Chapter Five

AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY home to the great tent city, Duwa and Jumal regarded each other with suspicion across the backs of their champions. Each had mis trusted the other since some childhood prank—Tayy couldn’t remember what had happened—which had set them eternally at odds. They usually put their differences aside for the more important task of defending their prince as his guardsmen. The division of the recent prize, however, seemed to have added chips to the flame of their animosity.

“I’d have thought fighting a war together would have . . .” Tayy started to say to his cousin. But Qutula, who had lately escaped a bloody death at the jaws of the maddened bear, had fallen into a brooding silence that the prince recognized only too well. Like the two quarreling guardsmen, they had been to war together in the Golden City. Fighting hand to hand in the squares and down streets both wide and narrow, they’d had to worry about an arrow in the back or a monster swooping down on them from the air.

On the battlefield, memories of the tent city of the Qubal Khan must have filled Qutula with a sense of safety and warmth just as it had Tayy. Neither of them had expected to find his life hanging in the balance on their own ground. The realization that they would find no safety even here at home heightened battle nerves more happily left behind. The prince took a breath to say some word of sympathy, but his cousin’s brooding, closed-in silence rejected any comfort before it could be spoken.

They were passing through the outskirts of the tent city. Qutula’s hooded gaze ranged over the camps, smaller and more widely scattered here than they were closer to the ger-tent palace of the khan. Tayy did the same, saw the gaps and absences of a city eroding at its edges as clans with no particular wealth or political connections packed their tents. They would follow the horses grazing afield on the rich grasslands that rolled away from the river in a sea of green and wildflower blue. Soon there would be nothing left but the political center around the khan, and his army of young fighters.

Against these lowering thoughts, only Bekter seemed to have an antidote. He held his bow in the position of a lute and muttered nonsense words under his breath while he fingered imaginary strings, working out a tune. He’d want the story out of his brother before Great Sun set, Tayy suspected; they might have the first performance after the feasting.

“So,” he said, directing his comments to Bekter, but speaking loud enough for all his companions to hear. “Do you think our bear is bigger than the one Nogai presented to the khan on his wedding night?”

Qutula looked at him strangely, but Bekter had perked up at the reference to the old story. As Tayy had hoped, he recited the first exaggerated description of the bear that Nogai killed.

“Old Brown raised up on his feet
Twice taller than the center pole
On which the silver palace stood,
In girth, wider than the lattices around.”

Songs often called the ger-tent of the khan “the silver palace” for the glittering silver embroideries that covered the white felt. Tayy would have had the recitation end there, with the bear, but Jumal, with his usual absence of tact, picked up the tale where Nogai entered it.

“The khan called Nogai to his side
His eyes aglisten with the dew of tears.
‘All I have is yours, good friend, but
find for me what I have lost.’ ”

“Our own tale reversed!” he said, pleased that he had made the connection. In the tale, the bear had stolen the khan’s new bride. Nogai had caught up with the bear and in a savage battle killed it. At the end of the tale he presents his khan with the huge bearskin, in which he has wrapped the rescued bride. “Instead of the friend saving the heir, the heir has saved the friend!”

Qutula glared murderously at his fellow guardsman and Tayy groaned under his breath. He’d have been annoyed enough if Jumal had compared him to the khan’s wife. But Jumal meant what happened next. Nine months after her return, the bride had produced a son and heir for the khan, thus Nogai had saved not only the bride, but the heir as well. The Nogai cycle didn’t end there, of course. The heir, it turned out, was the true offspring of the bear. When he reached the age of manhood, the bear-boy wreaked vengeance on the Qubal people for the death of his father. Finally Nogai met with him in a great battle fought on the banks of the Onga, where both had died of their wounds.

But that came much later. The story of Nogai’s bear was a favorite of childhood and only the coincidental symmetry of their ranks would have brought the end of the cycle to mind at all.

Fortunately, Bekter had his mind on his own version of the song. “Our Prince Tayy killed a smaller bear, of course,” he mused, though it went without saying.

“Ah, but consider this,” Tayy argued his case, glad to be back on the trail he had meant them to follow from his first mention of Nogai’s bear. “Tales always grow in the telling, right? So the bears in them must also grow. How big do you think this bear of ours will grow by the time we are old men?”

Bekter needed only a moment to consider. “Very large,” he agreed with a grin. “I think I can guarantee that it will become a very tower among bears.”

The clans did not build towers, of course. Cities that stayed in one place had once amazed the prince. In their travels to the Cloud Country, however, the army of the khan had seen great walls and towers built of stone or mud or wood that stood much longer than the life of a man, even a king. So they laughed, as they were meant to do, at the notion of a bear as tall as the great Temple of the Moon at the heart of the Golden City.

“And did I bring down the beast alone with my simple bow? Or did a valiant guardsman come to my aid with a spear carved with a charm for good fortune?” Tayy teased both cousins with the question.

Bekter picked up his tone, fluttering his fingers across the bent bow, mimicking their travel along the strings of his lute. “The young prince will win the day since that is the true history. And, of course, a singer at court always knows where his pies are coming from. Though the friend and guardsman must get in his blows, since brothers are closer than cousins.”

“And the rest of his companions? Do they appear as the villains in the piece, or the comic relief?” Jumal rolled his eyes and let his tongue loll out of the corner of his mouth in answer to his own mocking questions.

“They could be led astray by mischievous spirits,” Bekter thought out loud. Tayy was relieved that he had taken up his prince’s cause to draw his companions out of their dark moods with frivolity. In that vein he offered another end to their tale: “But is it not true that the companions had spread out in the woods, hunting prey and also alert to every danger? Good fortune made the prince a hero, but who would not have bagged the same shaggy prey in his position?”

“Not I,” Jumal cast a dark and complex look at the cousin who now rode in his place at Tayy’s side. “Qutula had my spear.”

“I thought I might need one but discovered a flaw in the shaft of my own. I meant to return it to you, or replace it if it took damage.”

“And a good thing you did,” Bekter asserted with fervor. Tayy thought he meant because it had helped to save his life, but in the true spirit of a singer, Bekter explained, “It gives me a way to add Jumal as another character in the tale.”

“The fool who left his weapon behind?”

They passed through the palisade of carts that marked the boundary of the tent city. As they entered the broad avenue that led to the palace of the khan, Bekter waved his hand to dismiss Jumal’s contribution. “That will never work. We must have only heroes in this tale. I think you gave the brave companion Qutula your spear, to replace his damaged one as a token of your regard. And so you are implicated with the prince in saving his life as well.”

Jumal seemed on the point of objecting to this version of the tale, which caused Tayy to wonder himself at the histories he had taken for truth all his life. Not the giant bear, of course. Even as a boy he had recognized the rich embroidery of a poet’s imagination, but he wondered now what less miraculous truth like his own hid behind the singer’s art.

Riding between the round white tents of the city, however, his companions had taken up the decoration of the afternoon with elaborations of their own exploits at the hunt. His objections lost in the laughing contributions of his fellows, Jumal accepted that he would have no say in the part he would play in the coming epic. Which was exactly what Tayy wanted. He laughed with the others, adding his own variant: “Where is the maiden in the tale? How can we have a hero without a maiden?”

Qutula paled alarmingly at the suggestion, but Tayy spread his arm wide to express his generosity when he said, “I will gladly cede my place in the tale to a princess. Perhaps the warrior queen of Pontus may rescue the embattled warrior? Even Qutula could have no objection to such a womanly rescue!”

They had all seen the warrior queen and her women’s army in battle, and agreed that she made a more comely heroine than the prince, “Though as likely to skin the brave companion as the bear,” Bekter pointed out, which made them all laugh the harder.

“A gentler maiden, then,” Jumal suggested, to which Tayy made one change: “Then she must take your place, good friend, and offer up the charmed spear to the gallant youth.”

Jumal flashed his eyelashes, ever the fool for a joke, and Tayy added his own jeering to that of his companions.

Then he saw the girl, conjured, it seemed, by their discussion.

There was nothing outwardly noteworthy about her, he would later admit. Pretty, but in a self-contained way, with none of the obvious allure that Sechule seemed to hold for her suitors. The girl stood with a broom in her hand in the doorway of a tent with ravens embroidered on the flap that closed over the smoke hole. He didn’t know why the broom seemed so important—he’d seen enough of them in the hands of slaves and servants. But raven feathers decorated the doorway of the tent the way pelts of stoats hung from Bolghai’s burrow. Brooms hung from Bolghai’s roof as well. Tayy’s friend Llesho, who had turned out to be a mortal god, had danced with a broom to find his totem form. So he wondered if the broom in the hands of the girl had magical properties, too.

She met his gaze, her dark, thoughtful eyes taking his measure, though he couldn’t tell what judgment she made about him. She wore the simple dress and hair ornaments of a maiden, but she didn’t giggle or hide her face or disappear inside the tent as most girls would do. She didn’t call out to him or smile either. Tayy felt turned inside out, with all his guts exposed to view. His thoughts from the deepest to the most frivolous, his feelings from the meanest to the most exalted were suddenly there on the surface for the girl to examine and to judge.

If he’d had a place to hide, he might have done so—except that for some reason he didn’t mind the intrusion of her gaze as he might anyone else who looked at him that way. Anyone but Lady Bortu. His grandmother had the same way of reading him to the ground with her glance. He didn’t get this funny feeling in the pit of his stomach when Lady Bortu did it, though.

Look your fill, he told the girl with his own gaze. “Scars are the measure of a king.”

“Excuse me, my prince. I didn’t hear.” Qutula asked, polite attention on his face, while a little behind them, their companions watched expectantly for his answer.

“Nothing—” He must have spoken aloud without realizing. “Nothing, just a riddle my father used to tell. ‘Scars are the measure of a king.’ ”

Chimbai-Khan had laughed at the wounds he took in battle, giving the riddle as his reason. Tayy had thought he meant that a khan was spared the pain of his injuries. Bruised from weapons practice and combat games, he had longed for the day he became khan so that he could laugh at painless cuts as well. Since then, war and death had taught him otherwise. No wound came without its cost. Scars marked not the wounding of a king, but his ability to heal himself, and with it, his people.

Fighting beside Llesho, the god-king, he had grown to understand more about what it meant to rule. People need their gods and shamans, their peaceful lives. But someone had to protect them from the evil of the world, even it if cost him some scars. He figured he’d be good at that now, good at being their khan.

“I was thinking of my father, and hoping that the way I carry my own wounds speaks well of me.”

Qutula looked at him strangely and he gave a little shrug, as if to let the words slide off his shoulders. “I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.”

His cousin’s answer, when it came—“All who follow you are honored to serve you”—felt like a line recited from a hero’s tale. Tayy ducked his head, feeling foolish. No one but himself cared about his old war wounds. The girl couldn’t know about his scars anyway.

Her eyes were very dark and very large, he noticed. She held his gaze while the pink tip of her tongue reached out and delicately touched the corner of her rich, full lip before disappearing again. He didn’t know what that revealed of her thoughts about him, but he had a suspicion that he ought to.

Who are you? he wondered. What clan? What name?

He dared not stop to ask. Her tent was small, not even two lattices and so far from the palace, indicating a family of low station. He didn’t want his companions to mistake his curiosity for interest. Qutula, he thought, might have noticed something, but his cousin made no comment. Tayy was relieved. They moved on and soon the mysterious girl had passed out of sight behind them.

The laughter had died in the strange moment before the raven tent, but the companions resumed their boasting as they neared the center of the camp. Challenges were accepted for wrestling matches and, if they noticed that he didn’t join in the merriment, they were discreet and did not remark on it. Left to his own thoughts, the prince considered the wagons heading away from the outskirts of the city. The passage of the peaceful folk meant nothing to the fighters who would stay at the right hand of the khan wherever he raised his tents. But Prince Tayy wondered how he could impel the family of the girl to stay until he had learned more about her. For the sake of curiosity, of course. He did not consider that he might fall in love until his uncle supplied him with a wife.

Mergen picked at the blood itching under his fingernails. The hunt had gone well. For a few hours he had forgotten all about the decisions waiting for him in the ger-tent palace where he served as an uneasy place keeper for his brother’s son. The khan understood the value of war, had fought it well enough as a strategist and with the force of his own arm. Stretching out over the neck of his horse, following the baying of the dogs in pursuit of a fleet-footed stag or a wild ram, however, he felt his connections to the earth and the sky and the people of the Qubal clans more keenly than he ever had on the battlefield.

The moment reminded him of what he was beneath his coats, at heart and soul. A man of the grasslands. Harnish, the Tashek mystics named them, for the wind that passed over the grass, never resting. The wind. That’s what he was. The wind.

Even an afternoon in summer must end, however. Returning to the tent city with their prey securely tied on the back of a horse, Mergen joined his companions in their jokes and boasting.

“You have cut short that ram’s lazy reign over his harem of ewes,” Mergen praised the skill of his friend Yesugei. “You must insist that the cooks honor the virility of beast and hunter with their best recipes.”

“Perhaps he can help me with my own harem,” Yesugei agreed. None but the khan knew how deeply from the heart the general’s answering joke had come. Yesugei pined to add Sechule to his household. She rebuffed him, setting her aim above him, on the khanate Mergen could not, in conscience, give her. Like all the rest, however, he passed it off as rueful boasting to enflame the scandalous jesting insults of their companions.

“Better the one end than the other,” someone joked from the back, and another, “Better the horns of a ram than the egg of a cuckoo!” This was an old riddle, which could lead to a murderous fight if a man’s sons strayed too far from the look of his own face. But this time they all laughed, knowing it for a harmless joke. If the general had no harem, at least Yesugei’s wife was faithful as Great Moon herself. All his sons and his one daughter took after their father.

With no cause for insult in his own tent, at least, Yesugei shifted the boasting attention onto his khan. “If there is a point to this conversation,” he asserted with mock indignation, “then it is dangling off the head of that fine stag you have yourself caught.”

Their party joined in laughing agreement, slapping the sides of their horses in goodwill.

“A lover for every branch,” they agreed. The many points to the antlers of the stag must surely indicate something about the pointed manliness of the hunter who bagged him, after all. “But a bit hesitant to commit his shot.”

Mergen had, in fact, hesitated to let his arrow go. He shuddered a little at the memory of wonders he had seen in the war. Even a khan had to consider, as he set the arrow, if he aimed at fair game or a neighbor visiting in his totem form. But the joke referred more to his lack of a wife. As his brother the khan had wished of him, he did, indeed, enjoy the welcome of many lovers among the clans without bestowing his tents on any one, or two of them.

Beside him, Yesugei said something. He didn’t catch it all, but recognized the tag line of another ribald riddle with, perhaps, a knife edge glittering in the folds of its meaning—if he wished to hear it so. With the others of his own generation of guardsmen and counselors around him, however, he chose not to see the nettles among the clover and laughed his raucous appreciation of the jest.

The day, he decided, was perfect. Warm, though, and the hunt was warm work. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and without thinking he wiped at it with the back of his hand. An uneasy silence fell suddenly over his companions. He didn’t need to ask what troubled them; he felt the bloody mark smeared across his forehead.

“It’s nothing. Wipe your face.” Yesugei handed him a scarf and reached to take it back when he had wiped the red streak from his brow.

My tether line, Mergen-Khan thought of his general, who accepted the wonders he had seen without letting them trouble his world. Since Otchigin had died, and then Chimbai-Khan, Mergen had had no friend as sure, no counselor as honest as the chieftain Yesugei. Blood was just blood. Men got it on themselves when hunting. It meant nothing, certainly pointed to no guilt on his part. He’d loved his brother and had no desire for his position.

They all knew that Chimbai-Khan had died of a snake’s venomous bite. Fewer knew the snake for Chimbai’s second wife, the emerald green bamboo snake demon, but no part of the tale laid any blame on Mergen. Still, he would not return the soiled scarf but tucked it into his own clothes rather than deflect the omen onto his general.

“Isn’t that the young Prince Tayyichiut?” One of his guardsmen pointed toward a minor tent as they came onto the wide avenue leading to the ger-tent palace gleaming in the distance.

“The heir has turned to hunting rabbit,” Mergen’s guardsman pointed out in jest.

With his attention drawn to the modest tent decorated in the raven totem, the khan saw where his heir’s hunt had taken him. Prince Tayyichiut had slowed his horse, his eyes fixed on a girl. She had high cheekbones and a mouth a bit too wide, but her solemn dark eyes seemed lit with complex inner life. Long, straight hair fell thick as a horse’s tail from her maiden’s combs. As he passed with his companions around him, the young prince couldn’t take his eyes off her. For her part, she seemed equally fascinated by the sudden appearance of a prince at her door.

“Not rabbit, I think, but larger game,” Yesugei amended. He might have meant the doeskin packet strapped to the packhorse. But Mergen, like his hunting party, understood him to mean the girl, and that perhaps the arrow went both ways. The prince seemed spellbound.

Mergen recognized the look. He’d had the same for Sechule in his time, and Yesugei himself often sported it in her presence now. Unfortunately, he also recognized the girl. But what was she doing here, in a shaman’s tent so close to the grand avenue leading to the palace? Had her fosterers lost their senses? And why, of all the girls in the camp, did Tayy have that look on his face for this one?

“No lady,” a guardsman sniffed with a nudge of his chin at her bare feet. “But she’ll do for practice.”

A vein throbbed at Mergen’s temples as he turned his wrath on the man. He’d spent years hiding the very existence of the girl, but in his temper his hand went to the sword at his side. He would separate the man’s head from his body with one stroke and worry about explanations later.

“Not if he has any sense.” Another of his guardsmen spoke up. Chahar, one of Bolghai’s many sons. Some had followed their father’s path and others had chosen the army. One brother had died with Otchigin, fighting stone monsters in the war for the Cloud Country. But they had all grown up wandering in and out of their father’s bur rowlike tent. Chahar wasn’t looking at Mergen or the sword half drawn from its sheath, but at the broom in the girl’s hand.

“That broom has seen little enough of sweeping, and she’s holding it wrong way up for earthly chores. She’s a shaman, or practicing to be one, with the raven-lady, Toragana, I would guess. If the boy has any sense, he’ll wait at least until she can control her spells before approaching her with any suggestion he may want to make.”

“I’d have thought the young prince had seen enough wonders in his short life,” Yesugei mused. “I’m sure he has no more than a passing curiosity about her, but I’ll put a word in Qutula’s ear if you wish, my khan. Sometimes young men will listen to each other before they will take the advice of their elders.”

Alone of Mergen’s companions, Yesugei knew the identity of the girl and the khan’s plans for her. Mergen wondered, however, if he only pretended to surprise at the shaman business.

“I’ll talk to Qutula.” It was time, Mergen thought, to start demonstrating to the court his faith in his sons. Bekter was a poet and the favorite of all, so his place in the palace was already secured. The khan’s appreciation of Qutula’s more subtle mind must be carefully introduced, however. He wanted to raise no fear among the clans that he planned to establish his own dynasty on Sechule’s blanket-sons.

“And I’ll make my feelings clear to the prince myself. He may find his way under whatever blanket he wishes as long as he makes his connections for the clans.” Mergen had no intention of letting Prince Tayy develop any sort of acquaintance with that particular girl, but he would reveal nothing on that score yet. Soon, though. First, he had to put an end to this shaman nonsense.

The prince led his followers racing the night toward home in a cloud of dust kicked up by their horses’ flying hooves. Mergen slowed his own party to a walk so they didn’t have to make their greetings in front of all the clans. Mergen let his companions think the fading of the light had put him in a pensive mood. His courtiers knew his temper well enough to cease their joking. Content to raise themselves a little higher in their saddles, they urged their horses to a swaggering gait past rows of round white tents. Yesugei, however, watched him with a sharp eye that didn’t escape Mergen’s notice.

He was pretty sure that plain dumb luck had brought the prince and the girl together. But the shaman business had to stop. She’d be no use to him at all with a rattle and a drum in her hand.