The horses clattered onto the open space. The rounded peaks rose to either side. The saddle linked the two high spots but was itself pretty much impossible to reach because of unstable slopes falling away to either side. Boulders lay in shattered heaps at the base. Pieces of broken rock like so many discarded roof shingles littered the slopes, piled in frozen waves at the bottom.
The girl dismounted and paced the rim, careful to stay away from the entrance to the labyrinth just as a canny animal shies away from a trap. The horses abandoned him, making straight — as only the horses could — for the pool at the center where they could refresh themselves.
He gripped his staff of judgment, knuckles white. He tried to relax but could not find calm within. With his free hand he parted the pocket sewn into his sleeve and grasped the mirror he had carried hidden within it for so many years. Three times he tapped his staff against the rock. The third time she looked at him. He beckoned. Hesitantly, she crossed to him.
'Come.' He tried to gentle his voice, but he could hear how lightly coiled ran the thread of words. 'Walk with me.'
He set first one foot, then the second, on the glittering entrance to the labyrinth. That which is cut may heal, but if it scars, then the flesh loses its flexibility and can easily tear itself open. Her ability to trust was scarred.
But on this day, she was willing to trust him.
He had not walked for many years, because it was too dangerous to reveal himself. Yet even after so long away, he knew the path as well as he knew his own hands.
Needle Spire, a slender thread of rock thrusting out of the ocean beyond Storm Cape; Everfall Beacon now in ruins on the South Shore; Stone Tor in the midst of the Wild; Salt Tower on the dead shore of the high salt sea; Mount Aua; the friendly environs of humble Highwater and its tumbling stream; the Pinnacle above the crumbling archon's watchtower overlooking the basin of Sohayil; the dusty Walshow overlook; the deep swamp within Mar- lake-swallows; Horn Vista; the Dragon's Tower; Thunder Spire; the Five Brothers; the Seven Secret Sisters; the Face, whose sheer cliff overlooked the first mey post on the Kandaran Pass. He knew the name and location of every one; he had walked them all, at one time or another: the hundred and one altars sacred to the Guardians, scattered throughout the land.
He walked quickly, although at intervals she slowed as if wanting to look through onto one of those faraway landscapes. Passing through the turn of Hammering Ford, the river overlook north of Westcott, he scented blood, tainted with the sweet-sour smell he had come to associate with those of his brethren who had crossed under the shadow gate into corruption.
'Who are you?' an unfamiliar male voice whispered from within the maze. 'Where-?'
The girl hissed, her shoulders tensing, but they moved beyond the taint. Finishing the path, they fell out into the center.
In a basin hollowed out of rock, clean water bubbled up from a crack in the ground. With a cry, she fell to her knees and cupped her hands. She drank, sucking in the clear liquid until it dribbled down her chin. The horses watched her with patient gazes. He slid the mirror out of his sleeve.
The bronze openwork backing curved with the shapes of twining dragons rising out of a stylized rendition of layers of mist. The silver-white finish of the actual mirror flashed where sunlight caught in it, like the flicker of a soul.
She looked up, gasping from the bitter drink, blinking like a sleeper coming awake.
'This belongs to you,' he said, holding out the mirror. 'This is your Guardian's staff, which you must carry.'
Her hand extended, but whether she chose to reach or the mirror pulled her to it, he could not say. She took it from him, drew it toward her body. Turned it. Stared into its polished face, seeing her own face hovering ghost- like.
Her mouth opened, and closed. The smooth lines of her face cracked as she hunched her shoulders. For the space of a breath he thought she would scream, or faint. Then she moaned, a low sound of despair, the worst cry in the world for being so weak.
'She lost her mirror, so she is dead. Don't make me remember her.' Although she trembled, she could not release the mirror. It would swallow her, and she would awaken in truth.
How he hated himself for what he had done, even knowing he had no choice.
The trembling in her hand passed into her body, a palsy shuddering through her. Grief is an anvil on which you are beaten, beaten, beaten. We cry for many things, but there are sorrows that lie beyond tears. Sometimes it is easier to look away, and when you are forced to recognize the hammer as it descends, all you can do is wait for the impact that will shatter you.
'Let her stay dead!' she cried.
The hammer fell.
PART FOUR
Gifts
In the Western Grasslands Beyond the Hundred (Four Years Earlier)
21
One never knows what gifts a stranger brings,
'There's nothing of interest in our lineage or possessions or grazing lands to cause a man of his tribe to wish to marry into ours,' said Kirya to her cousin, but as soon as the words left her mouth, she was sorry she had said it that way.
Mariya dabbed at teary eyes with her free hand. Three tiny beautiful beaded nets were cupped in her other palm.
'Nothing besides you, I mean,' added Kirya hastily. She looked away, toward the eastern horizon, measuring the curve of the sun's back as it rose.
'He didn't have to give me this gift,' said Mariya. 'He told me his aunt would speak with my mother at the confluence.'
'Mari, be practical. In our entire tribe we have nine hands of sheep, four hands of goats, and five horses. Three proper tents. He's born to a daughter tribe of the Vidrini lineage. Who are we to even think of bringing a son of that lineage into our tents? We can't possibly pay the marriage price. We've no son of our own tribe old enough to make a marriage across the lines in exchange, if they would even take one.'
'You don't know anything about his tribe, or his mother and aunts. Or what they want.'
Kirya took the beaded nets out of her cousin's hand and twisted them onto the tails of Mariya's three dark braids, a seal binding the loose ends. 'There, you look very pretty.'
Mariya unhooked her polished bronze mirror from her belt and regarded her blurry reflection with a frown, a piece of vanity that made Kirya sit back on her heels. 'Mother will scold me,' she said, heedless of the impiety of admiring her looks in the holy mirror.
'She scolds everyone. We'd best get moving, or we'll miss our chance.' She took the mirror out of Mari's hand and hooked it back on the belt.
Mariya rolled up the blankets they had shared while Kirya saddled the gelding and the piebald mare. The tribe lay a day's ride
behind them, and she wasn't surprised it had taken Mariya this long to reveal even to her beloved cousin the gift a Vidrini boy had given her, since as a stranger and a male he ought not to be giving her gifts at all. It had been at. least six nights back that the two tribes had happened to share temporary grazing lands by a watering hole on their way to the summer's confluence on the Targit River.
Kirya scanned the landscape: The long slopes, never quite hills, were scantly covered with yellowing grass or
