something more important.
For a wound that wasn’t vital, it had made Briar scream anyway. People from his own side had found him. When they lifted him to bring him back to camp, the pain had been so bad that he had fainted like some temple archive lily.
He was trying to tell Parahan all this when the potion hit and he slept.
19
THE GNAM RUNGA PLAIN
THE ROAD NORTH TO GARMASHING
The next time Briar came around, Rosethorn sat by his cot. She said cheerfully, “I’d box your ears, but apparently you’re being punished enough.”
He glared at her. “You aren’t usually so happy when I foul up this bad.”
“I’m not happy because you got hurt,” she replied tartly. “I realize your motives were good, but you shouldn’t have been out there.”
Briar covered his eyes with his arm. “I figured that out,” he admitted. “I just didn’t want anybody to die who didn’t have to. Well, our people.”
“General Sayrugo found us,” he heard her say. “Her scouts spotted the Yanjingyi warriors and she cut them off. None of them survived.”
“That’s good,” he said dully. People were moving around the tent. He didn’t want to see them talking about what a bleat-brain he’d been.
“Briar, look at me,” Rosethorn told him. “Sayrugo brought us company.”
He heard a scraping noise. A very deep voice said, “This is Briar? From your conversation, I had thought he would be as large as Diban Kangmo.”
“Go away, company,” Briar said. “I don’t want to be gawped at like some daftie in a show.”
“I thought I had come to understand the odd words that you use, but he is incomprehensible,” the deep voice complained.
Someone tugged on his sleeve. A voice he thought he would never hear again said, “Please look at me, Briar. I traveled such a long way to see you, and on a yak named Big Milk, too.”
It couldn’t be Evvy. Evvy was dead. He had her stone alphabet, taken from her by her murderers. She never would have let them have it unless she was dead.
Briar lowered his arm. Evvy stood at the opposite side of his cot from Rosethorn, wearing a tunic that was big enough to be a dress. A gaudy, multicolored silk scarf served her as a head cloth, but under it was Evvy’s same pair of bright eyes and her same flat-tipped nose. A smile quivered on her mouth.
“You’re alive?” he asked her.
She nodded. Tears filled her eyes. “But they killed my cats, Briar.” She knelt beside the cot and put her head on his chest.
Despite the pain he turned and hugged as much of her as he could reach. He murmured silly things, about how they’d pay them back, and she told him about what they’d done to her. It set a dull heat of fury burning in his chest.
“But you can walk?” he whispered.
She nodded and drew back, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. She was about to wipe her nose, too, when Rosethorn reached across Briar to thrust a handkerchief into her hand.
“Luvo fixed me. Well, Diban Kangmo’s daughter fixed me. I hardly limp at all,” Evvy explained. “Luvo’s a mountain. The mountain’s heart.”
“Who’s Luvo?” Briar demanded. “Who’s Diban Kangmo?”
“Diban Kangmo is the goddess of the peak spiders,” the deep, calm voice said. Evvy moved aside a little. Next to her, on a stool that brought it up to the level of the cot, was a rock of clear, purple, and pine-green crystal. It was roughly the height of Briar’s forearm and hand together, and it had the shape of an animal, though it was that shape after the rock had sat in running water for years.
A bear, maybe, Briar thought. A bear worn down by water.
“Briar, this is Luvo,” Evvy told him. “Well, Luvo isn’t his actual name. His real name is a lot longer, and I couldn’t remember it, so I call him Luvo. He’s one of the Sun Queen’s husbands — the one called Kangri Skad Po, the talking mountain.”
The rock nodded to Briar. “I did think you would be larger, from Evumeimei’s descriptions,” it said. Briar did not see a mouth move, but the voice definitely came from the rock. “I am honored to meet the one who has meant so much to her.”
Briar thought about it for a moment, then looked at Rosethorn. “You gave me another dose of painkiller potion, didn’t you? I’ll take willow tea from now on.”
Evvy’s tale was a long one. The healers fed Briar and changed his bandage as she told it. By the time she was done, Parahan, Souda, Lango, and Jimut had come to listen, not having heard every detail. If he hadn’t been clutching her arm most of the time, Briar would have thought it another mad dream, from her capture to her travels deep in the earth until they had found Sayrugo’s army.
Sayrugo had agreed to transport Evvy and Luvo to Melonam, where they were supposed to join the troops led by Captain Lango and his companions. They would have done so, too, but their force had come across Yanjingyi soldiers chasing fifty warriors led by Soudamini. Now the Gyongxin and Realms troops were joined, and Sayrugo was in command.
“If you’re up to a wagon ride, we’re close to Melonam,” Rosethorn told Briar when Evvy had finished. “You’ll be more comfortable in a proper bed than here.”
“I don’t need a wagon,” Briar protested, swinging his legs to the side of the cot. “I can sit on a horse.” He put his feet down and stood, or tried to. His thigh hurt so much that he bit the inside of his cheek until it bled. He sat down.
“Wagon,” Rosethorn said. Jimut nodded and left the tent.
To save his self-respect, Briar looked at Luvo. “If you’re a mountain, how did you get so small?”
“Your manners are as dreadful as ever,” Rosethorn murmured. She was measuring pain-killing medicine into a cup.
“This part of me is the heart of the mountain, and much of its mind,” Luvo explained, turning his head knob so he appeared to look at Briar with the pits that served as his eyes. “I do not think your manners are dreadful. I have only Evumeimei to measure by. Never before did I believe that meat — that humans were worth the trouble to converse with, so I have no standard for their manners.”
“Evvy also thinks we humans aren’t worth the trouble to talk to.” Briar looked at Rosethorn. “Rosethorn, I thought we agreed, no more of that stuff.”
“We have to lift you into the wagon, my dear.”
Oh, this was very bad. The cut must be deeper than he realized, if she was not blistering him for being rude to Luvo, or telling him to be silent and take his medicine. He watched while she dropped another liquid into the cup.
“Don’t worry,” she said, and smiled. “This will make it taste so bad you won’t care about the rest.”
Evvy, sitting quietly by Luvo, actually giggled.
Briar gulped the potion. It was even viler than Rosethorn had hinted it would be. He struggled until he was sure he wouldn’t bring it back up again. As his head spun, he mumbled, “Rosethorn, take my seed bombs.”
“I already have,” she told him as she beckoned to Jimut and another helper. They did their best to lift Briar gently, but he still screamed once before he fainted.
