Nine Gates (12 page)

“In response to those attacks, attacks that went to the very heart of who we are, we have done nothing but defend ourselves. Yet, here this afternoon, the present echoes the past. Shen and I find ourselves asked to justify our actions when we have done nothing other than that which the least insect would do if placed in a similar situation.”

Pearl saw an uneasy stirring, marked out a few whose very lack of response showed they were listening only so that they would be permitted to object, and moved to her conclusion.

“Moreover, we have done nothing that violates the pacts made between our ancestors and your predecessors. What magics we have used were used for self-defense. Nor have we done anything that would draw the attention of the nonmagical to our magics—or to the large presence of magic that is still extant in this world.”

Pearl could see Shen bending his head forward, burying his face in his hands, but she could not tell if his expression was one of dismay or amusement. Never mind. His reaction would not have changed Pearl’s approach. She and her own had done nothing wrong, and she wasn’t going to offer the members of the Rock Dove Society an edge by starting with apologies.

Judd Madden had taken a seat in the middle of the front row of the crescent. Now he rose and scanned those still seated.

“Are there any questions? Yes. Myron?”

A short, round-bodied man who looked as if he belonged behind the counter of the best sort of Greek diner rose to his feet.

“Hattie LaTour’s report,” he said, “ended by noting that
although you and yours had dealt with the immediate threat to yourselves, another threat may yet emerge. Could you speak to this point?”

Myron’s words made Pearl amend her assessment of him. He sounded like the CEO of some large corporation. That didn’t surprise her. Talent in matters arcane did not rule out success in other areas of life.

“You are correct, sir,” Pearl said politely. “The threat may not yet be ended. Initially, three adepts came through from the Lands. Their intention, so we learned much later, was to strip from the heirs of the Thirteen Orphans affiliations that our ancestors had retained despite the Exile. They wanted these because they believed they could use them to strengthen themselves so they could win against enemies who besieged their homeland.

“About a week ago, these first three were joined by a fourth, an ally from the Lands. This fourth—one Waking Lizard—reported that the cause for which he and his three allies had fought had been lost. Their armies were disbanded—the remaining members of their Twelve killed or captured. Two days ago, during a practice on my private lands, we were again attacked. Through a combination of magical and martial arts, we were victorious.”

“Yes,” Judd Madden said quickly. “Faint reverberations of that conflict were detected and reported.”

Pearl guessed that “And discussed ad infinitum” might be added, but Judd had no desire to open that matter again.

Instead Judd looked into the gathering and acknowledged a hand that had been waving energetically.

“Erick?”

A tall, thin Scandinavian-looking man rose, but despite his appearance, when he spoke his accent was broad New Jersey.

“Erick Swenson. Icelandic tradition. You spoke of affiliations. Can you explain what you mean by this term?” Erick glanced around the stone chamber with a slightly apologetic
air. “Sorry. Missed the last meeting, and since we’re barred from using e-mail or anything to communicate about these matters…”

There were a few grumbles, and Myron could be heard saying quite distinctly, “You could have contacted someone.”

Pearl cut in before bickering could start. She had hoped for a chance to explain matters from her point of view. There were certain advantages to be gained by establishing the emotional slant.

“Erick, if these others do not mind…” She glanced around and saw various—although certainly not universal—nods of encouragement. “I will be glad to explain further.”

“Please, ma’am, do,” Erick said.

“The Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice,” Pearl began, “originated in 213
B.C.
, when the first Ch’in emperor, Shi Huang Ti, took the advice of his minister Li Szu and attempted to wipe out all knowledge that did not support his particular political point of view.

“China’s is not the only tradition in which the written word is accorded magical power independent of the meaning of whatever is being written. Norse runes and Egyptian hieroglyphs come immediately to mind. Therefore, it is unlikely that the destruction of the written texts alone was responsible for what happened. Almost certainly, what contributed to the creation of an entirely new universe was the deliberate murder of scholars—four hundred and sixty according to the scholar Ssu-ma Ch’ien—that accompanied the burning of the books. Another form of destruction that may have added ch’i—psychic energy, magical force, whatever you choose to call it—was the intellectual suicide of those who chose to accede to the Ch’in emperor’s edict rather than risk their lives and secure positions.”

Pearl saw someone stir restlessly, and held up a hand to forestall questions. “I am not avoiding the point. I am supplying the foundation necessary if Mr. Erick here is to understand what has happened—and why our magic is unique.”

The man rose and walked over to where a coffee urn had
been set up, as if this had been his intention all along. Pearl did not believe him, but did not choose to press the point.

“Because of the creation of the Lands from this conflagration, the magical and mystical traditions of the Lands resemble in some ways those of the Chinese. This includes the recognition of Twelve Earthly Branches and the association of those branches with one of twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac.

“Within the tradition of the Twelve Earthly Branches, I am the Tiger, a place I inherited from my father, who was one of the original Thirteen. Shen Kung is the Dragon, a position he inherited from his grandfather, through his mother.”

Erick was nodding, but his expression made clear that he was waiting for more details. Not seeing overmuch impatience on the faces of her small audience, Pearl went on.

“Even before the Exile, I suspect that some of our ancestors hoped that if they were exiled without being formally severed from their various affiliations, they might carry at least part of those affiliations with them. Indeed, I suspect that they took steps to assure this would be so. However, the representative of the Chinese traditions who is here with us tonight can confirm that, whatever else they might have done, the Thirteen Orphans in no way imposed upon the indigenous magical traditions of China.”

A tall, straight-backed Chinese-American who was famous for expanding his father’s restaurant chain into a line of canned and frozen foods sold under the name “Deng’s Delights,” nodded stiffly in confirmation, but offered no other support. Pearl did not expect him to do so. Shared cultural heritage had made Franklin Deng a rival, not a friend.

Pearl went on. “Erick, my understanding is that those who remained in the Lands did not—for various reasons far too complex to go into here—immediately realize that in exiling the Twelve they had exiled their own ability to tie into the full power of the Twelve Earthly Branches.

“There were theories, of course, to explain why their powers were less than they thought they should be, but those
theories did not become important until the group of which Righteous Drum was one of the leaders found itself hard-pressed. They decided to come after us in an effort to reclaim exclusive affiliation with the Twelve Earthly Branches. As I mentioned before, we learned of this, resisted, and that led us to our current situation.”

“And that is?” Erick asked, his expression as open and eager as that of a child hearing a good story.

Pearl was about to answer when she was interrupted by a woman who had not spoken before, a thin woman, lean as a rail and somehow as rough and splintery.

“The Orphans have invited invasion of our world by some nasty folks who probably would like to get back those Earthly Branches—which probably should have been left behind in the first place.”

“Tracy!” Judd Madden objected, starting to his feet, offended by this violation of proper protocol and good manners.

The woman waved him down and kept talking. “I’m thinking this impending invasion endangers far more than the current Thirteen Orphans—I think it endangers all of us, maybe our whole world.”

The words were spoken in a very nasty tone of voice, offering not the least doubt that they were intended as an attack.

From a very young age, Pearl had learned the futility of answering attack with either defense or counterattack—for those were precisely what an attacker would expect. In some cases, falling back was far more useful. In others, a sidestep that put the attacker off-balance did the trick.

The latter was the tactic she chose now.

“You are afraid of our enemies, then,” Pearl said with a soft smile that defused any possible accusation that she was being insulting. “Wise. Even in my father’s day, the Lands were a place of war and conflict. From what I have learned from our enemies turned allies, war and conflict remains the common situation in many, many regions.”

The splintery woman—Tracy, Judd had called her—paused, evidently taken aback, as Pearl had intended her to be. Tracy looked to be in her late thirties, perhaps early forties, her demeanor weathered and rough. Her aspect was of a wholesomely muddled mixture of races—all-American, to be precise. Balked by Pearl’s reply, Tracy bought herself a moment to regroup by remembering her manners.

“Tracy Frye,” she introduced herself. “Generalist. If I represent anybody but myself, I guess it’s my kinfolk back in the Appalachians, but they’d be the first to kick me around a hill and up a tree for setting myself up as their voice. Now, before you think me a coward, I’ve got reason to speak like I did.

“My great-grandsire was around when your people arrived here and he liked to tell stories. I heard ’em when I was a sprout, and my own grandpa told them after. Both of them especially liked telling how your pa and those ‘Thirteen’ threw everyone off balance by showing up here and revealing that there was a whole world or universe or something out there that nobody had suspected existed—a universe that was birthed by this one, but didn’t belong to it.

“Grandpa was a bit of an existentialist in his way,” Tracy went on, “and the idea that a world could be born from a disaster fascinated him. In the threads of Great-Grandpa’s tales was something else too—the suspicion that your folks could draw on powers nobody else could touch. Didn’t make folks happy, I’m guessing. Grandpa implied your folks were pretty tight with what they knew.”

Pearl gave the slightest inclination of her head, a motion that could indicate agreement or merely be an encouragement for the other to continue speaking. Tracy went on.

“I’m thinking, seems those Earthly Branches have been split once, between the Lands and here. Why not split them again? Share a bit of what you’ve been hoarding, and we can help you fight your enemies. Fair trade, as I see it.”

Shen spoke from his seat at the back of the room. “Are your own traditions not enough?”

Tracy shrugged. “Like I said, I’m a Generalist. My tradition has always been to take a little from all the traditions. We’ve always found that like answers like best, so when it’s a West African boogie, we answer with a little voodoo. When it’s a Native American spirit, we take a dance and a puff of pollen. A leprechaun answers best to Celtic song and charm. Stands that the same would be true here—and I think that Miss Bright and her friends are being pretty selfish keeping all the right sort of magics to themselves when this situation puts us all in danger.”

Tracy seemed so reasonable, so folksy that had this been any other gathering Pearl would have suspected her of spinning a bit of a charm into her words, but such would have been instantly detected here. The woman wouldn’t dare.

Natural charisma
, Pearl thought,
and very strong indeed if she can make me listen to the idea of chopping up our powers and passing them around.

“An interesting tactic,” Pearl responded, appearing to reflect, “but one I fear will not work. You see, the original Thirteen made sure that each Earthly Branch would be bound irrevocably to one adept—and pass only to that adept’s own bloodline. Believe me, if the powers could be split and passed around, my father, for one, would have done his best to make certain whatever he could take from me would have been given to my brothers. He found even the idea of a Tiger Lady abhorrent.”

As Pearl had expected, most of the women and a majority of the men here gathered were clearly shocked by this. Even those who had come up in conservative traditions remained modern Americans. They felt a knee-jerk antagonism to gender prejudice—even if they practiced it themselves.

“But,” Judd Madden said, “that first group of invaders—the three you spoke of earlier—they
did
manage to separate the Earthly Branch from the, uh, host. Isn’t that the case?”

“They did,” Pearl agreed, “and the cost was loss of memory of anything connected to the Branches. Albert Yu’s personality
changed so much that even someone who had never met him—a girl who had never even heard of him—was able to realize that Albert Yu must have been altered. Shen…”

Pearl paused. She knew she was being cruel using her friend’s personal tragedy as an emotional lever, but they needed all the sympathy they could create.

Shen took his cue and spoke, his voice thin and tight. “When I was severed from the Dragon, my family thought that at best I had suffered a severe stroke, at worst that I was suffering from rapid-onset Alzheimer’s. My wife and son’s relief at my recovery has not quite alleviated their anxiety. Indeed, the event, brief as it was, has irrevocably scarred our family. I do not believe the Earthly Branch can be separated from its affiliated initiate without at least some damage to the initiate—nor do I believe it can be split.”

Fleetingly, Pearl thought of Brenda Morris. What had happened with that girl after her father had been attacked? There had been times when Brenda had seemed a little bit the Rat, even though the Rat had been stolen from Gaheris. This was surely neither the time nor the place to mention that anomaly. It was a mystery for the Orphans alone.