Nine Gates (8 page)

Very well. That Brenda Morris might have some native magical talent unconnected to the Branches, Honey Dream could accept. What plagued Honey Dream was the mystery of how Brenda had managed to manifest even a very little Rat.

Flying Claw had told them about this occurrence the morning after Honey Dream had rescued him from his foul captivity.

“There is something I must tell you about,” he had said, his voice tight with urgency, “something that occurred on the night I went to gather the Rat from Gaheris Morris.”

Flying Claw had paused, and they had indicated that they remembered, although this event was not something either Honey Dream or her father was likely to have forgotten.
That night had been the beginning of the end of all their plans, if they had but known the truth at the time.

Flying Claw went on. “I had expected Gaheris to be able to see me. We have never had a great deal of success in shielding ourselves from others who are affiliated with one of the Earthly Branches. I was startled when the man with Gaheris also saw me—I had not yet scouted the Dog—but I felt the Dog’s paw on him and immediately knew why. But Brenda saw me as well, clearly enough that she attempted to distract me.”

Did Flying Claw look a little embarrassed when he said that last? Honey Dream wondered. What had the tart done? Pulled down her blouse or tried to kiss him? Just the thought of it made her burn with contained fury.

“In the hours since my memory returned to me,” Flying Claw had said, “I’ve puzzled over why Brenda should have been able to see me. Then I recalled something I overheard, the day after Pearl’s house was brought to the attention of the Three-Legged Toad. I heard Des and Pearl discussing quite excitedly how Brenda had manifested what they called ‘a little rat.’

“Apparently, this is as unheard of for them as it would be for us. That ability seems to grant Brenda powers like, but not like, those of an Earthly Branch.”

What plagued Honey Dream even more than that Brenda Morris should be in the least ways anomalous was that the anomaly didn’t seem to bother anyone else. Honey Dream had tried to bring the matter up with her father over the days they worked out the details of the treaty of alliance.

Righteous Drum had dismissed the matter with a careless wave of his hand. “No doubt there was a flaw in the spell that Flying Claw used to entrap Gaheris Morris. Perhaps a signal was sent that gave the Rat the momentary thought that he was dead. At that instant the most minor fragment of Ratness could have slid from Gaheris to his daughter.”

Honey Dream didn’t like that explanation. None of the
other capture spells had malfunctioned in that way. Why should this one have done so? She knew her father suspected that Flying Claw had been lax in some way. Righteous Drum did not especially care for Flying Claw—surely a father’s petty jealousy, for until Flying Claw had entered their circle of associates, Honey Dream had honored no man other than her father.

When Righteous Drum had refused to take her warnings seriously, Honey Dream had tried to talk to Waking Lizard. That annoying old man had only laughed and waggled his beard at her.

“Envious, Snake of my heart? Beware strong emotions. They cloud the judgment.”

When she had protested that there was nothing in Brenda Morris for Honey Dream to envy, Waking Lizard had laughed even harder.

Honey Dream had turned on her heel and stalked away. After all, why should she care about a cowardly Monkey’s opinion? Waking Lizard only knew Brenda Morris as one of those who had saved him when he had fled to this world and collapsed covered in cuts and bruises. No doubt gratitude clouded his judgment—so who was
he
to talk about taking care to guard against strong emotions?

Honey Dream hadn’t tried to discuss the matter with Flying Claw. He still hadn’t forgiven her for expecting him to accede to her plan to retake the Rat’s memory from Brenda Morris. He seemed to feel it was a slight on his honor.

Demons take his honor! What sort of honor could a babysitter claim?

Abandoned by her allies, her wisdom eschewed—even though the Snake was only second to the Dragon in offering wise counsel—Honey Dream resolved that she would solve the Brenda Morris puzzle herself.

She liked the idea. Once she’d shown that Brenda Morris was in some way corrupt, the girl would be sent away.

Yes. Honey Dream smiled softly to herself. Let the others
fuss over history. She would act as a Snake should and set her powers to root out that nasty sneaking little Ratling.

“Honey Dream!”
Righteous Drum snapped.

Honey Dream realized with a quickly hidden blush that he had spoke to her at least twice.

“I’m sorry, Father,” she said meekly. “My thoughts wandered.”

“No doubt. Attend, would you? These matters apply to you as well. We were speaking of the obstacles that face our return.”

“Crossing the guardian domains?” Honey Dream said, dredging up a fragment of partially heard conversation.

Des gave Honey Dream a sympathetic smile that burned, if possible, more harshly than had her father’s reprimand.

“That’s right,” Des said, “those regions that enable us to touch—although there must be a better word than ‘touch’—various planes of existence.”

Honey Dream knew why Des had clarified. His command of the form of Chinese spoken in the Lands was good, but far from perfect. Equally, translation spells were fine for simpler ideas, but often bungled theoretical concerns.

Righteous Drum nodded. “The footings of the bridge we used to get here were not only in the Lands and here, but between, in those interstitial areas.”

“How did you manage that?” Des asked.

“Essentially, we contracted with denizens of those areas and employed them to set our footings. The last footing—the one that was wholly in this world—was the most difficult, but we managed to create it by invoking a dragon who belonged to this world as well as to one of the interstitial zones.”

“So if we choose to use a bridge to return, we’ll need to do the same in reverse?” Des asked.

Flying Claw shook his head. “It will not be that simple, for now the four of us are barred from the Lands as surely as
your ancestors—and by extension yourselves—are. Creatures like that dragon would not make pacts with us.”

He motioned toward the stump of his missing arm. “Nor do I have the power to compel them as once I might have done. It will be a long time—years, perhaps—before I can cast spells as effectively.”

Des frowned. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t we able to make it work? It seems to me the situation is a simple reverse.”

“A reverse, yes,” Righteous Drum agreed, “but not simple. We did not belong to your world, but we could claim—through the Earthly Branches that had been removed from the Lands—a kinship with this place. It was that kinship that persuaded the dragon to aid us—that, and many other things too complex to bring up at this moment.”

“I suppose,” Des pressed, “we could claim the same type of kinship to the Lands, more strongly even, since you four were born there and the rest of us have ancestral claims.”

Righteous Drum shook his head, sorrow on every line of his dignified features. “I wish that were so, but we cannot eliminate the fact that your ancestors were exiled—barred, banished—by simply choosing to ignore it. Not only were your ancestors exiled, they were exiled with their own concurrence. That makes the severance even stronger. We did not agree to our exile in the same fashion, but we have been barred nonetheless.”

“You have checked?”

“We have,” Righteous Drum said.

His tone was level, holding nothing of the fury and despair Honey Dream recalled from that horrible day, the one immediately following Waking Lizard’s arrival with the news that their allies had been defeated, the day they had tried to connect to the Lands and failed.

“Still,” Des said, his tone almost pleading,“surely since you did not agree to be exiled, you could provide the final footing for the bridge. Isn’t that possible?”

“Perhaps,” Righteous Drum agreed, but he looked as if
he was tasting something very sour, “but highly unlikely. Our enemies in the Lands will have taken actions to prevent that very thing. We might fight our way to the very borders of the Lands only to find ourselves blocked. This is one reason why seeking to establish the Nine Gates, rather than constructing another bridge, might be a better course of action.”

Honey Dream was astonished to hear her father’s normally resonant tones drop, so that he sounded as if he were making a confession. “Remember, Honey Dream and I have left family behind in the Lands. I have living wives, children. She has sisters and brothers. Waking Lizard has outlived his wives and children, but he has relatives and friends.”

“So does Flying Claw,” Honey Dream said, hearing the defiance in her own tone and moderating it. “And since our enemies have apparently risen to power, we must fear for those we have left behind. At best they could be held as hostages against our good behavior. I don’t want to think about the worst.”

Des Lee nodded, and Honey Dream remembered that although he was divorced from his wife, he had children about her own age.

“I understand your urgent desire to return home, but since we’ve eliminated the amulets we captured from the prisoners, and the option of building a bridge seems less and less possible, then we are left with the Nine Gates.”

Des took in a deep breath. “And making those is going to be more difficult than you might imagine.”

“Why?” Righteous Drum said. “Albert Yu spoke as if the creation of these gates was among the lore your ancestors had preserved.”

Des shook his head, not in disagreement, but indicating that he could not speak further.

“Wait until the others return. Shen Kung is our Dragon, and our greatest authority on the odd variation of magic we inherited. Pearl may be a Tiger, but she is far more magically sophisticated than she often leads one to believe. And
Albert… Well, the Cat has always been a little outside of the usual.”

There was that in his tone that made his polite refusal quite final, and Righteous Drum did not press. The discussion turned to purely theoretical matters.

Fine
, Honey Dream thought.
Then while you discuss theory, my father, I shall pursue fact. I shall do my best to learn what it is that Brenda Morris is hiding from us—and if I can, transform it into our own best advantage.

Having been severely injured only a week before, and still suffering from ch’i depletion, didn’t permit Waking Lizard to lecture for nearly as long as Brenda had expected.

Nissa caught the signs that the old man was fading well before he did himself harm, and insisted that he go lie down.

“There are plenty of bedrooms,” she said firmly. “The ones on this floor are all occupied, but Flying Claw’s former room is empty—the one he used when he was Foster.”

Riprap nodded. “I’ll take you up,” he said. “Don’t worry. We won’t waste our time. Des gave us homework.”

Waking Lizard’s unwillingness to argue told Brenda how tired the man must be, for even on a week’s acquaintance she had seen that when rested the Monkey was as energetic as his namesake.

While Riprap settled Waking Lizard, and Nissa hurried out to the garden to check on Lani, Brenda went across the hallway to her room.

The second floor of Pearl’s house was divided by the stairwell into two suites, each consisting of two bedrooms connected by a common bath. The open space at the front of the house had been converted into a comfortable sitting area. At the back was a door that led to the stairwell to the third floor of the house. This was where Des and Riprap had their rooms—and where Foster had stayed when he had lived with them.

Brenda, Nissa, and Lani occupied the suite to the right of
the stairwell (if one faced the front of the house), while Pearl had the front room of the other suite. Soon after their arrival, the other room in Pearl’s suite had been converted into a cross between a classroom and an artist’s studio. Like any classroom, it had a blackboard, but it also had a whiteboard. The other furnishings belonged as much to the realm of art as to that of pedagogy.

A long, wide table of scuffed mahogany was the dominant piece of furniture. Stacked in its center were four oblong boxes covered in the type of black vinyl that is supposed to resemble leather but never really does.

Grouped around the table were a half-dozen comfortable chairs. A bookshelf on the back wall held a variety of books, mostly dealing with various aspects of Chinese art, calligraphy, and culture. Other shelves held a half-dozen or so large boxes of white polymer clay, a selection of rectangular molds, bottles of ink in black, red, and green, a jar of fine-tipped brushes, and assorted modeling tools. A smaller table, set near a window, held a large toaster oven.

The room’s ample natural light was augmented by an electrical fixture overhead. Small lamps were arrayed on the top of the bookshelf, mutely testifying that the work done here demanded fine attention to detail.

But on this sunny summer afternoon, Brenda felt no need for an extra light. Riprap was already settled in his accustomed chair. He had an open box of polymer clay in front of him and was vigorously kneading the clay to make it pliable. Nissa had her notebook open and was checking a list.