The ramp they were moving up was a broad roadway paved with the same warm yellow-ocher brick that the Sihbaraburj was made of; it was cut into the Rock, slanting up the entire length of its northern face, a slope of one in seven, steep enough to make the pilgrims sweat but not enough to exhaust them. No doubt it was an impressive sight at the height of the season when a hoard of incense waving, torch-bearing worshipers climbed that long slant with Mutri-mabs weaving through them, capering and singing, playing flutes and whirling round and round, round and round in a complex spiral dance up that holy road. In this late autumn afternoon, she was alone on the roadway with the litter bearers; she didn’t like the exposure, she’d planned to wait for morning and the rest of the pilgrims, but Jaril was drawn too taut. He said nothing, but she knew he’d go without her if she forced him to a longer idleness. He’d go in a wild, reckless mood, risking everything on a chance of finding and taking the talisman. It was better to take the lesser risk of Amortis noticing them.
They reached the top after half an hour’s climb and turned in through a towering stone gate carved to resemble the reed arches of the longhouses. They passed into a green and lovely garden with fountains playing everywhere, palms casting pointed shadows over lawns like priceless carpets and flowering plants in low broad jars glazed red and yellow and blue. The walkway curved between two wrought iron fences with razor-edged spearpoints set at close intervals along the top raiclass="underline" Look and enjoy but don’t touch.
The bearers stopped just outside the Grand Entrance to the Sihbaraburj. They set the litter down and squatted beside it to wait until it was time to go back down. The widow helped her ailing son onto his feet and stripped away the blankets wrapped around him. He wore fine silks and jewels and arrogance, an exquisite, emaciated mama’s darling.
With Jaril leaning on Brann’s arm, they went inside.
Light streamed in through weep-holes, was caught and magnified in hundreds of mirrors. There were mirrors everywhere inside that brick mountain, light danced like water from surface to surface, images were caught and repeated, tossed like the light from mirror to mirror until what was real and what was not-real acquired an equal validity. Brann wandered bemused in that warren of corridors and small plazas, walked through shimmering light and cool drifts of incense-laden air and marveled that she had no sense of being enclosed in tons of earth and brick; like image and reality there was a confusion between inside and out, a sense she was in a place not quite either. They moved past shops and forges, small chapels and waiting rooms; they were stopped when they poked into the living sections, escorted back to the shops when they claimed they were lost. The place was so big that in the three hours they spent probing the interior they saw only a minute fraction of it. As the day latened, the light inside the Sihbaraburj dimmed and filled with shadow, the shopkeepers worked more frantically to woo coin from the straggling pilgrims, the Servants in the Grand Chambers were bringing their ceremonies to a close.
Brann and Jaril stopped in front of a room filled with shadow; fugitive gleams of gold, silver and gemstones come from the glass shelves that lined the walls from floor to ceiling.
A Servant was sitting at a table just inside the open archway, a scroll, several pens and an inkpot at his elbow. He lifted kohl-lined dark eyes and smiled just enough to tilt the ends of his narrow mustache as she stepped in. “Yes, khatra?”
“May I ask, Holy One, what is this?” She moved her hand in a small arc, indicating the objects on the shelves.
“They are gifts, khatra. Beauty to honor her who is beauty’s self.”
“Is it permitted to see them closer?”
“Certainly, khatra. However, it is so near to Evendown, it would be better to return on the morrow.”
As soon as he said the last word, a gong sounded, a deep booming note that shuddered in the bone. He stood. “That is Evendown, khatra, you must leave.”
She bowed her head, turned, and left.
4
Jaril moved impatiently about the cell as Brann unpacked the supper basket she’d brought from the big island longhouse that sold food to the pilgrims. “I’m going back tonight,” he said suddenly. “It has to be in one of those giftrooms, don’t you think, Bramble?”
“No has-to-be, Jay. But you’re probably right.” Brann pulled up the three-legged stool and sat down to eat. She wanted to tell him he was a fool to take the chance, but she knew he wouldn’t listen and she didn’t want to irritate him into a greater recklessness. “How you going?”
“Wings, then four-feet. I’ll be careful, Bramble. I won’t go till late and I won’t touch it if I find it. All right?”
“Thanks, Jay.”
“I been thinking…” He dropped onto the pallet, lay watching hereat. “We need something to keep it in, Bram-ble. To hide it from her.”
“I know. I can’t see any way we can do it. I’m afraid we’ll have to fight our way to Waragapur and count on Tak WakKerrcarr to hold her off his Truceground.”
“We might still have to, but I’ve thought of something. I can make a pocket inside myself and insulate the talisman from everything outside.”
“Even from the god?”
“I think so.”
“That helps. We’ve got seven days here, Jay. I think we ought to stay in character, leave with who we came with. Can you wait that long? It’s six more days if you find the thing tonight.”
“I can, once I know. I said it before and it’s true. It’s not knowing that eats at me, Bramble. But I don’t think we ought to wait to take the talisman on the last night before we leave. If she notices it’s gone, she’ll hit the outgoers hard.”
“And the stayers just as hard, be sure of that.”
“Well…” He turned onto his back, lay staring up at the cobwebs under the roof. “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Maybe we should just toss a coin and let old Tungjii decide. Heads, early. Tails, late.”
“Why not. Now?”
“No. Wait till I find the thing, Bramble. Till I know.”
Brann sat on the bed, a blanket wrapped about her, chasing biters away from her face and arms with a reed whisk; the Wounded Moon was down, but the darkness was broken by stars glittering diamond-hard diamond-bright through the thin, high-desert air. She shivered and pulled the blankets tighter; that air was chill and dank here in the marsh; a curdled mist clung to the reed clumps and the floorposts of the cell; tendrils of mist drifted through the windowholes and melted in the heat from the banked peat fire in the mud stove. Outside, the big orange grasshoppers the marshfolk called jaspars had already begun their predawn creakings and a sleepy mashimurgh was practicing its song. There was almost no wind; the stillness was eerie, frightening, as if the marsh and the Rock and even the air were waiting with her for something to happen, something terrible. What an anticlimax, she thought, if Jay comes sliding in and says he hasn’t found the thing. I don’t know how I could get through another night of waiting. Slya! I hate feeling so helpless. It should be me in there, not my baby, my nursling. She contemplated herself and laughed silently at what she saw. She was nervous about Jaril, but mostly she was irritated because she had no part to play in this, she was baggage. It was harder than she’d thought to reconcile herself to being baggage.
A large horned owl came through a windowhole, snapped out its wings and landed neatly on the reed mat. As soon as its talons touched, it changed to Jaril. He dropped onto the second cot and grinned at her.