“Perhaps a little later. I should very much like to hear Monster purr again. Now.” Dokyi looked up at Rosethorn. “Captain Rana wrote that you came to warn us, but as he has told you, your warning was not needed. Weishu made secret treaties with both Inxia and Qayan, which freed his armies so he could launch an invasion here. He is a greedy fellow, is he not?”
Rosethorn smiled wryly and told Dokyi, “That is one way of looking at it, Honored Dedicate.”
“Is it true, then, that you are also determined to fight here?” the older man wanted to know.
Rosethorn nodded. “More than ever after our time at the Winter Palace,” she said. Her belly griped. Her heart cried out for Lark, but her answer had to be the one she had given Dokyi and the reason she had taken her two children and brought them back to Gyongxe. After what they had seen of Weishu and his court, she had to do all she could to stop him. The emperor of Yanjing was a monster in human skin.
“Good,” Dokyi said. “I have an errand of utmost importance. You are the best person I know of our faith who can carry it out.” He came out from behind the table and gripped Rosethorn gently by the shoulder. “Forgive me. I did not let you walk into peril on purpose. I did not know that war was inside our borders until the God-King did, and I did not let this errand wait until you were the only one who could do it for me. At first
I
undertook it. A week ago I set out from Garmashing. For each step I tried to take due south on this errand, there were Yanjingyi troops to drive me south and east. To here, in fact, where I would find you.” He turned to Briar. “They are bringing food for you and Evvy, if you will sit over there.” He nodded to a bench against the wall. “I must speak with Rosethorn privately. And then all of us can have a proper midday.”
“She’s tired,” Briar said flatly. “Her breathing —”
“I understand,” Dokyi replied. “She will sit, and I will have tea brought.”
Rosethorn caught Briar’s gaze with hers. When she was certain that she had it, she raised an eyebrow. It was a warning, and her boy knew it. He was not to push any further. He stared back at her, hard, and then guided Evvy to the bench Dokyi had indicated.
“He is a faithful son,” the First Dedicate said as he led the way to a side door out of the general’s meeting room. “You have been unstinting with your own love, that he is so unstinting with his love for you.”
She ducked her head and hoped he didn’t notice she was blushing. She and Briar only rarely talked about affection. Both
of them had learned the hard way when they were children that many people would take any affection they offered and use it to get everything they had.
The older man brought her into a room next door that also seemed to be laid out for meetings. He sat on a bench on the nearest side of the long table and indicated that she should sit beside him. There were no windows here and only two doors. The only thing on the table was a leather pack.
Dokyi gestured, deep black fire trailing from his fingers. He and Rosethorn were instantly enclosed in a shadowy globe that almost touched the room’s ceiling. Suddenly Rosethorn, who had been cold since they left Kushi, felt warm. She drew her own power within her skin, not wanting her plant sensitivity to be entangled with the great man’s stone magic.
“Your children are not as carefree as they were when you left for Yanjing,” Dokyi said.
Rosethorn sighed. “No, Honored Dedicate. The emperor was more overwhelming than we liked. You warned us it would be so.”
“But I am sorry to have been proved right, all the same.” He hesitated, then asked, “Rosethorn, are you still heart-whole in your vows?”
“Of course, Honored Dedicate!”
“As I said, I tried to take care of this matter myself, but no matter how I tried, I could not place my feet on the road to my destination. I have not been so thwarted in my designs since I was a dedicate of only ten years.” Using great care, he opened the pack on the table and slid the leather down over the sides of the contents. He revealed a large peachwood box that contained four drawers. Letters were carved in the sides as well as the top.
Rosethorn shrank back from the waves of power that seemed to flow away from the box. “What is this?” she asked.
“This box holds the greatest treasures of our religion,” he said quietly. “Without them, the Living Circle falls apart.”
Goose bumps raced over Rosethorn’s skin.
Dokyi touched the small gold knob on the bottom-most drawer. Carefully he pulled, and the top three drawers separated from it. The drawers were not set into a single frame, but were interlocking pieces.
“Look at it,” he told Rosethorn quietly.
The contents of the bottom drawer, or open-topped box, were wrapped in silk that had not been dyed. Gingerly, using the tips of her fingers, Rosethorn separated the leaves of cloth that lay on top. Underneath them lay a cup. At Dokyi’s silent urging she picked it up, gasping as magic flowed up her arms and through her veins.
The cup was the size of her palm and made of baked reddish clay with no glaze on it. Four twisting branches of carved white aspen seemed to grow around the cup from a round, flat base. The base itself was secured to a thin granite circle. More signs she did not recognize were cut into the outside of the clay, but not the inside. It was the simplest of objects, but the power within it made her bones shiver. Somehow she managed to gently place the cup in its box and cover it again.
“Honored Dedicate?” she whispered.
“The Cup of Water,” he told her. He slid the three drawers into place on top of the cup until Rosethorn heard a faint click. Now the man touched the gold knob on the third drawer and pulled the top two off it. He motioned for Rosethorn to remove the silk cover from the drawer’s contents.
“No,” she said. She still shook from her contact with the cup.
Frowning, Dokyi motioned again.
Rosethorn reached out a trembling hand and uncovered the drawer’s contents. There lay a clear stone or crystal ball in which a flame burned, seemingly without air or fuel.
“Pick it up,” Dokyi ordered. Sensing that she was about to refuse, he ordered, “Each guardian must handle them. Pick it up!”
Rosethorn closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around the ball. It was warm.
And then she was furiously hot, burning inside her own skin. Swiftly she put the globe back and gulped the remains of her tea. It did not put out the heat inside her. She was afraid to speak, expecting flames to come out of her mouth.
“The Blaze of Fire.” Dokyi covered the ball with silk and slid the two remaining drawers over it. He pointed to the knob on the third drawer.
Rosethorn looked at him and gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. She saw Dokyi as she had known him that winter. She also saw a towering tree, a soaring fire, a jet of water, all whipped by a gust of air. She didn’t dare argue. It occurred to her that he had been these things all along and she, a dedicate initiate of Winding Circle, had never suspected it. Embarrassed for her ignorance, she stabbed the gold knob with a finger and let Dokyi lay the third drawer bare.
It held a green jade bowl. Inside it was a motley collection of seeds, large and small, many belonging to plants that Rosethorn had never seen before. She felt the magic in each as she ran her fingers through them, but no pain. Either she was worn down, or this Earth power was friendlier to her. She raised the bowl and
carefully inhaled the dry scent of the seeds, wondering how old they were. What she wouldn’t give to plant some of these!
Gently she set the bowl in its drawer and covered it with silk.
“The Seeds of the Earth.” The man covered the bowl with the last drawer and nodded to Rosethorn. She took a deep breath and touched the gold knob for the Air treasure. The wooden top of the drawer flipped up.
Under its silk covering lay a feather that was many colors and none. Every time Rosethorn’s eyes moved she saw different shades ripple across its surface. Even the feather’s shape changed as she held it in her fingers. A great wind assaulted her. Thunder rolled in the distance; lightning struck nearby. The skin all over her body rippled.
“The Feather of Air.” Dokyi’s voice was a comforting growl as Rosethorn covered the feather and replaced the lid. “Now these boxes will open only for you. These are the four sacred Treasures of the Living Circle. There are no other beauties like them. These are the embodiment of all we hold sacred. Each temple we build is touched by them, and they are in every temple. As long as we have these, our faith will not fall. As long as we labor in our charge to preserve the beauties of the world, to worship all of it in life and death, these Treasures and their blessings will be ours. Should they fall into the hands of a destroyer, however — into the hands of one such as Weishu — our temples will lose their strength. Our works and our people will become corrupt. The Treasures must be hidden outside a temple of the Living Circle.”
Rosethorn blinked wearily at him. “Why not?” she whispered. Tides dragged at the blood in her veins and in her womb.
Another kind of tide, hot and molten, surged in the marrow of her bones and within her eyes. She felt its long, slow roll countless miles below her feet, under the pathetically thin skin that covered the earth’s surface. “Why not … to another Living Circle temple?”
“First Circle Temple in Garmashing is the only one of our houses built to keep the Treasures without revealing their presence,” Dokyi told her. “If I had been here, or in your Winding Circle, with these boxes for a week or more, everyone would feel their nearness in the air they breathed, the fire they warmed themselves with, the water they drank, and the earth under their feet. Every bit of magic within them would strain to find the Treasures and touch them. They would appear in dreams, water puddles, in the surfaces of metal. A week more and others would come. No, there is only one other safe place for them here in Gyongxe.”
Rosethorn covered her face with her hands. Water laden with ice coursed through her veins. Flocks of birds flew south below her as she slid from wind to wind.
She didn’t notice when Dokyi left the room and returned with a tray of tea and buns. She came a little to herself when he wrapped her hands around a warm cup. “Drink. Do you understand, girl? You will take them to the Temple of the Sealed Eye in the Drimbakang Lho, west of here. Their priests are the only ones who can hide such things so no others can sense them. They are immune to the power that great magics possess over others. Only a dedicate of exceptional will and power can carry such a burden. Only a dedicate with strong reasons to return can take the Treasures there and come back.”
Slowly Rosethorn looked at him. She could have sworn she heard Lark ask someone to fetch Comas home from the looms. “What if I didn’t have such reasons?”
“Drink.” Dokyi helped her to lift the cup to her lips. A few sips and she began to feel as if she was more herself. “You would become a priest of the Sealed Eye. As I told you, I did try to take the burden myself. Thanks to the gods, I have to suppose, I failed. You must not.”
Rosethorn emptied the cup and set it down. “What if something happens to me?” she whispered. “The emperor’s soldiers …” She turned her head. There — that was Niko’s voice. He was talking about Tris, and Lightsbridge University.
Dokyi gripped her chin and made her look him in the eyes. “You will stop hearing the sounds shortly. It is the winds that carry them to you. Or perhaps it is the life’s blood of all the plants that link roots beneath the surface of this world. The sounds will fade. Listen.” His voice made her blink. “I was right about you,” he said with great satisfaction. “They can be distracting at first. But I knew the acceptance of the Treasures would not drive you mad.”
“Surely someone from Garmashing could have …” Rosethorn began to say. Then she saw the complexity of the table’s wood grain. She sensed a grain within the grain, and patterns inside that. Gently she followed the whorls with her fingertips. She might follow them to the tree that had supplied the wood for the table, if she concentrated hard enough.
“You are not listening. One of my dedicates perished in the attempt to hold the box, and another lost his mind. No other dedicate had both the strength to go and the need to return,
Rosethorn.” Dokyi spoke into her ear so that she could hear nothing else. “Only a very strong mage can survive the Treasures
and
the Sealed Eye temple. But
you
— half of you walks in the sun, and half of you walks in shadow. You will need the shadow in the Temple of the Sealed Eye.”
“What!” Rosethorn yelped. “That’s not true! I’m a plant mage! I
need
sunshine, I
thrive
on it —”
“Then
how did you die and return
?”
She opened her mouth, inhaled, and thought the better of whatever she had meant to say. Instead she exhaled and rubbed her temples. “It’s a long and difficult story.”
“Then I will live through the fighting, because I want to hear it. In the meantime, I am First Dedicate of the Living Circle faith, First Dedicate of
all
of the Living Circle temples, and your vows of obedience are vows to
me
. I need you to do this because if the emperor, if any evil person, seizes these Treasures, they will poison our temples first, and then the world. No more arguing!”
She bowed her head. “No, Honored Dedicate.”
“Eat something.”
“Yes, Honored Dedicate.” She picked up a bun and bit it. Red bean. She hated red bean. She ate it anyway.
As she chewed, Dokyi explained, “In a day or two General Sayrugo will send troops on a sweep of the villages between this fort and the Drimbakang Zugu. The people here in the south must be moved to safety, should imperial armies come this far. You will ride with the soldiers as far as the turnoff for the road to Sealed Eye. They will guard you.”
“Will the children and I have a guide?” Rosethorn asked. She bit another bun. This was very spicy meat. She ate it dully.
Dokyi shook his head. “No. The fewer people who know of this, the better. Briar and Evumeimei must remain behind.”