At a tiny walled village high in the mountains, at the last registered toll station, the Beltak priest turned aside with no word to anyone and walked away south, downhill. Yet even though his departure brought a certain sense of relief, the most difficult part of the crossing lay ahead. For days, they passed no other villages or indeed any sign of habitation except for a few isolated shepherd's shacks. On several occasions they observed men along the ridgelines, following and observing their march, but no one approached them.
In time, they had to dismount and lead the horses because of the steady upward incline of the road. Anji pulled the scouts in, and guarded the caravan before and behind with ranks of his most experienced men. In these high reaches, they saw only birds and rodents and deer. At length, in the mountains with white-capped peaks towering above, it became difficult to suck in quite enough air as one trudged along. They were walking in a no-man's-land where only clouds and rain held sway. They had truly left behind the grip of the empire and its priests.
Shai knew it for sure because one morning he saw a ghost, a wisp caught among rocks where a slide had half obliterated an old sod shack. The ghost was beckoning to them, its substance bent in a passionate come come come, and its mouth opening and closing with exaggerated desperation.
What did it want? It was too far away for Shai to hear what it was saying.
Seeing the remains of the shack, a peddler called cheerfully to one of his fellows, "See, there! That's the old way station, where that orange priest used to take alms and offer up that holy water of his. Not far now to the border! Only two or three more days, though most of it downhill! Whew! Downhill is the hard part!"
"What became of him?" huffed his companion, whose legs were as stout as tree trunks from years of pushing a loaded handcart up and down these steep trails. "That orange priest, I mean."
"Eh, who knows, up here. Anything could happen."
They both caught breath, then called out to a slender man of mature years who was striding past them, the very same man who had warned Shai off watching the Beltak priest. In daylight, Shai could admire the extremely bright, even gaudy, colors of the man's clothing: a voluminous cloak of peacock blue, wine-red pantaloons, and a tunic of an intense saffron yellow hue.
"Greetings of the day, holy one. Greetings of the day."
"Greetings of the day to you, friend. And to you. Almost home, neh?"
"Almost home! The gods be praised! You in a hurry there, Your Holiness?"
"I hear there's another caravan a half day's journey ahead of us. Thought I would catch up to them, get the news." He kept walking, making for the front of the caravan. Amazingly, the peddlers did not guffaw at this astounding statement. Indeed, the man's stride seemed tireless; as far as Shai could see, he wasn't even breathing hard despite the thin air and a bundle slung over one shoulder.
Shai trudged alongside the peddlers for a bit, watching the other man's bright blue cloak recede up the road. When, in the happenstance of moving along, he caught the eye of one of the peddlers, he spoke up.
"What manner of holy man is he?"
The two men looked him over, measuring him, and then nodded at each other as if to agree that they could speak freely.
"That one? Can't you tell by the sky cloak? That's an envoy of Ilu. Though what he was doing walking down into the empire I can't imagine. They kill priests there."
"Silk," said the other peddler wisely, nodding toward the well-wrapped goods in his own hardcart. "Sometimes the temples send a holy one south to buy silk for the temple. A dangerous task, mind you. Like a test of their courage and wit. Or to see if they're ready to move up in the temple hierarchy. I'll wager he's got silk in that bundle, two bolts of highest-grade quality. Not anything I could afford."
The holy man reached the van and just kept going, advancing past the forward guard and along the road until he was lost from sight. No one tried to stop him, a traveler moving into the unknown. Would he return home unscathed? Would something terrible happen to him?
But after all, Shai realized, he was really only wondering those things about himself.
PART FIVE: SLAVES
23
JUST BEFORE SUNSET a man appeared on the road, entirely alone, walking up out of the south. He was a holy man, and he wore the gaudy colors of an envoy of Ilu: a voluminous cloak of peacock blue, wine-red pantaloons, and a tunic dyed the intense yellow gotten only from cloth dyed with that dearest of herbs, saffron, whose value in the markets of the Hundred Keshad knew down to the last vey. Along with the rest of the small merchant company, Kesh stared as the man strode to the spot they were settling in for their night's camp, cheerfully greeted the caravan master, and began chatting as though he'd been traveling with them all along. The envoys of Ilu were known to be insane, not mad in their minds but willing to endure hardships and risk dangers that no ordinary person would get near. This certainly proved it.
But Keshad had his own business to attend to, a wagon, mules, driver, and most crucially the goods he was transporting north over the Kandaran Pass to the Hundred. He had a very particular and complicated routine he must follow at night to keep his goods safe. So he dismissed the envoy of Ilu from his thoughts, and did no more than glance his way once or twice, until midway through the next day when the envoy, pacing the caravan, drew up alongside Kesh where he walked at the front of the line.
"Greetings of the day, nephew."
"Greetings of the day, Holy One."
As the two men walked along the ancient trading road, they talked. It was a good way to pass the time. Their feet scuffed up dust with each step. The rumble of cart wheels and the clop of pack animals and the laughter of a quartet of guards striding out in front serenaded them. Behind, the rest of the caravan clattered along. That ensemble of noises always seemed to Keshad the most reassuring of sounds when he was out on the road. If safety could be found in the world, then surely it was found where folk banded together to protect themselves from predators.
"In ancient days," the envoy was saying, "the Four Mothers created the land known as the Hundred with its doubled prow thrust east and north into ocean and two great mountain ranges to the south and the west to protect the inhabitants from their enemies. The Mothers joined themselves with the land, and in that transformation seven gods emerged from the maelstrom to create order."
Keshad shrugged. "So the story goes, at any rate."
"Ah. You're clearly born and bred in the Hundred." The man touched his own left eye, as if to bring to Kesh's attention that he had noticed the debt scar on Kesh's face. "Yet you don't believe the Tale of Beginning?"
"I believed it when I was a child."
"You've gone over to the Silvers' way of believing?"
"The Silvers? No, I don't know anything about that."
The envoy was old enough to be Kesh's father, had Kesh still had a father; a man beyond his prime but not yet elderly.
"Something else, then. Hmm. Keshad is your given name, so you say. That means you were dedicated to the Air Mother at birth. Too much thinking. That's often a problem with Air-touched children. In what year were you born?"
Kesh brushed his elbow, where his tattoo was. "Year of the Goat."
"Even worse then! Goats are inconstant and unstable, prone to change their thinking, especially if they're Air-touched and liable to think too much. Still, they can survive anything. Look at you, a young man, in the prime of your strength, good-looking, all your teeth-oh, no! missing one, probably from a fight."
"That's right. But the other man lost more! And he started it!"
"Happy is Ilu when he hears of those who gain justice!" The envoy grinned, and Kesh laughed. "Good eyes, not bloodshot or yellow or infected. Strong limbs, open stride. Health in order. It must be your Goat's heart that is distracting your Air-touched mind."