Battle Magic

14

FORT SAMBACHU, GYONGXE

Evvy soon learned that it was one thing to be the companion of Rosethorn and Briar, the nanshurs from the west, and quite another entirely to be a student nanshur of eastern blood who had been left behind without them. For her first day after her friends’ departure, she had slept, eaten, explored, slept, and eaten some more. Even the cats were happy to laze and stuff themselves. On the second day she wandered among the refugees who were coming in from the villages on the eastern hills and plain. Unlike Briar or Rosethorn, she could do that without inspiring awe or fear. Here near the border, her Yanjingyi face was common enough to cause no extra interest. She admired babies, helped the families to settle in the fort’s empty rooms and sheds, and — when no one was looking — shored up crumbling walls in the rooms by packing the pieces they had lost back into the crevices. On the third day she wandered idly between the buildings, sending gravel and larger stones to fill in cracks.

It was when she looked at the fortress walls that she began to worry. They were not as solid as they ought to be. She started at the gate. There were gaps between the wooden frame and the wall that surrounded it. This close to the mountains, the builders had used stone in the walls instead of the brick preferred by house builders, to Evvy’s great approval. If she was to make repairs, she could do more with stone. She would need to do a great deal to make up for all this neglect and age.

Shaking her head, she climbed up to the battlements for a look around. Things were no better here. There were holes in the plaster on the walkway where running men could easily trip. Brick edging in the crenels had fallen away: Soldiers leaning out for a look below could slip on gravel or crumbling plaster and fall to their deaths. Anxious, she began to usher loose stones into the gaps on the walkway until one of Captain Rana’s mages caught her.

“You are a student!” he shouted. “Students do not practice magic without their teachers!”

“My teachers let me do the magic I’m best at!” Evvy shouted in return. “I don’t need a teacher for filling in gaps!”

The mage marched her straight down to Captain Rana’s office. They had to wait as the captain listened to complaints from refugees ahead of them in line. Finally he gave them his full attention.

The mage stood haughtily straight. “I caught this student practicing magic, unsupervised, without permission, on the wall. She was meddling with the walkway. She could have destroyed everything!”

“I am certain that she did not. I am familiar with her skills. You may go,” the captain said.

“But, sir —”

“Dismissed,” the captain said firmly. The mage stalked off, and the captain sighed. “Evvy, you can’t carry on here as you did with Briar and Rosethorn to back you up.”

“But you knew I didn’t do any harm! And the walls here need shoring up!” cried Evvy. “I can pack stone into the holes so tight it’ll be as if there’s new rock in place!”

“A few holes in plaster do not mean the fort will collapse,” the captain said patiently. “I have seen your work. I was impressed, but I am not prepared to do battle with my mages every time you want to fuss with things. This fort has stood for centuries.”

“It shows.”

Rana held up a hand. “We can use some more of those glowing stones you made on our journey,” he said kindly. “Why don’t you do that? It will help us save torches, and you’ll be useful.” Firmly he added, “That will be all, Evvy. Try to stay out from underfoot.”

Like the mage, she knew she had been dismissed. She stomped back to her room to sulk for the rest of the day. She made several handfuls of her spare pieces of quartz glow, then go dark again, just to be spiteful. Finally, knowing Briar and Rosethorn would both raise their eyebrows at her if they knew she was carrying on, she made them glow again. She put them in a basket and carried them out to the gate, where the sergeant in charge of the watch could be found.

“Captain Rana wants these,” she announced, and left the basket at the astonished man’s feet. Without another word she climbed up to the southern wall. Several of the guards saw her, but they were from Rana’s company and knew her. They nodded and left her alone. For the rest of the night she listened to the mountains sing.

A few of the tones almost made sense, she thought as she listened. One was water trickling over rock. Another was water streaming over it, and another was water roaring over it. That tone was rain falling on stone. She thought one might be snow falling on granite, but she would have to be closer to granite during a snowfall to be sure. There was a click that had to be a mountain goat setting a hoof on limestone, and a long, soft brush that she would bet was a snow leopard’s tail passing over gravel. But what was that metal scrape on granite, the tone that wavered? And the ringing clop like horseshoes in a cave, but not exactly?

A guard sent her to her room finally. Her cats curled around and on her. Monster’s cheeping mew of worry intruded on her thoughts and she petted him to comfort him. Ball settled between her shoulder and ear and purred loudly as if to drown out the mountains’ singing. She couldn’t do it; Evvy could hear them even in her room now. Apricot and Raisin covered her feet, Mystery her belly, and Ria curled inside the curve of her free arm. Asa settled on top of her head. Their combined purrs led her into sleep. She dreamed of the Sun Queen’s husbands. The cats climbed the mountains and laughed at her for not going with them.

Perhaps that was why, after feeding them and letting them out in the fort’s grounds to do their business in the morning, she took a small pack, filled it with dumplings and a water bottle from the fort’s mess kitchen, and strolled out of the rear gate. “Don’t go too far,” the guard cautioned her. “And if you hear a trumpet, come running.”

She nodded and ambled on. The herd boys had already gone out with the villagers’ goats, sheep, and yaks. Everyone felt safe with the southern mountains at their backs and the massive wall of thorny vines blocking Snow Serpent Pass in the east. She’d heard the soldiers say that by the time any Yanjingyi warriors came over the plain, everyone would be inside the fort with the gates closed and barred.

Evvy meant to go only as far as a ridge she could see from the southern walkway. It was home to a waterfall that fed the little river by the fort. She would take her lunch there, listen to the mountains a while, and return.

It was a glorious day. The sun warmed all the stone surfaces around her as she walked. She inhaled the air, scented with granite, limestone, and quartzite. The mountains’ chorus rang out in her ears, louder than the cries of the eagles and the singing of the smaller birds, louder even than the waterfall as she approached it.

The trees at the foot of the waterfall hid a canyon on the other side of the small river. Exploration would have been out of the question had a large pine not lain across the water, forming a perfect bridge. Evvy looked up at the ridge, where she had planned to have lunch, then down at the fort and the plain. There was no sign of any horsemen or trouble. She climbed onto the pine and across the river.

The canyon led her deeper into the stone reaches at the mountain’s foot. It made an echo chamber for the birds and the singing. Evvy felt like she was inside magic. She finally stopped for lunch by the creek that ran along the canyon floor, ravenous after her morning’s explorations. She was ready to swear that the mountain husbands and the Sun Queen herself sang to her as she took a nap.

Then she was yanked out of pleasant dreams. Soldiers in Yanjingyi uniforms grabbed her and bound her hands tightly behind her back. When she screamed, she was slapped. “Are there any more of you out here?” one of them demanded. “Speak up! Are any more of you out here?”

Evvy kicked and caught him on the thigh. She twisted her head and savagely bit one of the soldiers who held her. He cuffed her so hard she saw light flashes inside her head. The man she’d kicked grabbed her legs and tied them.

“Who else is with you?” he demanded.

She fell back on Chammuri to tell him what his mother ate for breakfast. He lifted her and dumped her over his armored shoulder. When she screamed, he pinched her leg hard and said in tiyon, “Silence, or you’ll wish you were as dead as my mother.”

Evvy called to the canyon rocks. They began to fall. Men shrieked as they were battered by the stony rain.

“Well,” someone out of her view said, “this is where she got to. You will talk eventually, Evumeimei Dingzai, but in a more comfortable setting.” A hand thrust a bottle of something smelly under her nose. Evvy tried to turn her face away, but the bottle was too close. Fog traveled up her nose and into her brain.

When she awoke, a man was bending over her. She yanked away only to discover she could not move from the neck down. They had taken her clothes and tied her to a table. Her legs were raised on a board above her hips and tied at the ankles so her bare toes pointed back toward her head. She couldn’t move her feet.

Her mouth was dry. She wanted to scream; she wanted to weep, but she would give these snot-suckers neither of those things.

The soldier who leaned over her wore the tan tunic and breeches of a regular foot soldier in the Yanjingyi army. “Here’s water.” He supported her head as he put a cup to her lips. Evvy drank the liquid greedily. “If you want my advice, girl, you’ll answer any questions you’re asked. Otherwise they’ll torture you. Nobody is hard enough to take that.”

“Why do you baby her?” Another soldier sat on a chair by Evvy’s feet. He stood. Like the other man, he wore the tan uniform. This one had an untidy mustache and carried a leather strap in one hand. “She’s going to get the full treatment sooner or later.” He drew back his arm and slapped the soles of Evvy’s feet with the strap, hard.

The pain shot through her like fire. She gasped, then bit her lip.

“Please, take my advice,” the soldier next to her head whispered. “Tell him what he wants to know.” He looked at the other man. “She’s just a girl! Ask your questions — you don’t have to hit her!”

“You’re an idiot, Musheng. Why are we here if we don’t teach them respect for the emperor? She came to this country to carry information against him and fight for his enemies, didn’t you, Evumeimei Dingzai?” He struck Evvy’s feet with his strap again. She screamed and tried to imagine a stone where she could keep her secrets. She had done so before. Another blow, or two, might make her blurt out something important, like where the others had gone, or the thing that Rosethorn carried. That was the problem with being quick with her tongue. Sometimes she spoke before she thought. She couldn’t do that now.

The soldier Musheng took Evvy’s hand and clasped it tightly. “Dawei, she could be your daughter!” He looked at Evvy. “Please, child. You came here with three companions, Briar, Rosethorn, and a dangerous slave, Parahan. Tell us where they are. We’ll have a mage see to your feet —”

“Let them heal like my arm had to heal when the northerners poured boiling oil on it!” snapped Dawei. He drew the strap lightly across Evvy’s burning, bleeding feet, making her flinch.

“A mage will tend your wounds,” Musheng said with a glare at Dawei. “But my captain won’t allow it unless you tell us what we need to know. These people abandoned you here when they knew trouble was coming, didn’t they? You don’t owe them anything.”

Evvy didn’t listen. She had the stone in her mind. Inside it she hid her cats, and her friends and where they went: Rosethorn and the thing she carried, Briar and the soldiers moving the villagers to safety, Dokyi and his lonely journey to Garmashing. Souda vanished inside the stone as well. Maybe these zernamuses didn’t already know she had come to Gyongxe with two hundred soldiers. Finally she blinked at Musheng. “What people?”

Dawei snorted. “That’s what you get for your kindness! Insolence! A Zhanzhi gutter rat lies to you about information she knows perfectly well you already have!” He slapped the strap harder over the soles of Evvy’s feet twice, grinning at her screams. “Tell him the names of your companions, and apologize!”

“I don’t know their names anymore,” she said.

Musheng sighed. “Why don’t you know their names, Evumeimei?”

“They told us she was a mage student,” Dawei said. “She did some magic.”

“Forgetting things is a high degree of magic for a student,” Musheng said. “I think you’re lying to us. Girl, you don’t help yourself this way.”

Evvy didn’t answer. Now she was trying to think her feet to stone. She had done it before. Someone — she couldn’t remember who — had told her to imagine herself as stone, though he’d woken her just as she had it worked out. That part she remembered.

Dawei lashed her again. She lost the feeling of stone. Pain washed up her legs in bloodred waves.

“Tell the emperor you have me,” she whispered. She remembered the emperor. “He likes me. He gave me a cinnabar cat.”

“Who do you think sent us in search of you and your friends?” Musheng wiped her face with a cold cloth. “Where are they, Evumeimei?”

“I want my clothes,” Evvy said. Her feet throbbed. In spite of herself tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. They ran into her ears. How could feet hurt so much? “I feel bad without any clothes.”

“You don’t need clothes,” Dawei told her. “Talk, and you’ll get them back.” He looked at Musheng. “She ought to have said something useful by now.”

Musheng nodded. “Let’s see what the mage thinks.”

Dawei scowled. “It’s past midnight. She hates to be woken up.”

“She’ll want to know the girl hasn’t talked, late hour or no. Wake her.”

Dawei left the room. Musheng leaned against the wall. “If I were you, I’d tell Nanshur Jia Jui what she wants to know, right away. She isn’t patient like Dawei.”

Jia Jui — she knew that name, but she wasn’t sure where she knew it from. She thought Jia Jui was another friend of hers who had cats. It was hard to think when she hurt so badly. “I don’t know what you want,” Evvy said. “I wouldn’t tell you if I did, but I don’t.”

“They were at this fort with you,” Musheng said. “The other prisoners told us that much. They said the First Dedicate of the Living Circle temple was here, too. Dokyi left before they did. What did he want?”

When he said “Dokyi,” Evvy saw a stone in her mind. “I don’t know,” she said, trying not to whine. “Would you put water on my feet?” It was hard to concentrate on making them feel like stone when they burned so badly. “Really, I’m just a kid. Why would these people you’re talking about tell me anything?”

“You’re a baby goat?”

That confused her. “I — I heard it somewhere. It’s street talk for somebody young.”

“Kid or no, you’re a prisoner now,” Musheng said. “Tell me something that Nanshur Jia Jui will think is useful and I’ll pour water on your feet. I had mine lashed once. I know how much it hurts.” He sighed and drank some water. “None of the villagers or soldiers we questioned knew why First Dedicate Dokyi was here, but you were with Rosethorn. He talked to her for a long time. Tell me what he wanted, and I’ll help you.”

“Anything to report?” A beautiful young woman entered the room with Dawei just behind him. She wore a bed robe of soft peach silk rather than a mage’s usual black robes and hat. There were no mage beads on her neck or wrists.

“She is very stubborn, Nanshur Jia Jui,” Musheng replied, bowing deeply. “She did not respond to the strap or to kindness.”

Evvy’s thinking, sluggish with pain and the effort she needed to maintain the stone around some of her memories, finally placed the young woman. “Jia Jui,” she mumbled. “Where are your cats?”

Jia Jui smiled as she bent over Evvy. “You remember me. That is good. Sadly, my cats are at home. They are too unhappy when I travel. But I understand you dragged your poor cats all the way here.”

Evvy frowned. “They’re used to traveling. Why are you in Gyongxe?”

Jia Jui shrugged. “The emperor my master has begun the conquest of this country. I must say, Evvy, I am sad to find you here. You do not show your appreciation for the Son of the Gods and the favor he showed you very well, do you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Evvy replied crossly. What Jia Jui said and what Evvy remembered were not the same. “Where’s Captain Rana?” she demanded.

Jia Jui sighed. “He threw himself off the wall of this fortress rather than let us question him. I hope we may do better, Evvy, but you must not force me to be cruel. Answer our questions, please, and spare yourself further pain. Tell me where Rosethorn and Dokyi have gone.”

Evvy remained silent and tried to make her poor feet feel like stone.

Jia Jui ran a finger along Evvy’s cheek. It broke the girl’s concentration. “Jia Jui, I don’t know who you’re talking about!” she protested.

The young woman frowned. “Evvy, have you worked a spell while my foolish friends stood by?”

The two men protested frantically, telling the mage that Evvy’s hands were bound so she couldn’t move them, and that the only words she said were normal talk. Jia Jui held up her hand and they shut up. Evvy shivered at how instantly the two men went silent.

Then Jia Jui held her hand out. Dawei put something into it — not a strap, but a rod. Her face calm and thoughtful, the woman struck the soles of Evvy’s feet with it.

It made the strap seem gentle. Evvy’s stone spell vanished. She cursed Jia Jui with every bad word she knew in several languages until the mage struck her again. Evvy howled in pain.

“Please, lady mage, stop!” Musheng cried. “Give the child a chance!”

Jia Jui lowered the rod.

Musheng leaned close to Evvy and whispered, “You see? I tried to warn you. She is pitiless. Answer like a good girl — you don’t want this, do you?”

“Where are they?” Jia Jui demanded. Musheng sprang away from Evvy. “Dokyi, Rosethorn, Parahan, Briar, Soudamini. Yes, we know the princess joined her brother here. Why do you think we bothered to take this honorless dump? We can’t even use it to get more troops and supplies here until we clear your chetu thorn spell from the pass. Where are your friends?”

Evvy licked blood away from her lip. She must have bitten it. She didn’t know who those people were; she didn’t care. She told Jia Jui to do something very bad with a yak.

The mage struck her feet three more times with the rod. In the gaps Evvy fumbled until she had her stone spell again and hung on to it, keeping it not in her mind but in the ceiling above where she could see it. The pain was white-hot in her feet and head. Her throat burned from screaming. Where was the song of the mountains? “Take over, Musheng,” she heard Jia Jui say. “I don’t care to weary my arm.”

That was when she learned that Musheng was not truly her friend.

He struck her for some time. He would stop. Jia Jui would ask questions, and Evvy would insult her. After three stops when Evvy said nothing, not even curses or insults, Jia Jui sighed. “Let her think while I fetch my mage beads. And you two, have someone take you to her room and fetch two of her cats. Preferably the biggest one, that she calls Monster, and the smallest one.”

The two guards followed her out of the room.

Evvy tried to breathe. It was hard. Her nose was filled with snot and the air hurt her throat. The cats. They would hurt the cats in front of her. She remembered the beads she had handled, General Hengkai’s beads, the ones for killing and destruction. Jia Jui had a necklace and bracelets of beads like that. She would use them on Monster and any of the others, maybe all of them.

She thought about pulling down these walls with her power, but she could not do it. Her legs throbbed and burned. Would she ever walk again? She couldn’t stop crying, though she bit her already sore lip to keep any noise from coming out.

Think! she ordered herself. What can you do if you can’t wreck this room and you can’t stop the pain in your feet? How can you escape? How can you stop her from hurting your cats?

She was Evumeimei Dingzai, a stone mage. If she couldn’t turn herself into stone, what if she took herself, her spirit, and put that into one? There would be no one in her body to hurt or to answer questions.

If I was cold and stiff, they would think I was dead, she thought. Not cold like stone. They’d know that was magic and Jia Jui would break my spell. But if they thought I died … There wouldn’t be any reason to hurt my cats if they thought I was dead.

Small pebbles lay in the corners of the room. Evvy found one to her liking. She began to concentrate. Her leg twitched; the wave of pain that resulted made her gasp. She tried again. Against her will she swallowed, making her throat burn even worse. Once more she tried. A noise outside made her jerk in fear: Was Jia Jui coming back? Were the men coming? The noise faded.

Now, she told herself fiercely, now, or you’ll fail and the cats will die!

Her power was a needle, darting across the room and into her particular stone. Her magic followed. With it went her thinking, most of her breathing, most of her heartbeat. Her body stilled and cooled as she found room for herself around each and every grain of rock in her particular sanctuary. She settled into it and rested.

Something sang to her. It was deep and comforting, but it boomed, too, shaking her loose from her hiding place. Her spirit and power flowed toward the singing, shivering to the deep hum beneath the song and dancing to it, too. Following the song, she entered a space that was hers.

Slowly she began to fill it, though it hurt. She knew, and the song knew, that her last hiding place was only temporary. This was her proper shape, pain and all.

Briefly it warmed. The warmth entered some of the places that hurt, making them loosen. Something inside made her wait. She must not rush, though she had no idea why she shouldn’t. The warmth faded. Perhaps she had imagined it, because once more she was cold.

She lay facedown on a lumpy hill. For a while she did nothing else, though the songs called to her. It took time for her body to remember the uses for fingers, arms, and legs. Any attempt to move hurt beyond words to describe it, but she knew that now she had to move.

She groped around her. She felt cloth, icy in spots. There were other, painless feet, stiff feet, stiff arms, stiff heads, all of them as cold as stone. She lay on a heap of corpses.

That was when she cried.

The mountain songs made her stop crying. They had changed. The deepest song spoke of safe caverns no bad soldiers could reach, where no killers went, where no pain could be found. It sang of safety and stones that healed, of water that was so cold it numbed pain.

She had to go to that song. It steeled her to do what was needed, and soon, before the sun rose. Using the sliver of the moon for light she began to tug clothes off the dead bodies around her. There were scarves for her to bind in layers around her poor feet. She found jackets and breeches and more scarves for her head, until she began to warm up at last. Among the bodies of so many adults — she couldn’t count how many — she also found the bodies of children, infants, and animals, including cats.

There was enough light that she recognized all seven of her cats among them. She nearly gave up then and there, weeping into Monster’s fur. She was at Fort Sambachu, and the Yanjingyi beasts had killed everyone. They were going to kill her if they saw her again. Maybe she ought to let them, or maybe she ought to go permanently to stone.

As if the singers knew what she was thinking, the mountain songs grew louder. The deepest song was loudest of all. It demanded that she hurry away from all the death. She must bring her song to the stone heights, to the dwellers inside. They would take her in, their sister of the mountains. They would bring her home.

She rolled down the rest of the cold heap rather than look at any more of it. The soldiers had dumped the dead outside the fortress, behind the rear gate. Evvy reached the little river, where she found a long stick under the trees. It became her staff. After a drink of water, she was able to turn her soles to stone. It was all that she could do for them. The rest of her feet throbbed. Even the scarves she had wrapped around them did not keep them from hurting with every step.

She fixed her mind on stone in the soles of her feet and on the song of the mountains, and kept going.

By sunrise she reached the canyon where the Yanjingyi war party had captured her. The deep song had called to her from there. She stopped to drink again from the stream. She wanted to sleep, but the mountain song was too loud now. There was no sleeping with that racket going on in her brain. She staggered upright by the water and looked back the way she had come. With horror she saw bloody footprints marked her trail. Panicked, she stumbled forward, wanting to run and unable to. The song was so loud that she did not hear the clatter of hoofbeats in the canyon.

Turning a bend in the stone, she saw an opening in the side of the canyon: a cave. Could she go there? There was plenty of loose rock above it and to the sides. Did she have the strength to close the opening once she was inside, hiding where she had gone?

She halted. The deep song had stopped. In front of the cave she saw the strangest thing. On the dirt was a polished lump of fluorite: deep green, deep purple, and clear crystal. It looked like an eighteen-inch bear sitting on its haunches, one that had been smoothed by years of running water until all of him was rounded. His muzzle was only a gentle point, not a sharp nose. It was the friendliest-looking piece of stone she had ever seen.

It cocked its head knob at her. “Evumeimei Dingzai, welcome to my home,” the living stone said. It spoke with the voice of the deep song, making every bone in Evvy’s body shiver. “Will you enter?”

Evvy stumbled toward it. “Who are you?”

“My name is very long, and I will say it for you at some time, but not now. I am the heart of the mountain that the meat creatures here call Kangri Skad Po.” The stone creature turned and trundled deeper into the cave on very short legs.

Evvy followed, leaning on her stick. Glowing moss on the walls of the cave lit their way. As they walked the tunnel opened up. Normally she would have gasped as it grew larger, but not today. Today she desperately held to the feeling of stone at the bottoms of her bleeding feet as they descended into the earth. So intent was she that she didn’t notice when the cave’s entrance closed behind them.

She did notice a mild grumbling overhead. A few rocks fell and the floor shook slightly, making her stumble.

“What was that?” she cried, steadying herself with her makeshift staff.

“It is nothing,” the crystal bear assured her, his amazingly deep voice making her think of icy underground rivers and hidden hot springs. “Soon you will rest and heal. Then you will tell me what you are. I have never felt anyone like you in all my millennia.”

Normally Evvy would have demanded to know how many millennia the living stone had, and what millennia were. Now she clung to her staff and limped onward, biting her lip until it started to bleed again.

In the world above the mountain roots, Jia Jui led the search party into the long canyon. On the walls of Fort Sambachu, the bodies of Dawei and Musheng hung as a warning to every idiot in the army who did not know the difference between a dead girl and a mage in a deep trance. She had already left sizable offerings to several gods that the emperor would never learn that she, too, had examined Evumeimei’s body and pronounced her to be dead. She would have sworn the girl was dead, and if the emperor’s spies ever learned differently, she would pay very painfully.

She could still save herself. The bloody footprints showed that Evvy could not go much farther. With the girl back in her hands, Jia Jui meant to shackle her to her own wrist and take her to Emperor Weishu herself.

So deep in her plans was Jia Jui that she didn’t notice the quiver in the ground until it was much too late. Driven by the living heart of Kangri Skad Po, the canyon collapsed on soldiers and mage. None of them would be seen again.