The Silk Map by Chris Willrich

Author:Chris Willrich
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781616149000
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

Even Zheng left off her scroll work to see the bright, shimmering pieces of the dress set down upon the black deck. The patch that Quilldrake had worn lay above the lower portion retrieved from the grave. There was a thin strip from the second piece that ascended to near Quilldrake’s fragment. They touched in just one point, a place representing a mountain at the edge of a mist-filled chasm.

Katta kept one hand on the ship’s wheel as he tossed a rolled-up third fragment to Gaunt. This was a fragment that would have covered chest and belly. It fit snugly with the other two.

Bone squinted. “Do you see it, Gaunt? The dress, the map, is oriented so head would be north, and feet south. The upper parts look like the deserts along the Braid, but the lower . . .”

“It shows a great mountain range,” Gaunt agreed. “And a huge plateau. Yet . . . I have never seen a map that presented that jagged valley cutting through the peaks.”

“I haven’t either,” said Snow Pine. “Hey, at one end of the valley, do you see the characters for ‘iron’ and ‘silk’? As tiny as can be?”

“Yes,” Zheng said with the air of someone hearing far-off music. “That is where we’re going.”

“To a chasm?” Bone said.

“To Xembala,” Katta said. “I’ve been certain of its existence for a long while, since the day I first found my section of the map.”

“Strange,” Snow Pine said, staring at the dress. “I’d never quite visualized it as both map and clothing before now. It’s almost as if the wearer—Xia, was it?—almost as if she were here with us.”

“Yes,” Zheng murmured, staring at the fabric. “Strange . . . there. Do you see?” She pointed at the interface of the three fragments. “That mountain at the edge of the chasm, the one that vaguely resembles a bird. That is the site of Qushkent.”

Gaunt ran his finger along the ironsilk. “That’s the direction most of the Karvaks were flying.”

Katta chuckled to himself. “Flying Karvaks! The wonders of phenomena never cease to amaze.”

“And look more closely,” Zheng continued. “If you peer here, you see a line drawn from the beak of the bird, down to the valley floor.”

“A secret passage?” Bone said.

“The implication of one, at any rate,” Gaunt agreed. “Without all these pieces there, it would be easy to dismiss any segment of the line as a flaw in the artwork. But with all together the intention is clear.”

“Lady Steelfox,” Snow Pine said. “She saw only the upper two fragments, not Katta’s. She can’t be as certain as we are that this is the way to proceed.”

“I think she has a fairly good guess,” Bone said. “And she may not even need the hidden path, not with her—”

He was cut off by the mummified hands that grabbed his throat.

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