Battle Magic

Evvy looked at the pots. She wasn’t quite sure what to say, or do. “Where did she find them?” she whispered to Luvo.

For a moment Luvo said nothing. Then he told Evvy, “There is a place on the Ice Naga — what you call the Snow Serpent River — to the west, like the … fort … that fell down, only with more — You do not like it when I call your people meat creatures. What do you call them?”

“Humans,” Evvy said. “Or people.”

“People can be anyone,” Luvo argued. “Diban Kangmo and her kin are people, as are the ice lions, the cave snakes, the nagas, the deep runners, we mountains. Humans are those meat creatures on two legs?”

Evvy nodded.

“The place like a fort where many humans are gathered just now. It is a place that reaches for the sky in spirit, and the humans who live there all of the time make pretty noises with long tubes and metal plates.”

“It’s a temple, maybe,” Evvy said. “I heard Parahan say that the first stop on the Snow Serpent Road was the Temple of the Thunder Horses.”

“That is where she found your food.”

“Did the humans there see her?” Evvy asked, wondering if she was the only one to scream at the sight of the giant peak spider.

Luvo sounded amused. “No one sees the spirit people of this realm if those people do not desire it. They prefer quiet lives. Stop asking questions, Evumeimei!”

Gingerly, keeping an eye on Diban Kangmo, Evvy crawled over to the pots. All of them were cold. She did not care. She started with tea, gulping it down. It soothed her dry and raw throat. She then turned her attention to the food, scooping up the barley-flour balls called tsampa and stuffing them into her mouth. These had butter and milk curds. Normally she would have spat such things out. Today they tasted better than anything she had eaten in her life, even her beloved fried eggplant. Another pot contained spicy rice curry with lamb. She alternated handfuls of that with the tsampa until she could eat no more. Only when she couldn’t even look in the other pots to see what was there because she was so full did she lurch to her feet and go to the great stretch of water near her resting place.

“I’m dirty,” she told Luvo. “I’m going to wash.” Since she was fairly sure he wouldn’t know what dirty was, she explained, “I’m all over blood and piss and dung and sweat. I don’t normally smell like this.” She fumbled with her clothes, peeling them off layer by layer. It didn’t occur to her to be shy. A talking rock and a giant spider were hardly the sorts to make her nervous about baring her skin. “I wish I had clean things.” It was hard to tell in the green light from the glowing spots everywhere, but she was nearly certain there was blood on some of her clothes. That made sense, given that she had taken the garments from the dead.

The water was very cold. After all of the cold-water baths we took as we traveled, I should be used to this, she thought gloomily, but I’m not.

The memory of her cats, seated to watch on countless stream banks as she and Rosethorn yelped in cold waters, struck her like a knife stab. She sat on the bottom of the cave lake and silently let her tears flow.

At last she began to drag her fingers through her knotted hair. Once it was straight again and fairly clean, she lurched up onto dry land.

Her dirty clothes were gone. Beside her mossy bed lay a pile of fabric in various green-tinted colors.

“There is an enclosed place,” Luvo said as she approached. “It is like the ‘temple’ place for the Thunder Horses, but it is for my mountain and those of my brother and sister. Your humans come to it and leave things for the humans that sing there and light lamps and bow up and down as you do, only more. They use fire to make smoke that smells interesting, too.”

Evvy gave him a tight smile. “The humans here worship your mountain and the other two as gods. They think you three are the husbands of the Sun Queen.”

“Ridiculous!” Luvo said. “The sun is not even part of this world!”

Evvy knelt clumsily and sorted through the pile. Soon she wore multiple layers of gaudy silk robes lined with fur. Somehow Luvo had also brought away several pairs of breeches that fit once she had rolled them up, and two pairs of fur-lined boots. She could wear one pair. Once she was clothed, she drank some more tea and fell asleep again.

The western army, made up of over five hundred tribesmen, priests and priestesses, and shamans, mounted on small, tough horses or driving carts, arrived around noon as Briar was brewing medicines in a temple workshop. One of the children brought word of the new arrivals, but Briar was busy keeping the greatest strength of his potions from cooking off. Once, when he took a rest, he walked up onto the wall to a view of many tents and soldiers inside and outside the temple. The sight alone made him cross. He wondered if he could ask his new friend the orange stone tiger if it would let him sleep there again that night.

The village child returned later to let Briar and the other healers know that a messenger had arrived from the east. Briar was not interested. He could not feel Rosethorn’s approach. With Evvy’s death, he doubted the east held any good news for him.

Jimut brought Souda’s dinner invitation to him. Though he was done for the day, Briar refused it. He meant to beg food from a cook and go somewhere private to eat. But Souda marched into the workshop as he finished his cleanup and seized him by the arm.

“No more hiding,” she said firmly. “You will eat with us, without arguments.” She did not release him until they were inside the tent that she and Parahan seemed to use as an audience chamber. Guards had set dishes on the carpet. Cushions were strewn all around them. Parahan was there already, scooping something into his mouth with a piece of flatbread.