Spear of Heaven (12 page)

If Vanyi refused to pay, she made it clear, it would be
simple enough to arrange a fall over the precipice. The three husbands were
sitting their oxen with perfect casualness, just near enough to separate Vanyi
from the rest, just far enough away to maintain their unthreatening air.

She considered that they were sixteen to the guides’ four,
but the guides had the advantage, at the moment, of position. She shrugged. She
had never intended to play the guides false, whatever they might think.

“Chakan,” she said. “Pay them as they ask. Half the bolt of
scarlet, on the whitefoot ox.”

“We’re taking the oxen,” said Aku calmly. “We’ll leave you
what’s yours.”

“Oh, no,” said Vanyi, just as calm, with a hint of a smile. “We
bought and paid for those oxen. And those packs. And those provisions. We’ll
keep them, if you don’t mind. We may have need of them.”

Daruya, bless her intelligence, had spoken a word to the
Olenyai. They were as casual as the husbands, hands not too blatantly near to
swordhilts, sitting their seneldi in a loose, easy, and quite impenetrable
formation around the huddle of oxen.

Aku inclined her head slightly. “We need to eat,” she
observed, as if to the air.

“You have your own ox,” Vanyi said, “and I notice that his
pack is remarkably large and heavy.” She smiled again, a fraction wider. “My
thanks for a journey well guided. May your gods prosper you.”

Aku understood the dismissal. She shrugged slightly,
spreading her hands in a gesture half of resignation, half of respect. “Prosper
well,” she said, “if the gods allow.”

The descent into the Kingdom of Heaven was heart-stoppingly
steep. They dismounted to begin it, dropping one by one over the side of the
mountain and picking their way along a narrow thread of a track, with a wall of
stone on one side and empty air on the other.

Daruya at least was aware that the guides were left behind
and in no friendly mood. But no stones rolled down from the summit to sweep
them aside, and no arrows flew. They were as safe as they could be on so steep
a slope, with seneldi that, though surefooted, were not mountain oxen.

Kimeri had been notably reluctant to begin the descent. She
kept lagging behind, looking back at the summit. There was nothing there; the
guides were gone, heart-glad to be rid of their charges.

Chakan, in the rear, met Daruya’s glance. His own was
watchful, his pace just quick enough to keep the child from stopping. He would
guard Kimeri and see that she was not lost or fallen. Daruya sighed and fixed
her mind on the track.

Climbing could be exhausting, but going down was worse. One
had to brace constantly, even where the track pretended to be more or less
level, running sidewise along the cliff-face. And one could see where one was
going—downward a league and more, and god and goddess knew whether they could
reach the bottom before night caught them all and pinned them to the precipice.

It had been morning when they began, not long after sunrise.
At noon they halted. There had been halts before, too many of them in Daruya’s
mind, but necessary. Even the Olenyai could not go on without pausing, not on
such a road as this.

This pause was longer, with time to eat leathery dried
oxmeat and still more leathery dried fruit, and drink water that still tasted
faintly of snow though it had been carried in leather waterskins since last
night’s camp. The beasts had a handful of corn each, which finished out the
store of fodder. If there was no grass below, only green illusion, they would
starve.

It occurred to Daruya as she sat on the stony ground and
tried to chew a strip of meat somewhat tougher than the sole of her boot, that
they should long since have seen what they descended to. Morning’s mists should
have lifted. The valley should have opened below them. Yet it was still hidden;
still featureless, an expanse of misty green with the Spear rising out of it.

“Wards,” said Vanyi beside her, rubbing legs that must have
ached as fiercely as Daruya’s, grimacing as her fingers found a knot. “And
Great Wards, at that. Do you feel how strong they are, and how old? They’re
anchored in mountains, with the Spear for a capstone.”

“So they do have mages,” Daruya said.

“Not necessarily. Mages could have been here long ago, set
the wards, and died or gone away. The people who live here now might not even
be aware of what protects them.”

“How do we get in, then?” Daruya demanded.

“We knock on the door,” said Vanyi, unperturbed.

“Are you sure there is one?”

“I’m assuming it. Our mages got in, after all. It can’t be
closed to people who come peacefully—just to invaders with weapons.”

Daruya’s eyes slid to the Olenyai, each with his two swords,
his bow and quiver, and his other, carefully concealed armament.

“We’ll get in,” said Vanyi. “Swords or no swords.”

oOo

The air grew warmer as they descended, until they had all
packed their hats away, and their coats. The Olenyai kept their robes and
veils, but the others were down to tunics and trousers or mages’ robes when at
last they came to the bottom of the cliff. It was a broad shelf of rock, bare
of grass, and beyond that only air. A bridge stretched across it. Of what lay
on the other side they could see nothing but mist.

The bridge was no solid work of stone such as they built in
the empire. This was a wavering makeshift of wood and rope, swaying in the wind
that swept down off the mountain. It was wide enough for an ox, more than wide
enough for a senel. Whether it was sturdy enough . . .

Daruya’s stomach ached with clenching. Her eyes burned. She
should be able to see across the chasm. She could see perfectly well to the
bottom of it: a long, long fall, and a tumble of rocks, and a river, its roar
muted with distance. The drop was much deeper than the bridge was long; it had
to be. And yet the bridge seemed to vanish into infinity.

She turned her face to the sky. It seemed very far away and
very pale. The sun hovered on the rim of the precipice, as if it hesitated to
abandon her in the trackless dark.

No one else was moving, either. Chakan had Kimeri on his
shoulders and was calming his fretful senel with strokings and soft words.

Vanyi stood on the first plank of the bridge. She stamped.
The bridge echoed. “Solid enough,” she said through the echoes. “We’ll have to
make sure none of the seneldi puts a foot through.”

Or shied and leaped over the utterly inadequate rail of
stretched rope and fell to its death. Daruya swallowed. Her throat was dry. She
stroked the dun mare’s neck. The mare was quiet enough, slick with sweat from
the descent, and mildly annoyed that there was nothing to forage.

“Come, then,” Daruya said to her. “Let’s get it over.”

She rode past Vanyi, deliberately closing ears and mind to
objections. The mare hesitated as her hoof touched the bridge, but she had
always been valiant. Daruya urged her gently forward. She snorted, lowered her
head to examine this oddity to which she must trust her weight, and advanced
gingerly upon it. The echo made her stiffen, but she did not halt.

Daruya kept her eyes on the road directly ahead of her and
tried not to think of the fact that the rails, chest-high on a short man, were
knee-high on a rider mounted on a tall senel. If she fell, she would keep them
both alive and bring them safely to earth. Her magery was strong enough for
that. But it would be less trouble if she forbore to fall.

Nobody had followed her yet. They were all waiting to see if
the bridge would hold her. She could not hear them breathing.

The mist ahead seemed impenetrable, but it came to her
slowly that there was something in it. A shape—shapes. One on either side of
the bridge. Massive, looming figures, narrow and tall. Men? Giants? Demons?

The mare was unafraid of what lay ahead. All her tension was
for the unsteadiness of the bridge and the hollow booming of her hooves and the
sough of wind in the ropes. Daruya supposed she should have walked, but riding
seemed more queenly somehow—more like the act of a Sunchild entering a new
country.

The tall shapes grew slowly clearer. The faint maddening
humming in her skull was the warding, she realized. She had never felt one so
strong before, or so removed from human source. It might have been a power in
the earth, for all the sense she had of the mages who had raised it.

She was glad suddenly that she had not yielded to temptation
and flown on wings of magery, avoiding the bridge altogether. The wards would
have armed themselves against her. But because she came quietly, riding as any
woman could ride, they did no more than rattle her teeth in her skull. Even
that muted with the raising of her shields.

It was not a warding against mages, then. Only against
magery.

The mist was thin now, revealing glimpses: green of grass
and tree, white of—was it roof? Tower? And directly before her, vast shapes of
men, stone-stiff and stone-still, tall pillars that seemed to hold up the sky.
Their faces were weathered and worn. Their hands were rigid at their sides.
They stared blankly, eternally, across the bridge and the chasm.

They had been painted once—brilliantly, from the look of
them. Under the paint was grey stone, bones of the mountains. All their power
was in their stillness, and in their height even above one who rode on
senelback. The Great Wards were not in them; they signified them, no more.

At first she did not see the men who stood beyond the
pillars, dwarfed by them. But she heard them: the song of metal on metal in the
armor that they wore, and the ring of armed feet on stone as they advanced. She
halted her mare between the pillars and waited for them.

Fear was a dim and feeble thing. Curiosity was stronger by
far. The armor that these men wore was as fantastical as the temples in
Su-Akar. Every edge of it was flared and fluted. Its surfaces were carved,
gilded, colored in eye-searing patterns. It covered them from head to foot. On
their heads were helmets like temple towers, some visored with scowling
demon-faces, a few open.

Those she stared at. Plainsmen again, she thought,
high-cheeked, narrow-eyed, bronze-skinned; taller than the men in Su-Akar, as
tall as in the Hundred Realms, and while not slender, not nearly so broad and
thick. They grew beards here, the first that she had seen in this part of the
world: a thin straggle by northern standards, confining itself to chin and
upper lip. They looked only vaguely ridiculous, and very stern.

Behind her the bridge boomed. The others had decided at last
to cross it, more slowly than she had, but determined once they began. She
stayed where she was. The guards would have to shoot past her to strike any of
the rest.

“Greetings,” she said in the language that her magery had
taught her, “and well met, men of Su-Shaklan.”

“Greetings,” said the guard in the center, whose thin beard
and mustaches brushed his breastplate. His armor was even more ornate than the
others’, his helmet higher, with a winged golden thing on the crest: dragonel,
perhaps, or dragon proper. He did not say that she was well met. “You will give
me your weapons if you wish to pass this gate.”

Haughty man. She gave him in return the hauteur of an
empress born. “I am unarmed, as you should see.” All but the magery that she
could not use, not here, and the small dagger in her boot, which she used for
cutting meat. She lifted her chin a fraction higher. “Now may I pass?”

“Not alone,” said the captain of the guard. His eyes slid
past her to what she was already aware of, the knotting of people and animals
at her back and on the bridge.

She nudged the mare aside. Vanyi’s mean-eyed gelding pranced
past her, snorting and tossing his horns. The mages followed, and the Olenyai,
and Kimeri riding beside Chakan. Daruya remained where she was.

“If you would enter Su-Shaklan,” said the captain of the
guards, “you will give to us your weapons. None but a man of the kingdom may go
about armed.”

Daruya held her breath. Olenyai swords were more than edged
blades; they held the honor of their master. They were not to be parted from,
even in sleep.

And yet, one by one and following their commander’s lead,
the Olenyai surrendered their swords, their bows, their knives and such other
weapons as they could be seen to carry. That there were more, and many, hidden
in the black robes, Daruya knew for a certainty. Either the guards did not
know, or they did not care what weapons a stranger concealed.

She suspected the former. No one judged an Olenyas rightly
at first. The robes and the veils were alarming enough, but the men in them
were small, more often slender than not, and little given to posturing. They
never saw the need.

They had given up their swords for the emperor’s sake, for
this embassy that he had sent. They would not forget the sacrifice. Nor would
they hesitate to exact a price, if they could.

For the moment they were quiet, keeping their demon-eyes
lowered, playing the humble strangers. It was not ill played. The guards
ignored them, speaking to Daruya. “These animals of yours. They are clean?”

As clean as they could be after such a journey, she almost
answered; but they were speaking of ritual. While she wondered how to reply,
Vanyi said, “They are clean in the eyes of our gods. I speak for them as for
the men who follow me.”

The guards accepted that. Like the guides, they saw her grey
age and reckoned her wise. The captain even inclined his head to her, mighty
concession to a foreigner in this of all places in Shurakan. “And the woman,
too? And the child?”

“All who are with me,” said Vanyi, no sign of a smile in her
voice, but Daruya sensed her amusement even through her shields and the hum of
the wards.

The captain turned abruptly on his heel. “You will come,” he
said.