Spear of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

said. “I was
trained to rule an empire.”
    He was impervious to irony as to the weapons of mages: it
sank into the shadow of his self and vanished. “Well and good. We meet in the
Guildhall in the hour of the sixth prayer. You’ll be a shadow, remember. A
whisper in the air.”
    She stood. It was amazing how elation could kill pain, even
of ribs that, she suspected, were cracked. She met his grin with one at least
as wide. Hers had edges in it, the sharpness of teeth. “You could have told me
this before you let me play the ranting fool.”
    “But you needed to rant,” he said. “And who knew? You might
see sense. This isn’t sense that we’re up to.”
    “No. It’s necessity.” She reached out a hand for him to
grasp, pulled him up. In the moment of unbalance he shifted, treacherous,
seeking to pull her down. But she was ready for him. She set her feet, made
herself a rock in the earth.
    He laughed up at her, for, standing, she was much taller
than he. “No, it won’t be as splendid as if you were one of my Olenyai, but
riding as my shadow—yes, that will do. We’ll sing it when we’re done, like the
song of the prince and the beggar’s daughter. She was dead, you see, but he
loved her withal.”
    “I don’t intend to die on this journey,” said Daruya, “or
for a long time after. I’ll live to take your oath from the Throne of the Sun,
Olenyas. You have my word on it.”
    “And the word of a Sunchild,” he said, half laughing, half
deadly earnest, “is unalterable law.”

4
    The hall of the ninth Gate was quiet. With its Gate hidden
behind a veil, a curtain of white silk no paler than the walls, it seemed but
an empty chamber, the hall of a temple, perhaps.
    Its floor of inlaid tiles made a map of the world as mages
knew it. Half was wrought in intricate detail, with cities marked in colored
stones. One that was gold, heart of the west, was Kundri’j Asan. One that was a
firestone, heart of the east, was Endros Avaryan that the first of the Sunlords
had built. Between them lay a great jewel like a star: Asan-Gilen, Estarion’s
city, that had brought together the realms of Sun and Lion, and given them a
place where neither claimed the sovereignty.
    The other half of the map was vaguer, its shape less clearly
defined. Its cities were few. Crystals marked the Gates, a thin line across the
broad mass of the land. Mages had traveled to each place, the first sailing in
ships across the wide and terrible sea, coming to land and building the first
Gate. New mages had come through the Gate, traveling on foot across a vast
plain, and at each Brightmoon-cycle’s journey, building a new Gate through
which yet newer mages could come.
    The eighth Gate was set on the knees of mountains that to
its builders had seemed mighty. But those who followed discovered that the
mountains were but foothills, and low at that. They climbed to the summit of
the world, and nearly died in doing it; but when they would have turned back,
too feeble to build their Gate, strangers found them and led them to safety.
    There in the mountains that touched the sky, they found a
valley, and in the valley a kingdom: the Kingdom of Heaven, its people called
it. There was the ninth Gate, the Gate that had fallen. On the map it was
unharmed, a crystal of amethyst—the color, said the mages who came back, of the
sky above the mountains’ peaks.
    Vanyi stood pondering the color of the sky and the integrity
of a crystal and other such inconsequentialities, while the others came
together near the veil of the Gate. They were not many as expeditions went;
dangerously few, if they were to be an army. Six mages, three of the light and
their twinned mages of the dark. Ten black-robed Olenyai with their commander.
Mounts and remounts for them all, since there were no seneldi on that side of
the world, laden with such baggage as they could not live without; the Guardian
of the eighth Gate would provide what more was needed for the ascent into