who may interpret Ri Amarah customs and their secret language. The source of their wealth. Their sorcery, if they possess sorcery.'
'Don't you trust the Ri Amarah?'
'As much as I trust anyone. Also, you'll be leaving Olossi for a month or more. You and Atani will ride with me on a circuit of the training camps and militia forts in Olo'osson. You'll talk to the local councils and merchants while I'm about militia business. Miravia will be company for you on the road.'
'When will we see Uncle Hari?'
'We'll come to Astafero as part of the circuit. That will be time enough for him to make a decision about where he intends to stand. I have it all worked out, Mai. It will do very well.'
PART FOUR
Guardians
16
Before dawn on the second day of the Month of the Ibex, in the Year of the Red Goat, a storm boiled up from the east over the mountains of Heaven's Ridge to break over a high salt sea and a vast escarpment that overlooked the western desert far below. Marit left her companions and the horses under the shelter of an overhang and walked into the downpour. If she stood out here long enough, would the rain pummel her into droplets that would pour over the jagged edge and plunge down cliffs too tall to measure until they shattered into nothing and were gone beyond redemption? Just as the life she had once led — Reeve Marit, who partnered with her eagle, Flirt — could never be regained.
Over twenty years ago she had been murdered, but instead of crossing under the Spirit Gate, she'd awakened as a Guardian, wearing the bone-white cloak of Death.
Marit had never feared storms. As a child she had sneaked out at night to see how close lightning would strike or if the blue spark of a fireling had left glittering in its wake a tangible mark of its passing, a ropy thread fine like spider's silk but as strong as iron. At such times her father would drag her in and slap her, and afterward hang fresh amulets over the doors and shuttered windows to prevent demons from creeping in on the trail his thoughtless daughter had left open. Her mother would scold her for upsetting her father and waking the others in the compound, but her mother never bothered with amulets and wards. She made offerings to the seven gods and expected the gods to deliver justice through the day-to-day work of the reeves and through the assizes presided over by the gods' holy representatives, the Guardians. That Marit's mother had never herself seen a Guardian did not shake her faith in their holy purpose.
Lightning chased across the sky, leaping from cloud to cloud. Storm scent prickled Marit's skin. Along the distant southern shore of the inland sea, a dance of firelings lit the horizon, winking into flame, flicking out, and popping again into life. She wept at their beauty.
Were the firelings not like the spirits of humankind? It is so easy to cut the breath out of a living, breathing person, to send the
spirit fleeing past Spirit Gate, and yet again and again spirits will kindle. The drive to live, to flower, to grow, is unquenchable; the kiss of the Four Mothers breathes it into the world and even the least of things — a patch of lichen on stony rocks, a frail sparrow battered in stormy winds, an unloved child — will suck in that strength and struggle to stay alive.
Whatever living might be.
She trudged across the pale mud into the shelter where her companions waited: two people who, like her, wore the cloaks of Guardians, and the three winged mares they rode, who were named Seeing, Telling, and Warning.
Jothinin smiled with relief. 'Not much to see in such weather, neh?'
'I saw firelings.'
His pleasant smile widened into something more heartfelt. 'Seldom glimpsed and therefore always welcomed. Among their gifts are said to be healing, and a filament as fine as spider's silk yet as strong as iron.'
'What is a fireling?' asked the girl where she crouched by the fire, turning a spit on which she had skewered five conies trapped among the rocks.
Jothinin settled down cross-legged with a satisfied grin.
'We're about to hear a tale,' said Marit with a laugh as she sat down.
'So quickly you understand me.' He pretended indignation, but he was a man who wore lightheartedness as easily as the sky-blue cloak that swathed him. Yet Marit did not think him light. 'It happened in ancient days when the Four Mothers ordered the Hundred. They gave pattern and form as weft and warp. The tales weave the fabric of the land, and within the tales lies the Hundred count.'
'What is the Hundred count?' the girl asked. She never left off asking questions.
'The hidden order of things. The Hundred count is the skeleton beneath the flesh. In the Hundred count we comprehend the architecture of the land. Just as we count numbers, so can we count the frame of the Hundred. The Hundred is many, yet it is also one. The Hundred is the one crossroads at which many roads meet. Yet it is also two: female and male; night and day; wet and dry; life and death. We who live and think possess three parts: the mind, the hands, and the heart, and three states of mind: resting,
wakened, and transcendent. Every town and city builds three noble towers, and within the Hundred three languages are spoken. The Four Mothers created us out of water, fire, earth, and air. The Five Feasts delineate our lives. There are six reeve halls,' he nodded at Marit, 'and seven gods, seven treasures, seven holy gems. Seven directions.'
'How can there be seven directions?' demanded the girl.
Marit hissed, for it was very rude to interrupt a tale, but Jothinin smiled with the calmness of a man who has faced the worst in himself and come to the conclusion that he can see very little after that to unsettle him.
'Nine Guardians and nine colors, the hues of their cloaks. Ten Tales of Founding.'
'What about eight?' cried the girl.
'Naturally, I was hoping you would ask,' Jothinin said.
Kirit laughed, the sound so unexpected it made the dreary day brighter. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and outside first light glimmered ovecthe sodden ground and restless waters.
'' These are the eight children, the dragonlings, the firelings, the delvings, the wildings, the lendings, the merlings, the demons, and we who call ourselves humankind.' There's your answer, Kirit. Firelings are one of the eight children — you might call them tribes or clans — of the Mothers.'
'That is no answer.'
'Lendings live in the grass, wildings in the high forest canopy, merlings in the ocean, and delvings in the stone. Firelings live in storms. They're seen most often in mountainous regions. They are blue, and sometimes red, and they appear to our vision for a moment only, as if they can slip into this world and out through the Spirit Gate, inhabiting both that place and this one. There are also tales of how firelings have saved lives of dying children, chased wandering goats home, and aided women in childbirth when they had no midwife to attend them. As the tale says, 'the spark of the living spirit is the spark of the fireling.' That which lives draws them.'
'What of us, Jothinin?' Marit asked as the fire streamed heat and smoke over her damp cloak and wet hair. 'We are met here, we three. You called us 'the last of our kind.' But the Guardians are spirits arisen out of the pool at Indiyabu in ancient days, raised by the gods in answer to a plea. As it says in the tale: 'In the worst of days, an orphaned girl knelt at the shore of the lake
sacred to the gods and prayed that peace might return to her land.' Are we truly Guardians if we did not rise out of the pool at Indiyabu? For it seems to me that the others — Lord Radas, Night, Yordenas, Bevard — have crossed under the Shadow Gate into corruption. They sow the fields not with justice but with discord, hate, and
