Snow Pine looked through the darkness and saw three wrapped, shambling figures moving through the ghosts toward her.
“We have to move!” Snow Pine said.
The three of them advanced along the wall after Zheng, but the ghosts kept them from making much progress. Bone threw a dagger at one of the wrapped mummies. It stuck between glowing red eye-sockets. The mummy kept coming.
“Almost there,” Bone began after a time. Then: “No . . .”
A fourth mummy blocked their path, standing within the passage Zheng and Deadfall had traveled.
“Very well,” Bone said, “I’ll distract him. Run!”
“You’re not allowed to die here!” Gaunt said, dispatching a ghost.
“No one stays behind,” Snow Pine agreed. “We stay together and trust to luck.”
As she spoke, the fourth mummy chuckled and reached into a pack at its feet. It pulled out some manner of discus and flung it at a nearby ghost.
The spirit sighed and crumpled, and its substance dispersed like a flock of doves.
Snow Pine heard the fourth mummy chant, in her native language, “‘Travel on, travel on, cross the river of perception, and know at last the other side.’”
The mummy—whom she was beginning to doubt really was a mummy—threw another discus, and another ghost dissipated. The group reached the thrower’s side, and the stranger pulled the wrappings from its head. Snow Pine saw now that the wrappings were simply paper.
“Ah, this is enjoyable,” said the mummy, clearly a living man, “but we must be escaping. Deadfall and Widow Zheng await us.”
“Who are you?” Gaunt demanded.
“I’ve had many names. Dorje. Surgun. Yi. Perhaps you know me as Mad Katta.”
“Deadfall’s master?” Bone said.
“Let’s compare karma later, eh?” Snow Pine said.
“Follow me,” Katta said.
They retreated down the tunnel. Snow Pine struck its side, and collapsing sand sealed off the graveyard. Now they were alone.
“Unwise,” Katta said, though he kept walking.
“It buys us a moment. Who are you, really?”
“A friend. You need friends, if you are to escape the realm of the Engulfed. Come, our companions are already aboard the ship of glass.”
They reached a remnant of the buried village where timber posts formed the suggestion of a pier. Beyond it was a twisted monument of black crystal.
Snow Pine had seen many vessels during her time in Qiangguo’s capital. She had seen great voyaging junks, sleek dhows, crowded galleons from places as far away as Mirabad and Kpalamaa. But she had never seen any craft like this. It was as though a three-masted ship had been assembled from leaves and thorns and branches of some brambly growth—and then transmuted to black glass. She felt lacerated just looking at it.
“Who made this?” she asked.
“Leviathan Minds,” Katta said. “Beings of nearly forgotten aeons, whose realm lies buried beneath the sands.”
“I remember,” Bone whispered. “When I was imprisoned in the crystal forest, I saw them. They were minds unlike ours, wise in magic, beyond human notions of good or evil.”
“The dwellers of the lost town remember them,” Gaunt said, raising Crypttongue and frowning at its pommel. “I hear them murmuring to me, warning me of the Leviathans’ power.”
Snow Pine looked at her friends. “You two make me nervous.”
“Says the woman with Monkey’s staff,” Gaunt said.
Snow Pine shrugged.
“You are an intriguing group,” said Katta. “Alas, we must postpone conversation.” He pointed down the way they’d come.
Howling ghosts were shimmering their way through the wall of sand.
He gestured toward a boarding ramp that lay before them like a giant obsidian sword. Striding up, he added, “I suggest the armed women stand ready. No offense, sir.”
“None taken!” Bone said.
As they reached the deck, Snow Pine saw Zheng kneeling before a blank scroll, ink block out, pen at the ready. Deadfall was swishing beside a ship’s wheel that seemed fashioned of ruby, its eight jabbing points reminiscent of an oversized shuriken from the Five Islands.
“All is in readiness, Lord Katta,” the carpet said.
“I told you not to call me that, old friend.” Katta gripped the ruby wheel, hands landing upon two of the points. Snow Pine winced. Katta seemed unperturbed as his blood dripped upon the wheel.
Strange light, as of trapped fireflies, glowed within the red crystal.
“Intriguing,” said Gaunt.
“You’ve not seen the half of it.”
“Are you all right, Grandmother?” Bone said to Zheng with unexpected politeness, bowing in the manner of Qiangguo.
“Shut up and let me work, boy,” said Zheng.
“You said it takes weeks to make a scroll of Living Calligraphy.”
“And so you’re preventing me from getting started?”
Bone raised his hands and backed away. Snow Pine turned away herself and stood at the top of the ramp . . . except that it wasn’t a ramp anymore. Somehow it had silently been drawn up onto the deck, the jagged railing swinging shut against the opening. There being no obvious point to guard, she simply stood, waiting. Gaunt stepped beside her.
“I had not expected us to become like a pair of doomed warriors in some ballad,” Gaunt said.
“Nor I,” Snow Pine said. “You know, our stories about magical weapons usually end badly.”
“Ours too.”
“Well, however it ends, I’m glad to stand beside you, my friend.”
Gaunt squeezed her shoulder.
The ship shuddered, and crimson light flared behind them. Snow Pine would have turned to look, but at that moment the screaming ghosts arrived. The mummies weren’t far behind.
Like a howling wave the spirits flowed up the side of the craft.
A proud-looking, transparent man loomed over Snow Pine. She bowed to him and disintegrated him. Beside her Gaunt stabbed a misty woman, whose form flowed into the gray sword.
“Sir!” Snow Pine heard Katta say. “You possess good aim! Employ the weapons in yonder pouch.”
Snow Pine swung the meteoritic staff, and ghosts erupted into light. But it seemed to her that some of the ghosts beyond her and Gaunt’s reach began shattering like old ice.
All at once the ship lurched forward, and she and Gaunt tumbled. The ghosts wailed in sudden panic as the glass vessel surged toward a wall of sand. The spirits fled just as impact came.
Yet there was no impact as such, for the sand flowed around them like the dust of a sandstorm. In a moment the ship was entirely encircled by darkness; the feeling of movement did not abate but actually increased.
“A ship that sails beneath the sands,” Snow Pine breathed.
“A relic of lost aeons,” Gaunt murmured.
“Cakes!” Bone said.
The women turned and saw Bone scowling at an orange sweetcake. “They are cakes, and yet they destroy ghosts.”
“It is truth, not baking, that dispatches things of evil,” said Katta at the wheel. Now it glowed like a molten thing, yet the man still displayed no hint of pain. “The greater the ill-will, the greater the inner torment. I seek to reveal that reality to those who haunt the land. On the Plateau of Geam I learned the art of imbuing offering-cakes with blessings. Although,” Katta added with a hint of pride, “the discus shape is my own innovation.”
“All hail Great Katta,” said Deadfall.
Zheng dipped a bit of ink upon her scroll. “I thank you, Great Katta, for keeping the ship mostly steady. I will also thank you to explain what the hell is going on.”
“My name is not Great Katta,” said the man at the wheel. “Nor is Lord Katta or Mighty Katta or Holy Katta or any such elaboration. I will accept Mad Katta, because it has a certain charm, in a way that Blind Katta never did.”
“You are blind?” Bone asked. “That is surely not true.”
&
nbsp; “It is. I am blessed, or cursed, with a form of second Sight, allowing me to perceive things awash in negative karma. In situations such as this, I am hampered very little! And yet, were I to throw myself endlessly against the monsters of this world, filling my Sight with horrors, I should in time fully earn the title ‘Mad.’”
“You are not mad,” Deadfall said. “You challenge evil, and I am forever in your debt. But how came you to survive the mummies near Qushkent?”
“I might have the same question for you, friend carpet. I was dragged deep into the desert, where the Leviathan Minds yet hold sway, feeble in comparison to their ancient powers, yet still dangerous. I am not entirely unfamiliar with those realms. When I was younger and more reckless I explored many a vile catacomb, where evil thoughts left their residue upon the passageways, allowing me to dimly ‘see.’ Dangerous roads, but knowledge of them has made me greatest of travelers along the Braid of Spice. And on rare occasions I have managed to take one of these—a ship of the Leviathan Imperium.”
“I have more questions than there are grains of sand swirling about us,” Gaunt said.
“You are not alone in that,” said Katta.
“Perhaps a trade,” Bone said, “one for one?”
“Very well. What do you seek, and why?”
“That’s two,” Snow Pine said, feeling a trust in Mad Katta that surprised her, “so answer two in return. We seek the Silk Map, so we can bear a treasure of ironsilk to Lady Monkey whose staff I bear.”
“Indeed?” Widow Zheng said, looking up from her scroll.
Katta’s eyebrows raised. “That is an ample answer, and I will be accordingly generous.”
“Then who are you, anyway? And why do you seek the map?”
“He is a holy man,” said Deadfall. “He gave me purpose and friendship when I lacked everything.”
“Deadfall,” said Katta, “I am many things, but I am not holy. Nevertheless I seek the holy. I am an itinerant of the Dust on the Mirror.”
“You serve the Undetermined, then,” Bone said.
“I follow in his footsteps, in my own meandering way. I was once an apprentice shaman of they the Karvaks call the Reindeer People. But I heard the teachings of the Undetermined and all that changed. I have had . . . many false starts, and perhaps even now I am not on precisely the correct path. Yet the Undetermined remains my polestar.”
“What, then, is your interest in the map?” Gaunt asked.
“You repeat an earlier question, so I will not count that. The map points the way to a land of enlightenment.”
“Xembala,” said Zheng.
“Yes. I have never reached that place, but I am sure it exists. I do not want it tormented by outsiders. I know that the vile beings called the Charstalkers have been seeking Xembala for too long. I must oppose them. I believe that this is the purpose that the Thresholders intend for me. Now, a question for you—why do you serve Monkey?”
“She has an answer,” Snow Pine said, “for the question that haunts Gaunt, Bone, and me. How do we find a particular magic scroll lost beneath the eastern sea? The scroll that contains our children.”
“Wait a minute!” Zheng said. “I travel with you for weeks, share battle with you, risk everything, and you never say this? But this fellow comes along and you blab all your secrets?”
“I apologize, Zheng. I just feel time is short and that we can trust him.” The answer sounded inadequate, even to her. Yet what she’d said was true. It was as though all her self-understanding was like the sunlit opening of a cave, with strange depths unlit behind her. Every friendship she had ever had—even her marriage—was like lighting a campfire near that entrance. Her relationships had thrown flickering light upon the deepest parts of her, but nothing had come clear.
But the eyes of this not-holy man were like bright lanterns, as though they reached the deepest parts of her and did not turn away. She found the sensation uncomfortable, but she could not turn away either. “We have been seeking a way to it, and to them, in vain, and only the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, the Wondrous Lady Monkey, seems confident of helping us. But her price is the Iron Moths of Xembala.”
“I know legends of Monkey,” Zheng said. “She was not trustworthy.”
“I have heard of her also,” said Katta, “and while it is often said she was impetuous and foolish and destructive, it was never said that she was a liar.”
“This is what we are reduced to, however,” Gaunt said, “dealings with untrustworthy demigods.”
“We will not give up,” Bone said.
“Do you know of a way, Mad Katta?” Snow Pine asked. “A means of reaching our children?”
“Not as such,” said the wanderer. “But I will say this: the masters of Xembala are said to possess great wisdom. It may be that in following Monkey’s quest you will find another answer to your own. And now I know my next question. Will you share your pieces of the Silk Map?”
Even Zheng left off her scroll work to see the bright, shimmering pieces of the dress set down upon the black deck. The patch that Quilldrake had worn lay above the lower portion retrieved from the grave. There was a thin strip from the second piece that ascended to near Quilldrake’s fragment. They touched in just one point, a place representing a mountain at the edge of a mist-filled chasm.
Katta kept one hand on the ship’s wheel as he tossed a rolled-up third fragment to Gaunt. This was a fragment that would have covered chest and belly. It fit snugly with the other two.
Bone squinted. “Do you see it, Gaunt? The dress, the map, is oriented so head would be north, and feet south. The upper parts look like the deserts along the Braid, but the lower . . .”
“It shows a great mountain range,” Gaunt agreed. “And a huge plateau. Yet . . . I have never seen a map that presented that jagged valley cutting through the peaks.”
“I haven’t either,” said Snow Pine. “Hey, at one end of the valley, do you see the characters for ‘iron’ and ‘silk’? As tiny as can be?”
“Yes,” Zheng said with the air of someone hearing far-off music. “That is where we’re going.”
“To a chasm?” Bone said.
“To Xembala,” Katta said. “I’ve been certain of its existence for a long while, since the day I first found my section of the map.”
“Strange,” Snow Pine said, staring at the dress. “I’d never quite visualized it as both map and clothing before now. It’s almost as if the wearer—Xia, was it?—almost as if she were here with us.”
“Yes,” Zheng murmured, staring at the fabric. “Strange . . . there. Do you see?” She pointed at the interface of the three fragments. “That mountain at the edge of the chasm, the one that vaguely resembles a bird. That is the site of Qushkent.”
Gaunt ran his finger along the ironsilk. “That’s the direction most of the Karvaks were flying.”
Katta chuckled to himself. “Flying Karvaks! The wonders of phenomena never cease to amaze.”
“And look more closely,” Zheng continued. “If you peer here, you see a line drawn from the beak of the bird, down to the valley floor.”
“A secret passage?” Bone said.
“The implication of one, at any rate,” Gaunt agreed. “Without all these pieces there, it would be easy to dismiss any segment of the line as a flaw in the artwork. But with all together the intention is clear.”
“Lady Steelfox,” Snow Pine said. “She saw only the upper two fragments, not Katta’s. She can’t be as certain as we are that this is the way to proceed.”
“I think she has a fairly good guess,” Bone said. “And she may not even need the hidden path, not with her—”
He was cut off by the mummified hands that grabbed his throat.
One of the arcane mummies, shrouded in its pale leathery wrappings, must have gotten aboard back at the lost village. Snow Pine was angry with herself. Like it or not, fate had made a warrior of her, and she should have been more watchful. She raised the meteoritic staff as Gaunt drew Crypttongue. Zheng gra
bbed Katta’s sackful of enchanted cakes. The mummy backed away, careful to hold the gasping and flailing Bone before it like a shield.
Katta said, never moving from his post, “I advise no sudden moves, my friends. This entity can snap a neck as easily as snapping its fingers. Begone, creature! There is nothing for you here.”
The mummy did not respond, except to point with its right hand, aiming at a direction to Katta’s left. Its left hand was still sufficient to immobilize Bone.
“You wish me to turn the ship in that direction?”
The mummy nodded.
“Do your masters await us there?”
Another nod.
Bone was by now shaking his head as much as possible, which was only an inch or so to either side.
“Are its masters the Leviathan Minds?” Gaunt said.
“They surely mean us no good,” Snow Pine said.
“Life is ultimately an illusion,” Katta said, turning the ship to match the mummy’s chosen heading. “As are physical threats. But there is no merit in allowing this creature to kill an innocent.”
Bone gasped something.
“Don’t be pedantic, Bone!” snapped Gaunt. “Of course you’re innocent. Relatively speaking. Let him go, thing.”
The mummy rasped words unknown, in a language unspoken for centuries. It relaxed its hold on Bone, but the thief stayed put.
They traveled for hours, at a speed Snow Pine could not estimate but which she suspected was swift indeed. She wondered about the people of Shahuang, and about the camels, which she would surely never see again. She wondered about Quilldrake and Flint, traveling with the strange, proud Karvak leader. Likely she’d never see them either. She found herself wishing Flint could comfort her in the matter of Flint’s loss, which was a peculiar daydream to be having, on many levels.
Stop daydreaming! she told herself. Look for a way out!
It occurred to her she could not see Deadfall anywhere. She shifted a little, seeking the carpet. The mummy edged backward at her motion. Peering in that direction, she saw a dark rectangular shape against the black crystal deck, almost impossible to see in the dim light. How long had it been there?
The Silk Map Page 24
