Spear of Heaven (41 page)

“The Gate’s open?” She stretched out a finger of magery, but
the healer slapped it back. She snarled and subsided. “We haven’t done anything
to rebuild it. It’s a blind Gate—and Estarion, about that—”

“It’s open,” he said. “All Gates are open as they always
were, though there are cracks in the walls in the Heart of the World. Mages are
mending those. The Gate in Starios is up and strong, and when I told it to open
on Shurakan, it did. Your Guardian met me on this side. I brought two pairs of
mages to give what aid they could—the twins from the Lakes of the Moon, and
your Guardian’s cousin Iyeris and her lightmage. They’re in the house of the
Gate, making it habitable again with help from the people of Janabundur. Did
you know that exorcist of yours has Gate-sense? He might be worth training as a
Guardian. Imagine,” he said, entranced with his own vision. “A Shurakani born,
being Guardian of its Gate.”

Somewhere far down below the fog of healing, Vanyi was
furious. She was the Master of the Guild. She was the ruler of the Gates. How
dared he order her mages about? How dared he meddle with her Gates?

He sat on the edge of the bed, perfectly pleased with
himself, having broken every pact they had ever made. He only made it worse by
saying, “All of this, of course, is by your leave. The Guild was struck hard
when the Gates started to fall—it was all they could do to hold themselves
together. They cried out for any help they could get. I happened to be nearest.
I tried to do everything as you would wish.”

“You came here,” Vanyi said. “Do you have the least idea in
any of the worlds, what will happen if people here discover what you are? They’re
already certain that we mean to conquer them out of hand. Your presence will
only confirm it.”

“Then we had better not let them know who I am,” said
Estarion placidly. “Later, of course, we should propose an exchange of state
visits, here and in Starios, and an alliance of goodwill between our nations.
At the moment I’m a messenger from your Guild, guard and escort to the healer
whom you so badly need. You can receive messengers, surely? That’s not
forbidden?”

Vanyi closed her eyes. “Hells,” she said, but without force.
“Esakai was right. None of us will ever be rid of you.”

“Not even if you die,” he said. “Remember that.” He took her
hand. He was warm, sun-warm, and strong. “Haliya sends her love and her
sympathies.”

“And her I-told-you-sos?”

“She saves those for people who can argue with them.”

She looked at him. Her mind was empty. She was healing,
being healed. Slowly; Aledi had been right, it could not be quick, not as
foolish as she had been.

He smoothed her hair back from her brow, easily, tenderly,
as if she had been one of his children. Now that he was quiet, she could see
how worn he looked. It had not been easy in Starios, either, when the Gates
began to fall.

“And when you began to die,” he said.

“Stop reading my mind,” said Vanyi.

“I can’t help it.” Nor could he, since he did not want to.

She sighed. It was good to have him here, and never mind the
difficulties, the politics, all the rest of the nonsense that hovered on the
other side of the healer’s magery.

He bent over her. His face was all the world; and she could
not touch it. She could not reach so high.

“You will be well,” he said. It was a prayer, and an emperor’s
will.

oOo

Daruya had not meant to sleep till evening. There was so
much to do—the Gate to look after, the mages, Vanyi—and she had dreamed
straight through the day and into the night. Troubled dreams, most of them,
full of shouting and confusion. Gates falling, walls tumbling in the Heart of
the World, mages dying or being caught in Gates as Uruan had been.

She kept trying to hold it all together with her two hands.
Both of them in the dream were branded and burning with the
Kasar
, a living fire that ate at flesh
but never consumed it.

She woke with relief to lamplight and quiet and the blessing
of memory. The Gates were safe. She and Kimeri between them had seen to that.

Kimeri was with the queen, and content. Vanyi was asleep and
very much alive. They had brought in a new healer—Daruya knew the mark of a
healer-priest’s power, as distinct in the mind as the
Kasar
itself. The Gate was up, then, and open, and letting people
pass.

Bundur was not thinking about her at all. He was in the
palace. It had been locked tight, which seemed to be the Shurakani way of
telling its king that he was not welcome. The king was gone. Bundur was finding
everyone who had keys, and seeing that those keys were set to the locks and the
palace opened up again. The queen was coming back to it; she would find it
waiting, all cleansed and opened and giving her welcome.

Daruya should not mind that he was occupied in doing his
duty—she had done the same in following Kadin through Kimeri’s Gate. But he was
not thinking of her, either, or missing her presence. That stung.

She rose, washed the sleep from her eyes and her face, and
put on her clothes. They were clean, a little damp about the edges. Her hair
was a hopeless tangle. She did not even try the comb that was laid on the table
beside the bed; she raked fingers through instead, tugging out the least of the
knots, and gave up the rest for lost.

Someone had left her a basket with bread in it, a bit of
cheese wrapped in a cloth, and a bowl of spiced fruit. She ate, and drank from
the bottle beside the basket—water, nothing more.

Up, awake, dressed and fed, she ventured forth into the
temple. It was dark, save where once in a great while a lamp was lit, and
seemed echoingly empty. The white ox was not in her pen; she had a stable to
rest in at night, out past the priests’ cloister. The god did not appear to
notice her absence.

“How like a man,” said Daruya. Her voice woke echoes in the
shrine and sent something fluttering and squeaking through the rafters.

She paused by the white ox’s enclosure. Someone had cleaned
it and washed it, as must be done every night, and taken away the heaps of
offerings—food to the kitchens, fodder to the stable, valuables to the treasury.
A faint scent of ox remained, a suggestion of ox-droppings—like magic, it could
never quite be denied.

The gilded bars were cool, and just high enough to fold her
arms on and to prop her chin. The god’s image glimmered above her.

She felt light and oddly empty, as she always did after a
battle. She was not startled to hear a step behind her, soft but making no
attempt at stealth. It was not Chakan: him she would not have heard at all.

She turned, prepared to greet a priest, or maybe someone
from Janabundur.

Priest indeed, but not of any god in Shurakan. He was here
in the flesh: she could feel the warmth of him and catch his scent, which was
different from that of the men here, sharper, with a suggestion of seneldi, a
hint of ul-cats. He leaned on the bars of the ox’s pen, chin on folded arms as
hers had been, and studied the god who loomed above them. “Fascinating,” he
said.

“Does the queen know you’re here?” Daruya asked.

Estarion slid a glance at her. “Vanyi asked me much the same
thing. The answer is no, and will continue to be no. I brought Lurian to look
after Vanyi, and mages to tend the Gate. I’m going back, and quickly, too.”

Why, she thought, he was defending himself—as if he thought
he had any need to do any such thing. Estarion the emperor never stood in need
of defense. He did as he willed, and that was that.

Estarion in the temple of Matakan seemed no older than
Bundur. He was not the emperor here. He was simply Estarion.

“Grandfather,” said Daruya in sudden comprehension. “You’ve
run away.”

He raised a brow. “What, you didn’t think I could?”

“What if the Gate falls again? We’ll all three of us be
trapped on this side.”

“That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?” He yawned and
stretched like one of his enormous cats, from nose to nonexistent tail, and
stood grinning at her.

“You look,” she said, stumbling over the word she wanted.
Damn it, then. She would say it. “You look bloody irresponsible.”

“That’s exactly how I feel.” He was still grinning. “I’ve
shocked you. Imagine that. Maybe it’s time I did the running away and you did
the ruling in Starios. You’re old enough, more or less, and steady enough, no
matter what you want people to think.”

“That,” said Daruya through gritted teeth, “is exactly what
drives me wild. You never see me as anything but good, loyal, solid,
dependable, dull—”

“—despite all evidence to the contrary,” he finished for
her. “Not dull, no. Not you. You’re a golden splendor of a child. But
underneath all the sparks and the temper is a right worthy queen. You show it
when you have to, you know. In Gates as they break. In temples when priests are
praying the worlds to pieces.”

“I had to do it,” she said. “Nobody else would.”

“Nobody else could.”

“Except Kimeri.”

“Kimeri is not quite four years old. You are what she will
be when she’s grown to a woman—crotchets and all, though if she’s as like you
as I think, she’ll be utterly dutiful and obedient and quiet, because you’ve
always made so much noise about being a rebel.”

Daruya flushed. “And she’ll despise me for it. That’s what
you’re telling me, isn’t it?”

He regarded her in honest surprise. “Of course not. Children
will do the opposite of what their parents either want or expect. It’s the way
the world is.”

“I don’t want her to be like me.”

“Nor do you want to be like you. Do you?”

Temper flared as she unraveled that. She bit back the angry
words. He was waiting for them, ready to smile at them, and say something that
would make her look a perfect idiot.

No. Not this time. Not either of them—not she with her
outbursts, or he with his maddening calm.

God and goddess. He was exactly like Bundur. So complacent.
So perfect in his superior wisdom.

With Bundur it was a pretense, a prince’s mask. With
Estarion—

The very same. It was easier to see here, without the dazzle
of his rank to blind her. And, she admitted with creeping shame, the flare of
her temper whenever she saw him or thought of him.

It had not always been this way. When she was as young as
Kimeri, she had adored him. She had followed him everywhere, got underfoot in
everything. And he had allowed it. Only when he fought in battles did he forbid
her to follow—and she obeyed, because he showed her exactly how terrible
battles were.

Somehow as she grew older it had changed. She had begun to
resist him, at first to prove that she was herself, apart from him, and could
do as she chose and not as he expected. Until rebellion became the expected,
and she was trapped in it. And he was always the one whom she resisted most
strenuously, and the one who seemed least perturbed by it.

She could never crack the polished surface of his composure.
No, not even when she drove him to a rage. It was always a calm, reasonable,
rational rage. He always forgave her. He never seemed to hate or scorn her, no
matter what she did or said.

She did not want to tell him so. He would only tell her that
his own youthful sins were far worse than her own. For all she knew, they had
been. Even in that she was never his equal. She could only follow, and be the
lesser.

That was foolish, too. It was wallowing, and a ripe rotten
sea of self-pity it was, too.

She tried something. She said as calmly as she could, “I
suppose you expect me to go home with you when you go.”

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t. You’re a lady of this kingdom
now. You have duties here.”

She was gaping. She shut her mouth. “Responsibilities. I
have them in the empire, too.”

“None that can’t wait,” he said, “or be done through Gates,
by messengers.”

She did her best to comprehend what he was saying. “You . . .
want . . . me to stay here? On the other side of the world? With
people who know how to break Gates?”

“You may not want to stay,” he said. “There is that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to take Kimeri back, then.
Aren’t you?”

“Only if you ask. And if she consents.”

“I won’t—” She broke off. “You can’t mean you’re letting me
decide for myself.”

“Why not? You’ve been doing just that for rather a while
now.”

“But I don’t want—” She stopped again.

This time he spoke before she could go on. “Do you want to
go back?”

“Bundur wouldn’t come. Kimeri might not. She likes it here.”

“Child,” he said with all the gentleness in the world. “I’m
not asking you what they want, or what I want. I’m asking you. Do you want to
go back to Starios?”

“Yes,” she said at once. Then: “No. No, I can’t. Vanyi can’t
travel, there’s the embassy, there’s Kimeri—she likes having a brother, and I—”

“And you like having a husband.” He smiled. “It’s pleasant,
isn’t it? Even if you went into it screaming denials.”

She nearly screamed denial of that, but that would have been
too easy. “You didn’t want to marry Haliya, did you?”

“Not at all,” he answered. “Not at first. I wanted Vanyi or
no one. Least of all a yellow woman. Who was sure that I was going to marry all
eight of her fellow concubines, that being the absolute smallest number of
women an emperor in Asanion could possibly have in his harem. Even when I
convinced her that I wanted only her, she was still certain that I’d take other
wives later.”

“Ziana,” said Daruya.

“The beautiful sister, yes. But she didn’t want to marry,
not really. She preferred the princedom I gave her, and the daughter she
adopted, and the freedom that she’d hardly dared to dream of inside an Asanian
harem.”

Daruya knew that very well. She had spent summers with Ziana
before that lady died. But it sounded different coming from Estarion, who had
taken the lady as his second wife in Asanian law, then sent her to be ruling
princess in Halion. People whispered that he had put her aside in all but name,
but Ziana had never thought so. Nor, it seemed, had Estarion. He had given her
what she wanted most.