“No,” said a voice just outside the light of their fire. A man of Rosethorn’s age in the long scarlet tunic worn by this temple’s priests walked closer to their group. “Our magics enclose us to protect us, with only the opening at the gate to allow other magics to enter, if they are small ones.” He looked at Rosethorn, then around the circle until he found Briar. “We would have been forced to ask both of you to remain outside. I have brought our chief priest’s apologies to you. Normally this is not such a problem, though your burden” — he nodded to Rosethorn — “is more than our spell walls can handle at any time. But there are so many small magics now. We already have two villages and their shamans, and there are always the midwives and healers.”
Rosethorn got to her feet and bowed. Briar did the same, though his sore body complained.
“We understand,” Rosethorn told the priest. “These are things that happen in times of upheaval.”
He bowed; she bowed, which meant Briar had to bow. Then she wandered off with the priest to talk magic. The others began to talk about fighting they had done before. Briar listened until he got so bored that he decided to go for a walk. It would stretch his legs and give his ears some blessed quiet.
He ambled down toward the river, waving to the sentries as he passed them. Once he reached it, he found the bank was lined with large boulders. He didn’t remember them from the ride in, but that was no surprise, as tired as he’d been. He slipped between the boulders and sat on the rocky verge, listening to the fast-moving water and thinking of nothing else for a while. It was a relief to have some time to himself.
When he turned to climb uphill to camp, he saw images in softly glowing paint on the sides of the boulders that faced the water and the plain. Each stone showed a different figure: dragon, yak, many-armed god or goddess, snow cat.
Then he saw motion. First the painted eyes followed him, and then the painted faces.
He stopped in front of the largest stone. The picture on it was a nine-headed cobra. It was a very big nine-headed cobra, taller than Briar by twelve inches at least. The paint glowed a moon-pale white. Briar wouldn’t have liked the thing even if it had held still. Then the middle head of the nine, the one that bore an ornate crown, left the safe grounding of the rock and stretched forward until her flickering serpent tongue touched Briar’s nose. He thought he might howl like a herd dog. He was far too scared to move.
“Please go away,” he said. His voice cracked.
“Briar?” That was Jimut. “Who are you talking to?”
“Are there any nine-headed snakes that crawl around after dark here?” Briar called. “One head is a woman’s?”
“Naga,” Jimut whispered. He had to be close for Briar to hear him. In fact, Briar was certain Jimut stood on the other, unpainted, side of the boulders. “But they’re stories. And the ones up here are different from the ones at home.”
Briar winced as all nine faces grinned down at him. “What do you mean?”
“In the Realms of the Sun they’re evil.” To Briar’s horror Jimut climbed on top of the boulder beside the naga. The three-headed goddess that was painted on Jimut’s rock stared upward as if she could see him. She slid a hand up along the curve of the stone, reaching for Jimut’s foot. “Here a naga can be a human head surrounded by snake heads, or crowned by snakes. They’re the gods of whole mountain ranges,” Jimut explained, “or several rivers that flow into one, or —”
Briar’s knees gave way and he knelt, unable to stay up anymore. The naga sank back into its boulder and went flat again. The three-headed goddess held her arms out to either side, as she had posed originally, and stared into the distance.
“You’re tired,” Jimut said, jumping off his stone. “You must go to bed.”
Briar did go to bed. His dreams of imperial armies that marched on Winding Circle were mixed with dreams of naga women dancing among fields of dead soldiers. He woke when dawn was just a pink gleam in the sky and walked back down to the stones by the river.
In the pearl-like early light, the naga queen was blue with partly scaled skin and very red lips. Her companion heads were yellow snakes, their tongues the same red as her mouth. Her crown was orange flames.
“Excuse me, please,” Briar said politely, “but I have to ask, were you joking around with me last night? It’s addled my head a bit. Well, more than a bit, since here I am when I could be sleeping, talking to a painting of a snake lady. A very beautiful snake lady,” he added hurriedly. “The most beautiful I’ve ever seen.” He waited, but there was no response from the painting.
“Addled,” he said at last, turning to look at the river. “That’s all it was. That thing of Rosethorn’s plain scrambled my poor —”
Something tapped his shoulder. He looked. It was one of the snakes. Slowly he turned. The naga queen leaned forward from her boulder and kissed his forehead.
“Real,” Briar whispered.
The queen and all of her snakes nodded.
“Have a good day,” he said, entirely unsure of what else to tell her.
She smiled as they all retreated back to their flat, painted selves. As flummoxed as he had ever been, Briar trudged uphill to the camp. He couldn’t even tell Rosethorn. She had too much on her mind for him to worry her more.
When they took the road, Briar carefully did not look at the stones until they had safely crossed the river. Only then did he turn to gaze at them. A number of gaudy, painted figures in shades of orange-red, bright green, and deep blue sat on top of the stones, waving at him. Atop the biggest stone, the naga swayed as she stood on her muscular tail, eight of her heads looking at their neighbors or the air. The crowned head blew a kiss at Briar. Gingerly, trying to do it so no one else would see, he waved at her.
A hard hand smacked him in the ribs. “What is the matter with your hearing today?” Rosethorn demanded. “I said your name three times! Captain Lango says we should reach the junction of the Tom Sho and the Snow Serpent sometime tomorrow. I’m leaving you there.”
Briar frowned. “You didn’t see —”
“I’ve had visions till my eyes want to pop. So what?”
He looked at the toe of his boot. A handful of sparkling snake scales lay on the leather. He would let them serve as a reminder that what he’d seen weren’t visions in the least.
“I should go with you,” he said, once he collected his thoughts. “There are strange creatures up here, Rosethorn —”
“No,” she interrupted. “I won’t argue the point anymore.” She turned her mount away from his and rode up to the head of the column.
Souda moved into the spot at his side. “I’m sure she’ll feel better once this errand of hers is done,” she told Briar softly.
Will she? he wondered. Will any of us?
They had ridden three miles when they saw buzzards circling near the road. In a shallow gully where a creek ran into the Snow Serpent, they found the remains of a group of villagers, one of Captain Lango’s squads, and some Yanjingyi warriors. Lango dismounted and walked down among the dead along with a few of his people. Briefly the Gyongxin soldiers stood there or along the edge of the road, their palms pressed together in prayer. Then the captain and those who had gone down to look climbed out of the gully.
Rosethorn and Briar approached him. “We know you haven’t time to bury them,” Rosethorn said, “but we can grow plants over them, all of them, until they become part of the earth.”
Lango shook his head. “We have sky burial. The buzzards will have them, and the other creatures. In that manner they will become part of our holiest of lands and remain close to all the gods.”