The Silk Map (4 page)

Gaunt, who'd trained as a bard, felt a twinge of jealousy: cheering on a combatant was surely her job, and Snow Pine showed a knack for it.

Nevertheless Gaunt was the one with the bow.

She fired again, and this time luck was with her, if not sight.

A crow cried its outrage and flapped away on a damaged wing. Gaunt barely noticed the whips of crackling energy that descended upon her boulder—she tumbled off in a low roar of pebbles and dust, landing inauspiciously on her face.

Snow Pine helped her up, and Gaunt reclaimed the bow. Yet there was no need. With much invective in the manner of crows, the flock relocated to a cliff a quarter-mile away.

“Their eyes are still burning,” Snow Pine said.

“So are mine,” Gaunt said.

“You probably can't see Bone on his way to us.”

“No, but I think I hear him.”

“Run!” Bone was shouting from somewhere upslope. “Run!”

“What is he fleeing from?” Gaunt said, squinting. “I can barely see him, running down the slope.”

“He seems to have found more xiezhi,” Snow Pine said.

“He has a talent for finding things,” Gaunt said.

“Maybe we should take his advice.”

It might have been the light still blazing within her eyes. It might have been the return of violence, yet again, to her life.

Something dark and stony rose within her mind, and she stepped forward, as Snow Pine had done.

“Gaunt!” Bone was shouting desperately. “Run!”

“Persimmon?” Snow Pine was saying.

“You do not need to run, my friend,” Gaunt heard herself answer, setting down her bow. “I realize now you were in no danger.” The shadowy form of Bone came toward her, on foot now.

“I know! That's why I blocked the gap. They were attracted by you and Bone.”

“I know.”

“Gaunt!” Bone yelled, nearly in her face. She could barely see his beloved, vexing face. Golden forms rose behind him like a dark wave. She whispered a prayer that she was right and grabbed Bone, forcing him into a kiss.

“Mmmph?” he said.

“Shut up,” she said, though it came out as “Shmp.”

It was a good kiss. Standing at the edge of disaster was like that, sometimes.

Nothing gored them.

When she opened her eyes, she saw more, and perceived Bone's astonished face and a herd of golden beasts nuzzling the ground for feed.

One by one the animals began snuffling away. Meanwhile the sun-crows' distant mockery blended with the wind.

“How did you know?” he asked when they pulled apart.

“I didn't, really,” she said. “Well, perhaps I guessed when half the herd followed you and half stayed with me—until the sun-crows dispersed them. Since we were both at fault, I thought together we could mend things.”

“Sun-crows?” He stared across the defile at the distant birds. She was beginning to make out his face. She liked it. Wilderness travel became him.

“You're burned,” he said, touching her face.

“This comes of getting close to fires,” she said.

Snow Pine said, “I'm glad you two put aside your troubles for now. No! Don't start! I'm sorry I said anything. So, how about we leave and come back in ten thousand generations?”

Bone smirked. “The Great Sage. I'd almost forgotten.”

Gaunt shook her head. “I've advice to him on how to reword his markers. It begins with a hammer.”

As they passed the third marker, Gaunt pocketed a fallen feather the color of obsidian. One never knew what might come in handy.

Bone led the way.
We altitude aficionados
, he mused,
have our uses.

Up and up. Between the third marker and the shining ice of the five summits he saw a region of swift-moving clouds. Here and there the veil of white ripped to expose gray-tan contours of misty rock, perforated here and there by gangly trees. Bone should have been terrified. He was exhilarated. To have something to scale was a great mercy compared with the terror of stumbling through an ordinary day.

Stone steps rose into a whiteness that was almost an absence of form. Bone plunged in.

Now all the world was a pocket of ghostly shapes with three inhabitants upon a shifting landscape about three yards across. The steps narrowed and switchbacked.

Up and up.

A sudden shift of wind, and the world expanded, sun blazing upon a cliff inches to Bone's right, treetops far below like a green army's spears.

One misstep and I'll be even more gone than my son
.

The thought drove Bone on. For the boy it was a magical form of
Gone
. . . and as such there was no giving up for Bone and Gaunt, they who, though husband and wife, still found it more comfortable to use old surnames than to abandon one of them or form a new or, outside of intimacy, to call each other
Persimmon
or
Imago
.

And the intimacy was a bit rare of late.

“I have the notion,” Bone said to escape his own thoughts, “that when we reach the end of the path there will be only a marker. It will say, THE GREAT SAGE HAS GONE FISHING.”

“COME BACK IN THE NEXT CYCLE OF THE EARTHE!” Gaunt added.

It was good they could laugh at something. Or grimace anyway. In normal times (to the extent that Bone had normal times) it was the glue between them. That and lust for new vistas . . . and lust for the bedroom—well, tent, inn floor, riverbank, graveyard, and on one memorable occasion—

“I wonder,” Snow Pine said, “if he, she, or it can hear us.”

“Or read our minds,” Gaunt said.

The thought dampened his musings like mountain mist.

Now the steps strained for the vertical—practically a ladder carved into the mountain. Mist made it impossible to determine how far up it went.

They roped themselves together and ascended. Bone wished he had ironsilk; hemp would have to do.

A chilly half-hour blew past.

Breaking the cloud layer, they saw a wall of granite to one hand, a seeming infinity of blue on the other, and a floor to the world composed of golden, churning fluff.

He whistled.

This was why he had to succeed. To bring the boy back, to make his mother fully live again, so they could enjoy all these moments. The truest treasures any mortal could pinch from life's treasury.

“Bone,” Gaunt said, voice all business. “Do you see it?”

Up there was a glinting of a more mundane treasure. Gold, or he was a guardsman.

“I see it. I think we're on the doorstep.”

The alcove turned out to be big as a country teahouse, and Bone could not imagine how so much gold had gotten up here. There were gold plaques, and gold benches, and a golden doorframe with embossed characters in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell.

The door itself was of iron, with a peculiar wooden knob, and a stone seal was set in its midst. There was also a window in the door, filled with translucent ice; through it, a dark passage was dimly visible.

“‘
Om Mani Padme Hum
,'” Gaunt said, squinting at the inscription on the doorframe. “This is gibberish.”

“It's not from my language,” Snow Pine said, “but I've heard it. I'm not sure what it is, but the priests of the Undetermined use that phrase.”

“The Undetermined?” Bone asked.

“You in the West may have heard of him as the ‘Dust on the Mirror?' A legendary being of enlightenment who broke through the illusions of this world.”

Bone remembered now. “He ended his own suffering and showed the way for others to end their own?”

Snow Pine nodded. “It's said about him:

 

The Undetermined

Who won by losing

Who is free of the chain of causes

And has had great effect.”

“Paradoxical,” Gaunt said.

“Yes,” Snow Pine said. “I don't really understand the Undetermined. And I say that as someone who's bashed her head against the Way of the Forest! But legends say he still appears now and then, with unmatched power and compassion.” She pointed at the door. “Now, speaking of compassion, this phrase supposedly comes to us by way of a goddess of kindness and empathy. A holy man once told me it calls upon her name, but in our province we called the same goddess ‘Guanyin.' So I don't know. A holy woman told me it means . . . aiya, can't remember. Something like ‘generosity, patience, wisdom.' You know. Enlightened stuff.”

“This door is most peculiar . . .” Bone reached out, and the stone seal blazed with a red inscription. Pain lashed his fingertips. “Ah!”

“‘Monkey,'” Snow Pine murmured, looking at spindly red lines resembling a bamboo forest twisting in a fiery wind. They were already fading. “It means ‘Monkey . . .'”

Gaunt studied the door. “There's a reason for the peculiarity, I think. Qiangguo's sages speak of five elements: metal, wood, earth, fire, and water. The door's of metal, wood, and earth. Bone has just discovered the ‘fire' aspect.”

“Thank you for the sympathy,” Bone said, sucking his fingers.

“Poor thing. Now, if we interpret the ice as ‘water,' we have the full set. There's some magical aspect to this door.”

“Hm,” Snow Pine said. “Is it to keep us out? Or keep the Great Sage in?”

“What do you know about him, again?” Bone said. “It may be important soon.”

“I know only what Lightning Bug told me when she was teaching me this and that. There were so many things I only got pieces of, like shards of porcelain after an earthquake.” She shut her eyes, remembering. “Once there was a great disturbance in the celestial court. An outsider came claiming to have power equal to anyone, including the August Personage in Jade. He, she, or it declared the title ‘Great Sage, Equal of Heaven.' There was great commotion until the Jade Emperor gave the Sage the job of stablekeeper for the cloud-steeds. For a little while all was well. But at last the Sage understood the position was a lowly one and returned to mischief. Storms crackled in the sky. Meteors streaked and crashed. Heaven's angry generals at last won the day. Yet the Sage proved indestructible. Luckily the Undetermined himself was on hand. I don't know how the deed was done, but the Sage was kicked down to the mortal realm to dwell within this mountain.”

“Hm,” Gaunt said. “Kicked down to the ground. Five-Toe Peak.”

“It's suggestive, sure,” Snow Pine said. “There are always stories of wise folk on mountains, but maybe this folk is trapped
in
one.”

Having already burned his hand, Bone saw no harm in trying the knob. It would not turn.

“Do you ever think before acting?” Gaunt said.

“I think while acting,” Bone said. “And I think the door is locked. Moreover I think the lock is of the metaphysical, not the pickable, kind.” He scratched his head. “Five elements. Perhaps we must match each element to its opposite. No, no, that only works in the Western system, where there are four . . .”

“Maybe,” Snow Pine said, “we can use the hot stone to melt the ice somehow, and then . . .”

“The stone's already faded.”

“Well, you could set it off again.”

“Thanks so much for your encouragement.”

“‘Om Mani Padme Hum,'” Gaunt said while touching the knob. It turned smoothly, and the door groaned open. Although Gaunt needed give only a gentle shove, the noise suggested tremendous weight.

When the echoes had subsided, Bone cleared his throat. “Think before acting?”

“Well, you'd already tested the waters.” Gaunt patted him on the shoulder. “The fires, rather.”

They stepped into the Sage's realm.

Bone pulled out a torch, ignited it with one of Qiangguo's ingenious fire-starting devices, and led them into the passage.

The tunnel corkscrewed deep into the mountain, changing character as it went. At first it appeared hewn, a tomb-like passage. Later it seemed the result of natural processes, with a rugged floor and irregular walls, but with an improbable downward curve.

“I do not trust the geology,” Gaunt said.

“I'm mistrustful of many things,” Snow Pine said. “Governments, sorcery, criminal organizations larger than three, people who smile too much, men—”

“Ah, you wound me,” Bone said.

“Should I trust you, master thief?” Snow Pine said. “As a general principle?”

“Point taken.”

“But it's never occurred to me to mistrust rocks.”

“You should,” Gaunt said. “This mountain has the outward aspect of granite. But this tunnel has the look of limestone. Worst of all, we walk among stalactites and stalagmites, which in a limestone cave are the work of dripping groundwater. I doubt the ice of the summit could be responsible.”

“It's wise to heed my wife,” Bone said. “Geology is something of a hobby of hers. Along with trailblazing, tavern songs, polemics, practical mythology, wizard-taunting, and morbid poetry.”

“Not true,” Gaunt said. “Morbid poetry is a passion, not a hobby.”