He had thought to go uphill, but the sight of the Sun Queen’s three mountain husbands towering over him made him feel uncomfortably fenced in. Instead he rode down, past the tent village where most of the army was camped, over the Snow Serpent River crossing, and out onto the grasses and brush of the Gnam Runga. The light in the sky was pearly and seemed to come from everywhere in the east. It would be a while before the sun crested the topmost heights of the hills and mountains there.
His horse startled a pair of pheasants, who drove horse and rider away from what turned out to be a parade of peeping youngsters. Snow finches, wagtails, and larks also gave their opinions of the rider and his horse as their day was interrupted. Briar wasn’t sure, but those opinions sounded like bird insults. He scanned the sky for the famed Gyongxe buzzards and steppe eagles, but there were none in sight.
“Too cold,” he told the mare. Gloomily he added, “Or they’re out where the fighting’s going on. They’ll get plenty of food at those places, enough for every carrion bird in Gyongxe.” Normally he grudged no one a meal, having often gone without for the first eleven years of his life, but it was hard to wish a buzzard well at a battlefield.
Once he could no longer see the village on the eastern hills or the fort on the southern ones, Briar dismounted, letting the mare’s reins trail. The horse, a sturdy animal bred for the thin air of the mountains, began to graze. Briar walked on until he heard only the wind in the grass and the insults of the smaller birds.
Someone had told him that Gnam Runga meant “Sky Drum.” It was a vast plain between the Drimbakang Lho and the Drimbakang Zugu, the long finger of mountains that curved out of the southern heights and around the capital, Garmashing. The enemy was aiming for that wide plain, where his generals could put their catapults to good use. First they would have to fight the emperor’s army in the north and the tribes of the Drimbakang Sharlog around the eastern passes. No one wanted the imperial armies to mass on the Gnam Runga.
Briar would have preferred to fight in the canyons, where he could have put trees to work, but the plain was what he would have, first when he rode west with Parahan and Souda and later when they rode to Garmashing. Now he crouched and tried to dig his fingers into the dirt of the Gnam Runga. The grass was interwoven and tough. It fought his intrusion, just as it fought the death of the winter freeze.
“I’m a friend,” he told it. “I just want to meet the dirt. Let me in a little.” He spread his magic over the bed of plants. There were patches of bare earth here and there, but he could feel the plant roots running under them, nourished by the trickle of moisture from the distant river.
The grasses trembled and then gave way.
“Thank you,” Briar told them gravely. “You’re very strong. Those lowland grasses would never stand a chance against you.”
The grasses were scornful of fat, water-soaked plants beyond the mountains. Only here, next to the sky, could they reach for the infinite.
Briar shook his head and looked around. A line of boulders stood close by. There were images painted on them in bright colors and outlined in white: a many-headed god, a snake twined about itself to make an intricate circle, a goddess riding a beast whose antlers were tipped with stars, a spider that wore a crown. It wasn’t the first time he had seen such paintings on rocks. Then, as now, he wondered who went to such trouble, and why. The Snow Serpent Pass was bare of them. Now that he thought of it, the Ice Lion Pass, which they had taken on the way to Dohan, had also been bare of the paintings. It was as if the artists had not wanted to share them with foreigners.
Shaking his head at the idea, possibly a leftover of his nightmares, he scooped up a little dirt. The grass closed over the space it had made for him. Briar said his thanks, rubbing the dirt in his palms to get a feel for it. If he was going to be fighting on these plains, he needed to understand his battlefield. He spent his ride back to Fort Sambachu smelling that earth, rolling it between his fingers, and dusting it onto his cheeks. Finally he rinsed it off in the little river that ran past the camp. By then he understood the earth of the Gnam Runga and what grew there, if not the stones and their paintings.
This dirt was very young and energetic, thrust up by the same force that made the Drimbakangs themselves. That same youth filled the roots and stems of everything that grew in it, making it more inclined to do whatever he — or Rosethorn — might ask of it.
He was considering the possibilities on his return to the fort when a soldier in the armor of the Realms of the Sun hailed him and informed him that Their Highnesses Parahan and Soudamini desired his company at breakfast. By the time Briar left Parahan and Souda, they had equipped him for any fighting they might encounter as they got the villagers to the safety of the temple fortresses. He now had three horses assigned for his use, extra packs, a tent, an armored vest, riding gauntlets, leather riding breeches, and an armored cap with a tassel of bronze eagle feathers. He also had a short, potbellied rider named Jimut, who had been assigned to care for Briar’s horses, tent, and even Briar himself.
He and Jimut had just dumped everything in Briar’s room when Rosethorn banged on the door. Briar could hardly believe what he saw when he opened up. Rosethorn looked fresher and brighter than she had in a couple of years. There was an extra gloss to her short-cropped hair. Even the natural red of her lips was more vivid than it had been in a long time.
“What are you gawping at, boy?” Her voice was louder and crisper, as if she had more wind in her lungs. Briar forgot himself and hugged her. She pushed him away. “What has gotten into you? Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for your rudeness to First Dedicate Dokyi last night!”
He grinned at her. “Never crossed my mind,” he reassured her.
Rosethorn looked at Jimut. “And who’s this?”
“Jimut, this is my teacher, the
Jimut pressed his palms together before his face and bowed deeply to Rosethorn. On their walk to the fort Briar had tried to explain that it was important to be polite to her.
“Whatever he told you, I’m much worse,” Rosethorn said.
Jimut kept his palms together and bowed again.
Rosethorn made a harrumphing noise and looked at Briar. “Bring a seed ball and some strong-grow potion,” she ordered. “Captain Rana has horses and guards waiting. We’re going to block the pass.”
“May I come?” Jimut asked. “If I am to attend
Briar sighed. “It’s just Briar.” He’d already said it to Jimut twice.
“I should take every chance to become used to his sort of magic,” Jimut continued politely.
“I have no problems with that,” Rosethorn said. “Only Briar, if we can move this along? We need to root them more deeply than usual, and I want to get it over with.”
“Evvy?” Briar asked.
“She would rather take a bath, she says. She
They were out the door with Rosethorn before she had time to get testy. She said nothing, sinking into a distant, thoughtful mood as they joined Sergeant Kanbab and a squad of ten soldiers at the stables.
As they rode past the camp, they saw that everyone was now up and busy shining armor, sharpening weapons, bundling crossbow bolts, and doing up packs. In the open ground between the tents and the river, archers practiced their shooting while spearmen and swordsmen dueled under the eyes of their commanders. The cavalry jumped their horses over obstacles in unison on the plain. Refugees were arriving: They carried children and belongings, or fetched them in carts and on the backs of mules and yaks as they climbed to the fort.
Once they reached the narrow place in the pass where the road first entered the river gorge, Rosethorn emerged from her deep silence. “Sergeant, take your people over to that rock,” she yelled over the roar of the fast-moving water. “If you’d hold our horses until we’re done?”
Kanbab nodded and motioned for her people to take the animals as Briar, Jimut, and Rosethorn dismounted. Jimut stayed back as the mages went into the bottleneck where the hills were closest to the road.
The task was easily done. Briar sprinkled strong-grow potion on the seed balls held by each of them, but the seeds were already quivering before the liquid touched them. The balls had soaked in the wakefulness and swift growth of the others used in the fighting on their way to the fort. Now it took just a whisper from Rosethorn for them to leap to the ground. The cloth burst, showering seeds everywhere. Plants slammed roots into the earth and sprouted even as Rosethorn and Briar walked forward with their water flasks. By the time they had emptied the water over the scattered seed, the growing vines were up to their shins. The green whips did not try to snag
