Nine Gates (39 page)

Shen Kung set down the tiny mallet with which he had rung the chime and looked over all of them.

“Pearl, as the most senior of our number, would you light one of the red candles? Honey Dream, would you light the other?”

An altar not much wider than Honey Dream’s outspread hands had been set up at one end of Pearl’s office. It was draped in deep red fabric, embellished with gold ribbon from which depended silken tassels so long that they swept almost to the floor. Freshly cut flowers were spread on the fabric that covered the altar, and small plants in delicately painted china vases were set at the corners.

The center of the altar was a large framed photograph of an older woman. Surrounding this large photo was a collage of other photos of this same woman. She was never depicted as young, for the Exile Ox had been among the oldest of the Exiles, but in most she was younger, in some, quite the ancient. In some pictures she was shown alone, but in a few she was surrounded by people who Honey Dream had been told were others of the Exiles, and, perhaps most importantly in their current situation, the Exile Ox’s adopted daughter, Hua.

Shen Kung was holding out lit matches to Pearl and Honey Dream. In concert they lit the candles that flanked the photograph. Albert had told Honey Dream that their custom held that two candles symbolized the joining of dualities—dead and living, old and young, wise and innocent—that were embodied at the heart of ancestor worship.

“Is it the same in the Lands?” he had asked.

“Not precisely, but close enough to be familiar.”

So it was with the rest of the ceremony as it progressed. In the Lands, a family of good standing such as her own would have offered real gifts, not paper replicas to the deceased, but even in the Lands, the sacrifice of living things was no longer commonly done.

Shen Kung had been chanting various prayers, some in English, some in modern northern Chinese, but most in the Chinese of the Lands, for this was the language the Exile Ox herself would have spoken—her first language, and so the language of her heart.

“… and you may wonder why, Honored Ancestor, friend of my grandfather who was as a father to me, and who spoke of you with both affection and respect, why we call upon you at this time, out of season, neither the New Year, nor the time of the spring festival of Clear Bright.

“We call upon you as the living have always called upon the Ancestors, to beg your counsel, to hope for your aid. We have never forgotten you though long years have passed. We hope some small seed of remembrance and reciprocal affection dwells within your heart.”

Albert stepped forward at this point and lit a cluster of incense sticks waiting with their bases set in sand in a small round pot in the center of the altar, directly in front of the photograph.

“Here is smoke to make the road on which you may journey to us, Nine Ducks, Ox of the Twelve. I am Albert Yu, great-grandson of the emperor you swore to serve, grandson of the boy emperor you brought forth from the Lands into the Land of the Burning. I have kept faith throughout the generations, and although many years have passed, I request that you keep faith with me.”

The smoke from the incense eddied up, hardly stirring in the still air of the office.

Hardly stirring
, Honey Dream thought, astonished despite the detachment she had been so carefully cultivating.
Yet it should be stirring. The windows are closed, but Pearl has her artificial cooling system running, else this room
would be stuffy. Yet the incense hangs before the picture, as if something holds it there.

Albert knelt on the pillow that had been set in front of the altar, bowed his head, and clapped three times. The sound was somehow wrong—not muffled, but not as sharp as it should have been.

It’s as if the sound is spreading into a bigger space than this room, into a bigger area, into …

The incense smoke began moving toward the picture of the Exile Ox. Honey Dream blinked and shook her head, forcing herself to focus. Part of her wanted to believe that the photographic image had changed, that the woman depicted within had pursed her lips and was breathing in the smoke. Her eyes told her this was not the case, that the photograph remained precisely as it had been, but Honey Dream knew that this was one case where the eyes lied. The image in her mind was the true one, for it was with the mind’s eye that she was seeing the ghost of the Exile Ox take form.

Initially, the image was as white and insubstantial as the smoke, but within a few breaths it became more solid, taking on color, at first in light strokes—shadings from colored pencils, lightly applied—then darkening and gaining in vividness until the colors were as brilliant as spilled ink, and the seeming of a living woman stood before the altar.

Nine Ducks, the Exile Ox, was dressed in a formal shenyi cut from unfaded yellow silk. As was to be expected in a robe worn by one of the denizens of the House of Construction, symbols for luck, growth, and longevity were amply represented in the lush embroidery on the sleeves.

Given the density of the embroidery—the yellow fabric beneath was hardly visible in many places—Honey Dream was surprised how crude and awkward some of it was. Then insight flashed upon her.

Her daughter did the embroidery, this Hua we have heard so much about. Nine Ducks is armored in love and devotion.

The thought was humbling, and Honey Dream bowed her head in mute acknowledgment.

She raised her head when Nine Ducks spoke.

“Young emperor, grandson of the boy I knew, great-grandson of the emperor I served, you have called, and I have come. Although I have tasted the offerings you have never forgotten to give me, long years have passed since I felt truly remembered. Why have you called?”

Something isn’t right
, Honey Dream thought.
Her response is without the warmth I had expected.

“Welcome,” Albert said, rising to his feet, and bowing deeply. Honey Dream joined the others in echoing that bow, and Albert continued. “I am glad to know that the offerings we have sent to you have fortified you in the afterlife. You seem surprised that I have called upon you, but did you not think this would be so when the goal to which you devoted so much is about to be achieved?”

Nine Ducks looked interested, but also guarded. For the first time her gaze swept beyond Albert, assessing those present. When those wise old eyes within their well-earned lines examined her, Honey Dream felt a prickle of ch’i.

Nine Ducks’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“I thought you spoke metaphorically, young emperor, but I see here two who are of the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice, as well as those in whom I recognize scions of my old allies. Yet the Twelve are not all gathered here.”

“Others are elsewhere,” Albert said, not quite evading the implied question, “even within this house.”

“I do not,” Nine Ducks said, spacing the words deliberately, so that the challenge was evident, “see any of my line. Where is the Ox?”

Albert did not evade, nor did he look in the least shamed. “You must know of your own descendants, Nine Ducks, but if you need me to say it, I will. They have fallen away from the learnings of the Thirteen Orphans.”

“And you did nothing to force them to remain within the fold,” Nine Ducks said.

“I was a child of seven when your daughter Hua died, and your granddaughter, Hua’s daughter, decided that she did not care to follow in the tradition. I suppose my father, who was then emperor, might have pressed her to remain within the tradition, but how could he have done so when her own mother had encouraged her otherwise?”

Honey Dream felt herself gasp in surprise, saw her father raise his head sharply.

They didn’t tell us this
, she thought,
but then it would be a matter of shame. Perhaps they hoped faithful Hua’s infidelity would not arise.

A new voice entered the dialogue at this point, Pearl Bright’s sounding sharp as the edge of her sword.

“I was a young woman when you died, Nine Ducks. I had always admired Hua. Repeatedly, I wished that my father loved me as you so obviously loved her. I was shocked when in her quiet way Hua made clear that she intended to have nothing more to do with the Exiles’ plans. Her daughter, although taught by both you and her mother, followed her mother’s wishes.”

“Yes,” Shen added softly. “You might say that an excess of filial piety, rather than otherwise, drew your family from the way of the Orphans.”

Nine Ducks had listened to this quietly, her expression unsurprised.

She knew
, Honey Dream thought.
She knew, and rather than being angry at Hua, she is supportive. Why? Her daughter defied her and her wishes.

“You wonder why I am not angry at Hua, Lady Snake?” Nine Ducks asked. “No. I cannot read your thoughts, but the question is there on your pretty face.”

“I would like to know, Mother,” Honey Dream answered politely, “if you would tell.”

“My Hua was not pretty,” Nine Ducks said, “not like you. She was a peasant girl, unloved and unwanted. If her parents
had not been able to sell her, they would have thrown her out and left her to die. She had a broad face, and broad hands. Her figure was never slim, even in starvation she was merely skinny. But she was as loving a daughter as any mother could wish.

“Moreover, she was faithful to my associates. She helped to tend the boy emperor—that spoiled and insolent child. She helped care for the infant son of the Exile Horse when his father selfishly got himself killed because his beloved was pregnant by another man. She carried and fetched without complaint, and her relaxation in the evening was to strain her eyes with needle and thread, embroidering charms to protect me.”

The Exile Ox’s face twisted in such pure hatred that Honey Dream wondered if they had somehow erred and summoned a po ghost, but this could not be, for while the po ghost was unable to speak, this ghost was positively fluent.

“Have they told you the reward my wonderful, faithful Hua was given for her fidelity? She was told she was not good enough! She was forced to listen as my associates debated whether she might be a barrier to our return home. Eventually, she was forced to marry Shian ‘George’ Wu, a man younger than herself, all so that the bloodline of her children would be correct!”

Nine Ducks’s expression softened for a moment. “At least that marriage was a good one. George recognized the gold in my homely Hua. He loved and honored her. While I lived, they both honored what they believed to be my wishes—that my granddaughter and the first heir of ‘proper blood’ be taught our lore. However, then I was gone, gone without commanding them to persist although as I lay fading into death Hua all but begged me to command her.

“But I did not, and so my family is one of those that has fallen away. Now I ask you, why should I honor the wishes of those who did not honor my Hua?”

Albert Yu clearly had no words left, and so Honey Dream took it upon herself to speak—for although Nine Ducks’s
outburst had been meant for all, ostensibly it had been addressed to her.

“Fear makes fools of us all, Grandmother,” she said. “I will admit this, even if it means calling myself a fool, for I am very afraid. You see in me a daughter who—although blessed to have my father with me—fears I will never see my mother again, that I will never see my brothers and sisters, that I will never again burn incense on the altars of my ancestors.”

“You are trapped here, then?”

“We are: myself, my father, and two others—our Tiger and our Monkey. Moreover, our exile is not one of voluntary nobility such as that you undertook, O infinitely stalwart Ox. Our exile is involuntary, and we have no way of knowing how those we left behind are—whether they live, or whether they are dead along with all who might remember their names.”

Honey Dream had begun her speech merely as an attempt to buy Albert Yu and the others a moment to compose themselves, but somehow she found herself pouring out her heart to the ghost. Tears were flowing down her face, ruining her makeup, but she didn’t try to stop them.

Perhaps pain speaks to pain
, Honey Dream thought, and it seemed to her that Nine Ducks understood.

“So you are asking me for help in returning you home? I have no such power. I am an exile whose exile was never repealed.”

“If I might explain, Grandmother,” Righteous Drum said.

The ghost inclined her head, and Righteous Drum began the complex explanation as to how they hoped to circumvent the exile by means of the Nine Gates.

“It might work,” the ghost admitted. “Legalistic, but then legalism has its place in the Lands, side by side with other traditions. What aid do you ask of me?”

Shen Kung, who had helped Righteous Drum with some points of his explanation, now spoke. “We were hoping for two things, Ancestress. First, we hoped that you would take the place of your great-granddaughter when the time comes
for the Thirteen to return to the Lands. More immediately, we were hoping you would be guide and counselor to those of our number who must journey to the underworld and establish the link that will enable our Nine Gates to be joined with the Nine Yellow Springs.”

“Thus empowering them to cross universes, as only life and death are capable of doing,” Nine Ducks said.

“That is so, Grandmother,” Shen said.

Albert Yu bowed before the ghost. “Will you aid us, Nine Ducks, the Exile Ox?”

The ghost considered. With a sinking heart, Honey Dream knew the answer before the words came.

“As to being your guide to the Nine Yellow Springs, no, I will not. To aid those who so insulted my beloved daughter—and they will be aided if you succeed, for their goal will be achieved—would be an insult to Hua. However, if you succeed in building the Nine Gates, and linking them to the Nine Yellow Springs, then I will not stand between you and your success.”

The ghost of Nine Ducks turned and bowed to Honey Dream. “I will do this for a daughter who cried sincere tears out of fear she would never again see her mother. I will not stand in the way of such love, such fidelity.”

Albert Yu was too good a ruler to argue. He bowed again deeply, and the others echoed his bow.