Chasing the Dragon (37 page)

Zal looked, and for a while there wasn't. He felt close to Mr. V and
wretchedly sad at the same time, but then something came to him,
faint and far away, a couple of notes, a line. His throat felt strange. He
heard music in his mind, he didn't know why.

"... that's our destiny ..."

"Go on!" Mr. V cried, hands clasped before him.

"... the gods may throw the dice, their minds as cold as ice
It came and went and Zal felt sure suddenly.

"The game is on again...." He couldn't pick out the words fast
enough. And then, like Mr. V's rebirth, in a rush there it was, belting
out of him in a voice he didn't even know he'd had, like a foghorn
calling for the last ship to come to shore.

"Winner takes it all! The winner takes it all!"

There was a thump from upstairs and a sound like a hefty girl
falling off a chair followed by a cross wail of disappointment and
annoyance.

Mr. V was up and running, shaking his hands at Zal. "Go boy! Go!
I'll see to her this last time, don't worry. Just run and put it back, bring
the book, undo what's been done."

Zal stood, still in shock, his mouth too strange to speak. He looked at
Mr. V for a moment and hoped somehow his awkwardly sewn face could
show all he meant in that second, all the warm feeling and gratitude, the
sorrow and the gladness. Then he turned and ran, his thick stuffed feet
flapping on the path with a sound of someone thumping a rug.

But he was not fast enough for Tubianca. As he reached the gate
she shot out of the low bushes at the edge of Mina's small garden where
she'd been hiding behind a bag of Mr. V's grass clippings and wrapped
herself around his leg, digging in all her claws and taking a large
mouthful just below his knee for good measure.

He howled in surprise, anger, and pain and paused to pull at her
and shake, but she wouldn't be budged. Through his trousers she
hissed, "I see you conspiring with that dwarf.... What are you up to?
... Awful doll thing ..." Here she stopped to get a better purchase
with her teeth and yanked off a large piece of cloth, tearing his leg. Her
hind paws paddled at him, ripping through his clothes. She intended
to shred him, he realised. Already his leg had begun to bend oddly. He
started running again, hauling her with him in a huge swinging stride
around his hip. At least the swinging forced her to stop tearing so she
could prevent herself from falling off.

She let out a yowl that ended with, "Sto-op!"

"No," Zal said, in between bursts of effort. "It's none of your business." He kicked as hard as he could, but his only reward was the sound
of his seam splitting. He didn't slow down.

"Stop," the cat garbled again, sensing both his determination and
the rapidly lessening distance to Lily's house. "I want to talk. I
promise."

After what Mr. V had said about her Zal was inclined to believe
her. She was fey, and she had said the p-word, but before he paused he gasped out, "Talk and nothing else." He kicked again, hoping she was
sick and dizzy.

"Yes!"

He stopped. Tubianca unpicked herself from his leg and spent a
moment turning away to smooth her fur and regain a dignified sitting
position.

"Well?"

She licked her whiskers. "He said something about me, but I
didn't catch it. You were too far away and whispering like little
rodents."

Zal sensed an opportunity, though for what he wasn't sure. "He
might have. What's it worth? Will you stop sneaking around and
trying to get rid of me?"

An unhappy miaow escaped from her mouth. "But it is so dull!"
she cried in protest, and he found himself agreeing with her.

"I know. But I don't find your methods of entertainment pleasant.
I expect you let that rat in on purpose."

Her eyes grew round, and then the pupils slitted with hatred. "I
did not, though I might wish I had. Very well, I will stop pouncing
on you."

"And the sneaking?"

She stared at him. He got the impression she was at the limit of
her ability to bear the shame of being beholden to him in any way.
"One thing for the pouncing. If it is good, then we will see."

"For the pouncing then," he said, hoping he didn't regret it. "He
said you were a lot better when the other cat was here."

Her expression wavered. She was quiet, then she said, "The thing
about you, doll, is that you are the last in a long line of inferior toys.
I have no memory of another cat, so either you are lying or else I have
spent too long here in the comfortable rooms."

Zal couldn't answer that. He shrugged and turned to go.

"Wait!" she snapped. "The other. Thing."

He said nothing.

"I promise I will not follow you around."

"Anymore."

"Anymore," she repeated acidly.

"He said no one finds the Yin a happy companion."

At that she turned her face away and became abruptly and passionately consumed with a contemplation of the distant rocks. Finding her
unresponsive to any gesture or word he resumed his trip to Lily's
house, ignoring the way that bits of his stuffing were loose and trailing
on the floor. The leg was half crumpled but still worked well enough
that he could move without being too slowed down.

He made a quick search. He was most interested in establishing
that she was not in, which she wasn't, but he couldn't help noticing
the peculiar clutter in the downstairs rooms, even her workroom which
was normally a place of order, housing the magnificent, evanescent tapestries on their bone stretchers. Today there was nothing but charts,
and mostly ones that looked to his untrained eye like nautical charts.
An astrolabe was out in the kitchen, a sextant in the workroom, and
rulers, string, and writing materials lay here and there. On her small
desk he saw an abacus and a scientific calculator side by side. Her bag
of movable materials was missing, so she must have gone upwards into
the real planes. He longed to have a good look around but he knew he
couldn't waste a chance. He ran upstairs, pulled down the ladders, and
scrambled into the dusty, empty reaches of the loft.

Two dirty skylights showed him a clutter of objects lying hig-
gledy-piggledy, coated in a layer of dust so thick it was like a kind of
moss. A few items in the farthest area were relatively clean, and here
he easily found the book. It was lying on top of an open red velvet case,
which bore the deep imprinted shape for the compact mirror. In a trice
he had switched them over and closed the lid of the case. Fortunately
things were reasonably dust free here and did not mark. As he was
about to go his attention was drawn by the setting of the case ... he had wondered how, in an entire loft, the dwarf could get by with a
phrase like "what you will find there." The case glowed scarlet and
was, clearly, the most obvious object in the room, but still ... and
now that he looked he saw that there were other things here: a old perfume bottle of pale blue, down to its dregs; a silver-backed hairbrush
with a dated style of pig's bristles for brushing long hair; and a small
green glass swan or goose with a red beak and big, childish eyes.
Glinda must have seen all these, he thought, and then he looked at
what they were resting on.

The dressing table was a kidney-shaped curved item in walnut,
clearly an antique. It had a mirrored back, but the mirror was covered
in a heavy velvet drape of mid blue that had faded unevenly in the
light from the windows. It was weighted with long golden tassels on
all sides that meant it couldn't slip off by accident. In the middle of
the drape was a gold-stitched emblem of a rune that he recognised as
being a royal mark of some kind.

He turned to go and found the white cat standing at the top of the
ladder.

"You promised!"

"I came here of my own free will without any following or
sneaking," she said, and moved forward, delicately sniffing at the floor
and stepping only in the cleared space between items where there was
no dust. Even so, she sneezed. "Blame yourself if you will go leaving
ladders down where they aren't supposed to be. I have a rat hole to find
too." She glided smoothly past him and looked askance at the dresser,
then prowled about its legs observing the skirting boards.

"I have to go. Come on."

But she continued her idle prowl. "Go on, do. Don't let me stop
you."

"I will put up the ladders and close the trap. You'll be stuck here."

"I can always sing to be let out," Tubianca said mildly, sitting
down and observing the hang of the low swinging tassels.

"But then she'll know we were in here."

"And? I shall only say I came here after the ladders were down. She
can interrogate me all she likes with that stare of hers, it is the truth.
You are the culprit. What are you doing here, anyway? Perhaps if you
tell me I will come quietly and Lily need be none the wiser." She
batted idly at the tassel nearest to her.

"Stop that. Don't touch anything."

"But it's so much fun," she wheedled. "And I have no fun left anymore since you spoiled it with your stupid promises." She smacked
again, harder. The weight tugged on the cloth and it slid half an inch.

He could leave. If he went now he could give Mr. V the book,
throw himself on the cinders, burn, and be dead or gone before Lily
returned from whatever strange errand she was on. If she caught him
...Ifshe...

The door downstairs closed with a firm sound and they both heard
the jingle of keys and the sound of Lily's sigh as she hung her coat.

Without a thought he threw himself forward, arms outstretched,
fingers wide. He met cat and floorboards at the same time, fortunately
without a sound as he was too light to make one, although the book
clunked faintly on the hollow floor. White fur slipped through his fingers and he felt claws rake his face a second later, though she made no
sound in her flight. There was also a slight flumping sound, and then
the tinkle of the perfume bottle falling onto its side.

As he got to his knees, slipping on the polished wood, he saw the
big white tail vanish through the trapdoor with noiseless ease. Cursing
her, he straightened up and reached forward to set the bottle right, and
without a thought his eyes glanced forwards into the mirror where the
heavy drape had fallen free.

He knew it was a mistake as soon as it had happened. For an
instant he was paralysed, staring at himself and the dusty room behind
him, the yellow gleam of the door in the floor where lamplight was
coming through....

... And then he was standing straight and tall, staring at the
falling form of a large and ugly cloth doll as it collapsed to the floor,
coat wide. The book showed clearly, half fallen from the inner pocket.

The paralysis was gone.

"Genius," said a voice sarcastically from behind his left shoulder.
He turned, and there was Glinda. They were both inside a room that
was exactly like Lily's loft, only reversed. Glinda bit out her cigar and
spat the end on the floor, grinding it under her boot. "Well, that's one
way of getting a move-on. I told you not to play games, but you never
listen." She shook her head, grinning at herself. "You think I'd understand by now. Anyway ..."

But he was looking down at himself. "I'm ... I'm ...'

"You're a shadow," she said, waving off his wonder and awe with a
flippant hand. "Big deal. It's part of your nature. Shadowkin. Just
don't go running around in bright light, not that there's much of that
here so I wouldn't worry."

It was true-there was not much light, and what there was seemed
blue and dim, making his shape a stain of black and purple on the air.
He felt better than in the cloth form however, fluid and strong.

"Let's move," Glinda said, clapping sharply. When he looked back
at the mirror she had already covered it with a filthy black robe.

"The book. Mr. V...." he began.

She sighed, adjusted a piece of her part-plate, part-leather armour,
and suddenly produced the book, offering it to him. "Here. Don't ask
me again or I'll have to kill you."

"Thank you, but he needs ..."

"You should have thought of that before," she said, shrugging
rather like Tubianca in manner. "Now you promised me that you'd be
my little soldier." She pulled out a new cigar, stuck it between her
teeth, and grinned at him. Her golden eyes blazed.

"I have to stop doing that."

She snorted as if it was self-evident.

He looked around. "Where are we?"

"Isn't it obvious?" She held out her hands and made a sweeping
gesture at her own magnificence. "Where do you think you get to see
and talk to me in person?"

"Thanatopia?"

She made her hands into guns and lined them up to shoot at him.

"Am I-"

But she was giving him a look that said if he even uttered the word
she'd be glad to make it so.

Zal shut up. He did a turn, and another, found he could walk,
move, talk. He smiled. "Okay. Let's go."

"You first," Glinda bowed theatrically and waved him on. "Rules
say I gotta follow at the stated position."

"Where?" He reached the trapdoor. There was no ladder here, just
a set of stone steps winding down into a fathomless blackness.

"I don't know exactly," she said with good humour. "But I think you
used to once be a decent soldier, so my plan is to find necromancersany necromancers-and prise the truth out of their nasty, fiddly little
fingers by any necessary means until we hit the right one or get a clue. I
know where they all are while they're here, so the first part will be easy.
After that I'm sure we can think of a way to make 'em talk."

And with that less-than-comforting confidence they began to
descend.

here was light. For an instant it even blotted out all of her sensors.
There was sound like a force on its own that made the stone vibrate
and weaker portions of it shatter, sending splinters and dust flying into
the air. There was a blastwave that cracked the stones which survived
the sound and threw over a hundred bodies up and into the air to join
the matchwood and rags, the fruit and meat and vials and potions and
fetishes and jewellery and small animals that had taken flight along
with them. There was a roaring of storm-force winds and an unearthly
terrifying howling of vortices counter-ripping, tearing hapless objects
to pieces. There was a thudding. There was a pattering. There was a
kind of extended sigh and then there was a silence.