Portal of a Thousand Worlds Read online

  “A little, Father.”

  Fraise removed his prior’s headdress and held it out. “Be me.”

  Still expressionless, the youth walked back to the mirror. This time, he needed longer and eventually Fraise went to stand beside him and provide his image as a model. Horse’s reflection stopped wavering, and then there were twins. Yes, he had very nearly achieved the impossible. No longer Outlandish, he was now one of the Gentle People; his face was the prior’s and their eyes were level; the great height and breadth had somehow disappeared, sedentary flab had replaced the remarkable musculature. The strain was obvious, though. Now sweat more than rain beaded his forehead, sinews corded his neck. The illusion was not perfect and not quite steady, but Fraise would never have believed that even this much was possible. It might well deceive anyone who did not know him—and it have been achieved with no preparatory study!

  If the abbess of Meritorious Aspect did have an imposture in mind, she could ask for no better seemer than Horse.

  “How long could you hold this?”

  “Not long, Reverend Father.” He spoke through clenched teeth, as if in pain.

  “Must I find out?”

  “Forgive your errant servant, Father. One hour, maybe, but not two.”

  “It is very well done.”

  Fraise’s nearly double-bowed his head. “Your words fill me with joy and the hope that I may someday be worthy of your teaching.” Even the voice matched!

  “You may return.”

  With a whoof of relief, Horse inflated to his former size and shape. His hands were shaking as he returned the prior’s headdress.

  “Very well done. There may—and I stress may—be a profitable first contract available for your naming. You and I are going on a journey. Change into traveling clothes, then saddle the two best horses. Tell no one. But first send Deputy Prior Evening Fade to me.”

  The arrow flies!

  The appalling realization that the mysterious summons might be a vicious practical joke did not occur to Fraise until he and Horse arrived at Huarache. That they arrived at all was no less than a miracle, and entirely due to Horse. Fraise would never have made it by himself or with a less resourceful companion. As the never-ending rain turned trails to swamps and brooks to torrents, Horse coaxed superhuman efforts out of the weary mounts. He took infinite pains to keep them healthy and more than once seemed to drag them across fords by his own brute strength.

  Initiates who traveled were sure of hospitality at any House of Joyful Departure along their road, but there were few of those in northern Chixi. Inns were nonexistent. The only recourse was to beg for shelter, and for that they must seem to be other than what they were, for no man, neither prince nor peasant, would knowingly invite ill-omened Gray Helpers under his roof. In those cases, it was always Horse who charmed their way in, often volunteering to cut firewood to earn their board, even after a grueling day that had left Fraise half-dead with exhaustion. When anything special was available in the way of hospitality, it would be offered to Horse. If the luxury was only a spare bed mat, he of course yielded it to his superior. If more intimate pleasures were offered, then they were invariably offered to Horse, and those he did not refuse. Fraise was left to sleep alone and curse himself for his wicked jealousy.

  The Humble Teacher said, To those who want least is the most given.

  In the final week of their journey, Fog Moon gave way to Cold Moon. Rain stopped, skies cleared, and the world seemed to freeze solid instantly. They had to endure days of bone-cracking cold before they rode into Huarache.

  Or rather into what had once been Huarache, for three quarters of the little town had vanished in a fire two years ago, according to a passing mule driver they asked for directions. The abbey had closed down; the Gray Helpers had gone, he said.

  Despair froze Fraise’s bones even colder than the wind did. Who could have played such a trick upon him? Was he so despicable as to provoke such spite? And who in the world disliked Horse enough to hurt him also? The prior slumped in misery on his horse and wanted to howl.

  Meanwhile, Horse had kept his horse walking and the other had followed.

  “There it is, Father!” he said cheerfully.

  “What?”

  “The monastery! Smoking chimneys, see?”

  True enough, the skinner had been wrong. The Order was still ministering to the few remaining inhabitants of charred Huarache.­ Sprawling and stone-built, the Huarache House of Joyful Departure stood up bold and strong amid the ruins to welcome its visitors with a delicious aroma of cooking. The community must be much reduced, for the frozen mud in the big courtyard indicated that traffic had been light before the frost came, but two brothers came running to answer the bell.

  Fraise noticed them notice Horse and then exchange glances. He wondered what they were thinking: Here comes another one? Or perhaps it was, This looks like the right stuff at last? He was so travel-weary that he did not care much anymore.

  The monastery was obviously designed for at least a 40-ply community, but the two brothers, Hawthorn and Western Mountain, seemed to be the only people around. One took the horses, and the other led the visitors to impressive guest quarters. There they could indulge in hot water, dry clothes, and thick fish soup. Life suddenly became worth living again. By then it was close to winter sunset, but the abbess sent word that she would receive Prior Fraise and Novice Horse whenever they were ready.

  Knowing that they had arrived at their destination, Horse must surely be excited, but he was concealing his emotions admirably. He limited his display of emotion to a slight frown as he asked, “Where is everybody, Father? I thought 10-ply was the smallest house allowed?”

  “I expect we will find out in good time,” Fraise said contentedly. The security was admirable. He was certain now that this house had been abandoned after the fire and had been opened up exclusively to interview and inspect the candidates called down from the hills by many copies of that cryptic summons. Whatever conspiracy was afoot was calling on remarkable resources, and that meant that it was aimed at a considerable pay-off.

  Brother Hawthorn came to report that the abbess would now receive the reverend prior and his novice. Her name was not mentioned, but that was not unusual.

  She wore the headdress of a high abbess, but she was not the abbess of Meritorious Aspect, whom Fraise had met a few times. Her room was spacious and completely barren of furniture except for one silk cushion and two rugs, equally spaced around a glowing charcoal brazier. She knelt on the cushion and gestured the visitors to take the rugs, so that the heat was divided evenly among the three of them. She was about forty, with sharp, hard features and an abrupt, uncouth manner. She wasted less than a dozen words on greetings and inquiries about their journey.

  Fraise kept his replies equally laconic. He hoped he was managing to seem as inscrutable as Horse, but he had trouble keeping his heart rate down.

  “So”—now she took notice of Horse, who kept his face lowered respectfully. Compared to her he seemed to fill half the room—“what did you bring me, Father?”

  “What you asked for, Mother. Exactly in all respects.” Fraise returned the scroll before she could ask for it.

  She unwound it enough to confirm that it was the genuine article, then laid it on the brazier to burn. “Stand up, Novice.” She had not been informed of Horse’s name, but that must be about to change anyway. “Turn around. Good. Down again, please. It hurts my neck to look at you when you are standing.”

  Horse knelt again, smiling respectfully at the jest.

  “What do you enjoy most in your duties for the Order?”

  Fraise wished she had not asked that, because he knew what the answer was going to be and she would not like it if she had an outing in mind for him. It was very hard to imagine Horse ever hurting anybody.

  His face lit up with enthusiasm. “Comforting people, Mother. I
mean when the bereaved are weeping and full of sorrow and we can explain again about the spark rising up and they see the stars waiting for their loved ones and know that she or he will be reborn in a better world. They dry their tears, and I love that.”

  The abbess did not comment. “Can you speak Palace Voice?”

  “I have had almost no experience of it, Reverend Mother. Just the imperial tax gatherers, when they come around.”

  “Try that one for me.”

  “Peonies bleed against the green

  A kite circles.

  I open the gate. Children come running.”

  The abbess winced. “That is terrible. You sound like the hill country bumpkin you are. What other voices can you do?”

  Horse quoted a few more lines of poetry in Qiancheng dialect, which he had picked up from passing traders overnighting at the priory, and then in a southern jabber he had learned from Brother Wavelet.

  “Better,” the abbess conceded. “Quite good, even. Have you advanced anyone yet?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “Would you, if your client requested it?”

  Horse did not hesitate. “If my client’s interests required it, yes. Not if the request was motivated by spite or trivial dislike.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would bring an unnecessary risk of disclosure.”

  That was the book answer. She nodded, and appeared to be thinking.

  “The novice is a very good seemer,” Fraise volunteered. “He does remarkable impersonations.” He shrank back from her burning glare.

  She said, “Neither will be necessary. As you said, you have delivered exactly what I requested. I did not stipulate an accent, because that can be taught and he seems to have a good ear.” She turned to Horse again. “If you can learn that, you will do very well for the contract I have in mind. It is not for me, though. I am not your client, who does not wish to reveal her name at the moment. I am authorized to speak for her. Release him to her, Prior.”

  Fraise hesitated. “We have not discussed terms yet, Mother.” One could not extort fees from a high abbess as one could a client of the laity. Again, she scorched him with her dragon-fire look.

  “They will be more than generous. Do you doubt me?”

  He wilted. “Of course not. I appoint this monk to assist the client you presently represent, Mother. Name him.”

  For the first time, she actually smiled. “My client directed that his name be Butterfly Sword.”

  The new Butterfly Sword kowtowed, narrowly missing the brazier with his forehead. “My ears are honored to hear this name she grants me. I will serve her needs in all things and ahead of all other loyalties.”

  “And you will be very greatly rewarded, Brother Butterfly Sword.” The abbess rang a silver bell. “We have a novice in this house who speaks excellent Palace Voice.” That could hardly be a coincidence. “You will make that your primary study, as a matter of extreme urgency.”

  “I will work at it day and night, if that be permitted, Mother.”

  “It may be,” the lady said with a smile that began by seeming cryptic but was understandable when the novice entered. She was petite and lovely. She carried a tea set, which she set down gracefully between Fraise and the abbess. She glanced at Horse—and then took a second look, the way all girls looked at Horse.

  “Moth,” the lady said. “This is Brother Butterfly Sword. You are to teach him Palace Voice and palace ways. He says he is willing to study by day and by night.”

  Quite unabashed, Horse was grinning, a shocking breach of decorum in a solemn naming ceremony.

  Novice Moth grinned back, so they looked like a pair of naughty children.

  Fraise felt the bite of jealousy again. He could guess what they would be studying tonight, and it would not be child’s play. They left together and his star pupil never looked back to say good-bye or thank you.

  “A fine day’s work,” the abbess remarked, pouring tea. “I agree that you met my requirements exactly.” She passed him his bowl. “You should see some of the dwarfs and geriatrics who have been paraded through here. I was starting to get quite worried! What is his leash?”

  “We have not yet settled on terms for this contract,” Fraise muttered desperately. Horse’s leash was the only hold he had left.

  The abbess shrugged. “What do you want?”

  He drew a deep breath.

  If Horse was exactly what she had been looking for, he had lots of bargaining room. “A 100-ply abbacy.”

  “Sorry. I don’t have one to offer.” She smiled at his anger. “I want you far away from here. You must have some idea by now of what is in the wind, Father, so you can guess why. I counteroffer with a 220-ply abbacy in Shiman. The climate down in Shiman is much more clement than Chixi’s, almost tropical. Interested?”

  Fraise thought of all the novice sisters there would be in a 220-ply, all eager to please the abbot. He felt almost faint. And beaches, perhaps. “Then we have an agreement!”

  “The boy’s leash?”

  “Lines seventeen, seventy-one, and one twenty-four.”

  The lady raised her cup in salute. “To your swift promotion, Father Abbot!”

  “To your future prosperity, Mother Abbess!”

  The tea was very bitter, but he was much too excited to—

  Oh!

  Oh, what a fool he had been. …

  III

  The Year of the Nightingale

  Chapter 1

  Lady Twilight returned to Sublime Mountain on the last night of the year, which marked the Death of the Vulture, and she thought it might mark hers also. She burned with fever, her chest gurgled with every breath, and she ached as if she had been beaten with hammers all over. Blizzard after blizzard had assailed her ever since she left Meritorious Aspect.

  Had she been on any normal mission, she would never have started out. She would have stayed on in Huarache until blossom time, but the Butterfly Sword contract was both too vital and too dangerous. Any delay or departure from the plan might bring disaster. While she had lingered at Huarache, waiting for the perfect candidate to appear, runoff from the exceptional rains had raised North Water to a full spring flood, never expected in winter. The boatmen had demanded extortionate danger money to venture out on it, and the normally leisurely trip downstream to Meritorious Aspect had been completed in two nightmare hours.

  From there, a boat on the Grand Canal would take her back to Heart of the World, but the canal was already starting to freeze over, something that normally happened only in Ice Moon, if at all, and the abbess told her she was crazy to continue. The only person in the Good Land who would not accept that the weather had closed down travel was Lady Twilight’s lifelong client, the Empress Mother. Death was the only excuse for failure, and also the reward she assigned for it. So Twilight carried on with her journey as if her life depended on it, which it very well might. By then she had begun to cough. At the last sunset of the year, she reached the palace gate more dead than alive, in a palanquin that her bearers had dropped repeatedly as they struggled up the icy hill from Heart of the World. The guards were reluctant to admit an obvious invalid, even when she showed her imperial warrant, because sickness was never allowed near the Emperor. Entry to the Great Within was even more difficult. Senior eunuchs were summoned and at first failed to recognize her. Twilight screamed and wept and coughed her heart out, and finally won her way to her quarters. There she collapsed into bed under the frowns of two physicians.

  She did not truly expect to sleep on that night of all nights. No one did. The death of one year and the birth of the next were marked by the Festival of Snowy Owls, the white bird that flies in the time of darkness. It was celebrated with kites and the finest of all firework displays, needed to scare away demons. The Emperor provided the greatest barrage in the Good Land. People banged pots and danced
in the streets until dawn and the sky was filled with the sparks and smoke of the fireworks. If the real stars came to join in, that was an especially auspicious start to the year.

  Fed and drugged and warm at last, Twilight did sleep, for a space that somehow seemed to be half a year and yet no more than a few minutes. She was awakened by a shrill scream.

  “Why did you not tell me you were back?”

  What? Where? Who? Oh, horrors, a demon with a hideous painted face lit by subterranean fire … the Empress Mother in her festival finery, holding a lantern.

  “I asked you a question! How dare you return and throw yourself into bed before you have reported to me?”

  Twilight’s answer was a paroxysm of coughing that went on and on until she collapsed back on her pillow, gasping for breath. She had not known the Empress Mother to come calling on her since the murderous days of the Scorpion Summer. What could have gone wrong?

  “Now answer!” said her tormentor. “Quickly! It is very dangerous for me to stay here. I might catch your disease. Did you find him?”

  Twilight nodded and stretched vainly for the beaker of water. Reluctantly, the Empress Mother edged just close enough to pass it to her at arm’s length before quickly retreating.

  The background racket sounded like guns firing. Much pot beating and drumming. Just fireworks? No, those were gunshots. …

  “Well? Describe him!”

  “Perfect. Right age, size …” Moreover the boy bore so marked a resemblance to Zealous Righteousness that Twilight had even wondered if the late Emperor might have gone dragon hunting in the Chixi hills at about the right time. It would be very dangerous to ask, though. The Empress Mother would take umbrage at the implications. “More like his … father than … Just perfect.” Twilight went back to wheezing and gurgling.

  “Is he fertile?”

  “Didn’t wait to … find out. If he … isn’t, won’t be for … lack of trying.”

  “Didn’t you ask?” the Empress Mother snapped.