Back | Next
Contents

Thirty-Six

The goddess did not accompany them back to the Night Harbor, as Zhu Irzh was expecting. Instead, she asked Chen and the demon to remain on deck, then closeted herself in the red lacquered room with her maid. The door remained closed for some time.

"What are they doing in there?" Zhu Irzh chafed. The atmosphere of the boat was really starting to get to him, causing a kind of deep psychic itch.

"I have no idea," Chen replied. "Discussing the situation, probably."

But when the door finally opened and the Celestial maiden stepped forth, she had changed. She now had about her an air of grave authority and presence, and her gaze was as depthless and dark as the Sea of Night itself.

"Goddess?" Chen said.

"A seed only," the maiden answered, and her voice was different, too, now having some of the timbre of Kuan Yin's own. Zhu Irzh had seen people download themselves, or parts of their psyches, into other people before, but he had rarely seen it done so smoothly. Usually the possessed were fuzzy around the edges.

"Can we go now?" he asked.

"Of course," the maiden replied, as though there had never been any question about it. Since becoming possessed, she seemed to have also taken on some of Kuan Yin's more fluid and mutable qualities. The maiden moved sinuously from the boat, and Zhu Irzh clambered after her.

The dock of the Night Harbor had filled up in their absence and was now crowded. There must have been a fresh consignment of souls released through the portals while Chen and the demon were on board. The souls looked confused: some wandered up to Kuan Yin's vessel and trailed wondering, wistful hands along its sides.

"We must be careful," the maiden said. "It would not be helpful if someone were to stow aboard." She spoke coolly, but Zhu Irzh caught sight of the sadness in her possessed eyes and knew that she would save them all if she could. Despite her remoteness, Kuan Yin, the Compassionate and the Merciful, was truly named.

Chen was already at the harbor master's hut, asking questions. When the maiden and Zhu Irzh reached him, he said, "The harbor master thinks he knows who she is. She's not in her original form, however. The dogs got to her when she reached the village."

"I can't understand why she didn't go onward to Hell," Zhu Irzh said. "She wasn't a good person."

"No, but she was murdered and that was probably enough to hold her here," Chen replied. "It gets complicated."

"So what happens now?" the maiden asked. "We go to the village?"

"Yes, but I'm reluctant to walk. It's too far and it's also dangerous. I'll have to try to arrange some transport."

"Leave it to me," the maiden said. She disappeared inside the harbor master's hut. Chen and the demon looked at one another.

"She's the goddess," Zhu Irzh said. "Best leave it to her."

But when the maiden emerged, her head was held high and her eyes were snapping. "Bureaucrats! Come with me!" was all that she said. Exchanging a further round of glances, Chen and Zhu Irzh followed meekly in her wake.

The transport that was to take them to Bad Dog Village proved to be a ramshackle coach, drawn by two mangy kylin lion-dogs. They stamped their fringed feet as the demon approached, tossed their manes and roared, enveloping the party in a wave of fetid breath.

"Lovely," Zhu Irzh said, eyeing them with minimal enthusiasm. "Couldn't they find anything better?"

"Apparently not," the maiden remarked. "I believe that man took actual delight in thwarting a deity. But I have so little jurisdiction here . . . We must take what we can get." She allowed Chen to open the door of the carriage and help her inside. "You will have to drive."

Chen glanced at Zhu Irzh. "Can you do it? I've no experience with these things."

"I can try," Zhu Irzh said, but he was not confident that the beasts would obey him. Chen hoisted the badger up, then clambered up beside him and watched as Zhu Irzh shook the reins, clucked, and failed to make the kylins budge. Eventually, with a lot of cursing and the use of a small, flicking whip, the beasts were prodded into movement and the carriage set off along the dock at a slow trundle.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Zhu Irzh asked.

"Not really, but apparently Kuan Yin does. Her avatar will give us directions."

"Strange," the demon mused. "You must have come here many times, and yet you retain none of it."

Chen grimaced. "Probably just as well. I don't like the Night Harbor, Zhu Irzh."

"I can see why." Zhu Irzh looked with distaste at the ghosts clamoring alongside them, their spectral hands brushing against his coat and the sides of the carriage. "What good do they think that will do?"

"They can sense the presence of the goddess," Chen said uneasily. "They're drawn to her."

"What, they think she might be able to give them special dispensation? Get them up to Heaven?"

"I have no idea. Maybe they're just like moths to a flame. Maybe it's me they're drawn to. After all, I'm still alive."

Zhu Irzh shook the reins, flicked the whip and the carriage picked up speed as they approached the outskirts of what passed for a settlement here. Chen leaned into the carriage and spoke to the maiden. Zhu Irzh heard a murmured reply.

"We need to head for the mountain road, apparently."

"And where might that be? There's a distinct lack of signs."

"Look," Chen said, and as he spoke the demon could see the mountains rising ahead, huge masses of shadow against the darkness. Somewhere high on a peak, he could see a wan light. "Do you think that's the village?"

"I don't know. Keep on this road and it'll take us into the hills."

As the carriage rolled along, Zhu Irzh saw that they were passing groups of souls, trailing drearily down from the mountains. Some were no more than children, clutching the hands of adult spirits, and many of them were old. Used to the exigencies of Hell as he was, Zhu Irzh repressed a shudder. What an afterlife, he thought. No wonder so many humans tried to make deals with Hell in order to avoid it. You would be much better off going to Hell straightaway: at least it was exciting, not this dull, elusive hinterland.

"Excuse me," he called down to one of the groups of souls. "Have you come from Bad Dog Village?"

"Yes, yes, a terrible place." One of the souls, an elderly man with the ravages of illness still plain in his face, was eager to complain. "We hurried through it, but we lost one of our number. The dogs kept him, it is said they eat spirits or hunt them for sport. And now we head for the boat and the peach orchards across the sea." A kind of peace suffused his worn features, blotting out the anxiety.

"We wish you good fortune and good sailing," Chen called down, and the demon drove on.

Gradually, he became aware that the sky, or whatever passed for it in the Night Harbor, was beginning to lighten. It became easier to see the fields and copses alongside the road, the remnants of farms and smallholdings.

"Who lives here then?" Zhu Irzh asked, puzzled. "Who would choose to farm such changing terrain?"

"I don't think they have a choice," Chen replied. "Some folk just get stuck. And perhaps some people don't want to face the journey, the razor bridge, dogtown—maybe they do choose to stay here. I don't know. I thought perhaps you would."

"I understand Hell and its workings," Zhu Irzh said. "But this country . . . I'm not familiar with it, after all, and why should I have taken an interest before now?"

Chen shrugged. Zhu Irzh drove on and at length the fields faded and gave way to rock and ragged outcrops. The air smelled of dust and decay. Zhu Irzh kept glimpsing bones from the corner of his eye, skeletal heaps by the side of the road, but when he looked, there was nothing there. He had not realized it was so quiet when the roar shattered the air. It reverberated from the rocks, making Zhu Irzh's head ring. The maiden gave a cry, quickly stifled, from within the carriage, and the kylins danced to a standstill and refused to go further.

"What was that?" Chen, his usual composure ruffled, clutched at the demon's arm.

"I don't know. What sort of things are you supposed to find in these mountains anyway?"

"I thought it was the home of the dogmen alone."

"I don't think that was a dogman. It sounded enormous."

"Look, let's just get on," Chen said.

"If I can get these things to move, we will."

Eventually he coaxed the kylins forward, but as they rounded the corner, something bounded down to stand in their path. It moved so swiftly that Zhu Irzh saw it only as a flicker against the rocks. The kylins reared, nearly overturning the carriage. Zhu Irzh and Chen both fought for control of the reins and hauled the kylins back.

"What is it?" the maiden cried.

"A thing," Zhu Irzh called back, with perfect truth.

He had never seen anything like the creature that now stood before them, bouncing slightly on four long legs. It was hairless and white, with a gaunt, tapering body and no sign of genitalia. Its narrow head was eyeless, with a slit for a nose and a gaping hole of a mouth, lined with teeth like a lamprey. Yet despite its unfamiliarity, it felt . . .known. He had experienced this thing before, and recently.

The maiden, disregarding Chen's warning shout, was scrambling down from the carriage to stand in the road.

"Heavenly Emperor," she said faintly. "Shur?" Her face was aghast, and abruptly Zhu Irzh remembered where he had met this thing before. It looked different, but he knew it. He would have paid good money to bet that this was the spiritual remnant of the immortal that Jhai Tserai had captured and held at the Farm. Next moment, his suspicions were confirmed. The thing's razor-sharp tongue shot out in the direction of the maiden and the creature charged.

 

Back | Next
Framed