The Iron Khan (21 page)

“You’re sure that’s it?” Chen lowered the telescope from his eye. The war-junk rode at anchor, behind the lee of a reach of rock.

At his side, Li-Ju nodded. “I’ve only seen it once before, but it fits the specifications. It’s the Empress’ ship.”

Chen didn’t have a problem believing this. The black boat slid over the sparkling surface of the sea like a spectral vessel. Even in what was clearly a Hell, it did not belong in this world of sunlight and ocean. If he squinted slightly, it was almost possible to see the islands through its form.

“She’s found a way out,” he remarked.

“Yes. But with what end in mind?”

“She’s also found allies, it would seem,” Chen said.

“Or coerced them.”

“Inari’s on that ship. And Miss Qi, and the badger. We need to have a plan of action.” It was all Chen could do not to suggest that they immediately storm the vessel, but impatience had proved the parent of disaster on more than one occasion. They needed a strategy.

“Not knowing the lay of the land — or sea, in this case — makes things difficult,” Li-Ju said. “I suggest we follow, at a safe distance. If we can do so out of sight then so much the better.”

“If she does see us,” Chen asked, “is there anything that will mark this as a Celestial boat?”

“No. We stripped it of its banners before setting out from Heaven.”

“So unless she’s got someone on board who knows all the craft of this Hell, this could be just another ship,” Chen said, aware of the triumph of hope over experience. They were clearly a warship, after all.

“Only one way to find out,” Li-Ju said, with a fierce and un-Celestial grin.

They kept close to the shore, hugging the island as closely as they could without running afoul of the sharp rocks that fanged out from under the surface of those deceptively calm azure waves. The black ship sailed ahead, also curving close to shore. Chen wondered what its ultimate destination might be. The island itself showed no signs of habitation, although a skein of immense birds wheeled around its craggy summits. Had the Empress found her way here by chance, or had she sailed here by invitation? There was nothing about the ship’s course to indicate where it might be bound.

Then the black ship started to tack out from the coast, her sails veering into the wind. They had a choice: either skulk beneath the cliffs and hide, or follow her out into the open ocean. Li-Ju chose to follow.

“The boat’s not armed, although the Empress has her own spellcraft.”

“Have you taken precautions against that?”

“Yes. The boat’s heavily warded. But then, so was Kuan Yin’s boat. This is a warship, however, and has more effective protection.”

At least, we hope so, Chen thought. They pulled out from under the cliffs, fully visible now. But the black ship did not falter in her course. She continued to tack out into the wider ocean, her sails hissing in the wind of an unknown Hell.

“A land of our own,” the Roc said. “Or it’s no deal.”

“I can’t promise you that,” Inari told it, leaning perilously out of the window. She did not like being so close to the Roc’s ferocious bronze beak; nor did she like the gleam in its molten eyes. But the great bird was, thus far, their best chance of getting out of captivity, if not this Hell itself, and it had proved more willing to negotiate than the shark-demons.

The Roc ruffled its metal plumage. “In that case…”

“Wait,” Inari said, anxious that it would simply take off and not return. “Don’t go. We can’t contact our friends. But I am close to the Jade Emperor. My husband’s colleague is the stepson of the Emperor of Hell and about to marry a demon who has connections with the Hindu levels. She’s also wealthy in her own right,” Inari added, thinking of the acres that Jhai owned in China, the places where her secret labs were said to be situated. “Why, even now she’s in Western China, buying land.”

She did not hope to convince the Roc, but it seemed that she’d done a better job than she’d thought.

“Indeed?” the bird said, with bright-eyed interest. “In that case… They will be happy to have you back, will they? They didn’t decide to dispatch an inconvenient little demon down to somebody else’s Hell in the first place, did they?”

“Certainly not! We were kidnapped,” protested Inari, but Miss Qi added icily, “Besides, I am a Celestial warrior. If you know anything of my kind, you know that we cannot lie. My friend is telling you the truth.”

“I’ll need something in writing,” the Roc said.

“I don’t have a pen.”

“Blood will do.”

They had no weapon, and neither wanted the potential bondage of a touch from the Roc’s razor claws, but the bird dived in a clatter of wings and plucked a thorn from one of the bushes in the ravine below. Inari and Miss Qi drew a drop of blood from each wrist, then watched as the liquid hissed into a word upon the air and faded. Inari had seen enough to know that although it had left no trace, it was as binding a promise as any inscribed upon a piece of parchment.

“Now,” the Roc said. It stretched its wings, a twenty-foot span or more. “Let’s ride.”

Scrambling out of the narrow window and bundling the badger through the gap, Inari was sure that the shark-demons would not be far behind them, but the building lay in silence as the Roc rose up, spiraling on the warm wind. The hut soon fell away beneath them, revealing a courtyard that they had not seen on the way in: pillars, and half-rotted statues of misshapen forms.

“It’s a temple!” Inari said.

“To sea demons,” the Roc told her over its shoulder. “Things come here when their worship on Earth is long forgotten.”

Well forgotten, Inari thought, glancing back. She did not like the look of those gaping piscine mouths, too reminiscent of the shark-demons. Perhaps they worshipped themselves.

“And you?” Miss Qi asked. “Who worshipped you?”

The Roc’s beak yawned, in what might have been a laugh. “I was not worshipped, though maybe I wanted to be. I do not remember. I was a political adviser to a well-remembered dictator. A world of car bombs and hand grenades, not swords and bows. I am not long dead. I was sent here, in the form of a rapacious, predatory bird. No doubt I deserved it.”

Inari was silent. No doubt he did.

“I should like the same kind of power, without the risk,” the Roc went on. “My colleagues — I cannot call them friends — would agree.”

“In this form?” Miss Qi asked, and Inari knew that she was wondering what kind of creature they might be unleashing upon some unsuspecting realm. “This one, or another?”

“Let’s see when the time comes,” the Roc said smoothly, and winked a glowing eye.

•

Over the ocean, and beyond. No one came after them. Inari, who did not like heights, forced herself to look down on a couple of occasions as they flew, and saw boats as tiny as matchstick vessels, sailing upon that endless sea. But there was no land other than islands: this Hell was, in its way, almost as featureless as the Sea of Night. At last, though there was no visible curve to the world before them, a dusky twilight began to fall.

“Heaven’s too far,” the Roc said. “Earth will have to do. It will be interesting to see Earth again. I doubt it’s changed much.”

Inari doubted that, too. “If you can just fly to Earth,” she asked, “why haven’t you done so before now?”

“Because I couldn’t. The key is your blood. Someone had to freely pay, in blood, to liberate me. People weren’t exactly queuing up.”

“Glad we could help,” Inari said, looking down again. The sea had darkened, until it truly resembled the Sea of Night. Then she realized that it actually was the Sea of Night: somewhere back there, they had left Banquo’s Hell behind and were heading into the realms between the worlds.

“Ah!” said the Roc, in a gasping cry. “Earth is waiting!” And there was a gap in the clouds ahead, with light pouring through it.

In Agarta, Omi replayed the memories over and over again. He knew he should not have left his companions, but the call of the city had been too strong. Omi barely realized when he rose quietly from his watch-place by the fire and headed out into the desert. The stars ahead spun in their courses, moving too fast and too far, and the air slammed into his lungs as he stumbled up and down the dunes. It was like being drugged, or losing one’s mind. Occasionally, memories of Roerich, of the demon, of the spell that he still carried inside his coat rose to ambush him with guilt, but Omi thrust it aside and carried on.

Halfway up the next dune, he saw his grandfather standing at the summit. The old spirit was insubstantial: Omi could see the stars through his body.

“Omi, what are you doing?” Grandfather said in distress. “This is not where you should be. What about your friends, your mission?”

Omi’s mouth opened, but no words came out even though he tried to speak. He gaped like a fish, gasping for air, struggled on up the sand. He pushed his way through Grandfather’s form and the old man’s body dissipated in rags and tatters onto the desert wind. Only then did Omi cry out. He knew that Grandfather was a ghost, but what if he had hurt the old man so greatly that he would not want to return? Omi fell to his knees at the top of the dune and put his face in his hands. When he next looked up, there was an oasis below him.

It was like, yet unlike, the oasis of the crescent moon lake. There was a pavilion — a much smaller one — and a low pool of water, but the place smelled stagnant and dead, and there was no sign of movement around it. The scroll that contained the spell leaped inside Omni’s pocket, and for a moment he forgot the city. His vision sharpened and cleared. Somewhere, he thought he heard his grandfather’s voice, but when he looked round, no one was there. The scroll was speaking, however, strongly and without words, a liquid fountain-fall of sound, and it impelled him into movement. He sprang up and ran down the dune toward the oasis.

When he reached it, Omi became even more aware that something was obviously wrong. The trees that surrounded the pavilion were stunted, their leaves withered, and the pool was almost dry. The pavilion itself was scoured and bleached by the sand, until the wood of which it was made looked ancient and rotted. There was a skitter of dust down its steps, sparkling in the moonlight.

The spell leaped again, whispering. Omi took it from his pocket and without stopping to think, opened the scroll. Immediately images poured out upon the air, flickering like flame and causing the world to stop. The dust paused in its tracks, the little breeze that had rattled the dry leaves stilled and died. Omi watched as the lines that had made up the map on the scroll sank into the dry earth and disappeared. There was an electric second of waiting. The dust on the steps began, so slowly, to move again. Life spread outward from the place where the spell had sunk in. Under the moon, the dry leaves lifted and grew green again. Water rose within the pool, ebbing up from deep beneath the surface of the sand, and the pavilion gleamed as if freshly painted. Omi felt a spring of hope: he had acted rightly, after all, and the memory of Agarta hung before him in the air. But then the dust on the pavilion steps swirled upward. Omi watched as it started to spin, whirling and whistling around the oasis and drawing more sand up with it until the oasis was surrounded by a twisting wall of sand. More spread outward until Omi could no longer see the stars, could no longer see the desert beyond, could see nothing except the pavilion itself. And then the sand turned inward and Omi flung himself up the pavilion steps and hammered on the unyielding door until he was unable to see or breathe and the world went dark.

When he woke, the city had come. It lay all around him, and once he had risen to his feet and breathed in its perfumed air, it was, Omi discovered with a cold pang of pain, no longer what he wanted.

“So you just — what? Activated it?” the demon asked. They were out of the Council chamber now, to Zhu Irzh’s relief, and standing on a circular landing. Nandini was not with them, but Zhu Irzh had not seen her go.

“Yes.” Omi looked down at the flagstones. “I can’t tell you how ashamed I am, Zhu Irzh. I will be honest. You are a demon, out of Hell, and I am a sacred warrior. And I am the one who — ” He paused.

“Fucked up?”

“Yes. I can’t make excuses for myself.”

“Actually, I think he can,” Roerich said. “The pull of Agarta is legendary. I explained to you, Zhu Irzh, that it has driven men mad before now. And I’m not convinced that Agarta didn’t somehow persuade him into releasing the spell. Or the spell into releasing itself. Whatever the Council says, it doesn’t always know the mind of the city.”

“I’m not blaming him,” the demon said. “I know how you can get sucked into things. It’s unfortunate. But we’ll just have to deal with it.”

“The question is how.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

“No,” said Roerich bleakly, “I do not.”

•

They could stay for a day, Nandini told them. After that, the city would expect them to move on. The demon greeted this instruction with a mixture of trepidation and relief. He didn’t relish the prospect of getting back out into the desert, given the possibility of radical change, but neither did he want to stay: Agarta had started to give him the creeps. City of the Enlightened Masters it might be, but he didn’t like the feeling of continually being watched, even though no one was in sight.