“You are the wolf,” Gaunt guessed.
“You are correct.”
Bone fled.
He slid down a nearly sheer slope of scree, earning cuts and raising clouds of dust. He shifted himself down a chimney of rock, descended a cliff until it was just safe to jump, ran down a mossy slope where a twitch of imbalance might send him careening into fissures at either hand.
For a while he had the feeling the apparitional Xembalans, Zheng among them, were calling to him, but he had no ears for them, only for Gaunt.
I won’t forgive you this time.
In his gut he wasn’t really fleeing a rocky hill that held his wife but was desperately swimming in a collapsing underground island, the Scroll of Years leaving his hands and carrying his son with it. The green canopy under golden clouds was, in his mind’s eye, the fragmenting substance of the Eastern dragon who had encompassed that island. His son was trapped in another world, and now his wife was captured—not dead, don’t think dead—in a strange, otherworldly place.
He had no notion of direction, only a vague sense of where the palace had gleamed beneath the clouds. From time to time he thought he might have glimpsed a balloon drifting above the branches. He kept running. The undergrowth was not so thick on this side of the river, and Bone was able to make progress, until at last he collapsed.
He must have passed out for a time. The light was as diffuse as always but more concentrated now to the west. He felt a chill. Golden mists writhed around the trees, perhaps an aspect of Xembala he was now permitted to see. From time to time he saw shadowy shapes walking in the same direction, with his gait. Something told him not to hail them, but he could not resist looking.
There stood other versions of himself—haggard-looking in a gray traveling cloak, sans mustache, as he’d appeared in the danker parts of the West; brash and barbaric in a jerkin meant for hot weather, his pale, exposed limbs earning sunburns now that they’d left the shadows of Palmary of the Towers. It was hard to say how accurate these visions were, as he’d only glimpsed himself behind his own eyes. Younger versions of Gaunt walked beside him, laughing, chiding, grasping his hand, pointing ahead. Sun to his moon. She saw herself as grim and gravestuck and he as full of life, but it was he whose heart was shadowed, and hers who blazed.
He had to look away, though he knew the mists shadowed him.
The mists were not the only surprise. When he reached the edge of this forest, he looked out upon cultivated fields.
He saw rectangular stone houses amid terraces of green. Strewn between houses and boulders were ropes bearing hundreds of colorful square flags. He saw goats and cows and yaks. There were no people, however.
The ground was rugged enough that he could run from boulder to terrace to isolated tree, keeping himself mostly hidden. At last he reached a house, its flags rustling upon the ropes leading to its neighbor.
“Good evening!” he called in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell, for day was fading. “You good?” He tried again in his best rendition of a northern dialect. “Peace be upon you,” he tried in the language of Mirabad, and “Hello!” in his own. There was no response. He leaned through an open window and saw no inhabitants, though there was a table set with flatbread, vegetables, and noodles, with a few oranges shining in his sight. His mouth watered.
He’d done much worse than steal food from invisible people, but he restrained himself. He suspected he was not alone. He crept around the house and observed the flags upon the ropes. Many were unmarked, but some bore a vertical script that was somehow familiar. Upon one he saw an illustration of a horse racing through clouds.
Bone shrugged and peeked into the window again.
There was one less orange, and fewer noodles.
Bone waved his arms, jumped on one foot, sang a sea shanty. No one manifested.
He tried to recall one of Mad Katta’s sutras.
He said, “‘Being is as Being does, Nothing is as Nothing was, Being Nothing’s what we do, Nothing Being really true.’ All right, I’m fairly sure that wasn’t it . . .”
There was a strange tremor in the air, and the flags flapped more violently. He felt a pressure and looked down to see an orange in his hand.
He ran.
In the fading light he looked behind himself to see not one but three dark inverted-teardrop shapes in the western sky. His feet took him into high country, past another village much like the last.
For a time it seemed to him that he was paced on one side by a younger version of himself, swishing and jabbing at illusory foes with a stick, and on the other side by Innocence, as he’d seen the boy on their once and only meeting, running with a fighting staff of Qiangguo much too big for him.
You are cruel, spirit of Xembala, he thought, and yet he mourned when the children vanished.
At last he collapsed beside a boulder and ate the orange.
His attempt to sleep was futile. He counted sheep, but they kept swirling around like cloudy mandalas. He rose and stumbled southeast. Luckily there was a pale glow to the sky for much of the night. Eventually he found a road and wandered along it.
A rumbling startled him, and he leapt off the side of the road.
A horse-drawn cart rolled into view, but he saw no driver. Bone stepped onto the road. The horse whinnied and clomped its hooves.
“Being is nothing!” Bone called out. “You good?”
The horse calmed itself. After a moment, Bone felt someone unseen touch him lightly upon the shoulder. He was led toward the wagon and felt much like someone entering a haunted house when he climbed aboard. But surely he was the ghost here.
He saw no reins as the horse continued, but there must be an unseen driver.
They traveled in silence for hours. The pale light faded, but Bone let the driver continue until he judged they were moving off his course. “I must be going,” he tried to say, and the wagon stopped.
“Thank you,” he said and, moved by all this inaudible generosity, he left behind one of his daggers, which could surely prove a valuable tool, even in a peaceful place. He leapt off the cart before the apparition could refuse.
Into the cold night he went, trusting to his ears and his footing. He stumbled more than once. Yet he felt a certain freedom, here on the verge of losing everything, his awareness focused only on the journey.
In the gray, cloudy dawn he beheld, almost directly ahead, the wreckage of a balloon floundered against the southern cliffs. A raptor soared above it.
“Trust a fox,” Bone murmured.
Vultures rustled upon a nearby hill as Bone approached the fallen craft. He glimpsed a pair of human bodies up there in a state that surely pleased the birds. He looked away.
The once-flying ger was trapped between large boulders flush to the cliff face, like a bit of food stuck in a titan’s teeth.
He saw Liron Flint watching the valley, eyes shadowed as one who has not slept in days. Haytham ibn Zakwan was looking over gear recovered from the balloon, cursing to himself. A woman in gray who reminded Bone of Mad Katta was sitting cross-legged, eyes shut. Snow Pine stood beside the one Bone believed to be Lady Steelfox. They were regarding the collapsed envelope and arguing. There was no sign of Quilldrake.
Bone crept closer to overhear the dispute.
“You dismiss all my suggestions out of hand,” Snow Pine said, “but consider them seriously when Flint makes them. You reject me because of my background. Am I a person to you, or an emblem?”
The Karvak princess answered, “You were an emblem, woman of Qiangguo, the moment you stepped through the Jade Gate. Of course you embody your Empire, out here—what was that?”
Bone heard it too. There was a scuffling sound amid the rocks, and although the crash survivors looked his way, the sounds did not belong to him. He turned just in time to avoid a blade-thrust.
Facing him was a cloaked warrior with a serrated blade.
He rolled between two rocks and emerged into the crash site. His opponent followed.
A
curious thing occurred or, rather, did not occur. The survivors did not see the fight. As Bone and his foe circled each other, looking for the moment to lunge, the others said:
“A dust devil?”
“An earthquake?”
“Ghosts?”
“It is I, Bone!” he called to them.
But the enemy answered, “They cannot hear you. You have been brought into the reality of the valley, as I once again have, at long last.”
“You! I know your voice. You’re the one from my homeland.”
“That is not who I truly am,” she said, “any more than you, thief. We are now only what we are.”
She jabbed; he evaded. He thrust; she rolled backward. On her feet in an eyeblink she said, “You are the man who serves Lady Monkey, in hopes she will restore your child. I am the woman who serves the valley, though the inhabitants think me mad.”
“And you oppose my finding my child?”
“You cannot. You threaten the valley. Even if you take but one Iron Moth from this place, you will inspire others to come.”
He dropped low and kicked; she leapt and pounced. Again, the dance.
He said, “You would seem to be too late.”
“The Karvaks can be defeated, or assimilated. And this time, less of the Silk Map will remain Outside.”
“I swear we have no interest in returning to Xembala.”
“What of your son? He is linked to the vital breath of Qiangguo itself.”
“How can you know this?”
“The Fraternity of the Hare hears many things, in many places. We’ve learned how to sever ears and let their owners still hear through them. We’ve explored deep places of the world and learned to raise up monstrosities long dead. We’ve made pacts with Charstalkers and Leviathan Minds. We know much. And we’ve learned there are those who would wish your son to become an emperor.”
“They can wish all they want,” Bone said, “but to me, palaces are merely more elaborate jails. Innocence will be far away and free of such obligations.”
“If he will not serve them, they will kill him, to release the vital breath for another.”
“They must go through us first.”
She flung sand at his eyes. He shut them just in time, leaping upon a boulder.
The others present looked this way and that, trying to understand the source of the disturbance, all except the shaman, who began to chant in a low voice.
“You are two people,” the one-eared warrior said. “In the end, you will acquiesce. And the new emperor of Qiangguo will know of this land. I know what emperors do.”
“You claim to know us all so well. I do not even know your name.”
She hesitated. “I am called Dolma.”
“Did you have a name in the old country?”
“It has been so long that even Xembala seems to me ‘the old country.’ But as a girl in the West, I was Violante.”
“They are both lovely names.”
“They are names, and thus merely convenient illusions.”
“How did you come to be in Xembala?”
“What is the point of your questions? We are enemies.”
“Life is illusion in transition, so what is the point of anything? Was yours a merchant family?”
“Yes!” she snapped. “They journeyed along the Braid when I was a girl. Brigands happened upon us, driving us over a cliff. Yet fate singled me out, for one of the Fraternity snatched me from doom at the last moment. They took me to Xembala for my education, and came to me again when I was twelve, that I might take up arms.”
“You did not return in all that time?”
“What of it! I saw paradise, thief! I will die to protect it.”
“And kill.”
“And kill.”
“You’ll do neither, you hot-country lunatics!” came a croaking voice.
A vulture settled down upon Bone’s rock, glaring directly at him.
“It took me a damnably long time to pierce the veils of this sneaky semi-dimension. And I’m not going to put up with you fools killing each other the moment I do.” The bird squawked down at Dolma. “Put down that rock, you! I, Northwing, command it! Spirits of sea and sky, is everyone south of the taiga a homicidal nitwit?”
“You,” Bone said, “you’re that shaman over there.”
The vulture that called itself Northwing studied Bone sidelong. “Why do you ask that?”
“Mad Katta—one of your countrymen, I believe? During our sojourn in Qushkent, he said something about shamans entering the spirit world by riding within the minds of animals.”
“Katta!” Northwing squawked. “In my language we called him Deadfall, for he’s long dead to us.”
“‘Deadfall?’ You are serious?”
“I am not always sober, you son-of-a-corpse, but I am always serious. You!” The bird spun its head. “Sheathe that sword, pale beauty, or you can fight all the vultures in this area. Don’t think I can’t do it, or that they’ll balk at living flesh this one time.”
Dolma stopped climbing the stone.
“What do you want?” Bone asked, sheathing his own blade.
“Ah, sense! Lady Steelfox will be interested in speaking with you. It’s for her to decide what happens next.”
Shortly, the cross-legged shaman was speaking in Karvak to Steelfox, with Snow Pine and Liron Flint leaning close. Sometimes Steelfox gave her companions a clipped explanation of what Bone and Dolma said. Haytham ignored them, tinkering as he was with his cauldron inscribed with magical writings. Thus commenced a most peculiar interview.
“She told me ‘trust a fox.’ Didn’t she? Who is the wolf?”
“The wolf is her younger sister. Lady Jewelwolf is wife of the newly elected Grand Khan. In my mistress’s opinion, Jewelwolf’s will is stronger than her husband’s, and I concur. Don’t delude yourself that he’s therefore a kindly person. It’s Jewelwolf who was responsible for the carnage of Hvam, and the khan is eager for more such victories.”
“That sounds bad for the region, I admit,” Bone said. “But I do not see the immediate concern for my companions and me.”
“For one thing, she has your friend Quilldrake, whether as ally or prisoner, it isn’t clear. For another, Jewelwolf is more than the wife of the new khan. She has formed an arcane alliance with a number of strange individuals. The kleptomancer Koel. The troll-jarl Skrymir. Mythul, mad prince of the Eldshore. And at the center of the group, the Archmage Sarcopia. Jewelwolf craves magical power; her link with these persons is stronger than her loyalty to the Karvaks. They call themselves the Cardinals of the Compass Rose, which I gather means something like ‘priest-kings of the four directions.’ They mean to divide the whole world between them.”
Some of those names were known to Bone, and even he shivered a bit. Just a little. “Nice work if you can get it.”
“Thus,” the shaman Northwing continued, “the Karvak realm is becoming one arm of a foul alliance. Jewelwolf already sees Steelfox as a rival. There are Karvak politics involved—I will not try to explain them. But understand that there are men who hate to see women wielding power openly.”
“Such men are everywhere,” Dolma murmured, “except Xembala.”
“Jewelwolf can manipulate such men,” said Northwing, “while snatching power from female rivals. Lady Steelfox, husbandless, will be forced into irrelevance. This is a great wrong. My employer was meant for greatness.”
“Again, my sympathies, but what has this to do with me?”
A long interruption began, filled with sonorous exchanges in Karvak.
The not-so-sonorous vulture said, “Steelfox is going to defy her sister. Her great advantages are friendship with my people and her experiments with flight. With the ironsilk and its many uses, including the making of armored balloons, Steelfox has a chance.”
Bone imagined it: a vast balloon impervious to arrows and crossbows, bringing invaders to Qiangguo. Or Swanisle.
Haytham swore and backed away from his cauldro
n.
A Charstalker erupted from the device. Immediately Dolma leapt into the flames.
“Dolma!” Bone cried. He’d been too shocked to act.
But she was not consumed; rather, she appeared to absorb the flames, until the red light shone from her eyes. When next she spoke her voice was like a churning of rocks.
“I now speak to the meat occupying two planes of Xembala, and one who walks between. This Dolma has severed my connection to your imprisonment device. Your balloon will no longer soar.”
“Let her go,” Bone said, though he was not sure why.
“The Fraternity of the Hare are good allies, Imago Bone. They have realized only we of Bull-Demon Mountain have the strength to repel invaders from Xembala. The world is changing, and lost lands will not stay lost.”
“What are you, anyway?” Northwing asked. “I’ve been wanting to question you ever since I stepped aboard one of these blasted balloons. You’re like no other spirit I’ve encountered.”
“Shaman. You are the one form of meat I can respect. I will answer. We derive from the red veins of rock that line the northern slope. They lead to the crystalline forest that underlies the great desert.”
“The Leviathan Minds’ archive,” Bone heard Snow Pine say.
“The record of souls,” Liron Flint said.
“For thousands upon thousands of years, the meat within reach of the desert has lived and died and been recorded within the crystals. Whether or not true reincarnation occurs for your kind, I cannot say. But under the influence of the Leviathan Minds’ creation, a form of transmigration exists. Records of your minds flow within the great archive. Some minds find peace thereby, and some escape to be reborn. Others of us meditate upon the great cruelties of life and afterlife and shed the shackles of morality. We find our way through the veins of crystal that lead to the greatest of us, he who is chained within Bull-Demon Mountain, and who awaits the day of his escape.”
“Why do I have the feeling,” Bone said, “the day of his escape will be a bad day for everyone else?”
“Know this, meat. You will never leave Xembala in this life. Whether your stay ends in peace or in fire is your choice.”
The Silk Map Page 34
