The Silk Map

by Chris Willrich

  Crystalline growths rose all around him in indistinct, spindly shapes, like distorted trees or frozen lightning strokes. The air around him hummed.

  Father, Father, Father, the wind droned.

  Something told him to run, and it was his own voice this time. Yet he could not.

  His feet were rooted to the sands, embedded in a layer of moonlit crystal. Bone, Bone, Bone, the growths seemed to tinkle, and in that light they almost seemed to be bones indeed, first toe-bones, then ankle-bones, and, with a rapidity that mirrored the deepening timbre of the sound, leg bones . . .

  Gaunt’s first awareness of trouble was awakening to find Widow Zheng battling Snow Pine and Flint.

  Gaunt blinked, murmuring, “What . . .”

  “Release me, grandchildren! I’ve lived on the edge of this desert for twice your lifetimes!”

  “No!” said Snow Pine, trying to pin Zheng’s arms.

  “You’re being lured,” said Flint, dodging the widow’s kicks, “to your death.”

  “My husband is out there, and I will find him!”

  Gaunt looked for her own husband and did not see him. “Bone? Bone!”

  “He’s gone!” Snow Pine said. “So’s Quilldrake. Help us!”

  “Ha!” said Zheng. “Help yourself!” Her next kick landed upon a scroll she’d kept by her bedroll.

  The scroll unrolled and crinkled and puffed outward, as though punched. Glowing blue characters rose forth, proclaiming the proverb Water can float a boat, and sink it too.

  And a flood burst from the brush-strokes in the air.

  It was as if the logograms were really holes in reality, leading to some sunlit place just below the surface of an ocean. Gaunt thought the effect beautiful, before it knocked her off her feet.

  She found herself toppled beside Snow Pine and Flint, drenched, salty, sandy. She rose, swore, and spat.

  The magic was gone, and so was Zheng.

  In the moonlight Gaunt spotted footprints leading away from the calligrapher’s bedroll.

  “She can’t have gotten far,” Gaunt said. “And I’d wager wherever she’s going, Bone and Quilldrake have gone too.” She pulled her boots on.

  “We’re with you,” Snow Pine said.

  “No,” Gaunt said. “Change your clothes—exposure.” The magically transported water was still warm, but in the desert night it would chill fast. She shed her robe; the thieving outfit beneath was damp as well, but less so. Snatching up her bow she said, “I’ll drop coins to mark the way.”

  “Good luck,” called Flint behind her.

  Gaunt ran. The cold awakened her senses to a keen edge.

  Under the moon she glimpsed a shape upon the sands. She caught up with Widow Zheng even as she heard voices on the wind.

  I, an evil, will prevent a greater evil . . .

  “Forgive” is a weakling’s word . . .

  You forsook the glory of voice and memory . . .

  Man’s for devouring, not for loving . . .

  This woman loves you, Bone, just enough . . .

  “Zheng! Stop!”

  “Let me go! Do you not hear him?”

  Gaunt . . . Gaunt . . .

  “My husband, Gaunt! My husband’s voice!”

  “That is exactly why you must resist—and I. We’re being lured to our dooms.”

  Mama . . . Mama . . .

  “No,” Gaunt said.

  “You do understand,” Zheng said. “I can see it. If some part of him has survived, I must go to him.”

  “He will not be here. Any more than my son is here.”

  Mama!

  At Gaunt’s words a tremor crossed Zheng’s face. “Your son?”

  “He is lost.”

  “I—I lost a son too. He fought the Karvaks . . .” Zheng looked around at the desert, seeing it anew.

  “I am sorry. My son lives. Or so I may hope. But he’s trapped in a faraway place.”

  No, I’m here, Mama.

  “Trapped . . . Persimmon Gaunt, in Lamentations of the Great Historian we learn of great crystal trees beneath the desert . . . the creations of the Leviathan Minds in the days when this land was a sea. Our great works, like our Heavenwalls, are as nothing before what they wrought.”

  I’m not a crystal tree, Mama.

  Zheng said, “The Minds used the trees as we use libraries. Each flower summoned thoughts as pollen attracts bees. For Leviathans the process was harmless and pleasant. But other creatures found themselves absorbed, crystallized, hanging from the branches like fruit.”

  Mama, don’t listen to her.

  Gaunt said, “I know it’s a trick, Zheng. I know my boy’s voice, and this is a good facsimile. But I also know the nature of the place where he is imprisoned. Time flows differently there, and his speech will already be deeper by now.”

  Mother, came a different, older voice.

  “Nice try,” said Gaunt, tightening her grip on her bow. “Do you think you’re free of the compulsion, Zheng?”

  “Perhaps . . . perhaps it’s well you spoke of your child. It may be easier for you to resist because you are younger,” Zheng said. “You have fewer memories to haunt you. Though I do not know why your young man proved so vulnerable.”

  “Looks are deceiving. Bone has ample memories. Will you stay with me? I must help him. Whatever comes.”

  “What of your son? Do you have no hope for him?”

  Mother . . .

  Gaunt could not reply.

  Zheng placed a hand on her shoulder. “I will stay with you.”

  They followed the voices. Gaunt’s son did not appear.

  Gaunt saw the crystals before she saw the men. She was put in mind of the mineral formations of deep caves, which may branch in seemingly organic ways. It was as though the crowns of crystallized oaks pierced the sands.

  In their midst Imago Bone stood transfixed in the act of stabbing the crystal cocoon that had engulfed him. Quilldrake was nearer, outside the cluster of treelike structures. He could still speak, although crystal formed a hood around his head and imprisoned his body mid-stagger. “Run,” he gasped. “Go. Don’t weep for us. We’ll be immortal after a fashion. Our thoughts will shine within eternal matrices.”

  “Bone needs no eternal matrices,” Gaunt said, raising her bow. “He has me.”

  She fired at Quilldrake.

  “Ah—”

  His gasp ended in the shattering of the material covering his chest. A great shriek lashed the desert, as fragments spun through the air. With the pieces came snatches of speech, and even splinters of thought itself, conveyed to her mind as a shard might convey glass to her blood.

  I must see everything, came a young man’s voice, and it took her a moment to recognize it as Quilldrake’s. With my own eyes! Imagination’s not enough . . .

  (Her hand cramped in the narrow study, streaks of sunlight crossing the paper as she copied yet another map . . .)

  The sensations receded. There had been many more, but only a couple stuck in her memory.

  “That was a memorable arrow you shot,” Quilldrake rasped.

  “It was not the arrow that was memorable,” Gaunt said. “If Zheng is correct, these crystals are memory itself.”

  “I’m concerned what it may do to me, to have it shattered all around me.”

  Gaunt nodded. “That is why I will be careful.” She did not add, And that’s why I’m shooting at you first.

  More crystal shattered, and again Gaunt’s ears and mind were assaulted. She tuned out the impressions and concentrated on freeing the treasure hunter. At last he stumbled up to them, bearing bloody cuts on his face, but basically intact. Zheng assisted him in breaking free of clinging shards.

  Gaunt set her sights on Bone, but already the crystal had responded. A translucent curtain now encircled her husband. She fired, and a section shattered, but it began re-forming even as she nocked another arrow.

  “Arrows are not enough,” Gaunt said. “I must go to him.”

  “You’ll be trapped as
well,” said Quilldrake.

  “We’ll see.” Gaunt advanced, firing again, and again.

  Voices and visions danced around her. Voices male and female, old and young, called out amid surf and snow and the braying of animals and the clash of weapons.

  “Gaunt! Persimmon!” Now Snow Pine stood beside her, and Liron Flint too, both shivering.

  “They’ve brought my scrolls,” Zheng called from behind them. “There’s a chance.”

  “What can you do?” Gaunt said.

  Zheng strode forward, for a moment seeming much younger in gait. “Stand still, Gaunt.”

  Zheng flung open two scrolls simultaneously. Silvery writing winged forth, proclaiming, A wise woman heeds the silence in her mind, not the noise of the mob. At Zheng’s whisper, the words fluttered into Gaunt’s ear. They tickled. The other formed characters so gray in the approaching dawn light, it was hard to believe anything was there. Yet rather than fade, these words arrayed themselves like a sword blade with a hilt of black ink. Determination whets the sword of character, the logograms read.

  She took up the sword and bowed to Zheng. “If one must bow,” Gaunt told her, “bow low and make it count. So it’s said.”

  In truth, she couldn’t hear her own words, for all sound was dimmed. She raised her sword of calligraphy and strode to the crystal barrier. Where she’d fired arrows, there lay ragged cracks. The jeweled archive tried to assault her mind, but she heard nothing, insulated by Zheng’s Living Calligraphy.

  Meeting the barrier, she swung the sword of words, and bits of the wall shattered. She covered her face with her off-hand, but shards still stung. With them came glimpses of other lives. She beheld a green land and a fur-clad people hunting a mastodon. She witnessed a strange, short folk painting the outlines of their hands onto rocks. She saw peculiar saurian humanoids raising corkscrewing towers beside a narrow sea. A part of her wished to become lost in time, to know all these unwritten histories.

  A cold resolution, woven into her thoughts, yanked her back like a tether across the abyss of days. Then she was Gaunt again, striking at the wall.

  Now Flint stood beside her, his saber drawn and glowing like a crescent moon, also hacking at the barrier. It seemed to her that with each swing a metallic screeching babbled unintelligible words into the desert air, a new voice for each attack. She had no time to wonder at this, for her own arm ached to destroy what kept her from Bone.

  At last they clove a gap.

  Bone’s eyes blinked at Gaunt through his cocoon of crystal. She imagined him saying, It was foolish to come back for me. She imagined responding, How could I not show you my sword made of words?

  Flint had followed; he frowned at his palely glowing saber. “I fear that Crypttongue will slay Bone as soon as free him.”

  Gaunt’s eyes widened, for she recognized the name. She saw that Bone’s did too. But she simply raised her weapon of shining words. “Then stand aside, for I must try.”

  She swung.

  She circled him, hacking, trusting that the sword of her own determination would not harm her lover. Shards flew. She bled upon the sands. The same sands were once rocks beside a disappearing sea. Within that sea strange octopus-like beings, crooning in their emerald majesty, inhabited obsidian citadels in the shape of sailing ships. Lesser beings crewed their vessels, meeping rodent-things, hulking ancestors of the saurian folk, insectoids reminiscent of scarab beetles. Their age was passing, and they would encode their knowledge into the crystal trees beside the shore, that none would forget their majesty. It seemed to Gaunt that her blood was a doorway into time, and through its red medium she beheld onyx eyes regarding her coldly. A wind blew across the ages from their aeon to hers, and with it came the message that she was a nothing, an afterthought; what could she say that would justify refusing their gift of jeweled entombment?

  She thought, I can say, “It’s for a reason when the wind gusts from an empty cave.” I can say, “It’s better to bend in the wind than to break.” I can say, “When the wind blows its changes, you may build walls, but I will build windmills.”

  All the endless proverbs and idioms that embellished Qiangguo’s language, and that had shut her out like a thicket, she now embraced as shelter in the mind-storm. And were such aphorisms, when all was said, not the greatest works of civilization? Whatever, they were human sentiments, and they pulled her back to the human world.

  “Gaunt . . .” Bone was rasping. “Gaunt . . . we’d best get out of here. I wrenched my foot escaping the last of that damned crystal . . . don’t believe I can carry you . . .”

  He was free, save for a dusting of crystal, and his arms were around her.

  “Flint is here, so let us both help you.”

  They fled the keening place of living crystal, trying not to look at the skeletons interred within the branches.

  When they were at last near camp Bone said, “Thank you, Gaunt . . . all of you. I thought I was lost in ancient memories. I saw horrors, like things of another iteration of creation. . . . We glimpsed things like this once in a hall of mermaids, Gaunt.”

  “Yes, I remember. Perhaps their memories reach back farther than humanity’s.” Gaunt shivered, sharing some of Bone’s chill. “It is somewhat frightening to imagine that this world once belonged to things nothing like ourselves.”

  “That is not what I find somewhat frightening,” muttered Quilldrake.

  “Then what is?” said Zheng.

  “I think our camels have disappeared.”

  “They will know to look for water,” Quilldrake said, after the travelers circled the camp, calling out uselessly. “If they were terrified by night noises, they’ll likely have fled to the nearest water source. Unfortunately.”

  “Why unfortunately?” said Gaunt.

  “The nearest water source,” Flint said, “is Hvam, the haunted city.”

  “They won’t have the sense to avoid such a place?” Bone asked.

  Quilldrake said, “Camels won’t be frightened by human ghost stories. Perhaps we shouldn’t be either. Though Flint and I have never dared. We’ve always skirted it in favor of an oasis one day beyond.”

  “How will we fare without the water?” Gaunt asked.

  Neither treasure hunter answered.

  “I see,” said Bone. “Well, do we make our desperate attempt by night, or by day?”

  “Night,” said Flint.

  “Day,” said Quilldrake.

  “Wonderful,” said Snow Pine.

  “I suspect Quilldrake feels the need to recuperate,” Bone said. “As do I. My foot still winces. Otherwise I’d concur with Flint.”

  “Without the waterskins,” Flint said, “we won’t last long. Night travel will help our chances.”

  “You haven’t experienced the clutch of the crystal,” Quilldrake said. “Bone and I won’t be good for much travel, not until we rest. I regret wasting the night, but wait we must.”

  “Is there not another alternative?” Widow Zheng said. “Each of you treasure hunters knows the way to this haunted city. Let Quilldrake stay with Bone, Gaunt, and Snow Pine, and I’ll accompany Flint through the night. The rest of you, catch up as you can. If we’re successful we’ll lead the camels back toward you.”

  “That could work,” Flint admitted. “Though I’m reluctant to split our band. And with the greatest respect, Grandmother, our last stretch will surely be by day, and speed is called for. You’ll be better off here.”

  “I will go,” Snow Pine said. “I don’t know the desert, but I’m wide awake. And I would rather not separate these two.”

  “Are you certain?” Gaunt said. “Bone and I have a way of finding each other again.”

  “I saw you separated from him for much too long. We’ll see each other soon.”

  “All this honor,” Quilldrake muttered. “Self-sacrifice. Courage. I think I will be ill.”

  “It’s only contagious after long exposure,” Bone said.

  “Good luck,” Gaunt said.

  “
I didn’t want to ask, before,” Snow Pine said to Flint, after they’d ascended and jogged down perhaps ten dunes, “but how far to this place?”

  “The rest of the night, I think,” Flint said, “and half the day.”

  “A tiring trip.”

  “With a haunted city for our reward!”

  “I’m glad to be doing something. It’s hard for me to sit still when there’s trouble.”

  “I can believe that. You have a restless look.”

  “You should talk. Most men I’ve known seek riches, or at least a place in the world. Except the few who abandon the world. But you’re in some strange place in between. You want knowledge.”

  “Indeed. What confuses me is why the compulsion isn’t more common. Here we are in a world of wonders, and people are content to stare down at their feet. Look up, Snow Pine! Thousands upon thousands of stars, and if you were to look through a spyglass, you’d see an order of magnitude more. What wonders must be out there. And what past wonders lie in the sands beneath our feet? We weren’t made to crawl about in the same hovels age after age, nor numbly chew the same roots. We were made to learn, and record what we learn, so that our descendants may learn even more.”

  “Well, you are like other men I’ve known, in one respect. You like to talk.”

  “My apologies. I do go on.”

  “I did not say I minded.”

  That shut him up. She did not mind that either. But he was interesting company, even as a silent presence. She was not above enjoying it.

  They passed over a flatter region of sands, and cold breezes stole their voices for a time. They passed a monumental spire of rock, jabbing gashes into the starfield, and the wind ceased for a time. She heard Flint’s prayer of thanks. Thank you for this night, she thought he murmured, you who whirl the days.

  “So,” Snow Pine said. “You pray to a god?”

  Flint looked at her. It was hard to tell in the starlight, but she thought he smiled a little, though his voice was wary. “Why do you ask?”

  Snow Pine smiled back. “So you can try to convert me. That’s what every devout Westerner wants to do, isn’t it?”