Dokyi handed her over to two female dedicates, who gently took her arms. “Let her sleep and eat. Give her a hot bath. Treat her with all honor,” the man instructed them. “And put this among her things.”
To Rosethorn’s drowsy surprise, he casually handed the pack with the Treasures to the younger of the two. “Rest,” he said, and kissed Rosethorn on the forehead. “I will see you later.”
The older dedicate led Rosethorn into a large room. All Rosethorn noticed was the bed, strewn with Evvy’s cats. Promising herself that she would never let Dokyi talk her into anything more than a fishing trip again, she tumbled onto it.
Briar and Evvy had finished their snack and were wondering what would happen next when the main door opened. Parahan came in, his arm around a much shorter person in a yak-skin coat and boots. They were chattering in the language Parahan often used for swearing. While his companion waited to see the general, Parahan came to see Briar and Evvy and filch a couple of their leftover dumplings.
“Who’s that?” Evvy demanded, feeling a little jealous. She could see that Parahan’s friend was female. She wore a long braid of black hair pinned at the back of her head, and a tiny row of rubies that followed the line of her brows somehow. She also had large golden-brown eyes, a perfect nose, and full lips. She made Evvy feel even more like a grub than she did already. “That’s my sister,” Parahan said gleefully. “That’s Souda — Soudamini! She’s the fierce one and I’m the layabout. There was gossip that the emperor might invade Gyongxe this year or next, so she came from Kombanpur to offer her services and two hundred warriors to the God-King. She heard what happened to me. So now I have my own clothes and weapons, because she prepares for everything, and we are going to fight Weishu, if the God-King will have me.” Parahan indeed had his own clothes: a red silk tunic embroidered with a multitude of birds, blue silk breeches, and proper riding boots. He asked, “Where is Rosethorn?”
“First Dedicate Dokyi took her away for a talk,” Briar said, leaning against the wall. “In that room.” He pointed to the door.
“There’s some kind of magic going on in there, but it’s behind a wall,” Evvy offered. “We can’t even get a peek.”
“Far be it from me to try to peek at mages,” Parahan said. Then he frowned. “Is she all right?”
“Dokyi’s our friend,” Evvy told him. “He wouldn’t hurt her.”
“He’s her, I don’t know, he’s the First Dedicate of First Circle Temple,” Briar explained. “That means he’s sort of the head of all the Living Circle temples in the world. And Rosethorn is a Living Circle dedicate.”
Parahan nodded. “I understand.”
“Maybe he’s telling her that she doesn’t really have to fight the emperor,” Evvy suggested. She sighed. “I would like that.”
“Prince Parahan,” General Sayrugo called.
“Excuse me,” Parahan told them. He went to the table and bowed. “Please, General, here I am only Parahan, a soldier.”
Sayrugo looked him over. “Well, only Parahan with one hundred of Soudamini’s troops to his name, the God-King sent me a message about you.”
“But the God-King doesn’t know me,” Parahan said, unnerved.
“In all my years of service to Gyongxe, I have learned never to try to guess what the God-King does and does not know,” the general replied. “The answer to your question, he says, is yes, you have a job. You may begin here in the south. Soudamini and you are to go west with two of my captains. Move as many villagers as possible into the fortresses between here and the Temple of the Serpents on the Tom Sho River.” Evvy saw that General Sayrugo was showing the road to Parahan on a map on the table. “With those same troops you may then proceed north. You have my permission to cut down every unsanctified piece of Yanjingyi worm bait that gets between you and the capital.”
“Where does that leave us?” Evvy asked Briar in a whisper.
“Wherever Rosethorn says we go,” he replied comfortably.
Evvy wasn’t comfortable. Dokyi had plans for Rosethorn. What if they didn’t include her or Briar? And now that they were indoors, with thick walls between her and danger, she was suddenly too tired to get up. She felt as if she had been pulling rocks out from under the feet of killers for months. She had been sleeping cold at night for years. She’d been hungry again, and terrified. This was a comfortable place. The mountains sang even through the walls. Why did they have to leave? Let soldiers deal with the emperor.
They slept most of that day, and bathed, and put on clean clothes. Evvy introduced the cats to Soudamini. Parahan introduced his rough-voiced twin to the people who had been his companions on the road to Gyongxe. When Souda learned that Evvy and Briar had freed him from his shackles, she insisted on pressing her forehead to their hands, which flustered both Evvy and Briar, though for different reasons. She was fascinated by the tale of their journey and their battles along the Snow Serpent River.
Serious conversation came over that night’s supper with Dokyi, the twins, and General Sayrugo. The discussion about the imperial soldiers in the Snow Serpent Pass, and plans to get villagers to safety along the Snow Serpent River, went smoothly. Then Rosethorn began to explain her plans.
“No!” Briar cried. “This is the most bleat-brained idea you’ve ever come up with! You can’t!” He glared at Dokyi. “Find someone else. Look at her! She’s worn-out! I won’t let you do it!”
“Such an ill-behaved child,” Sayrugo commented, looking at her pakoras — ball-shaped dumplings — with a suspicious eye. The Kombanpur cooks who had come with Souda and her troops had provided the meal to welcome Parahan.
“I am not a child!” Briar snapped.
Dokyi tried, unsuccessfully, to hide a smile behind his finger. “Such a bad student, then.”
“I’m not a student, either! Exactly! I’m certified in my own right, and she can’t tell me to go or stay anymore. She has trouble breathing up here!”
“Actually, I feel better,” Rosethorn said. She took a deep breath and raised her eyebrows. “Much better.” She had eaten all that was put before her and was taking seconds.
“There are benefits to the burden I passed to you,” Dokyi said, though his eyes were on Briar. “I will not tell you my age, because I am vain. I am older than I seem, however, and stronger, due to its influence. She is healthy enough for whatever trials the land may put before her, young man. And it is not your place to question a duty for which her vows have fitted her.”
“Enough,” Rosethorn said when Briar opened his mouth again. “Not one more word, understand me?”
For a long moment there was silence and tea drinking. Then Evvy said, “My cats can’t take any more travel. Between sleeping herbs and galloping along they’re not looking so good. I am a bit tired myself.” She rubbed her thumb along the table’s edge. “Might we stay here? I could help defend this fort and the cats would be all right. It’s a mountain fort. There are rocks I can use here, big ones. Maybe Rosethorn and Briar could do more thorns and bar the road to the pass.”
“That is a splendid idea,” the general said unexpectedly.
Everyone looked at her in shock. “It is?” Rosethorn asked.
Sayrugo smiled. “I am taking troops northeast along the Drimbakang Sharlog,” she explained. “Parahan and Souda will have two companies of my people as well as their own two hundred to ride along the Snow Serpent Road going west. We all have to move villagers to safety and fight any imperials that have come so far south. But Captain Rana’s company will remain in charge here to defend the pass and the local villagers. A barrier of thorns on the pass will make Rana’s work easier. There will be no more Yanjingyi soldiers to come through that way.”
Rosethorn frowned.
Briar smiled wryly. “I don’t think any trade will be going down the Snow Serpent for a while, Rosethorn, if that’s what’s wrinkling your face. It won’t matter if the pass is blocked.”
She nodded slowly. “We could do thorns, then. I’ll go with Parahan and Sou
damini as far as the Tom Sho River, provided they don’t slow down too much alerting the villages and temples.”
“And I’ll go with you, since Evvy will be snug as a flea in an armpit here,” Briar said cheerfully. Soudamini choked on her curried rice.
“Briar!” Rosethorn cried. “Where are your manners?”
“In the same dung hole you left your bleating brains when you said you were going off without me!” Briar shouted back, jumping to his feet.
“Boy, you cannot go to the Temple of the Sealed Eye with her,” Dokyi said. “It will not be permitted.”
Briar stared at Dokyi in white-hot rage, wondering if he should tell the old hand waver what he could do with his permission.
Dokyi stood and put an arm like stone around Briar’s shoulders. “Let us confer outside,” he said agreeably.
I’m not even one of his precious dedicates! Briar thought, indignant. He did not argue. At the moment standing this close to the old man was like being close to Rosethorn when she was in the depths of her magic, only stronger, like stone.
Outside the room with the door closed, the First Dedicate released him. Softly he said, “I know that you have lived under terrible strain since you reached Yanjing.”
“So?” Briar demanded. He kept his own voice quiet. He didn’t want Rosethorn to hear, either.
Dokyi folded his hands in front of him. “I honor your care for her, Briar, but this is now something only she can do, and it concerns survival for many. She wanted you to come with her, but it is quite truly not possible. If you love her, you will help her, not hinder her.”
“Is there no one else?” Briar whispered.
Dokyi shook his head. “The task requires someone extraordinary. She is that person. Do not make her duty more painful.”
He walked back into the supper room, leaving Briar to think and kick the wall. When he returned to his seat, Evvy was saying, “The emperor has plenty of riches. He doesn’t need Gyongxe. The farming here isn’t very good. What can he want here?”
Dokyi shook his head, smiling. “But he isn’t the heart of the world. He hears Gyongxe is the spindle on which the world turns, but he does not understand it. He thinks if he takes Gyongxe, people will say that he is the spindle.”
“He thinks Gyongxe means wealth, and magic,” General Sayrugo explained. “He thinks that people build temples here to be close to magic. In truth they come to be closest to the sky, where the gods dwell. When our ambassador reminded him that five holy rivers, that feed hundreds of thousands, rise here, he only said that was interesting.”
“He must not be allowed to control our temples or to handle the gifts of our gods,” Dokyi said. “He will do what he has done to every other realm he has conquered. He will loot its treasures and destroy all the signs of its history. That is what the emperor does to his conquered nations.”
Evvy stared at the man, her eyes wide. Briar glared at him for frightening her and put his arm around Evvy.
They picked at their food in silence for a time before Parahan said, “Do you know, I would like Briar with us.” To Soudamini he said, “You must see what my friend here can do with a handful of seeds, Souda.”
“Truly?” she asked.
Evvy nodded. “There’s plenty of the emperor’s soldiers that won’t be buried with their ancestors because of what Briar can do.”
Souda smiled wickedly at Briar. “Impressive.”
Briar looked at her. Parahan’s twin was a couple of inches shorter than Briar and well curved. Tonight she wore her blue-black hair in complexly twined braids secured with gold pins. A wicked dimple accented her mouth. Briar was the first to admit he was a fool for a dimple.
“Ride with us and find some Yanjingyi dogs to fight,” Souda proposed. “Show me these skills of yours. A prebu is always welcome.”
Briar looked at Parahan, confused by the strange word. “A nanshur,” Parahan explained in tiyon.
“We’re going to have a splendid time deciding which language to speak,” Souda murmured.
Briar shoved his hands into his pockets to give himself a second to think. If he went with the twins, at least he could watch Rosethorn for part of her journey. He could see Evvy was worn-out. There was also her un-Evvy-ish drifting off as she stared at the vast mountains. Perhaps if she stayed here for a time, to feed her cats and rest, she would get used to the tall peaks and come back to herself again. With the pass closed off, and Gyongxe armies roaming in two directions, the fort ought to be safe for her.
He hated to think it, but maybe Dokyi had a point as well. Watching Rosethorn until she left the twins for this strange temple was probably all of the orange he was going to get. Half of the fruit was better than none. With luck, he would find her when she returned from her strange errand. He would be able to sense her as she came down from the mountains: The very grasses would tell him.
He glanced at her. She had actually cleaned her plate. Her color was better than it had been since they left the Traders.
“You need to go to bed if we’re taking the road again soon,” he said gruffly. He looked at Dokyi, Parahan, and Soudamini. “We can’t wait another day?”
“You may wait,” Dokyi said. “I leave at midnight.”
“Alone?” Souda asked, alarmed.
“Alone is best,” Dokyi said. “Souda, I am the First Dedicate of the Earth temple of First Circle Temple. Midnight and the dark are my elements. I will be fine.” He stood and went to Rosethorn. “Do not wait for more than a day. The new magic will strengthen you as you travel, and the emperor is on the move. Good fortune and the gods’ blessings to you, my daughter.” He kissed Rosethorn on the forehead and looked at Briar. “If all things go well, soon we will meet again.”
As he walked from the room, Parahan, Soudamini, and the general followed to ask their own questions. The moment the door closed behind them, Rosethorn began a scold that blistered Briar’s ears.
FORT SAMBACHU
SNOW SERPENT PASS
Briar rose at dawn the next day after a night filled with foul dreams of Rosethorn and Evvy in the hands of imperial torturers. Rather than go back to sleep and risk more dreams, he borrowed a mare with a stable girl’s permission and rode out of the fort.
He had thought to go uphill, but the sight of the Sun Queen’s three mountain husbands towering over him made him feel uncomfortably fenced in. Instead he rode down, past the tent village where most of the army was camped, over the Snow Serpent River crossing, and out onto the grasses and brush of the Gnam Runga. The light in the sky was pearly and seemed to come from everywhere in the east. It would be a while before the sun crested the topmost heights of the hills and mountains there.
His horse startled a pair of pheasants, who drove horse and rider away from what turned out to be a parade of peeping youngsters. Snow finches, wagtails, and larks also gave their opinions of the rider and his horse as their day was interrupted. Briar wasn’t sure, but those opinions sounded like bird insults. He scanned the sky for the famed Gyongxe buzzards and steppe eagles, but there were none in sight.
“Too cold,” he told the mare. Gloomily he added, “Or they’re out where the fighting’s going on. They’ll get plenty of food at those places, enough for every carrion bird in Gyongxe.” Normally he grudged no one a meal, having often gone without for the first eleven years of his life, but it was hard to wish a buzzard well at a battlefield.
Once he could no longer see the village on the eastern hills or the fort on the southern ones, Briar dismounted, letting the mare’s reins trail. The horse, a sturdy animal bred for the thin air of the mountains, began to graze. Briar walked on until he heard only the wind in the grass and the insults of the smaller birds.
Someone had told him that Gnam Runga meant “Sky Drum.” It was a vast plain between the Drimbakang Lho and the Drimbakang Zugu, the long finger of mountains that curved out of the southern heights and around the capital, Garmashing. The enemy was aiming for that wide plain, where his generals could put their catapul
ts to good use. First they would have to fight the emperor’s army in the north and the tribes of the Drimbakang Sharlog around the eastern passes. No one wanted the imperial armies to mass on the Gnam Runga.
Briar would have preferred to fight in the canyons, where he could have put trees to work, but the plain was what he would have, first when he rode west with Parahan and Souda and later when they rode to Garmashing. Now he crouched and tried to dig his fingers into the dirt of the Gnam Runga. The grass was interwoven and tough. It fought his intrusion, just as it fought the death of the winter freeze.
“I’m a friend,” he told it. “I just want to meet the dirt. Let me in a little.” He spread his magic over the bed of plants. There were patches of bare earth here and there, but he could feel the plant roots running under them, nourished by the trickle of moisture from the distant river.
The grasses trembled and then gave way.
“Thank you,” Briar told them gravely. “You’re very strong. Those lowland grasses would never stand a chance against you.”
The grasses were scornful of fat, water-soaked plants beyond the mountains. Only here, next to the sky, could they reach for the infinite.
Briar shook his head and looked around. A line of boulders stood close by. There were images painted on them in bright colors and outlined in white: a many-headed god, a snake twined about itself to make an intricate circle, a goddess riding a beast whose antlers were tipped with stars, a spider that wore a crown. It wasn’t the first time he had seen such paintings on rocks. Then, as now, he wondered who went to such trouble, and why. The Snow Serpent Pass was bare of them. Now that he thought of it, the Ice Lion Pass, which they had taken on the way to Dohan, had also been bare of the paintings. It was as if the artists had not wanted to share them with foreigners.