Spear of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

the splendor of the trick. But
not unless you’re mage enough to make yourself smaller.”
    She cut through his nonsense with a voice like a blade. “You
said there was another way.”
    “There might be,” he said. “It would cost, too, seeing as to
how I’m sworn in service to the emperor, and the emperor has forbidden you to
go.”
    “Swear yourself in service to me,” she said.
    “I can’t do that,” said Chakan. He said it lightly, but
there was no yielding in it.
    She sat up carefully, glaring at him. “You’d sacrifice your
honor to dress me in Olenyai robes, but you won’t honorably swear yourself to
the heir of the blood royal?”
    “Robes are the outer garments of honor. Oaths are its heart.
I’m sworn to the throne, and through it to the emperor. When you are empress,”
he said reasonably, “I’ll serve you till death, with all my heart.”
    “But you’ll break your oath if you help me escape the
emperor.”
    “I will not,” he said. “You’ll serve the emperor on this
embassy, though he may think, at the moment, that you won’t.”
    Daruya’s head was spinning. It might, to be sure, be the
shock of her fall. But one did not have to plunge middle first onto a rock to
reel before Asanian logic.
    He held her and patted her while she emptied her stomach on
the stones. “There,” he said. “Next time you attack me, do it somewhere where
you can land soft.”
    She snarled at him. He smiled sweetly, sadly, and buried the
evidence of her foolishness, producing from the depths of his robes what looked
for all the world like a gardener’s trowel. Probably it was. Olenyai robes
could conceal anything, and often did.
    When he was done, he crouched in front of her, arms resting
on knees. “You do want to go, and he did give you leave, though he rescinded
it. I’m thinking he might be overcautious as you say—emperor or not, he’s a
grandfather, too, and he dotes on you. I’m also thinking you may have the right
of it; they’ll need you out there, your Sun-blood and your training, and your
power to speak for the emperor in the emperor’s absence.”
    “You think too much,” muttered Daruya.
    He grinned at that. “Yes, don’t I? I never learned to shut
myself off and be simple muscle. It’s a flaw in a warrior. It’s rather useful
in a commander.”
    “If he lives long enough to become one.” She leaned forward,
no matter what it did to her ribs and her uncertain stomach. “Are you going to
roll me up in a blanket and hide me in the baggage?”
    “Very near,” he answered. “I’m not visible to mages, yes?
One told me once—unwisely, I’m sure—that I cast a kind of shadow; when someone
stands in it, he vanishes, too. Suppose you dressed in black, not Olenyai, not
exactly, but cloaked and hooded, and rode one of my remounts. You can become a
shadow, yes? If you blur the eyes and I blur the mind, what will anyone see but
a troop of Olenyai and their seneldi, and nothing more?”
    Daruya wanted it to be so easy—wanted it with all that was
in her. But she had learned to be wary. Yes, even she, with her name for
recklessness. “If I’m caught, there’s hells to pay.”
    “Don’t be caught,” he said with grand assurance.
    “It’s not sensible,” she said.
    “Of course it is,” said Chakan. “Not that I don’t think your
grandfather is perfectly right, as far as he goes. You should stay safe where
he can protect you. But that’s no way to fly a hawk. You have to let it off the
fist, or it never learns to hunt.”
    “Asanian logic,” she said. “And I’ve nothing left in my
stomach, to cast at your feet.”
    “I’ll survive the lack,” said Chakan. He sat on his heels,
comfortable, quite clearly pleased with himself. “The Guildmaster means to leave
as soon as may be—before sunset today, I’m told. You’ll have to be quick if you’re
to do it; and clever, too, to make your farewells without being caught.”
    “I can mask my face and my thoughts,” she