Kirit had ridden ahead, following a path into the trees. He led Telling after her. It was cool up here in the mountain valley; the air was bracing, and a taste like the feel of a thunderstorm snapped on his lips. He shuddered at each least rustle and stir within the trees, but he saw no one. Birds fluttered in the branches and, once, a small sleek hairy pig scuttled across the path in front of him and raced away into the brush. The noise of its passage faded as he emerged onto open ground, a sprawl of ancient ruins beside a pool fed by a waterfall spraying down the side of a sheer cliff.
There was something odd about the water in the pool, something that hurt his eyes, like knives stabbing him, more pain than light. Even Kirit reined her mare away, wincing and shading her eyes.
'When we came before there weren't people here,' she said. 'But now they've made their mark and claimed it. Look! There's an altar in the cave. An offering of flowers, like they would offer to the Merciful One in Kartu Town where I was a slave.'
There was a chain in the water, hard to see if you didn't have a Guardian's vision. It ran from the shallows into the deep black depths beyond his sight. Chains bound things.
'Something's happened here,' he said. 'Something bad. Best we leave quickly.'
Kirit rubbed her eyes, looking as disturbed as he felt. 'Marit will know what to do.'
He was relieved, thinking of Marit's competence, her decisive nature, her clear-eyed vision, her blunt words. 'We'll leave Olo'osson. It really is best for the army to march without us. If Marit thinks otherwise, we'll discuss it when we meet her.'
He paused at the edge of the clearing as Kirit rode up behind him. The high peaks darkened as the sun set behind them, washing their outlines in a hazy purple-red whose echoes rippled in the pool where the falls disturbed the deep water. He shuddered and turned away, mounting his horse, making ready to ride. Kirit rode up close beside him, as uneasy as he was.
'Anyhow,' he added as Telling unfurled her wings, 'we can tell her we've accomplished our part of the plan. Just as we said we'd do.'
Anji had flown enough that he had become comfortable both with the harness and with the height, with his feet dangling,
with his safety held entirely in the hands of another man. Joss wasn't sure he could give up control so thoroughly; he was too accustomed to having his hands on the jess. But perhaps Anji, trained as a soldier, had long ago learned that his survival depended on the loyalty of his men. Who was the wiser, in that case?
'There!' shouted Anji, pointing so rudely with his finger that Joss flinched, and in the same instant — either because he caught the lapse or because he was that quick reacting — the captain curled his hand into a fist. He'd seen a ledge tucked high up on the rock-bound slope of Mount Aua.
'We can't go there,' said Joss. 'Guardian altars are forbidden.'
'Who forbids them?'
'We're not allowed to break the boundaries by walking in the holy places the gods made for Guardians.'
'Haven't the Guardians already been corrupted when demons stole their cloaks? Anyway, Joss, I have a vague memory that I was once told in passing by a person whose name I do not recall that when you were young you broke the boundaries many times. You got expelled from your first reeve hall because you dared to walk on Guardian altars? Can that be true?'
Joss laughed bitterly. 'I'm wiser now. Perhaps.'
'Ignorance weakens us,' said Anji as the wind thrumbled in their ears and a glitter woke on the distant ledge like a promise.
If they only knew how the Guardians had become corrupted. For if one Guardian had become corrupted, why not all? He refused to believe it, not about Marit.
'The altars do not like our kind. They'll cast us out and try to throw us to our death.'
'Are these altars alive? As the sands in the bone desert along the Golden Road are alive, inhabited by demons?'
'They are forbidden. The gods guard them. Nor will Scar be of any aid. You'll see.'
Mount Aua towered above the Aua Gap, its peak capped with snow after the rains and oftentimes scalded to a balding patch as the heat built later in the dry season. Many tales of the Hundred met or mentioned Mount Aua; songs praised the mountain's strength and watchfulness. Folk did not cut trees on its lower slopes, and its crown seemed to graze the heavens, although Joss had once flown right over the ragged summit, gulping dizzily at thin air. The ledge was scored into the mountain's side about
two-thirds of the way up. As Joss and Scar tested the currents and tried several routes to move in close without getting too buffeted by the winds swirling around the peak, Anji canted his body this way and that to get a better look.
'These altars, are they sited to give the Guardians an exceptional vista from which to observe the movements of people in the land? Or to give them a safe haven which few — beyond eagles and determined climbers — could ever hope to reach?'
'Hold on,' said Joss.
He flagged the rest of their flight — six eagles in all — to stay in a holding pattern; then he gave Scar the signal for descent. They hit an eddy, dropped, rose, and finally he maneuvered a reluctant Scar in to the wide ledge. The eagle landed, spread his wings in protest, and chirped vociferously.
'Unhook… now,' said Joss, and the two men dropped together, Joss shielding Anji from the eagle's irritation, but as soon as the men's weight vanished, the eagle folded his wings, tucked his head, and settled into the strange stupor that afflicted him on the altars.
'He's quiet,' observed Anji as they paced away from the eagle, an arm's length from the sheer edge. 'Hu! We're high up. I feel dizzy.'
'Going so high so fast you may get light-headed.'
The ledge ran like a divot scored out of an otherwise evenly sloped incline, and its inner edge was lost in the shadowy depths of a low-hanging cave cut into the rock. Up here, the wind really tore; no tree or bush or pile of boulders offered shelter, nothing but that cave, and between the cleft and the rim lay a glimmering pattern etched into the rock.
'Is that sorcery?' asked Anji. 'Or a vein of crystal or gems grown into the rock?'
'It's a Guardian's labyrinth. The labyrinth guards the altar, which you can only reach by walking the maze. But anyone who attempts to walk the maze will be cast aside by the gods' protective magic before he can reach their sacred hollow. As I should know, having survived the attempt more than once.'
Anji's eyes narrowed as he examined Joss, but he seemed also to be suppressing a smile. 'In your reckless youth?'
Joss chuckled. 'That's the answer I'll give if pressed.'
'So if I try to walk that path, I'll risk being cast out and thrown to my death? What if I don't walk the maze? What if I
just cut straight across the ledge to that cave behind, to see what's inside there?'
Joss slipped his flying hood back to drape along his neck and brushed a hand along his hair. 'I doubt this is the time to find out, given we've just enlisted the recalcitrant council of Horn in our grand plan to defeat the Star of Life and its commanders. Perhaps you think otherwise?'
Anji laughed, studying the altar. 'Prudence dictates caution. And yet…' The wind pulled a few strands of hair from his tightly coiled topknot; it tugged at the hem of his black tabard, and shinnied through his sleeves, catching in the coils of leather that bound his forearms, and the supple gloves encasing his hands.
What was the quality in Anji that drew the eye?
Anji was relentless, that was it. He kept after the tasks he meant to finish; he did not let up. People had a way of knowing who could be trusted to bring the sheep home and who might get weary of the shepherding and leave the flock out in the far pasture while bringing home excuses instead.
Anji smiled almost as if he guessed what Joss was thinking. He nodded toward the glittering path. 'Do you suppose Guardians can overhear us when we stand here?'
'Cursed if I know. I wouldn't want to take the chance that they can.'
'See you that open ground above and to the right? If we fly there we'll be able to speak in private and keep our eye on this altar at the same time.'
They hooked back in and flew to a high open slope on the massive mountain, above the tree line, so high up
