Nine Gates (17 page)

“They decided to make certain that even after death some part of each of them could remain with their heirs apparent. Mah-jong had already been selected as the means by which they would encode their magic. In China at that time, the game was played with either cards or tiles. The remaining Twelve knew they could not hope to carry a body around with them. Even a body part or ashes might raise difficulties, for the Thirteen were often on the move. However, a set of game pieces might escape greed or seizure, and although a mah-jong set is heavy, it is not impossibly so. In a pinch, it might be broken down, the various tiles distributed.”

“More hiding in plain sight,” Riprap muttered.

“More like hiding in plain hiding,” Des laughed. “Gambling has been frowned upon by the civil authorities in China for generations—centuries—yet the Chinese remain a people who love games of chance. The Twelve had ample resources for hiding their special mah-jong pieces. Remember, too, initially they did not have twelve sets to worry about, only a few.”

Pearl frowned reprovingly at Des. “You are taking us away from the main point. Shall I continue?”

“Sorry,” Des said, but he didn’t look particularly sorry, and Pearl was pleased with him. His casual manner was easing the remaining strain from Nissa’s and Brenda’s faces.

Pearl went on. “First Ram was, as many Rams are, a skilled artisan, and so she came up with the logistics of the plan. Several of First Horse’s bones were, let us say, cleaned and
cured. When next the Exiles were relatively settled, tiles were shaped from segments of bone and backed with bamboo.

“As each of the original Exiles died, the same course of action was followed, although, of course, First Ram could not make all the sets, for eventually she also died. The difficulties the Thirteen encountered in following this course of action are interesting, but not particularly germane to our course of action.”

“Which is?” Righteous Drum said politely, although his eyes were shining with eagerness.

Pearl inclined her head toward Shen, indicating that he should answer. She’d already said more than she intended, but family history was close to her heart.

“If we can get our hands on the mah-jong sets belonging to the missing four Exiles,” Shen said, “we may be able to use them as a stand-in of sorts.”

“Dry bones rather than living men and women?” Flying Claw challenged. “How could that work?”

“Not so much dry bones,” Shen said, “as the spirits who can still be summoned from them. I am hoping that, if we are lucky, we may be able to draw upon our ancestors’ counsel. In the research I have been doing, the Nine Gates must draw upon the power of the Nine Yellow Springs.”

He glanced at Righteous Drum, who nodded.

“Yes. This matches the lore of the Lands.”

Shen looked pleased. “I hoped it did. I have been reading my grandfather’s notes, but he was a great scholar of traditions other than those of his homeland, and I was concerned that his notes were contaminated.”

“No,” Righteous Drum assured him, “the Nine Yellow Springs and the Nine Gates are intimately connected.”

“Well,” Shen went on happily, his expression reminding Pearl of the boy he had once been, “the Nine Yellow Springs are in the underworld, and who better to advise us how to find and utilize them than ghosts?”

“Interesting,” said Righteous Drum, “but why do we need
these four sets? I understood that each of you is in possession of your own family sets.”

“That is so,” Pearl agreed, “but we have more than merely consulting our ancestors in mind. We had hoped that with proper and respectful approaches, we might convince the original Ox, Horse, Ram, and Monkey to lend enough of their spirit to our cause that our group of thirteen would be complete.”

“Necromancy?” asked Des with marked disapproval. “Let the dead remain dead.”

“Consulting the ancestors,” Shen countered, “is very Chinese. I thought you out of all of us would understand, Des, or are you more American than you’d like to believe?”

Des frowned. “Honoring the ancestors is very Chinese, yes, but asking them to manifest again in the world of the living? I’m not certain I agree.”

“What greater honor,” Pearl said, cutting in before matters could become too theoretical, “could we do our ancestors than fulfilling their greatest desire—their desire to have their exile rescinded, their desire to return home?”

Honey Dream
enjoyed watching the Orphans argue. It was a balm to her own still-bruised soul.

Although Shen and Pearl had explained their point of view quite logically, Des’s frown did not diminish. Pearl pressed her point.

“Des, when you assumed the Rooster’s place and were given her mah-jong set, you were told that there were two reasons that these sets were made. One we have already mentioned—so that the Thirteen Orphans would remain together, even after death. What was the other?”

Des might have taken on the responsibility of teaching the newest Rabbit and Dog, but clearly he had not forgotten that once Pearl and Shen had been his own teachers. He responded promptly and in good form.

“So that offerings could be made to their spirits, as is right and proper.”

“And why was this seen as important?” Shen took over the catechism.

“Because their exile isolated them from their kin,” Des said, “from those who would in more normal circumstances have made offerings at their graves. The mah-jong sets were meant to serve, in a manner of speaking, as portable graves.”

Des turned to address Brenda, Riprap, and Nissa directly. “None of you were raised Chinese, so you can’t know how important those offerings are to the dead. Every family makes offerings to their dead at least twice a year, on Ching Ming and at the New Year. Even when immediate family members move on, there’s usually someone to make at least a token offering. Without those offerings the afterlife would be unpleasant for them.”

Shen, whom Honey Dream resented because in his unskilled hands rested some of the power that should be her father’s alone, shook his head reprovingly. “Let us be blunt, Des. Precisely because they were skilled in the magical arts, the Exiles knew how horrible the afterlife could be for an unsustained spirit. My grandfather had met ghosts. Some were creatures to fear, others to pity. None were anything he wished to become.”

“Yes,” Des said, “and we have cared for our ancestors, but I do not see how this permits us to abuse their spirits now that they are at rest.”

Pearl rose abruptly, unsettling the cat Amala, who had settled in her lap. The cat jumped to the patio and dashed out into the garden. Lani shrieked in delight, but no one else paid the least attention. They were all focused on Pearl.

“Des, aren’t you listening? This has nothing to do with theory, nothing to do with necromancy in the usual sense.
We are not inflicting an indignity upon our ancestors. They did this to themselves. First Ram cleaned and flensed the bones of her friend, First Horse, at his behest. My father requested the same be done to him. We are not doing anything they would not have wanted. They did it to themselves!”

“Well,” Des admitted slowly, “I suppose you’re right, but still, this is unsettling.”

Honey Dream tuned out the incredibly dull discussion of ethics and morality that followed, focusing on keeping her appearance calm and yet alert.

Hands remained her greatest difficulty. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d twisted her fingers into each other when she was excited or angry. Her mother had noticed and had warned Honey Dream against giving her inner thoughts away—and then had reinforced the point by using those tics against her.

Despite the sometimes painful memories that accompanied this training, it was all Honey Dream could do to keep her hands still in her lap as Shen Kung and Pearl Bright revealed the source of the bone in the heirloom mah-jong sets and their plans for it.

Honey Dream wondered if her father, Waking Lizard, and Flying Claw saw the possibilities as clearly as she did. Pearl and Shen spoke of using spirits to fill in for missing members of their consortium of thirteen.

(Twelve, really. Despite all the respect everyone kept paying to Albert Yu, this Cat was really discardable. No matter what her father implied in an effort to flatter these strangers into cooperation, there was no way a candy maker would be elevated to emperor.)

Why stop with filling in for the
missing
members of the Twelve? Why not eliminate their descendants entirely from consideration and seek alliance with the wellspring of the line? Why not bring the Twelve Exiles home again?

Surely such an act would be right and even virtuous. Honey Dream did not think the dead Exiles could be resurrected
as such. However, if their spirits could be drawn back to the vicinity of these remnants of their bodies, then held there, the act of transporting the mah-jong sets to the Lands would also return the Exiles’ spirits to their homeland. This was what the Exiles had desired, so they should be willing to cooperate.

Of course, there would be difficulties. For this to work, the ancestral spirits must have priority over their descendants in their alliance with their affiliated Earthly Branches. If they did not, then the power would be further fragmented just when concentration was what they needed most of all.

Honey Dream wondered if the others had thought of this. For a moment, she considered being subtle, then shrugged and decided to take guidance from the Thirteen Orphans and practice the subtlety of hiding in plain sight. Direct interest in one thing could hide her deeper interests.

“Pardon,” Honey Dream said when there was a pause in the discussion. Her hands were completely still in her lap, although she had a strong desire to fidget with her writing brush. “I have no desire to interrupt this interesting discussion, but a difficulty in this otherwise admirable plan has occurred to me. I may be but young and foolish. My ignorance may be the source of confusion on one point that is apparently clear to heads wiser than my own.”

Everyone fell quiet during her little speech. Riprap and Flying Claw both looked relieved at the break in the increasingly esoteric subject matter of the earlier discussion. Nissa moved slightly, golden lashes fluttering over those impossibly blue eyes as if she had been nearly asleep until Honey Dream’s words roused her.

But Brenda Morris did not look pleased at Honey Dream’s interruption. Brenda quickly schooled her features to immobility, but her teachers had not been as strict as had Honey Dream’s and a hint of suspicion shaped the angle of her brows.

Honey Dream ignored the annoying Ratling, and focused on Shen Kung. Old men liked pretty girls, and Shen had no
reason to dislike her. She also gave her father a respectful nod, acknowledging that he was also a Dragon and therefore a master of arcane lore.

She very carefully did not look at Flying Claw. If her future plans were to work, she knew that he must not dismiss her as merely trying to impress him. She would need an ally, and she would like that ally to be him.

“You speak,” Honey Dream continued, her inflections very formal, “as if you believe that—at least in the case of the four unfaithful families—the spirits of the departed ancestors could somehow substitute. How could this be? Didn’t you tell us that the Earthly Branches were bound to pass down the family lines? Wouldn’t those bindings have held even when the lore that enabled the Branch holder to exploit the connection was lost?”

Shen Kung looked at her with approval. “You have anticipated a point that we were going to bring up, Honey Dream. Des, are you willing to let this ethical discussion go for now?”

Des Lee tugged at one edge of his beard. “For now. I admit, I’m interested in the answer to Honey Dream’s question.”

Shen returned his attention to Honey Dream. “As circumstances now stand, you are correct. The bindings between the Earthly Branch holders and the Branch persist—even if those who hold it are completely unaware of the relationship. However, there may be ways to undo those bindings. The best solution would be to ask the ancestors themselves to do so. They may be willing to work the unbinding, especially if we explain that the continuity of lineage they sought to assure has become so attenuated as to be useless to them.”

“We would need to promise,” Des said, “that we would bear their bones back to the Lands.”

“Of course,” Shen said. “We would need to take them with us in any case so that the Thirteen would be complete.”

Honey Dream listened with half an ear to the ensuing discussion on what course of action might or might not be
followed. She’d already learned that these Americans would talk any matter to death before reaching a decision.

Seductive and enticing, other possibilities claimed her attention. Shen Kung seemed certain that contact could be established between them and the spirits of the original Orphans. Very well. She would take his word for it and learn the details of how this could be achieved later.

What interested Honey Dream was what might be done once that contact was established. Shen and Pearl were concerned solely with rounding out their set of Thirteen Orphans, as if they were indeed playing mah-jong, drawing from a wall that grew shorter and shorter, their options becoming more limited with every tile drawn.

But why play that game at all? Why set out to break the wall with tiles that had been drawn before Honey Dream herself became a player? Might she not shuffle the tiles, build the wall anew, play a fresh game?

If four of the Exiles might be brought back, why not the other eight?

Why deal with these annoying Americans and their strange magics at all? Why not return to the source? Why not bring back the Exiles, offer them a remission of their exile, a chance to go home?

Yes. The extant group would not like this at all, but they could be eliminated from consideration. There was the spell Righteous Drum had designed, the one that robbed memory, that separated the power from the person.

There were other options, more direct. Could she say “murder” even in the quiet of her mind? Honey Dream dared herself, and found that she could.

Her father had been reluctant to take this course for a variety of reasons: foremost, the difficulties that might arise for them if law officials realized murder had been done. Honey Dream had been here in the United States long enough to realize how silly this worry had been.