Chapter Fifteen

 

SOMETHING WAS GOING ON between General Yesugei and his uncle. He’d been thinking about the problem ever since Mergen sent the general to hold the grasslands of the Uulgar clans in his name. Tayy figured it wasn’t exactly an argument yet, but it was enough to put him on his guard. From the dais he took a quick look around him. Yesugei’s absence left a gap in the gur-khan’s defenses not easily filled. Politics had a part in it, for one thing. Mergen had named Yesugei khan in his place among the Uulgar and had taken the title of gur-khan—khan of khans—for himself.

That the general wasn’t happier about his sweeping change in fortunes had a lot to do with Sechule, Mergen’s poorly-kept secret since before the prince or his cousins were born. If wealth and distance didn’t mend the breach, Tayy feared the gur-khan might be compelled to end it more permanently—and to his sorrow—with an execution. Before the war he would not have credited it, but Mergen had lately proved himself in delivering swift and deadly justice against his enemies. He hoped General Yesugei saw as much and tempered his love with caution.

Beside him on the dais, Qutula handed Tayy a meat pie with one bite missing. He accepted absently, grown used to his cousin tasting his food. When he bit into the pie, the richness of sheep fat exploded pleasantly in his mouth. He took a moment to savor it as thoughts about his elders tumbled in his head.

For Mergen’s sake, and because her sons Qutula and Bekter had been among his first childhood companions, he tried to like his uncle’s former—probably—mistress. She was pretty enough for somebody that old, but she had a way of watching him when she thought he didn’t see it that unnerved him. Sechule always seemed to be counting up the pebbles on the board and she was never happy about the sum. He figured to stay out of her way. Licking his fingers, he decided that if his elders didn’t have the sense to do the same they deserved their broken hearts. They were too old to be chasing women anyway.

Sechule wasn’t the only bad match on his mind, however. The khan’s tent city, much reduced from the size it had grown to during the war, had set up on the plains. As always, the khan’s city followed the Onga, but here the river disappeared into a little dell. When last they had set up camp in this place, the emerald green bamboo snake-demon, masquerading as his father’s second wife, had murdered Chimbai-Khan in his bed. Tayy planned to visit the shrine where his father’s pyre had burned and make an offering of his own to the ancestral spirit. He thought he’d kept his intentions to himself, but his grandmother had been reading his heart since he was on leading reins. It didn’t surprise him that she anticipated him now.

“Give this to my son among the spirits for me,” Bortu told him, and put a pie into his hands.

“I will.” He wrapped the gift in a clean bit of red silk, his own offering, and tucked it in the pocket of his lightweight yellow court coat embroidered from the upturned silver toes of his boots to his throat with the symbols of earth and sky and water. “If I have your permission?” He bowed deeply to his uncle the gur-khan, who gave it with a nod, his own sorrowful memories clear in his eyes.

“Give my brother a good account of me,” Mergen asked, to which Tayy gave a second bow.

“Always,” he promised. Then he kissed his grandmother respectfully first on one cheek and then on the other.

Qutula followed him from the dais. On the way past the firebox they picked up Bekter and Mangkut and others of his cadre on duty in the ger-tent palace. Together they headed for the door, where Altan waited with the dogs and the horses. Jumal had gone south as a captain in Yesugei-Khan’s army to claim the Uulgar clans in the name of the gur-khan. The tents of his clans had gone with him, counting the young captain’s rise in fortunes as their own.

They were gone, and Altan was already having trouble with the dogs. Tayy gave his friend a companionable nod over the heads of the hounds who snugged their bodies up close on either side of him and snarled to remind Qutula of their dislike. The dogs made his mare nervous and she kept her distance, stamping her foot and shaking the bristles of her mane in her impatience to be going.

“Enough, both of you!” With a vigorous rub to remind them of his affection, Tayy settled the dogs with a sharp command and whistled for the mare. When his guardsmen would have mounted their own horses to join him, he put a hand on Qutula’s shoulder, to keep him on his feet. His cousin flared his nostrils, perhaps seeing in the gesture too much of the same command that had put the dogs in their place. He didn’t mean it that way.

“Not today,” he said, and gave Qutula’s shoulder a companionable squeeze to show that there was no rift between them. “This is something I have to do alone.”

“Your uncle won’t approve,” Bekter objected, though Tayy knew this cousin would rather compose songs with the court musicians than ride with the warriors. “We have the khan’s orders to protect you.”

“Protect me from what? We are in our own lands, our enemies to the north have become our allies and our enemies to the south answer to the khan through his general.”

“Accidents—” In Duwa’s mouth, it sounded like a suggestion more than a warning, but Tayy dismissed this excuse as well.

“Which you can’t prevent if they are to happen.”

“There may be poisonous snakes in the grass,” Qutula suggested, a painful reminder of how Chimbai-Khan had died. He seemed unaware that his hand rubbed at his breast in the very place where Tayy had seen the emerald-green tattoo come to snaky life.

The gesture troubled the prince. His cousin had called the mark a reminder, but Tayy had felt the bruises of Qutula’s thumbs for days after they wrestled for the khan. Try as he might to believe in his guardsman, suspicion, like a worm, had crawled into his heart and slowly ate away at his trust.

“I’ll make plenty of noise to warn away the natural vipers,” he said. “As for the unnatural kind, the one I am thinking of had too much love of luxury to remain long in the grass. The Lady Chaiujin is long gone, off to steal the life of some less suspicious victim, I am sure.”

At the mention of the serpent-demon the dogs took up their baying, demonstrating with their voices a will to defend their master.

“Of course.” Qutula stepped away from the snarling dogs. He let his hand fall, but it seemed to take some effort to keep it at his side.

Tayy guided his mount toward the open grass. “If I don’t come back, you’ll know where to look—” The last time he’d ridden off on his own, he’d been kidnapped by pirates and set to the oar as a slave. The Marmer Sea was far from here, however, and the Qubal tent city well guarded by the khan’s army.

“But nothing is going to happen. I expect to find you waiting here for me when I get back—we’ll want a full accounting of this woman of yours. What we don’t have ourselves, we must enjoy at secondhand!”

He had thought to lighten the tension with his gentle teasing but a furtive glance passed over Qutula’s face, quickly gone again for a bland smile.

“And how long would I find myself welcome in any lady’s bed if word of my visits should find their way into the camp?” A lifted eyebrow promised voluptuous secrets remaining unspoken.

Qutula hadn’t mentioned her in days, and Tayy wondered if that promise was all bluff. Perhaps his cousin no longer sneaked under the tent cloths of his mystery lady. Having a few secrets of his own he felt uncomfortable pressing the point so publicly. But secrets made excellent trade goods in private. “I think you’re afraid that one of us will steal her away from you,” he countered. “When I return, perhaps we can find something more interesting to wager on than ’Tula’s love life.”

Urging his horse to a trot, he laughed at his companion’s suggestions for their wagers. “Races!” Altan cried out. He had the fastest horse.

“Music!” Bekter called after him to the noisy objections of his companions. Bekter would doubtless require original songs as part of the competition, which guaranteed him the win.

“Hunting,” Qutula’s voice whispered in his ear, though Tayy had already ridden a distance and could scarcely hear the shouted suggestions of the others. A chill wind raised the hackles on his neck; he wondered what his cousin planned to hunt.

But the sky was clear, the tents had fallen behind with his companions, and out ahead the dogs leaped in the grass that rolled in long waves rising to the south. Outcrops of flinty rock sparkled in the afternoon light, promising mountains that were just a smudge of smoky blue in the distance. Herds of horses ran ahead of him, scattering the sheep grazing on the wildflowers that raised their heads in bunches of blue and pink and yellow and white. Tayy could feel the joy of the day surging in the horse beneath him.

“Go, girl.” He gave her her head and she ran.

It wasn’t until they had tired each other out and he had turned back toward camp that he saw the circle of beaten ground. The fire had reduced Chimbai-Khan’s pyre to ash that had fallen in upon itself. Hooves of animals had driven the dust into the ground until nothing remained to show that a khan had gone to the ancestors but a smudge of gray, slowly losing its battle with the hardy grasses of the plains.

The beginning of a low stone shrine had formed at its center, however. Tayy slowed his horse to a walk and gave her the signal with his knees to turn toward the circle. He brought her to a halt a little distance away and dismounted, leaving her to lunch on the sweet grass. He saw no vipers, nor did any lady snake-demons dressed in green come across the grass to lure him to his death. Others had been there before him, leaving their own small gifts of food and drink and ornaments. A small bunch of wildflowers lay beside a dish of kumiss.

Stones, of course, to mark the place, rose in a small heap growing larger with each offering. Stuck into the crack between two sun-flecked rocks at the top, a ribbon with a prayer on it fluttered in the breeze. Tayy found a smooth, flat stone and placed it on the others, adding to the shrine.

“Bortu sent this pie,” he squatted in the ashes of his father’s pyre and unwrapped the offering, set it next to the kumiss. They would make a good meal together. Then he laid the red silk on the stones at the top of the shrine.

“The cloth is my gift, Father. The seamstresses in the underworld can make you a coat suited to your rank among the dead. Or perhaps you will want to give it as a gift to your first wife, my mother, to keep her spirit in good temper. She always loved the things you gave her.”

He stayed like that a little while, in the posture of a supplicant. The red cloth caught on the sharp edge of a stone and he watched it ripple like a banner in the breeze until invisible fingers—a doubter might have said the wind—plucked it up and carried it aloft. When it disappeared into the sun, he bowed his head. “Father, I miss you. The world has changed since you left it.”

As if in answer, his own black hound howled mournfully. The dogs had circled in, closing around him as they did when they sensed a disturbance. This time it didn’t mean earthly danger. The hair on Tayy’s neck stood up. Spirits, he thought, brushing his sleeve as they passed in the grass. When the red bitch batted his hand with the top of her head, he admitted to himself that he was glad for their company. He sat with his back against the stones, the dogs settling around him.

When he’d spoken about change, he’d meant politics. The Tinglut once again desired to negotiate marriages between their peoples in friendship. The conquered clans of the Uulgar no longer posed a threat to the Qubal or their neighbors far to the south. He didn’t consider himself a hero but hoped he had grown into the man his father would be proud to see as khan.

The black hound stared up at him with such warm understanding in his eyes that Tayy felt the weight on his heart ease. The words that came to him were of more private matters. “Jumal is gone,” he said. Rubbing the dog’s neck seemed to comfort him as much as it did the dog. “Someday, when I am khan, I’ll call him back. But what can an orphan offer him now to match the advancement he’ll earn bringing the Uulgar under Mergen’s sway?”

The black dog raised his head and uttered a high-pitched whine of sympathy, as if he shared Tayy’s pain. “I wish you’d explain it to me,” the prince muttered with his arm buried in the dark and bristly ruff. “He thinks I’m in danger, but Mergen sent him away before we could talk—”

The dog lifted his head so abruptly that Tayy’s arm slipped from his neck. The keenly suspicious squint in the doggy eye, so like the thoughtful glare of Tayy’s own father, made him wonder if the creature understood more than a beast’s mind rightly ought. He knew better, of course, but it helped to pretend even for a little while that his father could hear and respond through the hound. To play the game properly, he first corrected the misperception his words might have given.

“Not Mergen. He is faithful as Great Sun, and has lost none of his subtlety of thought while gaining your own powers of direct action.” He didn’t mention the deaths of the Uulgar chieftains, but the dog seemed to follow his meaning well enough.

“The danger remains unclear and Jumal, if he knew more, didn’t offer his intelligence to my uncle’s general before they set out for the south. So I am left with a warning, but with no clue what it means.”

The dog howled his anxious agreement while the red nuzzled them both like a worried mother. But no spirits spoke to him out of their mouths and Great Sun had risen almost to the zenith. His uncle would worry if he stayed too long at his mourning.

“I’ll figure it out,” he promised himself as he regained his feet. “In the meantime, I trust only the people who have proved their loyalty by their actions.” Mergen, surely, and Lady Bortu. Qutula and Bekter, for his uncle’s sake, though his cousin’s lapse during their wrestling match still troubled him. Altan as well, perhaps, but only Jumal and Yesugei had his complete confidence. He said none of this last aloud and the dog whined his objection.

“It’s the best I can do for now.” Whatever the dog or the spirits wanted, if indeed they did inhabit the hound, they hadn’t made it clear enough for him to act on. They’d just have to settle for what he could manage on his own.

The mare had strayed only a little way. As he gathered up her reins, the matter of Qutula’s woman came back to devil him. Or, not the woman herself, but women in general and his own hopes for a marriage to be arranged by his uncle.

Except that every time he thought of marrying, his mind supplied the face and form of the girl standing in the doorway of a tent far from the centers of power in the palace of the khan. He’d only seen her once, though he’d ridden with an eye to finding her almost every day since. Her family might have gone their own way as so many others had, taking their herds and flocks in search of fresh pasture. But he hoped not.

Just curiosity. Mergen would find him a first wife to bind the clans, and he would learn to love her as his father had loved the Lady Temulun, his mother. Perhaps some day, when he had the age and experience of a khan, he might take a second wife of his own choosing. But even then she must be of a proper family. He couldn’t debase his father’s blood by reaching too far beneath him, and he wouldn’t dishonor the girl by sneaking into her tent at night and pretending not to know her in the day.

“I won’t bring any shame to your name,” he promised his father. No matter what happened, he’d never dishonor the khanate. He thought he knew that much about himself. But he longed for his father’s arm around his shoulder and his gentle chiding as he explained how it must be for a young prince of royal blood.

He tried to let thoughts of the girl slide off his shoulders like rain off an oily woolen cloak, but it didn’t work. In his imagination Qutula writhed in a tangle of limbs with his mystery lady. His blood leaped as he imagined himself in the scene. Setting his cousin aside, he took his place under the seductive heaps of blankets, finding there his own lady of mystery, the girl with the wide dark eyes who had entranced him with no more than a glance.

He couldn’t face his guardsmen like this, so he headed away from the camp, to the place where the grasslands fell away to meet the river at the bottom of the dell.

 

 

 

 

The Lady Bortu, who had slit a throat or two in her day and knew the ways of a spy, had grown old on the path of politics. She had seen the love her sons bore each other ease the conflicts both necessary and inadvertent that often came between two headstrong men. Then she’d seen one die and the second take his place in honorable stewardship.

Chimbai had made mistakes. His mother thanked the gods and all the spirits that his own errors hadn’t killed him. That had taken treachery from outside the Qubal ulus. But they still had the aftermath of bad decisions to deal with. Mergen would recognize his sons, or not, as his conscience led him. A girl, however, was the responsibility of her grandmother. And one who set herself upon the shaman’s path required more than the usual tasks of matchmaking.

Which presupposed she was the offspring of the khan and that she had the skills to take her to the underworld and back again in the rites of initiation. Many years ago Bortu herself had traveled far on that path. She had danced with the broom and in the shape of her totem had journeyed in dreams. When faced with the tree at the center of the world, however, she had turned back, choosing khan-maker over healer as her fate. She had not sought her totem form again.

How many times had she regretted that decision? When her husband died? Her daughter-in-law? Her son? The children dead in her womb before she ever bore them?

Wind in the grass, the past. Impossible to catch it or change its flight. But she would have some say in the fate of this girl. First, however, to test the truth. Did she have the shaman’s gift? Was she Mergen’s daughter?

Lady Bortu had to know, to have her persuasions ready before Mergen turned his eye on her. So she had outfitted both herself and her horse as drably as she might, and left at home the better part of the decorations that usually hung from the silver horns of her headdress—the fine wires laden with a curtain of beads that dangled from her lobes at court—to pass unnoticed as any old grandmother through the camp.

She asked no questions of the ranks that surrounded the ger-tent palace, who would look to Bolghai for their healing and scorn the gifts of a minor seeress of no rank at all. As she expected, however, many of the lesser folk who made their camps out of sight of the silver palace knew the tent of this shamaness, Toragana. With a weary sigh and a suggestion of the true pain in her joints she had no trouble drawing out the direction.

Leaving her mount behind the little tent, she made her way to the door at the front. Above the door the gleaming eyes of a raven greeted her, sharp and wise even in death. She knocked once, to announce herself, and entered. The tent surprised her. For one thing, it smelled of herbs and fresh things. The shamaness preserved her totem animals more carefully than Bolghai did, it seemed, using sweet herbs and scented smoke as well as other things. For another she maintained a level of tidiness that Bolghai had never imagined. The tent reminded her of her own girlhood studies and a shaman dead in battle before her grandchildren were born. There was no sign of Eluneke, however.

“You’re the shamaness Toragana, then?” Lady Bortu inquired as a new patient might, cranky with her age. It disturbed her that the part came so easily to her.

“Yes, that’s me. Come in.” The shamaness looked up from the scrubbed workbench where she was crushing fragrant spices with a mortar and pestle. “Here, sit down.” The woman gestured to a low stool by the door for the khaness to sit and reached into a small chest, painted with elaborate designs and polished until it gleamed. The corners of her gray eyes lifted in her open, friendly face, ready to sympathize with her patient. She didn’t smile, which would have been improper when addressing one who needed her services, but the lines around her mouth gave her away.

The Lady Bortu declined the stool. Stealing a glance around the little tent, however, she noted that Toragana kept her rugs tidy, her brooms neatly tucked away on strings of sinew hung from pegs on the lattices. The furs of the beds were neatly stacked on the far side of the firebox, well away from the stool that marked the space by the door where the shamaness saw her clients.

“May I give you something for that toe? I have an ointment that often helps in such cases.” The woman held out a small stone pot. “Apply it with a clean soft cloth on rising and before you go to sleep. The pain will come back if you stop using the ointment, but I’ve had no complaints of those who are faithful in its use.”

Bortu turned up her nose, though it took an effort of will. “I didn’t come about feet.” The second joint of her right big toe certainly ached, but she thought she kept the pain reasonably hidden from the interest of strangers. Certainly she wanted to show no weakness in front of one who might prove to be a potential enemy.

“I understand.” The woman’s expression subtly sharpened and she put off her apron with birdlike movements. Hanging the discarded garment on a peg beside a mirror on the wall, she moved to her robes, soft deerskin covered with the feathers of ravens.

“My apprentice isn’t here at the moment. I can’t leave until she returns, but we can have a cup of tea while we wait. Or you can give me directions to the patient and I will follow when I can. If it’s someone I’ve treated before, a name should suffice. We don’t often see strangers here.” The shamaness combined both interest and concern in her request for directions, something Bolghai had never succeeded in suggesting even under the most dire circumstances.

The Lady Bortu stopped her with a raised hand, however, as if she would physically restrain the shamaness with the gesture. For the first time since she had entered the tent, this Toragana looked uncomfortable, which was just the way Bortu wanted her. Now that she had the upper hand, she allowed herself to sit on the little stool. “I didn’t come about a patient. I am here about my granddaughter.”

But not a patient. The woman drew almost the right conclusion quickly enough. “As I said, I have an apprentice right now. If your granddaughter truly shows promise, you would first want to talk to the shaman who tends to your clans about taking her on.”

“It seems that he has spoken to her already,” Bortu answered dryly. “But you misunderstand me. Do you have no idea who I am?”

“I’m sorry, my lady, but I don’t believe we have ever met.”

“No,” Bortu agreed, “but you have met my granddaughter.”

“Eluneke?” The shaman was clearly bewildered. “Eluneke’s grandmother is dead.”

“One of them, perhaps.”

That got the bones rolling in the woman’s head. Click, click, click, it came together. A father, not unknown, but one who had chosen to stay out of Eluneke’s life. Who, for some reason, had sent his mother to check on the daughter after all these years. But if the old woman was indeed Eluneke’s grandmother, and her own shaman was involved in her training—Bortu saw in Toragana’s eyes the moment when she realized they were talking about Bolghai, who was giving the girl a lesson this very minute. Bolghai, who served the royal court.

“Oh, my!” Eyes satisfyingly wide, hands covering her gaping mouth, the shamaness Toragana sank to the carpets as the answer to the riddle came together. “My lady khaness!”

The Lady Bortu held out her hand to be kissed, which the shamaness did, bowing her head low over Bortu’s aged knuckles.

“But,” the woman continued, confusion wrinkling her brow, “Bolghai must have known.”

“Indeed,” Bortu agreed. “He will have much to answer for on that score. But I am an old woman, and prone to seeing spirits in the wind. Perhaps my presence here means nothing and the girl can go back to all this—” She waved a dismissive hand taking in the little tent. “As if I had never been.”

“If that were so, you would not have come,” the shamaness countered.

Bortu didn’t like the way this Toragana was gathering her cunning around her. She was right, though she couldn’t know why. The khan would need young bodies to seal the compacts he made with the clans, with the Tinglut and even the Uulgar. Yesugei would need to be placated for his failure with Mergen’s mistress, and the general had sons.

“Your spies have already been here—”

Spies?

“The court historian, Bekter the poet. I knew he could have no use for the tales of one like me. But if he said nothing of this, why are you telling me now?”

“Ah, Bekter. I doubt he knows, nor would he be competent to judge, though at tales no one can best him. He never lies about stories. If he said he was interested, he was, though you’re likely right he didn’t come to hear them in the first place.

“But this is a matter for grandmothers. I can pay you for your teaching to this point, and cover any losses you may incur from her absence. There are always girls, or boys, with the gift to replace her—”

Bortu had said too much. She saw the flicker of calculation in the woman’s eyes. Not avarice, the shamaness had scented something more valuable to her kind than money or jewels. A final piece of the riddle had fallen into place, or so the woman guessed. Which was, Bortu thought, more dangerous yet.

“Your granddaughter, if so she should be, has extraordinary gifts.”

“Bolghai has said so,” Bortu agreed. The woman carefully had not mentioned that the khaness’ granddaughter was also the daughter of the khan, and a princess, if her father chose to make her so.

“She has foreseen a grave danger.”

Bortu rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?” Nothing, it seemed, was ever easy.

The woman took a breath to answer, but Bortu stopped her with a freezing glance. “First I will see her. When do you expect her back?”

“That’s hard to say, my lady khaness.”

Bortu understood her well enough. Spirit quests seldom followed a schedule. “Then I suppose we go to her.”

“I was preparing to do just that, my lady.” With a deep bow, the shamaness returned to her workbench. She gathered crushed herbs into a loosely woven little sack which she threaded onto a string. Putting on her robes and her headdress, Toragana faced the khaness with eyes grown dark as the raven that watched with the wisdom of the dead from atop the shamaness’ head. “I had planned to fly, but if your horse doesn’t mind, I will travel with you to show you the way.”

“I think he can manage,” Bortu agreed, her answer laced with irony. She hoisted herself from the stool with her head held very high as befitted the mother of khans, though she wished she’d taken the ointment for her toe. Too late for that now. She led the way from the tent.

Toragana didn’t follow immediately. Lady Bortu mounted and brought her horse around the front, considering a suitable punishment for a shamaness who made the mother of khans wait like a beggar at her front door. None, she concluded ruefully. With the gifts came a certain disregard for the world of living men—or women. Bolghai did it all the time. Even khans knew better than to challenge the spirits for dominion over their own. She considered leaving without the woman, could have found Bolghai’s tent on her own with little trouble. That didn’t guarantee she’d find Eluneke.

While she was brooding on such thoughts, a raven flew out the smoke hole in the roof of the tent and circled the khaness’ head. Bortu shook her off when the creature settled on her shoulder. There were limits even for the spirit world. The creature rustled her wings as if miffed, but she never flew out of sight. Bortu followed with little more than a press of her knees against the flanks of her horse to keep the gelding on the course set by the raven. As she had guessed, they traveled away from Bolghai’s little camp, heading for the river.