The Dragon's Gate

by Barry Wolverton

  “Okay,” he said again, forcing himself to bring the graphite stick to the paper. He sketched the girl’s skeleton as they had found it, the bleached bones etched with black ink. Oracle bone script, the guardian had called it. More like pictograms than the Chinese writing Bren had seen elsewhere. Mouse had read them in vertical columns, starting on the girl’s left: from her left shoulder down her upper and lower arm bones; then the left side of her skull and breastbone down to her hips and femur, her lower leg and left foot; then up and down her right side; and then the right shoulder and arm.

  And then the sudden, intense fire and the cracking of bone. It had made Bren flinch then, and it made him flinch now, to hear and remember the sound of them breaking. As if this girl, whoever she had been, might feel her body being destroyed. When the smoke had cleared, there were fractures in the bones, and while Mouse didn’t tell him what the oracle bone script had said, she did tell him what the fractures were: a map to this place called the Dragon’s Gate.

  As Bren reproduced the image of the cracked skeleton, though, it didn’t look like a hidden map. To Bren it just looked like broken bones, or an ornate piece of pottery dropped on the floor. What was left of the skeleton’s left shoulder blade, brittle with cracks . . . her tailbone, barely intact with a web of hairline fractures . . . her right breastbone, looking as if the girl had taken a musket ball to the chest . . .

  “Are you sure you read the bones right?” asked Bren, a touch of sarcasm in his voice. He avoided looking Mouse in the eyes when he said it, and for a while she said nothing.

  “No,” she admitted. “I didn’t even know I could read that language. I had never seen it before. It just . . . came to me.”

  “Why do you think you need to find this Dragon’s Gate?” he said. “Does it have something to do with the girl, Sun?”

  “It must,” said Mouse, “but I don’t know how, yet.” She surprised Bren by grabbing his arm. “Bren, I need to find out who I really am. I don’t believe the admiral’s story any more than you do. And this is the only way to learn the truth, I just know it. But I need help figuring it out. Your help, don’t you see?”

  Bren didn’t see, but he couldn’t tell her that now.

  She was right that he had never believed Admiral Bowman’s story about her. The admiral had found Mouse in an orphanage in a fishing village at the mouth of the Pearl River. He had been drawn there by rumors of a strange girl who could talk to animals. Later the admiral had told Mouse that she came from a lake high in the mountains of China. A flock of cranes had landed on the shores of the lake, and when they touched the earth they transformed into beautiful girls. They undressed and hung their robes on a willow tree by the shore, and then went to bathe in the lake. What they didn’t know was that in that very willow tree was a hunter who had come to hunt geese and hidden himself when the cranes landed.

  When the girls finished bathing, they dressed and flew away. But the last girl couldn’t find her robe—the hunter had stolen it. He jumped down from the tree and forced her to come with him, lest she freeze to death. She agreed, and the hunter took her home, asking her to marry him. She refused, and he in turn refused to return her robe, and this went on for weeks and months until she finally gave in. But she vowed never to name their children, so that they could never grow up.

  Years later, the hunter’s wife finally tricked him into returning her robe. As she flew away to rejoin her sisters, the hunter begged her to at least name their sons, so they could grow up to be leaders of their tribe. And so the crane wife agreed, calling out the sons’ names as she departed, but the daughters were left nameless, and eventually cast away by the hunter.

  That was the reason Mouse could talk to animals, the admiral claimed, because her mother was a crane.

  Bren could understand Mouse wanting to know the truth of it all—where she really came from and how she came by her uncanny abilities. And he wished he could help her. But deep down, he wanted to go home even more. Sean and the other survivors had nothing on their minds but making it to safety, which meant sailing north across the Indian Ocean until they reached the East Netherlands, that archipelago of Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia. From there they would be able to sign on with a ship to take them back to Western Europe. And Bren had every intention of going with them.

  CHAPTER

  3

  THE SILK ROAD

  The woman formerly known as the man pretending to be Lord Winterbottom wasn’t sure how long she had been riding her stolen horse, because the sun never seemed to move in this part of the world. It hung there high above her as she rode over one scorching dune after another, and anything like a breeze was just a slap in the face. What she wouldn’t have given for those overcast London skies and afternoon showers she was forever complaining about. To say nothing of the perfect Mediterranean weather, under which she had squandered most of her inheritance.

  And then, a sight that made her spirits go up an octave—assuming it was real. She had heard about these phantom oases in the desert. Mirages, they called them. A trick of the mind, all perfectly explainable by science. Or was it mathematics? She wouldn’t know, having been expelled from Jordan College in the middle of her first year for impersonating a boy.

  But this seemed so real. A house. Perhaps a church? Salvation, indeed.

  Jean Barrett rode her horse almost into the side of the building, so unwilling was she to believe her good luck. It was like a small inn, with a courtyard, abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Which it probably was. She was on the old Silk Road, that great artery of trade between East and West until the rise of the Ottoman Empire. Along the road the Chinese had built caravansaries—way stations or rest stops—every so many miles to make the four-thousand-mile journey bearable. She must’ve stumbled upon one.

  She fed and watered her horse, then fed and watered herself. Afterwards she sat down on the floor of the building and removed the large page she had torn from the Atlas of Ptolemy. She unfolded it and read the title again, written in Greek: THE HIDDEN SEA.

  Beneath the title were two columns of handwritten Greek text, with a couple of mathematical diagrams sprinkled in. Not a map, but instructions for making a map. So said Sufi, God rest his groping soul.

  “Bugger,” said Barrett as she set the stolen pages aside and dug in her rucksack for something else—a letter, folded twice and heavily soiled.

  She unfolded it and began to read:

  My dearest Lady Barrett,

  I wish you safe passage through the Holy Lands and into Persia. I trust my sources have provided the most current intelligence on the least hazardous routes. Arranging your visit to the House of Wisdom was something else altogether, and a thousand highway bandits will seem like nothing if you fail to convince. To that end, take care with the disguise I have provided you. Winterbottom clings to that blue coat as if his life depends on it—and yours will. Don’t remove it under any circumstance. He certainly wouldn’t. And he always wears it buttoned to the top, to ensure that all his medals are showing. No one there has ever met him, that I know of, but it would be good to be aware of a few of his personal tics and habits. . . .

  Barrett skimmed past this, as it was over and done with.

  . . . the papers are what’s critical, of course, and I have managed to create a brilliant forgery, if I may say so myself, through a connection I have at Rand McNally’s Map Emporium . . .

  More skimming, past the author’s rather tedious description of his cleverness, until she came to the relevant part:

  I’m afraid I can’t tell you with absolute certainty which map you will need. You’ll have to trust your instincts. What you will be looking for is an Indian or Eastern Ocean that no longer exists to us—one explored and mapped by Chinese navigators who had their life’s work erased by emperors bent on convincing their people that there was no world beyond China, no history but the present.

  Ptolemy was in a unique position to capture this knowledge, and if I’m right, his is the only collectio
n of maps in existence to plot the locations of islands and way stations that have since been lost to modern navigators. And it is here that I believe my friend, Brendan Owen, was taken and quite possibly abandoned by his captors. You’ve never met Bren, but you’ve heard me speak of him, so you know how important he is to me. That, plus the substantial fee we have agreed upon, will I trust make this worth your while.

  Yours faithfully,

  Archibald Black

  Barrett refolded Black’s letter and looked again at the stolen map. Or rather, the alleged map. Her Greek was a bit rusty (yet another subject she’d failed to master before being expelled), but it began, “Beneath the jeweled surface of the sea, where laughing waves play, there lie the phantom lands, sunk from men’s view of the world.” From there were somewhat flighty phrases about winds and storms, boats tossed, tropical islands spangling the Indian Sea, wild places terrible and remote, and those places talked about but never seen. On the back was a cramped, two-column list of places and their coordinates.

  “You must be joking,” Barrett muttered.

  She studied the list of place names, looking for ones that were unfamiliar to her—the “hidden” ones. But far too many failed to ring a bell. After all, Ptolemy had lived and worked in the second century. Barrett, having trained as an antiquary, knew that names of cities and regions had changed many times through the centuries with the rise and fall of empires. She would have to do her homework. Or, she could plot all the places listed here, and compare the result with a modern map.

  But how long would that take?

  The edges of the torn-out “map” were wanting to curl up at the ends, so she laid the whole thing on the stone floor of the abandoned building, pinning the corners down with loose stones. A desert breeze almost immediately tossed a handful of sand on the face of the map, and when Barrett brushed it off with her hand, a remarkable thing happened. Where she had brushed the sand away, there was a picture.

  A map, or part of one, lay horizontally across the page.

  She picked up the parchment and shook out the remainder of the sand, then held it in front of her for a better look. To her disappointment, it looked just as it had before—like a page from a written manuscript.

  She tilted it this way and that, trying to catch it at the right angle, or let the light hit it in just the right way, trying to detect more than one surface, or two pieces of parchment stuck together. But she could find no such thing.

  Beneath the jeweled surface of the sea . . . those were the first words of the “instructions.”

  Barrett laid the map down again, pinning the corners, and grabbed a fistful of sand. She casually scattered the grains across the parchment as if she were sowing seeds. Nothing happened.

  She lay prone on the ground next to the parchment, and gently swept the sand from one corner. And once again, a picture appeared.

  She pulled herself up into a squat, removed the silk scarf covering her head, and ran the delicate fabric from one side of the parchment to the other, until the loose sand was gone. Then Jean Barrett stood there, not believing her eyes.

  It was a complete map of the Indian Ocean, framed by the borders of Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. A diagram made of grains of sand, right below the text.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  She stretched out on the ground again, extended her index finger, and barely traced the lines of the map. It would seem that it had been etched into the parchment with miraculous precision, and became visible only when the tiny grains of sand settled into the otherwise invisible crevices.

  Barrett just shook her head and smiled. “Oh, Archibald. You don’t even know the half of it.”

  She ran her fingers through her short dark hair and then pulled them back with disgust. Her hair was still greasy with the pomade she had used to make herself look more like a man. Greasy and filthy—she hadn’t bathed properly in days.

  She couldn’t spare much water, but now that she at least had shade she disrobed to her undergarments and splashed two handfuls onto her head and body, rubbing herself down with the only scrap of clean fabric she had left.

  Outside, her horse neighed.

  Barrett hurriedly rolled up the map and stuffed it into her sack, just as she saw the shadow of a stranger fall through the door.

  She had time for one move: grab her clothes or her sword. When she heard a voice—a man’s voice—she went for the sword.

  The man who walked in was slight of build and appeared to be Chinese. He had short dark hair, a trim mustache, and a fuzzy beard that dangled off his chin. He wore a wide-brimmed, black silk hat and a black robe that reminded Barrett of a priest’s, except the robe was cinched with a colorful belt and had a pair of white cranes embroidered on the front. It was obvious from the look on his face that the last thing he expected to find in an abandoned caravansary on the abandoned Silk Road was an armed woman in her underwear.

  “I don’t speak Chinese, but I’m sure you can understand this,” she said, brandishing the sword with the flair of a stage actor.

  The man stopped in his tracks, his eyes going from the silver blade to the scarlet sheath. “The Tamer of Beasts,” he said breathlessly, and then he fell to his knees in front of her.

  CHAPTER

  4

  SHARK BAIT

  Bren and Mouse sat opposite each other in the middle of the longboat, each gripping an oar. Mouse could barely wrap her small hands around the handle; Bren had started to get the hang of it, and marveled at how much stronger he was now than when he had left Map. Sitting on the bench, he looked down at the muscles visible in his left leg through his tattered trousers. His browned arms, while still long and thin, were now roped with muscles around his forearms, and when he pulled the oar toward him, a small apple appeared in the crook of his arm.

  He momentarily took one hand off the oar and touched his face to see if he might have started growing a beard.

  Sean, sitting astern, helped the crew keep the rhythm by leading a chant.

  “Mouse, like this,” said Bren, noticing that his rowing partner was having trouble keeping her oar in the water. He demonstrated, executing the J-shaped stroke that the other men were using to propel the boat. “Watch Pieter in front of you . . . do what he’s doing.”

  “I am watching,” said Mouse, a tiny bit of irritation in her voice.

  Bren brought the oar around several more times, watching Mouse out of the corner of his eye. “Mouse, you’re barely getting the paddle in the water. If we don’t do it together, the whole thing is off!”

  “Watch your own side,” said Mouse.

  “It’s not my side versus your side,” said Bren, “we have to work together.”

  “Then stop yelling at me.”

  “I’m not yelling . . .”

  But he didn’t finish what he was saying, because two of the men who had been on break—Willem and Rem—walked up and grabbed Bren and Mouse by their collars.

  “You’re both doing it wrong,” said the one clutching Bren, and he unceremoniously removed the boy from his seat and took over the oar. His partner did the same to Mouse.

  Sean was grinning when the two deposed rowers came to the stern.

  “What’s so funny?” said Bren. “We’re not expert rowers, you know.”

  “I know,” said Sean. “You don’t have to be. I told the men beforehand we’d more or less be rowing with eight oars every time you two sat down. You’re taking your turns, breaking a sweat—that’s what matters.”

  Bren felt his muscles shrink back to normal.

  “Besides,” said Sean, holding up the map Bren had made with one hand and handing him the backstaff with the other, “you’re both our cartographer and our navigator. Make sure we’re still heading in the right direction.”

  “Aye, Captain,” said Bren, sitting next to Mouse at the stern. Sean was being kind, he knew. Any one of them could have used the backstaff to measure the sun’s height above the horizon, which told them their latitude, or n
orth-south position. Guided by Bren’s map, they were aiming north-northeast, toward the closest possible island—approximately 850 nautical miles, if they were lucky.

  And they would need luck. They had a backstaff and a map of possibly nonexistent islands, and little else. No hourglass, which left them guessing at time. No traverse board to dead reckon their longitude, or east-west position. Mr. Tybert had often spoken fondly of the old-timers and their uncanny ability to sail by instinct, to recognize the swell of the waves, the color of the sea, and the patterns of fish. Bren had none of that.

  But he did have Mouse. When the Albatross had been lost in the doldrums of the Atlantic, she had noticed the migration of birds and helped them decide which way to sail. She had uncanny ability in abundance.

  “Mouse, you let me know if you think we’re off course, okay? I know you have a sense about these things.”

  She nodded.

  The sea had been calm since they managed to push off from the island, with just enough wind to use their makeshift sail occasionally for power as well as shelter from the sun. Mr. Tybert had told him the Indian Sea was calmer than the Atlantic, but Bren wondered how long that would last. On a voyage this long, good weather was bound to be followed by bad, and the bad in turn followed by good.

  If you made it through the bad.

  Bren pulled out his journal and held the oracle bone “map” for Mouse to see. “Does anything here look like a gate to you? Or a dragon?”

  She studied Bren’s drawing, but eventually shook her head. “We’ll figure it out,” she said.

  Bren nodded, without much conviction. He then noticed Mouse’s hand resting against the pocket where she was keeping the jade eye. It could have been coincidence, but he wondered if she was worried about losing it, despite how unconcerned she had seemed on the island.