Spear of Heaven by Judith Tarr

little for royalty at all, that Daruya
could discern. She was a commoner, and an Islander into the bargain. Kings to
her were a blasted nuisance, no good at all for mending nets or catching fish or
sailing a boat in the teeth of a gale.
    Daruya, who had learned from Vanyi herself to do all three,
caught the thread of power as it spun toward her, and drew it taut. On it she
strung a web of shadow. It was the same working she had used to conceal herself
on the way through the Gate, and she used Chakan’s shield as she had then, but
this was wider, stronger. Anyone not a mage who looked at the passing of their
company would see four oxen with their riders, the train of pack-oxen that
waited outside the temple, and a confused image of guards, riders, caravanners,
but no clear faces and no certainty as to their numbers.
    With five of them working the concealment, it was a simple
enough thing, and no great effort. Daruya was able to see the town as they rode
through it, to be startled at its earthen plainness. After the wild
extravagance of the temple, she had expected the rest to be as gaudy.
    The temples were eye-searing spectacles, to be sure, and
there were a great number of them, but in among them the houses of the people,
large and small, were simple blocky shapes of mud brick, unadorned even by a
scrap of gilding over a lintel. The people were of like mold: dressed in grey
or brown or at most a deep blue, hung with amulets but boasting no other
adornment—until she saw a procession of what must be priests.
    They marched in a long undulating line, matching pace to the
deep clang of a bell, chanting in a slow drone. Their heads were shaven and
painted like the carvings in the temple. Their bodies were bare in what to her
was a wintry chill, but for the simplest of robes, a length of cloth, saffron
or scarlet or a searing green, falling to the ground before and behind, open
else, and hung about with a clashing array of gold, silver, copper, lumps of
amber, river pearls, firestones cut and uncut, strung together without art or
distinction. They made an astonishing spectacle, the more astonishing for that
passersby seemed to take no notice of them except to move out of their way.
    The caravan bade fair to run afoul of the procession, but
just before the two collided, the priests swayed aside down another road. The
caravan paused, waited for the rest of the procession to pass.
    Daruya, forced to leisure, took in as much of the town as
she could see. It was built on level ground, but beyond it reared the wall of a
mountain, so sheer and so high that it seemed to crown the sky. Snow gleamed on
its summit and far down its slopes—small wonder the air was so cold here. There
seemed no way over or past it.
    She was warmly dressed in gleanings from the temple’s
stores, her coat lined with fur and a cloak over that, and a hat on her head,
but still she shivered. Kimeri, cradled in her arms, nuzzled toward her breast.
It ached as if in answer, though the child had been weaned since her second
year. Daruya brushed the warm smooth forehead with a kiss, and swayed as the
mare started forward again.
    oOo
    They left Kianat unseen and took the caravans’ road to the
north and west. It was steep, and in places it was very narrow, but it found the
pass that went over the mountain and climbed it, higher than Daruya had ever
been in her life.
    When they came to the top, the second day out of Kianat,
unshielded now and riding openly as they were, demons and dark gods and all,
Daruya caught her breath. What she had fancied to be a lofty mountain was,
indeed, but slave and servant to the peaks that marched away before her, wave
on jagged snow-white wave of them, mounting up and up into the pitiless sky.
    It was beyond imagining. She was ant-small, mote-small,
crushed under the immensity of mountains and sky. But the sun that rode over
them, casting fire on the snow, was her own, the face of her forefather. Its
fire burned in her hand. Her blood