Chapter Thirty-four

QUTULA BEAT with his fist on the support next to door to his mother’s tent. It was still night, but with a snap in the air that spoke of false dawn just off the horizon.

“My Lady Mother!” he pounded on the support again and cast an impatient glance at the troop of Durluken massed behind him. “Saddle Bekter’s horse, and my mother’s,” he instructed two he trusted least. “The rest of you stay here unless I call for you.” He ducked his head and went in.

“Mother! My lord, the gur-khan, needs you!” he said, conscious that he could be heard easily through the tent felt.

Sechule seemed to have few such concerns. “Even the gur-khan doesn’t always get what he wants.” She had risen, and set a taper to a lamp. In the yellow glow she reached for the new purple silk coat Mergen had given her. “This is hardly a proper errand for a son.”

Curled on his side of the firebox, Bekter made a noise in his sleep like a yak in heat. He rolled over in his bed, burying his head in his blankets.

“The gur-khan has fallen ill,” Qutula explained. He hadn’t come as Mergen’s procurer. “No one knows what to do.”

He tried to warn her with his glance to listen past his words to the meaning he couldn’t speak out loud.

“I’ll come with you, of course. But the court’s shaman has a reputation for his skill,” she added, playing her part, though with real concern behind it. If he’d been there, the shaman might have recognized the poison and even figured out who had dosed the gur-khan. Or, if he didn’t identify it at once, Mergen might have died while he cast about for a likely cure. “Surely he must be able to help more than I.”

Qutula shook his head. “Bolghai has disappeared.” No surprise that the old stoat had vanished. He’d abetted the toad-girl’s training, after all, and now she was missing. The shaman’s absence could only work to Qutula’s benefit, however. Murdering the gur-khan hadn’t been part of Qutula’s plan. At least not yet. And he wanted none of the blame to tarnish his own name.

“Bek, wake up!” He strode over to rouse the lump hidden in the bedcovers. “The gur-khan needs your help!”

“Anything, of course.” Bekter rolled out of his blankets, bleary-eyed but tracking. “What’s the problem?”

“Mergen is sick. The Lady Bortu thinks he may be dying.” He omitted his own certainty of it. His brother knew nothing of the plots he had hatched with their mother and the Lady Chaiujin. For his brother, and for the court, Qutula had to appear the concerned blanket-son, frantic to help his beloved, if only clandestinely recognized, father.

“Bolghai is off looking for our sister, so we need you to find the ragged shamaness who trained the girl and bring her to the palace. Our father may die without her help.”

“She’s not there.” Bekter grabbed for his coats where they had fallen from their peg onto the carpets. “She’s looking for Eluneke, too, but in the sphere of dreams. Time runs funny there; she could be back yesterday, or a week from now.”

“For your father you have to try,” Qutula insisted. He might have said more, but Mangkut knocked to tell them the horses were ready.

Bekter yawned, but he was moving with a sense of urgency now. “I’ll check her tent; she may have come back while I was asleep. But if she’s not there, I don’t know what I can do.”

“You’ll do your best, I’m sure of it.” Qutula added an encouraging slap on the arm and assigned a handful of his own men to accompany him. He urged his brother to speed, confident that their mother would have the matter under control before he actually found the raven woman.

Sechule had begun to gather herbs and other things from the jars and boxes on her workbench. “What are his symptoms?” she asked for the Durluken witnesses.

“He suffers much the same as the prince’s recent disease, only to a much more serious degree: a clenching of the belly and nausea, headache. Even the light of a candle brought near causes him to scream in anguish. The Lady Bortu has tried all the cures she knows, but nothing seems to help. Most just make the pain worse. The prince is frantic with worry.”

Mergen had drunk the kumiss meant for Tayy and it was killing him instead of the inconvenient prince. He thought Mangkut might have guessed what had happened, but didn’t risk the truth in case his band of Durluken harbored a spy. Sechule had nodded her understanding as he recounted the symptoms, however. Of course, she would know them and know what they meant. When he had done, she asked, “Is anyone else ill?”

“No one else seems affected. The prince says nothing of his own condition, but I believe he suffers his usual mild version of the disease. We fear he may worsen.” No one said the word “poison,” but Qutula felt it as a question on every mind. Sechule, of course, would realize that Mergen hadn’t taken the full amount. She had calculated the dose for a younger heart, however. Qutula feared the gur-khan might be dead before they could reach him with the antidote. If that were to happen, it would mean war over the succession. Until he was certain that his original plan had failed utterly, however, he needed to play out his part as a loving son and cousin. His Durluken, reporting as gossip his desperate efforts to save his father, would allay any suspicion against him.

“I tasted every drink and dish for the prince, and Jochi did the same for the gur-khan. If something found its way into the food, we have failed our duty.”

With a glance at the painted chest where she kept her poisons and potions, Sechule let him know that she knew he had done it, and something had gone wrong. “Don’t take it on yourself.” She followed his lead and acted her concern for the benefit of his companions, who needed very little to secure their trust. “Of course, we may find that Jochi has also fallen ill. But if neither of the tasters has suffered, it means the dose, if any, can be strong enough only for mischief, not murder.

That might have been true if Qutula hadn’t taken the antidote, but it would convince his men, who would spread that gossip most convincingly.

“I am more concerned that the dark spirits have brought ill luck into the house.” Sechule finished gathering her herbs and flowers and picked up last a pot of leaves pounded into a paste.

“I’m ready,” she assured him, and led him from the tent.

“A aaaaahhhhhhh! Aaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” Tayy paused, his hands arrested as he buckled his sword belt around his waist. Closing his eyes, he shut out the sight of his uncle’s anguish, but nothing blocked the sound of his wretched cries.

“You are not well yourself, my prince,” Jochi reminded him in low tones. No one else had dared to remind him that he was himself mortal and subject to whatever evil beset the gur-khan. Over the sweat-soaked head of her only remaining son, Lady Bortu had watched him prepare as if for battle, but she had not chosen to stop him. None of the chieftains still assembled at the court had the rank, or the death wish, to stand in his way. General Jochi, however, had both position and his own grief to use against him, and the wisdom to know that sleep would be impossible in the palace.

“You might rest more comfortably in a friendly tent. My own are at your command.”

“I don’t need rest.” He shuddered at another piercing scream from his uncle, who had suffered sword wounds in the past without a whimper. “I have to find Bolghai.”

“With a sword?” Lady Bortu looked up from tending her son with questions brooding in her eyes.

“I have to find Eluneke.” When he said it, his fingers clenched around the hilt of his sword. “I have to find out who has done this to my uncle, and stop them.”

Mergen had passed into delirium, tossing his head restlessly against the fever that soaked his braids and sweated his brow. “Sechule!” he cried.

Tayy took a step closer. “What about Sechule?” he asked eagerly. If Mergen knew who had done this to him . . .

But Jochi stared long and hard into the darkness that filled the bottom of the ger-tent palace. “Your uncle has lately renewed his interest in the Lady Sechule,” he said, as if he expected salvation to walk out of the shadows. “He calls for his pledged wife. I sent Qutula to bring her.”

He must have let his feelings show because Jochi, misinterpreting them, hurried to reassure him. “Your uncle never intended to displace you as his heir, but hoped, when you had taken his place on the dais, to follow his heart with the lady. He wished very much also to repair a grief he has long felt for his nameless sons.”

“I wasn’t jealous.” But he couldn’t say what he’d been thinking, that his uncle had cried out the name of his murderer and not his lover. The Lady Sechule hadn’t approached the dais that evening, but her son had. With his own stomach churning, Tayy wondered suddenly what poison had come to the gur-khan, a wedding gift from his pledged wife, through her son. And then he wondered if Mergen had been meant to die at all. Qutula intercepted all of Tayy’s food, not his father’s.

Lady Bortu wiped Mergen’s neck and shoulders. “He’s dying,” she said. He had fallen into a muttering stupor, his eyes showing white beneath the half-closed lashes. “Nothing I do helps him.”

“I’ll bring Eluneke back,” Tayy promised, “She’ll know how to help.”

“Find her,” Bortu agreed, but she said nothing of saving the life of the gur-khan.

Qutula passed him in the doorway, escorting his mother who carried with her an assortment of remedies. Tayy didn’t wait, but acknowledged his cousin’s bow with a nod of his head that bordered on insult.

“You acted too soon,” he murmured under his breath as he knocked Qutula’s elbow in passing. “If he dies, you receive nothing. Except the point of my sword.”

The chieftains who had gathered to await the outcome of Mergen’s illness hadn’t heard him, but they watched with interest as Qutula answered in a voice meant to carry, “Your grief makes you rash. I have not heard you.” With a deeper bow still Qutula signaled his unwillingness to engage in open conflict in anger.

A murmur of approval went up among the watchers. Qutula seduced them with false candor, but he didn’t fool the prince.

“I will find Eluneke,” he said, again too low for any but his cousin to hear. “You won’t get away with this.”

“Watch me.” This time Qutula, too, spoke just between the two of them. Prince Tayy would have drawn his sword, but he had already offered combat. Qutula had refused it and he had no evidence to justify a seemingly unprovoked attack. Had no evidence to convince anyone in the court to keep Sechule, his uncle’s chosen consort, away from his sickbed either. But Eluneke was out there somewhere, counting on him to rescue her as much as he counted on her help to save his uncle. So he went.

Somewhere his body lay in pain, but Mergen didn’t feel it anymore. He had become spirit, and spirit rose out of the shell that ceased to writhe when he left it. He still breathed down there in the fever and sweat, with a belly corroded by whatever poison she had given him. Through her son, no doubt. He couldn’t believe it of Jochi, though now he wondered at how natural the idea felt, that Sechule and her son had murdered him, when only hours before he had been arranging his life around his love for them.

They had come, of course, like the carrion crows to peck his liver. Only Tayy had guessed what she had done. The rest seemed bent upon drawing her nearer, to repeat the dose if this one took too long about its task, he thought. She was weeping prettily, just the occasional teardrop as her choked voice gave directions to those who tended him.

“Have this made into a tea, please. And don’t mind the smell. Sometimes the bitterest herbs produce the sweetest results.” She gave over to a servant enough of the mixture of curled leaves and blackened stems to brew a large pot with the instructions, “All who attend the gur-khan should take a cup as well, to protect them. When the evil spirit is expelled, it will look for a new home.”

“No!” Mergen shouted. “She poisoned me!” But they couldn’t hear him and soon each of those near the dais had taken a cup. Qutula sipped with the rest, so perhaps this time she meant no harm. In fact, as the evil drink trickled down his own throat, he saw the rigid tension ease out of his convulsing muscles. Curious, he allowed the apparent calm of his own face to draw him back.

Pain! Terrible, terrible pain. The drink had softened his muscles, relieving the outward signs of his disease while making it impossible to control his limbs. Inside, however, the poison continued to eat at his liver while his gut turned to water.

“Now a cup, very clean, half full of cool water,” she instructed someone over his head, and soon he felt the cup pressed to his lips, spilling drop by drop over his tongue so he had no choice but to drink or drown. Not water, she had doctored the drink in full sight of all the court. He recognized that bitter taste—it had tainted the kumiss which Qutula had poisoned the night before—but he was helpless to spit it out.

“Drink, my love,” he heard her whisper in his ear. “It won’t be long now. I”m sorry it has to hurt so much. I didn’t plan it this way. It was supposed to be the prince, to clear the way for your own son’s ascension to the khanate.

“Qutula will be unhappy with me, since your death will doubtless mean war with the prince. And he truly wished for your love.” Softly crooning words of madness and hate into his ear, she fed him sip by sip from the poisoned cup, while the first relaxing draft kept his spirit trapped inside his body. “Your power, too, of course; even that would have been evidence of your love. But who can argue with fate? Certainly not I, who would have been khaness but for your scruples. Now I will be the mother of a khan and you will be dead.”

NO! he thought. Then, when the pain grew worse than he imagined possible, he thought, “Yes, gods and ancestors take me, I cannot endure this anymore.”

His bowels had let go early in his sickness. He would have hidden himself from the shame as each clenching seizure loosened his gut again, but he had lost the power even to turn his head away.

“Blood!” he heard, curses and prayers and weeping. Sechule was weeping. “I can do nothing but make him comfortable now,” she said, “I am too late. The evil spirits have chewed his vitals to the spine. I do not see that he can live so!”

“My lady,” he heard the sounds of comfort given to his murderess while he vomited more blood and the dark red pool spread across his bed.

“My son, my son,” his mother had reclaimed her place at his head while the woman he would have made his wife lay weeping in the arms of the son who had put her deadly potion in his drink.

“Is he in much pain?” Jochi asked, and Sechule answered, “None at all.”

It was a lie, as all her words were lies. He thought he must have died of the pain, and that it had followed him into hell itself to chew through skin and bone. Blood gushed unchecked from his body. He was cold, very cold, and desperate to say something that would unmask his murderers. But the spirits of the dead, the lost, the voracious spirits began to hover and among them loomed one living face of comfort.

“Mother,” he said, a whisper, barely a breath, for by then he had little breath left him. Then he had none.

His mother rocked with his head cradled in her arms, but he didn’t feel it. Her wails of grief rose up to heaven, but he heard them only as a distant, passing breeze.

“Well, brother,” Chimbai said, waiting for him in the pure white light of Great Moon Lun spilling through the smoke hole. “Between us, we are singularly bad at choosing women.”

“It could’ve been different.” The pain was gone now, and the filth and the blood. He walked beside his brother through the thick grass scattered with wildflowers in the sunlight.

“Maybe,” Chimbai made it known by his tone that he conceded not an inch. “But a woman who would hand a man his bleeding heart and grind his guts to ribbons in the bargain because he didn’t also give her an ulus for a wedding gift is no great loss.”

Like his brother, Mergen refused to concede the point. “So, I suppose if you are here, I must be dead. Have you come to show me the way to our ancestors?”

“Dead, yes, I’m afraid so.” In spite of this momentous pronouncement, Chimbai seemed preoccupied. “As for accompanying you to the ancestors, not yet, I’m afraid. I have work to do here first, to secure the ulus. Soon, though.”

Mergen nodded, accepting that answer. It had been on his mind as well. “Can I help?” Even as he asked, a shiver passed through him, carrying a memory of unspeakable pain.

Chimbai noticed. “Not yet,” he said. “Not this fight.”

Another nod. In life Mergen had always followed his brother’s lead, and he did so now, when Chimbai-Khan released him to his death in peace. “Later, then.”

They lingered, perched on an outcrop of glittering rock as morning turned into afternoon and the pyre was gathered and lit. Sechule wept. Qutula let a tear escape his eye as well, but Prince Tayy showed none of his grief or despair on his face. Mergen saw his nephew’s emotions like a garment that he wore, from the darkest to the brightest. He thought to ask if the boy would be all right, but already his attachment to the mortal world was fading. Coming toward him through the rising smoke, he recognized his father then, and Otchigin. His grandmother, and all the friends and ancestors who had come before him, beckoned.

“Go on,” Chimbai said. “We’ll be along soon.” He laid his hand on the head of a red hound Mergen recognized as one of Tayy’s.

“Oh,” he said, and smiled. “I see, now.”

An unearthly hand reached out to him and he took it, following the smoke of his pyre to the spirits of his beloved dead.