She spun.
The doorway into this chamber was off-center, and thus directly opposite the statue was a wall. On it was a painting that closely resembled the enlightened image. It was more faded-looking than anything else in the chamber.
Gaunt approached it, as the sounds of Karvaks neared. It was a near-perfect match for the statue, except that one hand pointed toward a star high up the wall.
“Quilldrake, boost me up!”
They heard sounds at the crossroads overhead as Gaunt teetered on Quilldrake’s shoulders and pressed the painted star. At once the ragged image of the holy figure rumbled sideways and a door stood revealed.
Quilldrake knelt, letting Gaunt off. “Hurry,” he said.
Gaunt, Quilldrake, and Zheng slipped into the hidden corridor as the door ground shut. Soon after they heard a beautiful language twisted by angry throats. Weapons pounded upon walls.
The hidden corridor slanted both upward and down. By unspoken agreement, the three slowly moved up. At last they could no longer hear the Karvaks.
“Well,” Zheng said, “it seems we’re entombed alive. At least the end was exciting.”
“Perhaps it’s what I deserve,” Gaunt said.
“Nonsense, both of you,” Quilldrake said. “Persimmon Gaunt, you were in the dark, facing hostile invaders, when someone attacked you. You responded in fear. Such incidents happen whenever soldiers march.”
“He meant only to stop me. And to keep me from crying out.”
“Even so, no blame attaches to you.”
“I am not so sure. I think perhaps the blame began when I took up a life that required the blade and the bow.”
“I’m not your confessor, but this old treasure hunter would absolve you if he could. Meanwhile—Zheng, be glad of my occupation! I’ve heard of ancient temples of the Dusters, with their negative spaces.”
“Negative what?” Zheng asked.
“Captain Yang spoke of special spaces for esoteric teachings. Well, secret areas such as this are just such spaces. They were also fine places for temple treasure. Perhaps here we’ll find the map—”
“That’s the first thing you think of?” Gaunt said. “When your friend Flint is probably a prisoner here?”
“Not at all, not at all. For the negative spaces were also good for spying on the less enlightened. Follow me.”
They ascended to the level of the upper corridors and found that Quilldrake was right. While these regions were largely unadorned, here and there they possessed paintings that resembled scrolls of religious instruction. On this side it was easy to perceive the doorways such images marked. There were also many peculiar concavities, inversions of the statues of the Undetermined and the Thresholders. Thin eye-slits allowed one to peer into the public chambers.
Gaunt peered through one such mask and beheld Karvaks moving through the corridors. Zheng clicked softly at her Living Calligraphy, and it went out like a snuffed candle. Now they proceeded through the dark.
Quilldrake was disappointed in his treasure hunting, for the secret chambers seemed devoid of goods. He could not help swearing now and then under his breath. Gaunt allowed herself a grim satisfaction at that. Something about the treasure hunter angered her this night.
Perhaps, she thought, it was the anger of recognition.
At one point Zheng looked through spy-eyes and gasped excitedly. She tugged Gaunt over and pointed. Through the slits Gaunt could see a chamber filled with faded paintings of a peacock-crowded, fountain-filled paradise, but that was not the cause of the gasp. Many objects were collected here, including Snow Pine’s dao sword and Liron Flint’s magical saber, the sword Crypttongue. No guards were in evidence.
“There is a doorway not far from here,” Quilldrake said. “We can recover the weapons.”
Gaunt said, “We’d best find the wielders first.”
“Of course.”
Three reverse-statues later, Quilldrake’s thirst for treasure was still unquenched, but they found their companions. In a chamber lit by a torch-bearing Karvak guard, Snow Pine and Flint lay asleep. The walls were painted with myriad and contradictory visions of hells, and Gaunt imagined she saw demons gawking and souls writhing. A second guard bore not a torch but a spear.
The companions conspired in a dark antechamber. “Zheng,” Gaunt said, “you said you have only three more scrolls of Living Calligraphy. Do any of them shed light?”
“Yes, but I have just one more of those.”
“That is all we will need. Now here’s my plan . . .”
From the beginning of Snow Pine’s sojourn with the Karvaks, she contemplated fighting. She’d clutched the dao-sword tight when the Karvak princess, a young woman roughly her own age, began her pronouncement about guests. Snow Pine had no desire to be such a guest, but she’d doubted her ability to defeat so many Karvaks. Flint, however . . .
“You have a magic sword,” she’d whispered in the critical moment.
“Crypttongue is formidable . . .” Flint had begun.
“But not that formidable?”
“I’m an explorer, not some warrior-mage of old. To give the blade what it requires, to fight off so many . . . no.”
“I don’t understand you,” Snow Pine said, “but I trust you.”
“I’m honored.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
They had set down their weapons.
The Karvaks had proven kindly captors. Their offers of horse milk and dried meat stood in livid contrast to the pyramids of skulls. Likewise, their preparations of five great blue canvases, at the direction of a tall, sprightly fellow in a white robe and turban, did not seem at all like the business of a marauding horde.
A person almost as out of place as the man in the turban had approached the “guests,” an individual whose gender Snow Pine could not initially guess, a bow-wielder of the northern taiga, sweating in a blue Karvak robe with silver charms hanging over it. This individual had stared and pointed at Snow Pine and Flint in a disconcerting fashion, before walking away.
“What in the world?”
“Show no fear, Snow Pine. That is the Official Starer. People think everyone surrenders to the Karvaks because of military might, but the true power is in the Starers. Whole cities have capitulated to avoid being looked at in that way.”
Snow Pine had glimpsed their visitor across the ruin studying their weapons and staring back once more. Snow Pine broke into laughter. “I am glad to have your company.”
“Likewise.”
“The Official Starer seems interested in your magic sword.”
“It does get attention.”
“Gaunt and Bone seemed to know it by reputation.”
“It’s an uncomfortable thing, carrying a sword more famous than yourself.” He had said no more.
Soon they’d beheld five blue gasbags swelling above five Karvak gers. Flame shot from openings at the tops of the tents to heat the air within the blue envelopes. Miraculously, nothing ignited. Or perhaps miracles had nothing to do with it; Snow Pine glimpsed hints of blazing triple-eyes within the fires.
“Yes,” said a voice beside them in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell. “I have harnessed demonic powers for my balloons. And I have enlisted Karvak Wind-Tamers—and one taiga shaman—to guide them. In this way do I compromise my natural philosophy. But I must fly.”
The speaker was a spindly man wearing a long white tunic and an orange two-wrap turban. His brown, mustachioed face was animated by an energetic, youthful bearing, though Snow Pine noted crow’s feet and dark circles around his eyes.
“My name is Haytham ibn Zakwan ibn Rihab, though you may call me Haytham.”
Snow Pine was in no mood to pretend this was a teahouse, but Flint spoke first, introducing them and adding, “Pleasant to meet you here in a lifeless desert, surrounded by Karvak warriors.”
“Likewise,” said Haytham. He smiled at Snow Pine. “And charmed, beautiful one.”
“Save it for the Charstalkers,” Snow
Pine said.
“My companion hasn’t had one of her best days,” Flint said.
“I quite understand, Master Flint.”
“Just Flint. You say you’re a natural philosopher? You seek the world’s secrets, without recourse to magic?”
“Yes!” Years seemed to blow away from Haytham like sand. “I am used to blank looks all around. Are you an empiricist as well?”
“Not precisely.” Snow Pine saw Flint struggle for modesty. “I am an explorer. I can’t claim to be a pure researcher, as fame and fortune do factor into my calculations.”
“You don’t say, Liron,” Snow Pine put in.
Haytham studied her anew. “Your companion . . . even her mockery is music.”
“I enjoy that music regularly,” Flint said.
“I’m right here,” Snow Pine said.
“And I do deserve her mockery,” Flint continued, “for I am perhaps just a greedy treasure hunter with pretensions.”
“Ah, that might describe me as well,” Haytham said. “One must make concessions in terms of patronage and methods. But the essence—the advancement of human knowledge—that remains pure. You are clearly willing to employ magic as well, Flint. Is that not the very sword of Younus that our delightful shaman is poking at?”
“If you know the sword’s history, Haytham, then you will respect why I’d rather not discuss it.”
Snow Pine said, “Maybe I’d like to discuss it—”
“Perhaps,” said Haytham, “we should wait for a time less full of eavesdroppers. . . . Ah, at last we have lift! Behold!” Haytham beamed and strode toward the swelling balloons.
“Look at them, Snow Pine. Flying craft . . . genuine flying craft. . . .”
“With Karvaks in them, Flint.”
The aerial fleet floated northeast, over desert that became increasingly rocky but no less lifeless. While one of the blue balloons was marked with Lady Steelfox’s standard—not a fox, as it happened, but a falcon—the Lady herself rode in an unmarked craft, her “guests” beside her. Haytham was elsewhere, but the staring shaman was aboard the cramped ger, along with several warriors.
Within a rune-inscribed central brazier, a Charstalker writhed. From time to time triple glares focused on the travelers.
“They are loathsome company,” Lady Steelfox said, “but we had difficulty creating a portable method of lift. Haytham calls such magical impositions ‘shortcuts.’ I tolerate them, as I tolerate these ‘portholes’ he carved into good Karvak felt.”
“The Charstalker is a somewhat dramatic shortcut,” Flint observed.
“Well, I suppose I am a dramatic person.”
“What are you doing out here, Lady Steelfox?” Snow Pine said. “This can’t be a pleasure trip.”
“Because we Karvaks are simply monsters, with no idea of pleasure? Don’t bother answering, it is on your face. I don’t expect anything else from a daughter of Qiangguo. But I’ll answer. I seek a lost treasure. The clues to the treasure may lie in a fragmented map, painted on silk . . . ah, I see in your eyes you’ve heard of this. Perhaps it’s not an accident that you’re out in the desert, so near to the Cave of a Thousand Illuminations. No? No matter. We will see what we will see.”
“You go to the cave now?” Flint asked.
“Indeed. If we time matters correctly we’ll arrive in the night and secure the ancient temple. We’ll learn all there is to learn and be gone before anyone is wiser.”
“Leaving our dead bodies behind, no doubt,” Snow Pine said.
“You insult me. If it’s the bloodthirsty face of the Karvaks you want, I’ll show you the door. It’s ever thus with your kind. You provoke us for ninety-nine years, and if we finally chastise you in the hundredth, you call it a century of Karvak terror.”
“Provoke, nothing! You invade and steal, because you’re too lazy to make something of your lands.”
“Bah! We never wanted to steal, not at first. We wanted safe havens for trade. It’s Qiangguo that keeps trying to choke us off.”
“So if people refuse to trade with you, you have the right to murder them?”
“Perhaps,” Flint said, “these are historical matters which have no bearing—”
“Enough,” said Steelfox. “My sister keeps saying I’m too soft, and perhaps she’s right. Men, bind and gag these people who insult hospitality, and set them beside the Charstalker. So much for ‘civilized’ folk.”
Snow Pine spent the rest of the journey furious at Flint for not employing his sword’s powers to the fullest, at the Charstalker for singeing her shoulders, and at Steelfox for being a Karvak. As night fell her temper cooled with the air. What she’d said was true, of course, but it had been impolitic to throw it in their captors’ faces. She must restrain herself, if their restraints were ever removed.
Such a development seemed far off, however; for even once they’d landed they remained bound, carried by Karvak soldiers into a tunnel framed by two enormous statues. Inside, torchlight revealed a shimmering, swirling fantasia of painted beings, from the enlightened to the striving to the benighted to the diabolic. Snow Pine felt thoroughly disoriented, as if she were swimming between worlds.
She’d had time to think, however. She had no weapons, but no one had noticed the needle inserted into her robe above her heart, what Lady Monkey had called a needle for weaving events. She did not know how to call upon it, or what would happen if she did. It would have to be a last resort. But the time of its use might soon be at hand.
At last they were deposited in a chamber with what seemed a hellfire motif, a snarling demon-statue glaring at them under a headdress of skulls. Only then did the Karvaks free them. She and Flint groaned and stretched. The guard by the door, and the torchbearer beside him, said nothing. She supposed they did not speak any of their languages. But she could assume nothing, and thus couldn’t confer with Flint about the fates of their companions.
Soon a third Karvak appeared with food, and Lady Steelfox with him.
“We haven’t found any caretakers to question,” she said without preamble. “Despite our efforts, we must have been spotted. Our search has turned up a secret corridor near the entrance, however. There seems to be a set of hidden chambers, perhaps more extensive than the public ones. If there’s anything to find, we will find it. If you have anything to share, it would please me to hear.”
“Or you’ll torture us?” Snow Pine said.
“Your question reveals more about you than it does about us. I can be a grateful patron, but my patience is not infinite.”
The shaman appeared in the corridor, stared at the prisoners, and spoke in the musical-sounding Karvak tongue.
Steelfox said, “We may have found what we seek. A passage leading to a village buried beneath the sands. It’s surely very old, for the temple inhabitants must have been excavating it before their own end came. We will investigate.”
The door closed behind her. The guards stood impassively.
“It is not actually necessary,” Flint said, “to argue at every turn with the woman who could kill us.”
“Oh! It is all my fault!”
“I did not say that.”
“You implied it. Well, I’m sorry that magic mind-sucking crystals scared off our camels and made us go to a haunted city where we were captured by a horde of flying Karvaks.”
“Apology accepted.”
“You are impossible! You have never been married, no doubt.”
“No, and I am finding myself in no hurry to change that.”
“Ah, such calm detachment. Would it kill you, Liron, to show a little emotion?”
“You mean, you would like me to yell and argue uselessly, instead of calmly analyzing uselessly.”
“Yes!”
“All right, then! We are completely doomed! And it’s all your fault!”
“Thank you!”
“You’re welcome! Now, I suggest, since all our behavior is useless, we get some rest. We may need it soon.”
“Fine
!”
“Fine.”
She did not quite know why she was so angry at him. Or perhaps she did know, and that made her angry too.
To hell with your ‘acceptance,’ dead husband. It’s too soon. Whatever my body may think. And yes, I’m still mad at you.
Mad or not, the thought of him cooled her somewhat, and soon she slept.
Judging by the heat, they had slept well into the day. She woke ahead of Flint, and she gratefully accepted water from the torchbearer. She couldn’t help thanking him, though he merely smiled back.
“Flint, wake up.”
Flint was a fast riser. After a disoriented look around, he said, “All is well?”
“We are still doomed, and it is still my fault.”
“Ah.” He rubbed his eyes. “Perhaps it can be my fault today.”
“You have a deal.”
“Snow Pine.” He took her hand. She stared at his hand taking hers. “I—”
The door opened, and Lady Steelfox returned. There were cuts on her face, and she looked as though she hadn’t slept. “I would discuss . . . oh. I am an unkind host, I see. It is not too much to grant you two privacy, if you—”
“No.”
“No.”
Snow Pine wasn’t sure who broke whose grip first. Steelfox blinked. “Very well. I would like your opinions on a certain matter. Below the desert is a lost village, and I am certain it holds what we seek. That’s because five of my men have been killed by the walking dead who inhabit it.”
“If you want my professional opinion,” Flint said, “some treasures are simply not meant to be found.”
In my opinion five fewer Karvaks is a good start, Snow Pine thought. But she remembered the torchbearer’s smile. “The world is full of things that shouldn’t be disturbed.”
Steelfox nodded. “I might be persuaded to leave it at that. But in my shaman’s opinion, Flint, you carry one such thing. Your sword.”
“Lady Steelfox, I won’t be coy with you,” Flint said. “Crypttongue is a dangerous weapon. It was forged by the legendary King Younus for the slaying of demons.”
“Then it would seem an ideal tool for the matter at hand.”
The Silk Map Page 20
