Five Odd Honors (29 page)

“Because, acushla, when the trouble comes that I think is coming, we’re going to need your help. And believe me, Brenda Morris, as much as we want your help to forestall the storm before it can hit us, I think you’re going to need our help to keep from being blown away.”

“I’m not ready,” Brenda said, hating herself for admitting this, but knowing it was true.

“Ready or not,” Parnell said, “the trouble will come.”

Between errands
to hardware stores, sporting goods emporiums, grocery stores, and even odder establishments, the Orphans still found time to speculate about just how the attack on Pearl might have been worked.

“After all,” said Riprap, his big, broad hands surprisingly delicate as he folded bandana-sized pieces of brilliantly colored synthetic fabric into a zip-top bag, “if we can figure that out, we can also figure out how to defend you.”

“We don’t have much to work with,” Albert reminded him. “We know the magic was centered on Pearl’s car. That’s it.”

Riprap shrugged. “Okay. That still helps. Who has access to the car? After all, she keeps it in her warded garage, not parked on the street. That limits access.”

Des, who had been making up small packets containing miniature bottles of wine and spirits, freshwater pearls, and tiny vials of perfume, glanced up, his expression concerned.

“Do we eliminate members of the house hold?” Des said. “All of us who have stayed here have access to the garage and anything in it.”

Pearl didn’t answer. Albert took over. He looked uncomfortable. “I was going to eliminate our own automatically, but—”

Pearl, who had been observing all the preparations from her recliner—she was still inclined to get tired—cut in.

“But I insisted we work an augury.”

“The results?” Riprap asked, his deep voice gruff , his hands pausing in their work as if he was prepared to spring to his feet and head out after the malefactor the moment he learned his name.

“They were,” Pearl said, “undecided.”

“Undecided?” Riprap said, the word almost a bark.

Albert frowned. “Yes. Auguries are not perfect, especially if the target has the sense to muddle them in advance.”

“I guess there must be ways,” Riprap agreed reluctantly. “It’s always like that with weapons. Someone invents the perfect solution to a problem, then ten other people get to work on countermeasures. Okay. So is that ‘undecided’ reading saying that Pearl could have been attacked by someone within our own group?”

“It’s possible,” Albert said. Pearl could tell he hated even admitting to that option, “but I don’t see it as very likely. There are other, much more reasonable solutions.”

“Oh?”

“Pearl’s car hasn’t been in the garage all the time,” Albert said. “Given all the people who have been staying in this house, both the car and the van have been out a great deal.”

Des frowned. “But would someone have been able to work a complex spell without being noticed?”

Albert made a disapproving sound. “Sure. Put up the hood, pretend to be checking for engine trouble. Slap a prepared amulet down where it would be concealed in the workings. If the spell was meant for Pearl in particular, the casting might have been done weeks ago. She hasn’t had much reason to drive lately.”

Pearl nodded. “That’s true. I rarely drive if I can get someone else to do so.”

“Or,” Albert continued, “the spell could have been meant to hit any one of the Orphans at a time when he or she was alone in the car. I did some checking. Lately, there have been so many people here that at least two people have gone out at a time—usually more.”

“True,” Riprap said. “Okay. So the spell could have been done weeks ago. That’s no help at all.”

“Were we able to learn anything about the nature of the spell itself ?” Des asked.

“No,” Albert said. “Nothing. Pearl’s attacker covered his—or her—tracks carefully there.”

Speculation continued, but Pearl tuned out the conversation. She and Albert had been over the matter in great detail earlier. Despite Albert’s dislike of the ambivalence of the result of the augury, she found herself considering what that ambivalence could mean.

The unhappy reality was that their most obvious enemies—those who had come recently from the Lands—were now bound to them by very carefully worded treaties, treaties that made such an attack all but impossible.

Pearl found herself wondering if they had been careful enough with Twentyseven-Ten and the other two former prisoners. Her car had been parked at Colm Lodge many times. Meddling would be easy enough for someone there—and with little chance of interruption.

Both Twentyseven-Ten and Thorn were magically adept. Twentyseven-Ten had a considerable amount of both talent and training. Moreover, he was a product of the same hard school that had produced Flying Claw.

And like Flying Claw,
Pearl thought uneasily,
his goal was to be the Tiger.

If Twentyseven-Ten and Thorn had worked the spell in conjunction, they might have been able to find a loophole in the prohibitions against their causing harm, since two parts of a spell done separately would not, in themselves, be dangerous, especially if the third component for making the spell activate was the presence of a person or a certain set of circumstances.

But Pearl didn’t raise that possibility. She was tired of debate and wrangling. In the end, very little would be changed. Everyone was alerted now to these new dangers. The scouts must set out again.

And what if the one who placed the spell was one of us?
she thought unhappily.
But who? I can’t really believe anyone in our number would want to kill me. But perhaps I am becoming naive and trusting in my old age.

Pearl Bright sighed and let her eyes drift shut in sleep. Sleep, that close kin to death. Death which still prowled in the jungles of her mind, wearing her father’s face.

The scouts passed through the Nine Gates, heavily burdened, but cheerful, ready to face a challenge they could see.

“We’ve been fighting shadows for too long,” Flying Claw said as he oriented his compass to find the most direct route to the Center. “I long for an opponent I can touch, a mountain I can climb.”

The three ghosts who possessed quadruped animal forms had opted totravel in them so that they could serve as pack animals. Bent Bamboo traveled as a human. Gentle Smoke alternated between her snake and her human form, for the snake could often penetrate where the larger creatures could not. More than once her scouting saved them the need to backtrack.

After several days hiking in as straight a line as was possible, they came to the first of the barriers Li of the Iron Crutch had mentioned, the Forest of Stone Trees .

The Immortal’s description didn’t do the place justice.

“It doesn’t look like a forest,” Riprap protested. “It looks like someone set up a bunch of agate pillars at random—sort of a maze without solid walls. Then they stretched a sheet over it to substitute for the sky. Gives me the creeps.”

Loyal Wind thought the pillars bore some resemblance to living trees. True, they lacked leaves or branches, but the striations of the multicolored stone did resemble the grain of living wood.

Copper Gong, still in ram form, was sniffing the ground. She looked up, nostrils flared.

“The ground from which these ‘trees’ spring smells rather like cement,” she said, pawing the surface. “Feels like it, too.”

“What bothers me,” Des said, leaning back, hands on hips, to look at the sky, “is how that white sky starts exactly at the edge of the stone field. Makes the whole thing look like a stage set.”

Nine Ducks had cut into the edge with one hoof.

“The same here,” she said. “Look. Under the surface, the ‘cement’ edge is as clean cut as if it had been poured in a mold.”

“What bothers me even more,” Flying Claw said, consulting his compass, “is how quickly we reached here. I calculated our rate of progress during our prior visit, and again this time. It seems to me that we have found this Forest of Stone Trees too soon. Surely we covered at least as much distance during our much longer, earlier exploration.”

Loyal Wind realized that once he would have been automatically aware of such an anomaly, but altered versions of time and space were so much a part of what was “normal” in a ghost’s life that he had not noticed.

“You are right to be alert to such oddities,” Loyal Wind said. “However, I wonder if somehow our journey was facilitated by the spirits of the Lands. Li of the Iron Crutch did tell us that many hsien found themselves exiled from their former homes. Perhaps word has spread of our desire to set things right, and the Lands themselves are helping us.”

Riprap had been unpacking footgear from one of Nine Ducks’s packs. Now he paused, his dark features troubled.

“I wonder who else might know we’re coming,” he said. “I can’t help remembering Thundering Heaven’s nasty attitude and that odd sword of his.”

“And what we encountered at the end of the Tiger’s Road,” Des added. “Yeah. Maybe the local hsien welcome us, but I don’t think we’d better count on everyone doing so.”

Flying Claw lowered the binoculars with which he had been sighting out as far as he could through the stone pillars.

“I agree,” he said. “As far as I can see, though, there is nothing out there, nothing at all. Are you all willing to continue?”

“Let’s camp for the night,” Bent Bamboo suggested. “Start in the morning with everyone fresh. That will also give us a chance to scout along the perimeter. Maybe we’ll meet someone who can tell us more.”

“At the least,” Gentle Smoke said, “we can top off the water.”

“My aching back,” complained Nine Ducks, who carried the water bags, but Loyal Wind knew she wasn’t serious.

Bent Bamboo’s suggestion was sensible, so, even though Flying Claw was clearly eager to move on, the young Tiger agreed. Flying Claw did, however, insist on being one of those who would scout the perimeter. When he returned, all he brought with him was a fat deer.

“We can eat well to night,” Flying Claw said, dropping the carcass from where he had slung it over his broad shoulders, “and in the morning as well. This doe hardly started when I approached her. I had the impression that she had never seen a human.”

Nothing interrupted their rest, and, with first light, they set off across the featureless expanse.

Li of the Iron Crutch had warned them that one of the worst features of this part of the journey was the hardness of the surface over which they must travel. To counter this, Riprap had purchased shoes that would protect the humans’ feet. He had also acquired a variety of soft, rubberized materials. From these, he had made hoof covers for the Horse, Ox, and Ram. These had soft padding covered by thick soles that provided traction. Once he got used to wearing his, Loyal Wind had to admit they were an improvement over horse shoes.

Everyone—humans and not—had been provided with head and eye coverings as well. Loyal Wind was certain that his made him look very silly, but after several hours tromping over the featureless plain, the only distraction the wriggling lines of heat radiating up from the stone surface, he was glad to have both. The humans carried umbrellas as well, and from time to time Riprap would hold his over either the Ox or the Horse to provide some relief from the sun.