The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  Then she paused. She could change her mind and her clothes and find something else to do. Something more sensible. Something less big and dramatic and a lot less likely to upset Gulien. She could slip unobtrusively around the palace and find out what everybody was saying, all the courtiers and the important people from the town who would be coming and going from the palace today, and, even more important, the servants. All of that would be easy and familiar and interesting, and she nearly decided to do that instead.

  But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Her skin crawled at the thought of spending another hour, another day, or especially another night in this half-ruined palace with Tamaristan agents lurking who knew where and her father locked in the tower. Though she hesitated for a long moment, when at last she took a deep breath and went out her door, it was to go down the stairs and out to the east courtyard, where Kelian was speaking to a handful of guardsmen while one of the stable boys led out his fast bay mare. No other horses were in evidence.

  He turned in surprise when she said his name.

  “I see you were planning to ride fast and alone,” Oressa said in her most cheerful, confident tone. “But, you know, there might yet be a handful of Tamaristan soldiers out there somewhere! There’s not such a need for haste that we must take rash chances.” Turning, she signaled to the most senior of the guardsmen, pleased to see it was Tarod, whom she trusted, and whose family lived away to the east, very near the Kieba’s mountain. It could hardly be better. “Tarod,” she said, making sure she still sounded cheerfully confident, “please gather up half a dozen guardsmen and see that everyone is properly outfitted for a few days on the road.” As the man bowed, she turned and smiled at Kelian. “I hope you don’t mind a slightly larger party. It’s true I’m not an experienced rider, but I’ll try not to slow us down.”

  Kelian said helplessly, “Your Highness—I mean, of course not, but—I assure Your Highness, I am altogether capable of—”

  “Of course you are,” Oressa told him warmly. “But Gulien and I have decided it’s best if a Madalin personally returns the artifact to the Kieba. He, of course, cannot leave Caras at this time, so I have taken on this task. Of course I will need a respectable escort. I’m sure it won’t take a minute to put one together. After all, there’s no need for pomp. I’m sure the Kieba would hardly be impressed.” She said to the stable boy, “A gentle horse for me and enough mounts for my escort.”

  The boy, eyes wide, bobbed his head and ducked back into the stable.

  Kelian began, “Your Highness, truly—”

  “It’s perfectly all right,” she assured him. “I’m longing to see the Kieba anyway.” This was actually perfectly true, though Oressa had never thought she would have the chance. It felt a little strange to realize that she planned to just ride openly across the drylands and right up to the Kieba’s doorway.

  “But—” Kelian hesitated. “It is hardly right for Your Highness to risk herself on the road—”

  Oressa raised a surprised eyebrow at him. “Really, Kelian, I’m sure you and a handful of guardsmen can keep me perfectly safe. I’m sure Gulien would be astonished to hear otherwise. Brigandage is not such a problem as that between here and the mountain, surely? You must see how important it is for my family to show the Kieba that we value her good regard. Do stop arguing and let’s get on, shall we? Oh, but you had better go ahead and let me have the artifact now.”

  The new young captain said, in a somewhat stifled tone, “Yes, Your Highness.” He patted at his shirt. “I have it safe. You should permit me to carry it. His Highness gave it to me in trust. I promise Your Highness I won’t lose it—”

  “Of course you won’t lose it. That’s not the point.” Oressa was surprised he didn’t understand. “I need to be able to tell the Kieba truthfully that I carried it to her myself. Surely you see that! I promise you, I won’t lose it, either! Go ahead. Let me have it.”

  With a set mouth and palpable reluctance, Kelian brought out the pouch and handed it to Oressa.

  “That’s the way,” Oressa said approvingly, glancing into the pouch to admire the glitter of the medallion. Then she tucked it away in her skirts and patted Kelian’s arm. He really didn’t look at all happy. Handsome, undeniably, and she did like him, but possibly he might be a bit stubborn. At least he seemed to have given up arguing.

  Oressa actually felt a little bit guilty for stretching the truth, although she really did believe it ought to be a Madalin who returned the Kieba’s artifact. She could apologize for her father and offer the respect of her family, explain that Gulien would be a great king and would never defy her. It was obvious that Gulien had in fact taken the Kieba’s golem without permission, and Oressa knew her brother wouldn’t speak on his own behalf. Their father had taught him never to argue or explain or justify himself, which meant it was up to her to see the Kieba and explain. So it really did make perfect sense to go see the Kieba herself.

  So she shouldn’t feel guilty at all. And the sharp need she felt to get away from her father wasn’t any part of her decision. Not really.

  She glanced around, but no one seemed to be questioning her presence or her right to commandeer an escort and accompany Kelian. She hoped Gulien didn’t plan to come to the courtyard himself to see Kelian off. But they were nearly ready. The boys were bringing out more horses, and Tarod was striding back across the courtyard with four other guardsmen—Oressa knew all of them, at least slightly. She beckoned to Tarod to help her mount her horse, a gentle-looking sorrel gelding, and said, “Your family lives near the Kieba’s mountain, isn’t that right? Have you ever actually seen her? I’ve always known she was out there, in her mountain, but I never thought I’d actually see her. Perhaps you can tell me about her while we ride.”

  Tarod, it turned out, did in fact know all the stories about the Kieba, once he relaxed enough to talk to Oressa. He was an animated, cheerful young man and a good storyteller, and she liked how he seemed to forget she was his princess once he was in the middle of a story. “I think some of the tales are made up, though,” he confessed, then grinned and added, “I made one up, myself, once.” He told it to her, about how the Kieba turned people who offended her into cottonwood trees and then when the wind blew and the branches creaked, you could hear their voices, pleading to be turned back.

  Oressa laughed. “Did you get anyone to believe that?”

  “People like unbelievable stories,” Tarod assured her. “The more unbelievable the better. Anyway, I’m not sure the Kieba couldn’t turn people into trees if she wanted. Though I don’t think you’d hear them pleading afterward.”

  “I’d believe it,” declared the youngest guardsman, who had been riding close beside her in order to listen. His eyes were wide. “I wouldn’t want to hear a story like that at night, with only a little fire between us and the dark. Are you sure we’re riding the right way, Your Highness?”

  “You’re safe,” Oressa promised him. “No one needs to actually cross her wall except me.”

  Kelian cleared his throat. “Your Highness, your brother entrusted this task to me. Surely you will permit me to intrude upon the Kieba’s mountain while you remain below. I promise you, I will—”

  “No, no, returning it myself is the whole point of my coming, after all.” And if there was any trouble—though she didn’t know why there should be!—then Kelian could take word back to Gulien. Oressa winced a little, contemplating that prospect, and asked Tarod to tell another story about the Kieba. Preferably one without lonely voices wailing on the night breeze or anything.

  They were well out in the countryside by that time. Just riding though the city had been exciting—Oressa had hardly ever left the palace in her whole life. She’d studied maps of Caras and of Carastind and of the wider world, but always rather wistfully. For all her casual threats to run away and become a temple maiden in Markand, she hadn’t actually expected ever to see most of the landscapes captured in ink. Now she found that maps weren’t the same at all. The city was so
much more crowded and busy and noisy and smelly than she’d expected. The streets were narrower and far dustier and the buildings taller and much more colorful—not just whitewashed plaster or the natural colors of the stone, but as they got farther from the palace, many of them painted poppy red or eggshell blue or a delicate pale green. How strange that she hadn’t even known how the people of Caras painted their homes.

  Even the sunlight seemed hotter in these crowded streets, which were filled with hundreds and hundreds of people, all of whom, even the children half Oressa’s age, seemed to know just what they were about. To them these crowded neighborhoods must be as familiar as the palace was to her. It seemed very strange that she hadn’t thought of that before.

  And once they left Caras and passed through the farmland that stretched out inland into the true drylands, she had been surprised again at the very flatness and aridity of the land. Oh, there were wheat fields still, and fields of amaranth, and occasionally some other grain she didn’t recognize, and here and there a carefully tended stand of fruit trees where there was a summer well that never failed. But there were also increasingly vast stretches of scrublands where nothing grew but tamarisk and scrub oak and pitch pine. The land was so very open, and there seemed so much more of it than she had imagined. Tarod’s stories were doubly welcome then, for being told in a familiar voice and for reminding Oressa of the purpose of her journey.

  She wondered whether her brother had realized yet that she was missing. But then, she was often missing, and she always turned up again. By the time he figured out where she must have gone, it would be far too late for him to send somebody after her, or come himself, which was what mattered. And he ought to know he could trust her to take care of this anyway. She was sure he did know that, really. Or would remember it, once he got over being angry that she’d slipped away.

  It was strange being out of the palace, out of the city, out in the countryside—just out. To be riding between fields of wheat stubble and scattered goats looked after, casually, by young children. The sky seemed much wider out here. The world itself seemed wider. “How far is it to the Kieba’s mountain? How long will it take us to get there?” Oressa asked. She ought to know, but it had always seemed unreachable. Everything outside the palace had always seemed unreachable to her. Princesses did not go about the city like the daughters of common merchants or tradesmen, far less out into the countryside. She hoped it was a long way. She felt safe, somehow, enveloped by all this space. Not a secret door anywhere, nowhere for her to hide—but nowhere for anyone else to hide, either. No place for secrets. Though it was ridiculous to feel that way, really, because she knew perfectly well that secrets always hid in people’s hearts, not in the earth or sky.

  “Five days, but that’s with farmers’ wagons,” Tarod told her.

  “Three, for us,” Kelian said. He slanted a look at Oressa. “Two, if I were riding alone.”

  “I’m sure three will be perfectly all right,” she assured him blithely.

  They stayed the night in the one public house in a little town, hardly more than a village, called Terand. “The mill’s down that way,” Tarod told her, gesturing vaguely. “We always used to stay at this end of town when we brought grain to be ground. My cousins still do, I expect.” He looked around and grinned. “Ah, there’s a cousin of mine now, with his eldest! With your leave, Your Highness—”

  Oressa waved Tarod away, peering curiously at the big bluff man who rose to greet him with a wide grin and a buffet on one shoulder. The man had been sitting with a boy and a girl alike enough to be twins, who also jumped up to welcome Tarod. Both appeared several years younger than she was, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, but they seemed perfectly familiar with how to go on in a public house. She was surprised to feel a twinge of something almost like envy at the easy knowledge of the farmer’s children, who knew how much a meal in a public house ought to cost, and how to buy one, and whether it was proper to speak to chance-met strangers. She hadn’t even known until this moment that she didn’t know any of those things, and now she felt the lack.

  Of course, the guardsmen knew all those things. A couple of them went off to order food while Kelian arranged for a supper and also for a private chamber for Oressa—which proved, when she glanced in curiously, to be starkly plain, with only a straw mattress on the bed and not even a rug on the floor. But it seemed clean enough, and she supposed one could not expect feather mattresses when one ran away on an adventure.

  “You didn’t announce who I am to the whole room, though? I wouldn’t want to create a fuss,” she said to Kelian as they sat down to platters of mutton stew and dark bread, butter and ripe pears. She thought he looked tense and worried and didn’t understand why. Everything seemed to be going perfectly well as far as she could tell.

  “No, no,” he assured her, a touch impatiently. “Of course not. But rough men stay here, Your Highness, and anyone can see you’re a lady of breeding and wealth.”

  Oressa glanced around, surprised. The public house was too small to have private parlors, but the common room was not terribly crowded. It seemed to be mostly families here, men and women both, many of them with children. “All these folk look perfectly pleasant to me. Six guardsmen and you are surely enough to guarantee our safety.”

  Kelian didn’t seem to be listening. He said, “And you have no maids to care for you! This is hardly proper. You must hire one of these village girls, but what if the girl proves to be untrustworthy? All our supplies will be perfectly secure with the men, but the Kieba’s artifact—it’s a beautiful thing; anyone might covet it—”

  “Kelian, I’m sure you’re worrying over nothing!” But Oressa glanced around with a touch of unease. It was true that she did not know anything about any of the people here, and it was equally true that she ought to have a girl with her. She beckoned to Tarod, at the other end of the table. “Your cousin,” she said. “He’s an honest man, I’m sure. And I’m certain his daughter is a pleasant and honest girl. Would she be willing to stay with me tonight, as I did not bring any of my proper maids?”

  The girl was awed and delighted with Oressa’s request, for though no one told her straight out that she was being asked to serve the princess of Carastind, Oressa was obviously an important lady. The girl’s father was first wary of the request for his daughter’s service and then, on seeing Tarod’s bluff confidence, cautiously pleased. Oressa felt smug. It was a problem she ought to have foreseen, but it was perfectly simple to solve. She couldn’t quite resist giving Kelian a complacent nod. That should show him he could stop worrying about every little thing.

  Oressa thoroughly enjoyed the public house. She’d never stayed in one before. She watched Tarod, who knew how to manage. One had to order bathwater separately, for example, which she would never have guessed. Servants carried steaming water into the bathing room in huge pots, two girls to each pot, and tipped it into the tub. There wasn’t any running water. There weren’t drains, either. The servants had to carry the water away again. Probably they watered the kitchen garden with it—nobody would waste water in this dry country. It was almost real desert even this close to the coast, which Oressa hadn’t actually realized. She was appalled but not actually surprised when Tarod’s cousin’s daughter, whose name was Tania, told her how much the bathwater cost.

  “How does anybody grow anything here?” Oressa wondered. “I thought it was all farmland once you got away from Caras.”

  “There’s rain in the spring for the wheat,” Tania explained. “The Kieba made the wheat for us, you know, long ago at the dawning of the age. It’s special drylands wheat, and plumps up the grain despite the summer drought. And amaranth is tough enough to take anything. Goats don’t need much water, either, and people have wells. And there’s the river, of course. Nobody else uses it once it loops toward the Kieba’s mountain, but my family has our farm along that part of the river and the Kieba’s never minded.”

  Oressa was delighted to have found such a talkative girl. S
he gave Tania a silver ring set with a pearl and asked her if she was willing to be hired for a few days. “Since Tarod is your father’s cousin, surely it’s all right,” she suggested.

  The girl laughed. “It’s better than all right! This ring is far too much, but you can all stay at my father’s farm and get supplies for the ride back, too.”

  So every obstacle fell down before her. Oressa went to bed feeling very satisfied with herself despite the prickly straw mattress, and dreamed of riding through wide-open drylands and not of her father at all.

  From Terand, the road, Oressa found, mostly paralleled the river. There were indeed farms along both banks of the river, and the next night they stayed at one of them. Oressa shared a room in the farmhouse with Tania, but the men had to sleep in the barn, which they seemed to expect and didn’t object to. Only Kelian seemed displeased, and by then Oressa was used to ignoring his displeasure, since he plainly was never going to approve of her presence on this journey.

  On the third day, the Kieba’s mountain finally came into view, and Oressa noticed how the farms vanished and the road narrowed and turned into a rough track as soon as the mountain began to loom against the distant horizon. Very few people came this way, Tania told her. Mostly travelers heading for Kamee, beyond the mountain, went around through Little Caras, and came up from the south. The girl sounded mildly scornful at the idea of people going out of their way to avoid the Kieba’s mountain, which Oressa found comforting.

  A little while later Tarod straightened in his saddle and peered ahead. “We’ll be there by midafternoon,” he told Oressa. “I can’t believe how much faster everything is with good horses and no wagons.”