Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1)

by Andre Norton

  She pulled the cup from its silk wrappings and showed it to the man who had sworn vengeance because that cup existed at all. “As a loyal son,” she told him, “take that and bury it after the custom of your kind.” She replaced it in its shroud and held it out, offering it to his suddenly reverent hands.

  “You do not need another such cup,” she added quietly. Her eyes pleaded with him to agree with her even as she hoped that Vughturoi would not race forward and slay him to protect her.

  “No,” he muttered, turning the wrapped bundle over and over in his hands. “We do not, now that we have my father’s honor back. Lady, I have heard of you. They hail you as the queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu; and now I see that it is true. I will do homage to you,” he said, and dismounted.

  Even as Vughturoi rode up, his eyes distended, his horse lathered, Tadiqan’s former ally went to his knees, then to his belly. Quick to seize the opportunity, Vughturoi beckoned his own men forward to encircle the others.

  From behind his own ranks, however, rose a tumult of horses, shrill screams, and finally the deep-throated death shriek of a warrior.

  Silver Snow dared to glance behind her.

  “It is Strong Tongue!” cried Sable. “Somehow she freed her hands, slew one of her guards, and seized her drum!”

  Silver Snow had heard that great grief, or rage, or fear could make people inhumanly strong. Thus it was with Strong Tongue, who now strode forward, beating the spirit drum to a rhythm more savage and more compelling than any she had ever heard.

  Faced with a shaman mad with grief and rage, even the bravest among the Hsiung-nu blanched, and many on both sides hurled themselves from their horses, to cower with their heads to the ground.

  “I have it!” screamed the deposed shaman. “And soon I shall have vengeance on you all for my son, I and my demons!”

  “Mad,” gasped Willow from where she sprawled on the ground. Silver Snow could see white around her eyes, which glared with the terror of madness that haunted human and beast alike.

  A howling wind blew up about Strong Tongue. Even as a guard tried to pierce it with his spear, it seized him and tossed him high and far. They could hear bones shattering as he landed. Still the wind intensified until it drowned out all other sounds. Mouths worked on prayers or shouts; horses tossed their heads, whinnying in barely suppressed panic; and all anyone could hear was the whining snarl of the wind, a miniature version of the kuraburan, or goblin storms, of the deep desert, a thousand-thousandfold worse than Tadiqan’s whistling arrows . . . until the first of the demons laughed.

  Shapes worse than any nightmare out of Taoist magical texts half materialized within the whirling vortex of wind, grit, and sand. They danced and gibbered and held out grasping claws. More and more fiercely Strong Tongue beat upon the spirit drum until Silver Snow thought surely that it would shatter, loosing the demons forever upon an unsuspecting world.

  “This for my son,” she shouted. That much Silver Snow could hear over the roaring of the wind and the giggling of the demons as they headed toward her.

  Already she could feel the wind’s hot breath. There was no place, she knew, to flee.

  “No!” A wail of rejection pierced the sounds of the black storm as Willow forced herself to her feet. Her lame leg buckled, but she caught herself by staggering sideways and steadying herself against a horse.

  “Elder Sister, Elder Sister!” she cried and hurled herself, not at Strong Tongue but between Silver Snow and the storm. Her hands fumbled in her bosom and produced her greatest treasure, the silver mirror incised with magical symbols that only she could read. It looked pathetically small, no larger than the disk of the indifferent sun now high overhead, but it flashed with light and in it was reflected, in miniature, all the fury of the storm and, at its heart, Strong Tongue, who summoned it.

  The storm seemed to shrink, as if somehow the mirror controlled it. Willow swayed on her feet like the tree for which she had been named. Her head dropped, her whole body sagged, but she held up her hands strongly as though she held a shield against the swordstrokes of a near-invincible opponent.

  Slowly the storm reversed the direction around which it spun on its axis. Even more slowly it turned toward Strong Tongue, to engulf her who had summoned it in the first place. Strong Tongue shook her head in rejection and pounded her spirit drum, and the storm edged back toward Willow.

  The maid trembled, but forced herself to limp forward, first one step, then another, always holding the mirror between the demon storm and herself, as she stood before her beloved mistress.

  “No, Willow,” gasped Silver Snow, but the maid shook her head once frantically, rejecting as impossible any help that her mistress or some warrior might offer. Silver Snow herself considered drawing bow and firing into that storm; but who could tell what those winds would do to an arrow? They might send it anywhere, including back upon the archer.

  That was what Willow sought to do: deflect the storm upon its sender. Just as clearly, Strong Tongue sought to overpower her enemy and overwhelm first Silver Snow, then the camp. Drum and mirror contended, the storm between them.

  And then, as if it had waited all these years for the most auspicious moment in which to turn upon its mistress, the yellowed skin of the drumhead tore, and the wind rushed free, overwhelming Strong Tongue’s screams. Even now, they were screams of rage, not fear.

  Only an instant later, Willow’s mirror broke into two pieces. Strong Tongue fell, lashed by the gale she had summoned; but the maid fell too, a slender tree exposed to a storm too strong for it.

  A warrior leapt to Strong Tongue’s side, his spear poised for a stabbing thrust at her throat.

  “Do not slay her!” Vughturoi shouted, his voice hoarse.

  What kind of strength would allow a woman to survive that storm? More, Silver Snow feared, than poor Willow possessed. Silver Snow slid from her saddle, ignoring the pain of her foot to run toward Willow, who lay motionless upon the ground. She arrived just as Sable did, but when the Hsiung-nu woman would have sheltered her, Silver Snow pushed forward.

  “Little sister?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  Strong Tongue had weathered the storm. Was it asking too much for Willow, whose only thought was to protect, to help, to serve, to have survived it too? After all, lame she might be in human guise, but she had all of the vitality of the fox kind, too. She had taken the entire brunt of the storm upon herself to deflect it; and in doing so, had saved countless lives.

  Tenderly Silver Snow turned her maid over. Delicately she brushed dust and grass away from the pale, still face. Willow’s lips were blue, and her chest did not seem to rise and fall, even faintly. A mirror . . . where was a mirror? If mist formed on it, then the girl breathed, lived, and might be healed. Never taking her eyes from Willow, Silver Snow scrabbled with one hand in the grass. When a sharp edge nicked her finger, triumphantly she brought forth one of the pieces of Willow’s mirror, broken by some fate in the shape of a half-circle that bore a darker splotch at its center. Sable brought up the other half. Yang and Yin. Neither, when held to Willow’s lips, showed any trace of mist. And then both shards of mirror dissolved.

  Her own lips trembling, Silver Snow glanced over at Sable, who shook her head and began to straighten Willow’s garments, pulling them down decorously to cover her legs, the straight one and the lame. Even as she watched, whatever knot of muscle and sinew had shortened Willow’s bad leg seemed to untwist: lame in life, Willow lay whole and straight in death.

  That sight broke Silver Snow’s fragile grip on self-control. She laid her head on Willow’s stilled bosom and wept as a mother would mourn for the death of her first-born.

  Vughturoi knelt at her side. “She said that she would endure testing unto death,” he said. “I had no idea of subjecting her to such an ordeal, no thought but that she would prove as true as she has.” She felt a light touch on her hair, and looked up in time to see Vughturoi rise.

  “Take that witch”—he pointed at Str
ong Tongue’s unconscious body, and his voice was chill with loathing—“and bind her. Bind her well, gag her, and guard her until a wild horse can be brought.”

  In silence, Vughturoi waited while he was obeyed. “Now, tie her to its back.”

  By this time, Strong Tongue had recovered consciousness, but that terrible vitality of hers showed only in the fires of her eyes.

  “I cannot punish you as you deserve,” Vughturoi told her. “And being what you are, a wife of my father and, once, before you turned to evil, a mouthpiece for the spirits, I think that I dare not punish you at all. So I shall send you hence, and whatever spirits find you may do with you as they will. Hei-yahhh!” he cried, and slapped the horse’s hindquarters.

  Maddened by the unfamiliar feeling of a burden lashed to its back, the horse reared, plunged, and dashed away.

  Faintly Silver Snow heard Vughturoi inviting the Fu Yu and the Yueh-chih—those who had not fled, much to the mirth of their fellows—to dismount and share his hospitality. She knew that she should rise, should greet them properly, as befitted a queen. She also knew that she had neither strength nor heart to do so, now that Willow was dead.

  She shut her eyes and wished that the darkness would overpower her. To her astonishment, warm hands lifted her and held her.

  “I cannot have you grieving thus,” her husband told her. “What would she say if she saw you?”

  Silver Snow gulped down a sob. “She would scold me for endangering my baby, and she would dose . . . dose me with dreadful-tasting herbs.”

  “Then listen to her memory,” Vughturoi ordered. “I . . . we . . . owe her everything. What would you have us do? Just say the word, and we shall give her a funeral finer than any that the grasslands have known before.”

  Sable gasped. “Oh, but look!”

  Two large foxes, totally against the nature of their breed, which hid from humankind whenever possible, emerged from the cover of the long grass and crouched, belly-down, beside Willow’s body, nuzzling and prodding it. When Willow did not respond, they yapped shrilly, as if in lamentation, and disappeared once more.

  Sorrowfully Silver Snow watched them vanish. “A funeral finer than any that the grasslands have known before?” she repeated her husband’s words as a question. “Say, rather, the funeral of a princess. May I ask . . . ?”

  “Anything,” said Vughturoi.

  “Then let my Willow be buried on the border between Ch’in and the lands of the Hsiung-nu, somewhere near green trees and flowing water. Let a mound be heaped up over her, a mound that shall ever be green, even in the depths of winter. No hunter shall come to that place, which shall be as a sanctuary for all living creatures, to honor a maid who was true to Han and Hsiung-nu, to the human and the fox kind.”

  “Let your women prepare her for burial, and it shall be done,” said Vughturoi. “We shall ride before winter. Perhaps some among the garrison will ride with us. Your Willow will rest warm before the snows fall. But you must come now, come and help to seal this new peace. After all, is that not how you are named?”

  She let him lead her away toward the great tent where, at least for now, she must greet warriors from the other tribes, who must now be won over as friends and allies. Behind her rose the tribeswomen’s lament for Willow, who would be celebrated in death as she never was in life. Silver Snow wondered what she would think of it.

  I will say farewell later, she told her friend’s memory. I will never forget you, and, when the time for my own funeral comes, I will join you and we both shall guard these lands, together, for always.

  She blinked away her tears and cocked her head. Abruptly she gasped, her hands going to her belly. Gazing at her, Vughturoi stopped in alarm, his scarred face turning gray under its weathering. He had lost children before to Strong Tongue’s spells and poisons, Silver Snow knew.

  “Nothing is wrong,” she told him. “Our son just kicked me.”

  “He has his mother’s daring,” said Vughturoi. “And his mother should sit down.”

  In that moment and ever afterward, Silver Snow would have sworn that she had heard Willow laugh.

  EPILOGUE

  Court officials had argued protocol and precedence for months before the heir of the shan-yu arrived in Ch’ang-an. He was the subject, too, of much gossip in the Inner Courts. Some even said that his mother had resided there, half a lifetime ago, before being sent into exile upon the plains.

  Half barbarian; half Han. Delicious speculation had it that he, like all others of the Hsiung-nu, ate his meat raw or that he was an alchemist, or that a fox-spirit had been his midwife. Rumor ran so wild in the Inner Courts that even the gossip-loving eunuchs had, finally, to suppress it. One thing, though, everyone finally could agree upon. This prince of the Hsiung-nu had come to Ch’ang-an not to argue for a treaty nor to wed a Han princess—at least not yet—but to be educated in the way of his mother’s people.

  It would be fascinating to see if he could, decided the chief eunuchs, then turned to the more important matter of bribes. These days, ever since the unfortunate Mao Yen-shou had lost his head over the trifling matter of a flawed portrait, one had to be so much more discreet. Perhaps this savage prince would prove to be generous.

  The young man who finally arrived in Ch’ang-an, accompanied by a troop of dour and fully armed horsemen, wore silks and furs. A lute hung beside his bow upon his saddle, and he spoke the tongue of Ch’in with elegance and propriety. Even the warriors who rode with him and who had been chosen for patience and steadiness (which meant that there were but a few, far fewer than should have accompanied the shan-yu’s heir) muttered at the height and breadth of the city’s walls. They had been warned by the shan-yu not to think of Ch’ang-an simply as a larger, more permanent winter camp; it seemed more like a huge trap, a . . . the word was prison, a fixed abode into which men were hurled and from which they could not escape. It was my mother’s city, my mother’s land, the prince had told them; and, respecting Silver Snow as much as they did her son, they nodded and accepted what they could not change.

  For a moment, however, the prince rebelled in thought. He was a free man of the grasslands and desert, used to riding where he would. How could anyone expect him to spend what might be years of his life pent within walls and under roofs? Behind him, his men muttered, and the Ch’in soldiers who accompanied them closed in, looking dour.

  Those dour looks steadied him. He flashed his warriors a warning look, knowing that they would feel shame that he must thus reprove them in the presence of men of Ch’in, who wanted only to regard them as savages. If he had not protested, they must not either.

  He had not protested when his father had ordered him to Ch’ang-an; the shan-yu Vughturoi was the chosen under heaven, and it was unthinkable to oppose him, as even his own brother had learned. Was it not Vughturoi who had consolidated all of the warring clans of the Hsiung-nu?

  And just as he dared not present himself to his father as aught but an obedient, loyal son, he certainly could not fail in duty when his mother sat nearby, her thin, fragile fingers holding some piece of stitching, which he could see, and the reins of his father’s heart and his, which he could not. It was not just unfilial to disappoint her: it was unthinkable.

  So tiny she was, her once-pale skin weathered by half a

  lifetime spent among the Hsiung-nu out under the holy sky, her dark, thoughtful eyes webbed in a fine network of wrinkles from staring into vast distances, either of the grasslands themselves or her own thoughts, her incredibly long braids frosted with a silver snow like that of the name that only the shan-yu dared to speak.

  His journey to her home meant a great deal to her, he knew. He might, warrior to warrior, have protested being sent to what was, for a Hsiung-nu, a luxurious prison; Vughturoi his father had lived among the Han and could sense his unease and distaste. But what of the lady his mother, who had accepted exile from her own people? So tiny she was, and so frail; but so brave withal. Had he not heard the tales, since he was old enough to
sit his first horse, of how she thrust herself before the ruler of the Yueh-chih and mended the old quarrel that had abetted treason and nearly brought on another war? His mother was the queen who had brought peace to the Hsiung-nu; a year of his life within walls was a small gift if it pleased her.

  With as much courage as he would have faced a battle, he rode through the city, confronted rank upon rank of officials, and, ultimately, was allowed the supreme felicity of hurling himself at the feet of the Son of Heaven. When he rose, he held out a roll of silk, carefully sealed against dust and storm. He cautioned himself that anything he said or did might reflect not just upon the Hsiung-nu but upon the lady who had left these courts to lead them. Drawing a deep breath in lieu of the weapons that would have been far readier to his hand, he prepared to speak.

  “This unworthy one who is permitted to style himself as Khujanga, prince among the Hsiung-nu, begs leave to greet the Son of Heaven,” he began. Some officials frowned at his audacity; the eldest among them remembered that his mother, too, had had a history of being . . . unconventional might be the most tactful way of expressing it. The lady had taught him the trick of observing such men from the corners of his eyes and of reading the tiny signals of approval or disfavor that they sent to one another; it was a gift for which he was grateful.

  “His father, the shan-yu, and his mother, she who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu, bow themselves before the Son of Heaven, and beg him to receive this wretched one within his courts to learn the ways of the Middle Kingdom, most illustrious under heaven.”

  The Son of Heaven nodded and, very faintly, smiled. Although the prince had promised himself that he would not care what such a soft creature—with his silks, his stiff cap, his Dragon Throne, and these oppressive walls—might think of him, he sighed inwardly in relief.

  The court relaxed, and the Emperor beckoned the Hsiung-nu prince closer for a brief, precious moment of almost private speech. To Prince Khujanga’s surprise, warmth lurked in the Emperor’s wise, sly eyes.