for that. She made to throw.

  A hand gripped her wrist. “Gaunt,” Bone said, “it’s not the Karvak.”

  “I’ve been mistaken for many things,” gasped the man with the saber, “but never that.”

  She blinked. It was the second Westerner from Quilldrake’s office.

  Gaunt relaxed, lowering her dagger and breathing hard. “I do apologize, sir. Mister Flint, I presume.”

  “Indeed,” said Flint, setting his weapon on the stone floor. The saber ceased to glow as it left his trembling grip, though the intricate gem-laden metalwork of the pommel glinted still. Something about its appearance tickled her memory, but there was no time to wonder about that now. “You’ll pardon me if I do not immediately shake hands, Persimmon Gaunt, Imago Bone. But I’ve had a long and bumpy day.”

  “You are u
nhurt?” Gaunt asked.

  “Yes. Heat and bruises are my trouble. I’m glad it’s not yet summer. I fear your dagger hit my companion the dead man.”

  “Oh.” Gaunt retrieved it, whispering fresh apologies to the fallen Karvak. By now Snow Pine and Widow Zheng had entered as well.

  “We were traveling with a live corpse the entire time?” Snow Pine exclaimed.

  “And a dead corpse,” Quilldrake said. “I guessed as much when I saw how big the shroud was. We have contacts in many temples. I’m not sure the priest knew, but others did.”

  “Indeed,” Flint said, snatching a waterskin from Quilldrake and greedily quaffing. He was a head taller than Bone, and even in his disheveled state he had the manner of an immortal looking down upon the world with rue. “I was obliged to collapse our escape route in a way that forced me back into the city, to our access under the House of Tender Breezes. I wished for tenderness indeed but could waste no time. I lurked here and there until overhearing the priest’s plan to foist this body upon you, and my path was clear.”

  “Clear to a madman!” Widow Zheng scoffed.

  Flint bowed.

  “Well, I do regret assaulting you,” Gaunt said.

  Flint shrugged. “I prefer to forget what vexed me in the past, that I might focus on what vexes me in the present.”

  “That’s not exactly a path to bliss,” Snow Pine said.

  “We don’t all seek bliss in this life.”

  “I admire your approach,” Bone said. “Do you feel pursuit is close at hand?”

  “I don’t know. I think we’re safe enough from ordinary observers at this moment, but I gather Charstalkers are involved.”

  “You two owe us explanations,” Zheng said, “especially about them.”

  “Agreed!” Quilldrake said. “But survival comes first. The immediate thing you must know about Charstalkers is that they can fly like smoke upon the breeze, or inhabit animal minds.”

  “The human animal included,” Flint said. “Thus the desert is, ironically, a haven, as it is inimical to animal life. Our demonic foes must make themselves obvious if they’re to hunt. Of course the sands present their own dangers, but there’s no help for that. Death licks every heel.” He retrieved his sword. Gaunt noted that on this occasion it did not glow. “Sunset approaches. I’d prefer to travel by day, but we must get off this track. Let’s leave signs that we’ve camped here, then make our exit.”

  In that way a companion who’d been utterly silent all day now took the reins of the entire expedition. Though clearly much younger than Quilldrake, Flint gave orders. Gaunt was uncertain what to make of it all, but Flint seemed to know his business. As they returned to the camels, she shared a wary shrug with Bone. They had to follow through on their best guesses, and that meant following Flint into the desert.

  They removed the camels’ bells and stepped into sands seemingly turned bloody with the sunset. Gaunt reflected that those she trusted numbered three, and they might still overpower Flint and Quilldrake if need be (though that sword was worrisome).

  I have become a cold thing, Gaunt thought.

  The desert became cold too.

  After some ten li they reached a rocky rise jabbing at the stars like a giant’s broken blade. There they camped against the northern face, for Flint and Quilldrake wished only to escape sight of the road. For the same reason they sparked no fire.

  “I suggest we sleep,” Flint said. “Save talk for tomorrow. It will be a hard day.”

  At dawn Bone and Quilldrake carried the body of Nine Thunderbolts high onto the rocks. “This method of corpse-disposal,” Quilldrake said, gasping, “is closer to that of Qushkent than to that of the steppe. But I doubt he’ll object. We’re close enough to the road to attract scavengers, I’d think.”

  “He’s heavier than I’d have credited,” Bone said. “As though he’s wrapped with something weightier than this shroud . . .”

  “It is not our business,” Quilldrake said, letting Nine Thunderbolts drop.

  “Farewell, brave warrior,” Bone said, feeling that he should say something. “May you ride upon starlit grasslands, fight wondrous opponents, and bed miraculous women.”

  “So let it be,” Quilldrake agreed.

  The others were readying the caravan, bells and all. Flint had snapped a desiccated branch from a long-dead tree, and was using it to sketch a map of the known world, all the way from the littoral region of Qiangguo to Swanisle. Gaunt was studying it with great interest, and Bone joined her.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Widow Zheng, hands on hips, “until I have the answers to two questions. Where exactly are we going? And where is the book I loaned you?”

  Flint said nothing, as he added finishing touches.

  “Xembala,” Quilldrake muttered, as he walked up.

  “That sounds like a long way to take a book,” Snow Pine said.

  “I see no Xembala on that map,” Bone noted.

  “Indeed,” Flint said. “One day I hope to add that name.”

  “You have a slight inaccuracy on the southern coast of Qiangguo,” Gaunt noted. “The coast bends inward more near Riverclaw.”

  “That indentation is obscured by the name of the city,” Flint retorted.

  “As you wish.”

  “I think the book was taken by our friends in black,” Flint continued. “And as for Xembala? Well, perhaps we will see it. But first—” He jabbed his stick. “We are here, a little west of Yao’an. We go to Shahuang deep within the desert.” Another jab.

  “You hardly moved the stick at all,” said Bone.

  “And yet a flick of the stick, on this scale, means many days’ travel. I want you all to understand what we undertake, and how much territory it may encompass. The first leg is comparatively easy. We must see the Cave of Ten Thousand Illuminations and consider for ourselves this record of the Silk Map. Then we can decide where we must go.”

  They began the long journey into the desert.

  “‘Comparatively easy,’ he said,” Zheng groused after an hour, fanning herself atop her camel. “Can’t we travel by night?”

  “There are two bad ways to cross the desert,” said Flint over the tinkle of the camels’ bells and the soft fall of feet and hooves upon the bright sand. “The first is to travel by day, under the unremitting heat and glare. The second is to travel by night and risk getting lost with no hope of recovery. We’ll likely do some of both. The only truly good path, I’m afraid, would be to turn around.”

  All around them lay mute supporting arguments—thousands of dunes, rocky outcroppings shaped into weird sculptures by the wind, trees dead for decades, the occasional bones of a horse. The mountains behind them had receded into a dark and wavy suggestion of mass, while the horizon ahead was a blur of merged sand and sky that was not so much like the world’s edge as an absence of form altogether.

  “I like this fellow,” Bone muttered to his mount, whom he’d privately named Scoff. (The camel-merchant had called her Fragrant Flower of the West, but he reasoned she deserved better than sarcasm.) “He sees a universe of disaster in a grain of sand.” He was grateful for his white robes and hood but still felt as if he were an ant traveling through a very large oven.

  Gaunt, just ahead of him and behind Flint, pretended not to hear Bone. “Is there then no good way, Master Flint?”

  “Flint will be sufficient. Or Doctor Flint, if you prefer formality. Master Flint was my father. There are indeed good ways. You can fly, if you have access to an aerial mount. You can use tunnels, if you are a sand-goblin. If one dared tame the dragon-horses of the Forbidden Steppe, one might cross the sands in a day. And perhaps, if you are a sorcerer, you can translate yourself magically from one side of the desert to another.”

  “As I understand it,” Quilldrake put in from ahead of Flint, “even the legendary Archmage can’t manage such a feat. Even great wizards are forced to walk.”

  “Indeed,” said Flint. “My real answer is that the only good way to tra
vel the desert is by consulting a book about it.”

  “I agree,” said Widow Zheng from behind Bone, as she and he peered warily at a distant skeleton. “I look forward to our camp and perhaps some candlelit reading.”

  “How far to the first oasis?” called Snow Pine from the tail of their caravan. Bone remembered that she’d grown up beside the Ochre River, and that for all the hardships of her life, insufficient water had never been one of them.

  “I believe we’re making reasonable time,” Flint called back. “But I still anticipate some travel by night. We have been here before, but we’ll have to judge at sunset whether we can safely travel the rest of the distance in the dark. Otherwise we must camp in the open.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “Possibly!” shouted Quilldrake. “The oases have old warding-stones blessed by priests of the three faiths hereabouts, and sometimes glyphs left by wandering wizards! One hopes at least some are efficacious!”

  “And if none are?” asked Gaunt.

  Widow Zheng cackled in a way that made Bone a trifle nervous. “That’s what Living Calligraphy is for,” she said.

  They settled into a quiet progression for the next hour. Had this been a forest or a grassy plain, Bone thought, chatter would have cut the silence, but in the desert simply moving was a disciplined endeavor. He recalled the milder desert beside the city he’d once called home, and the words of his mentor in the thieving art. Beware places of no concealment, Master Sidewinder had said. Grand plazas. Open sand. Honest relationships.

  Must I have no honest relationships? Bone had asked.

  Of course you may! With me you will never, even in the tiniest degree, ever have cause to think I would deceive you in any matter whatsoever. Rest assured, I am as trustworthy a man as has ever been born.

  You are a genius at thieving, Master Sidewinder, but you are a little obvious with your sarcasm.

  My work here is done.

  Bone smiled at the memory. He missed his long-dead teacher and wished Gaunt could have met him. He missed Palmary and cities in general. He regretted none of his time with Gaunt. Well, maybe certain events. The cannibals. The philosophical torturers. The dragons. But not the whole. Yet it seemed to him that for a city-thief he spent an inordinate amount of time outdoors. Someday, when they’d won back their son, he would take them into an overcrowded, noisy, polyglot enclave where nature was nowhere to be seen, to get away from it all.