The Silk Map (17 page)

“Hello!” called Quilldrake. “Yes, you! I'm the one you want. Remember? The one with the Silk Map. See you in another century!”

With that Quilldrake leapt off the roof and onto the ward wall. He did not pause to acknowledge the guards but leapt again, landing amongst the peony bushes.

Bone didn't recognize the language in which Snow Pine's opponent spoke, but he knew a curse when he heard it. That one broke off from her and jumped to follow Quilldrake.

Bone's own foe tried to follow, but Snow Pine was in the way.

For the first time, his disarmed enemy had a back turned.

He launched himself onto his opponent and together they sprawled to the tiles. For the second time Crazy Grip's face kissed the temple. Bone was no religious scholar, but he doubted this would produce enlightenment. He knew a thing or two about choking, however, even if he wasn't Crazy Grip. He pressed hard on two arteries.

Crazy Grip proved good at breaking grips too. Bone found himself shoved backwards. His fingers clawed at something and held, and he rose to his feet with Crazy Grip's hood in his hands.

Bone and Snow Pine confronted the assailant and stared.

This was the pale woman from the Alley of the Scholars of Life, as Bone had begun to guess. He had not guessed she would be maimed.

She stood defiantly with a freed tangle of brown hair whipping in the wind, revealing that her right ear had been cut away. The scar was neat, as though she'd subjected herself willingly to the knife. She met their stares of wonder and pity with one of disdain.

“You've unmasked me,” the woman said, “but it will avail you nothing. If your fates are tied to the treasure hunters, you will fall. We'll do whatever it takes to protect what we love. Even in the palaces of Riverclaw or Archaeopolis you cannot hide.”

Although she spoke of Eldshore's capital she didn't look like most Eldshorens, who tended toward somewhat lighter skin. She had the darker look of the Contrariwise Coast.

Like him.

“Talk is easy,” Bone said, in the dialect of that faraway place. “Bring that bone to some other dog.”

The woman blinked, as if hearing that lingo for the first time in decades.

“You are far from home,” he added more gently.

“Home is in the clouds now,” she answered in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell.

“Fight another day,” suggested Snow Pine. “There's only one of you up here.”

“You don't know everything,” the woman said. She pulled forth an irregularly shaped piece of gray-black pockmarked stone that hung from a silver chain around her neck. “None of us is alone.”

As she crushed the stone into smoky pumice, his keen ears heard her whisper, “Not anymore.”

The dust erupted into a cloud looming over the rooftop. Dark as a thunderhead, it emitted a gentle rain of ash. Three fiery spheres appeared within its form, and Bone had the sensation of hate-filled eyes staring down at him. It was not the hate, he sensed, which one man might feel for another. It was more the hate with which a man might regard a biting insect.

“The mortals will try to follow me, Charstalker,” the one-eared woman said. “Prevent them.”

An arrow shot through one of the fiery eyes. Gaunt must have swiftly sized up the situation. Bone felt a swell of pride in his chest.

The smoke quivered and the eye transformed briefly into a blazing squiggle, drawing the character that meant
Burn
in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell.

Bone felt a quite different emotion in his gut. On instinct he shouted, “Look out!”

Each eye belched forth flame. One bolt lashed at Bone, a second at Snow Pine, a third at Gaunt and the guards in the square.

Bone evaded, and in such a way that he was there to grab Snow Pine's hand when her own dodge threw her off the roof.

As he helped her climb back up, he had a clear view of Gaunt, who'd dived out of the blast's path. Others were not so lucky, and one man rolled to snuff his blazing clothing.

Bone also had a good view of the one-eared woman leaping to the ward wall and then the peony garden. He felt a gaze on his neck as he yelled to both Snow Pine and Gaunt, “Go! Help Quilldrake!”

“But you—” Snow Pine objected, staring at the smoke-thing.

“I've been dealing with magical lunacy since before you were born. Go!”

His wife, accompanied by guards, was already running toward the ward gate. Snow Pine jumped to the ward wall. His companions cared about him, and that pleased Bone; but they trusted his judgment, and that pleased him more.

He ran past the smoke-thing and into the bell loft, as three blazing eyes formed the three characters for the idiom
A clawless tiger
.

“Indeed!” Bone called out, his voice echoing through the loft. “Come inside and say that!”

He checked the pulse of the unconscious priest beside the bell-rope. He was relieved to find the man alive.

Eschewing the stairs, Bone slid down the rope into the shaft as the sky darkened with smoke. Clanging announced his return to the temple.

In the nearly empty room of the statues, candlelight flickered upon basins of water. The Karvak lay against the jolliest-looking statue, a bloody hand pressed against a bloodier stomach. Nevertheless the warrior managed a weak smile. “I suggest you draw a weapon after all,” he said.

“Are you a follower of this faith?” Bone asked as he looked around at the chamber's layout.

The Karvak shook his head. “But they are good employers . . . I respect them.”

“Do you believe them devout? My question has a practical thrust.”

“They are as fervent as any, and kinder than most.”

“Then,” Bone said, while an ashen cloud flowed downstairs like the stuff of a tipped-over volcano, “I will take a risk.”

The triple-eyes of the Charstalker shone with three fiery words. This time they were not in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell, but in Roil.

TIME TO DIE

“You are wrong,” said Bone, snatching up a basin. “It is bath time.”

Bone muttered a prayer to the Swan Goddess for insurance and splashed upon the Charstalker what he hoped qualified as holy water.

The smoky entity tried to evade, but there was no missing those fiery eyes.

There was a sound like water dousing a campfire, and a shriek filled the chamber as the Charstalker twisted and coiled. One of its eyes was sputtering.

The two other eyes shot blazing lances at Bone, and he barely managed to take cover behind the bronze statue of the holy being offering a libation. The metal did not melt, but candles did, and bowls of ritual water steamed.

Under other circumstances Bone would have fled such a fight. But he'd been provided a chamber filled with weapons! He ran to the gold-plated statue, grabbed a wooden bucket, and drenched the Charstalker again. Smoke whirled like a cyclone, and a second eye grew erratic. A single blast burned its way toward Bone, but he was running already, a jug in hand. His next shot was wild, but now the Charstalker seemed worried; if smoke clouds could flinch, this one did.

Now a vast splash hit the Charstalker, and one of the eyes went completely out.

It was not Bone's doing; he stared and saw the Karvak on his feet, grinning, bleeding, basin in hands. Bone grinned back, though he worried for the steppe warrior.

Both sought more basins. Both were hit by flames.

Bone's clothes were alight, and once more he was grateful for this arena. He threw himself into a trough that was likely the proximate source for the basins, buckets, bowls, and jugs.

Drenched, he escaped burning. However, it was difficult to extricate himself—and now the Charstalker billowed over him.

Two eyes flared. They displayed the two-part symbol, which in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell meant
Death.

The symbol hissed and frayed as water splashed upon it; hot drops hit Bone's face.

There stood the stooped priest, conscious, bearing an empty bowl and a defiant smile.

Bone stumbled out of the trough and reached the priest just in time to embrace him.

Thus when heat erupted around them they did not burn. Bone steamed a little, however.

“Ha!” he said, scooping up the old priest and hauling him around the statue of the laughing figure. “It suddenly occurred to me I'm drenched in holy water. I should have done that in the first place.” He stopped laughing as he saw the smoking body of the Karvak. “Ah, hell.”

“He was a good man,” the priest said. “Let us finish this, you and I.”

“Agreed, Grandfather.”

They came at the monster from around either side of the statue, a basin in each hand. The priest chanted what sounded like “Om Mani Padme Hum,” and Bone shouted, “For the Karvak!”

The Charstalker had but one eye left. It drew, not a word but a rude gesture made of flame, as priest and thief splashed it with its doom.

Its final act was fiery, and as Bone expected the blast sizzled toward the priest, but Bone had already launched himself from the platform of the laughing figure to occupy the air between smoke-thing and holy man.

It hurt. To be sure, it hurt a great deal. But Bone kicked through the fire and jabbed a wet boot in the Charstalker's eye.

Bone's next move was to connect with the outstretched hand of the gold-plated, beatific figure. The result was not enlightenment but unconsciousness.

Gaunt ran through the peony garden with her bow at the ready, city guards puffing beside her, Snow Pine nearly out of sight up ahead. Under other circumstances, Gaunt would have been alarmed by the presence of a dozen guards. She was not quite used to the notion of being an honest visitor, and yet it was true enough, for her party meant no trouble to Yao'an or its inhabitants.

True, their long-term goal was to find and plunder what Qiangguo would probably consider its rightful property. But no one needed to know that.

As she avoided branches and roots and little streams and miniature temples, she considered it surprising the guards allowed an outlander to accompany them. But they'd seen her shoot. They'd also witnessed astounding swordplay from the foes and a supernatural visitation upon the temple roof. She hoped Bone would be all right. But she trusted his skills.

They needed Quilldrake, she was sure now. Whether this Silk Map was related to their quest or not, with enemies like these he must be the sort of person who could help them.

She'd lost sight of Snow Pine. The group moved more slowly now, as they came up to a line of wooden houses bordering the garden. The guards began bellowing threats to any person who would dare hide from them. She did not think that would be very effective.

Gaunt paused and opened her senses to what was there. As a young poet she'd spent an exorbitant amount of time seeking inspiration in dark graveyards. Whether her poetry had thereby improved was a matter of taste, but it was a fact that she'd trained her senses to be alert for birdsong, crickets, a twist in the breeze, a swell in the moonlight, and (just in case) the rising dead.

It was daylight, and there were no rising dead, but she did notice Snow Pine crouched at one corner of a house. Her companion's two swords gleamed. Gaunt kept silent, for if Snow Pine had sensed something, Gaunt didn't want to disturb her. Gaunt crept closer. The house was a two-story affair suggesting modest wealth. More shapes seemed apparent on the upper story. She raised her bow, squinting. She lacked Bone's facility with heights, but that was what arrows were for.

Light flared within an upper window.

It was not firelight, nor reflected sunlight, but a bizarre green radiance that oozed like a liquid. It illuminated an intricate two-piece wooden panel that blew open as if a strong wind had erupted from within. The wind had a voice. Gaunt knew it.

“Who dares disturb the nap of Widow Zheng!”

Within the strange light she saw two figures in black, one hooded, one not. The un-hooded one held its right arm awkwardly.

Gaunt fired at her—for this was surely the one who'd attempted to choke Bone.

The woman reacted by diving into the weirdly lit chamber. Gaunt couldn't be sure if she'd scored a hit. Likewise, she didn't know what had happened to Snow Pine—for her friend had vanished and all sound was obscured by the bellows of the guards. Some of her new associates clutched crossbows and commenced discharging them at the remaining figure.

Gaunt waited no longer but ran toward the house.

She discovered an open door on the ground level, entering a dwelling that seemed made for the comfort of codices and scrolls, with some small provision for a human inhabitant. The way to the stairs was marked by a spill of swirling green light.

At the top Gaunt encountered a workshop that under other circumstances would have fascinated her. Books in various states of mending sat upon one large table. Yarrow sticks for divination lay upon another. A scroll of unfinished calligraphy dried upon a third. The walls were as book-lined as the ones below. All these things Gaunt would later reconstruct in her mind like the fading impressions of a dream. Of more immediate concern were the five figures in the room.