The Demon and the City (32 page)

The temple rose above them in a great arc, a dome of darkness. To Zhu Irzh, it looked impenetrable, but Robin was saying to Mhara, "There! That's where we went in." She was pointing in the direction of the canal.

"I happen to know," the dowser said, "that this particular route will take you right into the Night Harbor. We won't go by water. Come with me—I'll show you where to go."

He led them around the building, to a rubble-strewn courtyard. It looked to Zhu Irzh as though part of the side wall of the temple, perhaps one of the buttresses which supported its squat bulk, had collapsed into the courtyard. A series of fissures and holes were apparent in the wall of Shai.

"Look!" Chen said sharply. "Who's that?"

Zhu Irzh turned to see someone crouching by a pile of fallen mortar. The woman was rocking to and fro, arms wrapped around her waist, murmuring something in an erratic rhythm. With a distinct sense of shock, he saw that it was Jhai Tserai. She was wearing a crimson jacket and dark trousers, the same costume in which he had glimpsed her earlier, and she was perfectly made up, but there was an empty wildness behind her dark eyes, and her face was a mask of strain with a peculiar slackness about the mouth. Beneath the hem of the jacket, a long, striped tail twitched to and fro and her eyes were as golden as Zhu Irzh's own. She said something, but it made no sense; the words were slurred and unformed, coming from deep in the throat. Her
devic
self had emerged, probably conjured by weariness and fear and the proximity of Hell. It didn't take more than a quick look to inform the demon that whatever control she might have had over it, was gone. The disrupted day might have meant that she had forgotten the suppressant drugs, but whatever the explanation, she was all tigress now.

"Jhai," the demon said, soft and encouraging. "Jhai, come here."

"Be careful," Chen murmured.

"I plan to." The demon crouched down on his haunches and called to her, an alluring sound, compelling her to rise and stumble forward. He rose and caught her and her arms went around his neck. He felt her link her clawed hands. As she did so, she turned unseeing eyes on Chen and smiled, a peculiar, lipless grimace. Zhu Irzh stroked her spine, murmuring in her ear.

"What's the matter with her?" Robin said uncertainly.

"Shock," the demon said over Jhai's shoulder. "She'll be all right in a moment."

"She doesn't look all right to me. She doesn't look
human."

"Well . . ." Zhu Irzh had to admit that it was pretty obvious. "Perhaps she's been experimenting," he said lamely. This did not cut much ice with at least one member of the party.

"She is a
deva,"
Mhara said, out of the darkness.

"Did you know before?" Zhu Irzh asked.

"No. Only in dreams, but I didn't know if they meant anything real. I was drugged, and she hid it well." Mhara spoke neutrally, but Zhu Irzh could sense trouble ahead. Letting go of Jhai, he grasped her wrist.

"Come with me, Jhai," he said, and it was perhaps more his tone of voice than the uncomprehended words that made her follow, docile.

"Inside," Chen said with a wary glance at Jhai Tserai.

Within Shai, it was much colder, a bitter, wintry cold that Zhu Irzh had only ever felt in the Night Harbor, up in the high mountains, and this was the heart of the summer in Singapore Three. Frost rimed the broken floor and the ceiling glittered. Above them, though they were now inside, the stars shone like lamps in a clear sky.

Zhu Irzh looked back. Through the fissure, which seemed much bigger from the inside, he could still see the shattered column of the Trade House and, beyond it, the high structures of banks and the Pellucid Island Opera, with the lights of Tevereya floating beyond. As he watched, the lights died a block at a time, and the city was silent. Surely, a few minutes ago, people had been running through the streets, laughing and shouting and letting off firecrackers and fireworks? From the sky a single flake of snow brushed Zhu Irzh's cheek. It felt like a hot, floating coal. His shoulders hunched in a sudden shiver. Jhai pulled fretfully at his arm.

As soon as she saw that Paravang Roche was leading them toward the iron doors of the inner temple, Jhai whimpered and pulled away. Zhu Irzh was having a hard time reconciling this wreck of a demon with the flippant, ruthless young woman of recent acquaintance. She was agitated now, pawing at his arm and pointing. Zhu Irzh was straining to see into the shadows about the portals of Shai. He was almost sure that someone was there, waiting by the doors, a hovering presence.

As they neared the great double doors, someone rose fluidly from the steps and turned to meet them. It was a tall person, dressed in a swathed dark robe, with prominent eyes and a long braid of hair. The feet, which were bare, were the feet of birds, knuckled and covered with thick rumpled skin. It smiled, displaying a dual row of sharp teeth. The end of a tail switched about its ankles. It took a long look at them, and then bounded up onto the portal roof, where it crouched, rattling its head from side to side. Jhai looked up at the creature and gasped. It let out a peal of laughter, shaking its pointed head. Zhu Irzh grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the doors.

The emergency services had been working throughout the festival, in Bharcharia Anh, to repair the damage done by the earthquake. Gardeners moved silently through the green, moist gardens mending the torn soil, replanting the uprooted thousand-flower, bamboo, maple and cryptomeria, pruning and replacing. Now, the gardens were once again serene, wet with dew in the early morning, a light mist rising from the damp grass, and throughout the gardens the air held the scent of flowers and rain.

Iso Matabe preferred this time of day to all others, save perhaps the early evening, those times which were neither one time nor another, halfway between darkness and daylight, the times when the veil which separated the worlds drew thin and the beloved dead could be glimpsed. Matabe was now in her forties; a grave woman with a melancholy gaze. She was held to be one of the greatest poets of her day, hiding behind the walls of her house, walking in her green garden, a recluse who shunned performance. She could not bear to see anyone ever again, except the mute servant who drifted like a ghost around the house. She had lost too many: her beloved sisters, her mother, her lover Arei, and where once the house had resounded with the soft voices of the women, there was only a ringing quietness. Legends had grown up around her in the last twenty years.

Every four or five years she would submit another work to her publishers; long, intricate works, revealing a tormented soul.

The veil was very thin today. Matabe had seen it from the window, and rather than changing into the dark robe that she favored, had hurried down the stairs in her stiff morning kimono and straight out into the garden. The grass was damp beneath her slippers, and a single bird was singing: the canary that she kept in an ancient bamboo cage on the verandah. The door of the cage was always open, but like its mistress, the bird preferred sanctuary. The long, liquid song ran down the morning air, cold as snow.

"Tayu?" she called uncertainly into the rising mist. Through the veil she could see an identical garden, with a dark house beyond, its eaves glistening with frost. In the garden a woman was walking, dressed in a green kimono, almost her mirror image. A few moments after Matabe had called to her, she looked up: the time lag was slight but noticeable. She smiled.

"Tayu? You can hear me?" The mist was rising now, like smoke about her bare ankles, and she could see the veil itself, a gleaming brightness laid across the air, and then it was suddenly gone, as if someone had snatched it up into the sky. Her sister stood before her in the garden, her face a pale oval against the dappled background of the trees. Matabe, after an astounded moment, ran to her and clasped her cold hands. Tayu's composed face crumpled. When they both looked back, Matabe's home was no longer there. The canary still sang, a drift of change in the air.

The plain was bright with snow, a glare that reflected from the sunless sky and dazzled the eyes. There were, perhaps, mountains in the distance, an indistinct line of high country that floated, mauve and gray and a pale dull red, above the distant snow. Whenever Zhu Irzh looked at it directly, however, it faded, a dream far away, like trying to see a star from the corner of the eye. He thought he had come here with others—there was a flickering memory of passing through a door, like an old movie reel—but now he was quite alone.

The snow was real enough, however, a thick icy crust which broke beneath his boots, gnawing at his ankles. Above, the sky was a light ethereal blue, the color of a bird's egg. A few last fat flakes of snow still drifted down. He had no idea where he might be.

Zhu Irzh looked around him, turning in the snow. There was no one to be seen. He was on the crest of a low ridge, which looked out across the plains. As he stepped up over the ridge, Zhu Irzh saw something stretching out before him to the distant horizon. It was once more the Great Meridian, a path of energy. On either side of the bright path, a fire was burning. The voice of his own intuition spoke inside his mind, and it said:
This is where you must go
. Striding down the ridge, Zhu Irzh headed for the Meridian.

As he walked, he saw that a gate was beginning to raise itself along the Meridian. It started as a swirl in the air, a frosty glitter emerging from the ground and winding the frozen grass into its design. Within minutes the pillars of the gate were complete, hardening into a lacquered darkness the color of old blood. Along the horizon, clouds were building before the wind and the unseen sun faded as though a shadow passed across it. The pillars stretched high into the heavens, and now the lintel of the gate was building itself; each side putting out a tongue of air, which solidified, hardening to become the carved, curling roof.

The gate was fully made now, a finished and perfect structure, glowing against the bright air. Through it the light wavered, as does the air above a source of heat. It reared above him now, and as he gazed at it he saw with dim surprise that Mhara was standing on the other side.

The office worker was nearly ready to drop, snatching lungfuls of the inexplicably cold air as he swung around, dizzy in the grip of the demon's powerful arms. Her roaring had deafened him. His ears had stopped bleeding now, but the rivulets of dried blood down each cheek itched. Why he should be aware of so small and irritating a thing at a time like this, he could not have said. The demon had taken him all over the Shaopeng district, waltzing her toy along. He kept trying to avert his head from her stale, hot breath.

He had long since ceased trying to keep upright: it was easier to let go and let her swing him about as she chose. He was fairly certain that his ankle was broken because he had felt the snap, a wet blow to his lower leg, but he could not feel much anymore. Dimly, he remembered that the demon had killed Chara before picking him up and dancing off with him. He hoped devoutly that she would tire of it soon, kill him too and then it would be done with and over. She did not seem to be tiring, however, and now he saw with despair that they were back at the upper end of Shaopeng. As they whirled along the center of the street, the demon's feet striking sparks from the downtown rails, he felt a convulsive movement beneath them. At first he thought that it was the demon, throwing him around; he was too sick and giddy to think much of it, but then it came again and somewhere within his bruised brain the word "earthquake" reverberated. They had said that another quake was coming, some rumor that had been running rife in Shaopeng since the evening. It threw the demon off balance. She stumbled, and as she did so, she let him go, flinging him haphazardly from her.

He landed at the edge of the road, and with a dulled horror watched his hands sink into the surface of the pavement as they clawed frantically for a hold. The tremor had liquefied the road surface and it trembled and quivered beneath him. He dragged himself, half-swimming, across the pavement and pulled himself upright against a teetering awning. Gasping, his hand to his mouth, he glanced across the street and saw the demon poised on a shuddering shelf of roadway. Slowly, elegantly, she pointed one clawed foot forward and then dived, graceful as a swan, into the molten stone sea below her. The road closed silently over the gap caused by her passage. Unable to move, he grasped the pole of the awning like a man drowning and before his eyes the length of Shaopeng once again opened up and cracked from end to end.

Zhu Irzh shook himself. For a moment there, he had forgotten who he was. As ruffled as a cat rubbed up the wrong way, he turned to Mhara. "Where's everyone else?"

"On their way," the prince of Heaven said calmly.

"I don't even remember becoming separated."

"We weren't. It's just that none of us could see the others. But I could sense all of you, and that's when I realized what had happened. Shai is bending in on itself, causing distortions. The damage that the goddess has done to the meridians is creating an echo in her temple."

Zhu Irzh looked around at the frozen plain, the great gate.

"Where
are
we?"

"In Shai . . ." Mhara looked thoughtful. "When all this is over, it would benefit the Feng Shui Practitioners' Guild to have this place thoroughly investigated. Shai contains much more than it appears."

Zhu Irzh snorted. "If there's a Guild
left
. If they haven't been lynched by an angry mob."

"There'll certainly be an investigation," Chen said, manifesting from apparently empty air. He was joined by Robin and Paravang Roche, who looked as gratifyingly baffled as Zhu Irzh himself, and finally Jhai, who snarled at the others and slunk to the demon's side. He put a wary arm around her.

"Senditreya isn't far away," Mhara said. "She'll sense intruders." He stepped forward. "Detective Chen, this is something I must do. But I'll need your help."