Five Odd Honors (48 page)

“Because the Snake’s direction is south-southeast?” Honey Dream asked.

“Precisely,” Albert confirmed.

The wall was quickly built and Albert set the Summer tile in the gap that had been left, exposing the face rather than the blank bamboo back.

“Pearl, you take charge for the next step,” Albert said.

Pearl lifted the Tiger mah-jong set from where she had placed it on the floor near her feet, then spilled the tiles out onto an empty section of the table.

“We’re going to build another wall so that it abuts on the south side of this one,” she said. “We’ll reserve the bamboo tile from the flowers and seasons set to place opposite the summer tile.”

“I’ve got it here,” Nissa said, holding it up. The carved stand of bamboo was more representational than simple cylinders that represented the suit with the same name.

Doubtless,
Pearl thought morosely,
if Des was here he would take this opportunity to remind us that the bamboo suit actually does not represent bamboo at all, but rather a string of coins—of Chinese cash—strung through the hole in the middle.

A lump formed in her throat, but she reached for the cooling tea in her cup and washed it away. The time for tears would be later.

If we fail.

“One last wall,” Albert said when the wall from the Tiger’s set was completed. His eyes narrowed as he estimated the room left on the table. “We have room to place it to the east of the Tiger set. Nissa?”

Nissa reached down and lifted up the box containing the Rabbit mah-jong set. She spilled out the tiles onto the southern end of the table, away from the completed walls.

“Does it matter which,” Honey Dream asked a trace smugly, “east wind tile we hold out?”

“It doesn’t,” Albert said, smiling serenely at her. “We’ll leave the gap this time in the center of the west wall.”

Righteous Drum opened his mouth as if to ask a question, then shut it without speaking and helped shuffle the tiles. He was becoming increasingly dextrous with his one remaining hand. Pearl had spoken to him privately about a prosthetic—Dr. Andersen could be very discreet if the need arose and he was offered sufficient remuneration—but Righteous Drum had refused. “I will need to learn to function first without an arm. Later, when doing so has become second nature, and I can write and cast spells quickly, then perhaps I will consider an artificial arm. Now, though, I think I would come to rely upon it too much, and that would slow my retraining.”

Pearl understood; a man of surprising depth and courage, this Righteous Drum. She hoped his wife and other children were still alive and unharmed. She knew that he doubted they were, and admired him even more for going after the truth so fiercely when he could have continued in delusion.

When the Rabbit wall was finished, Albert poured himself tea, then addressed them.

“I did not ask you to concentrate while we built the walls, because setting up the structures is not what is important. What will be is how we bridge them. There are several steps—and I must remind you, this spell is wholly theoretical, designed by the Exile Dragon, preserved in our archives, but, as far as I know, never used successfully. We’ve spent days going over it and working out the steps, because I suspect we won’t get many chances to try it. It uses a lot of ch’i.”

Everyone nodded. Albert sipped his tea and continued.

“When mah-jong is played as a game, many people refer to this first step as building the ‘Great Wall,’ as in the Great Wall of China.”

He looked inquiringly at Righteous Drum and Honey Dream. Righteous Drum nodded.

“We have—or at least had—such a wall in the Lands. It was a project dreamt of by Shih Huang Ti, the same emperor who Li Szu convinced to burn the books. The imprint of his works and dreams is very strong in the Lands.”

“Good,” Albert said. “Then I don’t need to explain to you that the mahjong wall and the Great Wall bear no resemblance to each other.”

“No,” Honey Dream agreed. “The Great Wall zigzags, partially to accommodate terrain, but also because it was constructed from segments of other walls that were already there. Mah-jong walls are perfectly square.”

Nissa interjected herself into the lecture. “Des said that this was because we’re not really building the Great Wall, but we’re building a universe, and the Chinese thought—or I guess, think, because it’s true in the Lands—that the universe was square, or a cube.”

“What we have done,” Albert went on, “is build three universes. The first represents the Lands, where Gentle Smoke should be. The second, the one we built from Pearl’s set, represents the guardian domains.”

“More precisely,” Pearl said, “the western guardian domains where Pai Hu, the White Tiger of the West, has been kind enough to interest himself in our problems.”

“That’s why you used the Tiger set,” Honey Dream said, nodding approval. “I thought that might be the reason.”

“The last square represents this world,” Albert said, “what you call the Land of the Burning. We wanted to use the set tied to one of us here. We chose Nissa’s because the Cat is a rather anomalous figure—not properly associated with any of the Earthly Branches.”

And because,
Pearl thought,
we did not want to wait until Shen or Deborah or Gaheris could get here. Honey Dream doesn’t realize how hard it has been for us to wait this long, but it seemed wise to give the scouts a chance to contact us, and nine days isn’t that long.
. . .

Or might it be too long?

“Righteous Drum, our part in this is going to be easy,” Albert said. “We will do what in our system we call a Triple Knitting spell, supplying ch’i for the group effort.”

“Our name is not as colorful,” Righteous Drum said, “but we have a similar spell. Who is the focal caster?”

“Not any one of us, but rather the tiles themselves. You’ll feel they are receptive.”

Righteous Drum laid his fingertips lightly on the tiles closest to him. His eyebrows shot up.

“Yes. Almost as if they have a life of their own.”

“Not so much of their own,” Albert said, “but of our own. Honey Dream, in addition to contributing to the Triple Knitting, you will roll two dice and count off the walls, then two more and count the tiles.”

“Yes. I know how this is done.”

“Good. When you do the second count, draw the two tiles indicated and place them like this.” Albert took the spare tiles from Gentle Smoke’s set and stacked them like a short flight of stairs. “Touch them against the Summer tile.”

Honey Dream nodded crisply.

“Pearl, you’ll do the same within the Tiger square, but you’ll need to do the routine twice—once to connect with the Snake, once to connect with the Rabbit.”

Pearl knew this. She’d helped Albert review the old spell, but she didn’t protest. The explanation was meant for the rest.

Nissa was less patient—or perhaps more nervous.

“And I,” she said, “finish off connecting the Tiger and the Rabbit. Then what happens?”

“Then we concentrate on finding Gentle Smoke. We should feel a line of ch’i coursing through the avenue we have created. If all goes right, if the White Tiger of the West aids us as I have implored him to do, then our search should reach the Lands. What will happen there, I cannot say.”

‘We will find Gentle Smoke,” Honey Dream said firmly. “We will. We must.”

“Anyone need a potty break?” Nissa asked, sliding her chair back, “because all of a sudden, I do.”

Honey Dream looked momentarily indignant at this intrusion of mere biological concerns, but when Nissa left the room, Honey Dream quietly excused herself as well.

On her way to her own bathroom, Pearl stopped to make certain the house phone ringer was off and the machine would take any calls.

When such mundane necessities had been tended to, Albert took advantage of the disruption to move them around the table.

“Nissa and Righteous Drum, if you won’t be too crowded, take your seats on the east side of the table. Honey Dream, you start on the north side, so you can reach the wall, but then take a seat on the south, next to your father. Pearl, we’ll put you on the west to start, but when you’re done moving tiles, go to the north. I’ll cover west. That way we’ll be in something like the correct order for our signs, and have all four directions covered.”

During the break, Albert had lit some incense on the family altar. The light sandalwood scent was soothing, the exotic odor cutting them off from the ordinary world as neatly as the house’s soundproofing eliminated the noise made by the early arrivals to the Rosicrucian Museum.

“Everyone ready your Triple Knitting,” Albert said. “Nissa, don’t be ashamed to use a bracelet.”

“I’ve got this spell down,” she assured him.

“Honey Dream, I trust your judgment,” Albert said, settling himself into a chair on the western edge of the table. “When you sense that everyone is connected, begin.”

Of such little things are alliances forged,
Pearl thought, seeing Honey Dream straighten a little at Albert’s words.
Far more than any treaty, no matter what my father thought.

She forced any memory of Thundering Heaven from her mind, and concentrated on building her spell. Around her, Pearl could feel the others slot their own spells into place. Honey Dream was perfectly patient, waiting for the resonance between five such different forces to fall into harmony. Then she began.

Pearl felt rather than saw the fall of the dice, the selection of the two tiles that connected the Snake’s universe to that of the Tiger. Honey Dream was settling into her appointed seat on the south side of the table as Pearl tossed her own dice, one pair to select the wall, the second to select the two tiles.

To her delight, she felt a faint growling purr. Pai Hu would assist.

Pearl repeated the process. Without glancing at Nissa, she settled into the empty chair on the north side. Nissa took over, handling the dice without the least diminishment of her Triple Knitting.

Now to seek Gentle Smoke. The Exile Snake had died some years before Pearl’s birth, but Pearl had known her heir, had heard stories of the Exile Snake’s wisdom and, perhaps even more important, solid common sense. To these Pearl added more recent memories, from the time since the ghosts had come to stay at her house. Ghosts who had accepted a return to mortality—a return that in some cases, as for Loyal Wind who longed for redemption, might have been welcome, but for Gentle Smoke who had died at a relatively advanced age, with daughter and granddaughter, both, to carry on her line, might not have been so welcome.

These were not coherent thoughts, set down in orderly fashion, rather a flow of images, of emotions, of shifting perspective. Pearl’s portrait of Gentle Smoke made one cord in a five-strand rope of shaped ch’i, a rope that made its way, snakelike (how appropriate) out of this Land of the Burning, into the facilitating force of Pai Hu, out of the guardian domains, through an opening she knew was the last of the Nine Gates, and . . .

Pearl felt her entire upper body rock back as if someone had slammed a fist toward her face and she had jerked away in self-defense. Her ears heard corresponding gasps from each of her four companions, but she, like them, made no other reaction, every iota of ch’i and attention focused on adapting, adjusting, reconfiguring.

They had penetrated into the Lands. Currents sucked the ch’i from their spell as she would juice from an orange slice. Automatically, she started to pull back, to regroup, but Honey Dream protested. An image of Gentle Smoke flooded through the confusion. Pearl agreed, gave accord, pressed all the force of the Tiger into finding Gentle Smoke, to touching the Snake.

Honey Dream gave their seeking form and focus. In a very real sense she and Gentle Smoke were echoes of the same greater thing, the Sixth Earthly Branch. There were not words for what they sought to do, but it was not unlike looking for a single shape among scattered jigsaw puzzle pieces, the one with two “arms,” one “leg,” and a lopsided head, printed in the blue of the sky that is also the blue of the sea.

Finding, discarding, finding, almost matching, close, close, doesn’t quite work, pushing away options, glancing at the template, finding, finding, and there, there was Gentle Smoke, far, far away, her mind clear, her body was wracked with shrieking pain.

“Taken,” came Gentle Smoke’s voice, faint as a whisper, vibrant as a gong struck on a still night. “Li Szu. Past the mountains. Forest walks. Taken by Thundering Heaven. For the Branches. If you come, taken—”

The contact broke—no, was cut—and Pearl knew Gentle Smoke feared what would happen if anyone detected this powerful surge of ch’i in the desiccated place the Lands had become. Flung back into her body, Pearl felt her muscles trembling and gripped the sides of her chair lest she tumble to the floor. Her face was wet, and she realized the wetness was tears.

“Taken,” Albert said, and his voice rasped. He, too, wept. “Taken, and although she wished to hide it, I think tortured as well.”

Honey Dream’s face showed no tears, but not, Pearl realized, because she felt no compassion for her sister snake. She was too furious to cry.

“Tortured,” Honey Dream confirmed, “and worse. They know Gentle Smoke does not fear death, so they must make her fear living more.”