Chapter Seven

 

WITH A BOW TO THE LADY BORTU, Mergen settled himself on the dais. Looking around the great ger-tent palace, he nodded to a face he knew. Already there were fewer senior chieftains in their places above the firebox. The clans were departing, leaving him his tithe of young men for the army but taking away their wives and daughters and herdsmen, heading back to their everyday lives. Yesugei remained, however, offering his support as adviser to the khan while he stalked Sechule for his second wife. Mergen would have been happier about the one if not for the other.

Tonight, however, he had more pressing matters on his mind. Leaving the general to wander among the courtiers, following the sign of Sechule’s passing—her dark hair, and the smell of the herbs she used in her clothes—Mergen turned to his mother with a question on his lips. “Have you seen Bolghai?” His glance roved everywhere in the great ger-tent palace, searching for the shaman in the thinning crowd of courtiers.

“Not today,” the lady answered, making room beside her on the heaped furs. Beads of turquoise and coral clacked and rattled on her towering headdress as she returned his seated bow. “Are you ill? Cursed? In need of counsel from the underworld?”

With Bortu, you never knew if she was being serious or secretly laughing at you behind her hand. Chimbai-Khan had never had that problem with her, of course. But Chimbai-Khan had been her first choice as khan. They were alone on the dais now, however. Though she didn’t seem exactly serious about the reasons he might want the shaman, he detected a glint of interest—his mother would never show concern—in her eaglelike gaze.

“That fool girl has gone and apprenticed herself to some woman on the outskirts of the camp. Bolghai has to put a stop to it!” He told her the truth. If he couldn’t find the shaman, he might need his mother’s advice.

“And which fool girl would that be?” she prodded, knowing very well but wanting him to say it. Sechule wasn’t the only woman among the clans who had borne him a child.

“Eluneke.” He had thought that fostering the girl with a distant family of small holdings and few political aspirations would protect him from those wishing to reach Chimbai-Khan through Mergen’s offspring. He hadn’t anticipated this.

“Ah. That one.” Lady Bortu twitched a shoulder in a gesture that someone watching from the floor might take as adjusting the embroidered cuffs of her blue silk coat. Mergen knew better. “She was a pretty little thing,” Bortu mused. “But her mother was nothing special, as I recall, and her people haven’t been heard from since disease took their horses. How long has that been? Long enough to have come to our attention if they had any grit at all. I thought you had abandoned her.”

“So I wanted it to seem, if anyone discovered her parentage. Her foster family knew better than to allow a poor boy to court her. I gave her no dowry or presents to make certain she would have no suitors from among the better-placed clans. Why they gave her to a shaman escapes my understanding completely.”

“It would seem your ruse worked too well. If I’d known you still had an interest, I would have kept my eye open for a likely match. And her foster family might have been more inclined to keep her when her mother died.” Which all sounded perfectly innocent, except that Bortu seemed to know an awful lot about a girl in whom she claimed no interest.

Servants were approaching with heavily laden trays. The delicious smells reminded him of how ravenous he was, but he motioned them away. More important to finish this, now, with his mother.

“Did you know about the shaman business?” he asked her. “Was it your doing?”

“I thought you were the clever son. Don’t be a fool if you can help it.” Lady Bortu sniffed with a flair of nostrils to show her disdain for his questions. She didn’t deny his charge, however.

“But you knew.”

“It didn’t seem to matter.” Gnarled old hands still moved gracefully in a dismissive gesture, just her fingertips showing beneath her deep silk cuffs. “If you do have your eye on her, tell me and I will see what kind of match I can make for her.”

“I thought perhaps the Emperor of Shan.”

“The Shan Empire is very far away.” The Lady Bortu made a sour face. The capital city, she meant, at the heart of the empire: a distance his daughter would cross but once in her lifetime. “And the emperor’s affection is fixed elsewhere, or so the whispers say in camp.”

Mergen had seen with his own eyes the Emperor Shou’s infatuation. Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war in a foreign religion, held Shou’s heart between her sharp red fingernails.

“Not as first wife, of course,” he conceded, “but more than a concubine. Maybe even second wife.” In the great capital of the Shan Empire, a daughter of the khan might take no slight at being second to a goddess. For the emperor’s part, if anyone might find happiness with a woman of shamanistic tendencies it would be one who courted war in a woman’s form.

Other options remained to them, of course. “We owe Tinglut a sign of good faith,” he reminded his mother. “He’s lost a daughter in his dealings with the clans; it seems only fitting to give him a Qubal daughter as wife.”

“Ah, yes, I meant to tell you. A messenger from the Tinglut-Khan arrived while you were hunting. Old Tinglut has one of his sons on the march to negotiate a match to bind the continued peace between us. I think they will be unwilling to send us a second princess.”

Somewhere on the grassy plain between the Tinglut and the Qubal clans, a bamboo snake-demon had taken the place of the Tinglut princess meant to be Chimbai-Khan’s second wife. The princess doubtless lay in some rocky hollow, dead of the fanged tooth of the demon. Tinglut-Khan had come to accept that the snake-demon, and not her Qubal husband, had done away with his daughter. With Chimbai’s death at the same poisoned tooth and demons pressing them in the recent war, Tinglut had thrown his troops in with Mergen’s, but their truce remained uneasy.

“I sent the messenger to find food and rest in the city, with an invitation for his prince to come at his pleasure.” Lady Bortu watched him with a keen eye for how he would react to the news. He was surprised only by the speed with which Tinglut-Khan had moved, however.

“A daughter of the Qubal given as a wife to the Tinglut-Khan might ease those last suspicions,” he mused.

“The Tinglut are rich enough,” Lady Bortu agreed with a frown that meant she was turning over all the possibilities in her cunning old mind, “but the old khan’s looks are lacking and his temper is not sweeter. Eluneke is not so different from other girls that she will thank you for such a match, however many furs and jewels he showers on her. We must ask ourselves, how grateful will the old khan be for an unhappy wife?”

Mergen agreed for reasons of his own. He wasn’t ready to throw away Eluneke on a lesser power like the Tinglut. Yesugei had a daughter of marriageable age who might trade a husband’s less-than-perfect looks for a rise in rank, however, and Prince Tayy had a sister of seven summers or so fostered among the clans. They might betroth her to the old khan as a promise they might never need to keep.

Lady Bortu had continued down her own track, however. “A son, then,” she suggested. “Old Tinglut has sons. The girl is pretty enough, when she bothers to put on decent clothes. We might do well with a handsome Tinglut prince if not the emperor of Shan.”

Mergen had no intention of letting her go to the Tinglut, but he was determined on one thing: “She can’t be allowed to complete training as a shaman, of course. No sane man wants a shamaness in his bed.” Which was another reason Tayy’s interest had him worried.

A commotion at the door told him that the younger hunters had returned. His time to speak privately with his mother was running out and he hadn’t yet mentioned the most troubling intelligence of the day—Prince Tayyichiut’s fascination with a bootless shamaness from a lowly clan. Tayy couldn’t know who she was, so what had drawn the boy’s attention? And how were they going to put a stop to it? He would have to have a quiet word with Qutula and Bekter. They would join in his loving conspiracy to separate the heir from this inconvenient attraction.

“Have you thought about a match for your brother’s heir?” Lady Bortu nodded in the direction of the doorway. Prince Tayyichiut, accompanied by Mergen’s own sons, had just entered. His dogs, trying to follow their master, were repelled by the guardsmen at the door, adding to the commotion of the party assembling there with much whispering and jostling of elbows. “If you don’t need her for the Tinglut, Yesugei’s girl might do,” she added. “I can talk to her grandmother.”

But Mergen had other plans for Prince Tayy. “The Bithynian Apadisha has a daughter. She’s a warrior, so they should get along very well together.”

Bortu crossed her hands over the knee tucked under her chin and frowned, not so much displeased, Mergen guessed, as calculating the consequences of such a match. “The clans are so beset by enemies these days that we must have not only a warrior khan, but the same in his khaness?”

She might have planned the conversation to that point, but Mergen thought he’d surprised her with the Bithynian princess. Until recently he would have answered “no” to his mother’s question and found Tayy a nice young daughter of a neighboring khan, or even of a chieftain among the Qubal as his mother suggested. The death of his brother and the war for the Cloud Country, however, had taught him otherwise. “Times have changed,” he answered. “A prince of the Qubal people must marry for larger politics now.”

“And there are no warrior princesses nearer?”

He had added up to something new in her estimation, he thought.

“Find me one,” he challenged her. “But not in Yesugei’s tent.” Mergen didn’t want to test the general’s loyalty or his friendship too far while Sechule stood between them. “And stop this shaman madness while you’re at it. Many moves remain to the game if we are to stay abreast of our neighbors, and we have few enough stones on the board to make them.”

“More than you seem willing to use.” She gave a pointed look at the young men ordering themselves at the foot of the ger-tent palace, his own blanket-sons among them.

“Later, when my brother’s heir has the khanate, I’ll advise him, as I expect will you, on how best to use these loyal stones to serve his interests in the world.” It should have been obvious to her—“Until that day, I want no accusations of dynastic aspirations.”

The Lady Bortu frowned again. He had no time to pursue her displeasure, however. The horde of young warriors descended upon him with much noise and, always a bad sign, a bit too much laughter. He wondered which one of them had nearly gotten himself killed and how they had managed it so near to home.

Ah. Qutula. His companions nudged him forward. The sudden feeling surprised Mergen, like a stubborn horse had just kicked him in the chest. On the long trek back from the high country he’d gotten out of the habit of holding his breath, waiting for the news that battle had taken the bright light of his sons from his life. It wasn’t fair, this sneak attack on his unguarded flank. Looked like Qutula had made it home again in one piece, though. He lacked the cocky swagger that surviving a close call usually gave a young man but led the way with his head held firmly erect, his mouth set in a grim line. Perhaps it had been too close a call this time. Or, given it was Qutula, he doubtless hated being rescued even more than he disliked needing the rescue in the first place.

The prince followed behind, trying to look modest, though the excited grin that kept breaking out on his lips ruined the effect. Then Bekter, bursting to tell the story, and two of their companions. One dropped back at the door, but the other trailed his betters with a bundle heavy in his arms. When they reached the foot of the dais, they stopped and made low formal bows.

“Uncle.”

When the prince rose from his bow, Qutula was free to do likewise. He considered addressing Mergen as father, but hadn’t decided what his next step would be if the khan repudiated him. So, “My lord khan,” he said in greeting while in his thoughts he urged his father, Say it now. Call me your son. His eyes remained downcast in a respectful manner, showing nothing of the bitterness he felt when the words did not come.

“A trophy in honor of the hunt,” Tayy announced with a flourishing wave of his hand.

It was not clear if the prince meant the bear’s liver or Qutula himself, returned alive to suffer embarrassment in front of his father’s entire court. I could not love a patricide, his lady had cautioned him. He would rather have Mergen’s blessing anyway; would rather win acknowledgment as a reward for some heroic act of his own. But not like this, cast up at the foot of the dais like a child swept out of danger by a more alert guardian.

Jumal came forward, however, and placed the doeskin bundle in the prince’s hands, which in turn he extended to his uncle. “A gift to the khan from his heir and the guardsman Qutula, who killed the beast between them,” Tayy explained as Mergen-Khan unwrapped the dripping liver. He was very careful, Qutula noted, to say nothing that would imply any interest that the khan might have in his own son. “It was a very small bear.”

It was clear from the great size of the liver that the bear had been huge, at least seven feet tall on its hind legs, which was how Qutula remembered it.

“Here is a tale for the telling.” Mergen beamed in pride, though his teeth seemed clenched around some less pleasant emotion that remained unspoken. The khan drew his knife and cut off a sliver of the dripping, raw liver.

“A fine gift,” he said, and popped the sliver into his mouth, swallowing it without chewing so that the life of the bear might enter his vitals whole and potent. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. With the back of his hand he wiped the smear from his lips and licked away the juices with his tongue. Then he raised his red-stained knife over his head.

“To the cook pots!” he declared, “A portion to all who would be warriors as daring as these young hunters, and a tale of the chase while we eat our weaker porridge in anticipation of that finer fare to come!”

With that he invited his blanket-sons to join him on the dais as Prince Tayy’s courtiers. Bekter wasted no time in grabbing a pie from a passing tray, but Qutula accepted no dinner for himself when he claimed his place at the prince’s side. As Mergen had done for Chimbai-Khan, he sampled Tayy’s dishes before he would allow the prince to eat. His brother fed himself heartily to withstand the exertions of a night of singing, but Qutula took his own nourishment from those bites and fragments he tasted off his prince’s plate.

Their own cadre would guess that he served his lord in gratitude for his life. After a time, who would suspect him of dosing the very food he tasted for his prince? A servant filled the kumiss bowls and handed Tayy’s to Qutula, who took the first sip before passing it on. The tattoo on his breast warmed under his clothes as his resolve hardened.

“Your guardsman serves you well, Prince.” Mergen gave a nod over his own bowl of strong kumiss. He smacked his lips in appreciation for the pungent sour taste of the fermented mare’s milk. Unless one knew him very well, he wouldn’t notice the tension in the line of his jaw.

“Yes, he does,” Tayy agreed around another bite of his pie. They were all too polite—and too superstitious—to mention that Mergen’s solicitude hadn’t saved Chimbai.

They talked in casual nothings as they ate, but presently Bekter pushed his empty dish away, a signal that he was ready to sing.

“Have you made up a song for us yet about the wondrous bear and the great battle to defeat it?” Mergen asked, half mockingly.

“Not in its finished form,” Bekter protested, “But I can play a bit of it for your pleasure, my lord khan.”

“Then do so.” Mergen gave permission with a nod and a rueful smile. “I suppose I’ll never know the real events of this afternoon’s adventure, but we’ll have the poet’s version to entertain us, at least.”

Prince Tayy made a great show of indignation. “Would you doubt your heir?” he asked. “Or mistrust the truths of your singer of tales?”

“Mistrust? No, never.” Mergen-Khan protested in his turn with a sardonic smile. “I trust you all completely—to regale the court with the most outrageous and boastful lies they have heard since your elders told their own tales at your age.” Which might have drawn more wide-eyed protests from the prince, but Bekter had wiped his greasy hands on his coats and, with a bow to the court, he settled himself on a low stool in front of the dais.

Bekter had explained to Qutula on other occasions that he preferred to steal the march on those who would criticize his fledgling efforts with the same standards they applied to a mature, completed work. So it didn’t surprise him that his brother gave them a warning as he picked up his lute.

“I have only begun to craft this song, so don’t expect too much of it,” he said, “When I’ve had more time to polish it, the tale will shine like a fine jewel in the history I propose, to celebrate the heroes of the Qubal people.”

Cradling the lute on his bent knee, Bekter offered a last modest word of introduction. “I hope even this poor egg of a tale conveys a little of the excitement of the hunt and the prowess of the hunter. And the terror of the bear, of course, in whose life we will soon share at this feast.”

It seemed to Qutula that the bear had shown very little sign of terror, even with Jumal’s spear sticking out of its shoulder. But his brother had begun his song, and so he listened for his own part in the saga.

 

“The prince rode out, whom all men call the Son of Light, Bright shining in his armor, with silver on his toes, Strong of arm from fighting many wars.”

 

Bekter may have claimed the song was hastily constructed, but the word he’d used for the Son of Light—Nirun—had more renderings than a riddle. By saying it in the first line, his brother had clearly intended not only to describe Prince Tayyichiut, but to name him so that all the generations who followed would remember him for a hero. The gathered chieftains and clan elders must have known and felt the same shiver that had gone up Qutula’s back. They sat, enraptured, as if Bekter’s song was a Shannish rocket going off in an eruption of brilliant color before their eyes.

Qutula darted a glance to the place where Bolghai usually sat, wondering what the khan’s shaman made of this poetic naming, but the space by the dais remained empty. Half mad as he was, the old man seldom missed a meal. Where was he?

It seemed, to Qutula’s dismay, that Bekter sat with his lute making prophecies in the missing shaman’s stead. And all the lines of his song rained blessings on the son of the khan who was dead, whose dynasty should have ended there, in favor of Mergen’s own sons. Whom the living khan still had not acknowledged. The fire in his breast needed nothing of his lady’s pleasure or chastisement for kindling. Where in Bekter’s tale was Qutula the brave, who had survived attack by the great black bear? Where, for that matter, were the silver toes of a prince on his own boots? The silver cap of a prince for his head? Caught up in the singing of praises for the false heir, however, Bekter refused to see or sing the worth of his own brother.

“Like an army rode his hunters after the bright shining one

Seeking meat for hungry soldiers and livers for their manhood

—each had many ladies!”

 

Bekter had turned the lines from the grave business of naming a prince by his prowess to the ribald humor the court expected in a heroic song. The prince laughed, breaking the air of anticipation that had held the gathered company in its grip, though Qutula could see the court retainers shifting uneasily in their places. Some of the older courtiers had not yet shaken the sense of prophecy spoken in the first lines of the song. But here was the plainer meat of the tale; throughout the great felted palace, nobles and chieftains settled into the telling. More verses described the sweep across the grasslands in the lake formation, demonstrating the hunters’ mastery of warlike skills. Then the patient stalking of more common fare. Bekter added decorative mouth music to signal the approach of the bear.

“Spoor, longer than a hunter’s stride marked the trail Where trees, plucked twiglike by their roots, tumbled. What monster lay in wait upon that path?”

 

The tale sounded rough in some parts. Bekter’s playing left much to be desired. But Qutula saw that his brother held the whole palace—court musicians with perfected skills as well as the chieftains and warriors—tethered to his words as the hunters fanned out in search of the monstrous creature. As always, the poet had added an oasis of comedy. Putting himself in the role of the buffoon, Bekter set his audience at its ease, only to whip them into a frenzy of anxiety as the hero engaged once again in life-threatening battle. Already the mythic bear had grown tall as the towers of the Golden City of legend. When Qutula threw his spear, it fell in the tale like a splinter pricking the hairy hide. Then the arrow of the prince, whom the song named Nirun—Son of Light—plunged through the mad red eye to bury its iron tip in the beast’s brain.

As the great black bear faltered and died, the gathered company gasped a pent-up sigh of relief. All but Qutula, who ground his teeth in silent frustration. With a bashful grin, Bekter took his bows to uproarious applause from above the firebox and below. He had made Prince Tayyichiut a hero, dwelling on the prowess of the heir and galloping right over the little detail that the bear had nearly killed Mergen’s own son. If Mergen-Khan hadn’t been watching him with that narrow-eyed analytical stare, Qutula might even have believed they’d gotten away with it.

“A bear of legendary stature,” Mergen praised the singer when Bekter had put down his lute. “And a hero to stand the test of many singings,” he added with a slap to Prince Tayyichiut’s shoulder.

“I hope so, my lord.” Even his low bow could not hide the blush of pleasure on Bekter’s cheeks.

Tayy matched the singer for the deep purple that rose on his cheeks, but he protested the praise lavished on his own part of the tale. “Not so much a hero,” he assured his uncle. “You know how tales grow in the telling.”

“And yet, this mythical beast out of our singer’s imagination has left his liver behind for the strong of heart to enjoy.”

Mergen gestured at the servants who had returned with the first crisp slivers of liver for the warriors. As he had with all the other morsels presented to the prince, Qutula took the sliver from Tayy’s plate and bit into the rich meat before passing it on.

His father the khan looked like he’d scented prey and was on the trail of the truth missing from the tale the hunting party had agreed upon. Fortunately, the honor of a khan would prevent him from questioning his heir’s guardsmen, some of whom might have crumbled under such an interrogation. He didn’t think his own peril would distress the khan, but the danger to Prince Tayy had been almost as great, and unnecessary. He might have kept his soldiers around him for protection. A khan as wise as Mergen always did that. Or, he might have crept away again, saving himself while the bear busied himself murdering Qutula. Neither course would have made the prince a hero sung in all the camps of the Qubal, however, and already he heard Bekter’s lines murmured among the guardsmen.

 

 

 

Mergen smiled and led the gathered courtiers in their applause. The song would need polishing, of course, and he could not praise his blanket-son’s skill on the lute. But already the tale had captured the hearts of the court. Tomorrow the khan’s musicians would have mastered the melody and soon he would hear Bekter’s words throughout the camp. Mergen looked forward to acknowledging this clever son. He would show the clans that a khan—if only a former khan—could value the talent of a poet in one son every bit as much as he valued the prowess of a warrior in the other. Now, however, it was the warrior son who concerned him. Qutula had a dark and brooding look as he sampled his prince’s food and drank from his cup.

At present the service posed no real threat to the safety of either young man. Among his own people, Prince Tayyichiut had no enemies; the Qubal loved their hero-prince. Politically, the clans were at peace with their neighbors and the reputation they had gained in the recent wars would assure they remained so, at least until his young heir had gained enough experience to lead his people. The Tinglut already negotiated a closer relationship with the Qubal. More to the purpose, the Tinglut emissary lodged under the watchful eye of the army for the night. The only other strangers in the camp were prisoners brought back with them from the war. No foreign hand had access to the prince or his food.

Qutula wasn’t worried about someone poisoning the prince’s dinner. Mergen figured his son still brooded over his near brush with death that afternoon. The bear’s liver was large, testifying to a beast that would have towered over his son. Bekter’s song had exaggerated some facts and obscured others, but Mergen had stalked game in the woods himself, and could well imagine what had happened. It would have rankled that Qutula couldn’t take the bear on his own, and even more that having enraged it with a wound, he needed the help of his companions to avoid murder by claw and tooth. He required something to take his mind off his close call. For that matter, so did his father.

Lady Bortu seemed to feel the same. She drank from her own kumiss bowl and passed it to her grandson the prince with an indulgent smile, far too innocent in its apparent intent to take at face value. Qutula held a bland smile on his face as his grandmother praised her first son’s heir through her commentary on the song they had just heard. “An excellent tale,” she judged, “And an excellent hero, one who surely earns the loyalty of his followers.

“But,” she interposed with one gnarled finger raised before her, almost as if the question were an afterthought, “are the heir’s defenders themselves strong enough to stand against the thunder?”

Her words echoed a riddle that had more to do with loyalty than strength of arms. He wondered what she was up to. Qutula’s face had suffused with blood at the remark; Mergen had to take the heat out of the moment or risk losing his blanket-sons to blood feud with their own grandmother.

“There’s only one way to find out—we must have a competition of games tomorrow!” the khan declared, deliberately misunderstanding his mother’s meaning in his reply. He’d had, perhaps, a bit more kumiss than usual and so the gathered courtiers would blame his dulled wits on drunkenness and custom.

In times of peace, the games offered the young warriors a chance to learn each other’s skills. Their elders took the opportunity to look over the contestants as prospective husbands for the daughters who cheered their brothers on or, sometimes, wore their brothers’ clothes to enter the contests themselves.

In the aftermath of a war as they had lately fought, the games were a chance to celebrate victory and show off some of the very skills that had brought the warriors home. They also gave the horde a way to keep its skills sharp while releasing the tensions that grew between young men still nerved for battle. So the courtiers took up the call for the games while the “shussshh” of swords half raised from scabbards let him know the warriors who lined the walls were eager to demonstrate their worth as guardians of the khan.

Prince Tayyichiut quickly joined in the scheme. “We need two teams to test their strength against each other.”

His follower Jumal, who had carried the trophy of the day’s hunt, dropped to one knee with his hand to his heart. “I would be honored to serve my prince as first among the Nirun,” he said.

Mergen felt the chill of fate run up his spine, raising the hairs on his neck. Others among the prince’s followers quickly joined in the chant of “Nirun! Nirun!” The Sons of Light, that was, taking up Bekter’s song as they formed their army under the banner of the heir.

Another young soldier strode forward, whom Mergen recognized as Duwa, a childhood friend of his blanket-sons. Duwa had returned with the hunting party but had kept to his place among the lower ranks until now. Dropping to one knee as Jumal had done, he declaimed his own allegiance.

“And to oppose, in honorable mock combat, I put my spear and sword and the muscle of arm and shoulder at the service of the guardsman, Captain Qutula!”

Bekter, who had cozened another pie and a bowl of kumiss from one of the servant girls, looked up from his second dinner with shock and dismay. Mergen thought that Qutula would himself object, offering his sword to defend the heir’s honor in the games. Though his son looked surprised, however, the flesh firmed around his eyes and his jaw tightened with a challenge.

“Someone must, I suppose,” he said, carefully considering the matter as he spoke. “And what better way to show not only my willingness to serve my prince, but my strength of arms to do so, than by testing them against that very prince.”

The Lady Bortu’s riddle had clearly smarted. Tayy’s grandmother, she was, and Qutula’s, too, though like Mergen himself, she had never shown by any public word or action that she recognized his bastard children.

“And if Prince Tayyichiut should lead the Nirun, Sons of Light,” Qutula declared, “then we who oppose, even in mock battle, must be Durluken, the Sons of Darkness.”

To his son’s followers, he thought the name carried no weight to burden the soul. They were just the opposing team—the dark to the prince’s light and no more. But Qutula looked like something had settled in his soul; a missing piece of his understanding of himself had found its place, boot to stirrup.

That look slid over Mergen’s skin like the earth of a living grave. The clans didn’t bury their dead, except as the most dire punishment, to trap their souls with their bodies in the hell of the living grave. Mergen remembered a time when he’d threatened a man with that worst of all deaths— to slice him open crotch to gullet and bury him alive with his entrails in his hands. He felt like that was happening to him now, and didn’t know why, except that his son, whose birth remained buried from the world, proposed to ride in the morning under the banner of darkness.

Where was Bolghai when he needed him? Mergen would have stopped his blanket-son, begged him to change his mind, to find a name for his team that could not be misconstrued. Led by Duwa, however, the young warriors who gathered under Qutula’s banner had begun to chant their own name—“Durluken! Durluken!” as if they might drown out Jumal and the supporters of the prince.

If he spoke up now, Mergen would draw unwanted speculation to his son, so he kept quiet. But he wished Bolghai were here. The old shaman would have no qualms damping the enthusiasm of young warriors if he feared they might disturb the underworld with their games. But Bolghai’s place at the side of the dais remained empty.

 

 

 

 

Clutching the broom that had once set a god-king on the path of his destiny, Eluneke danced in the grass. Little moons Han and Chen had long since chased the sun below the horizon. Great Moon Lun rose and began her descent, casting a ghostly white light on the grasslands. Still, Eluneke danced.

And still, nothing happened.

After a while, her teacher Toragana came out to watch. Bolghai followed. He tapped his foot to catch the rhythm and set a fiddle under his chin, playing a tune in time to her dancing. Toragana added the beat of her drum. Still no change came over Eluneke.

“Not a large animal,” Bolghai said, and Toragana, nodding in agreement, shifted to a stately rhythm on her drum. Bolghai added the sweeping rise and fall of a bird’s wing to the song of his fiddle.

Eluneke’s stomach growled with hunger. She imagined her feet turning purple from the constant beat of the dance against the grass. But nothing happened.

“Not a hawk, then,” Toragana said.

Bolghai agreed. “Perhaps an eagle?”

But she wasn’t an eagle either, or a pheasant or a magpie or a lark.