The Eighth King (The White Umbrella Testament Book 1) Read online

  There was no point having a discussion with the Green Morning about the death of their man, not when it would take minutes to explain his identity, much less persuade them to let him through. He would leave that for a day when he could speak. Idly he tried something he had never done before: Held the Cerulean Sword and ordered it, with his mind, to speak. The Sword was not insensible of Gyaltsen’s efforts, and the noises it emitted sounded remarkably like words, but their hollowness was too grim for him to try to teach it.

  As the working populace endured the blight of mutism, so did the street prophets. Since the end of what right-thinking people now called the Regency, or the Interregnum, Gyaltsen had made it a habit to keep eyes on them, although it was rare that his own did the work—but, in silent streets, the gongs and cowbells they had recruited stood out more than their ragged shouts had on the days when men had voices. The prophets came in three main strains. There were the old King’s loyalists, who called themselves the Engineers in defense of the legitimacy of the King once known as Tenshing Sastha, now called the First, or the Eloquent, Regent. There were the Pretender’s loyalists, who called themselves the Ironmen for their candidate, and whom other partisans dubbed Barevines. And there were the ones who gave themselves no name, but whom all others called Wormbait. They dressed in green, but not in fighting wear as the brothers of the Green Morning did; their garb was rags, ill-fitting and badly dyed, to represent the poverty and chaos of Uä before White Tenshing’s coming. Their claim was that the line was broken at all branches, that no true King lived, that no man alive could win at Pongyo Gorge. Gyaltsen’s intelligence had reported the Lady Pema’s occasional attendance at one such prophet’s speeches, though to the General’s knowledge, it was not a topic she ever made much of in conversation. And Gyaltsen’s eyes outside his head had said that prophet, unique of all they knew, was a woman; and so, this prophet was whom Gyaltsen now examined, punctuating her huge, furious calligraphy with the jangling of a monk’s sounding staff.

  KINGS ARE MEN, Gyaltsen read. THE FAILURES OF KINGS ARE THE FAILURES OF MEN.

  DID THE SIXTH KING NAME A SEXLESS DRONE AS SON BECAUSE HE COULD NOT DOWER A DAUGHTER? PERHAPS. BUT THE LINE OF TENSHING WAS ALREADY BROKEN.

  DID THE FIFTH KING GET A BASTARD ON A WOODCHOPPER’S WIFE? PERHAPS. BUT THE LINE OF TENSHING WAS ALREADY BROKEN.

  DID THE FOURTH KING NAME THE WRONG CHILD OF THREE HIS HEIR? PERHAPS. BUT THE LINE OF TENSHING WAS ALREADY BROKEN.

  ASK IMJA ABOUT THE SECOND KING. ASK WHAT CHILD WAS TAKEN FROM THE PRIESTS WHEN WHITE TENSHING DIED. ASK WHAT CHILD RETURNED.

  THE REGENT’S BLOOD IS WEAK. THE LOGGER’S BLOOD IS WEAK. THE EUNUCH’S BLOOD IS WEAK.

  OUR BLOOD IS WEAK, AND THIN ENOUGH FOR WORMS TO DRINK IN RIVERS. THE HORROR OF OUR SLAUGHTER WILL HOLD DAWN AT BAY. THE SUN WILL COWER UNTIL THE WORM HAS HAD ITS FILL. NO WHITE KING’S BLADE WILL STOP IT. WISER THAN ME HAVE WRITTEN IT, AND I WRITE IT NOW.

  DO NOT MAKE YOUR PEACE. THERE IS NO PEACE TO BE MADE. DO NOT PREPARE. NO PREPARATION IS POSSIBLE. ONLY KNOW, AND BE THANKFUL THAT YOU KNOW.

  Gyaltsen was not thankful, nor did he feel he knew. As he left for the Orchid Palace, the prophet had rolled up the immense scroll on which she had written the characters, and pinned a new one to her easel to resume; some lackey of hers ran through the crowds, taking bids on the new relic. It was no purely spiritual venture. Yet Gyaltsen’s mind, which searched always for contingencies, now dwelt on one he had not yet considered. No, he could not say he was thankful; but he could, perhaps, concede a debt.

  When he returned to his chambers, Gyaltsen sent his aide with two letters, then meditated for a short time before the icon of the Green Crescent Deity—not the breathtaking statue that belonged by right to the King’s General, but an ill-used paper painting that he kept under a heavy book on his desk. He waited until his breath and mind had slowed, then gently allowed himself to visualize the Five Comets formation. When he did this over the table in the war room, the comets were white, and flashed easily across the terrain intervening between Rassha’s five gates and the main mass of the Pretender’s forces on the river. But now green comets slogged through a greenish-black sky as thick as tar. The graceful forms and precision of their dance had faltered, grew unbalanced; the points of impact with the enemy came laborious and ragged, their efficacy damped by compensatory maneuver. The same uneven labor tinged his breath. He fought the urge to open his eyes and write. That would come later; now was the time to commit the vision to memory. Even his troubled half-trance could preserve the terrible unfolding of the tactical map as it would happen in an indefinite and impenetrable night; the world’s impingements on his senses would shatter the vision and leave him with fragments.

  A rap came at the door, and sharp tarry splinters fell to the floor of his mind.

  Gyaltsen fought the urge to rage; the knock announced a senior woman of the court, and if it was who he thought it was, she was invited. He called out, “See her in,” or tried, but his voice was not equal to the task. He rose and opened the door himself, issuing the correct abasement to Mother-of-Daughters. She smiled as she entered, carrying in the same sort of slate he did.

  The chamber door closed. Mother-of-Daughters looked at Gyaltsen’s icon of the Green Crescent Deity, which was leaned at eye level on the base of the statue. HAVE I INTERRUPTED YOU? she wrote.

  I COURTED INTERRUPTION, wrote Gyaltsen. DID THE PRIESTS GIVE YOU THE SLATE?

  YES. THEY WRITE THAT THE BLIGHT WILL SOON BE OVER. BUT FOR THOSE OF US WHO WILL STARVE AND GO NAKED IF WE DO NOT GIVE ORDERS, THEY MADE ACCOMMODATIONS.

  Gyaltsen nodded to indicate his satisfaction. FORGIVE MY BLUNTNESS. HOW IS THE INTEGRITY OF THE LINE OF TENSHING?

  Mother-of-Daughters frowned, narrowed her eyes, and looked half-sideways at Gyaltsen: A request for elaboration.

  I HEARD. Gyaltsen erased. SAW A PROPHET TODAY. IS THE LINE OF TENSHING BROKEN AT THE RED?

  Her hackles rose; her eyes flitted around the room as though assassins might lurk in any corner. Gyaltsen supposed they might. I BELIEVE IT MAY BE, she wrote at last.

  ON WHAT GROUNDS?

  IMJA HAS ALWAYS WANTED UÄ. THEY WOULD TAKE THE LONG VIEW. I THINK THEY WOULD FEED THE WHOLE KINGDOM TO GOATS IF THEY COULD RULE THE SHIT.

  Gyaltsen laughed out loud, a sound that echoed in the chamber. He and Mother-of-Daughters shared a look; but when they tried to speak, their voices still defied them. MY LAUGH UGLY ENOUGH TO FOOL THE BLIGHT, he wrote.

  OR STRONG ENOUGH TO CRACK IT.

  NOTHING IS STRONGER THAN DIAMOND, Gyaltsen wrote, punctuating the sentence’s end with a stare as diamond-like as he could make it.

  Mother-of-Daughters smiled, and that too was diamond-hard. NOR WEAKER THAN PAPER. YET YOU WORSHIP A PAPER ICON.

  BOUGHT WITH THE WAGE FROM MY FIRST WEEK IN SERVICE, Gyaltsen wrote. SPLENDOR DISTRACTS ME.

  DOES THE DEITY SPEAK TO YOU?

  NEVER YET. BUT HIS PRESENCE HELPS ME PLAN TACTICS. He hesitated, looked; she seemed to want him to go on. FIVE COMETS FORMATION MEANT FOR DAY. BUT FOURTH BLIGHT IS NIGHT. DISTANCES GROW, NAVIGATION UNCERTAIN. PRECISION MANEUVERS MORE RISKY. AMBUSHES MORE DEADLY. MUST REFORGE WITH THESE IN MIND.

  PERHAPS YOU WILL NOT FIGHT DURING THE FOURTH BLIGHT.

  BUT WE MUST BE READY. Gyaltsen’s vision blurred; he blinked. EVEN THOUGH ALL MAY BE LOST.

  EVEN IF THE LINE IS BROKEN, wrote Mother-of-Daughters, DO NOT LET THE WAILS OF THE PROPHETS CRIPPLE YOU. THOSE WHO SURVIVE THE WORM’S COMING WILL NEED A STRONG HAND TO LEAD THEM.

  I WILL DO MY DUTY, said Gyaltsen, BUT I FEAR I AM IMMUNE TO COMFORT.

  I AM CALLED AWAY, said Mother-of-Daughters. WE MAY NOT SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN.

  Wilt not stay, and leave me my mountain man for the battle? Gyaltsen wished to say—but it would take too long to write, the labor of drawing characters only underlining his already evident impuissance. Instead he gave a military nod. She smiled, rose, and made the Abasement to a Subordinate on the Eve of a Long Separation. “Perseve
re,” she said, and left his chambers.

  The answer to Gyaltsen’s second letter came before he could settle down to meditation again. It was as terse as he expected.

  The King and his ministers are indisposed due to the urgency of various matters raised by the Second Blight. Please do not hesitate to summon me if any consultation on the elements of military strategy is required. Otherwise, be so kind as to suspend all but absolutely necessary military activity until measures can be taken to reduce agitation in the collective psyche and restore normal means of communication.

  Yours most cordially,

  Akar

  The Elegant Reed (his style)

  Mandarin of the Ninth Rank (dendr., cer., G.S.)

  Undersecretary for Social Harmony in the Precincts of the Great South Plain

  Gyaltsen spent a long time tearing the letter into very small pieces.

  The Painted Monk

  atang did not remember the walk back to the farmhouse; nor creeping, grassy-toed, across the sleeping bodies of Thogmey and his family; nor yet replacing her sword by the bed where she had seized it and slipping back between the roughspun sheets. But when Netten woke her, the night’s chill still lingered in her bones, and there were mud and grass stains on the knees of her trousers and on the sheets and blankets where her feet had been, and Lin Gyat was gone.

  Netten showed her the ruin of the frame and oiled leather that had formed the window to the master bedroom. “I remember when he left,” said Netten, “but not when he came back. And yet, he must have returned with some violence, to snap the struts and burst the window inward.”

  Datang looked out past the wreckage. “It is his shirt, and jacket, and trousers, all in a trail.” A thought crossed her mind. “Where are his underbindings?”

  Netten gave a distracted chuckle. “Bind the Python of Degyen? You and I are not acquainted with the same boxer, I think.” He looked around the room. “His rifle is gone,” said Netten, “and his club.”

  “No doubt he feared the women who would throng around the Python of Degyen. Too many of them could smother even a mighty serpent. But, Netten, I must tell you and the Eager Edge of what transpired last night.”

  She did so over breakfast, the farm family hanging on her words with openmouthed amazement—save Thogmey himself, who beamed ever wider as the events escalated in improbability. “The Deity Who Waits has blessed my farm,” he said, “as I conjectured to you, Regent, a year and a little bit ago.”

  “Has that blessing any standing against the doom of Uä?” asked Lin Yongten mildly. “If you surmise it has, plowman, perhaps I might stay a while.”

  Thogmey went silent at that. Netten glared. Datang rolled her eyes.

  Before breakfast was over, a young boy from a neighboring farm had run over with news. He had to pant a minute before he could deliver it. “A naked giant, with two rifles, one in each hand! He nearly battered down our door, demanding clothes. We told him we had nothing to fit—you know my father,” the boy said to Thogmey, “he is built like a potato, and not a large potato. But we gave him a sheet. As soon as he tied it around himself, though, he roared like a tiger and began scratching himself all over! He ripped the sheet in two before he left. I’ve never seen man or beast run that fast.”

  Netten could not suppress a chuckle. “The man chases horses for sport—I had forgotten. When did he come by?”

  “Before sunrise,” said the boy. “Father wouldn’t let anyone leave the house for three hours. And I had to go by Wangdu’s dzo farm first. He has more to lose.” He looked around the room, embarrassed. “More stock, I mean. Wangdu didn’t answer the door when the giant came. He saw the giant carry away one of his calves, though.” The boy grew thoughtful at the image. “I wonder where he put the rifles while he was carrying the calf?”

  “Pray you never learn,” said Datang. “Where did he go, when he left you?”

  “South to Wangdu’s.”

  “Then it is there we go when our meal is done,” said Netten.

  Thogmey’s good-byes were heartfelt, though it was impossible to miss his relief at seeing the three remaining fighters go. His wife was even less subtle in her satisfaction; but their daughter followed Datang with wide, glittering eyes until the friends were too far away for her to see.

  Wangdu the rancher described a scene in similar terms as the boy—though he was large and fat, so he could offer a pair of pants that might have fit Lin Gyat. But the giant pulled them off, too, itching furiously, then ran down Red Tenshing’s Road and southwest.

  “It was kind of the Deity to curse him in the spring,” Lin Yongten said as they rode away. “But I hope the Deity has not forgotten that winter will come again.”

  “What purpose to keep him naked?” asked Datang. “Surely the Python of Degyen cannot be excessively interesting from the deific vantage.”

  “I would not speak for the gods’ interests, if I were you,” said Netten. “But I admit I share your perplexity.”

  The next morning, as they made preparations to leave their camp site and resume pursuit of their newly naturist fellow-armsman, the Second Blight overtook them. Datang and Lin Yongten were terrified for more than a moment, but Netten pointed south toward Degyen and all swiftly became clear. They worked out a crude system of nonverbal signals for danger, fatigue, and injury, then wasted no time in following Lin Gyat.

  They soon came on the remains of a huge fire, including a long branch that Lin Gyat had sharpened into a stick and roasted something on. There were a few dzo’s bones in the fire, and more on the road as the three friends proceeded, a new one decorating the scenery every thirty to forty minutes. Soon came a town; the schoolchildren refused to stay at their desks at the sight of a Green Morning brother, and they spent all morning drawing pictures of Lin Gyat’s rages for Lin Yongten. They drew him strangely, though, covered with stripes like a tiger or, depending on the quality of the artist, a tiger’s victim who had escaped the creature’s teeth but not its claws. Datang and Lin Yongten gave their best inquiring looks, but the moppets could not write well enough to convey their meaning; all they did was run their fingers in stripes over their own skin.

  They pressed on after that, camping on the road again. In the morning, they could speak, and in speaking speculated about the meaning of the stripes. “Perhaps he is wounded,” said Lin Yongten. “Or has been crawling through brambles, or been attacked by men with knives.”

  “They did not draw any blood coming from the wounds,” said Datang. “And why would he not stay and heal, if he were hurt?”

  “Why did he go in the first place?” said Lin Yongten. “It cannot have hurt him to stay with us, and the Red Mother knows he has never been reluctant to unlimber the Python of Degyen in your presence. Does he fear us now? Or is he so rattled by the curse that he simply has not thought to wait for our succor?”

  “Perhaps it is you he fears,” said Netten. Lin Yongten made a strange face. “But, from the Left Hand’s story, I would surmise that he is driven by the spirit consciousness awakened by the Deity Who Waits. If his soul truly is new to humanity, it will fear pain and shy away from powerful predators, as animals do. At the same time, it knows that nakedness is a terrible obstacle to advancement. Without clothes, a man is lost to civilization. This forecloses the greater acts of charity and kindness, and it is those acts Lin Gyat must commit if his soul is to accumulate great merit.”

  Datang frowned. “That is a cruel fate for him, then.”

  “It would be,” said Netten, “though that alone hardly makes it ungodly; but the Deity Who Waits is charged with emptying the hells of souls. He said himself, did he not, that he had no wish for Lin Gyat to redescend?”

  “I do not know how many souls are in the hells,” said Datang, “but I do not imagine that Envied of Snakes will be the last to leave them, whether he redescends or not. Perhaps the Deity Who Waits is preparing a very long-term lesson.”

  Netten shrugged. “Your point is just. It is not possible to know a Deity’s r
easons, nor yet his plans—not with certainty. Yet I suspect he means Lin Gyat to advance on the ladder of souls in this life. Raising a soul from the hells…” Netten was silent a moment, composing his words. “One ought not second-guess the godhead. But I was taught that the hells cling to their tenants—and the tenants, for their part, although they despise their torment, long pine for it when they are lifted. Like little children, they love even ill attention; spared the ministrations of the hells, they learn a horror of the world’s indifference.” He paused another moment. “For this reason, a demon newly promoted to the mortal world will live hundreds of animals’ lives—to blunt the pangs of hellsickness, that the transition to humanity may grow smoother.”

  “Without slighting your compassion,” said Datang, “still less your erudition—you must agree that Envied of Snakes is more than usually depraved.”

  “His appetites are large,” said Netten, “and he stints not in their pursuit for love nor common sense. But what merit must there be in Lin Gyat’s soul, that it could ascend from demon to human so quickly that it still pines for hell?”