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After she caught her breath, she decided there was nothing else to do. She nudged her mount, clicking her tongue between her teeth. He snorted and tossed his head, but he did advance. The path descended as the canyon widened. Rosethorn could hear a waterfall.
A clearing opened before them. Soft grass grew around a wide pool. It was supplied from a waterfall that dropped thirty feet from a cliff. Three caves opened into the cliff face beside the waterfall.
“Leave your horse,” the voice ordered. “He will be cared for. Enter the temple — if you choose the correct entry.”
“And if I do not?” Rosethorn asked. Really, this is absurd, she thought impatiently. I have the Treasures; I found this hole in the wall — these holes in the wall. What more do they want of me?
“The temple protects itself,” the voice replied.
“Did you hear that?” Rosethorn muttered to the horse as she dismounted. “The temple protects itself. The rest of us can enjoy our nice little mountain vacation that we took when others need us.” She went about removing the horse’s saddle.
“Grumbling will not assist you,” the voice told her. “The animal will be looked after.”
“Grumbling makes me feel better,” she retorted. “If you don’t like it, you should have given the First Dedicate instructions, or made it possible for him to bring this burden to you. And I was taught that it’s proper to look after your own mount.” She did so, rubbing him down, feeding him grain, and settling him on the grass. Once that was done, she moved her pack to her chest, having placed it on her back to care for the horse, and looked at the three openings. The glowing path went straight through the smallest opening, the one that was covered with cobwebs.
Lark, Rosethorn thought, bringing her lover’s face before her mind’s eye in case this did not go well. She took a deep breath, picked up a stick that lay on the ground, and advanced on the cave. Using the stick, she cleared away most of the cobwebs before she walked inside. The glowing path led her down a narrow tunnel, so narrow that in some places the stone brushed her shoulders. Rosethorn bit her lip and went on.
As the daylight faded behind her, she saw light from another source. A fungus she did not know grew high on the walls and the roof of the tunnel. The farther she came from natural light, the brighter glowed the fungus. It gave off a whitish-green illumination, one that was not favorable to her skin. She grimaced at the sight of her corpse-green hands, but consoled herself with the thought that no one would possibly care about her looks down here. As a religious dedicate she knew it was a weakness to be vain of her creamy skin. It was doubly so because she spent nearly all of her time in the sun.
“Concern for appearance is a folly of the world,” the voice said, as if he’d read her mind.
Rosethorn spun. Behind her stood a black-skinned man so large he had to bend to keep from bumping his head on the roof. He wore a plain Gyongxin jacket, breeches, and boots. A white mark in the shape of an eye was painted on the middle of his forehead.
Rosethorn clutched the Treasures tightly. She didn’t want him to see that she was shaking. No man had seen her frightened since she had run away from the chains in her father’s farmhouse. “I don’t know how you read my mind, but it’s rude,” she snapped. “And my weaknesses as a dedicate are between me and my own First Dedicates.”
“In the Temple of the Sealed Eye all is known,” the man said. “Continue to go forward. Keep to the left of the tunnel.”
She didn’t like to turn her back to him, but it was a question either of staying here or going ahead. She certainly couldn’t go back, through him. As she moved on, the Treasures gripped her mind. They showed her strange images: a great city under attack; a young black man trying to get two girls who resembled him out of a beautiful house; soldiers in Yanjingyi armor surrounding them. They were separated and sold, the girls and the young man, in a Yanjingyi city. The young man was made to work on a rice farm. Then he found his way through forests and up into mountain passes, starved and half naked, until he collapsed. The last thing Rosethorn saw was a Gyongxin woman with the white eye painted on her forehead: She was bending over the fallen young man.
The vision faded.
“Is that you?” she asked, forgetting the big man most likely couldn’t see what she did. “You were an escaped slave?” She looked back at him.
He sighed. “Your Treasures could leave me my secrets.” He reached out. “Careful!”
She bumped a tall rock on her right. Something there hissed and scraped, darting at her. She stumbled back. The thing retreated, hissing still. Rosethorn turned to face it and carefully backed up until she struck the opposite wall. On the flat top of the rock was a serpent-like thing with a human skull. Its body seemed to be all vertebrae. It had no skin, no flesh, no muscle; its material was shaped like bone, but it looked to be a combination of metals.
“The cave snakes are the substance of the Drimbakangs,” the man told her. “In the beginning they made themselves of tin, copper, and gold.”
“They made themselves?” Rosethorn asked.
“At first,” the man replied.
She didn’t know if she was unsure or astonished. The cave snake rose up on its coils and hissed again, leaning out until its face was immediately in front of Rosethorn’s. The thing’s breath was cold, wet, and scented like the depths far underground. To her horror, Rosethorn saw movement beyond the beast’s small skull as several more of the snakeish things rose up inside her coils, hissing softly.
“They are very irritable when brooding a nest,” Rosethorn’s companion said belatedly.
Rosethorn took a deep breath. “I am sorry that I disturbed you and your nest,” she told the cave snake mother, fixing her eyes on the eye hollows in her skull. The thing must not know she was frightened. “It was not my intention. I would not like to see this become an argument between us.”
“It would be a shame on both sides,” a newcomer said as the cave snake drew in tight around her nest.
Rosethorn silently cursed the cave that gave her no warning of someone’s approach and looked to her left. Here the tunnel opened up into a good-sized chamber. A Gyongxin man an inch or so shorter than Rosethorn stood there, dressed like her companion in tunic and breeches. Also like the black man, he wore the white eye on his forehead, though it did not look like it had been painted on. As Rosethorn watched, the white eye blinked at her.
I want to go home, she thought dizzily.
The small priest said, “Welcome to the Temple of the Sealed Eye, Nivalin Greenhow, whose name in religion is Rosethorn of Winding Circle temple. I see why Jangbu Dokyi trusted you with your faith’s Four Treasures. In the wrong hands they would be powerful forces for ill, but you would never allow them to pass into those hands, would you?”
Rosethorn frowned at the man before returning her gaze to the cave snakes. She didn’t trust them. “I’m not sure how I could stop the wrong hands, past a certain point, though I would give it my best.”
“Your best is most formidable, my dear. Come. I am Yesh Namka, High Priest of the Temple of the Sealed Eye. Our warden of the gate behind you is Tegene Kess.” Rosethorn looked at the big man, who nodded to her. “We must go deeper into the mountains’ heart together before you can put down your burden,” Namka said. “What you see and hear beyond this point you may tell no one, not the children of your heart, not your lover, not Jangbu Dokyi.”
She heard ringing sounds in the dark behind the high priest. Out of the shadows walked three more creatures, eagle-headed, cat-bodied, spindle-legged, horse-hooved. Dark in color, they were speckled with spots that shone with a pale gold light, as did their wicked, hooked beaks. They halted beside Namka and cocked their heads to eye Rosethorn. The cave snakes chattered at them.
“Where did they come from?” Rosethorn asked Namka when she felt she could speak without her own teeth chattering.
“The mountains grow bored, sometimes,” Tegene Kess explained. “They have eons of time to build themselves and their child
ren. At first they follow the nature of the world, but there are times when they wish to try something different. Or the lesser gods who enter this realm feel it needs something unusual, and they make it. Do you understand?”
“Not at all,” Rosethorn said.
“You will,” Namka said, beckoning to her. “Come.” He turned and shooed the strange hooved creatures out of the way.
There was nothing for Briar to do. Those few warriors who had been wounded on the wall by enemy archers were being well cared for by the temple healers. He had collected all of the fallen mage beads he could find. He scrounged a midday meal and hunkered down near the north gate with his finds. Once he had eaten, he worked on spells that would turn the oak and gingko beads against their holders. One such spell depended on the sex of the gingko tree that made up the bead. To test the spell Briar threw two beads several yards downhill and worked the magic he had placed on them. Within seconds they popped, turning into rapidly growing female seeds that reached the size of a small goat, ripened, and burst. Briar cackled wickedly even as he covered his nose with one elbow and backed away from the vomit-like smell.
He bumped into something behind him. Turning to apologize, he choked. He hadn’t really expected the sitting orange stone tiger to be awake, but it had walked up for a closer look at what he was doing.
“I take it you can’t smell,” he said.
The tiger shook its head.
“Lucky you,” Briar said weakly. Of course they know what I say, he thought. Since he could do nothing about it, he resumed his seat to consider what to do with the male gingko wood beads.
While the great creature was there, he thought to ask it a question that had hovered in his mind all morning. “Did you two come from the canyon behind Garmashing? In the Drimbakang Zugu?” In case the tiger did not recognize the names, he brought his memory of the morning when shamans had danced a pair of giant skeletons to life to the front of his mind, in case the tiger could see it in him, somehow. He concentrated, trying to capture the sounds and scents of that chilly moment in time when stone shaped itself and walked out of the cliff.
A scraping noise made him open his eyes. With a single large claw the tiger had drawn two smooth lines with a waving line between them. It was a map of the canyon behind Garmashing.
“When did they dance you out of the cliffs?”
The tiger shrugged, making its well-marked fur ripple.
“But it was a long time ago.”
The tiger nodded and lay down beside Briar.
“Thank you,” Briar said politely, awed. “That’s what I thought.” He returned to his experiments with the male gingko beads, though his heart wasn’t really in his work. If he didn’t watch it, he thought, he would start to think the gods really were closer to Gyongxe than they were to any other part of the world, if they could gift native stone so that it defended the temples of lands far away.
He may have been deep in thought, but he still noticed the orange-and-black tiger as it got to its feet again and walked by him. Several moments passed before his curiosity overcame him and he looked up. Both tiger statues had gone downhill to eat the remains of the oversized, vile-smelling gingko berries.
“Well,” Briar said. “I suppose they don’t care if it’s meat or not. I wonder if they just like the magic?” He continued to work with the other wooden beads.
The tigers had eaten all of the berries and returned to their guardian positions to wash themselves when the grasses told Briar that horses were coming. A glance at the sky showed him that the day was drawing to a close. He gathered his beads and the remnants of his midday and walked to the gate. The tigers had taken still positions, but not the ones they had held before. The white tiger sat on its hindquarters, washing a forepaw. The orange tiger stretched out on one side.
Briar waited until the soldiers who had ridden after the enemy passed through the gate, then followed them inside. He stopped briefly to give each stone tiger a pat. Evvy would expect it of him, he knew. They had gone solid.
The twins and Captain Lango greeted him as they dismounted from their horses, but they seemed preoccupied. They withdrew to Souda’s tent and sent for a handful of their own people while the temple captain trotted up to the temple. Not long afterward he returned with the temple’s warrior-commander, the chief priestess, and her young tiger. They all entered Souda’s tent; guards were placed to keep anyone from coming close enough to eavesdrop.
The returning hunting parties had brought wounded. Briar swapped his mage kit for his healer’s kit and offered his assistance to the temple workers. With the addition of those who had been hurt on the patrol, the temple healers were glad to have Briar’s assistance as well as his medicines.
“We got all but two of the ones we were chasing,” Atori, one of Souda’s archers, told Briar as he cleaned her arrow wound. “Those Yanjingyi seps can ride!”
Briar grinned at her use of a Banpuri curse word he’d heard Parahan use many times. She ground her teeth as the cleansing potion he had applied bubbled deep into the wound. He murmured, “Not long, now. I’ve yet to lose someone to infection with this.”
“Well, there’s the goddess’s blessing,” she gasped. “Aiiiii!”
“Done,” Briar said, and began to bandage the wound. “When you take this off tomorrow, around noon, say, your arm will look like you never got shot. Give it a week, and it won’t even be sore.”
“I’ll be able to shoot with it?” Atori wanted to know. Her face was anxious. “That was a big camp we found. Bigger than ours. Signs of an army in the area.”
“You’ll be able to shoot,” Briar assured her. “Get some of the healing tea, and keep drinking that.”
She had been sitting on a stool so he could work on her arm. Abruptly she stood, grabbed him by the ears, and kissed him well. “Oh, if only I weren’t betrothed,” she said mournfully. “Thank you, Briar!”
He stood there, grinning for a moment. She was twenty or so, definitely too old for him, but it was nice to have a pretty girl kiss him among so much insanity. Better than nice!
“Say, emchi,” growled the next patient in line, an older Gyongxin warrior, “if you don’t want me kissing you, would you have a look at this?”
Startled out of his happy state, Briar apologized and beckoned the soldier forward.
It was almost midnight when he emerged from the barn that had been made over into an infirmary. He’d given his slumbering patients a last check, and then cared for those who were awake and asking for help of some kind. He had just seen his bedroll and furs, set up beside a shed where they wouldn’t be in anyone’s way — thank you, Jimut! he thought gratefully — when he heard noise outside the gate. It was a horn: not the great horns on the temple’s walls and roof, but a normal-sized one, blowing several notes. It halted, then sounded the same notes again.
Briar watched as guards hurried to open one half of the gates, which had been cleared after the battle. A rider in Gyongxin armor stumbled through, leading a weary horse. Attached to his saddle was a long bamboo wand with a blue silk banner attached. He was a messenger from one of Gyongxe’s generals.
A temple novice ran forward to take the messenger’s horse. Another came to lead him to those he needed to see. For a moment Briar wished the man brought word of Rosethorn or Evvy, but he knew better. He would not hear from Rosethorn until he saw her again, so secret was her task, and no one would send a wartime messenger for a student mage and her cats. For anything else, Briar was exhausted more than he was curious. He washed his face and hands at the courtyard well, then stripped off his boots and crawled into his bedroll.
As so often happened, he found himself too tired to sleep. After staring at the stars for a time, he sat up and pulled his boots back on. Perhaps the healers could spare some ordinary tea and maybe some food. He had not eaten supper. No doubt the temple kitchens were closed. He went back to the well for a drink of water and to clean his teeth.
It was there that Parahan and Soudamini found him. Th
e twins looked as weary as he felt. He noticed they had taken time to comb the dust from their glossy black hair and change into comfortable Realms-style tunics and baggy breeches. Parahan carried something bulky in his hands.
“Why aren’t you abed?” Briar asked, his voice froggy from weariness.
“We could ask you the same,” Souda replied. She sat beside him on the edge of the well.
“Oh, no,” Briar said, giddy from a lack of sleep and food. “I’ve been kissed by one pretty girl today. I couldn’t take it if I got kissed by another.”
Souda laughed quietly and put her arm around him. “It would be like kissing my brother,” she said. “Briar, listen. We have news.”
He looked at her, then up at Parahan.
“We chased some of the soldiers to a camp. They got the warning in time and ran, but their general left some letters and other things.” With shock, Briar realized that Parahan was weeping. “Briar, Fort Sambachu was attacked two days after we left. The Yanjingyi enemy had enough mages to blow down their gates. They wrote to their general that they killed the refugees and the animals.”
Briar clenched his fists. “Evvy?”
Souda took up the story. Parahan was wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “They had orders to send Evvy to the emperor’s camp once she told them where we were, and where you and Rosethorn were. But — she died, as they questioned her. They had one of the emperor’s best mages with them, just for that.”
Briar heard a voice. It turned out to be his own. “You mean tortured.”
Souda bowed her head. “Tortured.”
Parahan held the bundle in his hand out to Briar. “She showed me this, one of the days when you and Rosethorn were making the flower. It was in the general’s tent with his letter. He was going to send it to Weishu.”
Numbly Briar took it and undid the ties. It was Evvy’s stone alphabet. Not the one she had begun recently, made of stones that she had found herself. It was the one he had made for her, back when he realized he would have to teach a stone mage somehow. The stones lay still and dead in the dim torch- and starlight.
