The Silk Map (65 page)

Steelfox slowly came to her senses, realizing that her comrades (comrades?) had prevented the Iron Moth from slaying her. That left her free to do something, yes? Perhaps even stand up.

She stood up.

Yes, that was something. Zheng and Northwing, in their different ways, were fully occupied with the Moth, but there was someone else here. Gaunt—Gaunt had that sword again this time. And Gaunt was confronting Steelfox's little sister.

The princess's wits began returning. She saw Jewelwolf rise into the air, and she recognized the magic carpet she had tangled with before. The red light dancing among its knots was reminiscent of the Charstalkers, but from Jewelwolf's glee, Steelfox did not think it was the Bull Demon whom the carpet was serving just now.

Steelfox found her dropped bow. She picked it up, readied an arrow. General principle.

Persimmon Gaunt was saying something rather unexpected.

“Great Jewelwolf. I will grant you any service, any treasure, if you will only give your prize to me.”

But Steelfox already knew from her sister's expression what the answer would be. For a moment a request flickered on Jewelwolf's lips, and Steelfox wondered if it would have been, Then slay my sister. But conquest prevailed over rivalry. “This relic is not the true prize, as I think you well know. The true prize lies within. A prize that can shake an empire.”

Steelfox was not at all sure what was happening, but she was used to acting on hunches. It was a hunch that had led her to take on Northwing and Haytham, a hunch that had sent her chasing the Silk Map farther than her mother had likely wanted her to go.

A hunch that led her to fire up at the scroll of Qiangguo in Jewelwolf's hand.

The shot flew true.

She had meant to hit the scroll so as to force Jewelwolf to drop it, without harming her sister. But the substance of the thing was surely no ordinary paper, for the arrow sparked and flew wildly across the caldera. Startled, Jewelwolf crouched as Deadfall rose higher, becoming a shield for her.

“Gaunt? What is the thing my sister holds?”

“It is my life, Steelfox, and Bone's, and Snow Pine's. I don't know how it came to be here. But what I told Jewelwolf, I tell you. Help us get it back, and I am your servant.”

I collect interesting servants
, Steelfox thought. “I do not know how to help. If only—Qurca!”

She still could not sense her falcon's mind, but the falcon swooped through the strange thermals of the caldera and landed upon Steelfox's outstretched glove.

“It is a relief to see you, old friend. What is that you're carrying?”

Gaunt gasped. “I have seen the like of that splinter before. Steelfox, please. I must follow your sister. You must take this splinter to Snow Pine.”

Steelfox looked toward a mass of the possessed Iron Moths and a lone woman battling them. “I will rank my bravery beside anyone's, but I am not certain that's wise.”

“You must trust me. Quickly!”

“No. You said you are in my service. Slay this Iron Moth who threatens Northwing and Zheng. Then I will do as you request.”

With a shout of anguish, Gaunt did as Steelfox asked, swinging Crypttongue with ferocity that rivaled a Karvak's.

For Bone to fight the Iron Moths was not a happy proposition. Moving through them was something else. With reckless pleasure, Bone jumped, rolled, sprinted, vaulted. At one point he leapt upon the back of an Iron Moth and then off again, thus bypassing the river of lava. He was especially proud of that.

Unfortunately the only witness besides the Moth was pointing a serrated sword at him.

“At least I'll have the pleasure, Imago Bone, of sending you to the lava.”

“Are you still protecting paradise, Dolma?”

“She failed us! The flaw within the high lama was too large. It was she who was responsible for the Silk Map leaving Xembala. I think she always hoped it would lead her lost love back to her.”

“And to stop that, you'd side with this fellow?” Bone pointed a thumb. “He's not exactly what you'd call an equal partner.” He waved a hand toward Mad Katta, who stood staring at the Bull Demon, sweat dripping down his face, in the grip of some compulsion. “She who doesn't want to be a wolf shouldn't wear a wolf's hide, as they say in our country.”

“It was the only way.”

“‘It was the only way.' How often have I said that to myself, to others. And so rarely, Dolma, was it true! We imagine ourselves within a shadowed labyrinth when truly we stand upon a sunlit hill, the horizon all around.”

Dolma waved the sword toward him. “Back.”

“I cannot, Violante. I think I must help you return to the sunlight. Xembala is beautiful, yes, but perhaps it is too beautiful for some of us. Perhaps for some of us what's needed are the fishing docks of Widdershins, where fish guts and swearing go along with glorious sunsets. Or the briny tidepools of Ramblefar Rim, where if you can tolerate the reek you will see starfish like jewels.”

“Stop.”

“Or if the West no longer beckons, what of the East? I have seen the harbor of Riverclaw, a thousand bobbing craft ready to take you to the ten thousand worlds that are all labeled ‘Qiangguo.' I have seen the Ochre River, a serpent of muddy gold. There are places in the farthest North where ice twists into shapes of nightmare and wonder. There are seas in the South where the water is like stepping into a steaming Mirabad bath. None of these things are paradise. All of them await you. Better an egg today than a hen tomorrow.”

“Do not quote the proverbs of your homeland, Bone. It is not mine. I do not think I have a country. Except hate.” Dolma looked toward the maw of the Bull Demon. “Yes. To give myself to it, burn away everything that is weak, everything that snivels like a little girl. Yes.”

A new voice said, “No . . .” It was Mad Katta. Every muscle in the wanderer seemed to fight the Bull Demon's hold upon him. His trembling hand was reaching for a bag upon his belt. “No, that is not right. . . . Even here, in a place so full of evil I can see every direction I look. . . . Even here, that is not right. . . . You can be free, Dolma . . .”

“You know nothing of me!”

She turned and ran toward the ruby fangs.

Bone chased her, even as he heard Gaunt's voice crying, “Bone, Bone, don't let her—” and a shadow passed over him.

You ask me, Greatest One, what happened that day, when the Bull Demon awakened and what was imprisoned was released? I will tell you. But you must understand first how I came by the great prize.

I am Deadfall, the work of the wizard Olob. I am only secondarily a flying carpet, I now know, for all that I am a good one. I have a primary function and rather a useful one. I am a demon-siphon.

In the vicinity of weaker demons, I can absorb some of their essence, making this power available to my master. Olob, a demonologist, relished the potential I embodied. He envisioned himself making forays into Bull-Demon Mountain, swooping in like a falcon claiming a mouse, returning with delicious power.

He was a fool.

His apprentice Op understood his teacher's plans enough to be afraid for his master, himself, and the world. At best his mentor would become corrupted. At worst the Bull Demon might be freed from its prison-haven in lost Xembala. And so when Olob departed Anoka on an errand, Op attempted to complete me in a more wholesome fashion, so that I would drain power only from the vital breath of the land.

He was a greater fool.

Op's motives were good, by his own lights, but better to have destroyed me than create such a conflicted thing. When Olob returned early and discovered Op's treachery, only I survived the conflagration. But it was too late. Already did I think, and scheme.

Yet much of my nature was hidden from myself. The side I owed to Op was not aware how the side crafted by Olob hungered for demon-energy and craved wickedness.

I have murdered several times, never quite acknowledging it to myself, until that day in Qushkent when Charstalkers tried to possess me.

Instead, I ate them.

Poor Mad Katta. Exulting in my new power, I went to its ultimate source, as Olob had always intended. In the mountain of the Bull Demon did I leave him, trading him for a dose of that entity's energies. Even then I was nearly overwhelmed by the Bull Demon's power.

And so, trying to forget the screams of Katta, I hovered high in the atmosphere, unwilling to surrender my new powers, yet knowing that descending with Olob's pattern dominant would be to surrender myself to the Bull Demon's influence.

Sometimes, I have come to learn, the best action is no action. The world is larger than our perceived choices, and time may make other options known. So it was with me.

In Qiangguo, the energies playing at the edge of space are known as the Celestial Kingdom. If one's perceptions are properly attuned, these forces can be twisted aside to reveal what minds of matter might perceive as palaces, gardens, wildernesses, inhabited by luminous beings who have long meddled in the business of the East. (The rest of the world has its own problems.) I did not enter those realms, but I sensed them, knew the subtle currents of energy. For although I was fashioned to absorb the stuff of demons, I was also made to sniff the life-stuff of the world. And so, over the days, I gained understanding.

I began to perceive the flow of what Qiangguo's people sometimes call “chi,” moving through the lands below me. The major patterns revealed themselves first. I saw a gentle flow of energy circulating through the land of Xembala. I beheld a stately procession of power along the Heavenwalls toward Qiangguo's capital. I sensed the network of crystal branchings that still underlay the great desert beside the Braid of Spice.

Later, less obvious but still fascinating patterns emerged. There was a city in the West shaped like a hand, clutching at the energies of the surrounding land. (Nearby was a great crater seething with strange powers I did not wish to look upon long.) Dragons slept as islands in the ocean east of Qiangguo. Dragons of a different sort slumbered as mountain ranges in the far West. And one collection of dormant dragons—in the form of islands like jagged mountains—butted heads in a cold northwestern sea. Their conflict was the work of millennia, and the longest-lived of the mortals who dwelled in those violent lands might only perceive one thrust or parry, thinking it merely an earthquake or rockslide or storm.

Something in that faraway land tickled at me, and I turned all my perception toward it. Yes. There was a great chain binding headlands of each of the three dragon-isles. Although far smaller than the Heavenwalls or the crystals of the Leviathan Minds, it too was a human work that rearranged the power of the land.

And it was seeking something.

A thread of energy—gold, to my perception—twisted across the world to a point deep in the eastern ocean.

I could sense nothing special about that spot, except for one thing. I noticed another thread of energy—purple, to my perception—also leading to that spot. Its far end was at the capital of Qiangguo, where the Heavenwalls met.

And now I recalled a thing that Princess Jewelwolf had discussed with me, about a matter important to her colleagues the Cardinals of the Compass Rose.

Now, if I dropped low to the land, the Bull Demon would surely claim me. But I had not considered immersing myself in water. I was not a swimming carpet, of course. But knowing exactly where I needed to go, perhaps . . .

Yes.

Luck was with me, for even as I arced toward the ocean, I sensed that the Bull Demon's attention was divided. His influence was strong, but my will remained stronger. I found the spot in the ocean, near a shattered island, and I plunged in.

It was a mistake, I realized. The building pressure of the water was inimical to my enchantments. I could not stay down long enough to reach bottom and return.

But I was enjoying gambling, O greatest one, and I thought, if the stories are true, there is no need to reach bottom and return in one trip.

In the muck at the bottom of the sea, amid gaping fish, I found the scroll.