The Silk Map (5 page)

Bone smiled, yet Snow Pine tugged at her hair in a way that worried him.

She said, “You think the tunnel is some sort of sham?”

Bone wondered, with a fresh wince of guilt, how Snow Pine managed.
We're stronger than you Westerners,
Snow Pine had said once, when he'd tried to broach the subject.
You're tough, you know how to fight. But we're tougher, we know how to suffer.

“The whole mountain, perhaps,” Gaunt was saying. “There is a degree of unreality about the proceedings, a mutability. I think some mind guides this environment, even if it doesn't dictate everything.”

“The Great Sage perhaps?” Bone said.

“Or the thing that locked up the Sage,” Snow Pine said.

“Wait,” Bone said, halting. There came a distant, rhythmic noise in low tones, and in time to the rhythm a wind that fanned the torchflame. “It seems to me,” he observed, “wandering about through underground passages was quite frightening enough when I knew the local folklore . . .”

“Well,” said Snow Pine, “I may know the local folklore, but I have no idea what this is. But I can tell you one thing. It's snoring.”

Snow Pine might have known her friends would find a way to turn anxiety into argument. Albeit a friendly one this time.

“I hadn't expected snoring,” Bone said.

“I grow more annoyed with the Great Sage by the minute,” said Gaunt.

“You snore as well.”

“I have annoyance to spare.”

“It's very delightful snoring . . .”

“I think we're here,” Snow Pine said.

They entered a cavern that was a spelunker's dream. Vast blades of crystal stabbed all colors in all directions. Smaller cousins glinted in corners and jabbed underfoot. The travelers crunched gleaming wonders. Many crystals had a mirroring effect, and the trio were endlessly multiplied as they wove among the facets and edges.

From time to time Snow Pine glimpsed in the crystals a furry, simian face. “There is a beast in here. Be on your guard.”

The snoring stopped.

“Beast?” someone murmured sleepily. The chamber echoed
Beast-Beast-Beast!

They crept closer, their faces multiplying. Soon their three was joined by a fourth.

It was a monkey, such as Snow Pine had once or twice glimpsed in the forests. Yet those monkeys had possessed black fur and tan faces; this monkey was all gray. Its eyes were closed, and it breathed in time with the fantastic snoring.

Sharing a silent look, the three proceeded until they came to the chamber's heart. The gray monkey lay upon the cave floor beneath a vast mass of crystal, granite, obsidian, limestone—a conglomeration of minerals fused with the ceiling. Snow Pine had the uncomfortable sense that a giant foot, complete with jutting crystal toenails, had pinned the monkey in place.

She crouched low, craning her head.

“I think the monkey's trapped,” she whispered. “There's no room for it to move.”

“Is it made of stone?” Gaunt exclaimed.

The monkey snorted and shifted at the sound, but its eyes remained shut.

“I think so,” Snow Pine murmured.

“Is this the Sage?” Bone said, voice hushed.

“And should we awaken it?” Gaunt added in kind.

Snow Pine shut her eyes, thinking of a distant sea. “I think we have to. But I also think this is a creature of power. We may regret this one day. We should all agree.”

“I say awaken it,” Gaunt said. “We have come this far.”

“I go where Gaunt goes,” Bone said.

“No,” Gaunt said, a distant look upon her face. “No, I don't think that is enough this time. I think you must choose.”

Bone smirked. Snow Pine could sense he wanted to make light of the situation and could not, quite. “We can't command events,” he said at last. “We can only do our best and hope our children prosper within the future we shape. Let's awaken the monkey.”

Snow Pine said, “I'll do what I must. To give my daughter the world.”

She stepped forward. “Monkey! Hello! Monkey!”

The snoring stopped and became set of agitated screeches, such as she'd heard in the forests. The bizarre creature sounded like a chimpanzee.

“I
had
heard the Sage referred to as a ‘monkey,'” Snow Pine marveled to her companions, “but I never took that literally. I figured it was a nickname, or he was born in the Year of the Monkey, or something like that.”

The screeching stopped. Gray eyelids rolled across onyx eyes. “Year of the Monkey!” called the stone simian. “Is that what this is?”

“No,” Snow Pine said, wonder in her voice. “Actually it's the Year of the Snake.”

“Feh! Missed it again! I can't stay awake longer than half a year at a time, and when I fall back asleep it'll be for at least half a cycle.”

“You stay awake for six months at a time?” Bone said.

“Hey, hairy wildman, you try staying awake longer with a mountain on top of you.” The mineral monkey sniffed the air. “No, I'm wrong. I thought you might be a fellow Monkey. But you're a Rat.”

“I could have told you that,” said Gaunt, unable to suppress a laugh.

“And a Snake! Hey, this is your year, young lady. Use it well.” Another sniff. “Aha! There
is
a Monkey here, and it's you, girl of Qiangguo.”

Snow Pine blinked. They'd never tried determining where Gaunt and Bone fell in the procession of years, because the calendars didn't match, and in any case Bone had forgotten the year of his birth. Western folk supposed their personalities were set by the stars, and that wasn't for her to argue. Yet she did not doubt the Sage's pronouncements. Like many people, Snow Pine scoffed a little at the old notion that personality was driven by the animal of your year.

But she
did
see something wise in Gaunt, and surely there was much that was opportunistic about Bone. As she recalled, Rat and Snake were not the best romantic match, and not the worst. Maybe that fit as well.

She herself never minded being a Monkey.
Girl
, however . . .

“Woman of Qiangguo,” Snow Pine said.

The Great Sage laughed. “Who am I to deny a fellow Monkey her proper title? And a fellow female. But I would like it if you strangers would use one of mine. I think I deserve a little better than ‘you,' don't you think?”

“Apologies, Great Sage,” Snow Pine said.

“Equal of Heaven,” the Sage added.

“Equal of Heaven,” Snow Pine agreed uneasily.

“Wondrous Lady Monkey.”

“Wondrous Lady Monkey . . .” Gaunt said.

“She Who is Aware of Vacuity.”

Bone coughed. “She Who is Aware of Vacuity . . .”

“O Glorious Bedmate.”

“What?” Bone said.

“Just seeing how far we could go with this,” the Great Sage said.

“He has his faults,” Gaunt said, “but he is spoken for.”

“Ha!”

“
Lady
Monkey?” Snow Pine asked.

“Can't sages be female? Or simian? Or made of stone? Or dashing and gorgeous?”

“Apparently they can,” Gaunt said.

“So, since you're clearly under-informed, what are you doing here? I haven't been awakened in a thousand years that I can recall. Must be something big. Is the Undetermined springing me?”

“I don't think anyone here qualifies for that title,” Gaunt said.

“Ah, I had suspected,” said the Great Sage. “Anyway, having been imprisoned in a mountain, I'd expect my release to be similarly dramatic. I deserve no less.”

Snow Pine crouched beside the stone monkey head. Every time the Sage stopped speaking and assumed a distant look, it was easy to assume she was a statue. But swiftly enough she would blink, or sniff, or smirk. Each hair on her head was a separate mineral formation, like darker versions of the smaller quartz blades in the surrounding cave. Her eyes were black stones with clear impurities for pupils, like comets.

The comets swung toward Snow Pine. Granite lips revealed agate teeth. “You wonder how I can awaken. Surely I'm an artwork of sorts, you think, so how can I live? I concede it's a bit of a mystery to me also. Long ago, when there were many more moons in the sky, the quarrelsome god-clans of the Arctic and Antarctic warred over control of the sun and in the process changed its course.”

“I have never heard of a pantheon in the far north . . .” began Gaunt.

“It became a pantheon of the far
west
, long before your people again emerged from caves, once the sun bent to its new path,” said the Sage. “But that is beside the point, for the point was about me. Strange energies were unleashed in those days, and they fell upon a certain boulder in a magical place far beyond the Starborn Sea. I hatched from that stone, much as you see me now. And wonderful as I am, I'm no doubt not the most wondrous thing to be born when the sun changed course. Now. Tell me what has brought you so far to awaken me.”

“Great Sage,” Snow Pine said, glancing at her nodding companions, “we awakened you because we are in great need. We've lost our children.”

The Great Sage frowned. “Children? Lost?”

“Our son,” Bone said, taking Gaunt's hand, “and the daughter of Snow Pine here.”

The Great Sage snorted. “Surely you don't need me to resolve this riddle. Haven't you considered that they might have eloped?”

Snow Pine strove to maintain her temper. “You are unaware of the circumstances. Our children are very small . . . were very small when we left them.”

“Left them, lost them? Make up your mind.”

“They were left in a safe place,” Bone said, “so their mothers could join me in fighting a dreadful assassin from the West. The assassin is dead, but that haven is now lost . . .” His voice trailed off, and Snow Pine could see, for once, the guilt that lined Bone's face.

But the Great Sage was squeezing shut her stony eyes in exasperation. “I had thought people would only brave the wasteland to ask me matters of import! How to become immortal. How to vault through the clouds. How to assume the forms of animal, mineral, or vegetable. How to do battle with the Archon of Night, or rescue the Lost Moon, or face the Starwolf on the Day of Its Return. Lost children? Am I a village constable?”

All this time Persimmon Gaunt had been studying the Sage with narrowed eyes. Now she spoke. Fury lit her words.

“We are wasting our time! This weak one cannot help us. How could she do
anything
to recover a prophesied ruler trapped in a universe inside a scroll lost at the bottom of the sea? She cannot even shift a few rocks. Let's return to the village of Abundant Bamboo and consult the local wise-woman with her love potions and missing teeth.
There
is someone whose skills we can rely upon.”

The Sage growled and opened her eyes. “I see what you're doing there. Playing to my vanity. What you fail to understand, bizarre woman with hair like fire and skin like snow, is that I have no vanity, only a true and honest appraisal of my own strengths. I know how to cloud-leap one hundred and eight thousand li—”

“The world isn't that big,” Snow Pine said.

“Well, I may exaggerate a little for poetic effect. The point is, I'd be beyond the horizon, so how would you know? Likewise I can alter my form to explore the weave of atmospheric energies some mortals call the Celestial Kingdom, or make my stone body molten to fathom the depths of the world. More prosaically I can become any animal, or turn as invisible as the wind.”

“Yet you are trapped,” Bone said.

The Sage scowled, but then she shrugged. “A triviality. I tangled with the Undetermined up in the ionosphere. He slapped me down, and threw a mountain onto me for good measure. A very special mountain. It's partly composed of my own stubbornness, so I can't directly shift it with my own strength.”

“Interesting problem,” Bone said, stroking his chin.

“Could you not dismiss it?” Gaunt said. “If it's a product of your own mind?”

“Sure,” said the Sage, “if it were composed of fancy, love, anger, or a craving for fresh mangoes. Those feelings I could dispatch like mountain bandits. But I'm nothing if not stubborn. That means ‘I' can never be rid of the mountain, because the mountain is essentially me. The harder I try to outthink the problem, the heavier the mountain becomes. Clever Undetermined! Either I become enlightened myself—fat chance—or I wait for him to release me. Anyway, why didn't you say at once that your case was so interesting! Children lost inside a magic scroll! Far more intriguing than losing them at the market. You will share what you know.”

Snow Pine began, “I—”

“No, no, no,” said the Great Sage. “Don't use words.” She began to sniff. “Think about your loss, and your vital breath will do the rest.” She continued snuffling, and despite Snow Pine's outrage at the Sage's manner, it was clear the endless boasts were not idle.

Loss
, Snow Pine thought.