29 The Mistress of Rats

~DEMURE YU~

They approached the shiny disk of the portal, and Yu found himself just staring at it, completely lost. He asked Sayewa, "Should we hold hands? Perform a faery ritual?"

"I have seen your 'ritual dance' once, luckily, from a safe distance. I may doubt some of the faery tenets, but I will not profane the Faith by asking you to do it again. So. Don't do it again. Ever!" Sayewa snorted and pointed. "Look at the disk."

What do you think I have been---

He squinted, blinded by the glare, and noticed that the light was not uniform.

It was a shifting field of pinpoint sources, five of each of the five types. Within each grouping, four of them moved in a slow if random fashion and the last light dashed about in the same erratic manner, only much faster.

No, it is not completely random.

The uncertain lights darted more often in his direction, while the slower ones gravitated towards Sayewa. He thought maybe the lights that favored him were a transfiguration of qi, so he reached and pushed one of them. It obeyed his will, moving gingerly the way he wanted it to. Experimentally, he pushed at one of Sayewa's, and all he could do was make it sway from side to side.

"I hope that the Celestial's design is as transparent as it seems," Yu muttered.

"They are in seclusion, not imprisoned. There is no call for traps." The faery was as much an authority on the subject as he was, but she sounded far more assertive than he felt.

Yu weighed in: "We are supplicants, not offenders."

Sayewa swallowed and leaned towards the portal in concentration.

Yu felt her move the four elements around until they'd formed squares, then balancing and rotating each one to her satisfaction. The arrangement was simple, but he'd never been able to do what Sayewa had just done. Once her bit was done, however, he nudged his wee lights in the middle of each elemental square almost effortlessly. The challenge was holding them in place.

The background shine went out and slim beams of light connected the central dots forming a large pentagon. Swirling gray mist billowed beyond the shining sigil.

"Keep it steady," Sayewa whispered anxiously, her head nearly touching his. Another flight of petals took off from her hair, and he blew them out of his face.

"It's been millennia since anyone had seen a Celestial. Ancestors, Sayewa, we are about to meet one! How's that possible? How?" he mumbled.

The faery did take his hand then. "Together, Yu."

They stepped over the bottom beam and through the portal.

Through one of the dozens of portals, apparently.

The walls on the other side looked like a honeycomb of gateways, only it was rats that swarmed all over the walls instead of bees; some of them were at least as large as him. Yu and Sayewa teetered at the exit from theirs at a dizzying height above the black floor.

The middle of each portal afforded a clear view inside the cavern temples similar to the one they came from, or the idols' circles in the thickets of the heartwoods. The picture clouded out and turned to solid black towards the portals' sides.

Dreading what he was about to see, Yu looked away from the walls. The Mistress of Rats, the Mother of Sorrow was a presence rather than a shape.

The Celestial took her time studying Sayewa and Yu before lifting them off their perch. She let them float down to the floor, while she solidified into a white rat roughly the size of a horse. A long vest and a skirt of shimmering cloth gowned her long body, both sewn with so many jewels that they could have doubled as armour.

Nine strings of star rubies and sapphires hung off the crest of her head-dress. They swung gently, screening her radiant face from the non-Celestial eyes.

Yu and Sayewa prostrated themselves by her feet. The Celestial sat on her haunches and shrank in size until she was satisfied with the angle at which she viewed them. Regular rats poured on and off of her lap in an endless stream. She petted some of them absentmindedly and set others to the floor. How she picked her favourites, Yu could not begin to guess.

"You took your sweet time in coming," she said at long last, tickling an elderly rat under its chin. The lucky rodent's whiskers trembled with exaltation.

"Forgive us, Mistress," Sayewa responded from the floor, "much has been forgotten."

"Let the bygones be bygones," the Celestial relented. "You are forgiven. Oh, sit down already! I accept your greeting as appropriate."

Yu was glad to obey. Being extremely poor, he lived so far removed from powers both human and divine, that he rarely had to kneel. He did not relish the experience.

"Let's be quick, children, before the Celestial Court discovers your presence." She shifted uncomfortably, her muzzle twitching in distaste. "I have no desire to explain myself to them."

"Tell us what you ask of the people of the Evershining Empire, and we shall carry your word to them, O, Mother of Sorrow!" Sayewa promised fervently.

Yu wished the faery had not included him. Opening a portal in a hidden cavern temple was one thing, but stepping out in a square to announce that he spoke with a Celestials' voice could not end well for him.

"Whatever we did to invoke the punishment you set upon us, we shall—" Sayewa kept on.

"Punishment? What punishment?" The gemstone-set strings chimed melodically, as the Mother of Sorrow leaned forward, looking genuinely puzzled.

Yu explained: "The disease known as Inscrutable Contagion killed thousands in Sutao. Searching for its Heart led us here."

"The humans! Of course! They are so fragile, poor things. The Celestial vapours sicken them, ah, so unfortunate, really. I remember now it had something to do with us leaving that pleasant place!" She reached for Yu. For a heartbeat, he expected her to pull him into her lap to give him a pet.

But she put a blessing sign over them instead. "Worry not, little ones, the humans multiply profusely. Once my servants no longer move among them, they will easily restore their numbers."

"Eminent Celestial, why have your servants come among us?" the faery's stubbornness was coming in handy.

The Mother of Sorrow straightened. "A treasure of mine has just awoken in the Earthen Realm."

"Did someone breach the Celestial Gates before us?" Sayewa asked guardedly.

Yu felt strangely disappointed at the thought. His one heroic deed, now trivialized.

Being the first is glorious, but who remembers those who came second?

"It might have been left behind during the Final Interdict," the Mother of Sorrow's voice was even tighter than Sayewa's. Left with little to do but listen in on the conversation, Yu had a sudden epiphany: The Celestials are not immune to mistakes. And, perhaps, to punishment.

"An unfortunate oversight," Sayewa mused, "but it is not without a precedent due to the haste with which the Final Interdict was announced. Although, I have not heard of one that was not dormant before, Your Holiness."

It was hard to read the Celestial's expression behind the glittering gemstones, but Yu thought she looked pained. She licked her lips, picked up another rat, and thought for a while. Finally, she spoke: "It is urgent that I have the artifact back in my possession. The 'Lament of All Tears' is a white jade carving of a rat drinking from a cup shaped like a water-lily leaf."

"She could hardly hope for another visitor from the Earthen Realm who could wield all Five Elements," Yu guessed, "and she owes us a favour."

Next to Yu, the faery tensed, but her voice remained serene, "The rat's tail is curved over its body and the water miraculously runs up and back down along its length, to drip back into the cup?"

The Celestial inclined her head in confirmation, "The tears flow when the Lament is playing its dirge. Extinguish it as soon as you find it."

"I am but an Acolyte, Your Holiness, and my talent might not be enough to lull the Lament back to slumber," Sayewa murmured, her eyes downcast, "but we shall retrieve it and return it."

Yu, again, was not thrilled to be included. But the audience was over before he could voice his objections.

The Celestial unceremoniously lifted them up and dumped them by the portal before dematerializing. There was nothing for it, except to step back into the underground temple.

"You will be safer with me," Sayewa replied when Yu offered to wait for her by the portal. "As well as instrumental in gaining the admittance to the Lament's current owner."

They squirmed back through the tunnel that got neither wider, nor cleaner since they had visited with the Mother of Sorrows. The rats might have become less numerous than he remembered, but then again, he was not counting them back then, and he was not going to start now.