The Iron Khan (12 page)

What would be found at the other end remained to be seen. He was ashamed of his hope, that a spell would be found, not for the sake of Raksha and the akashi, but for his own: that he would have aid and not be forced to undergo his trials alone. His grandfather and the sensei would have told him that there was no shame in seeking aid, but Omi was young enough to feel it all the same, and old enough to recognize it in himself.

He’d be glad when they landed for purely practical reasons, too. Magic had its limits. His throat was parched and his eyes tired from squinting into sun and dust. He was aware of a cramp too, but reluctant to shift about too much on the crane’s back. So he concentrated on the land instead, and on the indigo-cerulean-sapphire feathers of the beautiful bird on whose spine he perched.

After a while, he began to fear that he’d missed the spot where the pagoda lay. The dunes all looked the same, and Omi had the dismaying impression that you could just fly round and round and never spot it. But then they passed over a high ridge of dune and the crane gave a croaking cry. A black spire rose from the desert, in front of a crescent lake of startlingly clear hue. There was a line of trees. It looked, in the middle of that dusty expanse, a cool and inviting place. Omi, overcome with relief, directed the crane downward.

Climbing from its back, he was immediately struck by the silence. There was no wind. The desert was completely still, not a grain of sand moving. Omi, enchanted by the quiet, walked down to the shore of the lake, which curled in its half-moon shape around the base of a dune. It was close to sunset now and the sky was a deep green, like water. Omi knelt and ran a hand through the water of the lake: it was cool to the touch and not at all stagnant. Toward the center of the crescent, a school of fish flicked and were gone.

Omi took a deep breath and released it. There might be enemies here, but he found it difficult to believe. He turned and studied the pagoda. Dark wood and stone, a sturdy construction. A white pennant, quite plain, drooped from its peak, and he glimpsed a great bronze bell. A long gallery led around the interior of the pagoda, surrounding what was obviously a courtyard. Omi walked toward the pagoda and just as he reached the oak doors which lay beneath the gallery, the bell clanged once, making him jump. His hand reached toward the bow, then away.

No voice spoke, and yet Omi knew that he had to explain himself. Aloud, into the desert silence, he said, “I have come from the akashi. I am in need of help.”

The doors opened, creaking with age. Omi hesitated, then went inside. The courtyard was also quiet. An immense stone basin stood in the middle of it, and Omi could smell incense. He looked around the upper stories of the gallery but there was no one to be seen. Then a voice spoke, clearly, into his ear, “Come.”

“Where are you?”

“Go up.”

Spotting a flight of steps at the far end of the courtyard, Omi did as he was told and found himself on the wooden boards of the gallery.

“The third room,” said the voice.

Very well. Omi walked along the gallery to the third door, and entered.

The room was empty. The door seemed to be its only entrance, for there were no shutters. Black-paneled wood shone in the light of a single lamp, casting shadows to all four corners of the room. A book sat on a small lacquered table, its crimson covers stiff with age.

Omi had not been trained for nothing. He said to the book, in amazement, “You spoke to me!”

“Yes,” said the Book. “I am alive.”

“Are you a book of spells?”

“I am a book of making,” the Book said. “Why have you come here?”

“I’m looking for help,” Omi said. He told the book about the Khan, about the akashi.

When he had finished, the Book said, “Sit down.”

Omi did so, on a small bench to the right of the table.

“Do not touch me,” the Book warned. “I can unmake you.”

Omi, who would in any case have considered it an unpardonable liberty, assented.

“Lean forward,” the Book said. “And watch.”

Omi did as he was told. Later, he thought how naïve he had been, but it had not even occurred to him to disobey. He watched as the book’s cover opened and he was, immediately, within the land.

It was as though he had been disembodied and stretched out. He was everywhere at once, standing on the glacial summits of the mountains above Urumchi, amidst the grit of the desert dust in the deepest Taklamakan. He was water in a pool in the Imperial palace, far to the east, and a spire of rock above a winding river. He was city and stone and forest.

When the Book snapped shut, Omi reeled back, gasping and fighting for breath.

“Now,” the Book said. “Do you see what I am?”

“You’re — everything?” Omi corrected himself. He wasn’t thinking straight. “You’re China?”

“I am the Book of the land, and of Heaven, which mirrors the land. I told you. I can make and unmake.”

“How old are you?”

“I came into being when the land came into being. I have had other shapes,” the Book explained.

“So — if you are the land, and you can — create it? You can change things, yes? Could you change a land-based spell?”

“If you want to do that,” the Book said, “then you must enter the land and do so yourself. That is the price you must pay.”

“How do I do that?”

“I will show you,” the Book said.

•

He stood at the edge of the desert. It was night, and the stars burned and blazed like fire. Behind him, the little lake and the pagoda were invisible, but he knew they were there. Deep within, he also knew that he was still sitting in the third room of the gallery, while his consciousness ranged through the world that the Book contained.

“Choose your shape,” the Book said.

“I don’t — ” Omi started to say.

Then there was a blur in the air and Grandfather was standing before him. He bowed — not to Omi, the latter realized, but to the Book. “Thank you for permitting my humble presence.”

“You’re welcome,” the Book said mildly.

To Omi, Grandfather said, “Our ancestors came from the north, from the mountains. This was their totem.” He extended a hand and a snow leopard appeared, pacing.

“Then I choose,” Omi said. Immediately he felt his muscles begin to shift and change, his face elongating, the bristle of fangs within his gums. His fingers prickled, became claws. Omi dropped to all fours.

“Now go!” Grandfather said. Omi raced out into the desert, splayed paws scattering sand. Even at the height of the sensei’s training, he had never felt so connected to everything else: this must be what it was like to be an animal, a sense of place so strong that little else was needed beyond the basic drives of food and mating. Territory was part of this, and so was the maintaining of it. For the first time, Omi, with his remaining fragment of human awareness, understood that self-consciousness is a two-edged sword, dividing us from the world as greatly as it allows us to comprehend ourselves.

But leopards don’t do reflection. Omi ran on and the landscape of the Book unfolded and flowed around him, coalescing and condensing.

He needed to find the spell itself, the spell that bound Raksha and the akashi to place. He didn’t know what it looked like, or how it smelled. He would, the Book had told him, know it when he came across it, but Omi was doubtful. However it was not, he had been given to understand, in the caves where the akashi lived. It had been cast out, and then taken away, to make sure that they could not stumble across it, and reverse its effects.

But where? With all China to look in, Omi’s spark of consciousness felt despair. He had to trust the Book to give him a clue, and indeed, the Book did. Coming up over the next ridge, Omi saw a forest spreading below and the distant gleam of mountains far beyond. Omi stood on the ridge and searched. An odd smell on the wind — magic? — and the glitter of light amid the trees. Omi headed down, bounding over the boulders to the treeline, and soon was among groves of trees he did not recognize. Orchids hung in clusters on the branches, and the stars shone high above, and yet somehow it was not a beautiful place, but sinister. It felt anomalous and wrong, inserted into the natural world of the Book like a page from another, darker text. Omi’s fur prickled as he headed toward the light, and then he came out into a clearing. A building stood there: a squat stone temple. The statues of two demons stood by its entrance, scimitars upraised.

Except they weren’t statues. As soon as they caught sight of Omi, they roared and charged forward. Omi, warrior though he was, might have been tempted to take flight into the trees, but not so his totem. He gave a snarl and threw himself under the nearest blade, catching the demon around the waist with his spiked paws. Disemboweling proved to be a brief and exhilarating process, Omi turning over as he’d seen the temple cats do. One kick and the demon lay still. That left the second one, and Omi made another choice. He snapped back into human shape, picked up the fallen demon’s scimitar, and clashed blades.

The demon was massive, like a boar. Its tusked face snarled, its little pig eyes glinted. It gave a grunt as Omi’s blade met its own. Its sheer strength made Omi stagger backward, catching his foot on a log. Rather than trying to save himself, Omi went down into a roll and then back up, just under the demon’s blade. He scythed out with the scimitar and even at this limited range it bit through the demon’s armor. Hissing golden blood spilled forth and Omi stifled a cry as it burned his hand. He feinted, the demon struck and the blade whistled past Omi’s ear as Omi brought his own blade around and struck off the demon’s head.

The demon chuckled soundlessly as his head flew across the glade, scattering drops of gilded fluid, and kept chuckling when it landed. The little black eyes were still alive, filled with greedy humor. He watched Omi as the warrior ran toward the temple steps. Glancing from right to left, Omi sprang into the building.

Once inside, it took him a moment to find his bearings. The temple seemed much larger than it had from the outside, an echoing hall whose columns reached into the distance. Used to magic, Omi was wary but not deeply perturbed. He did not, however, know where to start looking. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the low light, he saw that it was less a temple and more of a library. Books lined shelves along both sides of the room, leather-bound texts and ancient scrolls and parchments. It even smelled like a library, despite the statue of a god at the end of the room. After his experiences with the last lot of statues, Omi wasn’t going to take any chances. With the scimitar still in his hand, he made his way toward the god.

He was not very familiar with the Chinese pantheon, but there was something recognizable about the figure that sat on the plinth at the top of the hall. He’d seen it before — Omi searched his memory and at last recalled the occasion.

A side street in Singapore Three, a baking, broiling summer day. Omi had been sent to the city on a mission for the sensei and he was not enjoying the experience. It was a long way from the cool and the quiet of the mountains. With a sigh, Omi thought of the pine-scented breeze and the breath of snow, and as the heat and dust and the smell of badly maintained drains threatened to overwhelm him, he came across a temple.

It was a small place, much older than the city that surrounded it. Singapore Three had roared up in a handful of years, swallowing the little villages and townships that had scattered the shore, but fragments of them still remained, persisting in between the high rises and tenement blocks like old teeth in a row of gleaming new dentures.

This temple was no exception. Its façade was wooden, covered in bleached and peeling blue paint. But incense smoldered up from the little shrine by the door and there were fresh flowers in a vase. The temple was still alive. Omi thought of darkness and peace and pushed the door. It opened soundlessly, and inside were statues to two gods: the God of Writing and the God of War.

The deities glowered at one another, as if displeased at being obliged to share living space (later, Omi discovered that this actually was the case, and in the world-beyond, Writing and War rarely spoke to one another, one being in Hell and the other in Heaven, and then only under protest). Their sharing the temple had come about through lack of funds and planning permission, apparently, but whatever the reason, here the two were, glaring at one another.

Now, in another realm entirely, Omi found himself standing before the God of Writing, in his own lavish temple. He bowed.

“You fought my demons,” the god said in a voice like a bell. “Impressive. Are you a warrior?”

“Yes. From Japan.” Best get that out of the way immediately, Omi thought. He didn’t know how a Chinese god would react to a Japanese warrior.

“And you are a cat?”

“It is my totem.”

“I see. Why did you come here?”

“I came to search for a spell,” Omi said. He explained.

“And you were sent by a book?” The God of Writing had a smooth bronze face, quite impassive. Omi could not tell where the voice was coming from, since the god’s lips did not move.