The Iron Khan (18 page)

Omni told him about the plane.

“I didn’t see that,” Zhu Irzh said. “But you could be right. The stars would be the same, wouldn’t they?”

“More or less.”

“I’ve gone back in time before,” said the demon. “To a village. But that was north of here.”

“Time seems very loose in the desert,” Omi said. “I suppose we’ll just have to live with it. I’m more worried about the ifrits.”

“I haven’t seen any so far.”

“I know. That’s what worries me.”

After his previous experiences, the desert seemed too quiet, too peaceful — and yet there was still that air of waiting, as though they walked through something that was itself alive. Omi kept expecting ifrits to come shrieking over the next dune, but all he saw were long-tailed desert vermin and the occasional silent glide of owls. After three hours or so, during which Omi’s companions spoke little, Roerich suggested that they camp for the night. They set up a rudimentary encampment around a fire at the base of one of the dunes. It felt too exposed to Omi, but there was no other choice.

When they had gathered enough scrub for a blaze, the demon reached out a hand, but Roerich stopped him.

“Wait. Don’t do magic here. It’s too risky.”

“Okay,” Zhu Irzh said, peaceably enough, and produced a cigarette lighter from his pocket. They sat around the little fire, which flickered blue in the moonlight, and ate some of the bread that Roerich had brought with them. The fire might have been produced by ordinary means, Omi thought, but it wasn’t behaving like a proper fire. The demon eyed it uneasily.

“We’ll take it in turns to keep watch,” Roerich said.

“I’m not tired. I’ll take the first stint,” Omi offered.

“You’re welcome to it,” said the demon, yawning. He lay back into the embrace of the sand, crossed his legs at the ankle, and appeared to go straight to sleep. Roerich glanced at him with evident amusement, then said to Omi, “I’ll leave you to it. I might be dead but I still have to conserve my strength. Wake me in a couple of hours. Since our demonic friend is out for the count, I might as well take the second watch.”

But in the end, everyone was woken.

•

Omi had anticipated an ifrit attack. What he had not expected was to see the ifrit flapping over the edge of the dune like a windswept umbrella. It tumbled down the dune, sending sand cascading in all directions, emanating a thin shrieking. By this time not only Omi, but also Roerich and the demon were on their feet and Zhu Irzh had drawn his sword.

The ifrit reached the bottom of the slope and lay still. Close to, Omi could see its prehistoric origins in the line of wing and the tiny, useless claws that lay at the tip. These creatures were ancient, summoned from some unimaginable but mortal past by desert mages, also in the very-long-ago. Ancient or not, Omi wished they had been allowed to become decently extinct.

Zhu Irzh poked the ifrit with the toe of his boot before Omi could stop him. It did not move.

“Be careful,” Omi said. “They’re cunning.”

“So am I.”

Roerich sat on his heels a short distance from the ifrit, and studied it. “No, it’s dead,” he said, after a moment. “It’s beginning to disintegrate.”

He was right. Seconds later, the ifrit was no more than a bundle of leathery gristle, and a minute after that, even less. Soon, a sparse pattern of dust lay on the desert floor and Omi caught sight of the ifrit’s vestigial spirit ascending into the heavens, a single spark, soon gone.

“Well,” said Roerich, straightening up. “Whoever did that knew what they were doing.”

“And whoever did that,” Omi murmured, “isn’t far away.”

They fanned out, taking care not to lose sight of one another. Omi himself went up and over the dune, sidling sideways like a cat against the slippery sand, while Roerich and Zhu Irzh went along its sides. Omi’s shout, however, soon brought the others running.

“What the fuck?” Normally soft-spoken, even Omi was driven to profanity.

“Where did it come from?” Zhu Irzh said, wild-eyed. “I didn’t see that when we camped.”

The city lay on the other side of the dune: immense, reaching as far as the eye could see. Its marble walls shone in the moon’s glow; its turrets towered toward the stars. Banners fluttered from their pagoda-summits, and from the highest tower a call rang out over the city like a night-bird’s cry, warning and shrill. The city faded, as if summoned back into the substance of the sands, and then there was only the empty desert air. Omi stifled a cry of protest, but it was too late: the city was gone.

“Agarta,” Roerich said, with a hint of satisfaction.

“What?” said Zhu Irzh. “Never heard of it.”

“One of the great lost cities of the Gobi,” Roerich said. “Built before the Tokarians, before any of the current desert peoples. Its twin was Shambhala.”

“I thought that was a myth,” Zhu Irzh said.

“People would say the same about you.”

“It was beautiful,” Omi breathed.

“Yes,” Roerich said. “Men have spent their lives craving Agarta after a single glimpse of its towers, have laid down their bones in the desert in search of it. Don’t be one of them, Omi.”

“So why did it appear now?” the demon asked.

“I suspect the ifrit blundered into it. It comes and goes. Like its twin, it’s woven into the fabric of the desert’s landscape. But they know how to deal with ifrits in Agarta.”

“Somehow,” Zhu Irzh said, “I doubt I’d be welcome in those marble walls.”

“You might be surprised. It’s the home of the Masters, or one of them. They tend to see beyond normal distinctions.”

For Omi, sleep was out of the question after that. Rather than reviving the dying fire, they buried the ashes and moved on. By this time, the short desert night was almost over and the eastern sky was glowing bright indigo. The city did not reappear.

It was difficult to stop staring into the shadowy expanse of the Sea of Night as though it contained answers. It did, just not in the way that Chen wanted it to. The Celestial crew of the war-junk worked with quick, grim determination, hauling on the junk’s insubstantial sails to keep it tacking on a course that Chen estimated to be directly into the middle of the Sea — if it could be said to have a middle. Chen waited impatiently until a faint shout from the crow’s-nest indicated that Kuan Yin’s ship had been sighted. It weighed anchor in the billowing clouds of the Sea, ghost-white.

The goddess herself was waiting on the deck.

“Wei Chen.” She gave the slightest inclination of her head, a sign of apology. Chen didn’t expect this from a goddess, and it was gratifying.

“Goddess.”

“We’ve traced them,” the girl standing next to Kuan Yin said. For a moment, Chen thought it was Miss Qi who stood there, then realized that she was another Celestial warrior.

“Good. Where are they?”

“They’ve traveled through a rift in the Sea of Night. They’re in another Hell, but we don’t know which one.”

“That’s — not good,” Chen said. There had to be thousands of Hells, some of them no larger than a single person. He’d heard of such things.

“But you can follow them through. If you wish to take the risk, I mean — ”

“I’ll take it,” Chen told her. He’d gone further than this for Inari. And Mhara had sanctioned it — even when he’d already signed Chen up for another job. The Emperor must be impartial, and this suggested to Chen that Inari, or rather, their child, had become a priority.

Once more, the goddess bowed her head. “Very well. I cannot go with you. We must go on, to the shore of Heaven.”

“What happened to the Empress’ boat?” Chen asked.

“Gone.”

“Do you know where?”

“It may be that it has traveled to the same place.”

“We’re going to need the warship,” Chen said.

•

Standing on the prow of the war-junk, he watched as the rift grew nearer. It had only recently become visible, expanding through the cloudy shadows as a line of light, and Chen’s heart had leaped when he saw it. The warrior who captained this ship, Li-Ju, came to stand by his side: a tall man, armored, with a drooping iron-gray moustache.

“I have sailed the Sea of Night for over a hundred years by human reckoning and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I’ve only traveled on the Sea on a few occasions,” said Chen, “but neither have I. It seems the walls between the worlds are breaking down.”

“Is that surprising?” Li-Ju remarked. “With war between Heaven and Hell, and even trouble within Between, one cannot wonder that the fabric of the weave is becoming torn. Previously, all believed as the Emperor Himself believed; all was seamless and whole. Now, the universe mirrors our disagreements.”

Chen looked at him curiously. “You don’t agree with what the new Emperor is doing?”

“I question the wisdom of the action,” Li-Ju said, after a pause, “not the wisdom of the Emperor, but I think it is necessary all the same.”

The rift was widening, as if reflecting Li-Ju’s thoughts. Through it, Chen could smell spice, a warmth.

“You must strap yourself down!” Li-Ju called. “This could be rough.”

Chen seized a rope and with the captain’s help, they lashed themselves to the railing. Now the rift was directly ahead and Chen could see sunlight, a welcome change from the shadows of the Sea of Night. But the junk was starting to plunge and list like a bolting horse, and a moment later Chen glanced over the side to see the clouds of the Sea pouring down through the gap like rapids.

“Hang on!” Li-Ju cried. Along the deck, crew members were scrambling about the rigging, securing themselves with ropes and making sure that the sails remained as steady as possible. One of the booms swung free, hurtling over the deck, which was mercifully unpopulated. Chen tasted a different air, so strong that it was like a mouthful of wine. Then the light was all around them as they shot down the rift and into another world.

The sense of violation was unexpectedly powerful. Chen knew, at some fundamental level of his being, that this should not be possible — or, if possible, should not be allowed. It was similar to the sense that he’d had on entering the realm of Between, that liminal place that was neither Heaven nor Hell nor Earth itself: a transgression, that might in some manner be reflected in his own soul, a tear, a scar.

The junk was shaking as if it might rip itself apart and Chen was conscious of a flicker of fear: normally, he was not afraid of death (difficult, when one has visited all the places that one is likely to end up in the afterlife), but he did not like the thought that if he were to expire, his soul might be trapped in this other Hell. One could trust Kuan Yin to help only so much and it seemed that the goddess had distanced herself from the situation, Grimly, Chen clung to the rope and looked back.

The war-junk was almost through the gap. As Chen watched, the rift in the air began to close, first slowly, and then with appalling speed. Seconds later, it was gone and there was only serene blue sky.

“Well,” said Li-Ju at his side. “We’re still in one piece.” Crew members were running about, checking that the junk was intact.

“And nothing waiting for us on the other side,” Chen added.

“Nothing yet.”

Indeed, the sea that surrounded them was as empty as the Sea of Night itself. Unlashing himself from the rail, Chen went around to the other side of the ship. There was an island, a little round curve arching up out of the sea. Unconsciously echoing the earlier experience of Inari, Chen knew that although this might look like Earth, it was not.

“I think we should make for land,” Li-Ju said. “Wherever the Empress has gone, it seems the most likely objective.”

Chen was not sure that he agreed with this conclusion, but it was not his boat. He inclined his head in agreement and waited, tense, as the crew hauled the great sails around and the warship headed for the island.

Banquo was a solicitous host, but Inari found herself fretting. She was worried about the houseboat, about Chen, but most of all, about the baby. What if no one could find them? What if Banquo could not, despite his protestations, get a message through to Mhara? He said that a message had been sent, and when Inari had asked how this had been done, the pirate captain had informed her that it had been sent by bird.

“We tend to rely on email,” Miss Qi said, gloomily.

Banquo laughed. They were sitting in the captain’s cabin, around a table that was strewn with maps. Inari tried to get a good look at these, as much out of interest as self-preservation, but the maps were strange: their content altered from moment to moment, coastlines shifting and changing as she watched. A tiny line-drawing of a sea-serpent swam up through blue-stained parchment and was once more gone.

“We have no such technology here,” he said. “We have no need of it.”