Free Nine Gates by Jane Lindskold Page B

slowly. “How much they left out because they couldn’t remember all the details or find a way to fit them into the mah-jong code.” Nissa shivered, and suddenly got very businesslike. “I wonder how much more the people from the Lands know, and how much more they’ve invented in the past century.”
    Riprap started tearing the white clay into three roughly equal segments.
    “A century,” he said, reaching for the tool jar, “during which they’ve been busily at war while our ancestors were forgetting almost everything they ever knew.”
    Brenda slid into her accustomed seat. “Why don’t we each do a set of the Twins?” she suggested. “They’re about the most powerful and yet versatile spell any of us knows, and right now I’d feel a lot better if we replenished our armies.”
    The Twins to which Brenda referred were a triplet of associated spells. Like all the spells they had learned from Des and Pearl, the names came from mah-jong limit hands. Brenda wasn’t quite sure whether the spells had given the limit hands their names or the other way around. It didn’t really matter—or maybe it did, because when the spells manifested they often resembled their names.
    The Twins were, respectively, the Twins of Heaven, of Earth, and of Hell. The spells were rendered as a series of figures corresponding to those found in a mah-jong hand: fourteen in all. Not surprisingly, given the name of the hands, they consisted of pairs, but not of the same pairs.
    “Who wants which?” Brenda asked.
    Riprap opened one of the boxes of mah-jong tiles and spilled them onto the table. These were all modern sets, the tiles cast in plastic. Traditional sets were made from bamboo and ivory—or bamboo and bone.
    Each of the Thirteen Orphans had a family set, handmade, each slightly different from the others. These antique sets were surprisingly durable, the bamboo and bone worn smooth from the caress of many fingertips. Brenda had the Rat family set in her bedroom. Sometimes she opened the box and shuffled the tiles around on the small desk that sat in front of the window in her room. They moved easily, and occasionally she would find herself drifting into a wakeful sleepiness, a wonderful receptivity, but nothing ever came to fill that space that couldn’t be explained as the waking dreams of an overtired mind.
    And certainly they’d been kept busy enough lately what with lessons and meetings and a house full of people to be kept fed and clothed. Pearl had both a maid and a gardener who came in a few days a week, but as the Orphans’ business required a certain degree of privacy, everyone else pitched in to do laundry, prepare meals, and run errands.
    Brenda broke from her revery as Riprap snapped three tiles—one printed with black, one with green, one with red—down onto the table. “Pick,” he suggested, shuffling them. “Red is Hell. Black can be Earth. Green Heaven.”
    Nissa darted out her hand. “Green. Heaven. Let’s see. That’s the one that depends on honors pairs or terminals. Doesn’t leave me too many choices.”
    Brenda pulled one of the remaining tiles. “Black. Okay. I get Earth. I never can remember… When I’m making pairs, can I have more than one set of a number? There are four of each tile.”
    Des’s voice came from where he’d quietly opened the door, his entry covered by the sound of the mah-jong tiles clattering against the table.
    “You could,” he said, “but only if you’re looking to invokethe symbolic strength of a particular number. Since we haven’t gotten to that aspect in much detail, why not spread out the numbers?”
    Des hadn’t really meant the last as a question, but Brenda couldn’t resist a flippant answer.
    “Because it’s easier to inscribe ones and twos than it is to do eights?”
    “Do ’em,” Des said in his teacher voice. “You need the practice. In fact, in your case you might want to concentrate on the characters suit. It remains your