Briar hadn’t thought the bug munching was that bad, but it was his and Rosethorn’s pattern to reinforce what the other said. He dismounted and walked to the wall beside the gate. With one hand he reached out to a log he guessed wouldn’t bring the gate down and pushed. No one had to know that he asked the weak wood at the base of the log to give way for him. The log groaned, and then toppled onto the ground outside. He shook his head, tsking to himself.
“When did you last replace these logs?” Rosethorn wanted to know.
“Magic!” the headman shouted, his face red-bronze with fury. “You used magic!”
Briar turned and looked at the man. “I can’t magic the kind of bug damage that got done to this log,” he said. “Rosethorn can’t, either. We’re plant mages, not bug mages. Look at this wood yourself.”
“We just came up the Snow Serpent Pass with the emperor’s warriors chasing us,” Rosethorn snapped. “We didn’t have time to spell your logs. Believe us or not, but ask your wives and children if they mean to wait here with you behind your rotten walls.”
“We come at the bidding of the God-King,” Captain Lango said last. “Why would we be foolish enough to use his name for a lie?”
The village leaders were finally convinced, and the soldiers set up camp outside the wall. Rosethorn vanished. Briar could tell she had walked outside the wall, probably to listen to whatever songs her burden was singing.
He found work helping a woman and her children pack. Jimut, seeing what he was up to, obtained a mule the fatherless family could use for their burdens. While Jimut helped to load the mule, Briar gathered piles of sticks and what twine was available and made carry-crates for the villagers’ birds and pets. If he didn’t have enough twine, he simply persuaded the sticks to grow through one another to make the joins he needed.
The afternoon was half over when he heard a crash from a hut and a child’s screams. He ran to see what was wrong.
Inside the hut, two women were bent over a wailing child who lay between several wooden boxes. The little boy clutched his left shin with both hands, shrieking. Blood leaked between his twined fingers.
Briar pulled off the sling he wore on his back. “Excuse me,” he called loudly to the women. “Please, I can help. I’m a nanshur. I use medicine.”
The women moved aside. Briar felt inside the sling for a roll of linen bandage and a potion he kept for bleeding wounds. He leaned close to the child’s face and yelled, “Hah!”
The boy threw up his hands to protect his face. Instantly Briar gripped his leg. He felt it gently to see if it was broken — it did not seem to be. He used a touch of his power to tug a square of linen off the bandage roll. Carefully he pressed the cloth against the wound. After a short wait he took the cloth away for a quick look. The boy had cut himself from his knee halfway to his ankle, but the wound was a shallow one. Quickly Briar pressed the cloth to it again.
The older of the two women, assured that he knew what he was doing, got a wet cloth and set about cleaning the child’s bloody hands. The younger woman began to carry the fallen boxes outside.
When he heard steps approach, Briar looked up from his patient. A much older woman came over with a small kettle of steaming water and a bowl. “I think you will need this for your work?” she asked. “You are very good to come to the help of strangers.”
“I used to scream like that, too,” Briar said, grinning at the child. “When it looks so bad you think the healer will cut your leg off, you get scared. It is just a very ugly scratch.”
“We should have watched him better,” said the woman who had cleaned the child’s hands. Now she had given him some kind of sweet. He was sucking on it and watching Briar’s every move. “There is so much to put in the wagon that we forgot.”
With the two women to help, Briar cleaned the wound, covered it with his medicine, and bandaged it. The only thanks he accepted was a couple of very good dumplings that he shared with Jimut. After that he settled by the well and continued to make carry-crates.
The soldiers and the villagers combined resources for a large meal after dark. Though everyone was friendly enough as they came together to eat, the villagers’ faces showed their worries. The scramble to pick what to take and what to leave continued long into the night. Briar was dozing over a half-finished crate when someone nudged him awake with a booted foot. He looked up at Souda.
“Bed,” she ordered with a friendly smile. “In the camp. Come on. I’m turning in, too.”
Saddest of all, he was so worn-out he could not think of anything witty to say to impress her as they walked out of the village and into camp. Jimut was waiting. He bowed to Souda and took Briar to his bedroll.
They left in the early morning. Captain Lango detailed two squads of warriors to keep the villagers moving. The rest of his company and all of Souda’s, together with Rosethorn and Briar, returned to the main road. They halted that day only to rest the horses.
It was twilight when they reached the Temple of the Sun Queen’s Husbands. As a fortress, it made Fort Sambachu look like a collection of crates. Its walls, painted with blue and green many-armed men, were thick and lined with men and women armed with longbows. The walls were built in step fashion like those at Sambachu; so, too, was the temple itself, building up to a tower that gave a view of the road and plain. The heavy gates, each one painted with what Briar assumed was a husband who held weapons in every one of his eight hands, stood wide open to admit the villagers.
When Rosethorn approached the gates, her burden set up such a high, tooth-hurting screech that Briar covered his ears, almost falling off his horse. The ever-alert Jimut caught his reins just in time. The noise only stopped when Rosethorn turned her horse away from the gate.
She conferred with Souda and Captain Lango briefly, explaining that the magic in the temple’s walls and gates was uncomfortable with the magic she bore. In the end, only Captain Lango and his warriors accompanied the refugees inside for the night.
“Uncomfortable,” Briar muttered to Jimut, rubbing his aching jaws. “Uncomfortable, she says. I’ve heard two ships scraping against each other that didn’t make such a noise.”
“It’s not that the magics are fighting, or the temple is evil,” Rosethorn explained to Briar and their friends over roast goat, flatbread, and cheese. “Magic isn’t evil of itself, only the ends to which it’s put, like a dagger. But the shape their magic holds doesn’t match mine.” She didn’t really mean her own green magic. Briar knew he could have walked through that gate if he had wanted to. It was Rosethorn’s burden that had put up the fuss.
“No,” said a voice just outside the light of their fire. A man of Rosethorn’s age in the long scarlet tunic worn by this temple’s priests walked closer to their group. “Our magics enclose us to protect us, with only the opening at the gate to allow other magics to enter, if they are small ones.” He looked at Rosethorn, then around the circle until he found Briar. “We would have been forced to ask both of you to remain outside. I have brought our chief priest’s apologies to you. Normally this is not such a problem, though your burden” — he nodded to Rosethorn — “is more than our spell walls can handle at any time. But there are so many small magics now. We already have two villages and their shamans, and there are always the midwives and healers.”
Rosethorn got to her feet and bowed. Briar did the same, though his sore body complained.
“We understand,” Rosethorn told the priest. “These are things that happen in times of upheaval.”
He bowed; she bowed, which meant Briar had to bow. Then she wandered off with the priest to talk magic. The others began to talk about fighting they had done before. Briar listened until he got so bored that he decided to go for a walk. It would stretch his legs and give his ears some blessed quiet.
He ambled down toward the river, waving to the sentries as he passed them. Once he reached it, he found the bank was lined with large boulders. He didn’t remember them from the ride in, but that was no surprise, as
tired as he’d been. He slipped between the boulders and sat on the rocky verge, listening to the fast-moving water and thinking of nothing else for a while. It was a relief to have some time to himself.
When he turned to climb uphill to camp, he saw images in softly glowing paint on the sides of the boulders that faced the water and the plain. Each stone showed a different figure: dragon, yak, many-armed god or goddess, snow cat.
Then he saw motion. First the painted eyes followed him, and then the painted faces.
He stopped in front of the largest stone. The picture on it was a nine-headed cobra. It was a very big nine-headed cobra, taller than Briar by twelve inches at least. The paint glowed a moon-pale white. Briar wouldn’t have liked the thing even if it had held still. Then the middle head of the nine, the one that bore an ornate crown, left the safe grounding of the rock and stretched forward until her flickering serpent tongue touched Briar’s nose. He thought he might howl like a herd dog. He was far too scared to move.
“Please go away,” he said. His voice cracked.
“Briar?” That was Jimut. “Who are you talking to?”
“Are there any nine-headed snakes that crawl around after dark here?” Briar called. “One head is a woman’s?”
“Naga,” Jimut whispered. He had to be close for Briar to hear him. In fact, Briar was certain Jimut stood on the other, unpainted, side of the boulders. “But they’re stories. And the ones up here are different from the ones at home.”
Briar winced as all nine faces grinned down at him. “What do you mean?”
“In the Realms of the Sun they’re evil.” To Briar’s horror Jimut climbed on top of the boulder beside the naga. The three-headed goddess that was painted on Jimut’s rock stared upward as if she could see him. She slid a hand up along the curve of the stone, reaching for Jimut’s foot. “Here a naga can be a human head surrounded by snake heads, or crowned by snakes. They’re the gods of whole mountain ranges,” Jimut explained, “or several rivers that flow into one, or —”
Briar’s knees gave way and he knelt, unable to stay up anymore. The naga sank back into its boulder and went flat again. The three-headed goddess held her arms out to either side, as she had posed originally, and stared into the distance.
“You’re tired,” Jimut said, jumping off his stone. “You must go to bed.”
Briar did go to bed. His dreams of imperial armies that marched on Winding Circle were mixed with dreams of naga women dancing among fields of dead soldiers. He woke when dawn was just a pink gleam in the sky and walked back down to the stones by the river.
In the pearl-like early light, the naga queen was blue with partly scaled skin and very red lips. Her companion heads were yellow snakes, their tongues the same red as her mouth. Her crown was orange flames.
“Excuse me, please,” Briar said politely, “but I have to ask, were you joking around with me last night? It’s addled my head a bit. Well, more than a bit, since here I am when I could be sleeping, talking to a painting of a snake lady. A very beautiful snake lady,” he added hurriedly. “The most beautiful I’ve ever seen.” He waited, but there was no response from the painting.
“Addled,” he said at last, turning to look at the river. “That’s all it was. That thing of Rosethorn’s plain scrambled my poor —”
Something tapped his shoulder. He looked. It was one of the snakes. Slowly he turned. The naga queen leaned forward from her boulder and kissed his forehead.
“Real,” Briar whispered.
The queen and all of her snakes nodded.
“Have a good day,” he said, entirely unsure of what else to tell her.
She smiled as they all retreated back to their flat, painted selves. As flummoxed as he had ever been, Briar trudged uphill to the camp. He couldn’t even tell Rosethorn. She had too much on her mind for him to worry her more.
When they took the road, Briar carefully did not look at the stones until they had safely crossed the river. Only then did he turn to gaze at them. A number of gaudy, painted figures in shades of orange-red, bright green, and deep blue sat on top of the stones, waving at him. Atop the biggest stone, the naga swayed as she stood on her muscular tail, eight of her heads looking at their neighbors or the air. The crowned head blew a kiss at Briar. Gingerly, trying to do it so no one else would see, he waved at her.
A hard hand smacked him in the ribs. “What is the matter with your hearing today?” Rosethorn demanded. “I said your name three times! Captain Lango says we should reach the junction of the Tom Sho and the Snow Serpent sometime tomorrow. I’m leaving you there.”
Briar frowned. “You didn’t see —”
“I’ve had visions till my eyes want to pop. So what?”
He looked at the toe of his boot. A handful of sparkling snake scales lay on the leather. He would let them serve as a reminder that what he’d seen weren’t visions in the least.
“I should go with you,” he said, once he collected his thoughts. “There are strange creatures up here, Rosethorn —”
“No,” she interrupted. “I won’t argue the point anymore.” She turned her mount away from his and rode up to the head of the column.
Souda moved into the spot at his side. “I’m sure she’ll feel better once this errand of hers is done,” she told Briar softly.
Will she? he wondered. Will any of us?
They had ridden three miles when they saw buzzards circling near the road. In a shallow gully where a creek ran into the Snow Serpent, they found the remains of a group of villagers, one of Captain Lango’s squads, and some Yanjingyi warriors. Lango dismounted and walked down among the dead along with a few of his people. Briefly the Gyongxin soldiers stood there or along the edge of the road, their palms pressed together in prayer. Then the captain and those who had gone down to look climbed out of the gully.
Rosethorn and Briar approached him. “We know you haven’t time to bury them,” Rosethorn said, “but we can grow plants over them, all of them, until they become part of the earth.”
Lango shook his head. “We have sky burial. The buzzards will have them, and the other creatures. In that manner they will become part of our holiest of lands and remain close to all the gods.”
“This sky burial is your tradition?”
Briar envied the polite curiosity in Rosethorn’s voice. He was clenching his fists to keep from yelping his disgust. He had seen the buzzards haunting the gorge as they had fled into Gyongxe, but he hadn’t thought they were following meals left by Captain Rana. Or by him and his companions. He knew the Yanjingyi soldiers had their own elaborate funeral rituals that did not include being left to rot in the open. At home, the dead were buried to return to the earth.
“Sky burial is a practice of thousands of years,” Lango replied. “Commonly we have more ceremony for our dead, but war leaves us little time for the celebrations of peace. The ending is the same. The creatures feed and return us to Gyongxe.” He nodded to Souda and her captain. They came closer to hear what he had to say. “You see the danger. Here we have Yanjingyi soldiers who have come this far into the plain. We must press on.”
That night they were forced to camp in the open, together with two small villages’ worth of refugees. Briar saw Soudamini the commander for the first time as she chose the camping ground and selected sentries, both ordinary and mage. The mages among the soldiers and the villagers placed their protection spells, while Rosethorn and Briar sprinkled lines of thorn seed all around the outside of the camp, to be woken if things came to a fight. They took guard shifts with the other mages, watching and listening in the dark for the enemy.
No one came.
By noon they had caught up with Parahan’s company. They were escorting a long train of refugees to the Temple of the Tigers, a massive fortress that guarded the meeting of the Tom Sho and Snow Serpent Rivers.
“We’ve seen scouts in the distance,” Parahan told them when they had a chance to talk. “They ran from us. Captain Jha sent scouts to me last night. He has fo
und two villages burned in the northeast and planted with the emperor’s flags.”
“When does Jha mean to return to us?” Lango asked, worried. “If the enemy is in this area, I don’t like him being out there alone.”
“His message said he’d meet us at the Temple of the Tigers,” Parahan assured him.
Briar drifted back until he could ride without having to talk to anyone. His gut was tight; his hands trembled. During the night he had dreamed of the imperial birthday celebration, and the field of Weishu’s soldiers that had seemed to go on forever. It wasn’t the first time since they had left the palace that he’d dreamed of them. Today, though, the dream had a more ominous meaning.
Captain Jha was out there with one hundred warriors. They had looked like a lot before, when they were all crowded together on the road west. Now, imagining them against the emperor’s thousands, he realized the number was pathetic.
Stop panicking, he ordered himself, when it seemed he might vomit. The emperor has his thousands at the capital, not all the way down here. He’s got his main force guarding his own silky self, not burning a clump of wood-walled villages!
And what happens if Weishu catches you? a nasty little voice inside his head inquired. You were his guest, and you helped his pet captive escape. Then you carried word of the attack to Gyongxe, and now you’re fighting against him. You didn’t just take a vase from the guest pavilion. Weishu is going to want to do very bad things to you. And Rosethorn. And Evvy.
What he wouldn’t give for a few of those nagas and many-armed gods to send Weishu back to Yanjing!
The sky was turning gray and they had ridden another three miles or so when Briar saw something bobbing in the river. At first he thought it was a boat. He rode down to the water’s edge for a closer look. The thing that had gotten his attention was brown and muddy. A log or a branch? Several like it followed, rolling as they came over the rapids. One floated close to the edge and turned, showing him a swollen, eyeless face. Two of the corpses were missing heads. All had either ugly blade wounds or carried the crossbow bolts that had killed them. Behind them came the carcass of a yak, its hooves sticking in the air.