Nine Gates (47 page)

After the sun’s passage, Flying Claw had returned to his
usual friendly politeness, but Brenda was very aware of him riding there behind her. She wondered if he was equally aware of her, and tried not to slump in her saddle, even when their progress extended hour after bone-wearying hour.

And she tried to tell herself that when she looked back over her shoulder, she was looking for hints that the sun might be rising, not for the smile that flashed across Flying Claw’s face when their gazes met.

Loyal Wind returned from his fifth or sixth scouting trip at a gallop.

“I’ve found the Yellow Springs!” he announced. His smile had been broad with satisfaction, but then he frowned. “However, the springs are not unguarded, and the guardian is unlike anything I have seen. It has the appearance of a snake, but there is something wrong about it. It looks like a snake, but it does not move quite like a snake.”

“Tell us about it,” Righteous Drum said, but Loyal Wind shook his head.

“No. We are almost to where you can see the springs for yourself, and I may have said too much already. I would prefer you make your own decisions.”

Brenda had noticed that Leaf had increased his speed as soon as Loyal Wind returned, but he slowed a few moments later, when Loyal Wind made a motion with his right hand.

“The river goes underground here, and…”

He stopped speaking, for they could see for themselves. The Suns’ River vanished underground, thundering down into a wide, deep declivity. The rock surrounding the chasm was smooth, melted so slick that there were not even bubbles, but dramatic as the thundering fall of water was, Brenda hardly had eyes for it. Her attention was demanded by the room beyond the chasm.

“Room” wasn’t the right word; neither was “chamber” or “cave” or anything else that implied contained space. As far as Brenda could tell, they had emerged once again into an open area that was “outdoors.”

The air was fresh—more than fresh, perfumed with some
familiar flower. The sky overhead was brilliant blue, and held a few wispy clouds. She could hear birds twittering. A few yards off a rabbit was nibbling what looked like a perfectly normal dandelion.

Brenda looked beyond the rabbit, and across a vast meadow where lush green grass starred with wildflowers grew over gently rolling hills.

The only odd thing about the area—other than that it existed at all—was the angle of the light, but she couldn’t figure out why.

“Have we come out into the guardian domains again?” asked Deborah in a hushed voice.

“No,” Loyal Wind assured her. “This is simply another part of the underworld. All of you, dismount and follow me. I will lead you to the place from where you can see the springs and their guardian.”

He pointed, indicating a narrow path cut from the living rock of a rock wall that Brenda guessed must be the last remnant of the caverns from which they had emerged. The path led to a ledge that projected over the edge of the meadow like some sort of strange balcony. It looked sculpted, but Brenda was getting used to environments that violated just about everything she had been taught to believe.

She dismounted from Leaf’s saddle, surreptitiously rubbing the tops of her thighs, and hoping she wouldn’t stagger when she started climbing. Deborah grinned at her.

“Just imagine how it feels when you’re my age, with a whole lot less leg,” Deborah said. “I’m going to remember how it feels to be this out of shape when I’m home again, and want to skip a trip to the gym.”

The path was narrow enough that they had to ascend in single file. Loyal Wind took point, and Flying Claw brought up the rear. Brenda was tempted to drop back to be closer to the young Tiger, but remembering the strange creatures they’d seen, she didn’t. She was getting better at responding to a crisis, but it was going to be a while before she was the equal of either Flying Claw or Riprap.

The path was steep, not in the least kind to muscles that had been bent close to the barrel of a horse for days, but Brenda made it to the top without complaining.

Cross-training
, she thought.
That’s what I need.

Then she arrived at the top, looked out over the meadow, and forgot about anything as mundane as aching muscles.

From here, Brenda could see that the meadow rose and fell in undulating hills. Nine hills, she realized after a moment. The hills bore few plants other than the covering grass and an artful scattering of wildflowers. However, the one plant there made up for the lack.

It was a tall tree, so tall that “towering” seemed an understatement, a poor attempt to compare its vastness to something human hands might make. Its boughs were wide and spreading, like those of an oak or maple. Its leaves were boat-shaped, like those of a magnolia. Its flowers were enormous and white.

Brenda sniffed tentatively, and realized that the pervasive perfume she had been smelling since they had entered this area was very like that of a magnolia tree: light and sweet, floral with a hint of melon.

The tree, she now realized, was the source of the light, and the reason that light was somewhat peculiar, for it emanated from the blossoms high on the tree, some brighter, some dimmer. Brenda did not need Righteous Drum to tell her that the glowing flowers each held a sun, recovering from its long journey through the skies and under the earth.

Brenda felt shaken, awed with a comprehension of reality that, while it did not fit anything she knew, still seemed perfectly right. She let her gaze drop, studying the much less overwhelming rise and fall of the grassy hills. That was when she realized that between the hills curved something scaly and serpentine.

“Is that the snake, Loyal Wind?” she asked softly.

“It is… something,” Righteous Drum replied, puzzlement replacing the usual pedantic confidence in his voice. “It is like a snake or dragon but…”

“Hush!” Deborah cut him off, her voice firm, sharp, alarmed. “It’s moving! Has it seen us?”

Almost as one, they flattened themselves against the stone wall that backed their vantage point. Brenda felt her right hand moving toward the bracelets on her left wrist.

“No! No, it hasn’t see us,” Flying Claw said. Alone of them all—even the ghost—he had held his place. He stood in front of them, straight-backed and alert. “I am certain that whatever is down there has not seen us, but Deborah is correct. It is moving. It? They? No. It. Righteous Drum, come here. Look more closely. What do you see?”

Righteous Drum moved away from the wall, but Brenda noticed he kept a little behind Flying Claw, even as he leaned to take a closer look.

“Nine heads!” Righteous Drum said in consternation. “Nine heads issuing forth from one body. Yes. I am sure of it.”

Brenda forced herself to move forward where she could see. Separating the creature from its surroundings took a moment, for its scales were shaded a dirty brass hue that blended surprisingly well with the shadowed greensward.

Righteous Drum was right. The thing had nine heads, each one at the end of a neck so long that it could have qualified as a separate body, if length was all that mattered. The body—thick and sluglike—was half buried in the turf. Or did it emerge from there? She couldn’t tell.

“Parasite,” Riprap said. He had possessed the forethought to take with him the small set of binoculars from his saddlebags. Now he was viewing the ground below through them. “Leech. That’s what it reminds me of, not a snake, a leech. There’s something reptilian about it, but…”

“Whatever it is,” Righteous Drum said, “Loyal Wind was correct. This is not any of the many types of snakes I have studied. In the creature below, it is as if the snake has been subsumed by some horror—still there, but merged with something else.”

The creature had continued to move, each head gliding
sluggishly from some central point among the declivities. There was an ugly caress to the movement, but Brenda noticed that none of the heads went near the trunk of the tree, and although their necks were long, they kept well below the overshadowing branches.

Reassured by the monster’s lack of interest in them, they had all crept forward to watch. Brenda regretted that she hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring her own binoculars. They each had a pair, but now she could see that only Riprap and Flying Claw—the trained soldiers among them—had thought to bring them.

“Look!” Brenda said, embarrassed to hear her voice squeak. “What’s it doing? Is it drinking? All those heads at once?”

“Sucking,” Riprap clarified, his upper lip curled in revulsion. “Sucking the water from each of the Yellow Springs.”

“Those spring’s don’t look yellow,” Brenda said. “Are you certain we’re in the right place?”

“The waters are named from the brilliance of their color when they lift the rising suns,” Loyal Wind said. “This is the right place. I could not be easily mistaken.”

Brenda nodded. There was a long silence while each of them studied the meadow and its grotesque occupant.

“That thing isn’t,” Brenda said, “a usual guardian, is it? I mean, I’d sort of expect a place like this to have a guardian—magical springs, roosting place of the suns—but this is something else.”

Righteous Drum nodded, round, wide face unhappy. “This creature is not a guardian such as I have heard of in any legend from any time or place. It is something else, but what?” He turned to Loyal Wind. “Great Horse, have you ever heard of such a thing? Perhaps during the years you have run in the afterlife?”

“No,” came the reply almost before the question could be articulated. “No idea. I…”

Brenda looked at Flying Claw, who was watching the creature through his own binoculars.

“Flying Claw, could this be what Pai Hu, the White Tiger of the West, was talking about?”

Flying Claw lowered his binoculars and looked at her, considering. “You mean the source of that sense he had of being drained away? Perhaps. I am no scholar, nor do I think this is a scholar’s problem. A monster that sucks dry the wellsprings of the waters that raise suns—and in so doing interferes with our making ‘men,’ family, with those springs is a bane. That is enough reason for me to desire it gone.”

Flying Claw had dropped the binoculars to hang by their strap around his neck, the modern piece of equipment contrasting oddly with the snarling tiger’s face worked into his breastplate. He reached for the bow at his back.

“Wait!” said Righteous Drum. “Flying Claw, are you forgetting the Sage King Yu and his battle with the serpent with nine heads?”

Flying Claw let his hand drop from his bow, consternation on his face. He bent his head and recited, as if from a lesson often repeated.

“In days long ago, there was a terrible serpent with nine heads. Each head oozed poison so potent that it shriveled and dried anything it touched. The serpent with nine heads lay wrapped around nine hills, even as this monster does, and any who sought to attack it found it impossible even to approach, for with nine heads it could watch in every direction, so it slew those who came after it before they could raise sword or spear or bow.”

Righteous Drum nodded. “And the Sage King Yu took pity on his people, and went after the serpent himself. For a long while, he studied it. Yu realized that although the serpent kept watch on all sides, it never looked up. Then Yu enlisted the help of the Winged Dragon. He rode astride it, and they approached from above, in this way managing to cut off the serpent’s heads almost before it realized it was under attack. But although Yu was successful, killing the serpent only created more problems.”

“Yes,” Flying Claw said. “I remember. Poison spread from
each of the heads, and leaked from the body, so that the surrounding lands were destroyed. Eventually, Yu came up with a solution, but not before much had been ruined.”

“And we are not Yu,” Righteous Drum said, “and we cannot make an artificial island in an artificial lake to contain the corpse as a solution to the problem.”

“And,” Deborah said, frowning, “with the Nine Springs here, who knows where the poison would be carried? On the other hand, do we know that this monster is poisonous?”

“Heads look as if they might be,” Riprap said, handing her his binoculars. “I wouldn’t take a gamble.”

“Nor I,” agreed Flying Claw, “but what do we do?”

Brenda had borrowed Flying Claw’s binoculars. By modern standards, they were primitive: no autofocus or electronic enhancements, because Des had figured these would probably malfunction. Nonetheless, they did a good job of bringing the creature below into focus.

“The monster is dug in there,” she said, “off to one side. The body goes in who knows how deep. See? There’s even grass growing around where the body is rooted in. That thing hasn’t moved for a while, and doesn’t look as if it plans to do so.”

“I guess,” Riprap said, taking back his binoculars from Deborah and grinning at Brenda, “that rules out my brilliant plan. I was going to have you go down there and start screaming to lure it off. Then we could have our talk with the springs and get out of here.”

Brenda stuck her tongue out at him.

“Seriously,” she said, “if we can’t kill it in case it floods the area with poison, and we can’t lure it off, what can we do? I’m just guessing, but that thing doesn’t look friendly, or like something that will ignore us if we wander down there. It’s got a positively proprietary attitude toward the springs.”

“You’re right,” Riprap agreed. He turned to face Flying Claw, Righteous Drum, and Loyal Wind, all of whom were studying the layout below, their faces showing almost matching expressions of fascinated horror. “You folks have any
idea? Me and Brenda and Deborah, we’re not exactly experienced with fighting monsters.”

“I do not have any insights as to how we can attack it safely,” Righteous Drum said. “Flying Claw? Loyal Wind?”

Tiger and Horse shook their heads. Brenda moved to where she could kneel at the edge of the balcony and study the monster, while resting her increasingly achy legs. She watched as it sucked at the hills, almost as if nursing on enormous, grassy breasts. The notion was revolting, and embarrassing, too, because once it got into her head, she couldn’t get rid of it, and she felt like a pervert.