Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (82 page)

“I won’t. But don’t you—your brother said—” Again, she found herself hesitant to speak, not knowing what was permitted and what might, and might not, be known. “Your brother Eliar mentioned that you visit the prison.”

Miravia laughed. “Yes, I have managed that much. Because of the obligation. I bring food to those who are so destitute their families cannot feed them.” Her tone had a bittersweet edge. Her smile seemed touched with anger. “Eliar told me that you and I were meant to rescue that reeve, but now even that small task has been taken away.”

This passionate speech put Mai at ease. She began to feel that she might say anything, and not fear a sharp rejoinder. “I was surprised, too. It seems the council freed him.”

“Someone did, but I don’t think it was the council,” said Miravia with a frown. “I’m glad for his sake, poor man. It’s just . . . I had hoped for my own adventure. I’ll have none of those once I am married.”

“Is it already arranged?”

“Oh, it was arranged long ago,” she said dismissively.

“Do you know him?”

“His clan lives in the north, in Toskala. I’ve never met him, but we correspond.” She sighed. “He’s a scholar. Everyone speaks highly of him. I’m sure he’s very nice.”

“You’ve never met?”

“Why should we? Our families arranged everything. Anyway, the roads are very dangerous these days. No one dares risk the journey. I ought to have been married last year, but they had to put it off. I’m glad of it. Is that bad?”

Mai could not resist a gaze that shared in equal parts a glimpse of disillusionment and the presence of an ability to be amused at one’s own selfish, lost hopes. Like her brother, Miravia had charm and also a core of passion that, it seemed, she had learned to disguise.

“I was meant to marry a youth from another clan,” Mai said, “but it came to nothing after the Qin officer decided he wanted to marry me. Of course my father could not refuse him.”

“Well! That could be a disaster. Or a triumph.”

Mai blushed.

“Just like the Tale of Patience! Love’s hopes fulfilled!” Hearing her own voice ring out so clearly, Miravia pressed a hand over her lips and said, through her fingers, “Don’t tell Grandmother I said so. I’m not supposed to know such stories. But I do.”

“I don’t know the Tale of Patience,” said Mai. “Will you tell it to me?”

“You don’t know it? Everyone knows it!”

“Not where I come from.”

“If I tell you the Tale of Patience, you must tell me your story, your life in the faraway land, your marriage, your travels. Your adventures.” Like her brother, she had a way of grinning that lit her as with fire from within. “How I want to hear it all!”

“I’ll tell you, gladly. Will you have some khaif? I can get a cup.”

“Oh, I must not.” Seeing Mai’s confusion, she added, “I’m not allowed, of course. Only adults can drink khaif.”

“Surely you’re as old as I am. I’m an Ox. When were you born?”

Miravia bent close, lips almost touching Mai’s ear. The intimate gesture made Mai shudder with pleasure. “I was born in the Year of the Deer. But we’re not supposed to know about that. The elders call it an ungodly custom, a superstitious way of naming the years instead of numbering them properly. Don’t tell anyone. Please.”

Mai grasped her hand between hers. “Of course I won’t! But I still don’t understand. If you’re two years older than I am, then how am I allowed to drink khaif, while you are not? Is it because I’m a guest?”

“No, because you’re an adult.”

Mai shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re married. And pregnant.”

“He-ya! Tay ah en sai!”

The children’s voices thundered out in a unison chant, echoed by three unison claps. A woman’s powerful voice called a singsong phrase, and the children replied in a penetrating chorus, punctuating each phrase with unison claps. This call and response went on while Mai stared at Miravia and felt as though she had just been overtaken by a sandstorm.

From the veranda, Priya opened her eyes and turned to look toward Mai, a smile blooming on her round, dark face. Sheyshi’s head remained bent over her sewing. At length, Mai discovered she still possessed a voice, although it had little enough strength to pierce the roar of the schoolroom chorus beyond the wall.

“What did you say?”

“You didn’t know?”

Without warning, a deep clanging resonated out of the earth, so full and heavy that the whole world seemed to vibrate to its call. Mai pressed her hands to the bench. The sound throbbed up through the earth and the stone and into her body. Into her belly. Into her womb.

Could it be true?

Of course it could be true! It was even likely. Probable. Expected.

Yet she could not catch her breath. She could not even think, not with all that noise.

The children’s chorus stammered into silence. A little voice began to wail in counterpoint to the shuddering bass roll of the bell.

Miravia rose, face flushed with something other than steam rising off a boiling cauldron. “There cries the Voice of the Walls. May the Hidden One protect us!”

The bell ceased ringing. The sudden, shocked silence lasted long enough for a breath to be drawn in. Then, on those wings, rose a clamor from all around, within the walls and without, as if every person in Olossi cried out at the same time. That roar was its own storm, battering the heavens.

“What does it mean?” Mai stammered.

“The Voice of the Wall is Olossi’s alarm bell. When he sings, any person outside the walls knows to retreat to the safety of the walls. Once a year on Festival First Day, we hear him. Today he cries in truth. There must have come news. Bad news.”

She looked down into Mai’s face, and such a look of pity transformed Miravia’s features that Mai began to weep. To think of Anji was to gasp in terror, so she must not think of him. She rose to grasp Miravia’s hands.

“How can we find out what happened? Will the council meet? I have to go there.”

“We can’t. It’s forbidden.”

“Look!” cried Priya, pointing at the sky.

Eagles.

There were too many to count in one glance, circling above Olossi and then, on unseen winds, soaring away.

Mai had never possessed a reckless temperament. Always she had said to Ti: “The price is not worth what you hope to gain.” But Anji had ridden out against impossible odds, because she had counseled the bold choice rather than the cautious one. He might be dead. He might never come back, and she would be alone, pregnant, abandoned in a foreign land, the very thing she had feared most when she left Kartu.

The sound of jangling chimes broke over them. The deep bell took up its tolling cry once again, a reverberation that seemed to crack out of the very roots of the earth. Its voice hammered Mai. Her hands were cold, and her chest had tightened until small shallow breaths were all she could manage.

After all those years tending her sanctuary so she might live with inner peace and no outward trouble, she could not accept waiting any longer.

“I must go to where the council meets. I will walk out those gates and make my way alone if I must, but I will go.”

Miravia stared at her. Tears rolled as if jostled loose by the clangor of the bell. “I wish I could say so, and do so,” she said in a voice so low Mai could scarcely hear it. “How I admire you! How I envy you!”

“If you can go to the prison, then why not to the council house?”

“To bring food to the prison and the healers’ house is all they allow me, and only because the laws of the Hidden One cannot be twisted to forbid it.”

“Well, then, dear one, I am sorry for it, if it makes you unhappy.”

Miravia was not one to cry. Mai saw by the way she clenched her jaw and sucked in a ragged breath that she was used to swallowing her griefs and troubles, as she did now, but the pain still sat deep in her heart.

“It is nothing, compared to what you face. Wait here. I’ll go find Eliar as quickly as I can. He’ll know what to do.”

“Does he know the law of the marketplace, in the Hundred?”

“Eliar? Surely he does, for you know, he must know it well in order to flout it. Yet I know it well, too. All the women of my people know it. It is one of our chief studies. Why?”

“I am a merchant, just as your people are.”

The grin brightened her face. She laughed. “Well, then, my dear friend, let me help you. For there is so little else I am allowed to do.”

Mai took her hands. “I’ll accept your aid gladly. I swear to you I will repay it one day.”

At dawn Joss rose with a light heart despite the rough ground he’d slept on and the terrible sights he had seen yesterday afternoon while flying Hornward along West Track. He was exhausted, aching, and still weak, but Scar’s presence heartened him as nothing else could. Women might come and go, please themselves and him while they were at it, and that was truly a fine thing, but as long as he lived, he knew that Scar would be his most faithful companion.

Indeed, the eagle had fretted, kept close, brought him a deer. This they had shared in the evening, Joss slicing off a portion to roast over a campfire, while the rest Scar dragged to one side.

In the morning, casting done, Scar bowed to him in greeting and came eagerly to the harness. They had not been aloft for long when the eagle cried a warning. Soon after, Joss saw the first distant eagle, and at once spotted another three, then five more. An entire flight approached out of the east, in a staggered formation with flanks spread wide. It was exceptional to see thirty eagles flying together. They were temperamental and territorial beasts, and on the whole disliked their compatriots. But under the control of their reeves, they would endure most anything. It was part of the magic bred into them in ancient days.

Strung out, of course, they also covered a great deal of ground, seeing most everything that moved over many mey. Joss cast a prayer to the winds, and found a draft on which Scar could rise, the better to allow them a chance at outrunning the flight. But a reeve has good reason to gain familiarity with the creatures he lives beside. He recognized, quickly enough, Volias’s sleek and gorgeous Trouble. Gliding down, he and Scar found open ground and landed.

On his tail, Volias came to earth with a pair of reeves flanking him. One was Pari, the Argent Hall reeve. The other was Kesta, young, muscular, shapely and, of course, child of the Fire Mother as he was, so therefore taboo.

“You look like you’ve been dragged through the hells,” said the Snake as he sauntered forward.

“You look pleased to think it might be so.”

“Only had I been there to enjoy watching you suffer. What happened? Should I bring the others down? Turn them around?”

“By no means. You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you.”

Volias laughed. “That bad, eh?” He was a bastard, but he knew his duty.

“How is Peddo?”

“He’ll live.” Volias scanned the sky, then pointed toward Pari. “The Commander wasn’t minded to do anything after Peddo and I got back. She said, let you run on the winds of your nightmares and come back when you’d shed yourself of them. But then this boy arrived at Clan Hall and told us a tale I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen Horn Hall. As it was, the Commander was given strong reason to believe his outrageous tale might be true. So she sent me in command of the Third Flight, to bring what aid you might ask for.”

“I applaud the Commander’s wisdom. Why did she only send one flight?”

“There’s a second flight following behind this one,” said Volias.

Kesta broke in. “Why did she send any? Why in the hells are we wasting our time out here?” Her glare was almost as intimidating at her eagle’s. “We should turn around and go back right away. In case you hadn’t heard,” she added with drawling scorn, “High Haldia’s walls were breached, and the city was burned. Iron Hall’s reeves fled to their hall, unable to stop it. Now there’s an army of about ten companies—six thousand men!—marching seaward down the Istri Walk. Marching on Toskala. I have seen such things . . . and that we abandoned the countryfolk of Haldia to come stooping after this hare!” Her fury was like steam, almost visible rising off her.

“You’ll see those same things here in the south, alas. For there’s an army not more than two days out of Olossi, closing fast. About five companies, we estimate. Burning and slaughtering as they march. Desolation in their wake.”

Volias shook his head. “Two armies, hidden from us for this long. How can we have been so blind?”

“Was there news from Horn Hall?” Joss asked.

Their look was his answer.

Pari had stayed back by his eagle, whose head feathers were flared and wings half opened. An Argent Hall eagle would not feel easy in the proximity of so many unknown raptors.

“He’s handling him well,” remarked Joss.

Kesta smiled wickedly. “He’s not bad. A little young, but that fault improves with time.”

“Unlike you,” said Volias to Joss, because he could not stop jabbing. “So what are we to do? Two flights of reeves can do nothing against an army of three thousand. Iron Hall was helpless at High Haldia. An army won’t submit to arrest.”

“I wish they were all lost in the hells and eaten alive by rats!” said Kesta, tossing her head back.

“Best we meet up with Captain Anji.”

“Who is Captain Anji?” demanded Kesta. “What kind of name is that?”

“An outlander’s name. He’s our ally, and we’re fortunate to have him. Indeed, if he survived the night, he’ll be happy to see us sooner than he expected. We thought
it would take me days to fly to Clan Hall, persuade the Commander, roust a flight, and return here.”

“There’s one other thing,” added Volias. “This Argent Hall marshal who calls himself Yordenas? The Commander had us hunt in the records. There was mention of a reeve called Yordenas. He was a young man newly come to Iron Hall. He was killed about ten years ago, while trying to stop a skulk of bandits as they were beating and raping and robbing in an isolated village up in the high valleys. The reeve’s eagle was mutilated and left for dead, and the man’s clothes were found, soaked in blood. But they never found his body.”

“So we don’t know he was killed.”