HE IS WALKING but instead of skeletal trees he sees the long rise and fall of the slopes that make up the grassland countryside where he and the eagle bedded down that night. Grass rolls away on all sides. There is no horizon. Mist boils up out of the ground as though the earth itself has exhaled. He strains to see through it into the veiled distance. Are those merely shadows on the slope ahead of him or is that a figure climbing toward the crest? Those fingers on the back of his neck are the wind. He tries to move forward, to chase it down, but he cannot shift.
Then, on the wind, he hears her voice as faintly as if she is speaking to him across a vast distance, or in a whisper just behind his head.
"The ospreys raid on the West Spur. Their leader is Beron, captain of the border guard. Break them first, before they take the treasure that the Hundred needs most. The carters and merchants will help you, for they suffer the worst depredations. Hurry. The shadows are spreading. Beware!"
"Marit!" he cried, sitting bolt upright.
It was dawn, and he was sweating, and after all he was awake and there was nothing to see except the dregs of his campfire, his pack and weapons set on the ground beside the bedroll on which he had slept, and Scar rousing himself with the rising of the light. He buried the last embers, and made ready. The sky was cloudless, utterly clear, bound to the flat eastern horizon and still purpling dark where it met the distant Soha Hills to the west. His thoughts, too, were clear, sharp, naked. He thought of murdered reeves and mutilated eagles, of River's Bend burned to the ground, of High Haldia under attack, of farmers tied to the posts of the Witherer's altar, of Horn Hall abandoned, of the four children, of the dying Silver and his murdered companions. He thought of the voice in his dream.
You had to leave it behind, because if you did not, it ate you up from the inside out.
But not this time. This time he wouldn't walk away. He would fix something, serve justice somehow, or by the hells he would die trying.
22
The road north toward the Hundred ran long, and through steep, impossibly high mountains. Shai listened to the chatter of merchants and hired men as he rode through the ranks of the caravan.
"I knew it were not good, the way that other caravan did racket out yesterday."
"What caravan? I didn't get to the market that early."
"It were at Sarida before us, you know, readying to go. A smaller group of Hundred merchants they were, anxious to get home. They did bolt at dawn whilst we were still bargaining with the caravan master for places. I bet they did hear something of these bandits and heretics, and hoped to outrace the troubles."
"The market magistrate said there's been no caravan come south from the Hundred for two months. Not a one, not since our company came five months back before the really cold weather."
"Might still be snow up on the pass."
"No. I'm sure it must be these troubles. I hadn't finished with my last trades, I had a few deals to make, but I let them go. Better safe than dead, I'm thinking. I'm that glad we lucked into these strong guards."
"May the gods watch over us."
"Hush! No talk of the gods in the empire. You'll get us killed!"
The Hundred merchants had a strange way of talking; many of the words were the same as the language spoken up and down the Golden Road and in the empire, but they shaped the sounds differently. They had also a peculiar manner of dressing, men wearing loose robes that left their calves bare, or knee-length tunics and sleeveless jackets over baggy trousers. Instead of heavy jackets to protect against the cold, they wore lengths of cloth, cloaks voluminous enough to wrap around their bodies, falling down to their ankles and fastened in place at the shoulder. The complexion and arrangement of features on their faces weren't like anything Shai had seen in Kartu Town, either, where one saw a variety of folk passing through as merchants or soldiers or priests or slaves. They hadn't the red-brown clay coloring of Kartu people, or the dusty brown complexion of the Mariha and desert people, or the mulch-brown features of many of the Sirniakan people, nor the richly brown-black skin of Priya, who came from far to the south past desert and heaven-high mountains both, close to the sun. Most of these northern men had a complexion with a golden-brown shine, black hair more commonly curly than the coarse straight black hair known in the rest of the world, and the brown eyes that marked all human folk.
Not like Cornflower's demon-blue eyes.
Why must he still think of her? Those memories made him flush, made him itch. They shamed him. Chief Tuvi rode through, casting orders as to the winds, and in his wake Tohon dragged Shai away to ride point.
Out ahead of the rest, they pushed their faces into the wind that ran down off the tremendous height piled up before them. Tohon rode in a concentrated silence, his gaze roaming over the unfolding road and the narrowing vista of the land, but Shai sucked in the flavor of the wind and mumbled to himself in a low voice. By breathing in air that tasted of far places and unknown destinations, he hoped to thrust her ghost out of his mind, because she would not stop haunting him. Yet she ought to stop, here in a land where women were not permitted to walk abroad alone and uncovered. She ought to stop, because there were no ghosts in the Sirniakan Empire. Not one.
"Tohon, the Qin soldiers and that groom who died. What happens to them? To their bodies and spirits?"
"To die in battle is a good death. The gods take the dead man's spirit into the heavens, and their flesh is scattered by the animals, returning to the earth."
"But don't you keep their bones with the ancestors?"
Tohon burst out laughing. "Hu! You folk with your feet stuck in the bricks of your cities. I've seen those tombs where you bury the bones of your ancestors. How are we Qin to carry so many bones with us? I've my weapons, my saddle, my string of horses, my field rations. Back in my home country, my son tends the family herds. I'd a daughter once, but she died, and my good wife died of grief at the losing of her. It was a bad death. The girl drowned. When the water takes you, the demons capture your soul." He shook his head, face creased with a frown. Shai had never seen him look so downcast.
"I-I'm sorry to hear such a sad tale. May the merciful heart of the Holy One ease your burden."
"Huh. That's why I rode east with Commander Beje. I'd done my years in the army, I could have stayed in the home pastures and raised my grandchildren, but the burden was too great. My daughter's ghost haunted me. I wonder in what land my bones will be scattered. This north land, this Hundred land, perhaps."
"You don't just leave everyone behind, do you? Like those men who died. We just left them behind. Isn't there shame in having no remains to bury with the ancestors? Is there nothing their family has of them, in the end?"
"How is a person to stop in a battle, or on the trail? You talk too much, Shai. I told you before. Once the spirit is fled, the body is just meat. The spirit can be born again and again, and travel on the winds. You can meet them in another life."
"Not once they've passed Spirit Gate. The Merciful One teaches that once you pass Spirit Gate, you can be free of the world, free of suffering, gone altogether beyond."
"Why would you want to be free of the world?" asked Tohon. "I'll never understand you people."
" WHAT HAPPENS WHEN folk die, here in the empire?" Shai asked Anji that night as the captain waited for his tent and awning to be set up. They were standing by a freshly kindled fire. In the hills, there was plenty of wood to burn.
Anji considered, as if searching the question for traps. Finally, he shrugged. "The Sirniakan magistrates investigate every death and determine its cause. The guilty are punished. Those responsible for the corpse pay the death price. Afterward, the body is taken to the temple and burned. The ashes are plowed into special fields to nourish the living. Everything is always tidy in the empire. Not like in the rest of the world. Ghosts dare not trouble the priests of Beltak, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the Shining One Who Rules Alone."