He would learn from them regardless—assuming that we could form a plan for what should happen next. No one had yet broached that subject. I accepted a skin of water from Ruzt and went to sit next to Thu, who had been watching with quiet intensity for most of this time, turning a pebble over and over in his fingers.
“Thank you for coming to look for me,” I said. “Even though you thought I was dead.”
He bent his attention to the pebble. “My reasons were not noble.”
I was uncertain how to answer that, and words came reluctantly from my throat after so much talking. But Thu took my silence for a query, and went on. “I am the reason you came here. If I left the mountains with the news that you were dead—conveniently lost in an avalanche…”
His use of the word “convenient” called to mind all the suspicion that had greeted his initial appearance in Falchester. How many people had cautioned me that surely the Yelangese meant to lure me to my death? And lo, I died—or so he thought. “Tom and Suhail would have vouched for you,” I said. (Chendley as well, no doubt; I do not mean to slander him. But he was not at the forefront of my thoughts the way the others were.)
“Of course. But if Wilker had stayed, and I had gone with Chendley, neither of them would have been there to vouch.” He lost his grip on the pebble; it rattled away, and he bent to pick up another. “I knew it would look more honest if I helped to retrieve your body. I am sorry.”
“What do you have to apologize for?” I said in astonishment. “Had I been dead in truth, the last thing I would have wanted was for you to be blamed. It is only sensible that you should do everything you could to protect yourself; if I am upset, it is because such caution was necessary. And,” I said as an afterthought, “because you were forced to endure such a winter.”
This induced him to smile, as I had hoped. Then we sat in a more companionable silence, with me emptying the waterskin as fast as my stomach could accept it, while everyone girded themselves for the next peak to climb.
I do not mean Gyaptse or Cheja, of course. I mean the question of what we should do now.
With my voice somewhat restored, I explained to Suhail and Thu the plan I had agreed upon with the Draconeans, which had sent me toward the col that day. I did not go into a great deal of detail, such as explaining the council of elders; that was neither pertinent to the immediate question, nor a thing I felt I should share until we had decided whether the men would continue on into the Sanctuary or not. But they grasped the problem quite rapidly; and while they considered it, I turned once more to the Draconeans.
“What do you want me to do now?” I asked. “I can carry on more or less as we agreed; it will be easier now, with these two to help me out of the mountains. But they would be of much more help to me if they came to know your people, even if only briefly, before we departed.”
Suhail and Thu were talking quietly; Zam watched them with an untrusting eye. “You, we know. These two, we do not know.”
“They will not speak,” I assured her. “That is—I believe they will help me do what I planned.” Suhail certainly would. Thu might choose not to assist, but I was confident he would not work against me. “You trust me, and I trust them.”
Zam and Kahhe both looked unconvinced. Even Ruzt was dubious; she said, “You lived with us for months before you met the others. And then it was one human, not three.”
And three humans in the Sanctuary would cause more than three times the disturbance. At least I could be reasonably confident they would not attempt to hold the men hostage for my own good behaviour while I proceeded with my mission: that would be the worst of both worlds, introducing all the chaos of a human presence while also letting word of the Draconeans go into the outside world.
“Then we can continue on as planned,” I said. “Well—not immediately. It is far too late in the day to try and cross the col; we would be caught on the far side without sufficient light to descend safely. But we can camp for the night, and make our crossing tomorrow.”
I expected this to please Zam, who surely must be eager to see the back of us all. To my surprise, however, her scowl did not abate. Ruzt noticed this as well, and questioned her as to the reason.
“You want us to lie again,” she said.
Again? Understanding came, only a little tardy: as they had lied when they concealed me in their house. The elders had deferred judgment on the sisters’ transgression—if my mission turned out well, they could hardly punish those who made it possible—but they might not be so lenient if the sisters failed to report the arrival and departure of two more humans.
I spread my hands. “I will do whatever you decide. Take the time you require; this need not be something we settle in—” How did the Draconeans measure the hours of the day? It was not a thing I had learned yet, so I could not say “five minutes” or its equivalent. I paused, trying to think of a way to convey the concept; then I gave it up as not worth the effort, given the exhausted state of my brain. They seemed to understand me regardless, for Ruzt nodded, and the sisters began to converse amongst themselves once more.
When I turned back to my human companions, I found that Suhail had very quietly lost his composure. The novelty of the Draconeans could only hold back the tide for so long; now the impact of it struck him with full force, that I was not dead as he had believed. I sat wordlessly at his side and we gripped one another’s gloved hands hard, while Thu pretended he was very occupied in studying the springtime landscape of the Sanctuary.
There was no sound to warn me, for the wind was still blowing ferociously from the west—a profound blessing, as it turned out. I did not know what was happening until I saw Zam staring past me, up the slope toward the col, and I twisted to look.
A caeliger hovered in the air of the pass. Its position wavered from side to side, and I could not fathom what it was doing; why did it not advance? Was it searching for Suhail and Thu?
Then it suddenly veered off, almost into the upper slope of Cheja, and I understood.
Its pilot was trying to fly the craft through into the Sanctuary, but the winds were holding it back. The caeliger vanished behind Cheja, then reappeared; he was repeating his approach, once more pitting his engine against the headwind. I realized I was holding my breath. Then I realized I was holding it not because I hoped the pilot would make it safely through, but because I hoped he would not.
Everything came crashing down on me at once. The caeligers that had flown us into Tser-nga the previous year—they had not come this way, but the gorge they used as their passage through the walls of the Sanctuary must be the same river gorge I had glimpsed in my own treks. Assuming they had not crashed, their flight path would have taken them directly over this hidden basin.
Would they have been able to make out the houses and farmland below? Perhaps; perhaps not. Certainly they would not have known the inhabitants were Draconean—not without landing in the Sanctuary, and people surely would have said something if they had. The caeliger was not here to rescue me, for everyone believed me dead; nor was it here to investigate the mysteries of this place. It was here because its pilots had seen a relatively hospitable-looking region, beyond the edges of the Tser-zhag king’s control. Of course they wanted to investigate further.
Behind me, Zam snarled. In a voice so guttural I could barely make out the words, she growled, “What is that?”
“It is a—” My sentence died on my tongue. Of course there was no word for “caeliger” in their language. And what explanation could I give that would not simply describe what Zam already saw with her own eyes? The Draconeans did not even use carts, on account of the ruggedness of the terrain. I could hardly call it a flying yak. “It is like a basket,” I said, my voice faltering so much I am not even certain she heard me. “A basket carried by … the air.”
Ruzt’s reply was thick with tension. “Humans?”
“Yes.”
The caeliger veered off again. We all waited, every one of us on our feet, watching the col wi
th fists clenched. The seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness; the caeliger did not reappear.
“They’ve given up,” Suhail said.
“For today,” I replied. “But when the winds are more favourable, they will try again.” Which could be as soon as tomorrow.
I pivoted to face the sisters. “When they bring that basket to earth, I must be there to greet it. If I am not…”
If I were not, then all the horrors I had envisioned might come to pass even sooner than expected.
PART FIVE
In which the fate of the Sanctuary is decided
EIGHTEEN
An unexpectedly swift return—A prayer to the sun—No sleep—Waiting for the caeliger—More reunions—A foreign nation—The mystery revealed
Catching a caeliger on foot is impossible even in the flattest terrain. In the Sanctuary of Wings, even to attempt such a thing would have been suicide, for I would have broken my neck thirty seconds into any sprint.
The only way to be certain I could greet the caeliger upon landing was to arrange for it to land in a place of my choosing. It was with this intent that I skidded back into Imsali, hard on the heels of Ruzt and Kahhe and Zam, and gasped out a desperate request for the brightest cloth or paint they could give me.
Suhail and Thu were not with us. I knew better than to charge into the village with two more humans at my back; that would only cause more alarm. And although I very much wanted the Draconeans to be suitably alarmed, the presence of my husband and our Yelangese friend was too likely to tip matters over from “suitable” to “excessive.” Eventually I must admit their presence … but not until I had explained the caeliger and what it portended.
Kuvrey’s last words to me had been that she hoped to see me again soon. Her next words were, “We did not expect you this soon. What is going on?”
I tried to let Ruzt explain, trusting her vocabulary far more than my own, but that did not work; Ruzt, of course, did not fully understand what the caeliger portended. Between the two of us, we got the point across, albeit in tangled and uneven fashion. The news that more humans were attempting to breach the Sanctuary did not go over well. The more warlike of their people—chief among them Esdarr’s sister-group, who had escorted me to the place of the elders—were in favour of meeting this incursion with knives and the short spears they used for hunting.
“You will die,” I said flatly, making no attempt to soften it. “They have objects that hurl spear points farther than any arm, so quickly that no one can hope to dodge them. If you threaten them, they will kill every last one of you, to protect themselves.”
Not long before, I had been assuring them that humans were not the murderous monsters of legend; now all that good work was undone. But I was willing to accept temporary damage to the reputation of my species in exchange for not provoking a confrontation that would guarantee even more hostility going forward. “I can keep them from hurting you,” I said, putting more confidence into the words than I felt. “But I need to be there when they arrive.”
“This was your plan all along,” Esdarr spat, wings spreading. “You led them to us!”
I cannot blame her for thinking so. In a sense, she was even correct: it was my decision to come to Tser-nga that had sent the first caeligers over the Sanctuary. The army would likely have tried that sooner or later, but they might have tried it elsewhere in the Mrtyahaima—not here. Not where it would threaten the Draconeans.
I turned to the elders. “Have you seen this before? Last spring, a little before the monsoon. Two baskets like that one. They would have come in over the river.”
“Someone in Eberi said they had,” Sejeat said. “But no one believed them.”
With the caeligers painted to blend with the sky, it was not difficult to overlook them—especially when no one expected such a thing in the air. “Those two sent for others,” I said. “Or they went astray, and this one has been sent to look for them. It hardly matters. This means more humans are coming; there can be no hope of a slow revelation now. And if I am not there to meet them, you will not be able to talk to one another, which will only make everyone more afraid, and therefore dangerous. Please—I beg you. Give me fabric or paint, something bright, so we can bring them down where we want them.”
My words were even more garbled than usual, fracturing under the strain of distress and difficult subjects, but by then Ruzt was accustomed to piecing my utterances together. “How will those help?” she asked.
I closed my eyes, trying to calculate how large an image must be for someone to reliably spot it from the sky. “I need to make a target.”
* * *
Sejeat was observant. In the short time I had been in the place of the elders, she had learned to read my moods well; now, in the kicked ant-hill that was Imsali, she took me aside and asked, “What are you not saying?”
I had known all along that I could not keep Suhail and Thu hidden forever. Had Sejeat not drawn me off, I would have done the same to her; the sisters and I had agreed that of all the people I could speak to first, she was by far the best choice. “You recall that I came to the mountains with companions,” I said, not bothering to prevaricate. “Two of them stayed the winter outside the Sanctuary. We met them in the col today, where they were looking for my body. They were with us when we saw the caeliger.”
Perhaps it was the consequence of piling shock upon shock; eventually one reaches a point where additions have little effect. Sejeat stared at me, as unblinking as a lizard. Then she turned and bellowed in a powerful voice for the scant handful of carrier mews that had not already been dispatched to the place of the elders.
These went out shortly thereafter with a postscript to the previous message. This done, Sejeat insisted that Kahhe go out and bring the two men down. I do not think she especially wanted to add them to the chaos of the village; but it would be worse if they were discovered by chance, or left to wander freely.
I will not trouble my readers with a detailed account of the furor that greeted them. You can imagine it for yourself; for the curious, it was a second menagerie come to town, and for the suspicious, it was proof positive that humans were coming to kill them all. I was grateful beyond words for two things: first, the presence of the two elders and Habarz, without whom I am sure the situation would have degenerated into violence; and second, for my husband’s fine memory. At one early point, while everyone else was shouting, he whispered into my ear, “Is there a religious leader in this crowd?”
“Two,” I whispered back. “Esmin is local, but Habarz is something like a head priest for the whole Sanctuary. Why?”
Suhail’s answering smile was more than a little tinged with nerves. “I put my time waiting to what I hope will be good use.”
Moving slowly, so as not to startle anyone, Suhail approached Habarz. The shouting abated, except in a few quarters; Esdarr very much wanted to step forward and protect the elders. But Suhail stopped a safe distance away and knelt. Then, in a voice strong and clear, he recited words I could only partially make out—words in an approximation of the Draconean language.
It was one of the texts he had been working on back in Scirland. His transliteration of the script was imperfect, his pronunciation flawed, and the language itself was even more archaic than the religious form used in the Sanctuary … but it was recognizable. The words were a prayer to the sun, that it guide the beneficiary down the right path.
If my own first speech had been akin to a yak standing up on its hind legs and saying hello, now the yak was leading a worship service. The reactions would have been comical, had the situation not been so tense; as it was, I still had to stifle a laugh. Habarz stared at Suhail with his wings drooping so their tips almost trailed in the mud. The shouting stopped utterly; the only voices I heard were villagers murmuring to one another, asking what on earth the human had just said.
Kuvrey was the first to recover her wits. “Quite remarkable,” she said dryly. “But I think we need more than the sun to help us now
.”
“Then let my companions help,” I said. “I will vouch for them. And call for all the aid you like, neighbouring villages with their knives and their spears; you may need them. But please, do not hurt these men.”
The elders stepped aside to confer with the ruling sister-group of Imsali. Suhail rose and returned to my side, not even bending to brush the mud off his knees. Thu was watching all of this with an unreadable expression: wariness, perhaps, but also very rapid thought. I did not know him well enough to guess at those thoughts.
When the elders came back, I knew by Sejeat’s posture that I was not going to like what they had decided. “You may make your picture,” Kuvrey said, “and meet with the humans. But we will hold these two.” She gestured at the men. “If the others coming here are as dangerous as you say, then we must have protection against them.”
I swayed on my feet. Hostages. Suhail and Thu would be hostages after all. If I failed in my goal …
It took me an agonizingly long time to force my reply into Draconean. “I cannot—” The word “promise” had fled my mind. “The men who come in the basket, I do not control them. I will try. But my trying may not be good enough.” My companions were looking on, uncomprehending; they could see only that a sudden wave of fear had come over me.
“With these two in our keeping,” Kuvrey said, “you will try your very best.”
* * *
I scarcely slept a wink that night. A good deal of time was taken up in creating the sign I needed; there was no proper paint in the village, but the white lime ordinarily used to plaster the yak barn served well enough. I also had to discuss with the villagers the best place to lay that sign out. We needed a suitably large and flat meadow, where the snow had melted enough that my sign would be visible to a caeliger entering through the col, and the craft would have a reasonable chance of landing. And of course we had to negotiate the specifics of who would be where when that happened—my human companions included.
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