“Who knows what disgusting customs those out-landers have,” said Volias with a smirk. “You’re better off with us. Not that you have a choice.”
They walked into a garden so fancy that Nallo gawked. It had its own pool, with fruit and nut trees along either side, reflected in the still water. Aui! There was even a fountain of burbling water, just like in the tales! Avisha would have gushed over the many herbs and other flowering plants burgeoning out of troughs and terraces. A pavilion overlooked the far end of the pool. That pest Siras was seated on the steps leading up to the covered porch, and when he saw them he leaped up and brushed his hands on his trousers as if he’d been eating.
“I guess Tumna didn’t rip your head off, then, eh?” said Siras with a big grin as they reached the porch. “Not like she did to Horas. Not that he didn’t deserve it, mind you. He was rotten all the way through.”
“The hells!” said Volias. “Siras, you’re a bigger horse’s ass than even I thought.”
Nallo halted with a foot on the porch and one on the step below. The marshal turned, balancing on one foot with a sandal half pried off the other. He grunted with irritation, a man who has just been caught out in a lie.
Rain spat through the pretty garden. In the distance, thunder rolled and faded.
Rip your head off.
They had all known that the eagle was a killer who had murdered its own reeve.
When she got really mad, her tongue lit and she couldn’t stop herself. “That’s why everyone came to watch. Was it a good show? Or is everyone disappointed she didn’t rip my head off, too? Does it happen often? Because if I were an eagle, you three would all be in little pieces by now, but I wouldn’t eat a single scrap of bloody flesh because your foul taste would make me cast it all back up.”
Her heart was sucked dry, and her blood was raging. She walked away.
Volias called, “Here, now, Nallo—”
The marshal interrupted him in that smoothly dishonest voice she should have distrusted from the first. “We didn’t say anything because we didn’t want you to fear her before you had a chance to understand eagles. And Tumna in particular.”
“No one told her?” yapped the young one in a tone that couldn’t have made him sound stupider if he’d been a novice entertainer acting a part.
Ignoring every soul who tried to talk to her, she strode through the compound until she found the cot she’d been assigned. She grabbed her bundle of useless odds and ends, the worthless rubbish of her life, and walked out the gates of Argent Hall, never to return.
20
The arrival of the seventh Guardian, wearing the cloak of death, forced his hand.
He and the girl flew west across the Olo’o Sea, heading for the isolated western Barrens and its mountainous desert high country where few folk traveled and fewer lived. With Argent Hall no longer under the hand of one of his enemies, they might be able to walk an isolated labyrinth without falling into the custody of the others.
After that burst of speech, while shaping the bow, the girl again ceased talking. It wasn’t fear that closed her mouth, he thought. She liked to fly. She enjoyed the wind and wide waters below. Nothing frightened her.
They flew a night and a day and into the next night, a steady pace that would eventually exhaust the horses, but he had no more time to wait. At length, in the glimmering twilight before dawn, they flew into the swirl of currents that marked the western shore. South of them a pair of campfires burned, so far away they appeared like candle flames. But the salty air and fine grit on the wind told him no sour tales of the folk camping in this wilderness. He would have to take his chances that they were no threat.
They crossed over briny pools and streaks of dried salt and minerals that marked the shoreline, and beat crosswise up tableland that rose in stair steps to rugged highlands beyond, the massive foothills of the Spires. Peaks glittered as the first edge of sun out of the east caught on their icy crowns. Antelopes and gazelles nibbled on grass on broad terraces. Wild goats bounded alongside coursing streams as dawn’s light scattered them from their night’s stupor. The sun pushed into the sky. The horses labored, but they struggled on. They knew where they were going.
This altar was hard to find if you didn’t know where to look. Unlike many of the others, carved into cliff faces or sited atop granite pinnacles or bare peaks or breathtaking spires of rock, this altar had a humbler position nestled in a rocky saddle between two forested peaks. A homely place lacking magnificence, but one where he felt sheltered because of its immense isolation.
The horses clattered onto the open space. The rounded peaks rose to either side. The saddle linked the two high spots but was itself pretty much impossible to reach because of unstable slopes falling away to either side. Boulders lay in shattered heaps at the base. Pieces of broken rock like so many discarded roof shingles littered the slopes, piled in frozen waves at the bottom.
The girl dismounted and paced the rim, careful to stay away from the entrance to the labyrinth just as a canny animal shies away from a trap. The horses abandoned him, making straight—as only the horses could—for the pool at the center where they could refresh themselves.
He gripped his staff of judgment, knuckles white. He tried to relax but could not find calm within. With his free hand he parted the pocket sewn into his sleeve and grasped the mirror he had carried hidden within it for so many years. Three times he tapped his staff against the rock. The third time she looked at him. He beckoned. Hesitantly, she crossed to him.
“Come.” He tried to gentle his voice, but he could hear how tightly coiled ran the thread of words. “Walk with me.”
He set first one foot, then the second, on the glittering entrance to the labyrinth. That which is cut may heal, but if it scars, then the flesh loses its flexibility and can easily tear itself open. Her ability to trust was scarred.
But on this day, she was willing to trust him.
He had not walked for many years, because it was too dangerous to reveal himself. Yet even after so long away, he knew the path as well as he knew his own hands.
Needle Spire, a slender thread of rock thrusting out of the ocean beyond Storm Cape; Everfall Beacon now in ruins on the South Shore; Stone Tor in the midst of the Wild; Salt Tower on the dead shore of the high salt sea; Mount Aua; the friendly environs of humble Highwater and its tumbling stream; the Pinnacle above the crumbling archon’s watchtower overlooking the basin of Sohayil; the dusty Walshow overlook; the deep swamp within Mar-lake-swallows; Horn Vista; the Dragon’s Tower; Thunder Spire; the Five Brothers; the Seven Secret Sisters; the Face, whose sheer cliff overlooked the first mey post on the Kandaran Pass. He knew the name and location of every one; he had walked them all, at one time or another: the hundred and one altars sacred to the Guardians, scattered throughout the land.
He walked quickly, although at intervals she slowed as if wanting to look through onto one of those faraway landscapes. Passing through the turn of Hammering Ford, the river overlook north of Westcott, he scented blood, tainted with the sweet-sour smell he had come to associate with those of his brethren who had crossed under the shadow gate into corruption.
“Who are you?” an unfamiliar male voice whispered from within the maze. “Where—?”
The girl hissed, her shoulders tensing, but they moved beyond the taint. Finishing the path, they fell out into the center.
In a basin hollowed out of rock, clean water bubbled up from a crack in the ground. With a cry, she fell to her knees and cupped her hands. She drank, sucking in the clear liquid until it dribbled down her chin. The horses watched her with patient gazes. He slid the mirror out of his sleeve.
The bronze openwork backing curved with the shapes of twining dragons rising out of a stylized rendition of layers of mist. The silver-white finish of the actual mirror flashed where sunlight caught in it, like the flicker of a soul.
She looked up, gasping from the bitter drink, blinking like a sleeper coming awake.
“This bel
ongs to you,” he said, holding out the mirror. “This is your Guardian’s staff, which you must carry.”
Her hand extended, but whether she chose to reach or the mirror pulled her to it, he could not say. She took it from him, drew it toward her body. Turned it. Stared into its polished face, seeing her own face hovering ghost-like.
Her mouth opened, and closed. The smooth lines of her face cracked as she hunched her shoulders. For the space of a breath he thought she would scream, or faint. Then she moaned, a low sound of despair, the worst cry in the world for being so weak.
“She lost her mirror, so she is dead. Don’t make me remember her.” Although she trembled, she could not release the mirror. It would swallow her, and she would awaken in truth.
How he hated himself for what he had done, even knowing he had no choice.
The trembling in her hand passed into her body, a palsy shuddering through her. Grief is an anvil on which you are beaten, beaten, beaten. We cry for many things, but there are sorrows that lie beyond tears. Sometimes it is easier to look away, and when you are forced to recognize the hammer as it descends, all you can do is wait for the impact that will shatter you.
“Let her stay dead!” she cried.
The hammer fell.
PART FOUR: GIFTS
In the Western Grasslands Beyond the Hundred (Four Years Earlier)
21
ONE NEVER KNOWS what gifts a stranger brings.
“There’s nothing of interest in our lineage or possessions or grazing lands to cause a man of his tribe to wish to marry into ours,” said Kirya to her cousin, but as soon as the words left her mouth, she was sorry she had said it that way.
Mariya dabbed at teary eyes with her free hand. Three tiny beautiful beaded nets were cupped in her other palm.
“Nothing besides you, I mean,” added Kirya hastily. She looked away, toward the eastern horizon, measuring the curve of the sun’s back as it rose.
“He didn’t have to give me this gift,” said Mariya. “He told me his aunt would speak with my mother at the confluence.”
“Mari, be practical. In our entire tribe we have nine hands of sheep, four hands of goats, and five horses. Three proper tents. He’s born to a daughter tribe of the Vidrini lineage. Who are we to even think of bringing a son of that lineage into our tents? We can’t possibly pay the marriage price. We’ve no son of our own tribe old enough to make a marriage across the lines in exchange, if they would even take one.”
“You don’t know anything about his tribe, or his mother and aunts. Or what they want.”
Kirya took the beaded nets out of her cousin’s hand and twisted them onto the tails of Mariya’s three dark braids, a seal binding the loose ends. “There, you look very pretty.”
Mariya unhooked her polished bronze mirror from her belt and regarded her blurry reflection with a frown, a piece of vanity that made Kirya sit back on her heels. “Mother will scold me,” she said, heedless of the impiety of admiring her looks in the holy mirror.
“She scolds everyone. We’d best get moving, or we’ll miss our chance.” She took the mirror out of Mari’s hand and hooked it back on the belt.
Mariya rolled up the blankets they had shared while Kirya saddled the gelding and the piebald mare. The tribe lay a day’s ride behind them, and she wasn’t surprised it had taken Mariya this long to reveal even to her beloved cousin the gift a Vidrini boy had given her, since as a stranger and a male he ought not to be giving her gifts at all. It had been at least six nights back that the two tribes had happened to share temporary grazing lands by a watering hole on their way to the summer’s confluence on the Targit River.
Kirya scanned the landscape: The long slopes, never quite hills, were scantly covered with yellowing grass or brown scrub growing low to the ground. A hawk circled above. More crucially, a pair of vultures glided over the land toward the southeast, where Kirya guessed the two hunters would find the herd of fleet-footed gar-deer she had spotted yesterday. Such deer didn’t venture into the dry eastern grasslands often, and these had looked plump and juicy.
“At least demons didn’t eat us last night.” Mariya tossed a rolled-up blanket to Kirya, then tied her own gear onto the back of the mare’s saddle. “I thought they would. Did you hear them howling?”
The gelding was surly this morning, as always. He gave a halfhearted nip at Kirya, who shoved him with her shoulder to remind him who was boss. “That was the wind.”
“You can’t be sure! I don’t know how you can be so brave!”
Although their mothers were sisters, they looked nothing alike: Mariya had thick black hair, a pretty face, and the darker complexion that was rare among the tribes, while Kirya had the bland white-blond hair and round face common especially in the northern-roaming tribes of their people. Their looks were not the only way in which they differed.
“Mari, I will never understand you,” she said finally with loving exasperation. “You’re the best archer in our tents. Even at night, you would pierce any demon that tried to get close.”
“Demons can’t be killed,” said Mariya ominously. “Arrows would just go right through it. Then it would devour us.”
“That’s why we have the two arrows the Singer blessed. Those are proof against demons. Or we can capture their hearts in our mirrors. Then they would flee.”
Lips pressed tight, Mari surveyed the land. Despite being a child of the plains, she felt most at ease among the tents.
“I don’t want to miss that herd,” Kirya added. “I want something to bring to the confluence so we won’t be shamed in front of the other tribes.”
“Do you think he’ll be there?” Mari asked. “He said his aunt would talk to my mother.”
“Maybe. Don’t you want a good haunch of meat to offer when folk come to call?”
Kirya set a brisk pace in the direction of the circling vultures. The hawk moved away toward the north, but the vultures hung steady. The wind was hot and dry, blowing out of the eastern deadlands, but posed no threat to their hunting, as it would blow their scent and the noise of their approach into the west. The skin of the earth had a sandy color, bleached like the cloudless sky, and the summer heat had turned the green of spring grass to a brittle gold-brown. They’d had decent rains this spring, enough to keep their usual watering holes usable all summer. Twin lambs, both female, offered hope that they might begin to increase the tribe’s paltry herd. Now she had in her sights this unforeseen herd of deer, strayed out of their usual territories like a portent of prosperity glimpsed and pursued.
“But who ever feels that way after just two days?” Mariya could not stop chattering. “I know that Mother has already spoken with the headwoman of the Oliski tribe about a match with Laoshko Oliski, but—oh, Kiri!—he’s so old, with two wives dead already.”
“Young enough to father children and keep the herds, especially if it’s true he has some special knowledge of husbandry, as they claim.”
“You marry him, then!”
Kirya laughed. “If this Vidrini boy convinces his aunt to make the match, despite all the reasons for his tribe to speak against it, that’s probably what will happen. You’ll get the young one, and I’ll get the old one.”
“You won’t be angry at me afterward? You haven’t even had your Flower Night yet.”
“How could I be mad at you, Mari? The men who look interesting to me are always following after you. Like Orphan.”
“Mother would beat us if she heard you talk about Orphan that way.”
“Never mind, it isn’t your fault. You’re just so much prettier and livelier than I am.”
“I’m being stupid,” Mari muttered. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop going on and on. Look. No, over there. Just past that notch in the slope. There’s a deer.”
“Where?”
“It’s gone below the horizon.” Mariya slid her strung bow out of its quiver and rested it across her thighs, four arrows bunched in her left hand. Out on a hunting trip, they kept their gear ready at all
times. Her aspect had shifted, as swiftly as lightning struck. She was foolish and silly and all too often scared of the ripple of her own shadow, but she also had keen sight and the gods’ kiss on every arrow she loosed.
They pushed along the slope, Mariya leading them sidewise as they approached the distant rise.
“Men fall in love faster,” said Kirya in a low voice. “Everyone knows that. Women are more practical. Like in the story of the daughter of the Sun. The war leader fell in love with her the moment he saw her, but she didn’t like him at all. Not until she thought he would die.”
Mariya was no longer listening. “Tss! There.”
She gave the signal for Kirya to swing wide to the left before pulling her own horse toward the right. They separated, moving in a wide circle. The gelding flicked his ears and picked up his pace; like Kirya, he loved being out in the grass. Coming up the rise, she shifted her path to make sure the wind would not carry any hint of her presence to the deer. At length she dismounted and, leaving the gelding with reins loose to the ground, crept through the grass until she could look into the hollow beyond where the beasts had spread out around a sink. The swale was moist enough to nurture a coat of grass and scrub ash. Tails flicking against flies, the deer foraged.
Mariya eased down one of the western slopes to take a position where low ground offered an escape route for startled deer. Kirya scooted back to the gelding, mounted, and made her approach, coming over the rise. A few deer raised their heads, but she kept the horse to a steady walk as she nocked an arrow to the string. On the far slope, Mariya signaled.
With a shout, Kirya whipped the gelding forward into the swale. She took aim as the deer scattered. Her first arrow struck the flank of a springing deer; her second vanished into the bolting herd. They raced along the low ground, seeking the easy route.