The Silk Map (26 page)

“Our apologies,” Flint said with a bow. “We were unaware this area belonged to the Grand Khan.”

“You are incorrect,” the woman said. “It belongs to the Great Khatun. My mother.”

Snow Pine gripped her sword but did not draw. She said, “I think this place belongs to the dead.”

Quickly Flint added, “My friend is sun-touched. We are the survivors of a caravan destroyed by the hazards of the desert. We wished only to reclaim our camels.”

“I suspected someone would come. Well, you are in luck, as we have provisions to spare.” The woman did not lower her bow.

“We thank you for your hospitality,” Flint said, “but we have no wish to impose. And we should be recovering our animals.”

“Your camels will return of their own accord. There is nowhere else to go, or they would not have come here. And I think you misunderstand me. You will not be leaving, for even if you are what you claim, you must not alert anyone to our presence.” She lowered her bow as she nodded for her soldiers to disarm the travelers. Snow Pine realized there was no point in resisting, unless she wanted to become just another ghost of Hvam.

A falcon landed upon the Karvak woman's outstretched arm, and Snow Pine understood, with a feeling like that of an exposed field mouse, where the circling birds had come from. “I am Lady Steelfox, daughter of the late khan and your host. You are guests of the First Aerial Expeditionary Force of the Il-Khanate of the Infinite Sky.”

What worms will we feed, dear Bone?

In what land or clime?

On the emerald downs of home

Where iron bells still chime?

On the roaring coasts of yours

By wrecks of many wars?

In grim mountains of the East

Where vultures flock and feast?

We walk and sail to far and near

And wonder shines and burns

And I still hear the call, my dear,

Though all will end in worms.

I'll not complain, nor Reaper cheat

One hope alone I dare repeat

Though it seems grim to you—

May there be more than worms.

May there be stones.

May there be more than two.

—Gaunt, untitled,
the Desert of Hungry Shadows

I am grateful for the dusting, O Great One, and the period of repose. Now, when last we spoke, I had related the circumstances by which I became the guide of Mad Katta and learned he was no ordinary caravaner. In time I would know him for the great enemy of the demonic Charstalkers, the very ones you have bound to your service. But the nature of the conflict was not revealed to me until we arrived in the great city of Qushkent. I felt a knotting of excitement when our road turned into the southern foothills, and the rocky promontory rose before us, birds circling around its towers, and the mists of the CloudScar, that great abyss that borders the city to the south, whirling everywhere.

In the Bazaar of Parrots we sold our wares, and Mad Katta paid our guides and handlers and guards. For a short while one remaining guard, Kilik by name, argued about compensation, and in a most impertinent way. I could hardly comprehend my master's patience.

“I, Kilik, can cut a man's throat by tossing my sword above my head! I, Kilik, can shoot a man's eye when he stands upon the horizon! I, Kilik, am offended by your payment of two feathergold!”

“The world's edge, the inhabitants of other planets, the skills of Kilik. I marvel at all, though I must take all on faith.”

“I, Kilik, will not be mocked, nor assuaged by anything less than three feathergold.”

At last Mad Katta said, “Enough! Two now, and we will discuss the remainder of your payment tomorrow, after we've sold the last of the goods.” He was, I thought, a better man than I.

Indeed, although I do rest, and dream after a fashion, I could not sleep, though my master and his employees snored around me in the market caravanserai. I meditated upon this messy business of respiration, and how easily it could be thwarted.

At last I could bear no more sounds and rolled my way downslope to a place where stone garbage ramps led directly from the market to the CloudScar. I waited until no human was near and unfolded myself. I enjoyed the cool breezes that rippled over me from that fathomless gash in the world. Finally I felt my mind untroubled by Kilik. I thought instead of the delights of air currents, and how they would never be mine.

It is curious how a mind of melancholy bent can travel one intellectual byway after another and yet always find the paths that are darkest. My body wished to echo this mental state by leaping over the nearest barrier, and so it did. There I teetered at city's edge, where only birds, cats, and humans madder than Katta would walk. Sunset's rays speared out from the western deserts, while out in the abyss red vapors swirled and swam, with distant mountaintops rising beyond like islands of bloody ice. I beheld the great towers named for the Crake and the Lark and the Spiderhunter; and the necropolis that occupies a great stone shelf overhanging the CloudScar. Beyond the graves rose a solitary tower. There, Katta had said, lay the great Knot that the Nightkindlers' Fire Saint had left behind when he transcended this world and became a blaze of lightning.

I longed to reach that tower. Were I a true flying carpet, it would be no great trouble, save for whatever defenses the kagan of Qushkent left for such eventualities. But I was merely what I was: a sort of decorative guide dog.

With a swirl of feelings as convoluted as the clouds, I returned to the caravan and, after my fashion, slept.

In the morning Mad Katta discovered that Kilik had departed his service without further payment.

“Curious,” my master said.

“Perhaps shame came upon him,” I suggested, “for yesterday's behavior.”

“Perhaps. In any event I will leave a gratuity with the master of the caravanserai, to be donated to orphans should it not be claimed.”

“You are too generous, master.”

He grunted. “Even its greatest worshippers understand that coin is, at base, an illusion. And do call me Katta.”

“Very well, Lord Katta. Where shall I guide you?”

He sighed. “To the Tower of the Crake. You shall become my robe for a time.”

The crake is a bird active in twilight, and thus the tower was gray, and its interior dim and hushed. The priests and clerks of that place wore gray robes, though from time to time we passed scar-faced psychopomps with clothes the color of soot.

We entered a realm of drifting dust, shining in beams of sunlight. Circular book stacks filled the tower's central shaft, rising ten stories to a stained-glass skylight portraying a blazing fire. The shaft descended downward as far as we could see. Moveable ladders granted access to the books at each level, with trapdoors here and there making it possible to rise higher or descend lower. I noticed that all trapdoors above were closed, and all those I could make out below were open. “Do they not wish us to ascend?” I said in the low vibration that was my form of a whisper.

“It is a visual representation of Nightkindler doctrine,” my master murmured. “It's easier to descend into darkness than ascend into light.”

“Indeed, visitor,” said a gray-robed man who stepped clinking toward us through the dust. “The shadows drag us down, like gravity. It takes effort to reach the light . . . Surgun?” He raised his hands. Both wrists were wrapped in chains, one linked to a ring filled with keys, the other connected to a thick codex. “Is that you?”

“Ozan! I am so glad you are on duty. And that you remember me.”

“Oh, how could I forget?” The clerk embraced Katta with a clatter. “How do you fare?” He glanced at me, draped around my master's shoulders. “You seem to have prospered.”

“Well enough. Though I have my worries.”

Ozan's voice became serious. “I know that voice. There is danger.” He leaned in to whisper, “Charstalkers?”

“Yes,” my master said. “There are things I must research. And if you think the risk is acceptable, I would test the catacombs.”

Ozan drew a waving line upon his heart. “I will help you, but I wish you'd alert the pyrarch. It's his function to defy such evil.”

“And all evil for a thousand li knows this, and watches him with narrowed eyes. No, I risk much even setting foot in Qushkent. I must be about my research and vanish before day is gone.”

Ozan sighed. “You are using the stubborn voice. You are impossible when you're using the stubborn voice.”

“I have no ‘stubborn voice,'” objected Lord Katta.

“Come along,” said Ozan. He shifted a ladder, and we ascended to a trapdoor, which he unlocked with one of the keys upon his chain. He repeated the process on the next level, and the next, until we stopped close to the brightening window. There was but one floor above us. Dust motes swirled like miniature constellations as Ozan pushed the final ladder to a place that did not correspond to a trapdoor but rather to a peculiar pattern of books within the stacks.

Most of the library's codices had covers of leather ranging from black to tan to red; an occasional white color emerging like a rare desert cloud.

Yet in this section books with black covers had been shelved to compose a diamond shape, like a negative star. A single white book, almost dazzling by contrast, lay in its very center.

Ozan said nothing about this strange accident of organization, and it occurred to me that for all my master's skills, he could not perceive the pattern of the books. I wondered if this was a matter of concern, but I dared not speak.

Ozan said, “Shall I list the relevant titles, Surgun?”

“No need,” Lord Katta said. “I wish to consult the
Testimony of Sanguine Hong
, the
Geisthammer
, and the
Speculum Tyrannus.
”

“A little light reading,” muttered Ozan, ascending. Three times he drew upon his keys, and three times unlocked books from chains. All the books were black. Descending, he set the three upon the balcony and sat cross-legged against the stacks. I noticed that he chose a position at one remove from the dark diamond. “What passages do you seek?”

“Shadowy ones, dear friend,” said my master and commenced inquiring of Charstalkers until the books were all opened.

“Shall I read for you?” Ozan asked.

My master shook his head. “I have much to consider, and you will have other duties.”

“But—”

“I have gained certain advantages since you saw me last,” Lord Katta said, and I nearly billowed with pride.

When Ozan had descended once more, Lord Katta bade me drape myself over the first book and read aloud, in a language he'd taught me.

O dread one, I began my testimony yesterday in the manner of a confession, and now I must confess that I lack heart to repeat all that I spoke under the stained glass. You and I, master, are rather in the position of those desert ants which sometimes scurry onto my surface, finding themselves lost amid turquoise and ruby swirls. Having entered into my labyrinths, the insects might reasonably conclude certain things about the world, that it is made up of fibers gathered in knots, that it possesses certain colors, that it lies more or less flat. If I were to fly, even in the spasmodic manner that is my curse, the ants would soon learn how dismayingly limited was their vision.