Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (90 page)

Miravia brought a lamp.

“Is there any news?” Mai asked her.

“I’m told nothing,” said Miravia angrily. “Nor will I be, until I am an adult. It seems so unfair, for there are girls younger than I who are married. And you, who have come into our house, you are also left in the dark. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

There was nothing to do but sleep.

DAY ROSE AGAIN
, after a restless night. Again, Mai was summoned and taken to the rooftop garden for the women’s morning convocation of khaif and sticky buns. The ritual did not alter. The old grandmother would have poured the cups in the proper ritual manner, Mai thought, even with marauders pounding up the stairs and threatening to lop off her head. Afterward, the women cleaned up and departed to their tasks.

Standing at the lattice railing, she surveyed the streets and avenues. Wagons and carts rolled in a steady stream down toward Assizes Square, piled with twists of rag or bundles of freshly cut arrows. Along the battlements, guardsmen assembled, and she thought that women stood among them. At least half of those on the wall held bows or crossbows.

The army out of the north spread like a blight around Olossi, dark and cankerous. Flags and banners fluttered as a wind belled up out of the east. Six catapults had been drawn close during the night, and men bent busily around them. At the rear of the army, several large tents stood in a row, like the early arrivals at the quarterly market fair held in Kartu Town when folk walked many days from hill villages and isolated hamlets to purchase what they could not grow or make themselves. Around these central tents the fence of guards made a triple layer. Lines of men marched to reinforce those troops gathering within the outer town.

Out of the army came a crack, and a fine, high whir, and then the splintering thud of impact as a heavy object hit inside the town. Dust wafted up from a house a couple of streets inside the inner walls. Shouts rang out, and folk ran down what streets she could see toward the stricken compound. Looking back at the army, she saw that the great arm of one of the catapults had swung over. Another was being winched back.

By the main gate, a flag was drawn up on the pole.

“Now they will negotiate.”

Mai yelped, because she was so frightened, but it was only Miravia speaking.

Mai grasped her elbow and pulled tight against her. “I thought we meant to fight them.”

“The council must purchase time,” said Miravia. “I heard my mother speaking of it to my aunt. Master Feden disgraced himself. Now it is up to him to purchase
time. He must delay the assault at any cost. It’s said he will sacrifice himself to save the city.”

Mai did not need to ask what Miravia meant. She knew how the story would go. An official is allowed out of the walls to negotiate with the enemy, knowing he may be first to be killed. He is led to the tent of the general, or the prince, and taken inside, where he stands at their mercy. He talks at length, and speaks of the honor due to his ancestors and to the gods or spirits who watch over his town. He may sing a song relating to the founding of the first trading post at the oasis, how a mare led her sand-blinded master to the spring in the midst of a howling storm. For these acts we must be grateful, for there are those whom we cannot see who watch over us. When the ambush, or the counterassault, comes, he will be trapped behind enemy lines, but his act of sacrifice will save the day—or else it will be in vain, if the city is already doomed, since that is as likely an outcome as any other. She knew the tales by heart. In truth, her own father had related to her the actual story of the coming of the Qin army to Kartu Town, and how the Mariha administrator had met an abrupt death while trying to stall for time in the hope of receiving help from the next staging post to the east, where a substantial Mariha garrison was stationed. He had not known, of course, that the next staging post, and its garrison, had already been overrun.

“You’re weeping.” Miravia touched soft lips to Mai’s damp cheek.

“There’s no shame in weeping,” whispered Mai.

“No. Our tears water the garden of life. Or so the poets say. Look. Now there he goes. I think it must be Master Feden, but I can’t be sure. He’s too far away.”

The Olossians were distrustful. Rather than opening a gate or extending a ladder, they lowered their negotiator down by basket from the inner walls. For a long time after this Mai could make out nothing of what was transpiring, but at length a procession emerged from the outer walls and struck straight for the central, and largest, of the tents. Most of those in the procession were soldiers dressed in the drab leathers of fighting gear. One was a merchant whose bright silks advertised his wealth because of their splendid colors.

“That’s a saffron yellow,” said Miravia with the sure tones of one who knows her wares. “It’s said Feden is a man well filled with himself, but I must say it takes courage to march to your likely death dressed in your most expensive cloth. He might have left it for his widow, although everyone says they hate each other. And his heirs, no less. Oh dear. Have I shocked you?”

An attendant pulled aside the curtain that blocked the entrance to the largest tent. Mai shuddered as the merchant vanished within, to whatever fate awaited him. Who would meet him there, inside the tent? What questions would be asked? And how would Master Feden answer?

They watched the distant tent. Miravia’s fingers dug into her forearm, but the pressure seemed too distant to be bothered about. Mai caught her breath in, held it. What was going on inside? Was Feden spinning a tale to protect Olossi, or spilling the truth and thus betraying his new allies for the sake of mercy from his old ones? It seemed that the wind died abruptly, that a dead calm enveloped them as a shrouding cloth is thrown over the face of one who has crossed under Spirit Gate
and left this world behind. It seemed that the skin along her neck tingled as if kissed by a demon. She felt that a hidden gaze sought to pinion hers, and dig deep into her, but she rejected it, she shoved away that sense that her heart was being probed. She had nothing she was ashamed of! Yet, troubled by that pressure, she stepped back from the lattice barrier, shaking off Miravia’s hand, and reflexively rubbed her arm until she realized that the other woman had held her so tightly that her nails had left marks in the skin. Miravia swayed, as if hammered, and Mai caught her under the arms and helped her sit on a nearby bench.

“What was that?” Miravia gasped, although she could barely force the words out. “I felt as if hands were clawing in my head.”

No sound enlivened the air. Mai’s ears seemed stuffed with wool, and her throat was choked as with dust and ash. Olossi was strangling.

Then, the catapults woke. Their arms creaked and swung. Mai sucked in air to cry out a warning but no sound came out of her mouth. Six impacts shook the town. Wood shattered. Stone cracked. Dust burst skyward. Shouts and screams cut the silence, and folk hiding in their houses or standing frozen on the streets all came to life at once with shrieks and calls, the buzzing chatter of fear.

“They know,” said Mai. “They know we mean to fight them. Maybe he’s already dead.”

Supine on the bench, hands lax on her belly, Miravia said, weakly, “Look.”

A swift shadow darted across the troughs of herbs, succeeded by a second, and a third. Mai flung back her head and stared up into the blue pan of the sky. Four more passed overhead.

Eagles.

The Voice of the Walls boomed its warning cry. Seven times it rang.

Mai ran to look. Along the inner walls, guardsmen and civilians alike were passing bundles of arrows and rags up to the wall walk. At regular intervals, reservoirs of oil were set alight. Smoke uncoiled upward in threads of black and gray.

Beyond, the catapults made a clattering grind as they were winched back. Ranks of archers leaped to position, targeting the eagles as they glided low over the besiegers. An arrow flashed in the air. A stream of arrows was released out of the army, against the approaching eagles, but Mai could not see if any hit their target.

As the first flight of eagles swept past, each one released an egg from its talons. Up the eagles beat, seeking altitude. Down these large eggs tumbled, and when they hit the ground they shattered as ceramic does. It seemed a pointless effort as only one out of thirty struck a man, even if that man dropped as though felled by a hammer blow. The rest broke uselessly on wagons, or on the earth here and there with a splatter.

All along the wall, arrows flared as they were set alight. A volley of burning arrows hissed out from the walls into the outer town, where the army had gathered along the wide roadways. Arrows fell among them, and where the twisting flames met the splatter from the shattered vessels, fire burst with such brilliance that Mai cried out.

Now dropped a second flight of eagles. From below a fierce volley met them. One eagle lurched sideways and began to drop fast. Another released its egg early, so the
ceramic vessel fell somewhere within the inner town; this eagle broke away from the rest and with faltering strokes beat a wide turn, trying to get away. Of the rest, some released their pots over the outer town while the rest waited until they were beyond the outer walls and over the encampment of the enemy with its tents and supply wagons neatly laid out as targets. A dozen eagles from that first flight had circled back and, daringly, dropped down into Assizes Square, rising again as quickly, with the reeves holding bronze basins filled with burning rags. Arrows sought them. An eagle plunged into the outer town. Yet the rest made it through, and cast their rags to the earth. Where a pair of burning clouts tumbled into the roof of one of the tents, fire blossomed with bright rage.

Miravia stepped up beside Mai. She leaned on the railing. Far away, men were beating at the flames, but it seemed they could not put them out.

“It’s the breath of the mountains,” said Miravia. “The fire lanterns. Oil of naya. In its crude state, it rises from seeps, particularly along the western shores of the Olo’o Sea, where the earth cracks and bleeds.”

Along Olossi’s walls, the archers fired at will as a third flight passed over the encampment outside the walls. Fire and smoke began to obscure portions of the outer town, and where, in the open spaces, it was still possible to make out movement, Mai saw the enemy running away from the deadly flames. One man was burning as he ran, and even when that tiny figure dropped to the ground and rolled back and forth on the earth he did not stop burning. She could not look away. She was overwhelmed with joy, with horror, no space separating these two. A distant wagon, laden with the distinctive round, sealed pots in which oil of naya was carted, caught flame; when the axle was burned through enough to crack, and the wagon fell to one side, the pots rolled free and broke, and then the oil exploded with a roar that briefly drowned out the panicked cries of the enemy and the cheers of Olossi’s guards.

Fire raced along the tents. It seemed to leap to any spot—tents, catapults, wagons—where the splatter had touched. Even a taste of flame, a drifting spark, set a new conflagration. Men frantic to escape the burning broke from their ranks and scattered on the road or through dry fields.

The inner gates opened. Olossi’s militia ran out in force to drive back the invaders. They pushed forward confidently, cutting down men without mercy. Behind them, townsmen set to with axes to clear a firebreak between the inner wall and those motley houses and hovels built up into the dry-moated forecourt that separated the inner city from the outer sprawl. Bucket brigades lined up, but not even water thrown directly on it killed the flames.

In the encampment, the tents were ablaze. No creature caught in that inferno could live. What would Shai see, if he were standing here? She shaded her eyes; she squinted; she stared; but she saw nothing but the chaos of the living. What did Anji see when he witnessed the rising of the ghosts of those he had killed? Did he fear their vengeance? Or did he know that ghosts are impotent in the world if you do not fear them? Only past Spirit Gate do they gain a measure of power, so the priests said. Yet according to the teaching of the Merciful One, power of the spirit comes to the spirit only by giving up power. According to the teaching of the Merciful One, Spirit Gate leads to peace because beyond the gate lies nothingness. Surely, in such
a place, power as soldiers and merchants and princes understand it means nothing. Is nothing.

“Look!” Miravia tugged on Mai’s elbow to pull her gaze away from the chaos below.

There! As they fled back along the road, back to the north and east from which they had come, the routed soldiers were hit by a wave of riders who smashed through them, galloped on, turned, returned, swept back through, slashing and cutting, and raced on into fields and woodland, gone as swiftly as they had come.

A second wave of horsemen stormed across the tide of fleeing soldiers. Even in their low numbers, these riders cut a devastating wake, wolves on a summer’s night. The army was broken. They could only run, single men, small groups scrambling for safety, while the wolves devoured the stragglers.

The camp burned steadily. In the lower town, every able-bodied adult fought to save the warehouses and shops and living quarters from the fire, smashing some to spare the rest. There was nothing to do but watch as the battle shifted from defeating the army to defeating the fires. More folk poured out of the inner town and down through the gates into the outer town. Smoke boiled upward as flames raged along the outer wall. Ash stung her eyes, and she blinked back tears. From this high eyrie, the battle took on a certain detached fascination: there, a warehouse roof collapsed; there, a gap was cut between one burning house and a neighboring tenement just in time to prevent the fire leaping. The open spaces and squares in the lower town became crowded with folk pausing from their labors to gulp a drink of water; with wagons carrying barrels of water drawn from the river; with piles of goods hauled out of the path of the fire. The eagles did not return. Like the wolves, they pursued the enemy.