Portal of a Thousand Worlds Read online

  “Sand Warrior!” she said, with a smile as thin as midwinter sunlight. “I came to wish you good fortune in your combat … with …”

  Silky did not drop and touch his face to the floor as he should when a lady addressed him. He kept on coming. She retreated until she backed into the wall, and he stopped very close to her, almost touching. Verdant Harmony was large and not classically beautiful—her chin was too square, her shoulders too broad, and in a few years, she would be as fat as her father. Fortunately, Silky preferred large women. Winning friendly tussles with them gave him healthy exercise and a sense of accomplishment. Even as a booted sand warrior, he was only just eye-to-eye with Verdant; as a monk, he would be both shorter and barefoot. He was also bare-chested at the moment, and what he was doing was unthinkable familiarity. She opened her mouth to protest or scream.

  “Celestial Womb,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  Silky sighed. “You don’t remember? We have met before. You must remember! In the third world, in one of its great ages? The Empire of Lilies, and we were young.”

  She shook her head dumbly. People did sometimes recognize people they had known in previous worlds, or said they did.

  “You were the Emperor’s daughter, Princess Celestial Womb. You were almost as beautiful then as you are now. Oh, how could you have forgotten me, after all we were to each other?”

  Her face flushed under the white paint. “No! I do not remember! Now—”

  “I remember you! Vividly. I was a prince, then,” he said wistfully. “Noble Lance was my name.” He glanced around. “I must speak with you! Tonight, when you hear a tap on your windowpane, it will be me.”

  “No, no! The guards will shoot you! And nobody can climb that wall!”

  “I can. For you, I will. Today, I will slay the dragon. Tonight, I will speak with you through the casement. Tonight!”

  He walked away without looking back.

  Very satisfying! The Emperor and his mandarins would certainly have disapproved of a servant subverting his employer’s son from the path of filial obedience and debauching his employer’s daughter, but Gray Helpers did not think that way. A little variety would do them both a world of good.

  A prince was any man descended in the male line from the Emperor of the current dynasty, no matter how many generations divided them. Being forbidden to engage in labor or trade, princes varied greatly in their state. Their smarter offspring could enter mandarin training, but this was rarely attempted, for then they must compete with sons of the gutters and paddy fields, so failure was a catastrophic loss of face. A few princes held hereditary office and even fewer had hung on to ancestral wealth. Many were paupers. The rest made precarious livings by gambling. The highest rewards were in the arena.

  One anonymous noble—generally assumed to be Prince Wondrous Fortune—had imported a two-clawed dragon at fantastic expense and offered a prize for the man who could kill it with a sword. So great was the prize that every sponsor of warriors in the city had put up his best man. Silky had drawn the eighteenth chance, and traded it for the fourth spot, originally drawn by a man with more sense than ambition. Fourth still felt about right—he had learned the lizard’s style by watching how it killed its first three opponents, and could hope that the slow-witted reptile had not yet learned the sand warriors’ style. He was reasonably confident of success, since he would be fighting by the Gray Helpers’ rules, but there was an undeniable beat of excitement in his groin as he climbed into the rickshaw waiting for him.

  The Abbot knew nothing of this madcap venture and would be furious when he heard of it, but to Silky, it had seemed like the surest way to Verdant’s heart—or, at least, her bed—and their brief encounter as he was leaving had confirmed him in this belief. Faint heart never won fair lady, as one of the teachers had probably said.

  Adding young Malachite Harmony to the rickshaw was literally child’s play. The lanky runner was understandably unhappy at having to tow a double load, but he was Novice Mast from the abbey on discipline detail, so Silky just laughed at his woebegone expression and told him to be quick. The guards at the gate did not bother to inspect Silky’s rickshaw as it left, because they were more worried about assassination than theft; besides, he was one of the household. So they did not find the boy crouched under the bench.

  As soon as they were out in the streets, Malachite emerged and squeezed in beside Silky to sit with mouth and eyes stretched as wide as they would go, gaping at all the sights. He was very rarely allowed out of the grounds, and never without a parental escort and guards, so this would be an epochal adventure for him. It would also leave him vulnerable to blackmail if Silky ever needed to make use of him.

  By the time they neared the Courtyard of Dancing Blades, the program was already under way, and the surging roars suggested another sellout crowd. For a long time, young Malachite had been growing more and more horrified as the crowds grew thicker, buildings higher, alleyways darker and narrower and smellier. At one point, he asked, “Why do all the streets smell like latrines?”

  His education had been neglected. “Guess.”

  Silky was recognized as soon as the rickshaw entered the Alley of Rose-Red Lanterns, which led to the competitors’ entrance. People began shouting his name and pressing forward to touch him in the hope of gaining good fortune. Novice Mast was brought to a panting halt, so Silky disembarked and grabbed Malachite’s arm just before the lad was swept away by the crush.

  “Stay close! Hang on to my back strap.”

  “How will I find my way home if you die?”

  This problem was not high on Silky’s agenda. “Pick out a couple of the nastiest villains you can see and tell them who you are.”

  “What? Why?”

  “They’ll ransom you back to your father.”

  Malachite moaned. “He probably won’t pay!”

  Possibly not.

  The winner’s share of the gate would make fat Jade Harmony drool an ocean—as long as the winner was not the dragon. On the other hand, at a rough guess, a fourth win by the dragon should pay out its cost and put Wondrous Fortune’s fortunes on the right side of the abacus. Meanwhile, Silky had to get himself and his deadly sword into the arena without killing anyone, especially young Malachite.

  The Court of Dancing Blades was a large, sand-floored oblong surrounded by stands. The seats at the south end were shaded by a great roof with the upturned gables typical of Good Land architecture, supported on green pillars and tiled in blue. Four drum-shaped stone booths, which were used for various purposes at various times, stood south of the center. That day, they were merely blinds, protective cover for participants in some of the contests.

  Silky and Malachite entered just as the junior melee was ending. Eight youths had been bloodied and eliminated, leaving three still warily stalking one another in and out between the blinds, closely watched by the umpires. Even between roars, the arena rumbled with excitement. Having lodged his terrified but fascinated companion in the box reserved for competitors’ families, Silky found a secluded corner. Confident that all eyes were watching to see which of the three exhausted boys would make a mistake first, he quickly drew his two poisoned knives and transferred them to sheaths he had sewn inside his breeches, between his legs. The result was far from comfortable, and he knew from experience that he must sit down with great care or risk dire consequences, even without the added peril of the poison. He filled the empty spaces in his baldrics with the two extra knives he had brought in his boots.

  Walking carefully, he went to check in at the competitors’ entrance. He laid his sword on the table and deposited all his other weapons in a basket that the officials would keep safe for him—or for his heirs if his afternoon turned out to have been inauspicious. He added his boots. These were the rules of the Court of Dancing Blades, and the prince’s rules, which he just happened to be following at the moment.
Having done all that, he was required to drop his breeches and raise his arms, so that the officials could see that he was not trying to smuggle in any illicit weapons. The officials, of course, were busy watching the junior melee, shouting bets at one another.

  “How long do I have to stand here with my hammer hanging out?”

  “That’s fine. Hide the horrible thing quick. Ten more on the blue kid!”

  “Done!” retorted the other official.

  Silky raised his breeches carefully and tied the laces again. The senior gate officer shook out Silky’s boots, threw them back at him, and stamped a record sheet, all without taking his eyes off the action. Two boys met face-to-face and engaged their swords in a duel. Boy Blue-White managed to cut Boy Orange-Brown’s shoulder just as Boy Green-Pink, tracking the noise, came around behind him and ripped Blue-White’s back. The crowd went mad. Sand Warrior Silky was officially checked in.

  Half a dozen bouts of various types followed the junior melee but none aroused much interest. Even a grudge match fought with real blades hardly made a stir, although the winner risked becoming a murderer in the eyes of law. Everyone was waiting for the last item on the ticket: Two-Clawed Dragon versus Sand Warrior Silky. Over the winter, he had made a name for himself—mostly with his skills but partly because of the fiendishly appropriate name laid on him by his client, which was a great joy to the crowds. Other warriors invoked horror or terror in their arena names; there was only one Silky. Today he would either consolidate his growing reputation as the premier upcoming warrior in Wedlock or nourish a growing dragon.

  He stood on the competitors’ terrace to watch the bouts, ignoring the dwindling group of fellow competitors. They shunned him. He was doomed, ill-omened. It was very bad fortune to speak to a man on the day he died. He brought his heart back to its proper tortoise pace. It was a fine day to fight, sunny but not too bright, warm on bare skin but not too hot for the extreme demands he would soon make of his body. Imperial edicts called this Ice Moon. Here in the south, it was Budding Moon. It was even a fine day to die. What better exit could a man ask of Heaven than to die bravely before twenty thousand screaming supporters?

  There were other worlds than this one, and he could see no reason why Heaven would send him to a worse one.

  A straight fight on open ground between a swordsman and even a mere two-clawed would be suicide, especially when the dragon had been starved for three days. To make the odds very slightly better, the dragon was handicapped with a snack beforehand. Once it began to feed, the stupid lizard would regard a human intruder as a rival trying to steal its kill and fight defensively instead of hunting him down as prey. Even with that, the odds were heavily in favor of the dragon—fifty to one at last report. It had easily dispatched Leopard Claw, Mighty Fangs, and Creature of Nightmare. But none of them had been a Gray Brother.

  None had been Silky. He was the best.

  Of course, there were sure to be problems he hadn’t thought of.

  A wild boar lost the last-but-one bout and was towed away, the winner receiving a brief cheer. Now Silky stood alone on the north terrace and the crowd began to chant his name. They had shouted, “Nightmare! Nightmare!” the last time.

  The western gate opened; a gazelle bounded onto the field. The stadium fell silent. The terrified beast raced around the whole arena before recognizing shelter and making a dash for the blinds. In its run, it passed directly below Silky and froze his blood.

  Unforeseen problem number one: Brother Providence, seeming to be an obvious arena employee, was to have groomed the gazelle before its debut. He was also supposed to dust its coat well with opium powder, because dragons were very susceptible to opium. So was a gazelle, for that matter, and thus Providence would have muzzled it with a strap to prevent it from licking its coat and losing interest in the proceedings. The gazelle had not been muzzled. Conclusion? The bait had been spiked with opium.

  Prince Wondrous Fortune had a large investment to take care of. His guards had detected and frustrated half of Silky’s battle plan.

  Then the east gate opened and the dragon streaked out like an opal snake, a shimmering ripple of blue and green scales. Previously, Silky had guessed its length as that of three horses end to end, but today was his turn, and now four horses seemed more likely, maybe five. Big ones. How fast did dragons grow on a diet of human meat?

  There must be many newcomers in the crowd, because this first glimpse of the monster provoked just as much screaming as it had on its previous three entries.

  Problem number two: In previous bouts, the dragon had writhed and snarled around the arena, terrifying the spectators, until it had caught the gazelle’s scent. This time it hurtled across the sand in a straight line, right into the four blinds. The gazelle did not even break cover before it died. Icy water ran down Silky’s ribs and his topknot tried to unravel. Dragons learned much faster than he had expected.

  It was time to move. His feet were strangely reluctant, but he must reach the blinds before the lizard finished its appetizer and came out looking for the entrée. He hurried over to the stairwell and started down, not running in spite of his increasing sense of urgency. At the bend in the stair, for the one brief moment when no one could see him, he removed the poisoned knives from his breeches and tucked them in the sheaths in his boots. At the bottom, he drew his sword and transferred it to his left hand. An attendant opened the tiny barred door for him. He sucked in a very deep breath and walked out onto the sunlit sand of the arena. He was shivering as he had not done since fever swept through Wedlock in the Year of the Heron. For the first time in his life, the prospect of imminent death seemed real. The lizard was clever.

  The crowd roared. “Silky! Silky! Silky! Silky!”

  The dragon rose up on its hind legs with three-quarters of a gazelle in its mouth, rearing high to look over the blinds, straight at him. It had not done that for Leopard Claw, Mighty Fangs, or Creature of Nightmare. It had been expecting the main dish to appear from that inconspicuous door! It dropped down out of sight. Guessing what was about to happen, Silky began to run for the cover as fast as his boots would move sand. That was what his opponents had done, playing tag in the blinds. Leopard Claw had even managed to nick the dragon’s tail. But the dragon closed off that option for Silky. It came around the blinds and the crowd screamed even louder as the two opponents streaked toward each other over the bare ground.

  The lizard streaked twice as fast as he did. Obviously, it had developed a taste for man. It liked raw warrior better than gazelle, and it was certainly showing no sign of opium poisoning. Never mind a tea caddy; a teacup would be enough to hold Silky’s remains.

  The body of a snake, the scales of a fish, the antlers of a deer, the talons of an eagle, and the eyes of a demon—never could death look more certain or more beautiful, flashing in green and blue iridescence. He must not get too close. A two-clawed was wingless and did not breathe fire, but its breath would stun. One whiff to knock you out and two to kill, it was said—worse than Brother Archives’s.

  The dragon had come around the blinds on his left and his instinct was to veer to his right. Seeing that he wasn’t going to make it, Silky changed course and ran straight at the monster, whirling his sword over his head and yelling at the top of his voice, although there was no chance the beast would hear him over the noise of the crowd. Shouting just made him feel better.

  The prince’s rules said that the man was required to kill the dragon with no weapon but a sword. Silky had been prepared to argue that throwing knives might blind it but never kill it and therefore were not forbidden. If the argument failed to bring him the prize money, he would at least have won the honor. At the moment, he had no interest in honor or prize money, only bare survival. He was close enough. He stopped.

  At that same moment, the reptile’s tiny mind decided that all was not right. Prey should not attack! The other two-legged meats had not attacked. Puzzled, it
skidded to a halt in a shower of sand and raised its great head to stare at him with huge bulging eyes. Even at ten paces, it was looking down.

  Silky’s palm was too sweaty to throw a knife. He stooped, rubbed his hand in the grit and, even as he straightened, snatched a knife from his boot and hurled. The first blade bounced harmlessly off one of the bony brow ridges. The dragon cocked its head to see what the biped was up to, and the second knife plunged into its left eye.

  The lizard did not like that. It hurtled backward with a roar that echoed off the far end of the stadium. It toppled, curled, writhed, thrashed, clawed at its head, threw sand in all directions. Now what? However great its agony, there could not possibly be enough venom on that tiny blade to kill such a monster, and yet, between flying sand, thrashing tail, and poison breath, Silky could not get close enough to ram his sword into those glittering scales. Twice he ran in to try and twice had to leap back to safety.

  Uttering an even more gargantuan roar, the dragon gathered itself together. With its left eye spurting blood and the right turned balefully on its tormenter, it rushed him. Silky pivoted on one boot and hurled his sword with all his might into those nightmare jaws. He threw himself flat on his face and prepared to die.

  The crowd was making the loudest noise he had ever heard, but all he could hear from the dragon was a gurgling, clashing sound. He was alive? He sat up. The lizard was in its death throes, twisting and rolling as if trying to knot itself. It was still chomping on the sword, which must have cut its tongue and palate to shreds by now, and it was dying from the effects of snake venom, but who could prove that? Did it matter? As Silky rose unsteadily, his eyes caught a flash of sunlight from one of his knives. He tottered over to it and idly scuffed sand over it with his foot. There must be another one around somewhere. They might not be found for months. Only then did he realize that the twenty thousand spectators were on their feet screaming his name.