by Judith Tarr
“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.
“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.
35
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 start
ling 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.
As Daruya reali
zed what they carried, she burst out laughing. Kimeri had the little brazier with its lidded jar of coals, Hani the pot and the cups for brewing tea; that would be the packet of the herb that rested so precariously on top of the heap of cups. They were going to brew tea in the dragon’s cave, for luck and for friendship, and because no one could ever do anything in Shurakan without a cup of tea.
She looked back at Bundur, who was following slowly. His somber expression had vanished. He grinned at her, and a fine set of white teeth he had, too.
“And what,” she wondered aloud, “would a dragon look like, if he were flesh and not myth? Might he look like a prince of Shurakan?”
“He might,” said Bundur. “Or she might look like a princess of Sun and Lion, from the other side of the world.”
She stopped, briefly outraged. Dared he liken her to a ravening beast, however prettily subdued?
Indeed. And rightly, too. She shrugged, sighed, smiled, and went to drink tea in the dragon’s hall.
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Copyright & Credits
Spear of Heaven
Avaryan Resplendent, Volume II
Judith Tarr
Book View Café Edition
August 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-284-6
Copyright © 1994 Judith Tarr
First published: Tor Books, 1994
Cover design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Production team: Proofreader: Julianne Lee; Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre
v20130818vnm
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About the Author
Judith Tarr holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for The Isle of Glass and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.
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