Rosethorn took a drink from the flask at her belt. “Forgive me, Captain Rana, but we are on our way to Garmashing. We have important news for the God-King and First Dedicate Dokyi.”
The captain smiled. “The First Dedicate has anticipated you,” he replied. “He waits at Fort Sambachu, at the end of this gorge — our home base.”
“A fort? Not the temple in Garmashing?” Rosethorn said.
“I am certain the First Dedicate will explain when you see him,” Rana said. “If you will excuse me, I must see to my wounded.”
Rosethorn and Briar walked slowly over to Evvy, towing the mules and their ponies. Once the animals were tethered, both of them sat beside her in silence. After a moment, Evvy leaned against Briar’s shoulder. A glance told her Rosethorn had stretched out on the grass and cradled her head on Briar’s knee.
“Do you want to lie down?” Evvy asked Briar. “I don’t mind.”
“I’ll just lean against you,” he said. “We can prop each other up.”
“Good,” Evvy whispered. She let her eyes close. If she had her way, she would never fight again.
Evvy slid off his shoulder at some point. Briar woke in time to catch her and lowered her to the grass. Rosethorn had rolled away from him and curled up in a knot. Once awake, he felt too itchy to rest. One of the Gyongxin soldiers offered him a flask of tea. Briar had a drink and looked around at the mess they had made — they and the emperor’s soldiers — of a beautiful mountain cove.
Now that he had time to think and remember, something puzzled him. He went back to the rock slide Evvy had made of the ridge. At first his feet simply went out from under him as he tried to reach the two dead Yanjingyi mages. Suddenly the sliding rocks held still. He turned to see Evvy’s eyes on him. He smiled at her and pursued the short climb to the corpses.
He hadn’t been mistaken. Their bead necklaces had strangled them while he had bound their hands using the wooden beads in their bracelets. Briar knelt and touched a bare spot where the cord lay exposed against a dead mage’s throat. Cotton. The necklace had been threaded on cotton. Not only that, but the cord tingled with the remnants of a magic he knew very well.
He scrambled down to solid earth and walked over to his teacher. She was sitting up and talking with Captain Rana. When they stopped and looked at him, Briar said, “Cotton.”
Rosethorn raised an eyebrow at him.
“You strangled them with the cotton thread on their own mage necklaces. They didn’t even try to stop you?”
“They couldn’t even tell I was there,” Rosethorn replied calmly. “Briar, they truly don’t understand ambient magic. We will be very useful here.” Her voice was perfectly reasonable. “You could have done it just as easily.” She looked at Captain Rana. “Would someone build us a small fire? We need to collect these beads and burn them, before they fall into someone else’s hands.” She and Briar went to collect the beads as the captain gave orders.
It took some of their supplies of herbs that kept magic from spreading, but they saw all of the Yanjingyi mages’ beads destroyed in a nice, hot fire. They were even able to destroy the enemy’s mage kits. A part of Briar wanted to go through them, for curiosity’s sake. Rosethorn pointed out that just as they left special surprises in their own mage kits for snoops, the Yanjingyi mages could be expected to have something similar. Briar and Evvy both sighed at the missed opportunity and let the kits burn.
By the time they were finished, Parahan and the other Gyongxin warriors returned to report success at the road. There were no Yanjingyi soldiers left to carry word of Gyongxin soldiers in the pass. Just as good, from Briar’s point of view, those Gyongxin who took wounds were not badly hurt. Rosethorn, Briar, and Captain Rana’s healers were able to patch them up quickly before they all rode out.
They had not gone far before Briar noticed that Evvy was swaying in the saddle. Rana allowed him to switch to one of the surviving horses so he could take Evvy up in the saddle in front of him: Briar’s pony would not have appreciated the extra weight. Evvy was exhausted. Lately the work didn’t wring her out as it had today, but she had not shaped the paths of so many rocks in such different ways before this.
Briar asked Rana if they could stop long enough to make hot tea or soup, but the man refused. Briar understood — if there was one company of the enemy in these hills there might be more — but he was desperately worried for his two companions. Parahan finally caught Rosethorn when she began to slide from her mule and pulled her up to ride with him as well. At least the captain sent riders ahead to his camp to prepare hot liquids and food in advance of their arrival.
In camp Parahan and Briar wrapped Rosethorn and Evvy in blankets and propped them in front of the captain’s fire, where Captain Rana and Sergeant Kanbab joined them. Briar was startled when Kanbab removed his helmet to free a tumbling waist-length braid of black hair. She grinned at his obvious surprise.
“Sergeant Kanbab is my right hand,” the captain said. “I would be in bad shape without her. A good number of Gyongxin women serve in the army before they marry. Some of them stay even afterward, like the sergeant and General Sayrugo.”
Kanbab bowed to Rosethorn. “The men wish to know if they may eat the honored dedicate’s chickens.”
“My cats!” Evvy cried wearily, trying to struggle out of the blankets. “They’re really cats. You can’t eat them!”
“I’ll take the spell off,” Briar told her. “Finish that tea and have another cup.” He rose, trying not to groan. He had put out a lot of magic, too, without being able to draw more from his best shakkan, which was now on its way to Hanjian. Every muscle in his body ached.
The crates had been placed beside the small round tents that were to serve Rosethorn, Evvy, Briar, and Parahan. Approaching them, Briar shook his head at the soldiers who stood nearby. “Sorry, lads,” he said in tiyon, hoping they understood. “They aren’t as tasty as you’d think.” Kneeling among the cackling crates, he murmured the words he’d been taught by the mimander.
Suddenly crates, chickens, and chicken noises were gone. From the look on Asa’s and Ball’s faces, Briar knew they were going to make their humans pay for the extra-long nap they’d had from the dose of sleeping herbs.
Monster stuck his head through an opening in the side of his carrier and squeaked. For a large cat, he had a very tiny voice. Briar grinned. “You don’t hold a grudge, do you, old man?”
Evvy staggered over, her eyes swollen with exhaustion. “I can’t do gate stones to keep them from straying,” she whined. “I’m too tired!”
“I’ll do herbs,” Briar said. “Don’t worry. That tent’s for you and Rosethorn. Go to bed.”
Evvy managed to crawl into the small tent. When he looked in shortly afterward, Briar discovered she had collapsed onto her open bedroll without crawling into it. He tugged her blanket off and covered her, silently thanking whoever had set up the tents.
Once he’d made the herb circle around the women’s tent so the cats could roam inside it, he released them from their baskets and fed them dried meat soaked in water. Then he went in search of a meal for himself.
The soldiers invited him to share theirs: a cup of butter tea and a bowl of dough mixed with cheese and tea, apparently the normal ration meal. Briar had eaten worse, and more unusual, dishes. He devoured his and thanked his hosts.
They chuckled. “Usually foreigners just spit it out,” the cook explained in tiyon. Briar wasn’t about to tell them he hadn’t spat out far weirder things served by the emperor. They had agreed to keep silent about their time in Dohan, for one. For another, he didn’t want these people thinking he was a snob.
“You won’t catch me wasting decent food,” he said truthfully. He bowed and returned to the captain’s fire.
Rosethorn was gone. “She went to bed,” Parahan told him. He was sharpening his swords. “Captain Rana here says the emperor’s troops attacked in strength up the Ice Lion Pass, the Green Pass, and out along the northern plain a week ago. General
Sayrugo only had word of it two days ago. She wasn’t convinced until today that Yanjing might have sent forces up the Snow Serpent Pass. Most people have left it alone for attacks in the past. It’s too narrow for getting real numbers of troops into Gyongxe.”
“We didn’t see any soldiers before today, so they were ahead of us for certain. If they try to send more soldiers, they’ll have a fun time,” Briar said. “We choked the border crossing with thorns. They won’t get through those without a really good mage. We made the plants to resist axes, fire, and a lot of magic, Rosethorn and me.”
“The emperor hasn’t sent an army this way,” the captain replied. “Still, he can bleed us a bit, and tie up our troops here in the south with only the smallest portion of one of his armies if he chooses. He can afford to waste soldiers here; we can’t.” He got to his feet. “We ride before dawn and we’ll be riding hard all day. Get some sleep.”
By the time their journey into Gyongxe was done, Briar never wanted to hear the words “ride hard” again. His bum and thighs, used to the slow pace of caravan riding, were as blistered and chafed as if he had just sat on a horse for the first time. Rosethorn and Evvy were no better off, and Parahan, after years afoot in Weishu’s palaces, was even worse. Night after night the four applied salves to their sores and did their best not to complain. It was too important to reach the people who had been their friends for those long winter months.
Rosethorn and Briar also patched wounds on their companions. Twice during their ride up the pass they were cut off by Yanjingyi soldiers and had to fight their way out. Rana said with grudging respect that these Yanjingyi warriors were enemies to be respected. They had seen Rana and his company ride east and done nothing. It was Rosethorn and her companions who brought them out of hiding to attack.
Every day the hills around them rose ever higher. Trees grew straight up, clamoring for each bit of sun. There were fewer broadleafs and more pines. Scrub and grass clung to the lower slopes where wild goats and yaks grazed in between ribs of naked limestone, shale, and granite.
It did not help Briar’s peace of mind in this land of stone that Evvy twice dropped loads of rock onto Yanjingyi attackers. In his head Briar knew that even if the cliffs and ridges that soared above the road were unstable, Evvy would redirect loose stone if it fell. In his heart he waited for a ton of boulders to drop on him. If he could do it without Evvy noticing, he sent a screen of tough ivy crawling over any area that looked like it might be inclined to fall, just in case.
After supper the night before they were due to reach Rana’s base, Fort Sambachu, Evvy walked out beyond the picket line of sentries. Sergeant Kanbab came running for Briar.
“The men chased her, trying to get her to come back. They didn’t dare call to her, and they kept tripping in the dark,” she explained as she led Briar to the place where his student had last been seen.
“On rocks,” he said. He didn’t need to ask.
“On rocks,” Sergeant Kanbab agreed. She left him when he could see the pale gleam of Evvy’s yak-skin coat. Briar followed Evvy until she halted on the edge of the riverbank. He called for some of the grasses there to sprout up in case Evvy slipped and tumbled into the icy water. She could control rocks, but not dirt.
When he reached her, he had to shout in her ear. She had chosen a spot right over a series of rapids. They boomed in the night.
“What are you doing?” he cried. “The enemy could be nearby! And you scared the sentries!”
“The mountains sing.” Strangely enough, her voice was perfectly clear. “Not like the Yanjingyi singers do, or the Gyongxin warriors. It’s in my bones. They sing of caves and snow and vultures.”
“No, thank you!” Briar shouted. “I’m sure it’s lovely, you bleat-brained stone mage, but we’re going back to camp now! I bet your pocket stones will sing to you if you ask them nicely!”
“All right,” she said, as if he’d asked her to feed the cats. She linked her arm in his and walked peaceably back to the cook fires with him. She even apologized to Kanbab and the sentries. Briar was shivering by the time they sat down to get warm. These mountains weren’t like any others they had seen. She had liked the heights and the occasional glacier, but she hadn’t been strange about the mountains themselves. He remembered the skeletons stepping out of the cliff face not so long ago, and the knowledge that, in Gyongxe, this kind of thing happened over and over. Evvy had been friendly with Gyongxe’s rocks all winter. What if they survived this war, and Evvy was too entangled with the stone and mountains of Gyongxe to leave? What could he say to her that would compete with the highest mountains in the world?
FORT SAMBACHU
SNOW SERPENT PASS GYONGXE
The sunrise was just touching the river the next day when the hills in the east ended in towering cliffs. They were free of the gorge. Half a mile on they found a wide bridge that crossed the Snow Serpent River. They turned south and rode across it, off the main road. A lesser road following a deep stream took them to a short and jagged hill where Fort Sambachu was built at the feet of the Drimbakang Lho mountains. By then Briar was leading Evvy’s pony. Her eyes were fixed on the soaring peaks ahead. In the gorge the hills had obscured the mountains beyond. Here Evvy saw the immense, snowy heights that stood between Gyongxe and the Realms of the Sun.
“See those three?” Kanbab asked Evvy, pointing to the nearest mountains. “According to the worshippers of La Ni Ma, our sun goddess, those mountains are her husbands. The east one is Ganas Rigyal Po, the Snow King. The west one is Ganas Gazig Rigyal Po, the Snow Leopard King. And the one in the middle is Kangri Skad Po, the Talking Snow Mountain King.”
“What does that mean, the ‘Talking Snow Mountain King’?” Briar asked. He wasn’t sure if Evvy even heard.
Kanbab looked at Briar. “I think the worshippers feel he is the most conversational of the Sun Queen’s husbands.”
“The sun isn’t a queen in the Living Circle,” Evvy murmured.
Kanbab smiled at her. “But this is Gyongxe, the home of many faiths. Surely they told you that when you were here for the winter. Garmashing itself has more temples than even the God-King can count, it is said. People come here to build at least one temple for their faith because our realm is closest of all to the heavens, and our mountains hold them up.”
“And why do people want to be close to the gods?” Evvy wanted to know. “Back home, Shaihun does horrible things to people.”
Kanbab gave Briar a strange look.
“Shaihun is a god of the deep desert,” Briar explained. “Is that Fort Sambachu or a temple?”
“It’s the fort,” Kanbab said in confirmation. “Let those lowland creepers come against us there and see what they get!”
Briar had to admit, the fort looked promising. Its hill and its towers commanded a view of the pass, the road, and the grassy plain for a good distance. The curtain walls sloped inward and climbed the hill in steps, which would allow the archers on the highest level to shoot above the heads of those lower down. Around the outer walls an army of five hundred or more tents was camped, flying banners of crimson, turquoise, and emerald silks.
Evvy yelped and reined up, almost forcing her mount to rear. Briar instantly reached for her horse’s bridle, though he was trying to keep from pulling too hard on his own animal’s reins.
“Wait! Wait!” Captain Rana called, raising a hand. “It’s all right! They are allies, and welcome ones at that!”
Kanbab rested a hand on Evvy’s elbow. “If you’re this jumpy now, what will you do when you get to the war?” she asked. “We’re just getting ready for it. Garmashing is where you’ll find the real danger!”
Parahan rode up beside Evvy. “These — these are Kombanpur flags, but not my uncle’s or my father’s. What is going on here?” He dismounted and walked into the tent village.
“He’ll catch up with us,” Rana said. “Come on. The general’s waiting for you.”
Once inside the fort, they barely got a chance to wash up and r
elease the cats in the rooms to be shared by Rosethorn and Evvy. Rana shooed the three travelers along the halls of the fortress to General Sayrugo’s audience chamber. There the notables were seated on one side of a long, worn table behind pots of the ever-present tea and teacups. Rosethorn, Briar, and Evvy watched as Rana marched up to an imposing bronze-skinned woman in a fire-orange tunic jacket. He presented her with the reports he had written each night on the road.
Then they saw the older man on the general’s right and forgot all about her and Rana. Evvy squeaked and threw herself around the corner of the table to hug First Dedicate Dokyi. Rosethorn and Briar were more restrained, but every bit as glad to see the older mage.
“Evumeimei, where is your dignity?” her most recent teacher asked as he patted her on the back.
“I don’t have any,” Evvy said, her voice muffled by the cloth of his habit.
Dokyi looked up at Rosethorn and Briar. “General Sayrugo has been good enough to allow me to read the reports she received from Captain Rana,” he said. “I understand you had a difficult time. Evumeimei, did you bring your cats?”
She straightened up, indignant. “Of course I did!” Then she saw his smile and realized that he was teasing. “Sorry, Honored Dedicate. You can visit them whenever you like.”
“Perhaps a little later. I should very much like to hear Monster purr again. Now.” Dokyi looked up at Rosethorn. “Captain Rana wrote that you came to warn us, but as he has told you, your warning was not needed. Weishu made secret treaties with both Inxia and Qayan, which freed his armies so he could launch an invasion here. He is a greedy fellow, is he not?”
Rosethorn smiled wryly and told Dokyi, “That is one way of looking at it, Honored Dedicate.”
“Is it true, then, that you are also determined to fight here?” the older man wanted to know.
Rosethorn nodded. “More than ever after our time at the Winter Palace,” she said. Her belly griped. Her heart cried out for Lark, but her answer had to be the one she had given Dokyi and the reason she had taken her two children and brought them back to Gyongxe. After what they had seen of Weishu and his court, she had to do all she could to stop him. The emperor of Yanjing was a monster in human skin.