The Silk Map (14 page)

“
The meat thinks it may not be so simple.
”

“You will take this.”

“
That is no weapon. It is a rock.
”

“Rocks are not weapons? But look closer. Embedded within is the shape of an ancient nightmare from the days when these deserts were a sea. Throw this at your target, and it will awaken to claim him.”

“
As you wish.
”

“Go now.”

I heard one pair of footsteps shuffling away directly behind me, and another pair striding swiftly into the firelit dark. For a moment I was able to perceive the second individual, but only enough to glimpse a tall, bulkily robed figure swishing into the gloom.

I reposed there under the moon and stars until I was sure they were out of earshot, wondering. I vibrated myself a voice, just loud enough for the other carpets.

“Ah, hello?” I said in the language of Anoka. “I don't suppose any of you possess sapience and an interest in discussing a magical artifact's relation to the problem of complicity? No?” I repeated myself in the manner of Qushkent. Silence greeted me. Only the moon and stars knew I'd overheard the inception of some awful crime. Who could blame me for inaction? I am a carpet.

Yet dim memories of an explosion and screams still haunted me. Moreover, someone had recently tried to burn me alive. You could say it awakened a sort of compassion in me. Or perhaps it was a misdirected thirst for vengeance, draped in compassion's fabric. I am still not sure.

I shook myself out and skittered after the shambling form.

I didn't see my quarry and thought I'd best look for Katta—the Mad Katta my murderous owners had spoken of, as I realized. Although there were guards at the compound's gates, no one was specifically guarding the carpets. Keeping to the shadows, I hunted flaws in the wall and eventually wiggled through a crack out onto dry, stony ground.

I'm free
, I thought. It seemed to me, under all the twinkling treasuries of Heaven, that the desert stretching gray and smooth before me was no barrier to one such as I, who needed no food, no water, not even shelter from the sun. True, I couldn't fly well, but perhaps I would improve. And what had humankind given me but moments of confusion and terror?

But, I thought, as the full desert chill rustled the sands and shivered my frayed and blackened edges, what is a flying carpet without someone to convey upon a quest? Someone to say,
Let's go find the djinn
or
Let's go claim a magic lamp
or
Let's go harass the thieves and earn the love of a sultan's daughter
. A flying carpet alone was like a pair of forgotten shoes. Why, hard-bitten feet were out there! Somewhere out there a hero needed a lift. Even if it would only carry her a handful of cubits.

And somewhere out there a man was about to be murdered.

The idea held a grim fascination for me, who had so recently been granted awareness. What did it mean to deliberately snatch away such a gift?

I was not fashioned to sigh, but I rippled.

My search took me out to slippery dunes, where I could gaze (in my fashion) back toward the staging compound, seeking figures in the moonlight. But I saw no one.

My hunt was cut short when, slithering like a snake, I triggered the collapse of a dune. To escape becoming a self-referential burial shroud I flew. The wind of the upper air whisked me toward the compound, and frightened of discovery I wrapped myself into a ball, thudding to the rocky region at sand's edge.

By the time I unrolled myself I was pinned by a wooden staff.

I tried gently extracting myself, making the motions seem random, as if the wind were responsible. But I couldn't budge.

The staff belonged to a man who seemed lively but for whom old age was surely over the next dune. He was darker than the men of my short experience, putting me in mind of lacquered wood. Outside his white desert robe he wore necklaces bearing peculiar metal charms.

The man said something in a language I did not know, and then, “Intriguing,” in the manner of Qushkent. “This seems no ordinary theft; rather it appears someone cast my merchandise over the wall . . .”

At least the man did not have a voice like sand. Nevertheless I did nothing. Silence had been good to me so far.

The man knelt upon me and began behaving in what I considered a peculiar fashion. He patted me, running his hand over my surface as if searching for a lost key. “Hm,” he said, and, “Well. I perceived you were a magical thing when I purchased you from those layabouts. Now I'm certain. You have ironsilk embedded in your sinew. But it seems you have a dual nature.” He pushed his nose against my fabric and sniffed here and there. “And a violent history.”

A strange thought occurred to me, and I was so struck by it, I spoke it aloud. “You are blind.”

At once the man tumbled off me onto the ground, whipping up his staff into a defensive posture. He rose slowly, backing away in a measured fashion, his staff tracing a pattern like wings in the air. If not for his behavior earlier I would not have guessed his infirmity. As it was, I feared him, and I skittered skyward in my spasming manner, plummeting onto a low dune.

The man approached, murmuring what sounded like an incantation. I feared him all the more, thinking him a sorcerer.

“Spare me, Mad Katta, and I'll tell you a story!” I'd overheard the bedtime of my initial owners' children and had gotten the impression that was a good ploy.

He halted and lowered his staff. A smile flitted across his lips. “Very well, O magic carpet. Tell me a story.”

Layali of the Tales, she who beguiled her sister's would-be executioner for hundreds of nights, would have been disappointed in me. I could have told at least one tale by now—my own—but my mind had gone entirely blank. Instead I found myself considering the nature of that emptiness. I wondered what my nature was. Could magical constructs truly have minds? Did we have souls, cherished of the All-Now? Having been fashioned by followers of the Testifier of God, was his religion mine too? Was it right to worship uncritically in the manner of those you were born among? What would happen to me if the sorcerer destroyed me?

Such dizzied contemplations should have been the end of me indeed, but Mad Katta chuckled. “I perceive your answer, carpet. Unfolded beneath the moonlight, you reveal the tale that is yourself. Alas, while it's gratifying to graduate in Anokan eyes from ‘Blind Katta' to ‘Mad Katta,' your guess was true. I cannot see the patterns woven into your fabric.”

“I can think of no story,” I said. “Only fear.”

“You needn't fear. Not me, at any rate. I sense nothing of Charstalkers about you.”

“You need not fear me either, M . . . Katta.”

He chuckled. “This much I'd begun to suspect. There is something marred about you, O carpet. You've seen woe, and more. Your making was botched, was it not? You're as one born maimed.”

Something in his words aroused my ire. “It's easy to mock me, isn't it, O man? You who have full use of your limbs!”

Katta was speechless, his smile lost like a city buried under sands. After a moment he lowered himself to his knees. “I beg your pardon. I was inconsiderate.”

It occurred to me he surely had frustrations of his own, he who could not perceive the beauty of shining sands beneath the moon. “You have my pardon.”

“I am grateful. Yet I would give recompense. You presented the story of yourself, and it's no fault of yours I cannot perceive it. But now expectation crackles the air. Thus it is I who will speak, for something in your crafting hearkens to a tale of long ago and far away.”

MAD KATTA'S TALE

Long away and far ago, there lived in the Country of Walls a girl named Xia who made ironsilk.

Now
silk
, you must know, for the cocoon of the bombyx moth, makes a prized cloth, fit for royalty. In Qiangguo they call it “woven wind.” Had not a princess once smuggled silkworms in her hair on her way to marry the lord of Madzeu, Qiangguo would guard the secret still. But ever since that time, the cultivation of
ironsilk
has taken place only on a secret island in the heart of Qiangguo, the province of a particular and peculiar clan. There lie the caverns of the Iron Moths.

Xia was daughter of the clan chief by his late senior wife, and together with Jing, her half-sister by the second wife, it was her task to gather the cocoons of the Iron Moths and make of them bolts of ironsilk. Jing was lazy in this task, and Xia did most of the work, uncomplaining. Yet Jing always considered Xia spoiled and cruel, while envying the love her father felt for Xia. While Xia labored, Jing wandered the caverns, pitying herself.

Now, the Iron Moths are sapient beings but are unlike you and me. Legend has it their larvae arrived on this planet by way of a meteorite, and the crater of impact is now the lake guarding the forbidden isle. They worship a many-headed insectoid deity called Purpose, and they say that whatever face of Purpose lays eyes upon you when you eat your first rock, that is the aspect of the god you will follow. The Iron Moths bargained with the rulers of Qiangguo for the delivery of precious minerals with which to enrich their bodies, and in return the Moths offered themselves. The royal family possesses many a shield that was once an Iron Moth wing, many a sword that was once an Iron Moth leg, and even a few lanterns that were once shining blue Iron Moth eyes. Supple and strong, Iron Moth artifacts are gifts to kings.

But the true glory of the isle is ironsilk.

Once a Moth commits to Purpose, its caterpillar form chews upon rocks and minerals until it's ready to spin a cocoon. The silk of this cocoon is as supple as mundane silk, yet it responds to stress with the strength of iron. Its uses are endless. The Iron Moths willingly offered this material up as part of their bargain.

One day in her wanderings, Jing found an Iron Moth caterpillar and, motivated by a cruel impulse, carried the creature to Xia's mother's tomb.

She tossed the immature entity inside and told it, “Eat.”

When the defilement was discovered, Xia's mother's sarcophagus and half the tomb carvings had been consumed, and the devourer was enshrouded in its cocoon, presumably dead, for conditions in the tomb weren't benign for the developing pupa. Xia and her father mourned anew. The tomb was sealed off.

Jing said nothing of her act, and from that day there was enmity between the clan chief and the Iron Moths. There came a bitter day when Xia's father argued with the Moth elders in the Cavern of Fire where the arrayed cocoons stayed warm above a bubbling pool of lava. Xia's father demanded more limbs and wings for the emperor's armory. The elders refused.

Enraged, Xia's father kicked a cocoon into the lava. The heat killed the pupa within. The elders responded by rending the man, his guts following the cocoon into the molten rock.

Xia was distraught. But some whispered that Second Wife was not entirely displeased. With no male heir at hand, Second Wife took command. She soothed matters with the Iron Moths but proceeded to terrorize the humans of the isle, Xia chief among them. Only her daughter Jing did she cherish—especially as Jing had discovered a secret.

During the chaos of the clan leader's death, only Jing noticed that when the ironsilk cocoon floated upon the lava, it unraveled without being cut by the emerging pupa. Ordering servants to bring tongs and pots, she fished the ironsilk from the molten rock and splashed it with water. When the steam cleared, she saw unbroken strands of ironsilk stretching on and on. Jing and Second Wife quickly realized that the longer strands of ironsilk would be of immense value.

Negotiations ensued. You and I might be astonished that some Iron Moth caterpillars would accept being boiled in lava. But remember that their god Purpose has many heads. Their elders realized that they could demand ever-richer minerals from all corners of the empire in return for the elongated strands of ironsilk.

Soon more and more caterpillars felt cajoled by the new face of Purpose.

But Xia wept. She loved her work and could not bear that these creatures, alien though they were, should perish for anyone's greed. She unsealed her mother's ravaged tomb, the only private place she knew, and she sobbed all the anguish of her short life.

“Daughter,” came a voice from the old cocoon. “Heed me.”