Battle Magic

A huge voice boomed in the air. “Do not attack us, defenders of Gyongxe.” It was deep and musical. It could not belong to the person who walked toward them, hands — holding bags — in the air. “We are allies to you and foes to the invader from Yanjing!”

The huge yak turned and ambled south on the plain. Sayrugo wished she could do the same.

The second time Briar woke, someone was ordering him to drink. He obeyed, then tried to spit the nasty sweetness of spirits laced with opium from his mouth.

“Drink it, or I’ll use you for sword practice next time,” Parahan told him. The big man sat on a camp stool beside his cot, bracing Briar with one arm as he held the cup in his free hand. “You were supposed to be healing people — what were you doing on the battlefield?”

Briar drank the rest of the cup’s contents. “I went to see … what the green light was,” he mumbled. “It was our people. Gyongxe. ’N then I stayed to work on the wounded. ’N someone whacked me with a sword.”

His brain wasn’t so muzzy that he couldn’t remember that. He had been checking a fallen temple warrior by the light of one of Evvy’s glow stones. Suddenly, nearby, a Yanjingyi warrior had lurched to his feet.

“You!” he’d cried in tiyon. He was hardly more than Briar’s own age. “You’re one of their demon mages!” He had stumbled forward, raising his sword as he fell. Briar had felt something hot in his leg. He’d looked at the Yanjingyi boy to find that he had fallen because he was dead. He had been dying of a big wound in his chest when he attacked Briar. Only crazy luck, Lakik’s luck, had made him chop Briar’s leg instead of something more important.

For a wound that wasn’t vital, it had made Briar scream anyway. People from his own side had found him. When they lifted him to bring him back to camp, the pain had been so bad that he had fainted like some temple archive lily.

He was trying to tell Parahan all this when the potion hit and he slept.

THE GNAM RUNGA PLAIN

THE ROAD NORTH TO GARMASHING

The next time Briar came around, Rosethorn sat by his cot. She said cheerfully, “I’d box your ears, but apparently you’re being punished enough.”

He glared at her. “You aren’t usually so happy when I foul up this bad.”

“I’m not happy because you got hurt,” she replied tartly. “I realize your motives were good, but you shouldn’t have been out there.”

Briar covered his eyes with his arm. “I figured that out,” he admitted. “I just didn’t want anybody to die who didn’t have to. Well, our people.”

“General Sayrugo found us,” he heard her say. “Her scouts spotted the Yanjingyi warriors and she cut them off. None of them survived.”

“That’s good,” he said dully. People were moving around the tent. He didn’t want to see them talking about what a bleat-brain he’d been.

“Briar, look at me,” Rosethorn told him. “Sayrugo brought us company.”

He heard a scraping noise. A very deep voice said, “This is Briar? From your conversation, I had thought he would be as large as Diban Kangmo.”

“Go away, company,” Briar said. “I don’t want to be gawped at like some daftie in a show.”

“I thought I had come to understand the odd words that you use, but he is incomprehensible,” the deep voice complained.

Someone tugged on his sleeve. A voice he thought he would never hear again said, “Please look at me, Briar. I traveled such a long way to see you, and on a yak named Big Milk, too.”

It couldn’t be Evvy. Evvy was dead. He had her stone alphabet, taken from her by her murderers. She never would have let them have it unless she was dead.

Briar lowered his arm. Evvy stood at the opposite side of his cot from Rosethorn, wearing a tunic that was big enough to be a dress. A gaudy, multicolored silk scarf served her as a head cloth, but under it was Evvy’s same pair of bright eyes and her same flat-tipped nose. A smile quivered on her mouth.

“You’re alive?” he asked her.

She nodded. Tears filled her eyes. “But they killed my cats, Briar.” She knelt beside the cot and put her head on his chest.

Despite the pain he turned and hugged as much of her as he could reach. He murmured silly things, about how they’d pay them back, and she told him about what they’d done to her. It set a dull heat of fury burning in his chest.

“But you can walk?” he whispered.

She nodded and drew back, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. She was about to wipe her nose, too, when Rosethorn reached across Briar to thrust a handkerchief into her hand.

“Luvo fixed me. Well, Diban Kangmo’s daughter fixed me. I hardly limp at all,” Evvy explained. “Luvo’s a mountain. The mountain’s heart.”

“Who’s Luvo?” Briar demanded. “Who’s Diban Kangmo?”

“Diban Kangmo is the goddess of the peak spiders,” the deep, calm voice said. Evvy moved aside a little. Next to her, on a stool that brought it up to the level of the cot, was a rock of clear, purple, and pine-green crystal. It was roughly the height of Briar’s forearm and hand together, and it had the shape of an animal, though it was that shape after the rock had sat in running water for years.

A bear, maybe, Briar thought. A bear worn down by water.

“Briar, this is Luvo,” Evvy told him. “Well, Luvo isn’t his actual name. His real name is a lot longer, and I couldn’t remember it, so I call him Luvo. He’s one of the Sun Queen’s husbands — the one called Kangri Skad Po, the talking mountain.”