Chapter Thirty-seven

 

TAYY PROPPED HIS HEAD on his hand, elbow resting on a map of the grasslands spread on a low table. The dogs had slept the night through at his feet but were raising their heads again in the doggy ordering of priorities: a visit outside and then breakfast.

“Go,” he told them. They both hesitated, whining their distress at leaving him before leaping from the dais. In the gray dawn filtering through the smoke hole, he watched their tangle-legged run for the door. The shadowy light had dulled the glow from the lamps but provided little illumination for the maps he’d been studying. He closed his eyes for a moment, but it didn’t help. The details, blurred and indistinct, had burned themselves onto the backs of his eyelids.

After another wakeful night of mourning, his grandmother had finally fallen asleep, allowing him to turn his attention to his general and the maps spread out between them. Like Jochi, most of the guardsmen in their blue coats and the gathered advisers who offered their opinions in respectfully lowerd voices had belonged to his uncle. Once his own cadre had guarded him. He’d expected to rely on his age-mate captains then, but Altan was dead and Jumal far to the south. And Qutula . . .

“You’re sure Prince Daritai didn’t kidnap her?”

“As you requested, I had the Tinglut party followed. The prince set a careful watch and his force moved quickly to leave Qubal lands, both reasonable precautions given the failure of his embassy.” No one mentioned that General Jochi was just repeating the significant facts he’d already covered in his report. “The Tinglut could scarcely prevent our spies from observing their progress, but none of our people saw any sign of the Princess Eluneke in their camp, nor did they sense any undue secrecy in the Tinglut’s movements.”

Prince Tayy nodded. “So Qutula has her, as we thought, and likely murdered my uncle as well.” Staring down at the scraped horsehide map, he idly traced the branded lines that represented caravan routes and grazing boundaries. If he were Qutula, where would he go? Where would he find allies?

Beyond the ger-tent palace, the sound of horses going through their paces in the practice yard rumbled like distant thunder. His army prepared for war against an enemy who had until recently been a captain in their own ranks; who had sat on the very steps of the dais. Now he seemed to have vanished from the grasslands.

“Has anyone discovered Bekter’s whereabouts?” They would have told him if they knew, but Tayy couldn’t yet accept that Bekter had conspired with Qutula to murder their father. “Do we know if he’s hiding? Could he not know we’re looking for him?”

“I don’t have an answer yet.” Jochi shrugged a one-shouldered apology. “Until Yesugei comes, our armies are spread thin. But we’ll find him; it just takes time.”

“Do we have time?”

Trick question, when they had no choice. The general didn’t even try to answer it. They still had people out looking for Eluneke and others tracking Qutula. And, of course, Jochi had insisted that a large contingent of their warriors remain to guard the prince himself. With the gur-khan murdered and Eluneke still missing, Tayy didn’t even try to argue that point. But he needed to know where Bekter stood. And he needed to be out there looking for Eluneke himself.

“Perhaps the shamaness Toragana will know where my cousin is.” It had seemed to him that Bolghai had trusted and respected Eluneke’s teacher. But Bolghai had appeared to perform the necessary services for his uncle’s spirit only to vanish again as the funeral fires had died. Tayy wondered briefly if his own shaman had sided with Qutula, but dismissed the thought as unworthy. He didn’t want to think about his chances for victory if all the spirit world arrayed itself against him.

With an impatient sweep of his hand the map flew from the low table and fell on the steps of the dais. “I can’t sit here and wait like a child or a coward for my cousin to come to kill me. I have to find him.”

“And his followers?” Jochi asked, trying to sway him with the logistics of going against his cousin. “Your chieftains are correct in this at least—you’ll need the full force of Yesugei’s armies if you want to defeat Qutula.”

“You must mean my armies, brought home at my murdered uncle’s command by our general and vassal khan,” he corrected Jochi coldly. The man might have served Mergen well, but Prince Tayyichiut, heir to the khanate, could afford no doubt about his own position. If the chieftains wanted Yesugei as their gur-khan, they could elect him with their cups and stones. In the meantime, Mergen had named Tayy his heir. To free Eluneke, he needed the armies and the power to command them that came with his rank.

The general met his bleak and deadly gaze evenly. When Tayy didn’t back down, he accepted the rebuke with a humble bow. “The gur-khan’s army,” he said, giving Tayy the title although the chieftains had not yet voted.

Prince Tayy accepted the apology with a stiff jerk of his chin. The general hadn’t mentioned that if Qutula had indeed aligned himself with demon allies they might have no hope of defeating him at all. Tayy knew it already; he’d barely survived a war against inhuman foes with no particular interest in him. On rainy days the scars he wore from that time still ached, reminding him of the cost. His own safety mattered little to him while Eluneke suffered captivity or worse, but the thought of such powers arrayed in full force against the Qubal people tied his already abused gut in knots.

Something of what he was thinking must have shown itself on his face, because Jochi laid a restraining hand on his forearm. “You can’t command an army from the wrong side of the funeral pyre. To lead, you need to stay alive.”

“I have to find her. If I’m so easily removed from the board, Yesugei can take up the battle in his own name.” Tayy threw off the gentle restraint. “Let the chieftains elect a new line for their khan. It won’t matter to me then.”

Jochi shifted, placing his body between Tayy and the steps from the dais. “It will matter to your people,” he said.

Nearby, the Lady Bortu’s predator’s dark eyes opened slowly and closed again without rousing from sleep. Pitching his voice low so that he didn’t disturb her, Tayy growled a warning to his general. “If you try to stop me, I’ll have you killed for the affront.”

With a jerk of his chin he summoned the closest guardsmen, who approached with eyes wide and fearful. “I will step over your steaming corpse if I have to, but I will still go.” He had ridden with Jochi in battle and so his general would know he made no empty threats.

The general conceded, his frustration barely restrained in a graceful bow. “Don’t think that I value my own life over protecting yours, my prince,” Jochi assured him, “but I prefer not to ruin this poor soldier by testing his loyalties in a campaign I’ve already lost.”

“I know.” Now that he had won his point, Tayy took a precious moment to salve the wounds of the spirit he had tried. “But I could sit here and mourn ‘if only’ until the sky turned green and it wouldn’t change what has to be. Sound the call to arms. We ride.”

He didn’t wait for the general but strode toward the door down the long center aisle, past painted chests with the history of the ulus displayed on them. The bronze head of the Thebin king, Llesho the Great, once had meant no more to him than a prop to enliven the epic tale of Alaghai the Beautiful and her ill-fated king. Then the orphan king Llesho had stepped out of the tales to beg the Qubal’s aid in rescuing his country from the invading Uulgar. Chimbai-Khan had gone to war to repay the debt the Qubal had remembered for generations in its tales. Now it felt like Tayy himself was caught in a legend. Bekter, court poet as well as cousin, would understand about such things. But Bekter couldn’t be found.

Instead, he had a scattering of nobles rousing from their sleep on either side of the aisle. The ger-tent palace held six hundred when the clans gathered; now he counted just a scattered few, most of them too old to fight. Messengers had been sent with news of Mergen’s death, but it would take time for the clans to return. Some, he knew, would wait and watch while others did the bleeding, and would pledge their cautious loyalty to whoever remained alive and standing at the end of it.

But he had Jochi to advise him and Jumal would be returning with Yesugei. The Uulgar prisoners would fight for their new khan, he thought, to retain the freedom Mergen had granted them. When he found Eluneke—he refused to think of it as “if”—he was pretty sure he’d have his own allies in the spirit world to help him. He just had to find her.

Out of long habit he scarcely noticed the guardsmen who left their places along the many lattices of the palace to form a defensive phalanx at his back. But he’d lost the friends of his own age who should have been his captains, so he had no one to stand shoulder to shoulder with him when Mangkut entered the ger tent palace, blocking the doorway as Tayy moved to exit.

“A message from General Qutula, my lord,” Mangkut said, elevating his captain well beyond his rank. “I have been instructed to deliver it privately.”

“With a knife?” Jochi asked. He had followed Prince Tayyichiut from the dais, and at his signal fifty guardsmen drew their swords and surrounded the intruder.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” Mangkut begged off with a bow. “Mine is not the hand that moves the stones on this board.” He lifted his arms away from the weapons at his side.

Tayy believed him that far. “He won’t kill me,” he assured his general. “Qutula will reserve that honor to himself.”

“As you say, my lord.” This time Mangkut smirked when he bowed. Jochi was less trusting. At a meaningful glance, two of the guardsmen set aside their own weapons to search the messenger and relieve him of any threat he might have carried. Sword and spear were taken from him, and several knives uncovered and set aside. When they were done, Mangkut reached inside his coat and brought out a delicate piece of Shannish paper.

“You will hand the paper to me, and I’ll decide what is to be done with it,” Jochi said, and held out his own hand.

The prince understood his reasons. The packet might have held a scorpion or some other danger might reveal itself when he opened the paper, though Mangkut didn’t seem nervous enough about holding it himself to cause much concern. Surrendering with a little shrug, he gestured for Mangkut to do as Jochi commanded.

The paper had a single fold and, when released, a lock of hair slipped out. Tayy ignored Jochi’s glare and grabbed the long dark strands out of the air before they could drift to the ground.

“My lord Qutula instructs me to say, ‘follow, alone, or he will kill the girl,” Mangkut recited.

“Trust Qutula? He’ll murder them both, if he hasn’t already killed the girl.” Jochi’s words might have been an ice-knife to his heart. The prince trusted Qutula no more than his general did, but only Mangkut could lead him to the hidden camp where Qutula held Eluneke prisoner.

Fortunately, Tayy was beginning to have a plan. “Kill him,” he said, and turned away in contempt, his voice colder even than Mergen had sounded when he executed the Uulgar chieftains.

Immediately, his guardsmen tightened their hold on Mangkut’s arms. Tayy remained torn between rage against his cousin and his terror that his actions might cost him Eluneke’s life. He let that conflict show on his face. Suddenly Mangkut was afraid; when Jochi drew his sword, he began to struggle.

“I’m just a messenger,” he cried, “I have no say in the message.”

“You follow Qutula. That’s reason enough to eliminate you.”

“He deserves to die,” the general agreed, his blade resting at the join of Mangkut’s neck to his shoulder. He would willingly kill for his khan; he had his own reasons to hate as well. But there was a question in Jochi’s eyes: would Tayy act as an enraged lover, or as a khan? Would he see the advantage they held in their hands?

“Tell me where he’s hidden her and I’ll let you live.”

“I can’t tell you.” Mangkut ceased his struggles; calculation sharpened in his eyes. “I can only show you.”

“On a map, then, willingly.” Tayy finished the thought softly, as if to himself. “Or later if you prefer, in your own blood. If you don’t want to die with your entrails in your hands, you’ll tell me what I need to know.”

As it did during the hunt, the prince’s senses tightened until the whole world narrowed to his prey. Mangkut’s eyes dilated and his breathing gathered hectic speed. Tayy smelled the fear rising in acrid waves from the messenger’s clammy skin as he pleaded, “You don’t understand. I can’t tell you. Lord Qutula bribed a demon to hide his camp. I don’t know how I will find it again, only that he will let me see the way because his lord wills it.”

In his own petty way, Mangkut was as evil as his master. There was no point in trying to judge the honor of his words. But his terror stank of sincerity.

“So I’ll follow you,” Tayy agreed, “but not alone.”

At his command, Mangkut’s hands were tied. “Qutula wouldn’t expect you to bring me to him on your own. Where are the others waiting?”

“Scattered along the road. They’re to join us as we pass. By the time we reach the wagons on the outskirts, they should all be accounted for.”

It made sense. “Then that is where my own guard will ambush them and take their places.” Forwarned, maybe he’d even stay alive until Jochi arrived with his army.

“Take him out. Put him on a horse and tether it to my own,” he commanded, and then addressed a warning to Mangkut himself: “If you make a move to warn your followers, I will gut you and stampede your horse. Qutula may still kill me, but your living entrails will be scattered from here to the Tinglut. Do I make myself clear?”

“Qutula said you were weak.” The words still carried the bravado that Mangkut had begun with, but a line of sweat beaded his lip.

“He was wrong.” For all their sakes, the prince hoped Qutula’s captain believed him.

Mangkut said nothing to that, but he dropped his eyes, his shoulders hunched as if he might make himself invisible. Good. Tayy had seen his father and his uncle both use fear to save an enemy’s life before, but he hadn’t expected to need the lesson so soon.

“Get him out of here,” he said, and when his guardsmen had taken Mangkut away, he turned to General Jochi. “I have a plan, but we don’t have much time. . . .”

 

 

 

Bleary-eyed, Bekter rolled out of bed, wondering for a moment where he was. Not home, that was certain. But . . . a stuffed raven stared down at him from the spoked ceiling. Ah. He remembered now. Mergen, his father, was dead, and he’d heard whispers of poison. Who might have wanted to murder the gur-khan, or how they had managed it, remained a mystery to him, though there, too, he had heard whispers. He refused to believe Qutula capable of patricide. Didn’t see anything to be gained by it, for one thing. All of his brother’s hopes depended on his father staying alive long enough, at least, to repudiate his heir. As for the other whisper, Tayy had no motive at all. Mergen’d been preparing to step down in his favor, a smoother path to the dais than murder.

Sunk in his own grief, Bekter had come looking for Toragana. She’d been out looking for Eluneke, so he’d settled in to wait. She hadn’t come back, and at some point he must have fallen asleep. If he had any sense, he’d be sleeping still.

Now that he was awake he shoveled dried camel pats into the stove and found the tea while the kettle heated. As he was pouring the boiled water over the tea leaves, a rustle of black wings signaled Toragana’s arrival. The raven ruffled her feathers and turned into a woman, the warmth of welcome lighting her weary eyes.

“I didn’t expect anyone to be here.” She took the cup he had lavishly laced with honey and inhaled the steaming vapors with a deep indrawn breath. “Ahhhh. You can’t begin to imagine how much I’ve been longing for a cup of tea.”

“And I thought that welcome was for me.” Now that she had returned, Bekter relaxed enough to tease.

“So it was,” she answered in kind. “A man who can make a decent cup of tea and compose a heroic epic should be prized above all riches.”

For a moment they smiled at each other in perfect harmony, the cares of the world banished from the comfortable tent. But the disasters that had befallen the Qubal court were never far from either of their thoughts.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be here for you when your father died. But Eluneke . . .”

“I understand.” Bekter accepted her apology, but his chin sank mournfully to his breast. “Have you found any trace of where she might have gone, or why?”

Toragana shook her head, only then remembering that she still wore her shaman’s headdress of feathers with a stuffed raven nesting on her crown. She took it off and set it on a painted chest, then hung her robes from their peg on the lattices. “I had almost convinced myself that the spirits of the underworld might have lured her into the river to drown. But there was a moment when I thought I sensed her presence in the mortal world, like the sun through a break in the clouds. It vanished before I figured out where it might be coming from—I’ve spent the night flying over all the lands between the palace and the river looking for her, or any place she might be hidden.”

Bekter rubbed his face with both hands as if he could wipe away his own sorrow like so much dust. “How is it possible to hide a shamaness from the sight of her teacher?” he asked.

“Her captors must have otherworldly help.”

“Demons?” Bekter’s head came up at that. Both Toragana and Bolghai followed the white path of the shaman. But dark magics had troubled the grasslands before.

“The false Lady Chaiujin?” He shivered, remembering Chimbai-Khan’s deadly wife, and the strange woman who had come, uninvited, to his bed.

“It’s possible. I’m running out of other ideas.” Toragana’s gaze drifted. She seemed to look into a different world all of a sudden, and he wondered if she would turn back into a raven and fly away again. Presently, however, she gave herself a little shake and reined in her farseeing vision. “We are about to have company. And, maybe, some answers.”

Bekter listened for the sound of approaching horses. He heard nothing but the whisper of small creatures in the grass. Toragana was looking down at the carpet, however, and at the back of the tent rather than the door. When the fat green toad with one missing toe slipped under the tent cloths he reached for his sword.

Toragana stopped him with a warning. “You have nothing to fear as long as you offer her no threat.”

“He or she, the toad is poisonous.”

The shamaness waved his objection away, apparently unconcerned that the floor of her tent was filling with toads of all sizes. Not all were poisonous, but enough of them made Bekter nervous. Toragana, however, answered his concern without turning her attention from the regal toad who approached at the center of the hopping mass of green and brown and red. “Let me introduce the queen of the toads,” she said, “who has come as a messenger from her husband, who rules the realm of toads.”

“Greetings.” Bekter made a polite bow, but he wondered if perhaps Qutula had been right to fear for the prince. With no such fears, Toragana squatted down in front of Queen Toad and planted her elbows companionably on her knees. “Ribbit,” she said

The toad responded, “Croak!”

They proceeded to converse in a language that made Bekter’s head ache. Though he understood not a word of what passed between them, he recognized the seriousness of the debate from the sharp fan of frown lines marking Toragana’s brow. When the debate concluded, the shamaness stood up and put on her headdress again. The frown remained, her brows tilting like the wings of the raven on her head.

“The toads have found the Princess Eluneke, but we will need Bolghai to free her.”

“I can help . . .” Bekter was already reaching for his seldom-used sword, but Toragana shook her head, rejecting his offer of assistance.

“If a human could get near her, I would gratefully accept,” she said, assuaging his injured pride. “But the queen of the toads tells me that Eluneke’s captor has set a demon guard to hide her from human eyes. If you should find a way past this unearthly glamour, the demon would destroy you, body and soul.

“The toads, not being human, are untroubled by the demon’s spells. They’ve seen Eluneke and have spoken to her,” Toragana assured him. “She is still alive, they tell me.”

“Alive, but a prisoner of a demon!” He didn’t say at the command of his brother, though he knew it must be true. “If she’s so well hidden, what are we to do?”

“Queen Toad has come up with a plan. I think it will work, but it requires the stealth of Bolghai’s totem creature. And his sharp teeth.”

They needed the stoat, not the human shaman, and his sharp teeth for gnawing through bindings. One thing above all else he had learned in battle against strange forces, however; it always helped to have a backup plan. The demon’s spell might hide Qutula’s camp from his human sight, but he could follow the toads, who knew the way. His sword would sever rope or leather more quickly than the sharp teeth of a stoat. And, as Qutula’s brother, he might have a chance at reasoning their way out of this mess. Or at least surviving the attempt.

He watched, growing accustomed to the transformation, as Toragana turned into a raven and flew out the smoke hole of her tent. When he looked down again, the toads were leaving as well. He did the same, by the door, and rounded the little tent in time to see that some of the toads had scattered. A line of disturbance in the grass pointed like an arrow toward the little dell through which the Onga River flowed, where the King Toad had his dominion. A greater wave pointed him farther down the river’s bank, however. These, he thought, must be returning to assist in Eluneke’s rescue. Mounting his horse, he followed at a distance, determined to do no less.

 

 

 

 

Daritai stroked the neck of his mare but succeeded only in communicating his own tension to the beast. She sidled with dainty lifts of her feet, not willful but like himself unable to settle. As he’d expected, Tinglut-Khan had taken badly the insults of the gur-khan but had listened with an avaricious gleam in his eye when his lesser prince set out his plan.

“The Qubal are in disorder,” he’d told his father. “They’ve sent their best general to the south with half their army and all the prisoners they took during the war for the Cloud Country. Mergen Gur-Khan’s second, Jochi, is distracted by the death of his own son and there is no love between the Qubal prince and his first officer, the gur-khan’s blanket-son.”

“They’ll fight?” Tinglut-Khan had asked sharply, his hand straying across the map spread on a low table on the dais. At his side, Daritai’s half brother, Prince Hulegu, watched him with unblinking tension.

“They already do. The dead boy was no accident.” Daritai had driven the point home with his index finger, tapping the map where the Qubal usually grazed. “The cousin stands first among the prince’s retainers by rank, but leads his own band of followers he calls the Durluken. The dead boy was a champion of the prince’s own Nirun.”

“The Sons of Darkness against the Sons of Light.” Tinglut tugged at his long thin mustache. “So they play at spirit games and legend in their wars.” He chuckled softly, slanting a glance from one son to the other, as if he knew the same warfare might break out between his own heirs if he slackened his hand on the reins. “How did that son of yours do?”

“Brave, observant as you would expect.” He understood the threat behind his father’s casual question. He had wives, children, who would die first in any conflict with his father or the chosen heir. He’d thought of that. With any luck his most trusted guardsmen had already hidden them away.

“Ah, there is the boy now.”

Tumbinai strode forward between two of Hulegu’s most terrifying followers, one with a face so scarred that Daritai himself had difficulty looking at it. His son seemed unperturbed, though he had lived at the court of the Tinglut-Khan long enough to understand the threat. He smiled sweetly and kissed his grandfather first on one cheek and then on the other.

“Your father says that you were brave and observant,” Tinglut challenged him. “So what did you see? Report, like a good scout!”

“Eluneke was pretty,” Tumbinai said, “even if she did ride around in the shape of a toad sometimes. But she’s already in love with the prince and he’s in love with her, of course.” He wrinkled his nose as though he found the idea of love very strange, which made his grandfather the khan laugh out loud.

“And did you notice anything besides the pretty girls?” he asked, a little of the malice leaving his grin.

“Prince Tayyichiut was upset about his friend dying. His cousin said he was sorry, but he wasn’t. There was something funny about him.”

Tumbinai frowned and a cold hand clutched at Daritai’s heart. Sometimes the boy saw more than he should, but he usually had a good sense of when to keep his observations to himself, especially around his grandfather. He shrugged, as if he had no words to describe what he felt or saw, and ended lamely with, “I didn’t like him.”

“And did you like the prince, then?” Tinglut used a teasing tone, but he was watching his grandson carefully.

Tumbinai shrugged again. “He was sad about his friend. I guess that’s nice.”

“I’m sure it is.” Reassured in some way that the boy posed no threat, Tinglut ruffled his hair with a bejeweled hand. “Now go find your bed. You’ll be riding out with your uncle in the morning.”

“You mean I can go to battle like my father!” the boy’s face lit up with excitement, only to have his hopes dashed the next moment.

“I wouldn’t risk you to the battlefield, child. You’ll ride with the wagons and help Prince Hulegu to guard the women and children in case of attack. And when your father returns, you will take your place among the nobles in the palace.”

A hostage, then. Tumbinai flashed his father a nervous glance but bowed to show his obedience to the khan. “As you wish,” he said, and made a great display of yawning, which drew another laugh from his grandfather.

“Take this boy home to his mother,” Tinglut roared, “and find what comfort there you may tonight, my son. Tomorrow you will ride for the glory of your khan and your people!”

And so Daritai found himself horsed again and riding to war. If he succeeded, all the grasslands would come under the sway of the Tinglut-Khan. As reward, his father might permit the return of his son. If he failed, he figured he’d be dead, and so would have little to say in the matter.

The armies were loyal to him as their general and he tried not to think about what that might mean past the present battle. His unruly imagination, however, thrust a tangle of possibilities on him as he rode. Returning victorious from the conquest of all the grasslands, he might seize the dais for himself, freeing his family forever from the threats his half brother Hulegu urged in the Tinglut-Khan’s ear.

He could hold all the conquered lands in his own name, and live as gur-khan, filling the ger-tent palace of the Tinglut with the wives and children he had removed from the reach of the khan. All he had to do was sacrifice one child to Tinglut’s revenge. For Daritai had no doubt that his father would torture and kill Tumbinai before his men could reach the boy.

Hulegu would have done it, if he’d had the stomach to do his own fighting at all. Daritai, however, would trade the grasslands and all he possessed for the life of his son. A frozen corner of his heart told him even that might not be enough to save his child.