Spear of Heaven (11 page)

Demons kept bandits away, though her mother’s magic helped.
The one whom she had come to think of as her demon, the white-feathered one
that she had met at the spring, actually chased off a ragged man who was too
desperately hungry to care about the rumor of fire and terror.

Kimeri was angry at the demon for that. She made sure there
was food for the man to steal, left some of her supper and some of her
breakfast behind, and hoped he found them and was not too frightened to eat.

The demon understood anger, but its memory was very short.
It was like the wind: changeable. But its fascination for her went on and on,
and made it as solid as it could be, almost solid enough to touch.

Other demons came and went. There were different kinds. The
ones with feathers were actually not common. Most had a great quantity of horns
and teeth and claws, and scales and tails and leathery wings, and always the
yellow eyes. The ones that drank blood looked at the men and the seneldi and
thought hunger, but Kimeri’s demon warned them off with growls and
teeth-gnashings.

It was not the largest demon and certainly not the most
terrible to look at, but the others seemed to listen to it. Maybe, she thought,
it was like her: royal born.

When her mother actually let her have a senel to ride all by
herself, the demon came to sit on her crupper. The bay gelding did not like
that at all. Kimeri calmed it down, shaking for fear her mother would think it
was too much for her and make her ride like a baby again, the way the demon
wanted to ride.

It was a good senel, sweet-tempered and quiet, just not
prepared to carry a thing that had substance but no weight, and looked so odd
besides. Once she had explained, it pinned its ears and fretted but gave in,
and put up with the demon. The demon helped by being quiet and not moving
around too much, except when it forgot and stood up on the senel’s rump and
made faces at demons that peered down from the sides of mountains.

It was a very happy demon, riding behind Kimeri, being
invisible to everybody else. Sometimes she thought Vanyi might know it was
there, but Vanyi said nothing. Kimeri was careful not to talk to it aloud, and
when she talked to it in her head to make sure nobody else could listen. It
took a little thinking to manage that, but it was not hard once she began.

At first the demon never thought in words, but the longer
they went on, the clearer the demon’s thoughts became, until they were having
conversations, long hours of them, as the senel climbed up and climbed down and
scrambled from mountaintop to mountaintop along the roof of the world. Demons
had been there always, like the rocks and the snow and the sky—

“From forever,” the demon said. It liked the thought of
forever, played often with it, turned it around in its head like a bright and
shining toy. “Forever and ever and ever. We fly in the air, we swim through the
earth, we dance on the waters that come out of the dark. We are here always.
Always.”

“Do you go anywhere else?” Kimeri asked it once in her head,
after they had ridden through a valley with a waterfall. The demon had shown
her how it danced on water. She had set out to try it, too, but her mother had
caught her just as she began, and scolded her for getting wet, and made her
change all her clothes, even the ones that were dry. “Do you only live in the
mountains?”

“Where else is there to live?” the demon asked.

“Why,” said Kimeri, “everywhere. There’s a whole world
beyond the mountains.”

“The mountains are the world,” the demon said.

“No,” said Kimeri patiently. “The mountains are the roof of
the world. The world is much larger than they are. There’s the plain out past
them, and the ocean, and more mountains, though not so high, and more plains,
and rivers, and forests, and home, where I come from.”

“You come from the mountains,” the demon said. “You come
from the thick places—the low mountains, the ones on the edge of the world,
where air is heavy and easy to ride on.”

“That’s not the edge of the world,” Kimeri said. “That’s
only the edge of the mountains.”

“The edge of the world,” the demon said.

It was a stubborn demon. She tried to show it home, the
palace, the plain and the forest, even the Gate. But it insisted that home was
the mountains, and the palace was like the palace in the place she was going
to, which the demon thought of with a shudder. “The walled place,” it said. “The
place that burns.” It meant wards, she thought, because it said the mages’
wards burned, too, but only a little, and once she let it ride with her, it
could ignore them completely.

But the wards that made it so afraid were Great Wards, or
something like them—wards stronger than any few mages could raise. It scared
itself right off the senel and into nothingness, scaring her so much that she
thought she had killed it. But it came back a long time later, after they stopped
to camp, and it acted as if it could not remember what had scared it away. It
would not talk about the walled place again; she did not ask, for fear that it
really would go away and not come back.

“The burning place is near,” the demon said. It was almost
as hard to see as it had been the first time Kimeri saw it. Quivers ran through
it, ripples of fear, but it clung stubbornly to the back of her saddle.

She would be afraid of the place herself if she had not
heard her mother and Vanyi talking about it. To them it was a human place, that
was all, and maybe it was dangerous, but it was nothing to frighten a mage.
Demons, who were mostly air, had more to fear, and more to be wary of.

Her demon stood up on the senel’s rump. “Stay here,” it
said.

It was not talking to the senel. It caught at her hair with
claws like a brush of wind. “Stay in the mountains,” it said. “Don’t go down to
the burning place.”

“But,” she said, in her head as always, “what would I do
here?”

“Be,” the demon answered. “Be with me.”

“I’m not going to get hurt in the burning place,” she said,
trying to comfort it. “I have my own burning inside of me, that keeps me safe.”

“Stay in the mountains,” said the demon. “We can fly. We can
play with the wind. You can sing, and I can dance. Stay.”

She was usually careful not to act as if there was anyone
with her, but now she turned and looked at the demon. It looked like a shadow
on glass, with eyes that glowed like yellow moons. Its whole self was a
wanting.

She remembered that some of its kind drank blood, and some
had claws that could rip an ox to pieces. But not her demon. It wanted her to
stay, that was all, and keep it company.

“I learned words from you,” the demon said. “Who will talk
with me, if you go away?”

Kimeri’s throat started to hurt. Her eyes were blurry. “I
have to go.”

“You can stay,” said the demon.

“No,” said Kimeri. An idea struck her. “You can teach the
others words. Then they can talk to you.”

“I want you,” the demon said.

“I have to go,” Kimeri said. “I have something to do. I can’t
not do it. Even to talk with you, and play on the wind.”

The demon’s claws tightened in her hair. They were more
solid now, but still no stronger than the wind. Gently, because she did not
want to hurt it, she let out a flicker of magery. The demon tried to cling, but
the burning, even as little of it as there was, was too much for it. It wailed
and let go.

“I’m sorry,” said Kimeri, “but I can’t stay. I’ll try to
come back.”

“That is not now,” the demon said.

There was nothing that Kimeri could say to that. She had
more than a demon to think of, a Gate and a Guardian and a place where they
both were, as terrible in its way as the burning place. She could not stop her
throat from hurting and her eyes from filling up, but she could not do what the
demon wanted, either.

It was too much for a very young person, even a princess
with a Sun in her hand. The wind whipped the tears from her eyes, and kept the
others from asking questions and being awkward. But her senel’s saddle was too
cold a comfort, its mane too rough to bury her face in. She made her way to
where her mother was riding, talking to Chakan; pulled herself over behind her
mother’s saddle and wrapped her arms about that narrow middle and clung.

oOo

Kimeri was acting strangely again, clinging and refusing
to let go. Daruya worried, but magery found nothing wrong except a sourceless
grief. Homesick, she decided, and afraid of this bleak steep country that
seemed to go on and on without end. It was disturbing enough for a grown mage;
for a child it must be terrifying.

She gave what comfort she could, and it seemed to be enough.
Kimeri grew calmer, though she still did not ask to go back to her own saddle.
Daruya let her stay where she was, glad of her warmth and her presence.

oOo

It seemed that they had been traveling for whole lives of
men, ascending each mountain only to find another beyond, crossing each pass
into a new and higher country. The air blew thin and bitter cold. Spring lagged
behind, then vanished in endless fields of snow.

This was the summit of the world, as high as any simple man
could go and live. Mages could have gone higher, but even Vanyi was not moved
to that degree of curiosity, not with what she faced, ahead in Shurakan.

There were peaks above her, white jagged teeth, and sky the
color of evening although it was midday. Both moons were up, Brightmoon a white
shadow of the sun, Greatmoon like a shield of ruddy copper, hanging above the
crenellations of the Worldwall.

Those who needed mages’ help to breathe had that help and welcome.
That was most of them now, all but the guides, who were born to this country.

They kept formation as they had from the beginning, Aku
leading, the men bringing up the rear. Their expressions were unreadable. Since
Daruya disposed of the bandits to such spectacular effect, the ease that had
been growing between Vanyi and Aku had vanished.

Aku was still civil, would still converse with Vanyi, answer
her questions, perform her duty well and fully. But there was no warmth in it.
A mage, like demons, like foreigners, was nothing that Aku wished to call
friend.

It was not even hostile, that withdrawal. It was, that was
all, like the language Aku spoke, the clothes she wore, the way she harnessed
and rode her ox. Vanyi, speaking Aku’s tongue through a trick of magery,
wearing the winter garments of the Hundred Realms, riding a senel, was no more
kin to her than one of the animals.

Vanyi was stubborn. She did not take refuge in aloofness,
did not sequester herself with her mages and let the guides do as they pleased.
She kept on riding beside Aku, kept on asking her questions, kept on pushing
against the barrier that Aku had raised. It never moved, but neither would she
desist.

She was as bad as Estarion, she supposed. She did not want
to conquer, only to know and to understand. But she wanted that understanding.
She fought for it, even against such determined resistance. There were hatreds
enough in the realms of Sun and Lion, tribe fearing tribe, nation despising
nation. But never minds closed and locked as these were. Never such perfect
refusal to accept a stranger, still less a stranger who was a mage.

If Shurakan was as bad as this, she thought more than once,
it might kill them out of hand, lest their alien presence pollute the land’s
purity.

And now as they crept across the roof of the world, Shurakan
was close at last. Vanyi sensed nothing but rock and snow and cold, but Aku
pointed to a peak like a spearhead, leaf-shaped, clean and hard and white
against the sky. “That is Shakabundur,” she said, “the Spear of Heaven, that
stands guard on Su-Shaklan.”

Aku’s face was unreadable. Her mind offered nothing to the
reading but a deep relief. The journey had been no joy to her, even with the
prospect of riches in return for it.

Vanyi suppressed a sigh. It was tempting to pay the guides
off now and go on alone, with their destination in sight. But she was not that
great a fool. There were leagues yet to go, she judged; two days at least, and
likely more, before they came to the valley—and who knew what between. One
bridgeless chasm could set them back days, as they tried to find a way round.

She urged her senel forward. The gelding’s ribs were
beginning to show with long marching and short commons, but he was healthy
enough.

They had not lost any of their seneldi, even on the steepest
tracks. That was good fortune. God and goddess approved of the journey, the
priests would say—though not Estarion, who was lord of them all. Estarion did
not approve in the least.

oOo

There was no warning at all. One moment they were scrambling
along a precipice. The next, they found themselves on the very edge of it, and
the mountain dropping down and down and down into a vision of misty green.
After white snow, black rock, sky so blue it was near black, the mist and the
greenness seemed utterly alien.

“Su-Shaklan,” said Aku beside Vanyi. Vanyi raised her eyes
from the vision of green to the white spearhead of the mountain that stood
guard over its northern flank, then let them fall again into the country called
the Kingdom of Heaven.

And no wonder, if it struck all travelers so. It was
beautiful beyond comprehension.

“You must go there,” said Aku, pointing. Vanyi followed the
line of her hand to the cliff. For a moment she saw nothing but sheer drop; but
slowly she perceived the line of the track, twisting back and forth down the
precipice, shored with ledges. The bottom was out of sight, obscured by mist
and distance.

Vanyi brought herself sternly to order, and faced the guide
and what she had said. “You’re not coming down with us.”

“You have no need of us,” Aku said, “and we are not of that
country, nor welcome in it. We agreed to bring you here. We’ve done that. We’ll
take our payment and go.”