The Silk Map (36 page)

“I might have the same question for you, friend carpet. I was dragged deep into the desert, where the Leviathan Minds yet hold sway, feeble in comparison to their ancient powers, yet still dangerous. I am not entirely unfamiliar with those realms. When I was younger and more reckless I explored many a vile catacomb, where evil thoughts left their residue upon the passageways, allowing me to dimly ‘see.' Dangerous roads, but knowledge of them has made me greatest of travelers along the Braid of Spice. And on rare occasions I have managed to take one of these—a ship of the Leviathan Imperium.”

“I have more questions than there are grains of sand swirling about us,” Gaunt said.

“You are not alone in that,” said Katta.

“Perhaps a trade,” Bone said, “one for one?”

“Very well. What do you seek, and why?”

“That's two,” Snow Pine said, feeling a trust in Mad Katta that surprised her, “so answer two in return. We seek the Silk Map, so we can bear a treasure of ironsilk to Lady Monkey whose staff I bear.”

“Indeed?” Widow Zheng said, looking up from her scroll.

Katta's eyebrows raised. “That is an ample answer, and I will be accordingly generous.”

“Then who are you, anyway? And why do you seek the map?”

“He is a holy man,” said Deadfall. “He gave me purpose and friendship when I lacked everything.”

“Deadfall,” said Katta, “I am many things, but I am not holy. Nevertheless I seek the holy. I am an itinerant of the Dust on the Mirror.”

“You serve the Undetermined, then,” Bone said.

“I follow in his footsteps, in my own meandering way. I was once an apprentice shaman of they the Karvaks call the Reindeer People. But I heard the teachings of the Undetermined and all that changed. I have had . . . many false starts, and perhaps even now I am not on precisely the correct path. Yet the Undetermined remains my polestar.”

“What, then, is your interest in the map?” Gaunt asked.

“You repeat an earlier question, so I will not count that. The map points the way to a land of enlightenment.”

“Xembala,” said Zheng.

“Yes. I have never reached that place, but I am sure it exists. I do not want it tormented by outsiders. I know that the vile beings called the Charstalkers have been seeking Xembala for too long. I must oppose them. I believe that this is the purpose that the Thresholders intend for me. Now, a question for you—why do you serve Monkey?”

“She has an answer,” Snow Pine said, “for the question that haunts Gaunt, Bone, and me. How do we find a particular magic scroll lost beneath the eastern sea? The scroll that contains our children.”

“Wait a minute!” Zheng said. “I travel with you for weeks, share battle with you, risk everything, and you never say this? But this fellow comes along and you blab all your secrets?”

“I apologize, Zheng. I just feel time is short and that we can trust him.” The answer sounded inadequate, even to her. Yet what she'd said was true. It was as though all her self-understanding was like the sunlit opening of a cave, with strange depths unlit behind her. Every friendship she had ever had—even her marriage—was like lighting a campfire near that entrance. Her relationships had thrown flickering light upon the deepest parts of her, but nothing had come clear.

But the eyes of this not-holy man were like bright lanterns, as though they reached the deepest parts of her and did not turn away. She found the sensation uncomfortable, but she could not turn away either. “We have been seeking a way to it, and to them, in vain, and only the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, the Wondrous Lady Monkey, seems confident of helping us. But her price is the Iron Moths of Xembala.”

“I know legends of Monkey,” Zheng said. “She was not trustworthy.”

“I have heard of her also,” said Katta, “and while it is often said she was impetuous and foolish and destructive, it was never said that she was a liar.”

“This is what we are reduced to, however,” Gaunt said, “dealings with untrustworthy demigods.”

“We will not give up,” Bone said.

“Do you know of a way, Mad Katta?” Snow Pine asked. “A means of reaching our children?”

“Not as such,” said the wanderer. “But I will say this: the masters of Xembala are said to possess great wisdom. It may be that in following Monkey's quest you will find another answer to your own. And now I know my next question. Will you share your pieces of the Silk Map?”

Even Zheng left off her scroll work to see the bright, shimmering pieces of the dress set down upon the black deck. The patch that Quilldrake had worn lay above the lower portion retrieved from the grave. There was a thin strip from the second piece that ascended to near Quilldrake's fragment. They touched in just one point, a place representing a mountain at the edge of a mist-filled chasm.

Katta kept one hand on the ship's wheel as he tossed a rolled-up third fragment to Gaunt. This was a fragment that would have covered chest and belly. It fit snugly with the other two.

Bone squinted. “Do you see it, Gaunt? The dress, the map, is oriented so head would be north, and feet south. The upper parts look like the deserts along the Braid, but the lower . . .”

“It shows a great mountain range,” Gaunt agreed. “And a huge plateau. Yet . . . I have never seen a map that presented that jagged valley cutting through the peaks.”

“I haven't either,” said Snow Pine. “Hey, at one end of the valley, do you see the characters for ‘iron' and ‘silk'? As tiny as can be?”

“Yes,” Zheng said with the air of someone hearing far-off music. “That is where we're going.”

“To a chasm?” Bone said.

“To Xembala,” Katta said. “I've been certain of its existence for a long while, since the day I first found my section of the map.”

“Strange,” Snow Pine said, staring at the dress. “I'd never quite visualized it as both map and clothing before now. It's almost as if the wearer—Xia, was it?—almost as if she were here with us.”

“Yes,” Zheng murmured, staring at the fabric. “Strange . . . there. Do you see?” She pointed at the interface of the three fragments. “That mountain at the edge of the chasm, the one that vaguely resembles a bird. That is the site of Qushkent.”

Gaunt ran his finger along the ironsilk. “That's the direction most of the Karvaks were flying.”

Katta chuckled to himself. “Flying Karvaks! The wonders of phenomena never cease to amaze.”

“And look more closely,” Zheng continued. “If you peer here, you see a line drawn from the beak of the bird, down to the valley floor.”

“A secret passage?” Bone said.

“The implication of one, at any rate,” Gaunt agreed. “Without all these pieces there, it would be easy to dismiss any segment of the line as a flaw in the artwork. But with all together the intention is clear.”

“Lady Steelfox,” Snow Pine said. “She saw only the upper two fragments, not Katta's. She can't be as certain as we are that this is the way to proceed.”

“I think she has a fairly good guess,” Bone said. “And she may not even need the hidden path, not with her—”

He was cut off by the mummified hands that grabbed his throat.

One of the arcane mummies, shrouded in its pale leathery wrappings, must have gotten aboard back at the lost village. Snow Pine was angry with herself. Like it or not, fate had made a warrior of her, and she should have been more watchful. She raised the meteoritic staff as Gaunt drew Crypttongue. Zheng grabbed Katta's sackful of enchanted cakes. The mummy backed away, careful to hold the gasping and flailing Bone before it like a shield.

Katta said, never moving from his post, “I advise no sudden moves, my friends. This entity can snap a neck as easily as snapping its fingers. Begone, creature! There is nothing for you here.”

The mummy did not respond, except to point with its right hand, aiming at a direction to Katta's left. Its left hand was still sufficient to immobilize Bone.

“You wish me to turn the ship in that direction?”

The mummy nodded.

“Do your masters await us there?”

Another nod.

Bone was by now shaking his head as much as possible, which was only an inch or so to either side.

“Are its masters the Leviathan Minds?” Gaunt said.

“They surely mean us no good,” Snow Pine said.

“Life is ultimately an illusion,” Katta said, turning the ship to match the mummy's chosen heading. “As are physical threats. But there is no merit in allowing this creature to kill an innocent.”

Bone gasped something.

“Don't be pedantic, Bone!” snapped Gaunt. “Of course you're innocent. Relatively speaking. Let him go, thing.”

The mummy rasped words unknown, in a language unspoken for centuries. It relaxed its hold on Bone, but the thief stayed put.

They traveled for hours, at a speed Snow Pine could not estimate but which she suspected was swift indeed. She wondered about the people of Shahuang, and about the camels, which she would surely never see again. She wondered about Quilldrake and Flint, traveling with the strange, proud Karvak leader. Likely she'd never see them either. She found herself wishing Flint could comfort her in the matter of Flint's loss, which was a peculiar daydream to be having, on many levels.

Stop daydreaming!
she told herself.
Look for a way out!

It occurred to her she could not see Deadfall anywhere. She shifted a little, seeking the carpet. The mummy edged backward at her motion. Peering in that direction, she saw a dark rectangular shape against the black crystal deck, almost impossible to see in the dim light. How long had it been there?

If it was Deadfall . . . she could not explain to the others. That might give things away. She moved a little forward, a little sideways, and the mummy retreated, back, a little left, back again—

It stepped into the dark rectangle.

At once the four edges of the carpet snapped upward like the petals of some carnivorous plant. Bone had appeared entirely quiescent, but he instantly seized his opportunity. He kicked his legs into the air. Deadfall pinned the mummy's legs, and all three fell to the deck. Bone wiggled enough to escape the neck-hold, though the mummy still trapped one arm.

Now, however, Snow Pine, Gaunt, and Zheng were ready. They whacked, stabbed, and threw cakes. The mummy's middle collapsed, its head was severed from its body, and the arm that held Bone burst into dust.

Snakelike bandages writhed to the edges of the deck and slithered off, leaving only a pile of dust behind.

“Gah!” said Bone, holding his neck. Gaunt put one arm around him. The other held Crypttongue, at which she stared wonderingly.

“What is it?” he managed to say.

“This sword,” Gaunt answered. “It did not absorb the mummy's essence. As though there was truly nothing to take.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“For me, just now, yes. I do not want the sensation of escorting more trapped minds. But I wonder at the nature of the entity—”

“Hold tight,” Katta said. “I will attempt to escape whatever fate was intended for us.”

Snow Pine had previously been unaware that the ship's wheel could be
raised
. Katta did so, and the ship ascended through the darkness.

Light blazed across the deck as the dark vessel burst above the dunes. They reached a place where sand gave way to dry grass and shrub, strange rock formations twisting on the desert's edge like the headlands of a coast. Farther south lay an indistinct haze of brown; farther north slashed the green of true grassland.

A herd of horses in every hue moved among the drab shrubs, nuzzling for the ragged clumps of pale grass rising from the russet earth. They were powerful-looking beasts, and Snow Pine had the sense she'd seen them before. When some looked up at the magical ship and snorted their disinterest, she noted they possessed more ribs than the norm and realized what they were. “Dragon horses,” she whispered.