by Kate Elliott
“Who is Beltak?” he asked, hoping to throw down fresh scent to muddy the trail.
“That’s the short name of the god. He has a longer one, but it takes an hour to say it all.” The shifting dance of the flames played on his face. The world was an inconstant place, so the flames might have told him. Anji was a man who appreciated irony, and gave away little else.
“What of the Merciful One?”
“The priests of the Merciful One are executed if they’re caught. Or any of their worshipers. Hamstrung, and burned alive.”
Shai shuddered. The awning was settled. A lantern was lit, and a carpet unrolled. Shai excused himself, claiming he had to take a piss, but he was simply too nervous to sit. He walked a circuit of the campsite.
Six fires burned to shelter this consortium of thirty-one anxious merchants, ranging in grandness from long-distance solo peddlers pushing handcarts piled with silks and spices to one grand entrepreneur and his managers shepherding ten wagons of fine goods and forty or more healthy young slaves destined for the markets of the Hundred. No one sang or chattered. They watched the darkness, waiting for bandits or heretics to strike.
One man dressed purely in white sat alone, on a mat, with only an oil lamp for company. He held a wooden bowl in front of him and murmured words as he touched water from the bowl to his forehead. The Sirniakan carters and drovers knelt on the ground behind this man, mimicking his movement with bowls and water of their own.
Shai paused to watch. After a moment, a slender man of mature years slipped in beside Shai. The man wore a voluminous cloak, dark pantaloons whose color could not be distinguished, and a tunic that in the moonlight appeared as pale as butter.
After a moment, the man touched him lightly on the elbow. “Best not to stand watching, they don’t allow it,” he whispered. He flashed a kindly smile, then strode away, cloak swirling around his legs.
Startled, Shai moved on. As he continued his circuit, the Qin sentries nodded at him. These days they seemed polite more than friendly. He had taken their politeness for companionship before, having known so little companionship in Kartu. Now that he understood them better, he recognized that they were bred, or honed, to a manner with a sheen of smoothness that rarely betrayed extremes of emotion. Tohon was asleep, rolled up in a blanket and snoring, his weathered face as peaceful as a baby’s.
The sentry closest to the forest’s edge whistled sharply. Men leaped up. Torches were lit. The merchants scattered to their wagons and carts. Out in the night, branches snapped and whipped as unseen stalkers scurried to get out of the way. Qin soldiers dashed after them and, in the distance and hidden by darkness, a melee exploded. It settled quickly, fading into a few shouts and a cheery laugh.
The man in white appeared at the edge of camp, holding his oil lamp in his left hand and his bowl in his right. The soldiers reappeared, mocking the tailman who limped in. They dragged a body, a ragged creature who once might have been a man, although he was filthy, skinny, and quite dead now. Shai watched from a distance. It was difficult to see threat in the dead man, but the merchants were as ecstatic as if they had been saved from a marauding army.
A wisp of ghost substance spun out of the man; a face of bitter regret and pain began to form its familiar cry. The man in white lifted lamp and bowl, chanting words under his breath like a prayer over the dead. As he spoke, the ghost substance was pulled and pulled like thread unraveling, and drawn inexorably into that simple wooden bowl, sucked clean into it, until it was all gone.
All gone. Given no chance to pass through Spirit Gate. Trapped in the bowl.
No one else noticed. No one else saw.
Shai broke into a sweat. His hands were shaking as he turned away. The man in white—whatever he was—must not suspect what Shai had seen.
Hamstrung and burned alive.
No talk of the gods in the empire. You’ll get us killed!
The man in white moved away. The body was searched and afterward dumped into the bushes like so much garbage. The camp fell quiet again. It took him a long time, but he fought to breathe evenly. Once he thought he could speak without stammering, he circled back around to where he had started, at a spot overlooking the captain’s awning.
By the light of a lantern, under the sole awning erected for the night, Anji had settled in to confer with Master lad, the caravan master, a keen and cunning man for whom no detail was too small to ignore. Together they examined a knife that had been taken from the body of the dead man.
Mai appeared beside him, as if she had been waiting for him to show up. “What’s wrong, Shai? You look worried.”
“There is a man, dressed in white, who travels with the caravan. The drovers and carters mimic him. What is he?”
“He is a priest of Beltak. That’s what Anji says. Every caravan traveling through the empire must employ a priest to guard.”
“To guard what?”
“I don’t know. To guard against evil, I suppose. I think they’re sorcerers. Do not speak to him. He’ll leave us and go back into the empire, once we reach the borderlands.”
The caravan master glanced up, seeing Mai, and away again with guilty swiftness.
“He knows you’re not a boy,” said Shai. “Do you think the merchants suspect the captain lied to them?”
“Wasn’t Anji magnificent at Sarida? He told them what they most feared to hear, so they believed him.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t think they care,” she said coolly, “not as long as they’re safe.”
“Are we ever safe?”
She shuddered.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong, Mai?”
Shaking herself, she touched his hand. “I didn’t see how it happened, in Sarida. How we lost all the bearers, who walked so faithfully all this time, never complaining. And that poor lad forced to leave Commander Beje’s villa only because he saw us on the porch. He’s dead, too. And poor Cornflower, lost in the storm. How can we be safe when we never know who we’re going to lose?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What if Anji is killed? Then what happens to us? We’ve been on the road for four months. We’re so far from home we can never go back.”
Footsteps crunched on dirt. Mountain’s hulking shape appeared out of the night bearing wash water. “Mistress? Priya says she has your wash ready.”
She forced a smile before hurrying away.
WHY SHOULD THE merchants care that Mai was not a boy, as long as they were safe? If the caravan master had his suspicions, he did not confide them to Beltak’s priest. No doubt he’d be twice a fool to protest now, and a dead fool at that. They were all far from home; best not to take chances.
Their company pushed higher and higher into the mountains. The few weak souls in the merchant train who couldn’t keep up were left behind. At the order of the priest, one female slave was executed for an unspecified crime. A young slave gone lame was granted clemency and allowed to ride on the back of a wagon until he could walk again. None of the merchants complained about the grueling pace. Possibly this was because they were to all intents and purposes now at the mercy of their guards. Possibly it was because they were eager to push beyond the range of the Beltak priest’s absolute power. Or possibly they were happy to have to pay so little, nothing more than feed and provisions, for this magnificent captain and his wolf pack of soldiers who quietly and efficiently guarded the merchants and peddlers and their laden wagons and chained slaves.
At a tiny walled village high in the mountains, at the last registered toll station, the Beltak priest turned aside with no word to anyone and walked away south, downhill. Yet even though his departure brought a certain sense of relief, the most difficult part of the crossing lay ahead. For days, they passed no other villages or indeed any sign of habitation except for a few isolated shepherd’s shacks. On several occasions they observed men along the ridgelines, following and observing their march, but no one approached them.
In time, they had to dismount and
lead the horses because of the steady upward incline of the road. Anji pulled the scouts in, and guarded the caravan before and behind with ranks of his most experienced men. In these high reaches, they saw only birds and rodents and deer. At length, in the mountains with white-capped peaks towering above, it became difficult to suck in quite enough air as one trudged along. They were walking in a no-man’s-land where only clouds and rain held sway. They had truly left behind the grip of the empire and its priests.
Shai knew it for sure because one morning he saw a ghost, a wisp caught among rocks where a slide had half obliterated an old sod shack. The ghost was beckoning to them, its substance bent in a passionate come come come, and its mouth opening and closing with exaggerated desperation.
What did it want? It was too far away for Shai to hear what it was saying.
Seeing the remains of the shack, a peddler called cheerfully to one of his fellows, “See, there! That’s the old way station, where that orange priest used to take alms and offer up that holy water of his. Not far now to the border! Only two or three more days, though most of it downhill! Whew! Downhill is the hard part!”
“What became of him?” huffed his companion, whose legs were as stout as tree trunks from years of pushing a loaded handcart up and down these steep trails. “That orange priest, I mean.”
“Eh, who knows, up here. Anything could happen.”
They both caught breath, then called out to a slender man of mature years who was striding past them, the very same man who had warned Shai off watching the Beltak priest. In daylight, Shai could admire the extremely bright, even gaudy, colors of the man’s clothing: a voluminous cloak of peacock blue, wine-red pantaloons, and a tunic of an intense saffron yellow hue.
“Greetings of the day, holy one. Greetings of the day.”
“Greetings of the day to you, friend. And to you. Almost home, neh?”
“Almost home! The gods be praised! You in a hurry there, Your Holiness?”
“I hear there’s another caravan a half day’s journey ahead of us. Thought I would catch up to them, get the news.” He kept walking, making for the front of the caravan. Amazingly, the peddlers did not guffaw at this astounding statement. Indeed, the man’s stride seemed tireless; as far as Shai could see, he wasn’t even breathing hard despite the thin air and a bundle slung over one shoulder.
Shai trudged alongside the peddlers for a bit, watching the other man’s bright blue cloak recede up the road. When, in the happenstance of moving along, he caught the eye of one of the peddlers, he spoke up.
“What manner of holy man is he?”
The two men looked him over, measuring him, and then nodded at each other as if to agree that they could speak freely.
“That one? Can’t you tell by the sky cloak? That’s an envoy of Ilu. Though what he was doing walking down into the empire I can’t imagine. They kill priests there.”
“Silk,” said the other peddler wisely, nodding toward the well-wrapped goods in his own hardcart. “Sometimes the temples send a holy one south to buy silk for the temple. A dangerous task, mind you. Like a test of their courage and wit. Or to see if they’re ready to move up in the temple hierarchy. I’ll wager he’s got silk in that bundle, two bolts of highest-grade quality. Not anything I could afford.”
The holy man reached the van and just kept going, advancing past the forward guard and along the road until he was lost from sight. No one tried to stop him, a traveler moving into the unknown. Would he return home unscathed? Would something terrible happen to him?
But after all, Shai realized, he was really only wondering those things about himself.
PART FIVE: SLAVES
23
JUST BEFORE SUNSET a man appeared on the road, entirely alone, walking up out of the south. He was a holy man, and he wore the gaudy colors of an envoy of Ilu: a voluminous cloak of peacock blue, wine-red pantaloons, and a tunic dyed the intense yellow gotten only from cloth dyed with that dearest of herbs, saffron, whose value in the markets of the Hundred Keshad knew down to the last vey. Along with the rest of the small merchant company, Kesh stared as the man strode to the spot they were settling in for their night’s camp, cheerfully greeted the caravan master, and began chatting as though he’d been traveling with them all along. The envoys of Ilu were known to be insane, not mad in their minds but willing to endure hardships and risk dangers that no ordinary person would get near. This certainly proved it.
But Keshad had his own business to attend to, a wagon, mules, driver, and most crucially the goods he was transporting north over the Kandaran Pass to the Hundred. He had a very particular and complicated routine he must follow at night to keep his goods safe. So he dismissed the envoy of Ilu from his thoughts, and did no more than glance his way once or twice, until midway through the next day when the envoy, pacing the caravan, drew up alongside Kesh where he walked at the front of the line.
“Greetings of the day, nephew.”
“Greetings of the day, Holy One.”
As the two men walked along the ancient trading road, they talked. It was a good way to pass the time. Their feet scuffed up dust with each step. The rumble of cart wheels and the clop of pack animals and the laughter of a quartet of guards striding out in front serenaded them. Behind, the rest of the caravan clattered along. That ensemble of noises always seemed to Keshad the most reassuring of sounds when he was out on the road. If safety could be found in the world, then surely it was found where folk banded together to protect themselves from predators.
“In ancient days,” the envoy was saying, “the Four Mothers created the land known as the Hundred with its doubled prow thrust east and north into ocean and two great mountain ranges to the south and the west to protect the inhabitants from their enemies. The Mothers joined themselves with the land, and in that transformation seven gods emerged from the maelstrom to create order.”
Keshad shrugged. “So the story goes, at any rate.”
“Ah. You’re clearly born and bred in the Hundred.” The man touched his own left eye, as if to bring to Kesh’s attention that he had noticed the debt scar on Kesh’s face. “Yet you don’t believe the Tale of Beginning?”
“I believed it when I was a child.”
“You’ve gone over to the Silvers’ way of believing?”
“The Silvers? No, I don’t know anything about that.”
The envoy was old enough to be Kesh’s father, had Kesh still had a father; a man beyond his prime but not yet elderly.
“Something else, then. Hmm. Keshad is your given name, so you say. That means you were dedicated to the Air Mother at birth. Too much thinking. That’s often a problem with Air-touched children. In what year were you born?”
Kesh brushed his elbow, where his tattoo was. “Year of the Goat.”
“Even worse then! Goats are inconstant and unstable, prone to change their thinking, especially if they’re Air-touched and liable to think too much. Still, they can survive anything. Look at you, a young man, in the prime of your strength, good-looking, all your teeth—oh, no! missing one, probably from a fight.”
“That’s right. But the other man lost more! And he started it!”
“Happy is Ilu when he hears of those who gain justice!” The envoy grinned, and Kesh laughed. “Good eyes, not bloodshot or yellow or infected. Strong limbs, open stride. Health in order. It must be your Goat’s heart that is distracting your Air-touched mind.”
Kesh rolled his eyes, but he did not want to insult a holy envoy, who was a nice enough fellow, cheerful, lean, strong, and with an amazing set of white teeth that made his grin contagious. Obviously, the man was crazy.
“So, then, lad, you are born to be skeptical. How do you think the world came into being, if you don’t believe my tale?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought. I’m too busy wondering if we’ll be attacked on the road, and if the guards we hired will protect us. Or run.”
“That’s always a distraction,” agreed the envoy amiably.
/> Still, as the small merchant train and its armed escort trudged down the hip-jarring slope of the Kandaran Pass, Keshad studied the terrain of the rugged foothills where bandits lurked. He cast his gaze up at the spires themselves, shining in the afternoon sun. Light splintered off the snowy peaks. Clouds spun off into threads where they caught on summits and pinnacles. It was easy to imagine the fiery eye of a god glaring those formidable mountains into being as a warning to mortal man: Do not cross me.
“The way I see it,” Keshad continued, “it doesn’t matter how the world came to be. It matters what path a man takes as he walks through the world.”
“A fine philosophy! Did you serve your apprenticeship to Ilu, perhaps? You sound like a Herald’s clansman.”
“No.”
“One of the Thunderer’s ordinands, perhaps? I see you carry a short sword and a bow. That’s not common among merchants.”
“I am not,” he said curtly, and was then sorry at his sour tone. The envoy had treated him with good humor and deserved as much in return. “I have spent a lot of time thinking about journeys, because of my own. For instance, a merchant has a choice of three paths to reach the markets of the Hundred.”
“Three paths? I would have thought only one.” The envoy indicated the road on which they walked, but his sharp gaze never left Kesh’s face.
“He can brave the seas—”
“And their treacherous currents! The roil of Messalia! Reefs and shoals!”
“That’s right. Or the desert crossing to the west over Heaven’s Ridge.”
“And thereby across the Barrens! There’s a reason they’re called that, you know!”
“That’s so. But it can be done, and folk do it.”
“True enough.” The man coughed. “So I hear.”
