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 nanshur Rosethorn,” Briar said. He’d been lucky that Souda had found a man who spoke tiyon, since Briar had only a scattering of words in Banpuri. “She’ll be riding with us.”
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 Nanshur Briar —”
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 has seen us do this before.”
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 the two mages, but those would be the only people the vines left alone. Thorns an inch long showed on the lowest parts of the stems as the vines rose and sprouted more branches. Their various flowers budded and bloomed, then scattered still more seed in a burst of air.
Rosethorn and Briar had withdrawn to the clear ground near Jimut by the time the first blossoms showed. Everyone could see that green stems had crawled across all of the open ground between the rise of stone to the hills and to the river. They could hear the rustle as petals and leaves unfurled and heavy stems wove together with their neighbors.
Kanbab, who had at least seen something like this before, offered Rosethorn her flask. Rosethorn took a gulp of butter tea, grimaced, and passed the flask to Briar. He took two good drinks, having acquired a taste for the local beverage, and returned the flask to Kanbab with a quiet thank-you. He never took his eyes from the barrier, feeling with his power for any weaknesses. Rosethorn left that to him as the kind of basic work a junior mage ought to attend to.
“Will the enemy be able to cut through the vines?” Kanbab wanted to know.
“With a sharp enough sword or halberd,” Rosethorn said absently.
Briar grinned. “And then the stems will grow back three times as fast. And they will look for the one that chopped them, and grow straight through him.”
“Or around,” Rosethorn murmured.
“Or around,” Briar agreed. “And around, and around.”
“And the emperor will know you did this,” Kanbab said.
Rosethorn and Briar looked at each other. “Let him,” Rosethorn said.
The barrier was now two feet thick and three feet high. Thorns pulled themselves up the hillside, drawing stems with them. Roots shot down from the stems, lancing deep into the stony earth. More blossoms gave up seed that filtered to the ground among the thickly woven stems.
Briar waited for word from Rosethorn. She watched until the barrier was four feet tall and five feet wide on the road, and had climbed ten feet up along the hillside. No horse, mule, camel, yak, or human would be able to pass between the barrier and the river without losing skin, or between the river and the cliffs that edged it on the far side. They both knew the thorns would continue to grow for days, leaving the flanks of the hills on the north side of the road impassable by mount or by foot. No one would be crossing into or out of Gyongxe until Dokyi, Sayrugo, or those with whom they had trusted the opening spell came to clear the pass again.
Briar glanced at Jimut, who had turned gray under his dark brown skin.
“Jimut, mount up,” he told the rider. “And have a swallow of something, before you faint.”
“I never faint,” Jimut said, but he wobbled as he walked to his horse.
One of the other soldiers held the mount’s reins. It took Jimut two tries to get into the saddle.
“This will do, I think,” Rosethorn said, turning away from what they had set in motion.
“Good,” Briar said. “I want my breakfast.”
By midday, General Sayrugo and two hundred of her troops were gone, on their way northeast to warn the villages and get the people to safety in the temple fortresses. Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy spent the afternoon with Parahan and Soudamini, playing with the cats, watching their troops exercise, reading maps of the Gyongxe basin, and refusing to speak of anything gloomy. Supper was a grand feast in the style of the Realms of the Sun. Captain Rana and his squad were invited as thanks for bringing Parahan to Gyongxe and his sister. There was juggling, sword and fire dancing, and music from the Realms and Gyongxe. In the end, Parahan carried Evvy back to her room in the fort. She had fallen asleep by the fire. The cats, used to these things, followed them.
Evvy woke as Parahan set her down to open her door. Since she was leaving at dawn, Rosethorn had moved her things down to the camp. Evvy now had the room to herself. Parahan held her up with one hand as he walked her inside.
“Are you coming to say good-bye to us in the morning?” he asked as she fumbled to feed the meowing cats.
Evvy shook her head. “I don’t like good-byes. They’re bad luck. I feel small enough about not going to fight.” She sat cross-legged on her bed.
“You helped fight all the way here,” Parahan told her. “And Rana may need you to help defend this place. Just take care of yourself and the cats, so I have my friends to come back to. Will you promise me?”
“All right. I promise.” Evvy grabbed Parahan’s sleeve. “And you look after Briar and Rosethorn? As much as they’ll let you.” She felt a bad quivering in her lip and in her eyelids.
Evvy turned over and buried her face in the pillows. She only looked up, and wiped her wet eyes on her sleeve, when she heard the door close.
That afternoon she had placed her small statue of Yanjing’s god of luck, Heibei, on the room’s shrine. Now she used one of the coals in the hearth to light a stick of incense. Applying that, she lit two more sticks in the jar that already stood on the shrine, then left hers with them. Putting her palms together, she bowed and prayed silently to the plump, grinning god. She knew that Parahan, Souda, Dokyi, and Rosethorn didn’t pray to Heibei, but she didn’t think the god would mind, and Briar always said he would take help from wherever he would get it. She wasn’t sure about General Sayrugo’s gods, but she included her as well. She’d heard Captain Rana’s warriors say that soldiers could always use a friendly god’s attention.
Once she had finished praying to Heibei, Evvy turned in the direction of the Sun Queen’s husbands. She knew exactly where each mountain’s peak rose behind the fort. Now, in the quiet of the room, with the cats settled on the bed without fuss, she even thought she could hear their voices. One of them especially had a kind and musical voice, a low, burring hum. She tried to copy it low in her chest, reaching for that magical sound. On and on she hummed, making a kind of prayer of it, a prayer to the Sun Queen’s husbands to look after her friends.