The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (7 page)

“You
sure he was dead?”

She
sheathed her weapon.

“He is now.”

The
surviving guard was awaiting them at the over-turned cart. He and Ursa each
grabbed a corner and, like its unfortunate owner, it was dumped unceremoniously
down the mountain, wood and wheels and feathers raining in its wake. Ursa seemed
to take morbid pleasure it watching it go.

“All
those poor little chickens.” Kerris shook his head. “Really Ursa, now I see why
you wear white.”

She
mounted her horse in one smooth motion.

“Why?”

“The
blood shows up so much better.”

Her
smile was as terrifying as it was beautiful. She tossed her head and headed
out, the surviving leopard leading the spare horse behind. Kerris whistled for
Quiz and followed.

***

Kirin growled at the sight.

“I can’t believe this.”

“Oh!” he heard Fallon Waterford
exclaim. “Oh my, that’s terrible!”

There, on the narrow path before
them, lay an over-turned ox-cart.

He
rubbed his forehead. He was getting a headache.

With
a hand held high, he stopped the party and all horses ground to a halt. Two
elderly people, ocelots as old as the mountains, stood at the side of the road,
nodding and smiling gentle, toothless smiles. It was clear they were expecting
the Imperial party to come to their aid. Both oxen were still hitched, one
animal standing, the other lying quietly under tangled yoke and leathers.
Fruit, fresh and dried, had spilled from a split in the rough wood. Flies were
gathering.

The old man began to speak in the
ancient tongue of the Manda’Rhin, his voice hushed and breathless like the
language itself.

The
Captain growled under his breath once again, for he spoke little Manda’Rhin.
This
was the perfect place for an ambush,
he thought darkly. The mountain
climbing steeply above them, falling away sharply below. Small twisted cedars
grew at strange angles out of the slopes, and drifts of snow provided little
cover. But there were no warning bells, no little voices cautioning him to be
on alert. Moreover, alMassay was standing quiet and steady under his hand.

There
was a sound as Fallon pulled her horse up beside him.

“He
humbly asks us for help.”

“You
speak Manda’Rhin?”

“Oh
yes! Just don’t ask me to write early Dynastic poetry in it!” She laughed out
loud. “There are all kinds of books in the University. In every tongue you can
imagine. It’s a wonderful place, the University.”

“Tell
them we have no time.”

“S-sir?”

“We
have no time. The sun is already far too high in the sky. We will not make
Sha’Hadin
by nightfall.”

At
the mention of the monastery the old couple smiled anew, their small, moist
eyes bright with recognition. One of the oxen lowed miserably, thrashed its
forelegs as it tried to rise but sank back to the ruts in the road. The pair
were still nodding at him. Still smiling.

“I’m
sorry,” he began in slow Imperial. “We cannot help you.”

His
grinding teeth betrayed his words. The Scholar seemed to recognize this.

“Forgive
my boldness, sir,” she began tentatively, “But I think we should.”

“At the cost of another Seer’s
life,
sidala?”

She swallowed and looked down at
her saddle.

“Sir, this morning, you said that
the security of the Empire was at stake...”

“It
is.”

“I
think...” she swallowed again. “I think that if we can’t help each other, then,
then, then the Empire is already lost. Sir.”

He cursed himself once again.
She
was right. Expedience was not a worthy master. With a resigned sigh, he
signaled the six mounted guards and with well-trained precision, they split
into three groups, a pair to the cart, a pair to scout the terrain and a pair
to stand in guard of the two civilians, tempting targets for any would-be
highwaymen. They were as swift as they were thorough and once they had searched
the vicinity, the first pair dismounted to attend the cart. Like the mobs in
the marketplace, this proved no simple task and soon, Kirin was forced to
dismount to lend a shoulder.

Almost
immediately, the cart began to heave and within minutes, the dislodged wheel
was back on the road.

“Wow,”
whispered Fallon to the Alchemist. “He’s really strong.”

Sherah
smiled, her golden eyes never having left the Captain.

“It is the way of lions.”

Kirin
straightened up, releasing a deep breath and tugging down the sash at his
waist. He approached the elderly couple with a formal bow.

“
Sidi, sidala.
Your cart is restored.”

“Captain?”

It
was one of the guards.

“Yes?”

“Sir,
the rear axle is broken. It won’t be going anywhere like this.”

It
was a small sound at first, a faint and distant clatter that grew louder and
louder, like the onset of thunderclouds. All eyes turned to the sky, then the
defiant cliff face towering above them, then with amazing alacrity, to the road
ahead which erupted with a crash of wood and iron. Bits of shale rained down as
well, along with wheels which continued bouncing their downward descent and,
oddly enough, feathers.

“Wow,”
said Fallon. “Another ox-cart.”

 
Behind her, the Alchemist began to hum.

The ocelots were still smiling.

Kirin
sighed, headache pounding in his temples, and turned toward his horse.

***

The sun was sinking behind an
unfamiliar mountain, casting long shadows into the craggy valley. There was
grass here, but it was sparse, cropped too short by a small band of goats that
roamed in the rocky pasture. Twisted pines dotted the landscapes but those too
were short and stunted, owing their crude shapes to hard summers and harder
winters. Muddy footpaths seemed to weave in and out in all directions, a maze
of trampled snow and hoof-worn creases that led nowhere, anywhere and
everywhere, except where they needed to go.

“Where
now, stableboy?” Ursa growled.

Kerris moved Quiz deeper into the
valley. He rubbed a hand through his rumpled hair, bit his bottom lip several
times, chewed on the tip of an oddly-filed claw but in the end, he simply
shrugged.

“I
have absolutely no idea.”

“What?! I thought you knew where
this place was!”

“Well
then. You were wrong.”

“The
Captain said –“

“The
Captain
never asked if I’d been there, did he? Only if I knew the way.
Well, I showed you the way, didn’t I? But how to get in the proverbial front
door is another matter entirely. In fact I don’t think there
is
a front
door. I recall something about the number seven...”

Suddenly
one of the baskets erupted at her knees. It was Path, the ill-tempered,
emitting a series of shrill, frantic cries and sending downy feathers all over
the Major’s doeskin. She was trying her best to tear the bamboo cage to shreds
with her talons and beak.

Ursa swatted the basket lightly.

“Stop
it.”

The
falcon struggled all the more furiously to get out.

“I
said stop it.”

She swatted harder, to no avail.
Finally, she grabbed the basket with both hands but it simply resulted in a direct
hit from the lethal beak and a ribbon of red running the length of her finger.

“She’s
hungry,” said a voice.

“So
am I,” muttered Kerris, before his head snapped up in surprise. “Say! Who said
that?”

Seated
on a rock in the middle of the valley, a man was watching them.

“Was
he there before?” asked Kerris.

“No.”
Ursa scowled, her eyes narrowing to shiny slits. “He was not.”

“Of
course I was,” said the man. “You simply weren’t looking.”

The
Major urged her horse forward. The man spoke with the voice of a lion, in the
deep, rumbling tones and accents of the Old Courts. He was maned, too, his hair
growing long and dark and falling loosely past his shoulders. His pelt was a
pale sand, with a scar of fine white fur running across his left eye from brow
to cheek. He sat quite still, clothed in sweeping robes of brown leather, and
he carried a staff of twisted bamboo, which he tapped softly against the base
of the rock. He seemed tall, being long of limb and lean of torso and his
leonine tail was tufted with black.

But
he was as far from Lion, or any Pure Race, as a cat could get.

This cat wore a beard.

Mongrel
,
she thought grimly.
Mountain Lion
. Like the stripe of a tiger, or
rosette of a jaguar, a dark circle of coarse fur ran over his lip and around
his mouth, framing it, accentuating it in a way no true lion’s should. It ran
just to his chin and across it, thankfully stopping there and not traveling up
his jaw like she had seen in other mountain cats.
What was this called
again?

Oh yes, a goah-tee. Appropriate,
since he apparently tended goats.

“Do you know where the main
entrance to the monastery is?”

He
seemed to consider this a moment.

“I don’t think there is one.”

Again,
that rich, rumbling voice. She did not like this one bit.
Mixed Breeding
.
The scourge of the Upper Kingdom.
She decided to speak slowly, for he
was also, apparently, quite stupid.

“We seek
Sha’Hadin
. Can you
help us?”

 
“Yes. I can.”

“Can
you take us there?”

“Yes.
I can.”

She
felt her claws begin to curl.

“Now?”

“Well,
I don’t think they’ll let you in.”

“Why
not?”

“Why
should they?”

“We’re
here on business.”

“Business?”
He was smiling at her now, the kind of patient, long-suffering smile of only
the very wise, or the very dim. “Are you buying or selling?”

“Not
that kind of business.”

“We
have nice goats.”

She
stiffened in her saddle.

“We’re from
Pol’Lhasa
.”

“Aah.
Pol’Lhasa.”
It was only then that she realized his eyes were brown.
Unnatural.
Cats’ eyes were light, like the sun, like the sky, like the grass. Dogs eyes
were brown like the earth. This was unnatural. “Are you the Empress?”

“Simpleton!”
she sputtered. “Let’s go. This mongrel couldn’t find his way into a sheep pen,
let alone the monastery of the Seers!”

She prodded her horse forward,
almost pushing the man off the rock with her passing. He sent a curious,
lop-sided gaze to Kerris, who merely shrugged.

“Sorry,
sidi.
I’m just the
stableboy.”

The
leopard fell in behind and the party rode out of the small valley at a forceful
trot, picking one of the goat trails and following it as if they could make it
take them where they wished to go.

The
bearded one watched them, until they had disappeared into the long shadows of
evening. He shook his head with a sigh, rose from the rock and began to walk in
another direction, back along the way they had come.

 
***

Sunset was changing things.

The usually clear, bright blue of
sky had faded, growing dark, muddy, almost the color of the mountain rock
itself. Slopes, once red as clay, became the color of old wine and wine-colored
clouds took the shape of slopes. Everything gleamed and glistened on snow. It
all blurred the distinction between heaven and earth, making the narrow trail
more treacherous than ever before and causing great strain on already-strained
eyes. If he hadn’t known better, Kirin might have thought that the coming of
night beckoned the elements together, gathering them in some ancient ritual of
unification or prayer.

He
was tired.

And they seemed no closer to their
destination than when they had set out this morning.

All conversation had ceased after
repairing the ox-cart’s broken axle. It was as if each word was an added hour,
time they could ill afford now as the air around them grew cooler and the heavy
cloaks of midday became welcome second-pelts. They had passed the Inn Kerris
had mentioned, but there was no sign announcing it as such. Even still, he’d
been sorely tempted to stop for a flask of ale and directions. But the place
had seemed abandoned, the windows blackened, door bolted. Nothing on this
journey was proving simple, he had concluded.

Immediately
ahead, there was the sound of a hoof sliding on unsteady ground. The lead guard
had caught his mount soon enough but the Captain called a halt to their
progress. He dismounted and strode to the fore.

High
in the distance he could see lights.

Torches,
most likely, lining what could only be some sort of road. He prayed that they
led to the monastery and not some other Inn or marketplace or ox-cart.

He
felt warm breath on his neck.

“Can
I help you,
sidi?”
purred the Alchemist, standing altogether too close
for his comfort.

“No,
but thank you,
sidala.
” He sighed and surveyed the river of lights,
winding its way into a steep ravine far above them. “We are in need of torch,
not candle.”

She
smiled and held out her palm. A burst of fire erupted within, and Kirin found
himself shrinking away from its brilliance. It burned from no recognizable
source but something in the palm of her hand sizzled and flared with the light
of many torches.

He
nodded, impressed.

“That... should suffice.”

“Wow,”
came Fallon Waterford’s voice, hushed with wonder. “Look at all this...”

On
the rock face behind them were carvings.

The
entire side of the mountain was chiseled from its stony base as far up as they
could see. Kirin shook his head. The carvings did not start here, but likely
had begun a long way back on the trail, the shadows of the setting sun
rendering them unnoticed and incomprehensible. Even now, they remained as such
for the symbols themselves were strange, likely remnants of an ancient tongue.