Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1)

by Andre Norton

  To Silver Snow’s surprise, Strong Tongue did not glare. Instead, she held Silver Snow’s eyes the way—as Li Ling had once told her—that the hooded snake of Hind, when it rises to hunt, holds the eyes of a bird, forcing the wretched creature to wait until the snake can strike it. The woman’s tiny, deep-set eyes seemed to expand, a point of greenish flame kindling in their depths. She drew a deep breath, gusty like the purr of a tiger . . . a white tiger. Again the thud-thud of a heartbeat resounded. Surely that pounding filled the tent, Silver Snow thought. It nearly deafened her, but none of the Hsiung-nu seemed to notice it.

  The night that the white tiger stalked the camp, Sable and Bronze Mirror had not noticed that same sound. It was almost as if the Hsiung-nu were immune to it.

  Had she sent the white tiger to slay the unknown but hated Ch’in princess who would displace her or to terrify her into witlessness or a dishonorable, treaty-breaking flight back to her home? That now seemed likely. Perhaps Willow could find out more.

  Willow. From whatever obscurity Willow had limped off to, now she hissed, recalling Silver Snow’s attention, reassuring her that she had an ally. Light flashed over Silver Snow, and she drew herself upright. Even thus, she lacked several inches of Strong Tongue’s height; and she was barely half the elder woman’s weight.

  The ancient shan-yu seemed to shake himself, as if rousing from a long dream. “Spoken with courage and propriety!” he announced, smiling upon . . . his new toy, thought Silver Snow. I am like the jade vase or the silk robe, not to be kept locked away, but to be displayed and admired as a sign of his wealth and power. For this one moment, however, she was glad of it.

  “Strong Tongue is mother of Tadiqan, my eldest son,” the shan-yu continued.

  “And heir,” whispered Strong Tongue, though her lord paid that comment no heed.

  “She knows the language of birds and has the learning to understand the sound of stones, the creaking of doors and hinges, and the talk of the dead in their graves. There is no better teacher among the women of the Hsiung-nu. Strong Tongue, I charge you, when you have purified the hearth, instruct your elder sister in the ways of the Hsiung-nu, that she may make us gain even more face than we have by her mere presence.”

  Elder sister! Silver Snow suppressed a groan of dismay. Any hope that she might ever have had to conciliate such a woman had just vanished the way that smoke drifts up through gaps in the tent into the trackless air.

  “I would be humbly grateful for such instruction,” Silver Snow compelled herself to say, and won another smile from her new lord. Standing at his shoulder, Prince Vughturoi barely nodded, but Silver Snow felt herself approved, even protected for the moment. It was a protection granted her for her courage, she knew.

  Then she glanced at Strong Tongue, who had circled the hearth with powders and discolored, cracked scapular bones. She grimaced, as if unconvinced—as well she might be. As she busied herself, she moved not just with the gravity of a shaman about a vital rite but with the same self-righteous importance that Silver Snow had noted in the eunuchs of the Inner Courts: each movement made with ostentatious precision as if to ridicule the possibility that her enemy might ever learn them. Catching Silver Snow’s eye, she snorted with highly elaborate disdain, and bent to adjust the placement of a bone. Her massive breasts and haunches seemed to bob with the weight of her own righteousness and her consciousness of her worth.

  Silver Snow had seen men and women like her in the Palace, those who delighted in others’ mistakes, who pointed them out loudly in the presence of superiors, and who never forgot them, nor let anyone else do so. She herself found the vindictiveness of such behavior gravely improper. After all, Confucius had taught that one should do nothing that one would not wish to have done to oneself—and Silver Snow, who lamented each of her mistakes as if it cost lives, would sorrow when they were cast up to her.

  Nevertheless it was she who was the stranger here, she who must prove herself. These lands, as she had known from childhood, were harsh. Perhaps constant reproofs and reminders of past errors made the difference between survival and death. Well, even though Strong Tongue definitely had no interest in insuring Silver Snow’s survival, she would make certain that such harm would be as difficult to accomplish as possible. I will not fail, Silver Snow told herself. I will use her hostility to harden myself, to become more and more fit to live in this place.

  Still, she knew that Strong Tongue would not be content until Silver Snow failed, failed and died.

  Thus, I must be ever watchful, she told herself. From the way that the shan-yu Khujanga beamed at both of his senior wives, she knew that he thought that his mere command would guarantee their friendship. That assurance taught her much, both about his former strength and about how badly his mind was fading. A leader sure enough of his power to issue such commands would surely have noted the hostility between his former chief wife and the newcomer who had supplanted her. After all, what was the Ch’in character for “trouble”? Two women under one roof . . . or, in this case, in one tent.

  Then a new fear struck her. Was Khujanga fading because of simple old age, or something more? She would have to take great care of him herself lest she speedily become a widow.

  Silver Snow studied the woman she knew as unfriend, but who had been set as her sister wife and teacher. A long tiger’s claw hung among the amulets at her muscular neck, and the knife that she wore seemed to be well honed. Of all of the Hsiung-nu in the shan-yu’s tent, only she and her son wore dress that was totally bare of any Ch’in bravery of silk, embroidery, or jade. Considering that Tadiqan seemed to be the leader of those opposed to peace with the Middle Kingdom, that was but logical.

  As she held Strong Tongue’s gaze, she became aware that Tadiqan also stared back. Where his mother’s gaze was hostile, vindictive, however, Tadiqan’s was openly lustful. Silver Snow felt as if, right now, she would trade half of her dowry for a hot bath.

  “You wish to learn?” demanded Strong Tongue. “Then your lessons may begin now. Kneel down and place your hand upon my spirit drum.”

  How trivial a thing that demand seemed to be. Kneel, touch the drum, assist this woman to purify the hearth. Strong Tongue’s eyes had darkened again so that they seemed all pupil, and, at their centers, that greenish point of flame was forming, intensifying, would soon dart out and . . .

  Elder sister, no! A cry seemed to explode in Silver Snow’s ears, and she rocked back on her heels. For a moment her mind and Willow’s mind were twinned. Her hearing and her sense of smell were as sharp as those of a fox that had retreated to her earth to protect her kits. Though the scents of dung fire, sweat, and food threatened to overwhelm them, Silver Snow perceived what her maid did, as Willow projected to her mistress the smells of fear, of rage, and—from Strong Tongue—a great satisfaction. She heard the rustlings and whispers of the Hsiung-nu, the half-stifled protest as she watched as her hand went out, poised, to touch Strong Tongue’s drum . . .

  Skin reaching to touch drumhead . . . Scrape off the smoke and fat, and the drumhead’s leather—it looked like her skin. Silver Snow recoiled.

  “Afraid?” jeered the woman.

  Silver Snow shook her head and knew that that was a lie. “How would I presume to touch the tools of a shaman?” she asked. “That is a thing of power.”

  Tadiqan laughed. “How powerful, you do not know,” he said. “That drum was the result of a great hunt . . .”

  And the beast that they hunted, Silver Snow thought, almost paralyzed, ran on two legs, gasping, sobbing in Hsiung-nu and in the tongue of the Middle Kingdom, beseeching the Fire, the Sky, or the Ancestors to preserve him, or, at least, to grant him a clean, sudden death.

  There would have been no whistling arrows to bring down such a one mercifully, sacrificed to provide a covering for Strong Tongue’s spirit drum. Do I look upon the remains of some kin of mine? thought Silver Snow. After the disgrace of his defeat and captivity, her father had sheltered among the Hsiung-nu, had wed, had sired a c
hild whom he had perforce to abandon when he fled back to the Middle Kingdom.

  Strong Tongue reached out, as if to force Silver Snow’s fingers down to the drum, but the younger woman was quicker.

  “Do what you must to purify the hearth,” she commanded, all desire to mend her quarrel with Strong Tongue gone. “I shall not sully it again.”

  “We shall see,” muttered Strong Tongue.

  She beat upon the drum, kindled her fire, and hurled her incense, none producing the scents that were spicy, clean, or sweet, those that Silver Snow recalled from home. These odors were wilder, muskier. The drum beat faster, and Tadiqan took a step forward, laying his hands upon his mother’s shoulders as if to give her strength. He smiled at Silver Snow, and the healing gashes on his face made his expression a demon’s mask. He did not want her just for pleasure, then, but for power; as if, in wishing to violate her, he somehow sought to ravish all of the land from which she came.

  Silver Snow could hear the drumbeats resonate in the air and underfoot as Strong Tongue chanted, as she leaned closer over the ashes in the hearth, and labored to kindle flame.

  His fact taut with disgust and apprehension, Vughturoi bent toward his father and eased him down onto a pile of soft furs. The old man did not seem to share the disquiet that filled the great central tent; instead, he smiled with what looked like benign pleasure at the sight of his wives, the new chief consort and the old, seated beside his hearth, tending his fire.

  Abruptly fire rose where no fire had been before, and a beam of white light blinked out and was instantly gone. The beat of that vile little drum ceased, and Silver Snow found herself able to breathe normally.

  A muffled cry rose, and Silver Snow whirled to see Willow sink onto her knees in a shadowed corner. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, and she seemed to be about to swoon, but she thrust her mirror into the bosom of her robe before wrapping arms about herself as if she were so cold that never again might she be warmed. Faintly, as if from a great distance, Silver Snow “heard” her maid’s voice in her head. How should I let my mistress, my pretty little elder sister, be welcomed to a hearthfire kindled by . . . by that!

  Willow crumpled to one side, and Sable and Bronze Mirror leapt to her aid.

  “What is it, child?” asked the shan-yu.

  “We . . . my maid and I . . . are not used to so many people after such a long journey, Heavenly Majesty,” she ventured.

  “Say ‘husband,’ ” urged Khujanga, as one might encourage a child to swallow food.

  Silver Snow cast down her eyes with an artistic imitation of shyness, learned from observing some of the more successful concubines, and repeated the word, winning a smile. By my Ancestors, he is weak, feeble. How does he hold these men’s loyalties?

  This was the man who had defeated her father and Li Ling? This was the man who had made a goblet out of the skull of Modun, enemy to the Empire as well as to his own hordes? This wizened, smiling man, with his wives and his many sons, two of whom glared at one another at this very moment? There must be more to him than Silver Snow perceived. There must be, or she faced a fate that she did not even wish to think about.

  “We need air, perhaps,” Silver Snow said, playing for time.

  “I had not thought that you would wish or have the strength to move about so soon after your arrival,” said the shan-yu indulgently, “but, then, I expected no one so fair either. Should you wish to see . . . it is mean, humble, nothing at all, but the Hsiung-nu have wintered here since before my grandfather was a lad.”

  Smiling, he gestured, and a woman opened the flap of the great tent. The gust of cold wind that plucked at tent, furs, rugs, and the newly kindled fire was doubly sweet after the tension of quarrel and ritual that—every bit as much as the ever-present smells of fuel, sweat, leather, and seethed meat—had fouled the air.

  “Yurts have been prepared that are your own, lady. And now, I shall show you your home,” the shan-yu said.

  “Heavenly Majesty, should you—” began Tadiqan.

  “My eldest son,” said Khujanga. “Let me remind you for the last time. I fought Modun. Side by side with my kinsman the Emperor, I fought Modun and his Yueh-chih. I have ridden our plains since my mother foaled me. When I cannot withstand the kiss of the wind, it will be time to dig my grave-pit. But until then, I rule here, and I decide what I shall do.

  “Attend me!” he commanded, but to Vughturoi, not to Tadiqan. Silver Snow drew her robes about her and left the dusky yurt before she could see Strong Tongue’s face.

  In the days that followed, Silver Snow learned more of the temper of the people over whom Fate, the lords of the land, and her own faithfulness had set her. None walked when he could ride, and the women were just as fierce as the men, just as skilled with the deadly, matchless bows of the grassland riders.

  In the lavish yurts that the shan-yu had ordained as her own, Silver Snow set up her own tiny court. In the days and weeks that followed, she learned much. She had expected stark simplicity, such as she had known in her own home; she had been prepared for actual hardship. What she found, instead, was a curious combination of rigor and luxury. She might dwell in a tent of felt and leather, but it was warmer, by far, than the Cold Palace of her disgrace in Ch’ang-an. She had furs and rugs and silken hangings that a Brilliant Companion might envy, the deference due to the shan-yu’s chief consort and a woman who had been adopted by the Son of Heaven. True, the tea that Bronze Mirror and Sable brewed from blocks that seemed to be as hard as jade and as old as the nearly forgotten Shang was strong, bitter, and black, but it put heat into her in cold mornings as she rose from her quilts of sable and marten.

  By far the best thing about her new life was that she was no longer confined within a court and expected to regard that as desirable. She had the horse that she had ridden to the winter quarters of the horde and an endless supply of mares and geldings for remounts, should she require them; and the horizon itself was the extent of her boundaries.

  The shan-yu, she realized very quickly, had wanted only a princess to seal his treaty with Emperor Yuan Ti and to gain face among the tribes. When he realized that the bride that fate had brought him was no mean rider or archer, however, he showed the delight of a man who received his first great-grandson in his arms. Indeed, Silver Snow thought, he treated her like a favorite grandchild, not a wife, in all but precedence among the women of the Hsiung-nu.

  She was his nightingale, skilled in singing and talk of the court. That she was no fragile creature, but one able to savor the life of the Hsiung-nu increased her value in his sight. On those evenings during which she did not sing to Khujanga in the privacy of her yurt—Willow nearby to replenish supplies of hot wine, or the mare’s milk that the shan-yu, despite his admiration for all things Ch’in, evidently preferred—she listened to his tales of the grasslands and the steppes, the long rides far to the west, where, he told her, rose the Roof of the World; the wild raids for sheep and horses and, occasionally, wives; the battles with the other tribes.

  On such occasions, the age that filmed his eyes and occasionally restricted his awareness of what went on in his camp to what lay immediately at his feet fell from him, and he was young again, strong again:

  “And, lady, when Edika, my father, died, my mother contrived that I, of all the princes that he sired, should approach the body first. Thus, by right, I became shan-yu, but those sons of Erlik fought me for it tooth and nail. Yet, I prevailed, through the will of the Heavenly Majesty; that, and my bow and the strength of my men’s arms. And still, I rule, and shall do so for many years more.”

  Then he would laugh. From laughter, he would pass to coughing, and from coughing to thirst. Silver Snow would be quick to pass him the skin of mare’s milk or to coax him prettily to drink the brews into which Willow had carefully sprinkled doses of healing herbs: herbs to strengthen the heart and keep clear the lungs. As he sipped, once again, Silver Snow would sing.

  Once, he brought a son to hear her or to amuse her with tales
of a hunt or battle. Prince Vughturoi came, but, after that one time, never again. Later on, Silver Snow found herself searching for the shadow that had stalked, keeping guard, outside her tent during her journey hither. That discovery angered her, and she turned her attention back to pleasing her lord and preparing the letter that she hoped, somehow, to send to her father.

  “Ah, he had a son here, did Chao Kuang. Did you know that, lady?” asked the Hsiung-nu chief one night.

  Silver Snow glanced down into the tiny, delicate cup that she held. Her cheeks suddenly flamed, and her hands grew cold. “Thus I had heard, Most Heav—”

  “Ah, what did I command you to call me, child?” Khujanga raised a gnarled, scarred fingertip and shook it indulgently at her.

  Each day he gains strength, and his mind clears. Each day is a victory, she thought, but knew that time was her enemy. Nevertheless, as a general does with troops who know themselves to be outnumbered, she summoned confidence. Willow knew much of herbs and had learned much more of medicine and alchemy in Ch’ang-an; she might well preserve the shan-yu for years.

  “Husband!” Silver Snow corrected herself with the demure smile that she knew Khujanga liked. “Thus, as I said, I had heard, and would willingly pay my duty to an elder brother.”

  “He was weak, sickly, my wife said, and he knew it. When his mother died, he knew that he speedily would be a burden to someone else. Thus, one day, he rode out, away from the host. Whether his horse fell upon him, or he simply rode away from the clan, we never knew. But it was in a season of great sickness. I myself think that he chose thus to die that other and fitter youths might eat their fill, and I honor him.”

  And thus Strong Tongue lets you believe, thought Silver Snow sorrowfully. You honor him, yet you see him—or what I fear may have been him—on that vile little drum of hers. Should I ever truly be the queen that they hail me as, I shall have that thing buried . . . and perhaps her alongside it.