23 - The frozen plain
And more than the frozen plain, but I like the title. Sorry for the stream-of-consciousness bit when they came back from the Khas camp, but that’s the way I remember it, all tumbled together.
`We stayed for a day after the Feast of Naigha, packing and saying goodbye to everybody. “Will you really not stay?” most people asked, and when we said we wanted to be on our way before it got really cold, they said “But now it will get really cold while you’re on your way!” But we wanted to get the children home as soon as possible, and bring the king the letters, especially those in Ayran’s leather bag. The boys didn’t want to stay the whole winter either. So the next day we set out in a cart that was creaking with all the food and other things the villagers had given us. Also with Ailin, who was going to Trynfarin to learn at the temple. Tao didn’t like it one bit, and Ailin didn’t like it much either, but there was nothing for it.
Athal came to hug us, dressed in a jacket a bit too large for him but clean and newer than his own. “Did you get a new jacket?” I asked. “It’s my brother’s!” he said proudly. I told him to grow big and strong, and first he cried a little and then he said “when you come again I’ll be strong enough to lift you!” Felen and Jeran walked to the bridge with us to help the poor mule who was having much trouble with the steep slippery road. “Bear to the right at the pass,” they said, “until you come to the crossroads, then turn left and you’ll be going the right way.” “I know the right way!” Tao said, a bit indignantly.
At the end of the day we got to the other village. There were only three houses, and in front of the first house a big man was chopping wood. When he saw us his mouth fell open and the axe dropped to the block— a good thing it didn’t fall on his foot, because I don’t think Amre and I know how to stitch on toes cut off with an axe. “Ailin!” he shouted. “Come here! Guests! And call your sister too!” A woman came out of the house, almost as big as the man, and she called “Alyse!” Out of the next house another woman came, who looked almost exactly like her. We were taken into the house, while an old man took charge of the mule (but Jeran went with him all the same).
After a while I think the whole village was there, about ten people, all large, all old, they didn’t even have any little children. They loved it that we were there, all those young people! When Jeran came in with the old man, someone mussed his hair and said “Haven’t I seen you before? Aren’t you the tow-head that came through our village?” So this was where Jeran had escaped on the way south! We got thick soup, or thin stew, with pork belly and turnips and some kind of grain, and heavy dark bread, and again couldn’t eat much even though we were really hungry. “No wonder you’re so thin,” these people said, just like the people in the other village. Then we had to tell the whole story again, of course, of where we’d come from and how we’d come to rescue the children, and why Ayran wouldn’t come any more. “We’ll try to find someone in Trynfarin to bring you salt and things,” I said, and they were glad of that because salt was what they’d run out of. “There’s enough in the salt pork and the pickled cabbage so we won’t get sick,” one of the women said, “but if we kill a pig now we have to eat it right away.” In fact what we were eating wasn’t a pig but a goose, I think the best kind of bird I’ve ever eaten, much nicer than chicken or duck.
There was wine too, I wanted mine with water, and Jeran got wine with as much water as I had and the little girls water with a dash of wine. Then one of the men said “I’ll get the apple wine!” and that was really nice, fizzy and smelling deliciously of apples, and tame enough that the girls could have it too. “We got that at home!” Arvi (or Aine) said, “but not after the Feast of Naigha because then it’s too strong. But we’re bigger now, we can have it two days after the Feast of Naigha!” There was brandy, too, “our special rye”, and all the old people got a small cup of it. They asked Mazao how old he was, “I’m not sure,” he said, “fifteen, I think” and that was old enough to have brandy as well. “Tao, be ready to catch him if he falls over,” I said, and that made the men laugh. Mazao said “we Ishey aren’t used to strong drink so much,” and I explained that he’d had brandy when we had to stitch him up and he’d fallen over then.
Then Mazao suddenly felt his wolf-bite and he bared his shoulder so we could put ointment on. “You look like a wolf tried to take a bite out of you!” Alyse said, and then we had to tell that story. “Are there a lot of wolves on the way north?” Tao asked, and they said yes, and asked if we could shoot with bow and arrow. “No, but we can hit everything with slings!” It turned out that Ailin could shoot with bow and arrow, but only a little. “We’ll deal with them,” we said. Then people wanted to know how Mazao and Veh had got wounded, if it wasn’t the wolves, so we told them that they’d been fighting with a bad man in Tal-Borin. We got talking about how someone got to be a bad person— you had to make that decision, you weren’t born bad, while if you were born a wolf cub you couldn’t help growing up into a wolf, so it wasn’t the wolves’ fault. And if you were a bad person, you could decide to become good, but if you were a wolf you couldn’t decide to stop eating chickens and people.
The next day we were away very early, with even more food for the journey, salt pork and cheese and a huge jar of honey and a flask of the special rye. It was nice clear weather, easier to see the road but it also made it colder. The first few days we passed lots of empty little villages, and some big empty houses, and once we saw something on a hilltop that could have been a small town but we didn’t go there because it was a long way up and we could see no people there, not with our eyes and not with our minds. It was convenient, though, all those empty houses, because we had a roof over our heads and a stable for the mule (which was now really answering to the name of Sidhan) and enough firewood almost every night.
After the crossroads, where we’d turned left, the landscape became emptier, there was still forest but there were different trees now, and no houses at all, and it went up and up and up. We had to sleep in the cart, huddled together against the cold. The earth rumbled some more, and once we had to clear the road of rocks and trees that had fallen on it. Finally we got to a large open plain where a freezing wind blew into our faces. We rubbed our ears and faces and fingers with fat and put on all the clothes we could.
It took weeks to cross the plain! We could only travel very slowly because of the wind and we couldn’t really see a road or exactly where we were going, and on the other hand it was exasperating because we could see the other side all the time. There were some shepherds’ huts, but none of them were more than two or three walls and a roof, sometimes broken. We did get very good at hunting and tracking, all of us, even Ailin. And every evening when we had shelter we sang songs and told stories and practiced reading and writing and semsin. Veh’s and Mazao’s wounds healed completely, and Veh turned out to be even better with the sling than Mazao, and also much better at tanning skins with the animal’s brains, making the leather soft and smooth. There were some bits of wood where a kind of big sheep lived, so when we were on the other side each of us had a sheepskin coat.
Then suddenly we went over a pass and were in a forest, out of the wind, on a narrow road that went steeply down. First it was all tall straight trees with grey trunks —birches, Tao said— and then there were thicker and more gnarly trees, oaks, with bushes underneath. There was a lot of game here, and running water, and we still had the cart half full of food, too— after the cold plain it was like a feast. There were no villages in this forest, not even abandoned ones, but Imri said it did look like we were near Trynfarin.
We’d been travelling in the wood for days, perhaps more than a week, without meeting anyone except deer and rabbits —we hadn’t even been looking for people in our semsin exercises, we were so used to not having any around— when we heard hoofbeats. “Three horses,” Veh said. And then we looked with our minds and saw three people, one gifted, but not in any way we recognised. I was just thinking of hiding the cart with a seal when the boys got the same idea and covered it with three Ishey blankets, drab and mottled like the tree-trunks and the snowy road. The riders were coming closer, and our cart was taking up the whole road, we’d have to move aside to let them pass, but there wasn’t any way to get the cart off the road. I got out and stood in front of it, trying not to be afraid.
The riders came closer and got off their horses. Three young men, all wearing leather trousers and thin leather shirts open at the front so I could see that the skin under the shirts was light brown and bare. They were very ugly young men: their noses were flat, their eyelids sort of droopy, and the worst was that they all had scars on their faces as if they’d been in a terrible fight. But their horses were splendid, big and glossy and decorated with ribbons and beads.
We stood looking at each other for a while— I realised I wasn’t used to seeing other people any more after all those weeks. Finally one of the men, who seemed to be the leader, put a hand to his chest and bowed and said, in Ilaini but with a strange accent, “Greetings. I am Ayaglen Yatiyor.” “Ayaglen Halsili,” the second said, who was smaller and younger, perhaps hardly older than Mazao. “Ayaglen Yurumeg,” said the third. He stuck out his hand and pushed at the seal. “Oh, sorry,” I said and called to the boys to take the seal away. “You can pass, only it’s a bit hard because our cart is so wide.” “But we don’t want to pass, it’s you we came to fetch!” Ayaglen Yatiyor said.
By this time all the others were coming out of the cart, and the men’s eyes grew wider with every new person. And when Amre got out, they looked especiallly surprised as if they were amazed to see her. (Well, I could imagine, as they were so ugly and she is so beautiful!) “We heard you coming,” they said, “but we didn’t know there would be so many! Where do you come from?” “There,” I said, pointing south. “Vestinay, across the frozen plain. And before that Tal-Borin and Selday. Are you from Trynfarin?” “No, Essle,” Yatiyor said. He must have seen our surprise, because he said with a grin, “We’re from the Plains really, we were in the king’s army. And we won!” “Of course we did,” Yurumeg said, “we are Ayaglen!” It sounded so much like Tao saying “we are Ishey!” that it made me laugh, and then everybody laughed and it was no longer scary, only strange.
“You came across the highland— is the king’s army there?” Yatiyor asked. But we’d seen no army. The last soldiers we’d seen were Mazao’s mother’s guards. “Should there be?” “Well,” he said, “we have a problem— Trynfarin is being besieged.” “Who is besieging it?” Amre asked. “The Khas.” We boggled at that — Khas? Here? “A hundred and twenty of them, with their own mage,” Yurumeg said. “And there are only fifteen of us.” “That’s counting your son,” Halsili said. “How old is he?” I asked, because Yurumeg didn’t look very old to me. “Two,” he admitted. “Well, there are six of us, seven if we count Jeran and I think we should, who can use slings,” I said. “But that still doesn’t make an army.” Then he asked how long we’d been travelling, and tried to work out if it was possible to get help from there, but it would be half a year. “The Khas are getting hungry,” he said, “we don’t let them in the forest to hunt, their supplies are running out. But they don’t go away, and we can’t do anything about the mage. But come along to our camp, and we’ll tell everything.”
The camp was a bit of flat earth with walls of hide around it and fires burning, but no tents at all. There were several people there, men and women, all barefoot in the snow, and a little boy who was running around completely naked. That must be Yurumeg’s son! When he saw Amre he rushed at her and tried to climb her, but Yurumeg came and picked him up.
A woman came towards us, cheeks and forehead scarred like the others —I’d seen by now that they all had the same scars, it must be some mark like the priestesses’ snake heads— and very pregnant. She looked at Amre, and looked some more, and then rushed at her, “Zendegî! Is it really you?” Amre looked at her very closely, “Dushtan?” And it really was her sister! Amre hardly recognised her. “How did you get here?” “How did you get here?” And in no time they were speaking Iss-Peranian, and so was I, and two other women from the camp too, because like Dushtan they’d married soldiers from the Plains. We noticed that people weren’t understanding us and switched back to Ilaini, which everybody understood. Of course, when they’d been in the king’s army!
“I’ll make you some tea,” Dushtan said, and went on to make something on the fire that looked more like soup than tea, with all kinds of strange things in it, and because it was a fire of dry horse-droppings it smelt of poop as well. “Nasty!” the children said, and so did Ailin, Amre and I were more polite (I think I said “I’ll get used to it”) and the boys drank it and said nothing.
Dushtan introduced a woman who wasn’t as young as everybody else seemed to be, perhaps thirty or thirty-five. “This is Aksam, she’s our priestess, she saw you in a dream.” This woman was definitely gifted, but in a very strange way too. She was very interested in us, and I told her about Erian who had almost been killed by Khas mages for his anea. “Oh! Perhaps that’s what happened to Jeran then!” she said. This was a boy who had come back with the army, about thirteen years old. The priestess agreed with me that it was dangerous for us too, but on the other hand perhaps it meant they could use us as bait. The idea! Being staked out like goats for the mage to come and devour us!
“There are Arin and Karsi,” someone said, and indeed a patrol came back. They had won a skirmish and the camp was going to celebrate that with a bath. People were heating water in a large skin over a fire, and putting up tents in several places. Those tents were the baths, filled with steam that you sat in naked to let the steam and the sweat soak all the dirt off your skin. Arin asked if he could share ours so we could talk, and we said we didn’t mind, but when he found out that Dushtan and Amre were sisters and hadn’t seen one another for years he offered to talk later. “We can talk later,” Amre said, “we’re staying a while longer anyway.” “You know,” Dushtan said, “that’s the only thing I’ve really missed, apart from you and Mother and Father, a proper bath! There’s a real bath-house in Trynfarin.” The child in her belly also had an opinion about the steam-bath, and kicked her so hard that I could see it, and she yelped. “I hope I won’t scream when it’s born,” she said, “I’d disgrace myself, we Ayaglen don’t show pain. Sadness, mourning, yes, but not pain or anger.” Amre thought for a bit, and then asked “Can I look?” “What?” “Can I look at your baby, inside your belly?” “Can you do that?” “Well,” Amre said, “I been learning from doctors.” And then Dushtan allowed it, and Amre looked and saw a pair of healthy twin boys ready to be born!
Dushtan was so impressed that she fell silent, but then Arin introduced himself. He was one of the Greys! I’d seen the uniform already, but now he said it too. He’d been riding a patrol of Lenyas with his partner, Hinla, and then this happened, and it was their first assignment as a Guild runner too! The Khas had nailed their demands on the city gates, “so they can read and write, I didn’t know any Khas could”, Arin said: that they’d be allowed to go to Essle unhindered, a ship, and for every soldier an ounce of gold, a good weapon and a woman. “Does Trynfarin have that much gold?” I asked. “And probably not so many women who want to go with the Khas, either.”
When we told Arin where we came from and how we’d been travelling, he suddenly looked at me and said “You smell like Raith.” “I’ve had one lesson from her,” I said. “Both of us— don’t we both smell like Raith?” But when I looked at Amre and myself with my mind, I could see traces of everybody we’d been learning from, Serla, Vurian, Captain Lyase, and even Mialle a bit, but Raith’s trace had stuck on me but not on her. “I had a lesson, but I couldn’t learn anything!” she said. Then a boy came in with a handful of nice-smelling leaves, looked at me, startled, and left in a hurry. “See? That’s what I mean,” Arin said. “I do wish you’d had more lessons from her, because that’s the kind of thing we can use here.” “So do I,” I said, “but we had to leave after that one lesson.”
When we came out of the bath, Arin and Dushtan rubbed themselves all over with snow, and I tried it too— it stung! “If you don’t do that, you’ll be hot all evening,” Arin said. “Good!” said Amre, and skipped the snow, but I liked the tingly feeling it gave. We saw Veh come out of another tent, together with Halsili. That tent had a kind of extra forecourt made of skins, and I suddenly realised that Halsili must be of the same kind as Veh, a boy in a girl’s body. I’d been right when I thought they must have special baths!
There were already deer roasting, and we all sat down and ate venison and talked some more. “Should we be hiding?” I suddenly asked, but Aksam said that the Khas mage couldn’t see us, “well, unless you show yourself to him, of course. But perhaps Ruang knows more about that.” This was the boy who had brought the leaves and taken such a fright because I smelt of Raith, not half Khas like Erian but completely Khas, escaped from Solay —in fact Yatiyor’s sister Daima had rescued him— just before he went into training as a mage. But he didn’t know much more, except that you didn’t have a choice whether to be a mage if you had the talent. More like being a wolf than like being a crook, then. “But you had a choice!” Amre said. “Not if I’d stayed,” Ruang said. “If you’re made to be a priest, a priest is all you can be.” “Are all mages priests, then?” I asked. “Yes. Good thing I got out, because I never wanted to be one. And I don’t want to be like Aksam either.” “You don’t want to be a Plains priest?” “I don’t want to be a priestess!” —So Aksam must be a woman the way Halsili or Veh was a man!
When Amre and I were together in the cart later —the boys wanted to sleep outside with the Ayaglen, the little girls were fast asleep in the straw, and I think Ailin was talking with the priestess— I came up with a plan to take on the Khas mage. “Suppose I go and bait him after all, but only my mind, as an image? Then he’ll go and catch me, but I won’t be there to catch, only you and the boys with slings, and you’ll catch him! But I have to practice.” And I sent my mind out to the horse-pen where I sensed that Tao and Mazao and Veh were to see if they would see me. And they were: not only the three of them, but also an Ayaglen girl called Kisin, and Jeran. I couldn’t see exactly what they did, but it looked like kissing a horse’s neck in turn. Then Mazao saw me, or thought he did, and said “Hey!” and startled me right back into my body. “You were all cold!” Amre said. “Scared me out of my wits!” I must have left my body completely then, when I’d only wanted to show an image. And now Mazao and the others would be puzzled, so I went to reassure them and Amre with me.
Jeran was very excited: “We’re drinking the horse’s blood! That’s what makes you a warrior. She doesn’t mind, she’s used to it.” And indeed, they’d opened a wound in the horse’s shoulder, a spot where it wouldn’t hurt her while walking, and drank blood from it. “Do you want to try?” Kisin asked. I can’t remember whether Amre tried, but I did: it was warm and sweetish and salty, not pleasant but wild and real as if some of the anea of the horse was in it. “It doesn’t make you Ayaglen right away, but it’s the first step,” Veh said, and there was something in his eyes that made me think that perhaps he wanted to stay with these people who understood what he was.
“Come, I’ll make you some tea,” Kisin said with a laugh, and when she saw us making faces she laughed even more and said “or you can eat your own food, of course!” And then she took us to Aksam because I was shivering. Aksam told the story about the cleft in the mountain where the Valdyan witch —it was a while before I realised she was talking about the baroness Raith— had given Naigha the souls of many children back that Khas mages had used for power, and she had been cold and stiff like death for days and weeks. It was a warning as well as history, and it put me off that plan entirely, especially as I wasn’t at all sure that I even could go as far as where the mage was. “If you do anything at all, do it at sunrise,” Aksam said, “that is when they are weak and we are strong.”
So the next morning we set out, only to look at the Khas and their mage, we said, not to do anything to them. Dogru went with us, but he wouldn’t leave his horse while all the rest went on foot, and Jeran rode in front with him. It wasn’t long before we could see the town: it had a wall around it that was of stone to chest-height, and wood on top of that, and it was so large that Selday could have fit into it. They’d built the wall when the queen of Valdyas was here a year ago, someone had told us (Arin, perhaps), large enough that the town would be able to grow, and that was a blessing because they’d been able to get all the harvest and even the herds inside the wall before the Khas came too close. Khas were all around the town in small groups, and beyond we could see a hill with trees on it, sparse— no, planted wide apart, they were too regular to be just sparse forest. “That’s so the lord who used to live there could see where the game went,” Dogru said. “Silly,” Tao said, “if you were a deer, would you stay where you could be seen so easily, and not move to the other forest with bushes?” Among the trees, on the hilltop, there was a big house that looked a bit derelict. As we watched it some men came out of the house with swords and spears and went into the wood, perhaps to hunt though we didn’t see any animals. At the foot of the hill there was the Khas camp, a good number of tents.
“I can see the mage,” Amre said, “he’s in the house.” She took me along and I could see him too, as strange as Aksam but different, smelling a little like Erian but somehow sickly. It was clear that he was young, nervous, and woefully alone. But nauseating: he had a kind of fish-hook in each and every man in the army. “Perhaps we can take the hooks out!” Amre said. “Or just one, to draw him out, and then we can catch him.” But just at that moment some of the Khas had seen us and came after us! The boys threw Amre and me on the horse where Jeran already was and told Jeran to ride as fast as he could. We held on while he rode like anything, until we came to the wall of hides, far from the entrance! The horse knew what to do: it jumped right over. Jeran fell off and came down hard on one arm, and Amre and I could slide off before we also fell. The horse stood there sweating and confused and people came to take care of it and us. Jeran had broken his wrist in the fall, but “it doesn’t hurt! I’m almost Ayaglen!” “You need a splint all the same,” I said, and we put one on while he protested, “It’s my sling hand!” “Well, then you can practice with your other hand and get just as good with it. That’s what the splint’s for.”
After a while the others came back and they had a Khas captive with them! They were only a little battered, only the Khas had a sword-wound all through his shoulder that he was bleeding a lot from. We could clearly see the mage’s hook in him, so clearly that we could touch it and gently pick it out of his body. But then it stuck to Amre’s hands, and mine, and anea from us and from the whole camp was flowing through the fishing-line. Then Arin came and took fire in his hands from the cooking-fire— it was the spirit of fire really, but it burnt the fishing-line, leaving me and Amre and the captive all stuck together. It was very uncomfortable, but the mage wasn’t pulling at it any more so that made it a lot easier to get it away from us. We could feel that we’d put the mage off-balance at least. I called for someone strong and stable: “Tao! Veh!” and they came and helped us. I didn’t have the strength to do more than pray, and I said the Invocations very carefully and formally to make sure that the gods protected us. Ailin came too, and she said “Naigha is here!” “Yes,” I said, “all the gods are here if I’m doing this right!” But it was a darker side of Naigha than I’d ever seen, and suddenly it was a scary idea that someone would have to deal with that in the temple, so I asked Ailin “aren’t you afraid?” and she said she was, sometimes. And I could hear Tao ask in an exasperated voice “why are Khas people?” and feel Amre beside me, she was falling asleep in the snow, so I said “you can sleep, but only close to me!” but I was asleep myself before I knew anything more.
Amre now tells what Venla couldn’t see:
When they came back with with the captured Khas we could clearly see the hook embedded in the man’s spirit. Venla thought she could pick it out, but the thread stuck to her as well as the unfortunate captive. The dark slowly pulsing vein, for that is what it looked like to me, was sucking the spirit of the captive and those around it out. And now it was also draining Venla! I had to do something and I tried to get it off her and I was stuck to the same dark vein. I could feel it sucking our spirit out and that made me feel so powerless and angry that I wanted to lash out at the mage. I remembered that we learned how to attack someone with the force of our spirit and since this mage was sucking it out through this vein I thought it might be easier to attack him though it. All this went though me in a split second before and I drove my spirit into the vein committing even more of me than I had intended. I thought briefly of dying, but wat mattered was getting this… this thing away from Venla so I did not pull back, but pushed on even harder. It was dark and empty in there. I’m sure it wasn’t really a proper place but there was a flow away from where I came from so I followed it. As I got further and further it grew colder and things seemed to slow down somehow, but my anger kept burning and I pushed on until I could see the mage at the center of his disgusting veins. I tried to attack, but it did not seem to do much except maybe feed him more energy, so I looked at him. He was reeling, confused and dealing with more than he seemed able to handle, holding so many veins. Seeing him so off balance gave me an idea and I took the vein in my hands and yanked it as hard as I could. That seemed to unbalance him even more but before I could take a good look I felt something warm pulling me back and then I realized just how cold I was as I slowly returned to my body.
And this is Venla again:
We woke up in the cart, and Imri was holding the flask of special rye, and Dushtan was rubbing Amre with it and Yatiyor was rubbing me. “You fell asleep in the snow,” Dushtan said, “you were dying! That’s how it happens. But you’ll be all right now.” She slept in the cart with us, and the boys too, and it got all warm and snug and when we woke again we were feeling all right.
In the morning there was chaos, because some of the men had set a Khas tent on fire, and the mage had been alerted and sent his men. A hundred of them were surrounding the camp, and only twenty at the house— this was our chance to act! While we were preparing, the Khas were shouting all kinds of unsavoury taunts, mostly to do with what they’d do with our men when they caught them. Yatiyor and some others were taunting them back; funny, Yatiyor sounded just like Prince Lydan in Albetire, perhaps he’d learned his Ilaini from officers! It was also clear that the mage was unsettled, though he still had all of his men —but one— on a leash.
So we were about to go into the enemy camp. Ailin was going along and taking her knife, which was “to end someone’s life if they’re not really alive any more” as she said. She didn’t really want to give the mage to Naigha, I’m not completely sure why, perhaps because she wanted him judged by people first and only then by gods. “What if we give him a sleeping potion, so he can’t hold his soldiers?” Amre suggested, and that sounded like the best plan, so we prepared wine-bags with poppy-laced wine. Then I found Jeran and said to him “listen, we’re going to the enemy and we may die, I want to entrust something to you. In the cart, under the place where I sleep, there’s a leather bag with letters. If I don’t come back, will you take them to the king?” And he nodded solemnly and promised. One thing less to worry about.
We set out, Ailin and Amre and I and Veh— Tao and Mazao had gone with the group that was keeping the soldiers busy. Each of us was on a horse behind one of the Ayaglen who were the best riders, and that was necessary, because we were going right through the fighting before we could ride around the town. When we got to the house, the gate was closed, but that didn’t keep Yatiyor long: he turned his horse around and let it kick the gate open with its back legs. It was a house like a small castle, a bit like Lady Jerna astin Rhydin’s house, with a long stable on one side of the yard and the house in the middle. It smelt like far too many men with much too little clean water. I pulled myself together, noticed that my anie was dressed in Ishey clothes— that figured, because that was what made me feel strongest and most confident. But my body was dressed in leather winter trousers and a sheepskin jacket.
The mage was in a large room upstairs. The four of us went in, while the Ayaglen warriors kept the soldiers from following us. He was lying on a large bed, only half awake, or dreaming, or far away with his mind, anyway he didn’t really see us. I called on Anshen, but Anshen was very far away, there was someone in the way, whether Naigha or some Khas god I couldn’t tell. Then, instead, I called the spirit of fire, while Amre and Ailin made him drink the spiked wine. “Stop!” I heard Ailin say. “Naigha mustn’t take him yet.” The mage was unconscious now, and Amre and I used the spirit fire to burn the threads away. “Now get out,” Ailin said. “No, not you, Veh.” Amre and I went out on the landing, just in time to see through the window that Yatiyor was challenging the Khas captain. All the other fighters fell back, Ayaglen on one side and Khas on the other, while Yatiyor and the captain fought with swords. I couldn’t tell how good they were, and who was better, but in the end Yatiyor won and put his sword through the belly of the captain, all the way through so it came out at the back. All the Khas fell on their knees for him— at least we weren’t stuck with a Khas army, as I’d feared if we vanquished the mage.
Veh came out of the room carrying the mage on his shoulders, with Ailin following, looking very pale. “What shall we do with him?” Amre said, giggling with relief. “Wrap him like a parcel and give him to the king?” But then we saw how shaken Ailin was and took her between us. “It’s— he doesn’t have any balls. He’s got nothing in fact. It’s scary!” “You mean he’s actually a woman?” “No— he’s a man but—” We told her that we’d seen that before, in Iss-Peran, but we’d never heard of the Khas doing it too. “Perhaps it’s part of being a priest,” I said, but I knew as I said it that it wasn’t that.
