“Yes, Your Highness, and yet you must not—” Captain Aran began, not very happily.
Gulien lifted a hand, checking him. “What else can we do?”
“Yes, but—” repeated Aran, and pointed toward the Kieba’s mountain. “It seems to me, Your Highness, that the Kieba may now refuse to permit anyone to go up. I’m sure that is not as tales describe her wall.”
Gulien raised his eyebrows, peering past the cottonwoods and through the dazzle of the sun. Then he frankly stared, unable to understand how he had not seen the change at once, even distracted as he had been by the presence of the Tamaristans. The Kieba’s wall, obvious even from this distance, had plainly at least trebled in height since he had last seen it. It now also glittered forbiddingly all along the top. From here Gulien could not make out what the top surface had been lined with, but he could imagine well enough: razor-edged shards of steel or broken glass, or perhaps most likely of all, knife-sharp fragments of crystal.
Where previously the Kieba’s wall had been merely a warning, it was now a naked threat.
“Is that a response to my intrusion, I wonder?” he murmured. “Or to these Tamaristans?” Or to some other factor, but he did not believe that. He hoped for the latter, but remembering the Kieba’s anger at Madalin defiance, he would not have lain odds against the former.
A glance toward the farmhouses showed the Tamaristan company holding its position, unsurprisingly. Since the Tamaristans seemed unlikely to move, Gulien hardly hesitated before saying, “Hold the company here. They can water their horses by turns, but until we have a better idea what we’re facing here, they had better stay ready for action.” Then he nudged his own horse forward. The horse balked a bit at the low bank but finally jumped down in an awkward little hop, splashed across the river, and surged up the gentler slope on the opposite side. He was aware, behind him, of Aran sending a sergeant and half a dozen men after him, but he paid no attention. All his attention was on the newly forbidding wall.
The wall was all still red local stone, but its outer surface was smoother now—not smooth as plaster, but no longer so rough as to afford good holds for a man’s hands nor rests for his feet. And he had guessed right, for those were indeed shards of black crystal set forbiddingly into the narrow top of the wall. Dismounting, Gulien tossed his horse’s reins to the sergeant and walked forward to stand in the wall’s shadow, tilting his head back to stare up at it. Where before it might have been five feet or so, now he thought it must be at least twelve.
Of course it would not actually be difficult to get over the wall. A man could very well stand on a horse’s back, or be lifted up by another man. A blanket could be thrown across the sharp-edged materials at the top. But all that would be difficult enough to make a would-be trespasser think twice were he at all wise. Gulien had not quite decided whether he was wise or not. He could see no hare nor fox nor mountain cat anywhere about on this side of the wall, but who knew what might be waiting on the other? Stepping back a bit, he called out, “Kephalos! Kephalos?”
For some moments, he thought there would be no response. Then a shrill cry above made him step back again and lift an arm, and a falcon—of course it would be a falcon—dropped sharply out of the sky to perch on his wrist.
Gulien lowered his arm and looked at the falcon, eye to eye. This one looked more like a real bird, with eyes more like a normal falcon’s eyes, golden and round-pupiled, but it was heavy for its size and it stared into his face with a coldness that was nothing like a real falcon’s innocent ferocity.
“Kephalos,” he said to it, not quite a question.
The little falcon clicked its beak, and the kephalos said—speaking through the bird or from the empty air, he could not quite tell—“Gulien Madalin.”
Gulien let his breath out, inexpressively relieved that it would speak to him. He wanted to ask about everything at once, and this made it hard to ask anything at all. “The wall—,” he began, but changed his mind and started over. “The Kieba—”
“The Kieba has no preference,” stated the kephalos.
Thrown off his balance, Gulien hesitated. “No preference—” About what, he meant to ask, but the kephalos interrupted him with the same cold indifference.
“I have a preference. Where there are rival claimants, I must have a preference. When you come to the trial, I prefer that you succeed. Your predisposition must be reinforced, Gulien Madalin. Your secondary identity must be established.” And, before Gulien could demand to know what any of that meant, the falcon’s grip tightened on his wrist, its talons piercing his skin so that blood beaded up and ran down from the wounds.
With a considerable effort, Gulien suppressed his reaction—he made no sound other than an involuntary indrawn breath, nor any move to knock the bird-golem away. The earlier wounds had closed cleanly, with no sign of wound-fever; he didn’t understand what the kephalos meant to achieve by dealing such injuries, but he would bear it without complaint if it would only answer his questions. So he asked, striving to keep his tone reasonable, “Claimants to what? What rivals? Do you mean Prince Gajdosik?” Or, appalling thought, did it mean Oressa? He demanded, “Where is Oressa? Is my sister well?”
But if the kephalos answered, Gulien didn’t hear it. Light bloomed suddenly behind his eyes, silent flowers of lightning, robbing him of ordinary sight, oversetting his balance. He flung out a hand to catch himself, but it seemed to him that he was falling, except he did not seem able to feel the ground beneath him. He seemed to hear shouting, dimly, and thought first of the Tamaristans and then thought it might be his own voice. Then he realized how alarmed his own people must be if he had shouted or seemed to have fallen into a fit, and he wished to reassure them but seemed unable to frame words. Or thoughts.
His vision had shattered into a tumbling kaleidoscope of images—his thoughts seemed to have shattered as well. He remembered the kephalos, remembered mastering its splintering vision. He remembered fierce triumph—he had won some victory, wrung it out of a flood of dire defeat, but he did not know what the victory had been or what the defeat had comprised. It had not been his own victory; he knew that suddenly; nor was it his own defeat. But though the memories were not clear, the ferocity of feeling was overpowering, and Gulien flung himself away. He did not know what he did, but jolting away from all the phantasmagoria, he found himself falling into welcome darkness, out of the busting light, gone.
He opened his eyes to darkness and lay still for some time, blinking into the blind dark, not quite thinking of anything. But gradually he became aware that the darkness was not absolute. An oil lamp was lit, though its baffles had been drawn, dimming its light to hardly more than candleglow. He could see canvas overhead, rippling slightly in some unfelt breeze. . . . He was in a tent. Because he had left Caras and come . . . to the Kieba’s mountain, yes. Following Oressa. Yes.
There had been Tamaristans. That came gradually clear to him, his own people on the bank of the river and Prince Gajdosik’s Tamaristans sheltering in the farmhouses and barns of the small settlement. . . . Had there been battle? Had he been injured? He did not remember battle, nor injury. Although his wrist stung.
Memory returned—the Kieba’s wall, the falcon—and his breath hissed. He lurched up.
A hand caught his shoulder, support and reassurance rather than restraint. “Easy, now,” murmured a half-familiar voice. “You’re all right. Or leastwise I figure you’re all right. Say something, lad—Your Highness, I mean. You know your name, and my name, and where you are?” The man opened one of the lamp’s baffles to let a little more light into the tent.
“Sergeant . . . Mattin,” Gulien murmured. He felt steadier, though he touched his forehead gingerly with his fingertips. His head ached. Had he fallen? Or was this some remnant of whatever the kephalos had done to him? “I was talking to the kephalos. To its falcon. What—how long—” He tried to collect himself. “What’s happened, Sergeant?”
“Captain’ll be right glad you’re awake,” the
sergeant murmured, kindly not adding, And not babbling. “Here’s tea if you want it. Do you good, it will.” He didn’t wait for Gulien’s nod, but put a mug into his hands and went on. “Nothing much has happened as matters. The Kieba’s falcon spoke to you; you recall that much. You called out something, not in Esse—nonsense it sounded. Do you remember that? No? Well, a minute after that, you went down like you’d been shot. Took ten years off my life—off all our lives, I guess. But you’d taken no injury a mortal man could find, so the captain, he said we’d wait and see if you just woke up natural—this’n was at dusk, and if it’s yet midnight, it’s not much more, so you see you weren’t down long, Your Highness.”
That didn’t sound nearly as bad as Gulien had feared. And the tea, astringent through the sweetness of sugar, seemed to be clearing his head. Whatever the kephalos had done to him, it seemed to have passed off. “The Tamaristans?”
“They haven’t moved; we haven’t moved. We’re bivouacked in place, across the river from the mountain, and them Tamaristans are still where we left ’em as far as we know, in them farmhouses over the way. We’ve got sentries out, of course. Been quiet all the night so far. We’re all just waiting on the dawn, I expect, them and us both, and herself up the mountain, as may be. You want to get some proper rest. Likely that’s the best use you can make of what’s left of the night.”
Gulien drew a breath, let it out, and leaned back slowly. “Aran?”
“The captain’ll be glad to hear you’re up and making sense, Your Highness. I’ll see he gets that word, but I much doubt he’ll find anything so urgent he has to put it before you this minute—unless it’s you as has got something he needs to hear right this moment?”
Gulien shook his head. He hoped not. He couldn’t think of anything, but all his thoughts still seemed sluggish.
“Good. Then go to sleep,” said the sergeant kindly, no doubt seeing something of this on Gulien’s face. “Just you rest, Your Highness, and we’ll see what’s what in the morning.”
It seemed good advice. Certainly it could not be reasonable to rush around madly, alarming all his people, when he had, after all, no idea what to do. In the morning . . . in the morning surely he would feel sharper-witted. Gulien let himself be coaxed down and closed his eyes, though he opened them again long enough to say, “Leave the lamp. And wake me an hour before dawn—if the Tamaristans actually are waiting for dawn, let’s not let them get before us, Sergeant.”
“That we won’t,” the man promised, then patted him on the shoulder and reset the lamp’s baffle to dim the light again.
The hour before dawn seemed to arrive in moments, but Gulien did feel much more himself when Sergeant Mattin gripped his shoulder to wake him. This time there was not only tea, but a basin of hot water and a bit of soap, and amaranth porridge with honey and dried apples in it. Captain Aran brought the porridge, handed the bowl to Gulien, and waved the sergeant out, himself dropping with a grunt to sit cross-legged on the floor of the tent, since they’d traveled too light to have even camp stools. “They’re stirring over there, too,” the captain told Gulien. “Not drawing up or anything, but getting on their feet, I expect, same as us. The wall’s still there. No change to it. All night we’ve had reports of the odd fox and hare and owl, but the Kieba hasn’t strolled down her mountain to call for you by name.” He eyed Gulien sharply, but didn’t ask, Got your wits together? Or, What did the Kieba do to you, and can we still trust you? Gulien imagined that both questions were in the captain’s mind.
He nodded. “One hardly knows whether to find the Kieba’s silence reassuring or disturbing. But the Tamaristans may not know which, either. Or they may know far more than we do. What I hope for this morning is a parley with whoever’s in command over there—Gajdosik or one of his officers, as may be. Before anything else, I want to know what they know and where Oressa is.”
“You can’t put yourself in their hands, Your Highness—”
“Of course not, Captain. We’ll see what acceptable arrangements can be made. A neutral location, a few men. You may tell me whom you’d like to send with the proposal.” He thought of the reassuring solidity of the sergeant and added, “Mattin, maybe, if you can spare him for the task.” Gulien finished the porridge, set the bowl aside, and stood up, not quite able to straighten in the confines of the tent.
Outdoors was better. Gulien stretched gratefully, listening to the low rippling sound of the river, the murmur of his people, the quiet shift and stamp of the horses over in their picket lines. The predawn breeze was soft, not yet carrying the fierce heat of the day. The stars spread overhead. The moon, not quite full, lay pale and translucent, low by the eastern horizon, where the dawn lent a pearly tint to the east beyond the dark bulk of the Kieba’s mountain.
“A peaceful morning,” Gulien said to Aran. “May it continue so.”
Captain Aran grunted noncommittally, meaning he doubted the likelihood of this. But he said, “Parley’s a good notion, Your Highness. You’re right that we need to know what’s toward. Got a whole lot of questions stacking up, don’t we, and maybe they do as well. What I’d suggest is, we propose a couple of men each, meeting dab in the middle of that pasture over there.” He nodded across the river, where the pasture in question was beginning to show silvery in the dawn light. “Both sides can see the whole area plain, and it’d take quite a shot to hit anyone there from either their position or ours, whether they’ve got arquebusiers or crossbowmen or both.”
Gulien nodded, not much interested in these details. Somewhere not far away, he heard the rippling high-pitched call of the tiny desert owl, answered by the sharp kek-kek-kek of a falcon. He tensed, more than half expecting a bird-golem to snap down at him like a crossbow bolt out of the brightening morning. But there was nothing. Perhaps it had been a real owl and a real falcon, trading places as night gave way to day.
“Do you think—,” he began.
“Well, now,” Captain Aran interrupted him. “Begging your pardon, but it looks like maybe you’re not the only one to think of parley, Your Highness.”
Gulien followed the captain’s nod and saw a single Tamaristan soldier, not obviously armed, riding slowly from the direction of the farmhouses toward the river and the Carastindin force. His own men were falling silent all along the river’s edge as they became aware that something was happening. Gulien could hear sounds of arquebuses being primed and crossbows cocked, and the short tones of sergeants ordering both readiness and—undoubtedly equally important, under the circumstances—restraint.
“Well. It’s true, one man alone doesn’t seem likely to be anything but a request for parley,” Gulien murmured. “How convenient.”
“Could be it’s too convenient,” muttered the captain. “You oughtn’t let that man close to you, Your Highness. Who knows what he might do? Especially if he realizes who you are.”
But Gulien knew he needed to hear the Tamaristan emissary himself. “Let him come,” he ordered. “He doesn’t seem to be armed. Your men can make certain he hasn’t a hidden knife—that’s only prudent—but let him come. He may lie, of course, but I very much want to hear what he has to say.” He raised his voice slightly so the nearest soldiers could hear. “I have full faith in the ability of your men to protect me, Captain Aran.”
The captain sighed, but he made no further objection, and Gulien raised one hand in a gesture for the Tamaristan emissary to approach.
The man, who had drawn rein and waited some distance from the river, obeyed that summons immediately. As he drew nearer to the opposite bank, it became possible to see that he was a young man, probably a few years younger than Gulien, wearing the badge of a karanat. He wore no sword and carried neither arquebus nor crossbow. In his upraised hand, he held a green, leafy twig that appeared to have been hastily cut from a pear tree.
The young man rode forward steadily until he reached the opposite bank of the river, ignoring Gulien’s crossbowmen and, at so short a distance almost as dangerously accurate, his arqu
ebusiers. But the karanat did not even glance at the leveled weapons. He drew his horse to a halt, studied Gulien with some intensity, and at last called across the small remaining distance, “Is that His Highness Gulien Madalin? Will you parley, Your Highness?” He spoke Esse clearly enough, though with a strong accent.
Gulien called back, “If you would parley, you may approach!”
The young karanat bowed slightly in the saddle. Then he touched the reins, encouraging his horse to step into the river. Gulien was aware of the nervous shift of soldiers all around him. He put up a hand to stop any precipitous action, saying out loud, just in case any of his people were not paying attention, “No, let him come! Let him come.”
Here in this place, the river, wide as it was, could hardly be called more than a creek, though in the middle it was belly deep for the horse. The Tamaristan karanat ignored the water lapping at his boots, leaned forward to help his horse to lunge up the shallow bank, drew rein not twenty feet from Gulien, dismounted in one smooth movement, and dropped his reins to trail in the sandy mud. The horse sidled a step away, toward a nearby patch of grass.
The young man, ignoring the drawn Carastindin swords, walked straight toward Gulien, stopped a few feet away, and bowed respectfully. “Your Highness,” he said. His accent seemed less harsh now that he was no longer shouting across the width of the river.
Gulien studied him. “Do you speak for Prince Gajdosik? Where is my sister, Her Highness Oressa Madalin?”
The Mountain of Kept Memory Page 22