Spear of Heaven (8 page)

“There is a faction in their court,” Vanyi said, “that wants
to be sensible, not to mention practical, about the existence and practice of
magic. It’s a heresy, I suppose, but it’s strong, and it’s been ruling
Shurakan. Its leaders welcomed our mages and allowed them to raise the Gate.”

“Ah,” said Chakan slowly. “So. This, you didn’t tell the
emperor.”

“Or me,” said Daruya, startling them all. They had forgotten
her, as quiet as she had been, sitting in a corner with her daughter playing at
her feet. “If you had, my grandfather would never have let me come here even
before the Gate fell. He wouldn’t have given you a company of his Olenyai,
either.”

“No,” said Vanyi. “He would have wanted to come himself with
an army at his back, and whole temples full of priest-mages to bring the
Shurakani round to the error of their religion.”

“He is not as bad as that,” Daruya said stiffly. “A company
of cavalry, yes, he would have wanted that, and more Olenyai. And a priest-mage
or two, such as he is himself, in case you forget.”

“And himself,” said Vanyi. “There’s the trouble, child. He’d
have insisted that he was the only right and proper ambassador to such a
benighted people, and run right over me, too, because he is strong enough to do
that. He’d want to conquer these people as he conquered the whole of our half
of the world, because it’s in his blood to do exactly that. How not? He’s the
god’s child. He was born to rule the world.”

“And I wasn’t?”

Vanyi faced her full on. “You, I think, for all your
crotchets and your persistent conviction that you have to be a scandal in order
to be noticed, are at heart a more reasonable creature than he is. And if you
aren’t, you’ll refuse to conquer Shurakan simply because your grandfather would
conquer it—purely for its own good, of course, and because he’s the god’s
however-many great-grandson, supposing that you accept the dogma that Mirain
An-Sh’Endor was the god’s son in truth and not the bastard-born offspring of a
northern priestess and the Red Prince of Han-Gilen.”

“They still repeat that slander?” Daruya was surprisingly
calm about it. “Ah well. You explain this”—she flashed her golden hand,
dazzling Vanyi briefly—“and then we consider who sowed the seed of the Sunborn.
Meanwhile, what if I decide that I can’t resist the urge to be a conqueror,
either?”

“I doubt that,” said Vanyi. “Men conquer by force of arms.
Women have other methods. Some of which I hope you’ll see fit to use.”

Daruya eyed her narrowly. She gave nothing back to that
stare but a bland expression and a faint smile.

“He can’t come now,” said Daruya, “even to drag me back home
in disgrace. By the time we have the Gates back up, we’ll have had time, I
should think, to fend him off. Unless you’re going to give him a new war to
fight, somewhere in his own empire?”

“I should hope not,” Vanyi said tartly. “He can find his own
war. His own places to meddle in, too.”

“And a new heir?”

The girl was trying to goad her into an indiscretion. Vanyi
gave her smile a little more rein. “I suppose, if he had to, he could see to
that for himself. With as many females as he has, flinging themselves at his
feet—”

“He does not!”

Vanyi laughed aloud. “Oh, there’s nothing like a sinner for
outraged virtue! Of course he does, silly child. I suppose he looks horribly
old and decrepit to you, but to any woman who’s not his granddaughter, he’s a
big beautiful panther of a man—and he brings with him a promise of empire. Many’s
the woman who’d leap at the chance to bear a Sunlord’s heir. She’d have to wait
to share the throne, but share it she certainly would, with the empress growing
so frail.”

For a moment Vanyi wondered if Daruya would spring. But she
had more control than that, if not much more—not enough to find words that
would suffice. Vanyi hoped that she had made the child think. It would do her
good.

In the barbed silence, Chakan said, “So. We’re to have
guides through these mountains?”

Talian answered him with evident relief. “Certainly. Pack
animals, too—some of their hairy oxen.”

Chakan raised a brow. “You found men here who would endure
the company of demons and dark gods?”

“Some men,” said Talian stiffly, “are less superstitious
than others. Even here. And greed is as potent an encouragement here as
anywhere.”

“Greed for gold?”

“Gold isn’t what they crave,” said Talian.

If Chakan found the Guardian’s coyness annoying, he showed
no sign. His face of course was never to be seen by anybody but his brothers
and, Vanyi was reasonably certain, Daruya, but his eyes were limpidly clear,
betraying nothing but calm curiosity. “Oh? What do they value above gold?”

“Silk,” said Talian. “Silk of Asanion, in the most gaudy
colors imaginable. One bolt of it can buy a princedom here. Or a troop of
guides through the mountains, with oxen and provisions.”

“Remarkable,” said Chakan. “Silk, so precious? I wish I’d
known that. I’d have brought a bolt or three to do my own trading with.”

“Warriors will stoop to trade?” Talian asked, shocked out of
discretion.

Chakan’s eyes laughed. “Warriors do whatever they must do to
win their wars. If the weapon of choice is silk—why, so be it.”

Talian clearly did not know what to say to that. Vanyi found
the silence blessed, but doubted that it could endure for long. She broke it
herself before anyone else could be minded to try. “We leave as soon as we can
be ready. The guards are waiting, I hope?”

“They have been sent for,” said Talian.

Poor child. She had not found any of them comfortable
guests. Vanyi had a brief, wicked thought of commanding the girl to accompany
her. But although she could be ruthless, she was not needlessly cruel. Talian
was only a child, just past her making as a mage, when she gained no twinned
power, became neither darkmage nor light, but showed herself for a Guardian of
Gates.

It was a false belief among the young mages that Guardians
were weaker than twinned mages, lesser powers, mere servants of the Gates; but
from the look of this one, she believed it. The Olenyai alarmed her. The
Guildmaster rendered her near witless with terror.

Vanyi took pity on her, after a fashion. “Fetch the guides
here. If they’re to lead us where we want to go, it’s best they know now what
we are—all of us at once.”

“Demons, dark gods, and all,” said Chakan, impervious to her
withering stare.

oOo

He, with his Olenyai, had eaten before they came in, when
they could do it without the hindrance of veils. They had no breakfast to
abandon. None of them was obvious about it, but now that Vanyi took the time to
notice, they were standing idly, comfortably, casually, in a circle that
encompassed both herself and the emperor’s heirs. There was a placid deadliness
in the way they stood, hands well away from swordhilts, faces hidden behind the
black veils, yellow eyes calm, fixed on nothing in particular.

All but Chakan, who took an easy stance beside and just
behind Daruya’s chair. Kimeri looked up from playing with what looked like a
ball of string, and smiled.

He did not do anything that Vanyi perceived, but the child
got to her feet, dusted herself off conscientiously, and held up her hands. The
Olenyas swung her whooping to his shoulders, where she sat like an empress on a
throne.

Vanyi wondered very briefly if there was more to that than
anyone would admit—if the child had been fathered by the Olenyas. But her bones
said not. If Olenyas and princess-heir had been lovers, it was utterly discreet
and long over. They were guard and princess, friend and dear friend, or Vanyi was
no judge. But nothing more than that.

Pity, rather. An Olenyas in Daruya’s bed might be better
protection than an army of mages.

No one spoke while they waited for the Guardian to come
back. The mages were still stunned by the Gate’s fall. Miyaz and Aledi seemed
to cling together. Kadin, who had lost his lightmage, sat with them and yet
irrevocably alone. He had eaten nothing, drunk little. His fine dark face was
grey about the lips. His long fingers trembled as he picked up his cup, paused,
set it back down again.

Vanyi watched him but did not speak to him. It was too early
yet. A mage who lost the half of himself died as often as not, either from
grief or by his own hand.

She did not think that this one would do that. He was a
northerner, from Ianon itself that had been the Sunborn’s first kingdom. He had
pride, and strength of spirit.

The mark of his clan was painted fresh on his forehead—a
good sign, even if it were no more than habit. His beard, that had been
chest-long and plaited with gold, was cut short, his hair cropped to the skull
in mourning. Again, good enough. He could have turned the blade against
himself.

They would all suffer if he did. Six mages and a master had
been ample for the embassy that Vanyi had in mind. Three of them dead left the
rest overburdened, even if Kadin came through this grief intact. If he did not . . .

She would think of that when she had to. She let her eyes
return to the map, tracing and retracing the ways they must take. Guides they
might and must have, but she never trusted to one expedient if several would
do.

“Daruya,” she said abruptly. “Come here.”

Daruya came, for a wonder; what was more, she seemed
inclined to pay attention as Vanyi set about teaching her the map and the
journey. But, thought Vanyi, this mattered to the girl. It touched her pride.

Pride was useful in swaying kings, and kings’ heirs.

The guides were a woman and her three husbands. Daruya at
first would not believe what her magery told her she was hearing; surely her
gift of tongues was failing or turning antic. But the woman’s mind quite
clearly perceived the three men with her as husbands—men who shared her bed and
stood father to her children. They were brothers, sturdy-built middling-tall
men like heavyset plainsmen, with bronze skin seared dark by sun and wind, and
narrow black eyes, and black hair worn in cloth-wrapped plaits. Their wife was
much like them, near as tall as they and quite as solid.

She did the speaking for them all. Her name was Aku, which
meant Flower; she named her husbands, but Daruya paid little attention. Names
were not what they were. They were stolid, at least to look at, but there were
festoons of amulets about their necks, and they eyed the Olenyai in what they
fancied was well-concealed terror.

The Olenyai, without the mages’ gift of tongues, had leisure
to observe, and to be amused. Daruya hoped that one of them would not take it
into his head to do or say something appropriately demonic, and lose them their
guides before they even started.

The woman seemed fearless enough. She was brusque, striking
a hard bargain with Vanyi, whom she had singled out without prompting as the
leader of the expedition. That spoke well for her perception, since Vanyi had
not been trying to look conspicuous. The other mages in their robes— lightmage
silver, darkmage violet—were far more impressive than she was in her plain coat
and trousers and boots; and the Olenyai were alarming, faceless black
shadow-men with golden demon-eyes. Vanyi could have been a servant, an old
woman of no particular height or distinction apart from a certain air of
whipcord toughness.

But Aku knew, and for that, Vanyi let herself be haggled
with. Daruya might have done it herself, for the matter of that, if she had had
occasion. At the moment she seemed to have been included with the Olenyai in
the class of demons, in the minds of the men, and as young and therefore
insignificant in the mind of the woman.

Old age held great power here. Daruya made note of that.

At length the bargaining was concluded, the guides given
half a bolt of scarlet silk in payment, the rest to follow at the end of the
journey. Daruya rose in relief and gathered up Kimeri, who had fallen asleep in
Chakan’s lap. Kimeri murmured, burrowed into Daruya’s shoulder, and went back
to sleep again.

“Poor baby,” said Chakan. “She hardly knows where or when
she is.”

“She knows it very well,” Daruya said. “She wore herself
out, that’s all, creeping through the storm in the Gate.”

He looked as if he would have said more, but he did not. She
was glad. It frightened her that ki-Merian of all people was so docile and
sleeping so much. She could find no wound in the child, of mind or body,
nothing but tiredness and a desire to be near her mother. But that was
disturbing enough. Kimeri was the least clinging of children, and the least
inclined to sleep when she could be up and doing.

Daruya did not want to say anything of that, even to Chakan
whom she trusted. She busied herself with the flurry of departure—a last meal
eaten in haste, farewells said to the Guardians, gathering and mounting and
forming their caravan in the temple’s inner court. The seneldi were snorting
and rolling their eyes at strangers, hairy oxen as Talian had called them:
great shaggy beasts, taller than a tall senel, with broad curving sweeps of
horns, and feet as broad as banquet-platters.

There were four of them in the court, wearing harnesses that
translated into saddles and bridles of a sort, as each guide approached his
beast and mounted by climbing its harness like a ladder. He had only one rein,
and a stick that he used to turn his massive mount and to drive it forward.

Daruya, fascinated, almost forgot to mount her own fretting,
head-tossing mare. Chakan passed Kimeri up to ride on her saddlebow, still
asleep and dreaming peacefully of riding her pony in the empress’
perfume-garden. Once the mare felt the twofold weight she settled, though she
still snorted at the oxen.

Vanyi was speaking, not loudly but clear enough to be heard
over the stamping and snorting of the animals. “We’re shadow-passing through
the town for convenience’s sake—this many seneldi appearing from nowhere would
raise a frightful riot. Daruya, will you anchor the casting?”