Spear of Heaven (36 page)

oOo

She began to run.

Back the way she came. Back through the twisting, turning
passages. She forgot that she was a woman of venerable years, with stiff knees
and shortening wind. She ran like the girl she had been.

The Minister of Protocol’s workroom was no longer empty. The
Minister of Protocol sat in it, upright at his worktable, smiling. And very
dead.

The smile was rictus. Certain poisons induced just that
expression, and just that blue cast to the lips. Vanyi was glad, at least, that
he had had no pain. She had feared much worse.

She said so, taking a great deal too many breaths to do it,
to the seemingly empty room.

“But, lady,” said a gentle voice, “death is death.”

“Some deaths are worse,” she said. “And some, if your sages
are to be believed, cast a man lower on the wheel of lives. Is it easier to die
if you believe you’ll be reborn?”

“One would think so,” said Esakai the priest of Ushala temple.
He had been using no magery to conceal himself, only a fold of curtain over an
alcove. He came forward slowly, leaning on a staff.

He looked no different. Elderly, gentle, amiable. No hatred
in him, no terror of what she was.

He regarded the Minister of Protocol with honest regret. “I
do wish he could have lived,” he said. “But he was obstinate. He would not see
reason, even with the authority of the gods behind it.”

“What reason was that, if it was too unreasonable for this
of all men?”

“Why,” said the priest, “that truly he was not well advised
to ally himself with you. Your magery is difficulty enough. Your Gate is
deadly. What is it after all but an instrument of conquest, conceived to
destroy our kingdom?”

Vanyi gaped. Of all reasons she had expected, this was the
last. Hastily she mustered wits and voice. “That was why you broke the Gate?
Because you were afraid of armies invading through it?”

Esakai’s thin white brows rose. “You expected any other
reason?”

“It’s too logical,” Vanyi said.

“Lady,” said Esakai sadly. “Oh, lady, how little you must
think of us, if you believe that we can only fear you because you possess
powers we were all bred to despise. That is no trivial thing, mind, but it’s
not all we can think of. We remember what you’ve told us of the empire you come
from, how vast it is, how small we are, and how insignificant. It could consume
us in an instant. And so it will, unless we resist it.”

“No,” said Vanyi. “That’s not what I meant. You’ve let your
mobs destroy half of Shurakan in the name of the gods’ will against mages. If
invasion were all you were afraid of, you’d have done none of that. You’d have
marched on Janabundur—regardless of the power of the name or the house—and
dragged us out and made examples of us.”

“Yes,” said Esakai, “and given your king-above-kings all the
cause he would ever need, to fall on us and destroy us.”

“He can’t come through the Gate,” Vanyi pointed out. “It’s
broken.”

“And so shall it stay, while we have the power of the gods
to help us. But, lady, if he has armies of dragons as the tales say, he needs
no Gate, and no long march overland, either. We won’t chance that. We’ll see to
it that no mage can ever live safe in Su-Shaklan, and we’ll wield you as we
may, to gain your emperor’s promise that he won’t conquer us.”

Vanyi had been aware of the armed men closing in behind her,
the drawn swords, the pikes, the hum of chanting that bore magery in it. The
Olenyai would have sprung to her defense. She held them back.

“No,” she said. “Hold; be quiet. Get away if you can. This
is strategy, and planned for.”

From the roll of their eyes, they knew it already. One might
approve. The other might be thinking her a raving idiot. There was no telling;
they were shielded against magery.

But they were quiet, which was what mattered. To Esakai she
said, “It’s very odd, you know. One of the first things I did when I began
building Gates to span this world was to inform the emperor that whatever he
did, he was never to think that he could use my Gates to further his conquests.
He’d do it the old way or none, foot-slog and senelback. My Gates are not his
to use, nor are my mages his servants.

“He honored that agreement,” she said, “though I gave him
precious little to sweeten it: promise that he could use Gates himself, to see
what was on the other side, and promise to share what we learned. He’d never
bring his armies to overwhelm Shurakan.”

“Unless,” said the priest, “he were given what he considered
reason. However slight. His heir is here—the one who will rule after him, if
the gods ordain. Might she not be the beginning of his invasion?”

“Believe me,” said Vanyi, “Daruya would sooner die than be
her grandfather’s puppet.”

The priest shrugged slightly, contemplating the dead man as
before, with an expression of honest grief. “So would this man, and we gave him
his wish. We cannot endanger our kingdom. Surely, lady, you understand that.”

“I understand that you barely comprehend what you did in
breaking the Gate. Your servants don’t comprehend at all that the prayers they
chant, the circles they dance in, are workings of magery. What will happen when
they learn the truth?”

“The gods defend them,” said Esakai, “and through them this
kingdom.”

“All priests are blind,” said Vanyi, who was herself a
priestess of the Sun.

He did not know that. He sighed, pitying her. “You thought
to be a sacrifice. I name you hostage. Let your people pay the price to gain
you back—let them depart from Su-Shaklan and never return.”

“It’s not going to be that easy,” said Vanyi.

She was feeling odd. Her breath had come back, but shallower
than before. Her chest was tight. Her arm ached. Had she struck it against a
wall somewhere, or strained it careening round a corner?

She was where she needed to be. “Let me send these warriors
as messengers,” she said. “They’re safer so; I don’t know how many of yours it
will take to subdue them if you let them stay, when your own guards try to
carry me off.”

Esakai believed in the Olenyai no more than any other
Shurakani; he could only see their small size and their quiet bearing. But it
served him to be rid of her guards, however weak they might seem. He agreed to
it.

They did not, but she commanded them. “Tell Daruya,” she
said. “She’s not to come galloping after me. There are subtler ways to win this
war.”

One of them, who was slightly the taller and rather the
elder, inclined his head. “I’ll tell her,” he said. “She won’t like it.”

“Of course she won’t,” said Vanyi. “I expect her to control
her temper and think, and do what’s sensible. She can do it if she tries.”

“Yes, lady,” said the Olenyas. His voice was perfectly
bland.

She was sorry to see them go. They had been like a wall at
her back, visible and tangible protection against the dark. Without them she
was utterly alone.

She was bait, and this was the trap: trap within trap. She
could only pray that Daruya would understand the message and see what she must
do. It was more trust than most would have given that wildest—and many would
say least—of the Sun’s brood. But Vanyi had never quite believed that Daruya
was as feckless as she seemed.

It was a frail thing to rest her hopes on, but it was what
she had. She smiled at Esakai. “So then. Am I to be shut up in a dungeon, or
may I have dinner and a bed?”

“You are our guest,” said Esakai, “until we are given reason
to think otherwise.”

She bowed, ironic. “My thanks, sir.”

Damn that woman, thought Daruya, to all twenty-seven
hells.

They were all in the hall, even the children—happenstance,
chiefly, since it was evening and the daymeal was past. The women were sewing
by lamplight, the children playing on the floor, Bundur reading from a book of
old stories. Daruya listened, wondering how any of them could be so calm with
Vanyi gone to the palace and not yet come back, and no word from her, no
message, nothing.

The mages, who should have been either fretting over their
Guildmaster or arming for the fight, were sitting on the edge of the lamplight,
Aledi and Miyaz close together, Kadin well apart and utterly silent, and the
Gileni Guardian, Uruan, seemingly asleep. Even the exorcist was there, looking
surprisingly ordinary, playing with the children.

Hunin and Rahai burst in with signal lack of ceremony, and
the rest of the Olenyai after them. The hall seemed suddenly full, and not only
with bodies; the air had the scent and the taste of a storm that was ready to
break. Daruya stood up with the swiftness of relief, and half-stepped toward
the Olenyai. “Where is she?”

“In the palace,” Hunin answered. “She sent a message. You
are not, lady, to gallop to her rescue. You are to remember that there are
subtler ways; to think, to be sensible. And then do what you must.”

“You let her send you away?” demanded Daruya.

“She commanded us,” said Rahai, and not happily, either. “She
was captured and is being held hostage.”

“In return for what?”

“She didn’t say,” said Rahai.

“You didn’t ask?”

He met her ferocity without blinking. “She didn’t tell us.
They were speaking Shurakani. I caught the word for hostage, but the rest was
babble.”

“I think,” said Uruan from the edge of the light, “that they
were meant not to know, so that they couldn’t tell us. She doesn’t want us to
surrender whatever it is they want.” He faced the Olenyai. “Did you know the
men who captured her?”

“It was one man,” Hunin said. “He came here more than once:
a priest of the palace temple. Esakai, his name was.”

“What is this?” Bundur demanded suddenly, his Shurakani
voice running swift on the heels of Hunin’s Asanian. “What are you saying? What
is this about Esakai the priest?”

“He is saying,” said Daruya, reining her patience tight, “that
Vanyi has been captured and held hostage, and that she doesn’t want a rescue.
He doesn’t know what she’s hostage for. He thinks she doesn’t want him, or us,
to know.”

“I can guess,” Uruan said in Shurakani. “All foreigners out
of the kingdom, and all mages dead or exiled.”

“It might be more than that,” Daruya said. She clenched her
fists. “Damn her! I knew she’d do something like this. What is she trying for?
To get herself killed and make a martyr, and bring down the wrath of the whole
Mageguild, and the empire, too?”

The Olenyai did not understand her. The Shurakani, who did,
did not know what to say.

She started to stamp in frustration; caught herself. “Damn,”
she said, but much more mildly. “Uruan, come here. We’re wasting time, talking
in two languages and getting nothing said. Translate for us.”

He was willing, even glad to oblige. He was still haggard
and a little wild about the eyes, but he was in better case than Kadin. His
ordeal inside the Gate seemed to be fading like a black dream; and he was
strong as all his kin were, with a fierce resilience.

He would do. He rendered her outburst into Asanian, word for
word. She could have done without quite so faithful a translation, but she had
asked; she could hardly call back the asking.

Chakan responded at once and firmly. “The Guildmaster would
do no such thing. She asked you to be sensible. To think.”

“I am thinking,” said Daruya. “I’m going to fetch her.”

“You are not.”

It came from both sides, in two voices, in two languages:
Chakan, Bundur. They stared at each other in astonishment and swift anger—gods,
even in that they were alike.

Suddenly they laughed. Chakan recovered first, and spoke in
Daruya’s furious silence. “She was not, whatever you may think, telling you not
to do it so that you actually would. She has a better opinion of you than that.”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” Daruya muttered.

“I have.” Bundur glanced at Chakan. “The warrior is right.
She thinks she can accomplish something in the palace, and safely enough to
send her guards away.”

“Or unsafely,” said Daruya. “These aren’t her warriors. They’re
my grandfather’s and mine. It’s not her place to get them killed.”

“Daruya,” said Chakan, “as logical as that might be, it’s
not like Vanyi. She’s in the palace, yes. She knows who’s been breaking
Gates—he’s holding her hostage.” He turned toward Bundur. “My lord, do you know
this priest?”

Even in a temper Daruya could note the enormity of the
concession: Chakan the Olenyas had granted a foreigner his title.

Bundur could not be aware of the exact degree of the honor,
but he seemed to notice that he had been admitted to favor. “I know this
priest,” he said through Uruan. “He’s one of the oldest of the old guard, well
known to everyone, with no enemies that I’ve ever heard of. I’m amazed if what
your warriors think is true, that he’s been the mind behind the attacks on
mages. It seems unlike him.”

“Yet he is of the old way of thinking, yes?” Chakan
inquired. “He has the art of seeming less than he is—that’s not uncommon. Who
notices a harmless old creature doddering about, mumbling a word here, casting
a smile there? What if the word were that mages were to be destroyed and the
foreigners cast out, and the smile were directed at those who did so with
utmost dispatch?”

“He needn’t have done anything himself,” said Daruya. “He
could just suggest. And hint. And deplore. Oh, so many foreigners, so many
mages, and that ghastly Gate of theirs . . .”

She stopped. They thought her finished: Bundur said
something, but she was not listening.

Gate, she thought. That was how it had begun—not with mages
killed or hunted out, or foreigners expelled. With a Gate, through which an
embassy was known to be coming, an embassy from a great and distant empire.

Suppose . . .

“Suppose,” she said, “that mages aren’t what he fears most.
He’s afraid of them, there’s no one in Shurakan who isn’t, but they aren’t his
great fear. No; he dreads what their magic has made. Their Gate. Their door to
other worlds, that opens on a particular city in a particular realm. Now suppose
he’s given word that an embassy has asked and been granted leave to use that
Gate to enter Shurakan. The embassy is to be made up of mages—whom all
Shurakani hate and fear—and of the heir to that foreign empire, which is ruled
by mages who are also priests.” She paused. They were all silent, staring at
her.