by Judith Tarr
They kept formation as they had from the beginning, Aku leading, the men bringing up the rear. Their expressions were unreadable. Since Daruya disposed of the bandits to such spectacular effect, the ease that had been growing between Vanyi and Aku had vanished.
Aku was still civil, would still converse with Vanyi, answer her questions, perform her duty well and fully. But there was no warmth in it. A mage, like demons, like foreigners, was nothing that Aku wished to call friend.
It was not even hostile, that withdrawal. It was, that was all, like the language Aku spoke, the clothes she wore, the way she harnessed and rode her ox. Vanyi, speaking Aku’s tongue through a trick of magery, wearing the winter garments of the Hundred Realms, riding a senel, was no more kin to her than one of the animals.
Vanyi was stubborn. She did not take refuge in aloofness, did not sequester herself with her mages and let the guides do as they pleased. She kept on riding beside Aku, kept on asking her questions, kept on pushing against the barrier that Aku had raised. It never moved, but neither would she desist.
She was as bad as Estarion, she supposed. She did not want to conquer, only to know and to understand. But she wanted that understanding. She fought for it, even against such determined resistance. There were hatreds enough in the realms of Sun and Lion, tribe fearing tribe, nation despising nation. But never minds closed and locked as these were. Never such perfect refusal to accept a stranger, still less a stranger who was a mage.
If Shurakan was as bad as this, she thought more than once, it might kill them out of hand, lest their alien presence pollute the land’s purity.
And now as they crept across the roof of the world, Shurakan was close at last. Vanyi sensed nothing but rock and snow and cold, but Aku pointed to a peak like a spearhead, leaf-shaped, clean and hard and white against the sky. “That is Shakabundur,” she said, “the Spear of Heaven, that stands guard on Su-Shaklan.”
Aku’s face was unreadable. Her mind offered nothing to the reading but a deep relief. The journey had been no joy to her, even with the prospect of riches in return for it.
Vanyi suppressed a sigh. It was tempting to pay the guides off now and go on alone, with their destination in sight. But she was not that great a fool. There were leagues yet to go, she judged; two days at least, and likely more, before they came to the valley—and who knew what between. One bridgeless chasm could set them back days, as they tried to find a way round.
She urged her senel forward. The gelding’s ribs were beginning to show with long marching and short commons, but he was healthy enough.
They had not lost any of their seneldi, even on the steepest tracks. That was good fortune. God and goddess approved of the journey, the priests would say—though not Estarion, who was lord of them all. Estarion did not approve in the least.
oOo
There was no warning at all. One moment they were scrambling along a precipice. The next, they found themselves on the very edge of it, and the mountain dropping down and down and down into a vision of misty green. After white snow, black rock, sky so blue it was near black, the mist and the greenness seemed utterly alien.
“Su-Shaklan,” said Aku beside Vanyi. Vanyi raised her eyes from the vision of green to the white spearhead of the mountain that stood guard over its northern flank, then let them fall again into the country called the Kingdom of Heaven.
And no wonder, if it struck all travelers so. It was beautiful beyond comprehension.
“You must go there,” said Aku, pointing. Vanyi followed the line of her hand to the cliff. For a moment she saw nothing but sheer drop; but slowly she perceived the line of the track, twisting back and forth down the precipice, shored with ledges. The bottom was out of sight, obscured by mist and distance.
Vanyi brought herself sternly to order, and faced the guide and what she had said. “You’re not coming down with us.”
“You have no need of us,” Aku said, “and we are not of that country, nor welcome in it. We agreed to bring you here. We’ve done that. We’ll take our payment and go.”
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.”
11
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 fin
gers 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.
12
From the other side of the Great Wards, Shurakan showed itself clear, unveiled and unconcealed. The pillars of its gate stood on the rim of a valley like a goblet, slopes and terraces descending half a league and more to a lake like a blue jewel with a broad rim of green. Beside the lake was a city of dark roofs and white towers. Other, smaller cities and towns and villages scattered through the valley and up the slopes of its sides. On the terrace just below and northward of the pillars, under the Spear of Heaven, rose a second city. Its towers were airier than those of the city in the valley, its walls higher, broader, running along the edge of the terrace. Between terrace and walls, the city stood nigh half a league high; only a bird would wish to fall from that wall.