The Silk Map (39 page)

“Commerce!” said the parrot, sounding proud.

“Avoid the Street of Peafowls, for though you may fetch higher prices from the grandees there, they are treacherous and wield private armies. Exotics such as yourselves are safest staying in the Alley of Babblers, where strange ideas are the norm. Avoid the District of Doves, which is named ironically, and the Avenue of Spiderhunters, who are twilight folk. Learn the chirps of each street and be ready to take wing. We have a saying, ‘Before entering a place, consider your exit.'”

“It is one of my principles as well,” Bone said.

They thanked Aydin and proceeded south, and up.

From the realm of the sand-bathers the land rose like a petrified tidal wave. Desert swiftly gave way to dry grassland, broken by granite slabs. Solitary bushes and poplars were the heralds for an army of trees, with gnarled undergrowth crunching underhoof. Where at first the stones seemed interlopers in the soil, rock and dirt became equal partners in an ancient dance, and at last the rock predominated as the dance ended at a precipice kissed by clouds.

The dragon horse snorted and stamped, excited for the first time since he'd awakened. The late morning was still cold up here, and his breath was visible. He rippled his back in a way that finally convinced Gaunt and Bone that he wanted to be ridden.

They trotted west along the precipice. Gaunt reflected that Bone's love of heights must be facing its ultimate test.

Soon there came whinnies from the west, and beyond a stand of pine trees they encountered the other dragon horses, with Snow Pine, Zheng, Katta, and Deadfall beside them. The humans and horses looked weary but safe. The carpet looked like a carpet.

The horses reared and stamped and snorted, facing the edge of their desert world.

The others had halted beside an egg-shaped boulder vast as an Eldshoren cottage, perched as though awaiting some mountainous bird to warm it. Gaunt imagined that a sneeze could topple the stone, but the snorts of the horses merely sent vapor coiling past to descend into the whirling cloud mass rushing past the cliff face. Had the rock actually fallen, it would have plunged but a few feet before the white swallowed it whole.

Snow Pine and Gaunt hugged, and Katta said, “I am pleased you did not perish.”

“It would be wasteful,” added the magic carpet, “if you were deprived of breath.”

“Behold the CloudScar,” said Zheng, perhaps wishing to change the subject. “Before today, I never thought to see it.”

“How far does it extend?” Bone asked, in a tone he usually reserved for jewels.

“No one knows,” Katta said, “for its eastward and westward extents lie deep amid mountains, where none go, but rumors say it's half as long as the Braid itself. As for its width, accounts agree the far wall is rarely more than a few miles off. If my sources are true, then by peering out there you might glimpse rocky ramparts rising above the white and the pearly helms of the Heavenwalk Mountains. Beyond, to the southeast, lies the Plateau of Geam, where the lamas taught me baking and the lore of the true and the transitory.”

“Which has proven more useful?” Gaunt asked. “Baking or lore?”

“They are reciprocal skills. When a cake fails to rise it is helpful to recognize the rising and falling of the cake as illusions. When contemplating reality it is helpful to see illusion as the sugar on a pastry. The bread would nourish without the sugar, but the sugar would be meaningless without the bread.”

“You may not be making me a follower of the Undetermined,” Gaunt said, “but you are making me miss pastries. And cities. Where lies Qushkent?”

“You can see it from atop Egg Rock, here.” Barely had Katta's words joined the hushed sound of the wind than Bone had ascended the great stone. Gaunt dismounted and followed; she was pleased to note she was only a trifle slower.

“I see a stone mountain to the east,” Bone said, “one resembling the head of a bird. But no city.”

“Look again,” Gaunt told him, guiding his hand. “The bird is the city.”

And indeed, the snowless peak that lofted blue-gray above the CloudScar had been shaped by artisans of courage and subtlety, coaxing a roughly avian shape into the head of a raptor. The neck was a sheer cliff dropping perhaps two thousand feet into the whirling white, but at the flat crown it narrowed into a beak-like projection jutting into emptiness.

“Ah, Qushkent,” Katta said as he assisted Zheng up the boulder. “At most times I am detached about my blindness, but alas this isn't one of them. Enjoy the sight. This is among my favorite places . . . but one must watch one's step, even as the thin air makes one watch one's breath. Here we will find the way to Xembala.”

“Ah,” Zheng said, minding her footing. “It puts me in mind of a poem.”

She said:

 

Why argue?

Win your robe and bowl

While I walk the clouds and rivers

Where I will carry water and chop wood

And wipe the dust from the mirror

Dust that is as true as we.

Katta looked startled. “That was written by a follower of the Undetermined, in Qiangguo, a long time ago. He lost a sort of . . . contest. The poem has vanished in the mists of time.”

“I don't really understand it,” Zheng admitted. “I don't even remember where I heard it.”

“The author . . . thought he'd been unfairly criticized on an esoteric point. So he went to walk the Earthe.” Katta smiled, his look distant. “Perhaps he was just a sore loser. We try to see beyond worldly illusion, but pride is always there, and with it attachment, and suffering.”

“‘Life is suffering,'” Bone said. “That's your creed in a nutshell, isn't it? There are days I would agree. Many of them recent.”

“Outsiders often fixate on that phrase, and I'm afraid it misleads them a bit. You could just as easily say, ‘Life is bliss.'”

“Well, I
would
rather say that . . .”

“But that is not it either. Life is also boredom. And lust. And sleep. And pain. And that funny feeling immediately after burping when you feel obscurely proud of yourself.”

“You get that too?”

“The point is, life will give you all these things, unpredictably. But we keep wanting to control it all, to get what we want, when we want.
That
leads to suffering.”

“So life
is
suffering.”

Katta rubbed his temples. “I am starting to think so . . .”

“Perhaps you should burp.”

“These are intriguing questions, to be sure,” Gaunt broke in, “but I'm afraid I have one even more intriguing.”

“Oh?” Bone said.

“What are our opponents up to?”

Snow Pine followed where she was pointing, squinted, and sucked in her breath.

“I would be grateful if you told me what you saw,” Katta said.

“The Karvaks have reached Qushkent,” she said.

As they neared the gates, they argued. Bone would always wonder later if he'd been on the right side. There was expedience, and there was knavery. He had always believed he'd had honor, for a thief; afterward he would question that.

It began with Katta saying, “I do not understand how they could have beaten us here. How could their balloons have outrun the dragon horses?”

“Never underestimate a scholar of Mirabad,” Bone said.

“Nor a Karvak,” Zheng said.

“I suspect,” Gaunt said, “the Dragonheat had a salutary effect on the air currents. They might have had as rough a ride as we. I notice only one balloon over the city, when three went south.”

“Then Liron—” Snow Pine said. “Flint. And Quilldrake. They may have been lost.”

“We know only what we see,” Bone said. “But what we see worries me greatly. They may have had a whole day to seek the secret path to the valley below.” A cold, clever idea occurred to him. “I think we should sell the horses.”

“Bone!” Gaunt said, sounding shocked.

“Hear me out. Our funds are low, and we may need to grease many palms to find the path. Indeed, we may need more money simply to survive. What harm can the dragon horses suffer? We have witnessed their power. They can surely escape when they wish, mighty as they are.”

“I am with Bone,” Zheng said. “Let's fleece the locals. It's for a good cause.”

Snow Pine said, “I can't tolerate these creatures being imprisoned.”

“Nor I, Bone,” Gaunt said, as if he'd sprouted a third eye. “And there may be magics that can bind even such as they.”

“We can be careful whom we sell the horses to,” Bone said.

Katta looked into the eyes of Firstsnorter Proudneck Earjab Hightail and into those of the stallion's companions. Katta snorted, shifted, moved his arms. He sighed. “Springjumper Wildgroan Headtoss Backkick is willing. He is willing to trust Imago Bone in this matter. The others are not, but the leader gives his consent.”

“I still don't like it,” Snow Pine said.

“Are you mad?” Zheng said. “We are going up against Karvaks. And if you expect me to craft more scrolls of Living Calligraphy than one, I am going to need to buy materials.”

Gaunt stared at the horses, then at Bone. “I agree with Snow Pine. This is not simply sentiment. I am the wife of a thief. But some things I can't tolerate, expedient or no.”

Bone studied her. He knew how much of a treasure that truly was: to have a wife who accepted him, all of him, with all his past, his compromised present, his likely future. Would he endanger that by becoming an even worse man than he was today?

Yet Innocence Gaunt still lay beneath the sea.

“That is two to two,” Bone told Katta. “Yours is the deciding vote.”

Katta shook his head. “I do not accept your rationale, nor your invitation to vote. You four have been companions for some time now, while I am an outsider. You must decide.”

“There is one other who might speak,” Gaunt said. “The magic carpet, Deadfall.”

“Deadfall is a tool,” Bone said, “a contrivance.”

“It thinks. It chooses. It can choose now. Will you accept its vote? It is that, or we are deadlocked, Imago.”

“Very well. What is your opinion, Deadfall?”

“My opinion, O thief,” came the strange, dry voice of the carpet, “is that I would not have this steed treated as a tool or a contrivance. Even if he himself is willing.”

“Three to two,” Snow Pine said.

Widow Zheng made a disgusted sound, but Bone bowed. “So be it. We will find another way.”

“We thank you,” Katta told the horses. “One day I will grant the boon you ask, stallion, and find your lost mate, taken beyond the sea.”

They watched the horses depart. Slowly the three majestic beasts gained speed as they passed among the trees, then they slipped behind a particularly thick stand of pines, and what emerged on the far side were three blurs that it took imagination to resolve into horses.

Gaunt did not hold his hand as they approached the City of Birds.

Earlier, O marvelous owner, I related some of my difficulties after becoming separated from Lord Katta. As you will recall I fluttered, dispirited, through the catacombs beneath Qushkent. At last I emerged into an arm of the karez irrigation system and returned to sunlight. I had lost my friend but not my conviction to continue his mission. If Lord Katta sought to prevent evildoers from claiming the Silk Map, then, I, too, would stalk those who would stalk it. To that end I journeyed to Yao'an, learning how to impersonate a human so as to get close to humans. And finding the company led by Quilldrake, I inserted myself into their midst, after first arranging a small commotion among Yao'an's elite.

I could elaborate on what I have already related—how I rescued the travelers time and again, doing single combat with Karvaks and Charstalkers and ghosts and mummies, and even driving a Leviathan Mind single-tasseled back into the sands—all the while studying my companions and their motives. They did not seem to me to be the tools of evil but rather a mixed band of beings with a similarly mixed bundle of motives. I could not judge them as yet, so I traveled with them, learning. For the sake of Lord Katta's memory, I would absorb all I could, so as to judge whether, in the end, they should be allowed to journey to Xembala.