The Iron Khan (20 page)

“Nicholas!” he cried, and again, “Nicholas!”

The first time, the name was swallowed by the howl of the wind. On the second occasion, it rang out into a sudden silence.

“Roerich?” Zhu Irzh said aloud. He lowered his arm. The sand had gone. Only a faint shower of dust from the sleeve of his coat pattered to the floor. Zhu Irzh looked up at a towering marble wall. He stood on flagstones, so tightly joined together that you could not have slipped a hair between them. The air smelled of roses, and somewhere, like the sound of a fountain, someone was playing a lute.

He had found his way into Agarta. Or, more likely, Agarta had rescued him. Zhu Irzh breathed a sigh of uneasy relief. But what about Roerich, and Omi? There were signs of life, anyway, and even if he’d somehow been saved from the sand by accident, he’d still been saved. This was a city of the Enlightened: Would they know what to do with a demon in their midst? Feeling out of place, Zhu Irzh started walking in the direction of the lute.

After perhaps ten minutes’ walk, he could see why the city had exerted such a hold over Omi. It was far beyond the merely pretty. Everything seemed perfectly proportioned. There were no awkward angles, no out-of-place vistas. The eye was led harmoniously from one splendor to the other and yet it was never dull. Roses were everywhere, cascading down the sides of the marble turrets. As Zhu Irzh walked, a nightingale began to sing, tremulous at first, and then with more confidence. Above, the sky had started to lighten. The demon made his way into a courtyard, reached through a round moon-gate under a fall of blossoming jasmine. The sound of the lute was growing clearer and then he saw the lute player: a middle-aged woman in a blue robe that fell like water around her feet. She did not look up as the demon approached, though his feet rang out on the flagstones. She finished her piece with a calm flourish, then said, “Seneschal Zhu Irzh.”

The demon blinked. “You know who I am?”

“Why, of course,” the woman said. It was hard to place her. Her hair was a steely gray, bound in a long braid, and her flat, calm face and folded eyes could have been Chinese, or something entirely different, Siberian, perhaps, or Native American. “The city told me you were here.”

“There was a sandstorm,” Zhu Irzh explained. “I was with someone — a man. Nicholas Roerich?”

“I know him.”

“We were separated. I’m worried about him.”

“The city will have collected him,” the woman said. “The desert is riven with storms — some natural, some not.”

“What makes the unnatural ones?”

“The ifrits conjure the sand.”

“But someone conjures the ifrits, am I right?”

“You are not wrong.”

“If Roerich’s here,” Zhu Irzh said, “I’d really like to speak to him. And there was someone else with us — he went missing.” Perhaps not tactful to mention that he’d done so because he’d become besotted by the city itself. “A young warrior, named Omi.”

The woman gave a slight frown. “If he is here, the city has not told me.”

That defused the demon’s suspicion that this person might be the city, an avatar, but maybe she was dissembling. “I need to find him,” Zhu Irzh said.

“Why?”

“He has something that’s important to me.” Zhu Irzh didn’t want to tell this woman any more than he had to — from what Roerich had said, the city was clearly on the side of light, but that didn’t mean they shared an agenda. It felt weird to be here at all; it didn’t make him as uncomfortable as being in Heaven had done, but it was certainly similar.

“I will try to find him for you,” the woman said. “But for now, come inside.” She rose in a watery swirl of robes and led the demon into a small pavilion. In it was a table, set with a number of plates and a large metal jug.

“Tea?”

Tea. In a supernatural, timeless city in the middle of the night. What the hell. “Shall I pour?” asked Zhu Irzh.

It occurred to him that it might not be wise to eat or drink anything. Mythologies of all the lands cautioned against doing so, and the fear that one might be trapped in such a world, anchored by physical desires. But Zhu Irzh had not heard of demons being so snared, and anyway, he was thirsty after all that sand. He sipped his tea, which was perfumed with jasmine, and waited while the woman went off on some unknown errand. Though she knew his name, she had not given him her own. Perhaps she did not have one.

Then someone walked quickly through the hangings of the pavilion and the demon looked up to see Roerich.

“Nicholas!” It surprised him a little to realize how pleased he was to see the man: it was like having Chen around, the feeling that somehow, everything would be all right.

“We seem to have been taken on board,” Roerich said. “Omi is here.”

“Is that a good thing? I mean,” the demon said hastily, “obviously I’m glad he’s okay. But isn’t it a bit like giving someone a drug to which they’re addicted?”

“I don’t know how it will affect him,” Roerich said. “I share your unease. It’s more likely to be a problem when he has to leave, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s at the Council chamber, apparently — I haven’t seen him yet. We’re to join him there.”

“The Council?”

“The Council of the Masters. Which includes Mistresses, by the way — you’ve met one of them, Nandini.”

When they stepped outside the pavilion, Zhu Irzh saw that it had become significantly lighter, with a morning softness to the air. “Nicer than the desert,” he remarked, as they walked through the rose garden.

“It’s got its own microclimate,” Roerich said. He pointed to a distant turret. “That’s the Council chamber.”

Now that dawn was coming, the demon was able to get a better sense of the city itself. Its harmoniousness was still evident, but its construction was certainly curious: it possessed no one form of architecture, but seemed assembled from all manner of buildings. Low-roofed cottages sat side by side with towering fortresses; pagodas sat next to humble dwellings. It should not have worked and yet, it did.

“The Masters are from all over the planet, remember,” Roerich said when the demon pointed this out. “They have the homes they knew in life.” He gestured to a temple held up by Grecian columns. “It mirrors our own history.”

“Weird.” But it worked, which was more than Zhu Irzh could say for Hell.

The way to the Council chamber led down a long, narrow street lined by marble walls. At the end of this, steps climbed in a semi-spiral up toward an ancient door: it looked like the medieval turrets Zhu Irzh had seen in pictures. Nandini stood on the steps, smiling.

“You’ve found it, good. I’m glad my instructions were adequate, Nicholas.”

Zhu Irzh was aware of a sudden, acute nervousness, occasioned, he was sure, by being in the wrong place. He told himself that he’d hung out with the Emperor of Heaven; after all, they were friends. So why feel so uncomfortable now? Nandini was watching him with a penetrating dark stare.

“You can’t help what you are,” she said. “You can help what you do with it.”

“Did you just read my mind?” Zhu Irzh demanded.

“I didn’t need to. It was clear from the expression on your face,” she said gently.

That obvious, eh? But the demon felt that whatever he tried to hide, these people would see through it. Nandini was different from the Celestials he had met — sharper, despite her outward serenity. More human, probably. Just be honest, the demon told himself. It didn’t come naturally, but anything less would be a mistake.

“Are you ready to go in?” Roerich asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

It was hard to see, at first. Nandini led them up a wide stone staircase, plain and without ornamentation, and this was clear enough. But then they were shown into the Council chamber itself and Zhu Irzh found it impossible to focus on any one thing. Later, in memory, it became a little clearer. He thought there were tall windows, arched and looking out onto a vista of snow-capped mountains, even though he knew that the city had been sitting in the middle of the desert. He thought, too, that there had been stone flags beneath his feet, and a round table, surrounded by high-backed chairs. And he seemed to remember that sitting in the chairs had been a variety of people, of many races and ages, but in memory their faces were blurred, like the photos used in news reports to protect people from being identified.

Nandini was clear enough, and so was Roerich — and so was Omi, sitting in a chair beyond the Council table, underneath an open window. He approached Zhu Irzh, smiling, and the demon was surprised to discover how relieved he was to see the young warrior.

“I owe you an apology,” Omi said in an undertone. “I shouldn’t have gone off like that — I put you both in danger.”

Zhu Irzh could tell that the young man was genuinely ashamed, so to save Omi face he said, “No worries. It turned out all right in the end. And if you hadn’t gone off, then we might all be under several feet of sand by now. Who knows?”

“Even so,” Omi said, but fell silent at a glance from Roerich. Zhu Irzh blinked, ducked his head, but still could not see the Council properly. He felt suddenly very small, like a child allowed at an adults’ dinner party. It had been a long time since Zhu Irzh had been a small child — several hundred years, in fact — and he did not relish the sensation.

A voice came from the Council table. “Demon, ghost, warrior.”

“That would be us,” Zhu Irzh said, overcompensating for nerves by flippancy.

“You’re carrying a spell,” the voice said.

“I won it in a fair fight,” Omi said, defensive.

“Can you help us take it to its rightful place?” Zhu Irzh said.

“You don’t understand,” Nandini said. “You see all that is around you, and you know that we saved you from the sand. But our power is limited.”

“That wasn’t what I understood,” the demon said.

“That is because you don’t know the wider picture. We are being rewritten.”

“What?”

“The Book of Heaven has come to Earth,” Nandini told him. “Omi has spoken to it, done its bidding.”

“Was that wrong?” Omi asked. “I thought it was helping us against our enemy?”

“It is. But it has its own agenda. It has become displeased with its home in Heaven. It thinks that things need to be — revised. The spell that you’re bearing will accomplish that — when you release the spell, it will enter reality and change it. Like throwing a stone into a pond — ripples will spread outward through time. The Khan may be removed, he may not, but what is certain is that the relationship between the worlds will be altered. The free concourse between the worlds will no longer be so open. You’re likely to find yourself back in Hell.” This last comment was directed at Zhu Irzh.

“Let me get this straight,” Zhu Irzh said. “This spell is our best chance of defeating the Khan, and you’re telling me that it’s likely to permanently alter the entire world?”

“Effectively, yes.”

Across the room, Omi shifted uncomfortably.

“Great. You said it could close the ‘concourse between the worlds.’ Why would this book want to do that?”

“Because Heaven’s become corrupted,” Roerich said. “The Book is one of Heaven’s guardians.”

“But I know the Jade Emperor. He’s a friend.” Too late it occurred to Zhu Irzh that having a demon as a personal acquaintance might not reflect all that well on Mhara, in the view of either the Book or Council. “Anyway, whatever. He’s an exceptional person.”

“But he has changed things,” Nandini pointed out. “And the Book doesn’t seem to approve of change.”

“Neither did the old Emperor. Look what happened there.” The demon stole a look at the Council, but found that his gaze slid off them, as if gliding on ice. His thoughts were moving too quickly for him to organize them properly, but one thing seemed relatively clear. “If the spell will have the effect that you think it will, then we can’t use it. We’ll have to think of something else.”

Without your help. Zhu Irzh had the wit not to express this thought aloud, but the whole situation reminded him of Chen’s dealings with Kuan Yin, in the earliest days of their working partnership. Then, Chen had only recently been cast out from the Goddess of Compassion and Mercy’s protection — a punishment for marrying a demon — but it seemed to Zhu Irzh that it was a similar issue. All of these deities, these masters and mistresses, wanted you to do their dirty work for them, without actually sullying their pristine hands. And if you failed, or didn’t conform to the strict dictates that they set, then you were history, even if it hadn’t been your fault. Hell was at least more honest, the demon thought, as he had considered on a number of occasions before.

Roerich wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, though. Zhu Irzh turned to his companion. “Nicholas. What do you think about all this? The best thing would be not to use the spell, yes?”

“I’d have agreed with you,” Roerich said unhappily, “if it hadn’t been for the fact that, as Nandini has just informed me, it’s already too late.”