Free Nine Gates by Jane Lindskold Page A

mitt. Better to let each pick out what worked best.
    In any case, the tools weren’t what mattered, rather the end result—and the one who did the crafting.
    When the Thirteen Orphans had been exiled from the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice, they had faced an almost insurmountable challenge. Each of the twelve adults was a skilled adept in a peculiar form of magic. However, in their new environment, they lacked anything but their essential knowledge. How could they preserve what they knew?
    A new insight interrupted Brenda’s review of this now-familiar tale.
    “Hey! I just had a thought.”
    Nissa looked up from her notebook. Riprap gave her an encouraging nod, his hands still busy working the clay. Neither teased her as her brothers would certainly have done, remarking that this must be a landmark day because “Breni had a thought!”
    Fleetingly, Brenda missed her family, her friends, the relatively normal life she’d left behind in South Carolina. She shoved the emptiness away, letting enthusiasm take its place.
    “Remember how Des and Pearl told us the Twelve wanted to find a way to encode their magic so it would be preserved, but so at the same time they wouldn’t be tied to any particular book or staff or whatever?”
    The other two nodded. Riprap inclined his head toward the oblong boxes in the center of the table as he spoke.
    “They encountered mah-jong. It was already around, although a relatively new game, played as often with cards as with tiles. Its five suits, three standard, two of honors—aswell as the flower and season tiles—offered a wealth of possible symbolic significance. So they decided to create a sort of mnemonic tied to the mah-jong tiles in which they could record their knowledge.”
    “A book,” Nissa added, “that couldn’t be taken from them because it was being mass-produced all over. Des hinted that some of the Orphans had something to do with the trend away from using cards to tiles for mah-jong, that they were looking to make sure the symbols would be preserved in a more permanent form.”
    Brenda had let their words wash over her while she let her insight take firmer form. She realized she was bouncing lightly on her toes with barely contained excitement.
    “That’s right. But I bet I know why the Twelve were so eager to encode their lore—and why Pearl and Des are so wiggy about our writing things down.”
    The other two looked at her, their expressions showing they were a step behind, but only that. Brenda hastened to articulate her revelation.
    “It must have to do with these other magical traditions—the indigenous ones that Des mentioned earlier. I bet the Twelve didn’t want to write anything down in a form that could be stolen, so they did this instead.”
    Nissa put her hand over the open page of her notebook as if suddenly fearing a spy could read what was written there.
    “I think you’re right, Breni. We know that the various spells take a lot of concentration. Probably back in the Lands when they wanted to do some complex working, they had tomes they could use as an aid to memory. They probably planned to reproduce those tomes as soon as they were settled here, then realized how easily their knowledge—the one really unique thing they had in their favor—could be stolen.”
    “And how vulnerable they would be,” Riprap said, “if someone stole their tricks. Wow. Byzantine.”
    “Chinese,” Brenda corrected with a grin. “Which, the more I learn about their history and philosophy, the more I believemeans thinking in a fashion more twisted and convoluted than those Eastern Europeans ever could imagine.”
    “So the Twelve did write their magic book,” Nissa said, “but not only did they write it from memory, they wrote it in code. I wonder…”
    She trailed off, her hands stilling, her expression growing serious, her turquoise eyes widening a little in fright.
    “What?” Brenda prompted.
    “I wonder how much they forgot,” Nissa said