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Jia Jui shrugged. “The emperor my master has begun the conquest of this country. I must say, Evvy, I am sad to find you here. You do not show your appreciation for the Son of the Gods and the favor he showed you very well, do you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Evvy replied crossly. What Jia Jui said and what Evvy remembered were not the same. “Where’s Captain Rana?” she demanded.
Jia Jui sighed. “He threw himself off the wall of this fortress rather than let us question him. I hope we may do better, Evvy, but you must not force me to be cruel. Answer our questions, please, and spare yourself further pain. Tell me where Rosethorn and Dokyi have gone.”
Evvy remained silent and tried to make her poor feet feel like stone.
Jia Jui ran a finger along Evvy’s cheek. It broke the girl’s concentration. “Jia Jui, I don’t know who you’re talking about!” she protested.
The young woman frowned. “Evvy, have you worked a spell while my foolish friends stood by?”
The two men protested frantically, telling the mage that Evvy’s hands were bound so she couldn’t move them, and that the only words she said were normal talk. Jia Jui held up her hand and they shut up. Evvy shivered at how instantly the two men went silent.
Then Jia Jui held her hand out. Dawei put something into it — not a strap, but a rod. Her face calm and thoughtful, the woman struck the soles of Evvy’s feet with it.
It made the strap seem gentle. Evvy’s stone spell vanished. She cursed Jia Jui with every bad word she knew in several languages until the mage struck her again. Evvy howled in pain.
“Please, lady mage, stop!” Musheng cried. “Give the child a chance!”
Jia Jui lowered the rod.
Musheng leaned close to Evvy and whispered, “You see? I tried to warn you. She is pitiless. Answer like a good girl — you don’t want this, do you?”
“Where are they?” Jia Jui demanded. Musheng sprang away from Evvy. “Dokyi, Rosethorn, Parahan, Briar, Soudamini. Yes, we know the princess joined her brother here. Why do you think we bothered to take this honorless dump? We can’t even use it to get more troops and supplies here until we clear your chetu thorn spell from the pass. Where are your friends?”
Evvy licked blood away from her lip. She must have bitten it. She didn’t know who those people were; she didn’t care. She told Jia Jui to do something very bad with a yak.
The mage struck her feet three more times with the rod. In the gaps Evvy fumbled until she had her stone spell again and hung on to it, keeping it not in her mind but in the ceiling above where she could see it. The pain was white-hot in her feet and head. Her throat burned from screaming. Where was the song of the mountains? “Take over, Musheng,” she heard Jia Jui say. “I don’t care to weary my arm.”
That was when she learned that Musheng was not truly her friend.
He struck her for some time. He would stop. Jia Jui would ask questions, and Evvy would insult her. After three stops when Evvy said nothing, not even curses or insults, Jia Jui sighed. “Let her think while I fetch my mage beads. And you two, have someone take you to her room and fetch two of her cats. Preferably the biggest one, that she calls Monster, and the smallest one.”
The two guards followed her out of the room.
Evvy tried to breathe. It was hard. Her nose was filled with snot and the air hurt her throat. The cats. They would hurt the cats in front of her. She remembered the beads she had handled, General Hengkai’s beads, the ones for killing and destruction. Jia Jui had a necklace and bracelets of beads like that. She would use them on Monster and any of the others, maybe all of them.
She thought about pulling down these walls with her power, but she could not do it. Her legs throbbed and burned. Would she ever walk again? She couldn’t stop crying, though she bit her already sore lip to keep any noise from coming out.
Think! she ordered herself. What can you do if you can’t wreck this room and you can’t stop the pain in your feet? How can you escape? How can you stop her from hurting your cats?
She was Evumeimei Dingzai, a stone mage. If she couldn’t turn herself into stone, what if she took herself, her spirit, and put that into one? There would be no one in her body to hurt or to answer questions.
If I was cold and stiff, they would think I was dead, she thought. Not cold like stone. They’d know that was magic and Jia Jui would break my spell. But if they thought I died … There wouldn’t be any reason to hurt my cats if they thought I was dead.
Small pebbles lay in the corners of the room. Evvy found one to her liking. She began to concentrate. Her leg twitched; the wave of pain that resulted made her gasp. She tried again. Against her will she swallowed, making her throat burn even worse. Once more she tried. A noise outside made her jerk in fear: Was Jia Jui coming back? Were the men coming? The noise faded.
Now, she told herself fiercely, now, or you’ll fail and the cats will die!
Her power was a needle, darting across the room and into her particular stone. Her magic followed. With it went her thinking, most of her breathing, most of her heartbeat. Her body stilled and cooled as she found room for herself around each and every grain of rock in her particular sanctuary. She settled into it and rested.
Something sang to her. It was deep and comforting, but it boomed, too, shaking her loose from her hiding place. Her spirit and power flowed toward the singing, shivering to the deep hum beneath the song and dancing to it, too. Following the song, she entered a space that was hers.
Slowly she began to fill it, though it hurt. She knew, and the song knew, that her last hiding place was only temporary. This was her proper shape, pain and all.
Briefly it warmed. The warmth entered some of the places that hurt, making them loosen. Something inside made her wait. She must not rush, though she had no idea why she shouldn’t. The warmth faded. Perhaps she had imagined it, because once more she was cold.
She lay facedown on a lumpy hill. For a while she did nothing else, though the songs called to her. It took time for her body to remember the uses for fingers, arms, and legs. Any attempt to move hurt beyond words to describe it, but she knew that now she had to move.
She groped around her. She felt cloth, icy in spots. There were other, painless feet, stiff feet, stiff arms, stiff heads, all of them as cold as stone. She lay on a heap of corpses.
That was when she cried.
The mountain songs made her stop crying. They had changed. The deepest song spoke of safe caverns no bad soldiers could reach, where no killers went, where no pain could be found. It sang of safety and stones that healed, of water that was so cold it numbed pain.
She had to go to that song. It steeled her to do what was needed, and soon, before the sun rose. Using the sliver of the moon for light she began to tug clothes off the dead bodies around her. There were scarves for her to bind in layers around her poor feet. She found jackets and breeches and more scarves for her head, until she began to warm up at last. Among the bodies of so many adults — she couldn’t count how many — she also found the bodies of children, infants, and animals, including cats.
There was enough light that she recognized all seven of her cats among them. She nearly gave up then and there, weeping into Monster’s fur. She was at Fort Sambachu, and the Yanjingyi beasts had killed everyone. They were going to kill her if they saw her again. Maybe she ought to let them, or maybe she ought to go permanently to stone.
As if the singers knew what she was thinking, the mountain songs grew louder. The deepest song was loudest of all. It demanded that she hurry away from all the death. She must bring her song to the stone heights, to the dwellers inside. They would take her in, their sister of the mountains. They would bring her home.
She rolled down the rest of the cold heap rather than look at any more of it. The soldiers had dumped the dead outside the fortress, behind the rear gate. Evvy reached the little river, where she found a long stick under the trees. It became her staff. After a drink of water, she was able to turn her
soles to stone. It was all that she could do for them. The rest of her feet throbbed. Even the scarves she had wrapped around them did not keep them from hurting with every step.
She fixed her mind on stone in the soles of her feet and on the song of the mountains, and kept going.
By sunrise she reached the canyon where the Yanjingyi war party had captured her. The deep song had called to her from there. She stopped to drink again from the stream. She wanted to sleep, but the mountain song was too loud now. There was no sleeping with that racket going on in her brain. She staggered upright by the water and looked back the way she had come. With horror she saw bloody footprints marked her trail. Panicked, she stumbled forward, wanting to run and unable to. The song was so loud that she did not hear the clatter of hoofbeats in the canyon.
Turning a bend in the stone, she saw an opening in the side of the canyon: a cave. Could she go there? There was plenty of loose rock above it and to the sides. Did she have the strength to close the opening once she was inside, hiding where she had gone?
She halted. The deep song had stopped. In front of the cave she saw the strangest thing. On the dirt was a polished lump of fluorite: deep green, deep purple, and clear crystal. It looked like an eighteen-inch bear sitting on its haunches, one that had been smoothed by years of running water until all of him was rounded. His muzzle was only a gentle point, not a sharp nose. It was the friendliest-looking piece of stone she had ever seen.
It cocked its head knob at her. “Evumeimei Dingzai, welcome to my home,” the living stone said. It spoke with the voice of the deep song, making every bone in Evvy’s body shiver. “Will you enter?”
Evvy stumbled toward it. “Who are you?”
“My name is very long, and I will say it for you at some time, but not now. I am the heart of the mountain that the meat creatures here call Kangri Skad Po.” The stone creature turned and trundled deeper into the cave on very short legs.
Evvy followed, leaning on her stick. Glowing moss on the walls of the cave lit their way. As they walked the tunnel opened up. Normally she would have gasped as it grew larger, but not today. Today she desperately held to the feeling of stone at the bottoms of her bleeding feet as they descended into the earth. So intent was she that she didn’t notice when the cave’s entrance closed behind them.
She did notice a mild grumbling overhead. A few rocks fell and the floor shook slightly, making her stumble.
“What was that?” she cried, steadying herself with her makeshift staff.
“It is nothing,” the crystal bear assured her, his amazingly deep voice making her think of icy underground rivers and hidden hot springs. “Soon you will rest and heal. Then you will tell me what you are. I have never felt anyone like you in all my millennia.”
Normally Evvy would have demanded to know how many millennia the living stone had, and what millennia were. Now she clung to her staff and limped onward, biting her lip until it started to bleed again.
In the world above the mountain roots, Jia Jui led the search party into the long canyon. On the walls of Fort Sambachu, the bodies of Dawei and Musheng hung as a warning to every idiot in the army who did not know the difference between a dead girl and a mage in a deep trance. She had already left sizable offerings to several gods that the emperor would never learn that she, too, had examined Evumeimei’s body and pronounced her to be dead. She would have sworn the girl was dead, and if the emperor’s spies ever learned differently, she would pay very painfully.
She could still save herself. The bloody footprints showed that Evvy could not go much farther. With the girl back in her hands, Jia Jui meant to shackle her to her own wrist and take her to Emperor Weishu herself.
So deep in her plans was Jia Jui that she didn’t notice the quiver in the ground until it was much too late. Driven by the living heart of Kangri Skad Po, the canyon collapsed on soldiers and mage. None of them would be seen again.
THE TEMPLE OF THE TIGERS,
THE DRIMBAKANG LHO, AND
THE TEMPLE OF THE SEALED EYE
Once he had gotten used to the fact that Rosethorn and her horse had simply disappeared, Briar listened to Jimut’s pleadings and turned to help move the refugees into the Temple of the Tigers. He busily sent runaway toddlers, goats, and the odd group of boys across the Tom Sho Bridge and up the rugged hill. It was when he reached the temple fortress at the top of the hill that he saw why the place had the name that it did.
Two giant tiger figures stood on either side of the front gate. One, painted orange with black stripes, snarled realistically at anyone who rode toward it. The other, carved of pure white stone with black stripes, looked as if the sculptor had caught it in midleap, forelegs and claws extended. Briar could even see every hair in the animals’ carved fur. Captain Lango’s Gyongxin people did not care for them. Parahan and Souda’s people only bowed as they passed: Jimut explained that tigers were common, respected animals in the Realms of the Sun. The local villagers, unlike Lango’s fighters, were clearly used to these tigers and even rubbed them on the side or paw. Briar only relaxed once he was well inside the curtain wall. He had half expected the tigers, like the naga queen of the Temple of the Sun Queen’s Husbands, to act unpleasantly alive.
He went with Parahan for a look around when they were settled: The plan seemed to be for the soldiers to patrol a circle around the place while they waited for Rosethorn’s return. They also expected the arrival of more warriors from the west, the southern part of the Drimbakang Zugu mountains and beyond. Knowing that, Briar agreed they ought to familiarize themselves with their newest temporary home.
The place was big, with the stepped outer wall that was common to Gyongxin fortresses. A small village already fit in the lower courtyard as part of the temple, together with barns, stables, mews, chicken coops, fenced gardens, and roaming herds of goats and fowl. In the upper courtyard loomed the main house of worship with its dormitories, side temples, and kitchens.
Briar wandered into the temple. It was lit with hundreds of small lamps. Parahan explained this was the sole Temple of the Tigers in Gyongxe: All of the others were in the Realms of the Sun, where tigers made their home. It was hard to keep tigers here, a priest told them. They missed the warmth and the ability to roam that was theirs elsewhere. Also, the snow leopards resented interlopers.
Briar was fascinated by the artwork that covered the temple’s interior walls. The borders set around each large painting were made of dozens of smaller ones: pictures of prophets, gods, demons, teachers, and tigers shown in every aspect, from infancy to godhood. Like the main scenes, the border images were done in vivid colors, showing their subjects in various poses. What bothered Briar was that the small figures seemed to move in the corner of his eye. They turned to chat with their neighbors. Worse, some leaned forward to get a better look at him, Parahan, or Souda. When he whipped around to stare at the paintings dead-on, they were still — except that the little border folk had changed position. Some of them were rude enough to cover giggles with one or several hands. One tiger had rolled onto his back. Another urinated in Briar’s direction.
He just had to ask. Fortunately a priest-artist was nearby, touching up the colors on a large painting. “Excuse me,” Briar murmured when the man set his brush down, “but weren’t the figures in the border over there placed differently before?”
The priest smiled tolerantly and came to look. “Sir, it is dark here. With the torchlight and the many shadows our paintings appear to change….” He stared at the section of paintings that had moved for Briar. One crimson-fanged warrior-demon now showed his bare behind to anyone who cared to see it.
Briar looked at the priest. The man blinked, then backed up a step. He leaned in closer and inspected a broad section of the paintings with borders that had moved. Finally he scowled at Briar and hurried off, telling his novice to put his paints away.
Briar turned his back on the paintings and tried not to look at any more of them. He said nothing to his companions, just as he ha
d not mentioned the boulder paintings and the naga queen before. If they thought his twitches and flinches were strange, they were too polite to comment. Mages were expected to be odd. He would ask Rosethorn what was going on when she came back. He had an idea that it had something to do with his touching her cursed burden.
Briar also refused to sleep inside, despite the arguments of Parahan, Souda, and Jimut. There were just too many paintings to avoid. In the end, his friends gave him an assortment of furs to use as well as his bedroll, to keep off the early summer cold. Briar didn’t care. There were no paintings inside the curtain walls, and the stars above moved only as they were supposed to move. He fell asleep looking at them and asking Rosethorn’s gods to watch over her.
When the morning sun touched his eyes, Briar opened them to find a shaven-headed priestess in heavy robes squatting beside him. She grinned, showing off a scant mouthful of teeth. “Don’t worry, emchi youth,” she said, and offered him a bowl of butter tea. “Once you return to the thicker air down below, you will no longer see things. Whatever touched you was powerful. I can see its blaze all around you. Its power calls to the little gods whose doors are on our walls.”
Briar sat up and accepted the bowl. “Thank you. You’re very kind. I would prefer not to have been touched at all.”
She cackled. “But then they would not have their fun with you, the little gods, and it is so rare that they may play! The power in you makes it possible for them to enter our world for a time. They have been stirring for years, knowing that the evil was coming. At least now the waiting is over, and we will all see.”
Briar sipped the tea for a moment, thinking. She was a nice old woman. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind a question or two from a silly foreigner. “May I ask — why do even the temples here in Gyongxe have walls, like castles and big cities do? From what I’ve heard, you aren’t attacked very often.”
