Five Odd Honors (43 page)

“Doorways in the sand,” Brenda thought, remembering the title of a book she’d read a long time ago, something to do with kangaroos and not graduating college.

Brenda cleared a larger section of sand and sketched a rectangular door on it, complete with a little round circle for the knob. Then she rose, stretched, and did her best to focus.

It wasn’t easy. Whereas immediately after Parnell’s departure, she’d felt very alone, now Brenda was certain she was being watched by things just out of sight, or that moved as soon as she turned to get a better look.

There was something in the shadows beneath the tree into which Parnell had vanished, something else moving with the light breeze that stirred a stand of wild flowers. She was fairly certain that the butterfly that had lofted by, orange, black, and brilliant gold against the blue sky, had been watching her.

Face by face, eye by eye, unable to ignore the reality of the watchers, Brenda accepted those critical gazes, then accepted those that she had not glimpsed, but that were almost certainly there.

She forced her mind to focus on something far more important: making the character symbols she must inscribe seem more real than anything else. The symbol for “one” was easy—a horizontal line with the character for “ten thousand” beneath it. Brenda wrote this four times in a row.

When she moved to the number “two”—the same as “one,” but with an added horizontal stroke—Brenda began to imagine where she wanted this door to take her. Sweat beaded beneath her hairline as she envisioned the copse of trees on campus where Parnell had introduced her to Oak Gall.

Brenda suspected that Parnell kept a semipermanent ward of some sort there, had sensed it in her desire to not look too closely at the place when she passed by during more usual business hours, in the fact that although the towering oak cast some very nice shade, she never saw anyone lounging there.

That tree, then, would be her destination. With the number two, B rendaimagined the place. With three—two with yet another horizontal stroke—she began to imagine the oak glade as close as the other side of her door. Four, which turned the strokes vertical, shorter, and placed them within a box, was the number Brenda used to help her envision her door as more than a picture in the sand.

Five and six were complicated enough that Brenda didn’t try to do anything but get them right, but seven and eight were stylized and simplified. Brenda used them to firm up her image of her intended destination.

The beads of sweat had turned into streams, but Brenda didn’t do more than blink away the stinging droplets that found their way into her eyes. Nine, the final character, was where she must refine her image, and she did so, feeling growing certainty that she had the spell right.

After she had drawn the last stroke of the final wan, Brenda allowed herself the luxury of wiping her forehead with the back of one arm. Touching the round circle that stood for the doorknob, she could feel the latent power of the spell, waiting to be triggered.

The urge to open the door was strong, but Brenda held back. She was tired, but there was one thing more she must do.

She needed something to wipe out her spell in case her using the gate was not sufficient. Winds were the simplest solution, especially since she’d drawn her spell in the sand.

North was the Rat’s wind, but she must frame it appropriately. After consideration, she decided on a sequence called Windy Chow. It called for one of each wind, followed by a pair of the wind one wished to summon, these followed by a chow—or run of three—in each suit.

The winds were complicated to draw, but Brenda remembered them pretty clearly. She’d make her chows out of the simpler versions of each suit: a one, two, and three of dots and characters, a two, three, and four of bamboo. One of bamboo was always drawn as a bird. Brenda worried that she wasn’t up to that level of artistry when her pen must be a stick and her paper a stretch of damp sand.

Concentration was easier to achieve this time. The watchers had become as much a part of the surrounding area as the splash of the water and the softness of the grass. Brenda was also getting too tired to have attention to concentrate on more than one thing at a time.

With firm strokes, she drew the winds, pleased that she did indeed remember them better than she had thought she did. Then she drew the first two sets of chows. With the third, she instilled not only the summons of the wind, but that it would wait to cut loose its force and smooth out the sand until after she had opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

When she was done, Brenda’s limbs ached from crouching and she felt about ten thousand years old. She felt good, too. There was no doubt that both spells were “live.” All that was left was to use them.

She looked around the green hills, and felt rather than saw the varied awarenesses that pulled back lest she notice them.

“Maybe I’ll see y’all later,” she said, letting the lazy drawl of the land to which she was returning color her speech.

Then she placed her hand over the drawing of a doorknob and felt it round and hard in her hand. She pulled, and the door opened. On the other side, just as she had imagined, was that little copse under the spreading oak on the USC campus.

Brenda walked through the door. Behind her, the north wind rose and scoured the damp sand clear of the last trace of her magical workings,

The door closed behind her. For the first time, she noticed that it was quite dark. She wondered how long she’d been gone. Realized she was almost too tired to care.

Brenda slid down against the rough bark of the tree trunk and sat heavily on the ground. One of the oak tree’s roots caught her at the base of her spine. The jolt of pain woke her up a little, enough to notice Parnell rising from where he’d been sitting cross-legged on the grass. He gave her a small bow, not in the least mocking, very much resembling, despite his casual tee shirt and jeans, the squire of those Arthurian-tinged dreams in which Brenda had first seen him.

“Congratulations,” Parnell said. “I never doubted you could do it, and I shall enjoy gloating over those who did. So shall Aunt Leaf.”

“What time is it?” Brenda asked.

“About two in the morning of the day following that in which you let me take you into the Land Under the Hill. Dermott and Shannon both doubtlessly are wondering what we have been up to, and, if they are awake, are giggling at the idea that we might be entwined in each other’s arms.”

Muzzily, Brenda thought that wasn’t the worst option she’d ever had, but a better one was falling asleep, maybe right here. The grass felt very soft.

“Take this,” Parnell said, opening a sack he’d cached to one side of the oak. “I got you a present.”

What he handed her was a large carton of yogurt, the container blazoned with the legend “with extra active cultures.”

“A gift from the Tuatha de Dannon,” Parnell said, proffering a spoon. Brenda couldn’t have been happier if Parnell had given her a coronet of diamonds.

She grinned at him, accepted his gift, and greedily fell to.

It was even raspberry: one of her favorites.

Pearl confided
the situation regarding her nightmares to Albert. To Pearl’s surprise, Nissa insisted that they first do auguries to clear Albert of complicity.

“Remember, Pearl. Albert spent some time not quite in his own right mind. While, according to the terms of our treaty, Righteous Drum and his associates had to remove any and all marks, sorcerous and otherwise, from those whose memories they had stolen, that doesn’t mean someone else didn’t take advantage of Albert’s lapse.”

That thought had been chilling, for Albert had been Pearl’s student and protegé during his youth, and her trusted friend for many years now. Like her, he shared a semi-celebrity. That had created a bond above and beyond their shared heritage.

Am I losing my edge?
Pearl thought.
Not too long ago, I could see everyone’s ulterior motives far more clearly than their ostensible ones.

Auguries had cleared Albert, and, at Albert’s insistence, Pearl had told Righteous Drum and Honey Dream about her nightmares—but again only after a series of auguries had ruled out each and every one of the residents at Colm Lodge, separately and in combination, from culpability.

Albert proved to be a considerable help in working the complex readings, adding both his ch’i and his expertise to the process.

“We’re going to have to clear everyone,” he announced. “We’d better start with those who are currently physically closest. They’re the most likely to notice you’re holding back something.”

Pearl had to admit that this was true. Their reduced group had continued meeting for daily martial arts practice on the grounds of Colm Lodge. Many days, Righteous Drum and Honey Dream would come to Pearl’s house to consult the materials in her library or simply to visit.

The other three—Thorn, Shackles, and Twentyseven-Ten—had never established the same level of comfortable intimacy, probably because they were all too aware of their ambivalent position. Unlike the cadre of which Righteous Drum had been a part, they had not been trying to keep an emperor on his throne, but to unseat one.

Given the chaotic succession to the Jade Petal Throne, this alone might not have been enough to create an uncomfortable situation, but the three former prisoners had also been forced to admit—to themselves, as much as to anyone else—that they hadn’t really known for whom they were fighting.

Pearl thought that Twentyseven-Ten was a facile enough thinker to work himself around to justifying his actions, what ever they might have been, but the other two were more straightforward types. As a result, the former prisoners conducted themselves as something in between prisoners of war on parole and sinners seeking redemption. Neither attitude made them comfortable house guests.

When Shackles, Thorn, and Twentyseven-Ten met with the rest to spar and exercise, Pearl was polite to them, but did not press intimacy beyond what they invited, nor go out of her way to make them feel welcome.

She rather enjoyed keeping them a little at a distance. It made impressing them easier.

Even within her more comfortable relationship with Righteous Drum and Honey Dream, Pearl did not like admitting that she was being tormented by nightmares. It felt a little too much as if she were reverting to being a child who was having “bad dreams.”

To Pearl’s relief, neither of the Landers took this attitude.

“Communication through and attack via dreams are both well known in the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice,” Righteous Dream said. “Is it not the same here?”

“I suppose it isn’t,” Pearl said. “Or at least not so common that we take such occurrences as matter-of-factly.”

One great advantage of Pearl’s confession was that, with the help and considerable skills of Righteous Drum and Honey Dream at their disposal, the auguries went much faster. They continued to use the Orphans’ methods. Peculiar as they were, it was easier to teach Righteous Drum and Honey Dream something of the Orphans’ symbolism than it would have been to re-educate the rest of them. The materials were at hand, and, as Righteous Drum said when he understood the form, very efficient.

“Easier on the turtles, too,” Honey Dream said with a glint of humor in her eyes.

Pearl recalled how turtle shells had been among the items used for divination by the ancient Chinese. Apparently this practice had passed to the Lands as well.

Methodically, they set about clearing various of the Orphans from complicity. They started with Shen Kung, the Dragon, because they might need his considerable knowledge and ability.

Nissa had offered to have herself checked, and only smiled when Pearl admitted she’d already done the necessary auguries.

“That’s okay, Pearl,” Nissa said. “I double-checked you, too.”

Once Pearl would have been shocked by this, but by now she’d learned that despite her warm and maternal outer affect, Nissa was quite in de pen dent and decisive. Doubtless Nissa had decided that Pearl could not be trusted to be suitably critical of herself.

They had cleared Shen and were working on Deborah when Honey Dream articulated what Pearl knew they all must have been thinking.

“Desperate Lee is long past due for his report. Shouldn’t we be checking on him and the others?”