Shadow Pavilion (17 page)

36

T
hey must have simply opened all the kennels. The courtyard was filled with a flood of dogs, the same scaled beasts that had nearly torn the badger apart so short a time before.

“Go, go!” Zhu Irzh shouted, and the badger did not need bidding; he threw himself at the ominous mouth of the gateway on the demon's heels. A dog snapped and caught the hem of Zhu Irzh's long black coat. There was the sound of tearing silk; the badger thought he heard Zhu Irzh cry, “Oh bloody hell! Not again!” The demon took hold of a handful of coat and wrenched it free of the hound's mouth. The badger, feeling the sheer of teeth, teakettled. The dog howled, receiving a mouthful of iron, and the badger bowled himself forward, nearly knocking Zhu Irzh flat.

But the gateway was opening. Zhu Irzh and the badger hurtled through. The badger found himself in a sudden, muffled world, as confining as the bag. It was as though the walls around them had stolen sound; he could still hear the baying of the dogs, but it was stifled, heard through some barrier. As badger again, he cannoned into Zhu Irzh.

They stood at the mouth of a long tunnel and, even under these desperate circumstances, the badger felt a great reluctance to enter it. There was something wrong with it, even to one born in an ancient Hell. Zhu Irzh seemed to feel the same way, for he hesitated, only for a moment, but long enough for someone to coalesce into the air ahead of them.

“Go, then.” Agni appeared amused, the gold-rimmed eyes gleaming in the shadows. “See how far you get. Remember, the hunt goes on.”

A dog howled, startlingly close, and galvanized Zhu Irzh into movement. He pushed forward, through the insubstantial form of the tiger prince, and into the tunnel. The badger, once more, followed. He glanced back once to see Agni staring after them, smiling gently.

Long and long, and far away. The badger had a short memory for things that did not matter, and even hurt faded, given time. But he found later that this journey back to the world of men remained with him, unfading, as bright and fresh as the first time, emerging in his animal dreams.

A circle of fire, flames rushing and gushing in glittering waterfalls, horned faces grimacing between them. Zhu Irzh ducked as a thick red person raced toward him, swinging a scimitar like a grin. The badger stepped back as Zhu Irzh hurled himself down and up, bouncing on the balls of his feet, but the red person was nowhere to be seen, swallowed into light and fire. Then heat reached out and licked them with a long golden tongue and both the badger and Zhu Irzh cried out, only to find that they were unharmed, although the badger smelled slightly singed.

Somewhere else: another jungle, a temple like a pyramid, its steps covered with monkeys that had the wise, sad eyes of old men. They all stopped their quiet conversation when the badger and the demon stepped into the clearing, staring. At the temple's summit, the badger glimpsed someone very ancient, half-ape, half-man, with a golden gaze. He raised a ringed hand and the green leaves whirled up and through them, carrying them away.

Another forest, different, fresher. Above the treeline, the badger saw a spire of mountain, the glassy shimmer of a glacier wall, and for a moment, was consumed by an unfamiliar longing that in a human might have been called homesickness. Zhu Irzh was frowning. “This is like the Himalayas, or something.”

“Have you been to the Himalayas?”

“No. I've seen them on TV.”

The sky was as clear as the mountain stream that bubbled up through the rocks on their left. The badger, taking chances, went over to it and drank. It, in turn, was like drinking light. Zhu Irzh eyed him askance.

“Careful.”

“I am thirsty. It is very pure.”

The demon was still frowning. “I'm not sure this is a Hell, you know. I think perhaps we've been ascending.”

“Do you think we deserve that?”

“God knows,” the demon said, with a trace of irony. “Does this look like Hell to you?”

It did not. The trees, dark evergreens interspersed with splashes of rhododendron, filled the air with a resinous scent. The earth was russet, crumbling and fertile. Cyclamen pushed their way through the long grass, aconite and aster. Overhead, a faint crown of stars could be seen, even though it was still bright day. The badger agreed.

“But still, it is not where we wish to be.”

“No. Although it's a lot nicer than our own Heaven. Not so managed, don't you think?”

“It
is
wilder,” the badger concurred. Somewhere from deep in the woods came laughter and the sound of running feet. A small deer burst out from beneath the fronded branches, a dappled thing, golden-horned and golden-hooved, with knowing brown eyes. The appealing effect was slightly mitigated by a pair of sharp little fangs.

“Oh,” it said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know anyone was here.”

“We're—visiting,” Zhu Irzh said. “Actually, we're also lost.”

“Why, how can you be lost? This is the Forest of the Shepherd. All is known here.” The deer took a closer look. “Ah, but you are foreigners, aren't you?”

“If we're trespassing, I can only apologize,” Zhu Irzh said. The badger hoped that the demon was not about to divulge to this being that they were actually on the run. Heaven it may be, but they could be wrong, and in the badger's experience, not even Celestial creatures were wholly to be trusted.

“No, no, all are welcome. But where are you headed?”

“Earth?”

The deer raised a gilded hoof and delicately pawed the ground, in what the badger thought might have been a gesture of astonishment. “The world of men? A long way from here. How did you get here?”

“A long story for a long way,” the demon said.

“The Shepherd loves stories,” the deer said. It raised its head and whistled, a curious, birdlike sound. Moments later, a whistle came back, faint on the wind. “I'm to bring you to him.”

The sinking sensation the badger experienced was, he knew, shared by Zhu Irzh; he could see it on the demon's face. But Zhu Irzh had been correct: they were lost, they needed help, and better from this seemingly inoffensive being than some of the other individuals they'd encountered lately.

Zhu Irzh appeared to be thinking along similar lines. He said, “Okay.”

The deer led them along the stream until it widened, the little mountain brook becoming something closer to a torrent. The deer sprang nimbly across a series of rocks, evidently placed to form a bridge.

“If you don't mind—” Zhu Irzh said, and scooped the badger up. The badger bore this indignity as best he could: his legs were too short to hop from stone to stone as the demon was now doing. Looking down, he saw that the rushing water was full of silver fish, swimming upstream as fast as lightning. On the other side, however, the deer was gazing upward.

“There is rain on the way.” And the badger could smell it on the wind, see the clouds gathering. A wilder Heaven indeed. “Never mind, we will soon be at the temple.”

This lay a short distance through the trees. There was more laughter, accompanied by singing, and then a single thread of flute music that drifted through the pine branches and silenced all other sound. Beside the badger, a grove of rhododendron released its flowers and the huge white blooms floated through the air, glowing as if candlelit, to light their way. The demon looked impressed.

The temple, when it appeared, was an immediate improvement on the deva's neglected place of worship. This was no ruin, rising in ivory marble from the forest floor and linked with trees that grew up through the stonework as if cultivated, forming a pattern of shadows across the walls and floor. A pool, lily-filled, lay before the temple, reflecting it back. Each one of the blossoms floated in through a small trellised window, disappearing. The flute music went on.

The deer led the badger and Zhu Irzh up the temple steps. Inside, a group of women sat on sequined cushions. They wore saris in every shade of blue and green and silver, shimmering like starlight. Not all of them were young; two of the women were gray-haired, with serene, lined faces. A bronze bowl, filled with water and a single lily, stood in front of the flute player, who sat surrounded by flowers.

The badger nearly ran. Beside him, he saw Zhu Irzh falter, as if unsure whether or not to bow, and then the demon did.

“My Lord.”

The flute player was slender and blue-skinned, the color of early morning frost, with eyes as golden as the horns of the little deer, who now curled at the flute player's feet. Curling black hair fell to his shoulders; he wore a sun-colored sarong.

“I am the Shepherd,” the flute player said.

“I think,” the demon remarked, very politely, “that I might have come across you as Lord Krishna.”

“That is one of my names, yes.” No invitation to call him by it; the badger knew how much it took to be on first-name terms with gods. It seemed “My Lord” would do.

“We're lost,” the demon said. “I'm terribly sorry about all this. We didn't mean to trespass.”

“How did you get here?”

“Well, I don't really know. It wasn't our choice. My companion here and I were taken captive on Earth and ended up in one of your lower levels, at a place called the Hunting Lodge.”

Here, the deer raised its sharp-toothed head and gave a most surprising hiss. The women's faces became somber and sad, and Krishna himself flushed to the shade of a stormcloud.

“Ah,” Krishna said, putting down the flute. “I know of it, of course. Agni's kingdom.”

“They came here,” the deer said. “With dogs.”

Zhu Irzh's eyebrows rose. “That's a bit ambitious, isn't it, for a lord of Hell?”

“Agni has always been ambitious,” Krishna said, “and with his tigress harem spurring him on, that ambition has been honed.”

“What happened?” Zhu Irzh asked.

“They were sent away. We drove them out. No creature of this land wants their kind here; all live in harmony. There are tigers here, too, who lie down with the deer at night, with the small creatures. This is a place of peace.

“This is a heaven for beasts,” Krishna explained. “And that is not popular among Agni's tiger tribe.”

“You'd think, wouldn't you …” the demon began, and Krishna smiled.

“Yes, you would indeed. But they say: the spirits of dead animals, often cruelly slaughtered, are kept here as if it were a game reserve, a wildlife park. They do not leave, because they do not wish to, but Agni's tigers cannot understand that, wishing to have full range across the worlds, to make every realm of Heaven and Hell their personal hunting ground.”

“Was this why we were captured?” Zhu Irzh enquired. “As a bit of big-game hunting?”

“I am afraid, my dear demon,” the Lord Krishna said, “that you are rather too small a game for Agni.”

“Oh.”

“And yet you were captured nonetheless
…
Curious. I've heard nothing of Agni's activities of late; it is though he is biding his time. Though one of his harem has gone to live among men.”

“She has?”

“In China. She became an actress, in the movies.” Krishna pronounced the word carefully, as if not entirely familiar with it. “Her name is Lara Chowdijharee.”

“Lara C's a tiger demon?” Zhu Irzh's mouth fell open.

“I have not heard of this person,” the badger said.

“You're not really much of a cinemagoer, are you?”

“I see no point in it. The people are too large and they live in dark houses.”

“Just think of him as a critic,” the demon said to Krishna. He went on: “I know of her. I've no connection with her.”

“And yet your lover is her cousin.”

“How do you know about Jhai?”

“We are all family,” the god said. “Even if some of us live in Hell and others do not, even if some of us choose to inhabit Earth. I know who you are, Seneschal Zhu Irzh. I know what a role you have played, in the saving of your world. I think that if you had not done so, you would not be standing here now; Heaven would have spat you out.”

“My Lord,” the demon said, “you are a god and you know what gods know. Do you have an opinion on why I was taken to the Hunting Lodge?”

“Yes,” said Krishna. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

37

S
eijin had meditated upon the matter and was ready to try again. But in the meantime, he found himself confronted with an angry client, and that was something that very rarely happened. Male self would take some time to get over this.

In fact, the client interrupted the meditation session. Seijin had begun by absorbing the warrior's spirit, after feasting upon his flesh. The man had been shadowed, as though maroon veins of anger and spite had run between sinews and muscles, but Seijin did not mind that. It lent piquancy to a vital essence, chili-pepper hot. The Lord Lady took these aspects and set them in their correct place, within Seijin's own spirit, where they burned for a little time, like candles. Then, the assassin settled down to watch within. Coming so close to Mhara had provided an insight into the Celestial Emperor's movements: the images were imprecise, seen through a dark glass, but substantial enough for Seijin to be able to tell where Mhara had been and was going. Female self dutifully noted Mhara's descent to the realm of Earth, to the little temple where Seijin had been so short a while ago, and having been there, the Lord Lady was able to reconstruct the image within the memory of the building.

There was Robin, so grounded, so certain of her place even though she understood its precariousness. Seijin had not objected to the little human ghost. A toughness there, a certain fibrous quality which could be respected. And that could be felt in these other folk: one male, one female. One human, and one demon. Seijin felt a faint twinge of regret: these could almost be the Lord Lady's own parents. Children of such unions were rare, but obviously they did exist, otherwise Seijin would not be sitting here now. Perhaps—and here the Lord Lady allowed a small measure of daydreaming—perhaps a child might one day result from these two, born on Earth like Seijin had been, and perhaps it might be stolen, brought here to the Shadow Pavilion, raised as a successor.

Happy thoughts. But these were enemies, male self was quick to remind Seijin. Any child of an enemy is one's own foe.

Times change,
Seijin reminded male self.

But not by much,
male self reminded back.

Anyway, these were thoughts for another day. There was work to be done, and with this in mind, Seijin watched as Mhara entered a discourse with the demon and the human and the ghost. It lacked clarity and it was impossible to hear what was being said even though Seijin had cast a small and hopefully undetectable spell within the room. It seemed that this was not working and this, almost more than anything else, gave the Lord Lady an insight into the intrinsic power of the Celestial Emperor.

And then the Gatekeeper came in.

Seijin was unaccustomed to being interrupted, but the reaction was immediate. A raised hand, a flick of the long sleeve, and the Gatekeeper was sent flying against the wall.

“Lord Lady! Forgive me, forgive me, I did not mean to intrude—”

“Then why did you?” Seijin spoke mildly.

“There is someone here to see you. The Dowager Empress, she—”

Seijin rose and gave a low bow. “It is I who should be asking for your forgiveness, Gatekeeper. You were right to disturb me, for such an august visitor. Please show her in.”

“Here?” the Gatekeeper asked.

Seijin glanced at the remains of the night's meal, the shattered ribcage, the remnants of organs. “Perhaps not. In the guest parlor? I think that would be appropriate, don't you?”

“Eminently so, Lord Lady,” the Gatekeeper quavered. “Shall I show Her Highness there now?”

“Yes,” Seijin replied. “I shall see her shortly.”

The Dowager Empress was livid, and this disturbed the calm airs of the Shadow Pavilion to a distressing degree. Seijin could feel them all the way down the stairs, coiling around like serpents. Female self said she would be glad when they'd done with this bitch. Male self agreed, more vehemently. Seijin reminded them that this was a client, and as such, must be tolerated. A contract had been agreed upon and must be honored with propriety until it was complete. Both selves subsided, muttering, as Seijin walked with a smile into the visitor's hall.

The Dowager Empress rose in a rustle and hiss of robes. Her face was, as always, serene, as masklike as before, but as soon as she set eyes on the Lord Lady, she spat, “You failed!”

“Madam,” Seijin gave a deep bow, so that hair brushed the floor. “It was not that I failed, only that I have not yet succeeded. This was a skirmish, nothing more.”

“A skirmish! My son is alive and well and stalking the ways of Heaven and Earth as if nothing more had befallen him than an unexpected shower of rain!”

“Madam, I would remind you that you are not a warrior. The mettle of an opponent must first be tested.”
Better not tell her about the missing hairpin,
female self counseled, and Seijin agreed. “I have now undergone that test and I know what awaits me, what I must do to defeat your son and carry out your wishes.”

“What if he finds out?” Ah, this, then, was the crux of the problem: the Empress feared being found out; she had been indiscreet. Seijin gave an inward sigh. Clients always managed to screw things up for themselves, and he supposed that this might be especially true of Celestials. Guilt at wrongdoing undermined them, no matter how ruthless they believed themselves to have become.

And then they blamed you, of course. Seijin gave another bow. “Madam?” Spoken with great sympathy, an invitation to confession.

“He knows I'm up to something.”

Seijin feigned concern, leaning forward with furrowed brow. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure!” the Dowager Empress snapped. Seijin wished that her facial expression would alter, even a little, to reflect her feelings. “He followed me.”

“What had you done, Madam, that your son felt it necessary to follow you?”

“I was obliged to eavesdrop upon him,” the Dowager Empress said. Was there a hint of discomfiture behind that bland countenance? Perhaps, but only perhaps. “He was proposing all manner of absurd plans to the Court, suggesting—no, insisting!—that some of them should put themselves through hardship and trauma, travel to Earth, if you please, and assist the so-called helpless­.”

“You do not feel that folk are in need of Celestial assistance?” Seijin spoke mildly, aware of a slight surge of the newly consumed spirit within, the protest of one who believed himself to be a victim.

“These people choose their own paths,” the Dowager Empress said, looking amazed that this should even be open to question. “It is their karma, for wrong-doing carried out in a previous life. Or perhaps they choose their earthly lives, in order that they might experience suffering and pain, discomfort and woe.”

“Do people make such choices?” Seijin asked, genuinely puzzled. The Dowager Empress gave him a narrow look.

“I should have thought that you might have remembered.”

Seijin gave a gentle shake of the head. “Why no. I have only lived one life, Madam. I have no karmic history.” By virtue of an otherwise dubious heritage: there were some advantages to being of such mixed blood, at least, though this had not been so evident in youth.

“Maybe you are accumulating karma to come,” the Dowager Empress said, beadily.

“Maybe.” Seijin's voice remained placid. A hundreds-year-old assassin, slayer of Celestials and demons and men, had surely plenty of accumulated plenty of karma, most of it murky. But Seijin had already taken steps, dwelling on these briefly, and in the deepest part of the mind, swiftly borne away and hidden by female self. Seijin was not sure how much the Dowager Empress could read of other people's minds. The Lord Lady had no intention of coming back as anything, of coming back at all.

The Dowager Empress seemed to be waiting for more information and she appeared a little put out when this was not forthcoming. “The fact remains,” she said, “that my son must be stopped in this ludicrous reform effort—reform! Revolution, more like, and most unwelcome. Some of my husband's oldest courtiers have come to me, expressing their grave concern—poor things, they do not know what to think! The Emperor guided them in their every notion. How long do you think they would survive in the maelstrom of Earth?”

Seijin knew what she wanted to hear, even if it was insincere. “Surely not so long,” the Lord Lady murmured.

“Exactly! And what, might I enquire, do you intend to do about it?”

“I intend,” Seijin said softly, “to make a killing.”

It took time and energy to get the Dowager Empress out of the Shadow Pavilion, and Seijin begrudged the effort. It might even be necessary to swallow the life of another warrior, in order to keep up one's strength. Seijin hoped not, as the hunting of such took up more energy
…
and there you were, locked in a kind of spiral. Yet it could not be denied that the Dowager Empress had a point: time was passing, during which Mhara was already, or so it seemed, in the process of making sweeping changes within the infrastructure of the Celestial Realm, and the longer this dragged on, the angrier and more frustrated the Dowager Empress would become. Seijin was not concerned about the matter of personal reputation—this would hold, so male self was firmly told, in the face of some protest—but experience informed the Lord Lady that clients tended to panic, to try to take matters into their own inexperienced hands, and thereby create no end of a mess. The Dowager Empress might be a scheming old bitch, but Seijin doubted whether Her Celestial Highness had ever actually had anyone killed before. Although one never knew. She seemed the classic example of a soul gone quietly hollow, rotting in its ancient shell. And so she was panicking, insisting on action which might not be entirely appropriate. Seijin decided to sleep upon it, and duly went to the uppermost chamber, to take uncertain refuge in dreams.

Morning rolled slowly over the lands of
between,
appearing first as a distant fire in the sky, all around the horizon. Seijin was awake before this happened, standing at the window and watching the ghosts of the night-hunters flit between the rocks. Something with great shadowy wings and a forlorn cry drifted overheard, brushing the window with its pinions, leaving the smell of blood and cold air in its wake. Then the sky crimsoned and Seijin watched the spirits stop in their tracks, freeze, and fade. Today would be the day of the second attempt.

Seijin opened the window and dismissed the view. That would return soon, but for the moment, the air parted like water, as though Seijin had cast a stone into a pool, revealing a glimpse of a different world. The Lord Lady looked down onto Earth, to the small temple that was Mhara's place of worship in the human realm. Like infrared, the temple gleamed white, then glowed a patchy blue to reveal the divine presence within, and other shapes, more shadowy. His Celestial Highness had company, then. Seijin looked out at dim stars: it would be the middle of the night in the city beyond. One of those shapes, the one closest to the Emperor, must be the ghost, Robin; the others—one tasted familiar, but the wards were too strong and Seijin could not see beyond them. Interesting. But the truth of the matter would be discerned soon enough, and it didn't really matter if someone got in the Lord Lady's way.

As dawn touched the sky, Seijin lifted a hand and spat a single silver sphere into the waiting palm. This was the distilled essence of the human warrior, a necessary sacrifice. Seijin breathed upon the sphere until it became too hot to hold, smoking in the hollow of the hand. Gritting teeth, Seijin carried it to the box containing the single remaining pin and bound the glowing, molten thing into the shaft. The spirit, bound, shrieked as it was further tied, and Seijin gave a small smile of satisfaction. Then the pin itself was taken and strapped in to make the point of a long arrow, formed of a demon's thigh bone. Like the Lord Lady, indeed: human, demon, shifting, all manner of wrong.

Seijin held the arrow. One shot, one chance. That really lifted the stakes and the spirit with it; these days had been missed, with so great a chance of failure. The ruination of the previous attempt had been invigorating, and Seijin wanted to capitalize on that, strike while the fire was still hot. A curious metaphor under the circumstances: for
between
was even colder now, the flames of the smith's forge had still not returned and Seijin did not intend to suffer that immortal presence in
between
again. No betrayal—the smith owed Seijin nothing except a grudging tolerance—but all the same, chinks in the armor must be closed.

And speaking of armor
…
Seijin dressed with even greater care, summoning mist and curdling it into silver gray, hard as iron yet not as brittle, conjuring cloud from the wreaths above the mountain peaks and casting it over a shoulder. Holding the bone arrow, and a long curved bow, won in Genghis' horde so many years ago, accompanied by a scimitar in its sheath, Seijin once more set foot upon the world of Earth.