Daja's Book (9 page)

Polyam shook her head. “They would have to
qunsuanen
the
dakas
. Why waste the time, and the paint”—she gestured to herself—”when I've gone through it already?”

Briar's lips moved as he did calculations. “I might get five silver astrels from a top-of-the-ladder pump for it,” he said, handing the carving to Daja. “That means it's worth maybe a gold maja on the market.”

Someone—Tris—gasped.

“I told
gilav
Chandrisa you'd probably sell at three gold majas,” Polyam commented. “Don't make a fool of me.” She smothered a yawn with one hand. “I'll meet you by the stables in the morning. For this, I believe I can even scrape together another bargaining meal.” With a cheerful wave, she left them. Daja danced a jig, thinking of more Trader food.

“Polyam is enjoying this too much,” said Niko sourly. “As are you four.”

“We've been good all day,” protested Briar. “We didn't use our magic without someone to watch us.” Daja, standing behind him, saw his fingers cross behind his back. She agreed; if none of the castle's people had mentioned the appearance of a steam-vent in one of the courtyards, she and Briar weren't about to. “We've earned a bit of fun, don't you think?” Briar asked.

“I don't understand,” Tris said, her voice hoarse. “At first she acted like she almost hated Daja, but now she goes to all this trouble, getting food and offering to ride with us—” She stopped, coughing.

“I think partly she does it because she can,” Lark explained when Tris caught her breath. “Because they let her. As
wirok
she's a despised person. They give her their leavings—”

“And their scorn,” said Rosethorn quietly. She had been seated at a desk, writing.

Lark nodded. “But now, she's the only avenue for them to buy something they want. She's getting
better food out of them than she might see for weeks, not to mention access to trade goods. They're listening to her now. I'd take advantage, in her shoes.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Tris admitted. She began to cough again. “It's all this smoke, from those grassfires!” she gasped. “I
hate
it.”

“I don't like the sound of that,” Rosethorn said. “Let me give you something for it.”

“I don't want anything nasty,” Tris croaked, following Rosethorn into the room where she and Lark slept. “I'll be all right.”

Lark got out her needlework, keeping an eye on Sandry. Briar decided that Little Bear needed to be combed and set about it, while Niko picked up a book. Daja went onto the balcony.

Frostpine sat on the stone railing, his back against a section of wall. He glanced at Daja, nodded, then returned to staring at the valley below. Tris's starling, Shriek, was asleep on his shoulder, half tucked under some of the man's hair.

Daja sat nearby and looked at the view. The bands of fire were just a few miles from the lower edge of the forest. Drifts of smoke blew into her face off and on. They didn't affect her or Frostpine as they clearly did Tris and the others, perhaps because as smith-mages they were used to smoke.

She wasn't sure what to say to him, so she said nothing. After a while she heard his quiet voice. “I was born in Mbau, southeast of the Pebbled Sea.”

Hot country—good ebony, mahogany, and brass-work, though, Daja thought automatically. She remained silent.

“My father was a shepherd in our village. He was poor once. My older brother and sister talked about eating bean stew for days because that was all they had. There was enough money after I was born, though. My mother and sisters had several dresses. My father could pay someone to watch the flocks while he sat in the
shuq
with the elders, and told stories, and judged quarrels.” There was a dreamy tone in Frostpine's voice, as if he told a story about someone else.

“Our
mchowni
—shaman, you'd call him—was like an honorary uncle. He ate with us on feast days, and brought us children presents. He found husbands for my sisters and a place among the warriors for my brother. I didn't like him. He was always watching me.”

A larger-than-usual cloud of smoke drifted over the balcony. Taking a deep breath, Frostpine blew at it as if he were a bellows, driving it away. On and on his breath went, until no smoke remained in the air around them.

“I was ‘the moody one.' Most of my time I spent with the blacksmith, fetching and carrying. When I was older, he taught me. I loved it, but it frustrated me, too. Something was missing. It was like always reaching for a tool, only to find it gone when you try
to grab it. Some days I went so crazy that the only thing for it was to run, and run, and run.”

He fell silent, his eyes closed. At last he continued, “When I was fifteen, the
mchowni
died. He died—and all of my magic, that he had taken and used since the day I was born, the magic he'd paid my parents for—it came back to me. I nearly died. It was like my veins were on fire.

“He didn't even know what kind of magic it was. He just used it to get what he needed. And me, the first time I walked into the smithy after I was well again? I heard all the metal singing. My tools melted when I picked them up. The smith ordered me out. My whole life was in ruins. And my parents told me it was for my own good. A blind man could see it was for
their
good that they sold my power.”

“You never said,” Daja whispered, her eyes stinging. She wanted to cry for the boy he had been.

“I was angry for a long, long time. I wanted to hate everyone. It took hard work for me to live past that anger, to realize how senseless it was. If I dwell on it, I start to get angry again, so I try not to dwell on it.”

“What happened to you? What about your family?”

“I left. I had to—there was no one who could teach me, and I had to be taught. I still hear from my youngest sister. It took me a while to grow up enough to write to her.”

“No wonder you were upset.”

He sighed. “Lark is right—you four need this. The memories were just too much.”

“It'll be over soon, I think,” Daja reassured him. “When I get my magic back, I promise, I'll never give it up like that again.”

Frostpine came over and kissed her forehead. “That's all I needed to hear,” he said.

A
s they rode to see the glacier the next morning, Tris kept her fingers crossed that the journey would take them out from under the smoke that draped Gold Ridge for as far as they could see. She got a little relief from the cough that had plagued her all night as the road they followed led up, past the tiny crocus valley. Who would have thought such runty-looking plants would be worth so much? she thought as Briar pointed out the terrace where he'd fried some.

Sandry her companion on the trail, was not her usual talkative self. The magical effort in her weaving had caught up with her as she slept, just as Lark had warned; she was pale and heavy-eyed, half-dozing in
the saddle. Behind them came Niko, Yarrun, and Lark, talking idly. The Gold Ridge mage had offered to come along as far as the turnoff to the glacier valley: he wanted a look at the progress of the grassfires. At the rear of their column rode Briar, who had volunteered to keep an eye on the pack horse that carried their lunch.

Polyam, still decked out in bright yellow, and Daja led their company. Once Tris's starling, Shriek, had stopped filling her ears with his normal babble to hunt breakfast, Tris nudged her pony forward so that she could talk to them.

“A shame about the saffron crop,” Polyam was telling Daja. “That's usually what we buy here. Lady Inoulia needs a miracle to get this valley through to the next harvest. They need rain, and they need copper and saffron. They're out of all three.”

Tris looked soberly down into the valley. She could just see the edge of the shrunken lake far, far below: their road was carrying them to the river that fed it. “I wish I could
do
something,” she muttered, thumping her leg with her fist. “Back home, I'd have it raining buckets!”

“Could you?” asked Polyam with a laugh. “Could you indeed?”

“She could,” Daja said glumly. “And with as much thought as rolling over in bed.”

Polyam's laughter died. “You're serious?”

Tris guided her pony to the outer edge of the
roadway. Their route sloped down now, into a wooded cleft where the small, grudging river that filled the lake entered Gold Ridge Valley. “Don't tell her what all I can do,” she advised Daja. “It might just make her nervous.”

“It might,” Daja admitted. To Polyam she said, “Tris makes me nervous sometimes, and she's my
saati
.”

Polyam shook her head. “To hear
kaqs
called
saati
—it makes me feel as if the world's coming all unglued.”

“What else am I supposed to call them?” Daja asked, surprised. “Tris, Briar, Sandry—they're as close to me as my own blood. It's been a long summer,” she said, wishing that explained their friendship and knowing it didn't even come close. “We've been through a lot together.”

Yarrun rode up behind them. “You must excuse me for not going farther. I have no interest in glaciers,” he announced. “Their power and mine do not mix. I leave you here.” Clucking to his mount, he turned it toward the closer of the watchtowers that stood on either side of the river where it entered Gold Ridge.

“You might do better if you
did
have an interest,” Tris muttered. “Whether your power includes them or not.” Yarrun was starting to get on her nerves. He was so sure that everything he did was right and proper. After hearing Rosethorn, and after all the books she had read since beginning her magical education, she had to wonder. She
felt
the dryness in the valley
below. It wasn't limited to the burning grasslands, the shrinking lake, or the shriveled fields. The ground everywhere was parched. She saw brown at the tips of leaves and needles on all the trees; looking at them made her itch.

That must be Briar's influence on her, she decided as they followed the river out of the main valley, bypassing the watchtowers. Throughout this trip she'd noticed she was more aware of plants and trees.

Looking ahead, she could see drying brush and grasses on the lesser valley's sides. Only the riverbanks were green. I've just been here a few days, she thought, wiping her forehead on her sleeve. How must it feel to have lived here for three years, with everything drying up?

Their party decided to eat midday a good distance from the glacier, after they discovered the wind that came off the towering wall of ice was
cold
. Looking around, they chose a broad stretch of sandy earth nearly a thousand yards away, atop a low, flat hillock at the foot of a cliff. Walking to the edge of their picnic ground while the food was set out, Daja stared up at the glacier.

Soaring over it in magical form the day before, she hadn't appreciated how vast the glacier was. She was impressed again by its noise: the thing filled the air with creaks, snaps, groans, and the babble of melting water. Listening, she began to think what she'd been
told was true. The ice sounded as if it
did
move, however slowly. The long, steep gouges in the rocky walls of this valley could well be the marks of its claws as it shrank back from Gold Ridge.

“Daja,” called Lark. She, Polyam, Briar—who liked to handle food if he couldn't stuff it into his mouth immediately—and Niko had placed everything neatly on a dropcloth. The meal looked like a king's feast, spiced with flavors Daja had known almost from the cradle. Now was the time to add
her
bit to the meal.

“It needs a centerpiece,” she told her companions. Reaching into her saddlebag, she brought out her surprise and plunged it sharp end first through the middle of the dropcloth. There it gleamed in the sun, its inner petals just unfurling: a copper rose. “One of the buds was opening when I got up,” she commented, pleased with the way everyone gaped in shock.

Kneeling, Briar stroked the flower. “I'll be switched,” he muttered. “It's warm—I think it's still alive.”

Polyam dropped to her good knee to examine the copper bloom. To Daja she said, “If you can learn to do this kind of magic on purpose, you'll be one rich
lugsha
.”

Daja thought bitterly, I'd rather be a rich Trader, then shrugged. “First I have to learn how to do the magic on purpose, don't I?”

Once Lark spoke the blessing, no one talked—they were too busy eating—though each of them reached
out from time to time to stroke the copper rose. The Trader food sweetened everyone's moods, once they'd devoured enough of it. The dessert pastries, thick with honey and nuts, made them all pleasantly lazy.

As Lark napped, Tris, Briar, Sandry and Niko went for a closer look at the glacier. Polyam and Daja took a walk on the riverbank. Down here, close to the rampart of ice, the water was deeper and swifter. In the shade the air was cold; they kept to the sun.

For a while they said nothing. Then Polyam misjudged a spot where she stepped with her wooden peg, and the sandy ground crumbled away. She wind-milled, almost going into the water. Daja grabbed her, dragging her back.

“I'm
fine
,” Polyam growled the moment she was steady.

Understanding, Daja stepped away. She didn't want anyone to think
she
ever needed help and support, either. “You ride well,” she remarked, thinking that might help her companion to feel less helpless.

Polyam snorted. “For short distances, like today,” she replied, rubbing the thigh muscles of her bad leg.

Daja made a face. She'd wanted to make the woman feel better. Instead she'd reminded her of another thing she couldn't do easily, yet another thing that White Traders, at least, needed to be good at.

To her surprise, Polyam admitted, “I cramp up. It's
better to walk for long trips, even when the footing isn't so good.”

Daja couldn't help it—the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “What happened to you? How did all this—” She gulped. “I'm sorry. It was rude of me to ask. It's none of my business.”

Polyam stared into the heat-rippled air that rose from the cliffs across the river. “I used to be the best handler of horses, mules, and camels in Tenth Caravan Idaram,” she said dreamily, clearly thinking of better days. “The best in all Idaram caravans. About twenty months ago, we were crossing the Osar Mountains, in Karang. It's bad country there, very bad. A rockslide covered the road, and I was trying to get our string of horses across, leading them myself. The rock shifted. I went down, and kept sliding, all on my side. It was shale—nasty rock that breaks up into sharp pieces. It carved my leg to the bone, took my eye—my whole left side looks just like my face.” She touched the thick scars on her cheek.

“Trader and Bookkeeper,” Daja whispered. “Your healers couldn't help?”

“They're healers, not gods,” Polyam told her. “I was no good with horses after that. You know we like to carry only half-broken animals, so their owners can train them as they like. Without two good legs to balance on, I tried, but—”

“I'm sorry,” Daja said.

“You're sorry for
me
?” Polyam's smile was twisted. “At least
I'm
still
Tsaw'ha
.”

“Is being
wirok
so much better than being
trangshi
?”

Polyam stared at her as if she'd run mad. “What a silly question! Of course it is! Of course!” She ran her fingers over the cap on her staff, as if memorizing the engravings and inlays that told her life story. “I'll pray to Koma and Oti every day that you find a way to lay up so much
zokin
that your name will be taken from the
trangshi
logs, and you'll be able to return to our people again.”

Watching Polyam's fingers glide over her staff's etched metal cap, Daja used a hand to cover the top of her own staff, hiding its unmarked brass from view. “Is there that much
zokin
in the world?” she asked wearily.

“It's happened before,” said Polyam. “It could happen again. I feel sorry for the ship or caravan that would owe you that much, but at least you'd be among your own. That's what matters.” She looked at Daja and said sharply, “Wouldn't you
want
to return to the
Tsaw'ha
?”

Daja kicked the dry and sandy earth at her feet. “Yes, of course,” she said automatically. “But you can't be
Tsaw'ha
and
lugsha
, not ever.”

Polyam blinked. “If you were
Tsaw'ha
, why would you want to be
lugsha?
There'd be no point to—”

“Daja!” someone yelled. Looking up, Daja saw Tris
racing toward them, plump legs thumping the ground. “Daja, c'mere!”

“They're all right, for
kaqs
,” Polyam remarked quietly. “But you can't turn ashes to gold, and you can't turn
kaqs
into real people.”

Tris halted before them, gasping for breath. “Daja, didn't you hear me calling? Why didn't you come?”

Daja glared at her. “We were
talking
,” she said, annoyed. What made Tris think people had to drop everything the moment she bellowed?

“But this is
important
,” insisted the redhead. “Now look. You said you came up near here through hot springs, right? Do you know where? Is it near this place? Briar can't remember.”

Tris and her questions. Did she ever stop asking them? Trader children, as Daja knew quite well, spoke when they were spoken to.

“
Daja
…”

There would be no shutting her up until she was satisfied. Squinting her eyes against the glare, Daja scanned the rising dirt and rock on their side of the river. A few hundred feet up, she found the green line of ridge. A white shaggy face, long and solemn, topped by small black spikes of horns, stared down at the people below. “About fifty feet back from where that grandfather goat is, the ground rises again. Over that rise are the hot springs.”

Niko, Sandry and Briar, walking at a more sensible pace, caught up with them.

“If we had our magic, we could go into the ground under the springs and see if the cracks continue on under the ice,” Tris remarked to Niko.

“I'm
sorry
you don't have your magic,” commented Sandry defensively.

Niko patted her shoulder. “It's all right—we couldn't have put the mapping project off, not the way the magics were breaking out. Everyone knows you worked to exhaustion yesterday.”

Sandry stuck her tongue out at Tris, who only grinned.

Niko continued, “See those giant pieces of rock jammed together, the line they form?” Everyone stared at the slabs of granite that lined the valley walls on their side of the river. The stones looked as if a powerful force had shoved them together until one piece slid up another. “Those show that two sections of the earth are pushing together here. They run through this part of the valley.”

“I don't understand,” complained Daja, leaning on her staff. “What's so important about the hot springs and stone cracks?”

“Water,” said Briar. He'd removed his shoes. Sitting on a rock, he lowered his feet into the river—and yanked them out with a yelp. “That's
cold!”

“Ice melt,” Polyam reminded him, grinning.

“
Water
,” Tris said irritably, seeing that Daja still had not figured out what she was driving at. “How do we get more water into this river, and into Gold Ridge
Valley, when we've tons of the frozen stuff right here? See, with hot springs nearby, it means that lava's close to the surface—”

“Or that it's easier to reach,” Niko said. “If the lava gets into faults in the earth that go under where the glacier is at its thickest, we can get the ice to melt faster.”

Now Daja saw it. “It'll run downstream to the lake. Gold Ridge will have water.”

“Niko says parts of the glacier are thousands of feet thick,” Tris explained. “That's
maybe
enough weight to keep the lava from bursting through. That'd make a volcano, which we
really
don't want.”