Nine Gates (11 page)

A high, shrill keening interrupted their conversation, carrying even through the closed door. It resolved into words.

“No! No! No! No nap! Wanna play w’ Foster!”

“Tough,” Nissa said distinctly. “I told you you are not to open the front door. I think you need some quiet time.”

The howl rose into inarticulate fury, then muted somewhat as the door to the bedroom Nissa shared with Lani closed behind mother and daughter.

“Wow,” Brenda said. “Who ever thought a rabbit could have so much passion?”

She and Riprap grinned at each other. While he kneaded the clay, Brenda set out the other tools. Nissa joined them as they were about ready.

“Overtired. Overstimulated. Sometimes I think I should
ship her back to my sisters in Virginia, but I have this gut feeling it’s important that Lani not be isolated from events.”

“Is Lani going to sleep?” Riprap asked. “She sounded right worked up.”

“She was out before I finished the story of the Bunny and the Golden Shoes, and that’s her favorite right now. She really was overtired, and I think she has a crush on Foster.”

Nissa gave Brenda a sly look. “Not that she’s unique in that.”

Brenda, who had had more than one sisterly chat with Nissa on the subject—having no sisters of her own, she was finding Nissa’s automatic assumption of female camaraderie novel and pleasant—stuck out her tongue at Nissa.

Riprap rolled his eyes. “Okay, partners. Yesterday, we did some pretty tough spells, and I for one can still feel it. Shall we do something more routine today?”

“Definitely,” Nissa said. “I was considering a nice new Dragon’s Tail sized for Lani.”

“Wriggly Snake here,” Riprap said.

“I, for one,” Brenda said, “want nothing to do with snakes. I was thinking about a Knitting. Waking Lizard’s lecture reminded me how useful it is to be able to combine our abilities, but we’re not always going to have peace and quiet in which to compose our minds.”

Like the peace and quiet of a battlefield when the battle’s over
, she thought, remembering when she’d last done the Knitting for Pearl.

They discussed briefly what combination of tiles would be most effective. Although Riprap argued that Brenda should again practice her characters, Brenda countered that she didn’t want to forget how the dots and bamboo were arrayed. Riprap sighed and gave in.

For a long while, the classroom was silent. Focusing on the designs, Brenda inscribed one bamboo, one dot, then two bamboo and two dots. At first she was peripherally aware of the others working at other parts of the table, the faint clatter as they reached for a tool or pinched off a bit of soft clay and
packed it into a mold. Then she only heard their breathing. After a while, she was so absorbed that she didn’t hear even that.

Consequently, Brenda was surprised to finish her last tile—a seven bamboo—and find the other two still absorbed in their work. Nissa was working at half scale, which explained her relative slowness with a simple spell, and Riprap’s big hands made crafting tiles harder for him.

Brenda raised her head, craning back to ease a stiffness in her neck and shoulders, then reviewed her work. Each tile was a tidy match—although in her own “handwriting”—for one of the fourteen tiles she had set up for reference.

She felt the pleasant lassitude that usually accompanied the cessation of intense concentration, and thought that she could use this relative lack of desire to do anything or go anywhere to practice the routines Waking Lizard had been lecturing them about. Although some involved hand gestures meant to help with concentration, the real heart of them was mental, and she thought she could manage without disturbing the others.

She stretched again, and as she was lowering her arms, folding her hands in her lap, she heard movement from the other side of the door.

Damn. Lani’s decided to end her nap early, and if she comes in here hollering for Mama, Nissa’s spell might be ruined.

Carefully, making as little noise as possible, Brenda slid her chair back and moved to the door into the hallway. She opened it with equal stealth, and glanced across the hallway. To her surprise, the door to Nissa and Lani’s room remained closed, but the door to her own room stood ajar.

Okay. I bet Nissa locked the door and Lani decided to leave through my room.

Brenda closed the door to the classroom and moved with quick purpose toward her open bedroom door. If she handled this right, she could catch Lani and shush her before she disturbed Nissa.

She slid the door open only wide enough for her to get in, her mouth already shaping words. Then she stopped in astonishment. The person in her room wasn’t Lani.

It was Honey Dream.

Two new
members of the public, an older man and woman, slid into chairs in the back as the meeting of the Rock Dove Society was getting under way.

Sitting side by side, they listened with perfect attentiveness to an interesting and informative lecture by a Shakespeare professor from Fordham University, the campus of which was located across the street from the Botanical Garden, about the introduction of numerous invasive bird species into the United States by a well-meaning but ecologically underinformed devotee of the Bard’s plays.

If the pair didn’t take notes, or if their gazes seemed to travel restlessly over the assembly, observing who was there with at least as much interest as they watched the brightly colored slides, well, newcomers to an established group are often that way.

After the lecture ended, that same older man and woman were among those who chose to skip fruit punch and cookies in order to go for an undirected tour of the patch of virgin forest that was the Botanical Garden’s heart. Those two were among the first to walk up to—and then directly
into
—a large glacial boulder that was situated a few steps off the trail.

Passing through solid stone was momentarily disconcerting, but then they found themselves in a large round room that was almost prosaic—if one could ignore the fact that the lighting was indirect and appeared to come directly from the stone itself. The room also appeared to be empty.

“I remember when there was a rather lovely Eye of Horus out there,” Pearl said, “painted on the rock to mark the door.”

Shen chuckled dryly. “I suppose someone thought the Eye qualified as graffiti. Or maybe that it attracted a little too much attention to this spot.”

“Maybe,” Pearl agreed, “but I still liked it.”

“So did I,” came a new voice from the apparent emptiness.

Conversation halted in midbreath as a woman emerged from shadows they hadn’t noticed until that moment. She appeared to be somewhere in her late forties. She was clad in neat khaki slacks, a pink polo shirt, and walking shoes.

“I am Billi Rockshaper,” the woman said, extending her right hand. “One of the custodians of this particular warren. You are the first to arrive. Welcome.”

No one would call Billi Rockshaper pretty or even handsome. Her nose was too strong, her upper lip too thin, her lower lip very full. Heavy, coarse, brown hair hung from a straight center part, not so much framing her face as defining it. However, her expression as she came to meet them was pleasant, giving credence to her words of welcome.

“I remember you,” Pearl said, meeting the handclasp. “You ran the slide projector.”

“Digital,” Billi said with a laugh. “I remember when a major feature of running one of those things was fixing them when they jammed. Make yourself comfortable. The others should be along soon. They take care not to leave the meeting all at once.”

“Wise,” Shen said. “It might be noticed.”

A few folding chairs—the expensive type with padded seats—had already been set up. Shen moved to open another, and seated himself with a slight sigh. Pearl was again reminded that although they both had aged, her role as the Tiger had encouraged her to remain far more physically fit than the sedentary Dragon.

Billi moved to continue setting up the chairs, arraying them in a crescent several rows deep. Pearl went to help her.

“How many do you expect to attend the meeting?” she asked.

“At least a dozen,” Billi said, “but not more than two dozen. However, I always try and arrange for both more chairs and more refreshments than we will need. As you probably already know, this can be a touchy lot. There are always one or two eager to imagine a slight.”

Pearl did not disagree, although after her experiences with Hollywood egos, those of the adepts of the magical community were hardly a challenge.

As Billi had predicted, the others began trickling in soon thereafter. Pearl had counted nineteen and no more had followed for some five minutes when a sixtyish man clad in ironed blue jeans and a red sports shirt rose to his feet. His most distinctive features were his neatly cut black hair, worn quite a bit longer than was usual for a man of his age, and a short curling black beard, both lightly touched with silver.

“Judd Madden,” Shen said softly, speaking underneath the man’s opening comment. “He’s this year’s chair. Modern Kabbalist tradition.”

Pearl nodded. For all the Thirteen tended to refer to the “indigenous” as if they were one group, there were many magical forms and traditions still active in this world. Some traditions were the last remnants of cultures long vanished. Magic had proven to have a peculiar resilience that resisted time.

Judd Madden was finishing his opening comments, light words thanking those who had organized the earlier entertainment. He ended by thanking Billi and someone called Hadley for arranging the refreshments for both that meeting and this one.

The routine comments created a veneer of normalcy, but Pearl was not in the least fooled. Tension emanated from the nineteen men and women arrayed on the folding chairs, each a coiled vine from which sprung leaves and branches, a jungle of human emotion and reaction through which the Tiger must find her way.

“Today we have a visitor from California,” Judd Madden went on, “as well as the pleasure of the company of a local who does not join us as often as we might wish. They are both here in response to rather special—almost unique, one might say—circumstances that arose a few weeks ago.

“These circumstances were brought to our attention by Harriet LaTour on behalf of the Rosicrucians,” Judd Madden inclined his head in a gesture of thanks to a sixtyish woman clad in austere white who sat on the right-hand horn of the crescent, “and were discussed in some detail at our last meeting. In response to those discussions, Shen Kung agreed to come to this meeting, and also agreed to ask one of those more closely involved in those events to attend as well. We are pleased and honored to welcome Pearl Bright of the Thirteen Orphans.”

Pearl half expected a patter of applause, for in tone and meter Judd’s introduction was very like those she had heard hundreds of times before. This time the conclusion of his speech was met only with silence and a growing sense of expectancy.

This was broken at last by a large black woman wearing a full-length dashiki printed with elaborate patterns in red and bronze over khaki trousers. During the public meeting of the Rock Dove Society her close-cropped head had been bare, but now her wooly curls were covered by an elaborately folded kerchief cut from the same red and bronze fabric.

“I am Renata,” she said, rising to her feet and turning to face Shen and Pearl. “I represent the West African into modern American traditions. According to what we learned at our last meeting, you folks have brought some trouble onto us… Or something like that, anyhow. You want to explain it yourself?”

Renata’s tone was friendly enough, but there was a challenging note beneath. Pearl rose to her feet and, without being invited, crossed from the back row where she and Shen had seated themselves up to the front. She’d learned long
ago about commanding an audience’s attention, and knew you couldn’t do nearly as well if they were concentrating on craning their necks, trying to get a clear look at you.

Shen half rose as if to join her, but Pearl shook her head.

“I was there,” she said. “I can answer their questions.”

Shen stayed and she sensed his relief. If he had been up front with her, he’d have to keep explaining how he didn’t remember even the parts in which he must have been intimately involved.

Once up front, Pearl studied her audience without appearing to do so. At least for now, she had them. The Thirteen Orphans, true to their original vows, had always kept pretty much to themselves. Therefore, much of what she had to say about the Orphans and their history would be new.

She swallowed a sigh as she recalled how her efforts to get to know other traditions had been viewed with hostility, both by many of the indigenous traditions she tried to study and by her own people. The Rosicrucians, her neighbors to this day, had been one of the marked exceptions. Their traditions included welcoming the seeker.

Pearl couched her reply to Renata’s question in a reflective, reminiscent note that would invite sympathy.

“I can see why you’re worrying about our bringing trouble on you, Ms. Renata. That’s pretty much the response the Thirteen Orphans have always met with. The Exiles left their homelands to preserve those homelands, only to be greeted with fear and suspicion before they had hardly done more than take a few steps on the soil of their new home.

“Then they were attacked by those who had exiled them. They bravely sought to defend not only themselves, but their new world from contamination. After the attacks ended—as we all hoped, forever—they retired to quiet lives, comporting themselves as very normal citizens.

“Today, we, the descendants of those original Thirteen Orphans, find ourselves in a strangely similar position to that of our ancestors in those early years following their initial arrival. After many decades of relative peace, we were
attacked by those from the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice.”

Although many of the members of the Rock Dove Society must have heard some version of this already, still there was an indrawn gasp. Pearl acknowledged it with a slight inclination of her head, and went on, her tone serious.