Free Spear of Heaven by Judith Tarr Page B

started.
    The woman seemed fearless enough. She was brusque, striking
a hard bargain with Vanyi, whom she had singled out without prompting as the
leader of the expedition. That spoke well for her perception, since Vanyi had
not been trying to look conspicuous. The other mages in their robes— lightmage
silver, darkmage violet—were far more impressive than she was in her plain coat
and trousers and boots; and the Olenyai were alarming, faceless black
shadow-men with golden demon-eyes. Vanyi could have been a servant, an old
woman of no particular height or distinction apart from a certain air of
whipcord toughness.
    But Aku knew, and for that, Vanyi let herself be haggled
with. Daruya might have done it herself, for the matter of that, if she had had
occasion. At the moment she seemed to have been included with the Olenyai in
the class of demons, in the minds of the men, and as young and therefore
insignificant in the mind of the woman.
    Old age held great power here. Daruya made note of that.
    At length the bargaining was concluded, the guides given
half a bolt of scarlet silk in payment, the rest to follow at the end of the
journey. Daruya rose in relief and gathered up Kimeri, who had fallen asleep in
Chakan’s lap. Kimeri murmured, burrowed into Daruya’s shoulder, and went back
to sleep again.
    “Poor baby,” said Chakan. “She hardly knows where or when
she is.”
    “She knows it very well,” Daruya said. “She wore herself
out, that’s all, creeping through the storm in the Gate.”
    He looked as if he would have said more, but he did not. She
was glad. It frightened her that ki-Merian of all people was so docile and
sleeping so much. She could find no wound in the child, of mind or body,
nothing but tiredness and a desire to be near her mother. But that was
disturbing enough. Kimeri was the least clinging of children, and the least
inclined to sleep when she could be up and doing.
    Daruya did not want to say anything of that, even to Chakan
whom she trusted. She busied herself with the flurry of departure—a last meal
eaten in haste, farewells said to the Guardians, gathering and mounting and
forming their caravan in the temple’s inner court. The seneldi were snorting
and rolling their eyes at strangers, hairy oxen as Talian had called them:
great shaggy beasts, taller than a tall senel, with broad curving sweeps of
horns, and feet as broad as banquet-platters.
    There were four of them in the court, wearing harnesses that
translated into saddles and bridles of a sort, as each guide approached his
beast and mounted by climbing its harness like a ladder. He had only one rein,
and a stick that he used to turn his massive mount and to drive it forward.
    Daruya, fascinated, almost forgot to mount her own fretting,
head-tossing mare. Chakan passed Kimeri up to ride on her saddlebow, still
asleep and dreaming peacefully of riding her pony in the empress’
perfume-garden. Once the mare felt the twofold weight she settled, though she
still snorted at the oxen.
    Vanyi was speaking, not loudly but clear enough to be heard
over the stamping and snorting of the animals. “We’re shadow-passing through
the town for convenience’s sake—this many seneldi appearing from nowhere would
raise a frightful riot. Daruya, will you anchor the casting?”
    That meant riding in the rear and securing the edge of the
working. It also meant great trust, and a degree of concession that she had not
expected so soon. She sat her mare nonplussed, until she found her tongue
somewhere and put it to use. “I’ll ride anchor. Chakan, you, too. I can use
you.”
    Vanyi’s approval was quick, sharp, and surprisingly warm.
Daruya began to wonder exactly how surprised the Guildmaster had been to find
her with them in the Gate—and exactly how unwelcome she had been.
    Not at all, maybe. Vanyi did not share the emperor’s concern
for his heirs; or at least not his concern that they be kept close, and
therefore safe. Vanyi in fact cared