Portal of a Thousand Worlds Read online

  “They are the Bamboo Banner!” said a woman with a child on her hip. “From up-country.”

  “Who are the Bamboo Banner? Who leads them? What—”

  The porter snapped, “Watch!” He pointed to where a band of drummers was beating a wild tattoo, rising to a climax, turning all heads. One of the Bamboo Banner men was prancing around in the open space, arms wide, drawing attention to himself. Another watching him held a gun at his side, butt on the ground.

  Satisfied that he had the crowd’s attention, the first man stopped prancing, turned to face the gunman at a range of four or five paces, and spread out his arms. The other went down on one knee and raised the gun to his shoulder. It looked like a modern rifle. Man Valor shouted, “No!” and a few other spectators also cried out. But most did not. They had seen this done already.

  The gunman fired. Crack! His victim staggered as if he had been punched, but he did not fall. He laughed and spun around, showing that he was unhurt. The crowd roared.

  “How do they do that?” Man Valor yelled. He meant to ask the porter, but one of the Bamboo Banner crowd controllers had noticed his livery and was suddenly there.

  He was young, tall, and bony, with close-cropped hair and very bright eyes under his green headband. He held his staff horizontally with both hands, as if about to push Man Valor backward. But he was grinning, showing a broken tooth.

  “Heaven preserves us, Guardsman! You want to see? Hit me!”

  Suspecting a trap, Man Valor leaned on his own staff and said, “Why should I hit you?”

  “Because you cannot hurt me. Go ahead. Hit me with your stick, anywhere you want.” His grin grew even wider. “Except between the legs. I am not senior enough to take that one yet.”

  This was a trap. The kid had some pink welts across his chest, but he would not be so amused if Man Valor broke a few ribs for him and he had a lot of friends handy.

  “No.”

  “A coward!” the boy said with disgust. “Here!” He held out his bamboo rod to the porter. “You hit me. Hit me hard.”

  The porter shook his head, snatched up his pack, and backed away into the crowd.

  “Are there no real men in this city?” the boy wailed.

  “There are now!” said one of his comrades, arriving at the scene. He was older and heavier; he was also the one who had just been shot and ought to be dead. “Front or back, Leaping Serpent?”

  “Both!” Leaping Serpent said. He turned sideways and hunched his shoulders, bending slightly. The other man raised his stick overhead and brought it down two-handed across his victim’s shoulders with a crack that made Man Valor wince and several of the spectators cry out, as if they had felt the blow themselves. It certainly looked genuine, but the youth hardly reacted at all.

  He straightened and put his staff behind him. “Again!”

  The strike came sideways this time, whistling like a sword cut, and took him full across the chest. He staggered backward a step and Man Valor thought he saw a wince, but it was gone in an instant. The blow should have laid him flat on his back.

  “Now will you hit me?” Leaping Serpent asked him mockingly.

  The acrobats were building their pyramid again, but Man Valor had to deal first with this inexplicably indestructible youngster. “With my own stick?”

  “Certainly.” No hesitation.

  “Then hold out your arm and I’ll break it for you.”

  At once, Leaping Serpent extended his right arm to the side. “Hard as you can.”

  Man Valor looked warily at the other man.

  He nodded. “Go ahead. Heaven preserves us because we serve the Good Land. Serpent is far along in his studies. You cannot hurt him.”

  Man Valor raised his staff two-handed and brought it down on the boy’s forearm as hard as he could. The arm moved, of course, but there was no trickery. He both felt and heard the impact.

  Leaping Serpent said, “Thank you! Not a bad smack.” He wiggled his fingers to show that he had taken no hurt. “Will you let me do the same for you?”

  Man Valor’s tunic was thickly padded to protect his arm, but he shook his head. He could not work if his arm was broken; he needed wages to eat.

  The crowd was applauding the acrobats. He looked to see how the pyramid was coming along.

  “Why not?” asked the older man, stepping close. His eyes were as bright as the boy’s under thick dark brows. “Are you afraid of being hurt?”

  “Yes.” And if he did not get back to report to his master very soon, he was going to be hurt with a whip.

  “We are not afraid of anything. We follow the Bamboo Banner and no man can hurt us.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t trust your own eyes? You saw me shot? A big strong man like you cannot break a boy’s arm?” He lowered his voice and moved his face very close to Man Valor’s. “I am Chestnut River, patriot of the third proving, of the Pearl Army.”

  “I am Chief Guardsman Man Valor.”

  Chestnut River raised bushy eyebrows at the inappropriateness of that name. “The Emperor is dead.” His breath bore a sweet smell of spices and his teeth had a green stain on them.

  Sweat! Here was treason! “No! Not true! Long live the Emperor!”

  Chestnut River nodded solemnly. “The palace lies to us. The Good Land is being ruled by a woman! Do you wonder that Heaven is enraged? That we have storms and floods and terrible omens? We must restore the Golden Throne. Bamboo himself leads us.”

  Man Valor just gaped at him. Men who could not be hurt? The urgency of the drums seemed to have merged with his heartbeat, filling him with a strange, confusing insistency. He was shaking. The pyramid was four men high now and obviously heading higher still.

  Chestnut River took his arm in a grip whose power was appreciable even through the armor padding. “Come with us, Man Valor. Follow Bamboo; follow the Bamboo Banner. We will have you as top man of a pile like that one inside two weeks. In three months, you will laugh at blows and bullets and sword cuts. Join us!”

  “My master … I must go and explain first and then—”

  “No, you must come now.” Already Chestnut River was leading him across the square and he was putting up no resistance. Leaping Serpent strode along on his other side, grinning joyfully.

  “But my mother …”

  “No one may turn back when he has taken the first step. Do you need to prove it with a gun? I will gladly let you try to shoot me, but it will do no good, as you saw. Bamboo had made us invincible. Will you be one of us, Man Valor? Are you worthy of that name you bear?”

  Man Valor kept on walking.

  Chapter 5

  Day in, day out, Prior Fraise of Sheep Rocks was not a happy man. He ministered to the mortuary needs of the largest parish in Chixi Province, but his flock was spread over endless hills, inhabited more by sheep and goats than people. At least half of those people were semibarbaric nomads who dug pits in the ground and buried their dead whole, without caring in the least that their sparks might not yet have fully escaped and would need ritual help to ascend to the Fifth World. The few permanent settlements were mostly isolated ranches and mining camps. They did not bring their dead to Sheep Rocks; they expected the Order to go to them.

  That morning, Fraise was in a particularly sour mood. Two nights ago, he had conducted a farewell for a wealthy rancher, but nothing had gone right. The cost of importing firewood into that blighted, eroded, deforested land had all but wiped out the Order’s profit. Fog Moon had lived up to its name, making the timber wet and obscuring the stars that should preside; without wind to help, few sparks had risen, making the mourners tearful and angry.

  Worst of all, the discard had borne an unmistakable gunshot wound in the back of his head, and so had obviously been a casualty in one of the hill country’s age-old blood feuds. Yet his heir had ignored all hi
nts that the Gray Brothers could help him obtain his revenge in return for a trifling fee. The stupid amateur would probably get himself killed instead. Admittedly, that would mean another ritual for the Order to organize, but an outing as well would have been much more profitable.

  After a whole day on horseback in wind and rain, Fraise had returned to the monastery exhausted and frozen to find a letter awaiting him from the Chixi mother house in Meritorious Aspect. Almost certainly it was another warning that he was behind in his remittance. The financial Helpers there never seemed to understand that a large parish did not necessarily mean a large income; the abbess of a 300-ply house evidently had no idea of the problems of a 10-ply priory like Sheep Rocks. Some months, Fraise could barely feed his tiny community, as well as remit his dues to Chixi, let alone put anything aside to further his own career. He had inherited the priorship two years ago simply because nobody else wanted it. It had brought him no happiness or respect. The older initiates still kept forgetting and addressing him as “Brother Fraise” and the novice sisters were no more cooperative than before.

  He had finished his morning tea and rice. The tray had been removed by the half-witted postulant, so he had no further excuse not to open the scroll. Yet still he dawdled. He was tempted to burn it unread.

  The northeast corner of the roof was leaking again.

  His room was probably the finest in all of Sheep Rocks, because the priory was the only stone building in the village, all others being crumbling wooden shacks. In summer, he had a pleasing little garden, tended by the two postulants and he owned a silk rug not too obviously faded. When the weather permitted, which it currently did not, he had a fine view of snowy mountains. Yet, by the standards of abbots or abbesses, these quarters ranked as a dog kennel. His shelves held a few small carvings of nephrite, which had belonged to his predecessor and which the ignorant might mistake for true jade, but no real collection. A man of worth always collected something: antique scrolls or porcelain or ivory, usually of some particular time or provenance. These he would display for visitors to praise while he expounded on their specific qualities. That was what gentlemen did.

  The prospect that Fraise could ever amass enough wealth to buy himself a modest abbacy seemed as remote as the stars. He was doomed to remain rooted forever in these ghastly hills, and even that might be better than whatever the abbess of Meritorious Aspect was about to threaten him with.

  Sad and apprehensive, he broke the seal and unrolled the scroll.

  Dearest Brother, guard our words within your heart alone. We yearn urgently for a brother or male novice counted on these fingers: thumb, that he stand more than eight spans, less than nine …

  Prior Fraise stopped, blinked, and went back up to the beginning again.

  The characters still read the same and the calligraphy was very fine, very precise, not ambiguous at all. Eight spans? Very few men of the Gentle People were as tall as that. Fraise himself was not and he had never considered himself short. Nine-span giants were rare, even in Chixi.

  Index, that he be of Outlandish stock and appearance.

  That went without saying if he was more than eight spans tall.

  Middle, that he was born in the Year of the Nightingale, or very near.

  She was describing Novice Horse! No! Never! Fraise could not visualize himself trying to run Sheep Rocks without Horse. Horse was wonderful with the livestock. He could dig a bone pit in a third of the time anyone else took and he chopped more firewood than all three other novices together.

  He ate more, too.

  Fraise read on.

  Ring, that he have a leaping heart. Pinky, that he be a skilled seemer.

  Hmm. Horse was very good at seeming magic within the limits imposed by his size. But a leaping heart? If she meant ambition, well anyone with a leaping heart would not voluntarily hang around here in Sheep Rocks to rot, which was a cruel appraisal of Fraise himself. It was true that he was holding back on initiating Horse, although he hated to admit it even to himself, but that was not because he feared that the kid would gallop away over the hills to greener pastures. Horse was too amiable and easygoing to do anything so drastic. Fraise was delaying because Horse was far too valuable as a novice. An initiate brother was excused from the more menial tasks in the priory, and Horse did most of those all by himself. It would take three youths to replace him.

  But if leaping heart meant dutiful, painstaking, and eager to please, then Horse qualified again.

  If you cannot satisfy our need, Brother, let fire eat this paper and rain wash your memory.

  This was a very good day for rain and a cozy, but expensive, fire.

  If you have, in your care, the youth we seek, speak to none of this but bring him in haste, covertly, to the priory at Huarache, two days west of our house, and believe that our gratitude toward you will be without bounds. May your spark shine ever brighter in this and all higher worlds.

  The characters swam on the page. She was telling him to name his own price! A conch of taels? A 50-ply abbacy? Let some other fool try to run this priory without Horse?

  The prior rang his bell and when the buck-toothed postulant answered, Fraise told him to send in Novice Horse immediately.

  He was tempted to leap up and pace the room as his excitement mounted, but that would imply a lack of tranquillity and dignity. Why had the request come to him, in this flyspeck hamlet? Just for secrecy? But there were many obscure houses closer to Meritorious Aspect, so he must assume that many identical letters had been dispatched. It could even be that the hunt had so far failed to find a youth fitting all those very specific requirements, so now they were beating the hinterlands.

  It was going to be an imposture, obviously, possibly even an impersonation. Outlanders with enough money to hire an aide from the Order could only be nobility. Half the lowly cattlemen and horsemen of Chixi were of Outlandish stock and despised because of it, but ever since Falling Mountain had led his horde in from the Outlands three hundred years ago to overthrow the Tenth Dynasty, most of the aristocracy had been of Outlandish stock. Anyone sneering at them did so a long way behind their backs. Most noble families were well diluted by Gentle blood by now, but some retained their size and rocky features. Even the imperial … Fraise shied away from that treasonous idea. The Order would never risk that! But some young noble not too far from the throne was a possibility. The risk must be appalling, but just thinking about the potential rewards made his head spin. His share would certainly make him rich.

  And Horse himself? Well, he might get discovered and suffer the death of a thousand cuts, but success would surely bring wealth beyond dreams.

  Fraise sighed. He tried to be a meritorious person as the teachers defined that slippery term. He was aware that men had more faults than fleas, as the Humble Teacher wrote, and he tried to rise above his own. But the truth was that he was jealous of Novice Horse, of his never-failing cheerfulness, the way the novice sisters looked at him … Horse should have been initiated at least half a year ago, but who could possibly replace him?

  The bead curtain jingled. Novice Horse put his head through at about knee height, touched it to the floor, and stopped. His close-cropped hair dripped rainwater on the floor.

  “What are you doing, fool?” the abbot shouted.

  “Honored Father … You said to come at once, but my feet are muddy.”

  Fraise laughed in silence. Let Deputy Prior Evening Fade worry about the mud!

  “Never mind that. Enter properly.”

  Horse’s head withdrew, then he parted the beads and strode in. He must have been tending the horses, because he was soaking wet and coated to the knees in more than just mud. He wore only a breechclout, also muddy. He dropped to the floor and kowtowed. Suddenly, the room reeked of stable.

  Moved by a sudden whim, Fraise strode over to the wardrobe chest and dug out a monk’s robe. “Stand up.”

 
Horse stood up, and up. He frowned uneasily, suspecting something wrong.

  “How tall are you?”

  “Eight spans and a hand, Father … perhaps a little more.” He sounded apologetic about it.

  “When were you born?”

  “In Lotus Moon in the Year of the Nightingale.”

  They couldn’t ask any better fit than that.

  The prior handed him the robe. “Put that on and make yourself seem respectable.”

  Horse clearly guessed that something unusual was afoot, for his face was completely expressionless. He took the robe and walked over to the mirror in the corner. In about two minutes, he returned for his superior’s inspection, properly garbed—one shoulder covered, the other and both arms bare. His face had lost some of its heavy boniness and melted into the softer, reassuring features of the Gentle People that layfolk expected and would find more reassuring in times of bereavement. His head was now clean shaven, his arms no longer bulged so conspicuously with woodsman muscle, and although his feet were still grubby if Fraise deliberately stared at them, he would not have noticed them otherwise. In fact, he would not even have noticed that this humbly smiling young monk was damp.

  Who could not be jealous of such perfection?

  “Excellent!”

  Horse bowed. “Your Reverence is gracious.”

  “Merely truthful. I am”—Fraise omitted the probably he had been about to insert—“about to grant you your initiation. Let me try one more test. How are you at impersonation?”

  The novice gave him a steady look. “I have had no training in that skill, Father.”

  Clever answer. Seeming was the art of assuming a general type—putting on a monk’s robe and seeming to be a monk. Duplicating a particular individual was so impossibly difficult that novices were strictly forbidden to try it lest they become discouraged and lose confidence in their seeming. But there were tales of initiates who had been able to do it.

  “But you have tried, in private.” Everyone did. No novice in the history of the Order had been able to resist trying.