The Hieros touched her fingers to her forehead, as in prayer. 'Holy One. Greetings of the night.' Deliberately, she looked at him.
He had learned over the years how to protect himself against the onslaught. In the early years, he had avoided looking folk in the face because every look, every meeting, was like a hammer to the head. But a Guardian could not fulfill his duty if every assizes was a brutal pounding. He had learned to filter thoughts and feelings as through a net, capturing those silvery fish he needed and letting the rest slip away. Every person hides within himself grievances and cruelties, but many are simply trying their best, sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding. Most folk were like nai porridge, a little bland and even boring while perhaps sweetened with a dollop of honey or spiced with the sting of eye-watering hot peppers.
The Hieros did not fear him. Her faith in the gods' laws was strong, and she had made hard choices that caused suffering to others, but she was not ashamed of her life or her tenure as hieros over this temple, her prominent place in the hierarchy of Olo'osson's temples and guilds and councils.
'What do you want from the temple?' she asked, because for her the temple always came first. There had been a girl, once, named Jarayinya — an old-fashioned name taken from the Tale of Patience — but that carefree girl had been swallowed up long ago by the All-Consuming Devourer. 'When we met before, you told me that the war for the soul of the Guardians has already begun.'
He nodded. 'We are at war, Holy One. Now we are in need of
allies. I am as you see me a humble man, an envoy of Ilu in appearance and a Guardian in truth. This young woman is an outlander, and yet she is also a Guardian. There is one other Guardian we count as an ally. That makes three.'
'There are nine Guardians, Holy One. Every child knows that.'
'Among the Guardians some have become corrupted. She who wears the cloak of Night rules them. Three obey her without question: Sun, Leaf, and Blood. One, a man wearing a cloak like to the twilight sky, obeys her but with reluctance. We'd take kindly to news of him, in the hopes of making him our ally.'
T have seen no Guardians but you two.' She was speaking truth.
'So she's not a demon, then?' the outlander asked, indicating Kirit. 'The spirit of an angry dead girl?'
'She is a Guardian,' said Jothinin, 'as am I.'
'I have seen you before, ver,' admitted Tohon. 'You walked over the Kandaran Pass when we did. But you were trampled in Dast Korumbos during the bandit attack. I thought sure you were dead then.'
Jothinin ignored his words. 'Have you seen or heard tell of other Guardians?'
The outlander looked up. A glancing blow, that glimpse: he was an honorable man, loyal, cautious, and too deep to scan easily. He was far too deep to be easily led astray.
'I heard of one wearing a green cloak, a very bad man who did unspeakable things,' he said as a spark of entirely unexpected anger flashed in his otherwise guarded gaze; so might a father swell with outrage at an attack upon a beloved son. Upon Shai. 'Where he went I do not know. Marshal Joss spoke of seeing a death-cloaked woman in his dreams. Before the attack on Olossi our soldiers shot a cloaked rider on the West Track. We're told demons command the northern army, Lord Radas among them.' He was telling the truth.
Jothinin raised both hands, palms out. 'Let me tell you a story. My nose is itching. Many whispers have tickled my ears. The Guardians are not single spirits who have existed in all this time in the same vessel since the day the gods raised them at Indiyabu. The cloaks carry the authority and power granted by the gods. But the individuals who wear the cloaks change.'
'How can this be?' demanded the Hieros. 'Guardians can't die.'
The outlander tugged on his ear, saying nothing.
'The cloak leaves a person when his tenure on this earth comes to an end, and awakens a new vessel. Any who inherit the cloak were ones who died fighting for justice, and are therefore granted a chance to restore peace.'
'Then you are demons!' said Tohon.
'Neh, I think not. Maybe we are ghosts, of a kind. Solid enough. Able to laugh and to cry, to eat, to piss if we drink too much.'
'But if Guardians can't die,' the Hieros said, 'then how can the cloak pass from one vessel to another?'
'Within the Guardian council, there has always have been a mechanism to guard against the shadow of corruption. Five cloaks, acting in unanimity, can execute one.'
The Hieros laughed curtly, quick to see the flaw.
'Indeed,' Jothinin said with a wry smile, 'if a Guardian is canny enough and persuasive enough, she may corrupt enough of the council to make it party to her will. As the cloak of Night has done.'
The Hieros snorted, her mood darkening with skepticism. 'So this is your Guardians' war? You seek a majority of five, to destroy the others. What is to stop you, then, from becoming corrupt in your turn? From taking over this army that is ravaging the north?'
The question startled him. 'Nothing but my own heart, Holy One.'
'Why come to us? There seems little we can do that we have not already done: raise an army to safeguard ourselves, send out scouts, build up stocks of oil of naya, expand the safe zone so folk may plant crops when the rains come. You can be sure we do not wish to fall under the northern army's brutal yoke. You need only look at me, Guardian, to know I speak the truth. So what else can we possibly do?'
For once he stumbled, at a loss for words. He could not force words past a leaden tongue.
Kirit rode forward. 'In my tribe,' she said in her hoarse out-lander's voice, 'every person works. All work together, each at her own tasks. So must we work together, to bring peace.' She frowned at Jothinin, as if scolding him.
The Hieros and the Qin solder waited as the lamps hissed and the river flowed.
The night wind's weary sigh spurred Jothinin on, despite his
misgivings. 'We come to offer you a weapon. I will tell you how to kill a Guardian and release its cloak to a new awakening.'
22
Although it wasn't quite dark, a fire burned at Candle Rock as Marit approached from the north. The hells! She had expected the rock to be deserted, and yet hadn't she also prepared the way by shifting the message stones? It was two days off the full moon. She might have known some reeve would be waiting, as reeves did, loyal comrades who would risk their lives to aid one of their own. Her eyes watered, maybe only because of the stinging wind.
She'd left Badinen and his eagle riding a high current while she dropped down to scout out a safe landing place; they'd been traveling for many, many days, and every evening she and Warning landed first as a precaution. They pulled up sharply as the man sitting beside the fire leaped to his feet.
'Marit!'
Why did it have to be him?
Careful not to meet his astonished gaze, she dismounted and slapped Warning on the flank to send her off to the altar at Ammadit's Tit for sustenance.
'Are you a ghost or a lilu?' he demanded.
'I'm a Guardian, Joss.'
He sat down hard on the ring of stones as if all the breath had been slugged out of him. 'You can't be Marit. Not truly.'
'Truly I am,' she snapped.
'Marit died!' His head rose, and for a horrible moment she looked into him, all his shame and fury and reckless rule-breaking to make the gods say they were sorry, only of course he had caused her death by violating the altar on Ammadit's Tit just because he was too young and stupid to think something so awful could come of breaking the boundaries. And all the drinking and sex in all the twenty-one years after her death had not made his shame and fury go away; only the years themselves had muted his grief and anger, as years will do. By then, of course, he'd gotten into the habit of drinking and devouring-