Spear of Heaven by Judith Tarr

slowly.
    Only Daruya did not move; and the guides. The men had a look
she had seen in battle, in warriors who had seen too much, whose minds had stopped,
leaving them blankly still. The woman was stronger, or more resilient. She
flinched at the brush of Daruya’s glance, but she steadied herself, lifted her
eyes, met Daruya’s.
    Daruya was prey to both arrogance and impatience, as her
elders never wearied of telling her. But she was not a fool. She spoke very
carefully, choosing her words as meticulously as if she had been addressing the
emperor of a nation with which she could be, if she failed of diplomacy, at
war. “I swear to you by all that I hold holy, that I have harmed not a hair of
their heads, nor done aught but win us free of ambush.”
    Aku’s eyes narrowed. “You did it? Only you?”
    Daruya felt the flush climb her cheeks. “If there is blame,
yes, it is mine alone.”
    “But the other could,” said Aku. “Could have done the same.”
    She meant Vanyi. Daruya hesitated. To lie, to prevaricate,
to tell the truth . . . “She did nothing.”
    “She would have,” Aku said. Perceptive, for a woman who had
no magic. She was no longer quite so afraid. “I see that you’re very foreign.”
    “Very,” said Daruya, a little at a loss. She thought she
understood what the woman was getting at. But she could not be certain—even
knowing what thoughts ran through that brain, both the spoken and the unspoken.
“We’re still mortal,” she said. “Still human. We’re not gods, nor demons,
either.”
    “So you say,” said Aku. She struck her ox with the goad,
urging it forward onto the track the caravan had taken. Her husbands, stirring
at last, fell in behind her.
    Daruya, left alone, baffled, a little angry, had the
presence of mind to sweep the land round about. Nothing threatened. The bandits
were still running. Already the tale had grown, the caravan swelled into an
army of devils armed with thunderbolts. By the time it passed into rumor, it
would be a battle of gods, into which the bandits had fallen by accident and
barely escaped alive.
    None of which mattered now, with guides who could turn
traitor and lead them all into a crevasse. What dishonor would there be in
that? Not only were they foreigners; they were mages.
    Fear would be enough, Daruya hoped. And common sense. Aku
had that. She would want her payment, her scarlet silk. And maybe she would see
the profit in seeing this journey to its end, the tales she could tell, the
travelers who would pay high to pass through the mountains with a woman who had
guided a caravan of demons safely into Shurakan.
    And they were safe. Whether word spread swifter than they
could travel, or whether they were simply blessed with good fortune, they met
no further ambush. No one tried to rob them in the villages, nor were they
fallen on in camp and forced to give up their valuables. The snows that were
not uncommon even at this time of year veiled the upper peaks from day’s end to
day’s end, but never came down upon their track. All their passes were open,
the ways unblocked by snow or rockfall or avalanche.
    oOo
    The luck was with them. Kimeri heard the Olenyai saying
that to one another, in whispers so as not to frighten it away.
    They could not see the demons who followed, spying on them,
or clustered round their camp at night, round-eyed as owls, staring and
wondering. The mages, who should have been able to see, were not looking. The
guides had made themselves blind, because seeing made them so afraid.
    Demons kept bandits away, though her mother’s magic helped.
The one whom she had come to think of as her demon, the white-feathered one
that she had met at the spring, actually chased off a ragged man who was too
desperately hungry to care about the rumor of fire and terror.
    Kimeri was angry at the demon for that. She made sure there
was food for the man to steal, left some of her supper and some of her
breakfast behind, and hoped he found them and