Spear of Heaven (35 page)

“It’s prayer to them,” said Daruya. “When they work magic,
they think it a miracle, and the gift of a god.”

“And isn’t it exactly that?” Estarion sat on a cushion, for
all the world as if he were there in the flesh. He looked comfortable but
tired—as he would be, for it must be late night in Starios, and he did not look
as if he had slept.

Daruya had no sympathy to spare for him. “But they
don’t
know,” she said, stubborn. “They
don’t see what they are or what they do. They just do it.”

“And hate us, and pray their gods to destroy us—and so, in
their minds, the gods do.” Vanyi sighed. “They won’t thank us for telling them
what they’re really doing.”

“They won’t believe it,” said Estarion. “That kind never
does.”

“Unless we can prove it to them,” Daruya said. “Somehow.
Show them that they’re as much mages as we.”

“That’s for later,” said Vanyi. “Much later. Now we have a
greater urgency to face: to be rid of the mages who broke the Gate.”

“We don’t know it’s those mages,” Daruya said. “It could be
any circle of priests in Shurakan—any holy man, if it comes to that, who has
reason to hate mages and Gates.”

“It could,” said Vanyi, “but I think not. Do you know what
temple that is?”

“Should I? It has a god like an ox with a man’s face, and a
white she-ox for his consort.”

“Yes,” said Vanyi. “That is Matakan, whose father is the
greater moon, and whose mother is the white moon-goddess, the mother goddess of
Shurakan. The king and the queen are his kin. His chief power is the blessing
of crops and the fields, and the guidance of princes. His legend calls him
friend of the earth, brother of the children of heaven, and destroyer of
unclean magics.”

“Magic,” said Daruya in dawning comprehension. “Ox-droppings.
Excrement of Matakan—the evil that he casts out when he consumes the fruits of
the earth.”

“Exactly,” Vanyi said. “What would you like to wager that
Matakan’s temple is the place where the new king’s faction gathered before it
seized the palace, where behind wards they conceived their plots and broke the
Gates?”

“I saw none of that,” said Daruya. “I saw a circle of
priests turning aside a storm. They hate mages, yes, that’s underneath
everything they do, but there’s no clear intention in it. No malice.”

“Not in the priests you saw,” Estarion said. “But wouldn’t
those be the lesser ones, the ones who aren’t needed to hold the palace? They
perform the offices, keep the storms at bay, while their masters go about the
greater business of their order.”

That made too much sense. And it had to come from Estarion,
at whose every
Yes
she shouted, by
instinct, a vehement
No
!

Not now. She was too tired, there was that. And he could not
do anything here but talk, no matter how solid he seemed.

“So,” said Vanyi, “we find the masters. That should be
simple enough. They’ll be in the palace, ruling it and its king.”

“Warded, guarded, and praying you’ll fall into their hands.”
Estarion reached but did not try to touch her. “Prayer here is magery. Remember
that.”

“I’m hardly likely to forget it,” Vanyi said. Her voice was
tart.

Kadin stirred suddenly at her feet, thrashed, flailed at
air. Daruya flung herself on him and wrestled him into stillness.

The silence was much larger than it should have been. Much
deeper. Much more . . . numerous.

Kadin was awake, but he was quiet, breathing hard, staring
toward the door. Daruya followed the line of his gaze.

What Bundur must be seeing, she could well imagine. His wife
on the floor with the black mage, in a posture she had more than once assumed
in the marriage bed. The Guildmaster standing over them. And the stranger who
sat by the wall, the dark man with the lion-eyes, whose like he could never
have seen before, nor ever imagined.

Estarion looked both real and unreal. Solid, yet not quite
there—as if he were more distant than he should be. His edges shimmered.

A demon, Bundur was thinking. A dark god. Both and neither.

“Grandfather,” said Daruya steadily in Bundur’s language, “this
is my husband.”

Estarion inclined his head. He had grace; he carried himself
as one who had been emperor from his childhood.

Bundur saw it. Understood it. “Sir,” he said, a little
abrupt perhaps, but courteous. And to Daruya: “This is your emperor?”

“This is the Lord of Sun and Lion,” she said. She rose
carefully. Kadin sat up but offered no violence. She could forget him, she
thought, until she had dealt with the rest of it.

They were measuring one another, her grandfather and her
husband. Finding one another immensely strange, and very foreign. There was no
leap of liking, no meeting of minds that she could discern. And yet somehow
they agreed.

Maybe it was simply that they knew her and acknowledged her
failings. Estarion had that look about him. So did Bundur—a quirk of the lip, a
glint of the eye.

“How,” Estarion asked, “do you contend with the hottest
temper in my empire?”

“As I do with all forces of nature, sir,” Bundur answered: “swiftly,
thoroughly, and with great respect.”

“Is it worth the trouble?”

“I married it,” Bundur said. “Sir.”

“Ah,” said Estarion, “but did you think you were going to
tame it?”

“Of course not,” said Bundur.

Estarion smiled his sudden brilliant smile. “You’re a wise
man, I see. And remarkably courageous.”

“She’s no danger to me,” said Bundur.

“No? Then she must love you for a fact.” Estarion settled
more comfortably, stretched out on the cushions, propped on his elbow. “But I
was thinking of your courage in standing here, talking to the most foreign of
foreigners, and knowing that I’m not, strictly speaking, here at all.”

“You’re not here?” Bundur sounded puzzled. “I can see you,
hear you.”

“But I have no bodily substance. I’m a working of magic, a
figment of your mind’s eye.”

“Grandfather—” Daruya began, half angry, half afraid.

He ignored her. So did Bundur. Bundur’s vitals were knotted
to the point of pain, but he was strong. He held his ground. She dared not
touch him, still less ease the pain, for fear he would revolt.

“Tell me,” he said, “O shape of air and darkness, if what I
hear is true. Is it magic that they practice in the temples? Are the greatest
haters of magic its most devoted practitioners?”

“I’m no oracle,” said Estarion, “but from all I’ve heard and
seen, it’s true.”

Bundur’s knees gave way. There was a cushion close enough to
fall to; he dropped onto it with something resembling grace, and sat for a
moment, simply breathing. At length he said, “I thought I was stronger. I
thought I knew what it was to live among mages.”

“Even mages are never quite prepared for everything that can
happen,” said Estarion. “And you were taught from childhood to hate mages and
to reverence priests. To discover that they’re the same thing . . .
that would break most men’s minds.”

Bundur laughed shakily. “I’ve married a demon’s child, I’ve
consorted with mages, I’ve seen a dark god in my own sitting room. What’s
another terrible truth to that?”

“Not all priests are mages,” Vanyi said, sharp and clear.
They listened to her as they would not have done to Daruya: stopped their
stallion-dance and stared. She glared back. “No, young Shakabundur, not even in
our country, which isn’t half as preposterous a place as you’re coming to think
it is. It’s just a few priests and a particular form of prayer, and a fairly
universal talent for raising wards. We would be a threat to that, we and our
Gates, not least because we can name it for what it is.”

“You think the leaders know,” said Daruya.

“Know or suspect,” Vanyi said, “and believe themselves
righteous because their gods answer their prayers. Maybe they didn’t know
before they saw us. Who’s to tell, till we can ask them?”

“You’re not going to do that,” Estarion said quickly.

Vanyi’s brows went up. “Why not? Do you think we should
cower here till they fall on us and destroy us?”

“I think you could let them come to you.”

“I could,” she conceded. “It’s a decent stronghold, this.
Well armed, well guarded; good walls, no easy way in. They’ll come here, of
course, before too long. Once their other quarry is hunted out and disposed of.”

“Promise me you won’t do something rash,” said Estarion.

Vanyi looked at him. Simply looked.

He withstood her stare far better than Daruya could have,
but even he could not find a grin to set against it. She said, “I won’t do
anything that isn’t necessary.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he said.

“That’s what you’ll get.”

“Gods,” muttered Bundur. “And he’s her king?”

“More than king,” Daruya said. “But she’s the Master of
Mages.”

“My sorrow,” said Estarion, flashing a glance at them, “that
I ever let it be so. Damn you, Vanyi—”

“Damn you, Estarion,” said Vanyi. “Go away and let me work.”

“Not till you promise to be sensible.”

“I’ll be exactly as sensible as I need to be.”

“If you get yourself killed,” he said, low and fierce, “I’ll
haunt you till I die myself.”

“The way you’re haunting me now?” Vanyi wanted to know. “Avaryan
help us. I’m like to die of it.”

“Don’t,” he said.

“What, you care that much?”

It was mocking, but it was not. Estarion met it with sober
certainty. “Always, Vanyi.” He paused. “You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t dare.” She rubbed her eyes. She looked as if she
was suddenly, cripplingly exhausted. “Go home, Estarion.”

This time he obeyed her—if anyone could call it obedience.
It looked like the yielding of royal will to royal whim. Daruya herself could
not have done it better.

Vanyi entered the palace without concealment, and with no
particular care to be either nameless or faceless. She had had some difficulty
escaping House Janabundur—everyone was determined to keep everyone else safe,
and never mind how many of them had already rebelled against it—but after all
she was the Guildmaster, and the oldest woman in the house besides, which
mattered more to the Shurakani. She had her way.

She also had a pair of Olenyai at her back, but that was
more help than hindrance. They kept her from having to fret about attacks from
behind.

The palace, like the city, was quiet, almost too much so. It
was waiting for something, she thought. Her arrival? She would have laughed at
herself, but there was cold in her bones.

The Minister of Protocol’s workroom was empty, its table
tidy, dusted and clean. He had not been there that day, or the night before,
either. She followed the memory of him, brazening her way past guards and
chamberlains, going invisible when she must.

She was taking no great care to hoard her magery. This was
her gamble, her last cast of the dice. That she knew who had cast down the
Gates through the circle of priests. That that one was waiting for her as a
spider waits for its prey, crouching in the center of its web.

Fear had no part in it. She had been considering this for a
long while now, perhaps since she decided to come to Shurakan in spite of the
Gate’s fall. Someone would have to lure the enemy out. Her mere presence in the
kingdom had not been enough. She must force the meeting, and the confrontation.

If she had guessed rightly. If the enemy was the one she
thought, and not someone else, someone unexpected.

oOo

The palace was a warren. Not as much of one as the Golden
Palace in Kundri’j Asan; nor was it as large as Estarion’s palace in Starios.
But there was a great deal of it, a great many doors and passages, staircases,
rooms that were full of people and rooms that were echoingly empty.

Vanyi followed the thread of presence that was the Minister
of Protocol. Either he had been wandering lost for long hours, or he liked to
ramble. Or it was yet another aspect of the trap. If she gave in to tedium and
retreated, the enemy had won a respite. If she persevered, she was caught. In
either event, the enemy won.

Which was exactly what Vanyi hoped for. She pressed on past
weary feet and aching head, staring strangers, guards who barred her way and
found themselves confronted with the threat of Olenyai swords. Neither bluster
nor insults swayed the veiled warriors. They spoke no Shurakani; only the common
language of hand on swordhilt and a few fingerbreadths of bared steel.

The trail led her into darker, narrower ways, perhaps older,
certainly the province of servants and lesser ministers. Rooms were crowded
together here, with larger ones at intervals, full of the scents of cooking and
the clatter of plates and bowls.

It was the hour for the daymeal. Vanyi had eaten, but not in
a while. She regretted not thinking to bring at least a pouchful of fruit or a
round of bread to nibble on. She had thought—hoped—to be seized at once and
taken to the one she must see.

Foolish of her. An enemy clever enough to hide from mages
who were actively hunting a destroyer of Gates had more than enough sense to
lead her on a merry chase before going to ground.

Indeed, and it was growing less merry by the heartbeat. She
stopped abruptly. The Olenyai drifted past her, halted.

One circled round to guard her back. The other poised just
ahead of her, alert, though the corridor was empty.

Think, she told herself. What was this for? Why a trail this
long and this convoluted, if they both knew how it had to end?

Subtleties within subtleties. The enemy might be afraid of
her. She was a master of mages, after all—and that one knew what the title
meant.

Or she might be hunting the wrong quarry. Why then would he
run? He should not even know she hunted him.

Unless he ran from someone else.

But who—