Spear of Heaven (42 page)

“You give too much,” said Daruya. “You don’t take enough.”

“Why, what should I do?” he asked with all apparent honesty.
“Run away? Leave you the regency?”

“If you have to,” she said steadily.

“Maybe,” he said. “In a while. Once matters are settled in
Shurakan. Would your lord like to see the world beyond his mountains?”

“He intends to,” said Daruya. Her heart had quickened a
little. “Would you—really—?”

He held out his hand. The
Kasar
glittered. “Shall we swear a pact? When Shurakan is
settled—in a year and a day, perhaps?—you’ll come to Starios with your lord,
and take the regency.”

She kept her own hands on the bars of the ox’s pen. “And
you? What will you do?”

He shrugged, smiled. “I don’t know. Wander. Be nobody in
particular. Explore the worlds beyond the Gates.”

Yearning struck her so hard that her knees buckled. To do
that—of all things one could dream of, that, she wanted most.

He saw. His smile widened. “And when I come back, as I give
you my solemn word I shall, then you have your freedom to go where you will. A
full priestess-Journey, seven years long, if that’s your wish.”

“I’ve wished for that . . .”
Her voice died. She flogged it to life again. “I could even run away to sea?”

“Even that,” he said.

His hand was still up, still waiting. She clasped it,
Kasar
to
Kasar
. No bond was stronger than that, no pact more potent. “A year
and a day,” she said, “until I come to Starios. And while you journey—a hand of
years?”

“Not so long, I think. Another year and a day. Or two.”

“You never had your priest-Journey either,” she said. “A
hand of years. And then I go on my own way.” And what Bundur would say to
that—if he thought he had any say in it—

He would lead the way through every Gate. He had it, too,
that eagerness rigidly curbed, that longing to fly free.

“God and goddess,” said Daruya. “I married my grandfather’s
image.”

“And your own,” Estarion said. He pulled her into his
embrace. She startled him, nigh hugged the breath from him. He laughed with
what little he had left, and kissed her forehead, and left her there, blinking,
astonished at them both.

When the queen had returned to the palace and taken her
consort, and the mages had rendered the house of the Gate fit to live in, and
Vanyi was up and walking and doing her best to outwit the healer-priest who
stood watch on her, Daruya climbed with Bundur and the children and two of the
Olenyai, up the Spear of Heaven. It was a full day’s journey to the mountain,
even on senelback; the seneldi waited in camp on the mountain’s knees, with
Yrias to guard them and keep them from straying.

Daruya had seen little of Bundur in the days of the queen’s
return. For all her magery and her resolve to be a woman and not a petulant
child, she could not help feeling as if a distance had grown between them.

He seemed oblivious to it. And yet it was he who said to her
as they woke of a morning and he prepared to go yet again to the palace and the
court, “If I asked you to run away with me, would you go?”

Her heart leaped, but she was wary. “Where would you run?”

“Not to your empire,” he said, reading it in her eyes. “Not
yet. But there’s yonder mountain my namesake, and it’s calling me. I’ve a mind
to climb it.”

“Even to the snows?” she asked.

“Even so far, if you like,” he said.

“I would like,” said Daruya.

Which was why they were here, scrambling up the steep stony
track, still well below the line of the snow. It would have been only the two
of them, but Kimeri was not to be denied, and Hani refused to be left out. They
would go as far as a place Bundur knew, and share the daymeal; then they would
go back down with their Olenyai, and Bundur and Daruya would go on till they
met the snow. The summit they could not reach, or so Bundur thought. The air
was too thin.

He had never climbed a mountain with a mage. Daruya meant to
stand on the Spear’s very tip and greet her forefather the sun, and see all the
world spread out below her.

This was a more earthly pleasure, much like the journey into
Shurakan, climbing the side of a mountain with a pack on her back, for they
would not come to the snow till nearly sunset, and would have to camp there, up
against the sky. It was still almost warm here below. Her boots felt hot and
unwieldy; her coat was rolled and fastened to her pack, and she climbed in her
shirt, and would have shed even that if it had been a little warmer. The
Olenyai, wrapped in robes and veils, must have been sweltering.

From the mountain’s side she could see little of what was
ahead, but if she looked back she saw the whole of Shurakan, deep green goblet
of a kingdom, rimmed with snow. Clouds ran swift below, and broke like breakers
against the mountain walls. The Summer City on its terrace seemed far away yet
very clear, a circle of walls enclosing roofs and turrets.

One tower flew a streamer of scarlet, a minute flash of
gold: House Janabundur with its banner that Chakan had raised, golden sun on
scarlet silk. It was the custom, he insisted, when a Sunchild was in residence
and making no secret of it; therefore he would have it here in this foreign
country. Some of the court already had admired the fashion and considered
flying banners of their own, oblivious as all Shurakani were to the distinction
between an imperial heir and a mere and minor lordling of the court.

Daruya smiled at the banner and at the one who had insisted
on it. He was carrying Kimeri on his back, making nothing of the child’s light
weight; his eyes returned her smile. The grim guardsman of the first days in
Shurakan was gone. He was the Chakan she remembered, on guard always but willing
to ease into laughter. He seemed to have decided, if not to trust Bundur, then
at least to regard him with less suspicion.

They scrambled up a last and nigh impossible slope, slippery
with stones and scree, and teetered on a sudden narrow rim, and descended into
a ring of startling green. It was like an island in a sea of clouds, a tiny
valley, even a forest in miniature, a grove of gnarled and knotted trees that
bore sweet fruit. A little stream ran through it from the living rock, a cavern
overhung by the arch of a tree.

Daruya stood on the valley’s edge, struggling for breath yet
trying to laugh. When at last she could speak, she said, “Bundur! This is just
like the dragon’s cave in the tapestry.”

“This is the dragon’s cave,” he said, and very pleased he
was with it, too. “This is where the Warrior Sage fought with the dragon, and
won by losing, and the dragon taught him to brew tea from the leaves of the
cloudfruit bush.” He gestured toward a tangle of low thicket. “There, see.
Cloudfruit.”

“And water, and mountain apples, and grass to sit on,” said
Kimeri, standing on her own feet again and running toward the stream. Daruya
reached by instinct to catch her, but Bundur had no fear; nor did her power.
There was no dragon in the cave, and no cave-bear either, though she heard the
squeaking of cavewings deep within.

The Olenyai paused in following the children toward the
water. They exchanged glances. Chakan dropped veils, headcloth, outer robe. He
folded them, tucked them under his arm, and grinned at Bundur, who was
struggling not to stare and failing miserably.

“No fangs,” he said in atrociously accented Shurakani. And
trotted after the children, lithe in shirt and trousers, with his swords slung
behind him. Rahai strode in his wake.

“Gods,” said Bundur. “They’re no more than children.”

“Rahai is older than you,” Daruya said. “And he won’t live
as long.” She paused. “An Olenyas’ face is his honor. Who sees it, unless he be
friend and kin, must die.”

Bundur went very still. “What am I? Friend or prey?”

“Both,” said Daruya. “It’s an honor—and a warning.”

“Ah,” he said. “I serve you well, or I return to the wheel
of souls on the blade of an Olenyas’ sword.” His eyes followed the
bred-warriors where they dipped water from the stream, forbidding the children
to drink until they had proved it safe.

They did look like children themselves, as small as they
were and seeming slight, with their cropped yellow curls and their smooth ivory
faces. But the scars of rank on their cheeks—Chakan’s five, Rahai’s
four—betrayed the truth; and the twin swords, and the way they moved, light and
supple, like hunting cats.

“I suppose,” mused Bundur, “they took the veils at first
because no one reckoned them dangerous. Are they beautiful in your country?”

“Very,” said Daruya.

“They’re pretty,” Bundur said. “You are beautiful.”

She widened her eyes at him. “What? I thought I was ugly but
interesting. Now that I’m beautiful, am I dull, too?”

She was only half laughing. He caught at her, pack and all,
and turned her round to face him fully. “Is that what you think? That I’ve
grown bored with you?”

“No,” she said, but slowly. “I think you’ve been too busy to
be bored.”

“Too busy to notice you, or to see that you’re fretting as
if in a cage.” She would have spoken to deny it, to say that she had enough to
do among the mages, looking after her daughter, tending Vanyi, standing guard
on the Gate. He laid a finger on her lips, silencing her. “You were bred to
rule over princes, and we keep you locked up like a novice in a temple. If it’s
in your heart to go back to your empire, go.”

Her eyes blinked against sudden tears. Foolishness: her
courses were coming on, that was all. “Do you want me to go? Have I become an
inconvenience?”

“No!” He had spoken too strongly, or so he was
thinking—idiot man. He softened his voice. “Lady, I would keep you here your
whole life long, and love you every moment of it. But you were never born for a
realm so small. It stifles you.”

Guilt stabbed. She had not told Bundur of her pact with the emperor.
There had been no time, and no suitable occasion.

If she did it now, he would think she mocked him. If she did
not, she truly would be making a fool of him, who had never done her aught but
honor.

She bit her lip. “Bundur—”

“You’ll leave when your time comes,” he said. “I know that.
I expect it. But if you think you have to endure until then, out of loyalty or
honor or even pity—”

“
Bundur
!” He
stared at her. “Bundur,” she said, less sharply. “I will leave, yes. I gave the
emperor an oath that in a year and a day I’d go back to his city and take his
place while he rested. He’s been emperor for half a hundred years—it’s
horrible, when I think of it. I wonder that he didn’t run away long since.” She
was babbling. She made herself stop. “I also promised him . . .
you’d come, too. I wasn’t thinking at the time, I wasn’t remembering—you can be
so proud, and I—”

“Daruyani,” he said. He had loved the full form of her name
ever since he first heard it; but he kept it for great occasions. It was too
beautiful, he said, to dull with use.

Her eyes were blurring again. Loving a man was nothing like
bedding him. It was awkward; it was difficult. It kept reducing her to tears.

“Daruyani,” said Bundur, “I told you long ago that when you
went to your own country I would go with you, if you asked. But if you only
think to ask for fear of offending me, then I refuse. I won’t burden you with
unwanted presence.”

“I want you,” she said. Her voice was rough. “You’ll have to
learn our language; you’ll be needing it, to be my consort. You’ll have to
learn our laws and our customs, and all our ways.”

“Am I such a barbarian as that?” he asked, trying to be
light, but his eyes were glittering.

“You are exquisitely civilized,” she said, “and very
foreign. The courts will find you exotic, and call you beautiful.”

His cheeks flushed darkly. It was one thing to know himself
a handsome man. Beauty—that was difficult, if one were a man, and possessed of
a certain kind of pride.

She linked arms about his neck. They fit well, they two; they
were eye to eye, standing on the edge of the grassy level. She thought briefly,
mischievously, of plucking loose the cords that bound his hair and letting it
fall straight and shining. But that would embarrass him in front of the children
and the Olenyai.

Later, she thought. Tonight, under the stars, on the edge of
the snow. “They’ll call you beautiful,” she said, “but none of them will lay a
hand on you. Unless of course,” she added after a moment, “you want it.”

“And will you kill them then?”

“I might.”

“Am I allowed to ask what I can do to a man who lays a hand
on you?”

“You can kill him,” said Daruya.

He began to smile, long and slow. “I like your country, I
think. Here, you could take another husband, and I would have to suffer it.”

“And in some parts of my empire,” said Daruya, “you could
take other wives, and I would be expected to smile and be kind to them, and
share your gracious favors.”

He knew her well. He heard the edge in her voice. It widened
and deepened his smile. “You like our country, too, then, where no man takes
more than one wife.”

“I suppose that means we’re well matched.”

“Very well,” said Bundur. He sounded enormously complacent,
much pleased with himself and his world. She would slap him out of that. But
later. When he was not so charmingly entranced with her.

“Yes,” he said, with his eyes full of her face, and his mind
full of wonder that it should, after all, be beautiful. “We are matched.” His
brows drew together. “It doesn’t make you angry still. Does it?”

She did slap him for that, but lightly, barely hard enough
to sting. “Idiot,” she said. “Of course it does. But only when you ask.”

She caught at his hand and tugged him forward. The Olenyai
were well ahead, with water-bottles full, carrying them up to the cave. Kimeri
was carrying something taken from Chakan’s pack; Hani had something else,
balancing it gingerly as he picked his way through the grass.