The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  Oressa clenched her teeth. Nasia was obviously sure that this must be the letter every father sent his daughter to give her formal notice that she was being courted by some eligible young man. And of course Nasia was probably right . . . in a way.

  “Your hair’s still damp. There’s no help for that, but you can’t go out to supper with it loose over your shoulders like some merchant’s daughter. I’ll braid it and put it up and it should look well enough. Don’t fidget, please. Where did you put those gold bangles of yours? Those would look nice with the earrings and that necklace, and of course everyone will be looking at you tonight, child, won’t they! The first days of courtship are such a wonderful time for a girl. All right. There. Don’t look so solemn!”

  Oressa took a deep breath and followed her maid out to her reception room to let the man give her the letter. Because the man would undoubtedly report her attitude and manners to her father, she took small ladylike steps and kept her eyes demurely down.

  The man turned out to be a guard officer she knew slightly: Beriad, Lord Meric’s cousin, an intelligent and good-humored man who had gone into the king’s guard because he wasn’t his father’s heir. Oressa liked him, so she had never let slip any hint that she knew of his unsuitable closeness with a certain long-widowed lady of the court. But even if she liked Beriad, he was still her father’s man. She tried not to show him anything but a blank court expression as she took the letter he held out to her and slit the fragile paper.

  “Well?” Nasia asked, too polite to crane her neck and stare over Oressa’s shoulder, but understandably dying to know what name the letter contained.

  Oressa glanced down at the few words—too neatly penned to have been written by her father’s own hand—and found herself clenching her teeth, struggling against an outburst. She had already known what this letter would say. It was ridiculous to feel like this. She should have been prepared. Only guessing and knowing weren’t the same, and now she found out how little prepared she had been. She smothered anger and fear and said as blandly as she could, “What a very interesting notion of my father’s, to be sure.”

  She would live and die a virgin before she married a Tamaristan prince, but she didn’t say that. She would climb out her window and run away to be a temple maiden in Markand, and nobody would ever guess except Gulien. But she certainly didn’t say that. She swallowed her anger, determined that Beriad would not be able to tell her father that she’d had hysterics, like a girl, like a child. He was watching her worriedly—obviously her tone hadn’t been quite as light and unconcerned as she’d tried to make it.

  Nasia, her eyes narrowing, also guessed something was wrong. She plucked the letter from her hand, smoothed it out, and looked down at the thin spidery letters. Then she looked up to stare in confounded dismay at Oressa. “But,” she said in a blank tone. “But this says—this is—a Tamaristan prince?”

  “A Tamaristan prince? Surely not.” Beriad, plainly just as surprised, shifted to look over Nasia’s shoulder. Then he stared at Oressa.

  “It’s a sensible decision, I’m sure, under the circumstances,” Oressa said coolly. “Naturally my father wants only what’s best for Carastind.” Despite her best effort, her voice wavered on the last words, and she turned and fled—in a decorous stroll, but it was definitely flight—back into her private rooms before she could lose her composure entirely. She did not slam her door behind her. Princesses did not have tantrums and slam doors. But she tried her best to make the quiet click of her door carry the same emphasis as a crash.

  Gulien himself brought Oressa her supper, not so very much later. Ordinarily Oressa loved sharing supper privately with her brother. She actually did like the formal dining hall, with its carved and gilded tables and heavy crystal goblets and beautiful painted plates, but when she and Gulien shared their father’s high table, Gulien had to sit all the way across the table from her and so they couldn’t hear each other unless they shouted. And no one shouted at the king’s table, ever. So she usually liked it much better when Gulien joined her for a late, informal supper.

  But tonight, after all that had happened, Oressa could hardly bring herself even to look at her brother. She knew nothing of this was his fault. She knew it was all her father’s fault, but she couldn’t help some of her anger spilling over on Gulien.

  “I tried to stop him, you know,” her brother said tentatively.

  Oressa still didn’t look at him. “No one can stop him doing anything he wants.”

  “I think it must be true that he offended the Kieba somehow.”

  “Really? I can’t imagine how.”

  Gulien sat back. “You’re too hard on him. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you are. Carastind needed a decisive king after our great-grandfather—”

  Oressa sighed loudly to make her brother stop and said pointedly, “Some people think it’s important to make the right decisions. Apparently Father thought it was just fine to offend the Kieba instead!”

  “Anyway,” said Gulien pacifically, “I did try to tell him that you couldn’t marry a Tamaristan prince no matter how much gilding Gajdosik puts on the bars of your cage, and he said—”

  “I know what he said!” Oressa jerked her head up and glared at him. “He asked what you thought a princess was for—the decoration of the court? Because he already has plenty of decorative objects and would prefer useful ones.”

  “Well . . .” Gulien opened a hand. “That’s close.”

  “What, was it even worse?” Whatever their father’s precise words, Oressa could imagine his exact scathing tone. She tore a piece of bread into little pieces and then littler pieces, until it was a pile of crumbs in front of her.

  Two of her father’s guardsmen had also turned up at her door. They were just like an honor guard, except they, like princesses, weren’t there to be decorative. Oressa knew they were there to stop her from running away to, say, become a temple maiden in Markand. That was rather insulting. Oressa had every intention of sneaking out of her room later, even if all she did was stroll back down the hallway to her door so she could look puzzled when the guardsmen were shocked to see her. She could do this perfectly easily by going out the window and climbing around to the aviary. She did that all the time. No one expected a princess to climb around on the outside walls of the palace, though really there was plenty of fretwork and carving so it was very easy. And the aviary would be deserted at this time of night, so it would be perfectly safe.

  But teasing the guardsmen wouldn’t change anything. Prince Gajdosik’s ships would still be in the harbor, his men would still be on their way north from Paree, and her father would still be planning to sell her to him in exchange for an alliance against his brothers and Estenda. With all that, teasing the guard almost didn’t seem like it would be worth the effort. Running away to Markand, that might be worth some effort. If she had the nerve. She’d never been on her own in the city; she’d hardly ever even left the palace. And Markand was a long way away. And could Gulien cope with their father without her? It was all ridiculous and impossible. She scowled down at her pile of bread crumbs.

  “Stay put,” Gulien told her. Oressa might have been angry that he would dare command her about anything, only then her brother scrubbed his hands over his face and added wearily, “Will you? Please? This isn’t the time for your tricks. Everything’s upset—it’s too hard to predict where people will be. You’ll be caught. We’ll find a way to get you out of this, Oressa, only you can’t do anything foolish. It’ll just make things impossible. But I promise you, I won’t let anyone sacrifice you like a game piece on a board. All right?”

  Oressa started to ask how he planned to stop their father from doing anything at all. But she saw then that he was desperately worried and that part of what worried him was herself. She said, in her meekest tone, “All right.” Although she couldn’t help but add, “For now.”

  Gulien looked at her silently for some time. Then he said, as she had, “All right.” He rubbed his
hands over his face again and went away.

  Breakfast, like the previous evening’s supper, was a silent, strained affair. Oressa had no one to share it with but Nasia, and her maid knew maddeningly little about what was going on. Oressa thought about sneaking out of her room and listening to the rumors, but it was easier to get rumors from her father’s guardsmen as the shifts changed. Except that half the rumors contradicted the other half. The Tamaristan soldiers were advancing up the road from Paree toward Caras. No, they were still in Paree. No, they’d left Paree, but they’d gone inland rather than up the coast. Oressa personally doubted that one: She couldn’t think of any obvious reason why a Tamaristan force would head into the desert when conquering Carastind so obviously depended on taking Caras.

  Other rumors said that another Tamaristan force had landed north of Caras, up by Addas, near the border Carastind shared with Estenda. No, but more ships had been spotted out to sea and might be heading north. No, there were ships, but they clearly meant to come straight into the harbor at Caras.

  Oressa supposed Gajdosik had a plan for dealing with the cannons at the harbor mouth. She couldn’t imagine what it was. Maybe he just had so many ships he was willing to sacrifice some to get his men to the docks.

  By the time Gulien came back to see her, near dusk, she was exhausted with worry and the effort of staying in her rooms like an obedient child. But Gulien looked worse than she felt. He was carrying half a dozen old scrolls and one fat book. He sat down on Oressa’s couch, piled all the scrolls and the book on the cushions next to him, let Nasia bring him a cup of cider, looked at it with blank weariness as though he didn’t quite know what it was, and set the cup down untasted on the flat arm of the couch. Then he looked at Oressa and said without preamble, “Gajdosik’s rejected Father’s offer.”

  “What?” said Oressa blankly. She was stunned. She’d been furious about their father’s plan to give her to the Tamaristan prince. But she had never for a moment thought Gajdosik might turn that offer down. “He can’t have,” she said, and looked at Gulien, trying to figure out what he might really have meant.

  But her brother only shook his head. “Our courier came back with a message. A very clear message. Prince Gajdosik doesn’t want an alliance.”

  “But—”

  “He’s arrogant, but he must truly believe he has enough men to take Caras and then make himself king of all Carastind. Maybe he does. We’re getting reports—well, all kinds of reports. But there may be two or more princes behind this attack. There are definitely a lot more Tamaristan soldiers than we expected. And there might be another force in the north after all. We thought not, but now we think maybe there is. But however many branches there are to this attack, we’re fairly certain it’s Prince Gajdosik making all the decisions. We’re sure he’s going to try to take Caras. We have no idea how much else he might try to take. He’s an aggressive bastard, that’s the truth. And arrogant. He declares—” Gulien stopped.

  “What?” When her brother stared at her without answering, Oressa threw a cushion at him. “What?”

  “Well, he says, while a Carastindin princess might be useful, he doesn’t need his marriage bound about with concessions and promises,” Gulien said finally. “And a strong man takes the whole loaf instead of being satisfied with a mouthful of bread.”

  Oressa jumped to her feet, glaring at him.

  “I didn’t say it!” her brother protested, raising his hands. “He said it!”

  Oressa swallowed her first furious response with some effort and declared instead, “We’re not going to let him do this!”

  “No. No, we’ll fight.” But her brother’s tone made it clear that he expected to lose. He said, “Even without the Kieba’s help, we could throw them back in any ordinary year. And in any ordinary year, the Kieba would probably protect us. But this year . . . I guess those rumors about the plague and about Father offending the Kieba did make it across the Narrow Sea, and I guess they sounded more plausible than I’d have thought. . . .”

  Oressa felt sick.

  “So I’m going to go see the Kieba myself.”

  Every time Oressa thought she couldn’t be more shocked, Gulien said something more shocking. But as she thought about it, she started to like the idea.

  “I know it’s not completely safe, even for a Madalin,” Gulien said earnestly. “We don’t intrude without invitation—that’s always been true. But—” Gulien patted the scrolls he’d brought. “Our records show we’ve had a good relationship with the Kieba all the way from the reign of Oren Madalin. I looked it up. When the fire rain came and every Madalin except Oren died, that’s when the Kieba extended her protection not just to Carastind, but to our family specifically. That long ago, Oressa! I simply don’t believe our father could have offended her so badly she’d forget she’s favored us for hundreds of years! Even if he has, surely I can persuade her to be generous and forgiving. Then, if the Kieba defends us, Gajdosik will have no choice but to tuck his tail and run back to Tamarist, and if he can’t win mercy from his brother there, that’s just too bad for him.”

  “Yes,” said Oressa, nodding. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Oh no, you won’t—”

  “Yes! What else should I do? Wait here to see whether it’s Gajdosik or the Kieba who gets here first? Because I bet it’ll be Gajdosik, and you’ll get back to find him in this hall and me a married woman—”

  Gulien held up his hands to stop her. “Our soldiers would be ashamed to know you think so little of them.” He paused to let her realize this was true. When her eyes dropped, he went on. “As I say, we’ll fight. Caras won’t fall in a day, and we’ve men coming from Little Caras and farther east. They’ll get here before Gajdosik, and the plague rain this spring didn’t fall inland, so that’ll help. We’ll hold. You’ll hold here. I’ll take a pair of fast horses. It’ll take me maybe two days to get to the Kieba’s mountain if I ride fast and don’t stop for the night. You’d slow me down, Oressa. But that’s not why you can’t come. It’s dangerous right now for travelers, but that’s not why either.”

  Oressa put together several things she should have understood more quickly. She said, “You need me here so I can tell Father where you went.”

  “When you think it’s time,” Gulien said quickly. “Not too early, not too late. I trust your judgment, Oressa. There’s no one else I can trust with this.”

  This was definitely true. “All right,” Oressa said, not very happily. She was half relieved, maybe more than half, to see her idea of fleeing to Markand become impossible. “All right,” she said again. “I’ll stay here. I’ll do this. But if you don’t come back, Gulien, I will come after you. You tell the Kieba that.” She tried to smile. “You warn her how much trouble I’d cause her. Tell her that.”

  Gulien hugged her, briefly and hard. “Keep safe,” he said. “Be careful. And if you aren’t going to be careful—”

  “Be lucky,” Oressa finished with him, and hugged him back. Then she let him go and stepped back.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Kieba’s mountain wasn’t tall and sharp-edged like the great jagged mountains of Markand. Gulien had seen illustrations in books, so he knew what Markand’s mountains looked like: ranks of jagged white-edged peaks against the sky, like knives or shark’s teeth. Those mountains looked cold and forbidding, as though nothing could ever live there, although the books spoke of stocky white sheep that leaped up and down sheer cliffs on their way to high pastures and of giant eagles that could carry away half-grown lambs.

  The Kieba’s mountain wasn’t at all like that. It rose out of the red desert in a series of knolls and humps. Its highest point was probably . . . Gulien tilted his head back, estimating . . . not much more than twenty times higher than the king’s palace in Caras, and the whole mountain was probably no farther around than a man could ride in a single day.

  On the other hand, the Kieba’s mountain was the only mountain in all of Carastind. It shrugged upward from the flat dryla
nds, brooding in solitary power over the sandy soil with its dusty sage and tamarisk and over the fields of drylands wheat and purple-leaved amaranth some farmers, bolder than most, had planted in its shadow. The farmhouses and scattered outbuildings were visible in the distance, beyond the wheat fields. The river, brown with sediment, wound its sluggish way through the nearest field and vanished around the low shoulder of the Kieba’s mountain. The road followed the river, but Gulien drew his horse to a halt where the river turned, beneath the spreading shade of one of the cottonwoods, and stared instead up at the mountain. No path led toward it. No one would dare trespass.

  The whole mountain was surrounded by a wall, making clear the Kieba’s desire for privacy. It was a low wall, barely shoulder high on a man. The stones were rough, providing easy handholds, and the top of the wall was flat and smooth. It was not meant to keep out trespassers, that wall, but only to mark out the boundary of the land the Kieba claimed for her own. If anyone was foolish enough to intrude, well, the Kieba was certainly well able to deal with trespassers. Everyone knew that—certainly Gulien knew that: He knew all the stories about the Kieba.

  Iskandar of Markand had believed that the Kieba turned trespassers into foxes or falcons, or that she fed them to her foxes and falcons in order to teach her creatures to take human shape. But the people of Markand did not live in the Kieba’s own country, and Iskandar, like most foreigners, had been ready to believe anything of the Kieba, even long after she had ceased to be a god.

  On the other hand, Maranas Madalin, Gulien’s own distant ancestor, had written that the Kieba imprisoned trespassers in lightless cells below her mountain and kept them there until they forgot their own names and voices and bodies and turned into mere whispers of darkness. Then she let them go, but they were only wraiths, haunting the dark moments between sunset and moonrise.