“Many people do.”
It was dark in the little room and an oil lamp flickered gold in the corner. He debated snuffing it out but he was cold and the cushions were warm. Warmer now, with his wife.
“I must still leave tomorrow for Agara’tha,” he said and she growled. Her marbled tail would have lashed had it not been under a blanket.
“She won’t want it now,” said Ursa. “You saved her life tonight.”
“We saved her life.” He glanced down at her. “You killed the hassassin.”
“Because you knew she was there. The Palace is not prepared for war.”
“Neither am I.” He sighed. “There are too many thoughts, too many distractions, too many threads. I can’t sift them out to find the Ancestors. I can’t even find Solomon.”
“Maybe he’s dead.”
“Maybe he is but I won’t know until there is quiet.”
“Sha’Hadin was quiet,” she said.
“I may find that quiet in Agara’tha.”
“Pah,” she snorted. “Alchemists are not quiet. They are always humming.”
He smiled, enjoying the feel of her breath on his neck.
“I can’t be both here and there. Surely, she knows that.”
“She knows,” said Ursa. “But she fears. She is a cricket with the heart of a dragon, but still, she fears.”
“We all do,” he said.
“If you leave,” she began. “What do I do? Where do I go? Where will I serve?”
He thought a moment, knowing this question had to come.
“Train the Bushona Geisha,” he said.
“They hate me,” she said.
“Many people do,” he said.
He could feel her smile now against his shoulder. It was a good feeling.
“They need armour, not flowers and silk.”
“Then get them armour.”
She grew still and he could tell that she was thinking.
“Colourful armour,” she muttered to herself. “So they retain their chaos and bewilder their enemies, but terrifying so that no hassassin will dare try kill the Empress with them in the room.”
“You see? You never find the road until you open the door.”
“They will never be as good as me.”
“No one will,” he said. “But still.”
“If you go to Agara’tha and they kill you, you will not be serving the Empire.”
“If I stay here and we lose the war, I will not be serving the Empire.”
She grunted.
“I am but one,” he went on. “At Agara’tha, there are many. If I can open their minds, if I can train them, then I am serving the Empire.”
“And they hate you too. Hmmm.” She pushed up on his chest then, and peered down at him through her wild curtain of hair. “Everyone hates us.”
“So it seems.”
“And yet, we keep fighting to save them. Why?”
He reached up to smooth the hair from her face.
“Perhaps we both have the hearts of snow leopards.”
“I will be gentle with you tonight.”
“What if I don’t want you to be gentle?”
She grinned and bent down, covering him with her hair.
***
“Tsaa buga!” wailed Balmataar.
Yahn Nevye looked over his shoulder, across the child riding in the sling on his chest and past the child clinging to his back. Setse was looking as well, one child on her hip and supporting the new mother with her arm.
“Tsaa buga!”
“Keep your tongue in your head,” grunted Zorig as he trudged past the boy with the golden eye. “Do you want to bring the snow down on ours?”
“The Tsaa buga are close!” Balmataar warbled, arms waving like branches. “Can you not feel them? You people are useless!”
“We can feel them, Balm,” said Setse. “But we are in an exposed valley. If they come, we die.”
They had left their mountain ledge in the morning to find this expanse of white awaiting them on the other side. The Ngari Plain, Zorig had called it. Large and white and empty, flanked to the north and to the south by the Scales of Khunlun. It would take almost a day to cross it. The children didn’t even argue anymore; they merely looked with hollow eyes. Their stomachs were empty, their souls emptier. It broke his heart, this life of Oracles.
“If they come,” snarled Balm, “We can kill them and finally eat and not die. We have been dying one by one since your yellow cat stole us from our homes!”
“Dying?” gasped the new mother. Her name was Houlun Elbegdorj, third wife of Tuuv Saranagal, alpha of Khumul. “How many have died?”
“Only three,” said Setse. “Three from thirteen.”
“From fifteen,” said Nevye. “You must count us, Setse.”
“Why are they dying?” wailed Houlun.
“Tsaa buga!”
“It’s me,” said Sev, the girl who never spoke.
They all looked over at her.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “They are coming because of me.”
“Who are?” asked Setse.
“The tsaa buga.”
Nevye frowned. “Did you call them?”
“I’m hungry,” she said. “So I did.”
“Can you make them stop?”
Tears brimmed beneath her lashes.
Beneath the deep snow, the ground began to rumble.
“Tsaa buga!” wailed Balm.
“Why are they dying?” Houlun cried and she clutched her baby to her chest. “Why?!”
“Because Oracles are weak!” snapped Zorig. “You are whole, woman. You wouldn’t know!”
“Tsaa buga!”
Houlun tore away from Setse, stepped back and back again.
“I’ve made a mistake,” she said. “I don’t belong here with you. My baby doesn’t belong here with you.”
“Tsaa buga!”
“See?” Setse pointed at Balmataar. His eyes were wild, his knees knocking. Nevye didn’t know how the boy managed to stay on his feet. “Oracles are weak, Houlun. Most of us don’t live past our first winters. That is life for an Oracle, but we are trying to change that. That’s why you need to bring your child with us.”
“No, I must go—”
“Tsaa buga!”
“Shove some snow in his mouth,” grunted Zorig. “He’s giving me a headache.”
A cloud of white rose along the horizon and the earth roared at its advance.
“I’m so sorry!” wailed Sev.
“Quickly,” said Setse. “If the tsaa buga come, we’re dead. We must cross the snowfield.”
“We won’t make it,” Nevye said. “The snow is too deep.”
“We can’t go back,” she said. “It’s too far. We can make a Shield?”
A Shield. A force of mind and will and magic. They had become proficient while leading the Army of Blood.
He glanced at her.
“We are not the Magic,” he said.
“We are two fifths of the Magic.”
He tried to smile but it did not find a home on his face.
“Then we make two fifths of a Shield.”
“We are not shielding the Army of Blood,” said Setse. “Only a few children.”
“And me,” grunted Zorig.
“It should not be hard.”
“It’s my fault,” said Sev.
“This was a mistake,” said Houlun.
“Tsaa buga!”
The child in his arms began to cry but he didn’t move. He had almost made a Shield to push Balm on the cliff. Sev had called the tsaa buga. The thoughts were coming as fast as the herd. This was the life of Oracles. Unforgiving and raw.
“I have an idea,” he said.
He swung the two children into the snow behind him and looked around at the weary group.
“Come close, everyone. Come close. Show me. What do we have for weapons?”
“I have my dagger,” said Setse and she slid it from her boot. “And you have
the sword, the one the Shogun-General gave to you.”
“Bright River.” He touched the hilt with his gloved hand. “But a bow? Arrows? When the tsaa buga come, we will need those.”
“Tsaa buga!” wailed Balm. “The earth thunders with their numbers!”
“I could use a snowball on him,” grumbled Zorig. “But not for a tsaa buga. I have a bow but my hands shake too much.”
“I have two arrows,” said Sev. “I stole them from my brother’s gar when I left.”
The ground thundering, the snow rising, shapes moving in the distance, growing larger.
“So,” he said. “A sword, a dagger, a bow and two arrows and…”
He smiled at her.
“The very best weapon in my Kingdom.”
He reached out to lay a hand on aSiffh’s young neck.
“A horse.”
The Oracles murmured now. All the children were frightened of aSiffh, even the ones that rode on his back.
One by one, he slid the children from the horse to the snow, reached out to undo the rope at the stallion’s cheek. aSiffh raised his head, nostrils wide, before letting a squeal rip through the sky. The children screamed and hid behind adult legs as a shape swooped down from the clouds. Hunts in Silence swept overhead, talons flashing in the dim sun.
“The tsaa buga are coming,” said Nevye. “We will all eat well tonight.”
The ground shook as the tsaa buga thundered toward them.
Nevye turned next to a young boy called Shaganaruii Doshan.
“Stand here,” he said, pressing the sword into the boy’s small hands. “Hold it with both hands into the legs of all the tsaa buga that run past. It will take all your strength but just hold and don’t let go.”
Doshan nodded quickly.
“And Sev,” Nevye said. “Can you shoot your arrows with Zorig’s bow?”
She stared at him, tears frozen on her cheeks.
“You can call them,” he said. “But can you kill them?”
Like Doshan, she nodded quickly.
“Only take sure shots. We have two arrows. Don’t lose them on a strong one. Wait until the end, find the weak, make it count.”
The girl quickly snatched the bow from the old man’s hand. She nocked the arrow and pulled the string to her eye.
He turned to Zorig.
“Take the dagger,” he said. “Slice any that come too close.”
Zorig took it, turned it over in his scaly hands.
“You’re foolish to trust me with this,” he said.
“You are stronger than you think.”
The old man shook his head, but took his place behind the yellow cat. The children clung like skins, warm and frail. The wall of beasts was nearly upon them.
“Tsaa buga!” wailed Balm. “Tsaa buga!”
Nevye reached for Setse’s hand. She gave it.
“The Shield will hold,” she said and closed her eyes. “Do not doubt. The Shield will hold.”
“The Shield will hold,” said Nevye and he too closed his eyes, swallowing his uncertainty and calling the air to wrap around them like a fist.
Summoning it, marshaling it, bending it into a wall, thick as ice on the mountains, strong as stone and earth and metal. Drawing power from Setse’s thoughts, Setse’s will, Setse’s heart, Setse’s hand, tight in his. The memory of the Magic, of the witch and the grey lion and the mongrel. Most especially, the mongrel. Sireth benAramis. Once his enemy, now his mentor, and he formed the man’s bearded face in the wall of his mind. He saw a dark room he had never been in, a place he had never seen, a single lantern in a corner he had never known, and with the force of the vision, he reached out with mongrel hands as finally, powerfully, the herd hit.
They hit with the force of strong water and he pushed back with every hair on his body and every thought in his head. With every thought in Setse’s head and with every thought in the mongrel’s head. He held the creatures away as they pummelled against him, thudded, rippled, deflected, flowed around them like a rock in a river. The bearded face snarled and pushed the Shield outward even more, as if a great wind were at their backs, a great spotted mongrel wind. Nevye was so very grateful for the teaching. They would all be dead now, otherwise.
The Shield was holding. He opened his eyes.
He could see them as one might see koi moving beneath the ice, thundering in waves past the wall of will. Silver and brown and white and grey, tsaa buga were the largest animals on the northern plains. They ran on four legs like horses, with large tusks, neck spines, and shaggy hair matted with ice. Their antlers were as wide as the height of a tiger and just as deadly. They moved in huge numbers, churning up all the lands behind them on their split toes like khamels. In Imperial, he’d called them reindeer and in Hanyin, xùnlù but he could barely think in those tongues now.
He heard aSiffh squeal but did not risk a glance. From the corner of his eye, he could see young Doshan, knees bent, elbows locked, holding the sword straight as a rod as it sliced at the knees and hocks of the animals that lumbered too close. He didn’t dare look for Sev, prayed that she was saving their two arrows, and he vowed that after fire, the art of arrow making would be first on their list.
Hours, he thought. It seemed like hours before the herd began to thin. Setse had told him that, before the Khargan’s Army of Ten Thousand, it would take days for a single herd to pass out of a village’s hunting grounds. They were as plentiful as grass in summer and snow in winter. One wave of the great antlered beasts could feed a village for months.
Finally, the last of the creatures thundered past with the old, weak and very young straggling behind. Together, they dropped the Shield and he glanced at Setse, grimaced to see the strain on her face. All was forgotten when she smiled at him.
“Shar,” she gasped. “You see?”
“See?”
“Sakal.” She touched her chin. “Sakal always helps.”
Sakal. Her name for Sireth benAramis. He marveled that she had thought of him as well. Perhaps he had helped them with the Shield. It seemed nothing was beyond the man’s skills. It didn’t matter. Setse was safe, they were alive and he turned his attention to the group. Young Doshan was all but frozen in place, knees still bent, elbows still locked and covered from ears to tail in the blood of his prey. Balm was on his knees, hands clasped over his head and Nevye shook his head. The young man needed training more than any of them.
Surprisingly, Sev still stood with arrows nocked and now, as the weary stragglers loped by, she stepped forward, sending her first arrow into the neck of an oldling. It stumbled and fell, wailing as it bled across the earth. Immediately, she re-nocked and sent the second into the barrel of a calf. It too went down, thrashing in what was left of the snow.
For his part, aSiffh stood over the plains, pink tendrils swinging from his bloody jaws. Nevye tried to count the young stallion’s kills but it was impossible. They would have much food tonight and for many nights.
The entire plain was devoid of snow; the drifts flattened and turned to mud beneath hundreds of split-toed feet. Crossing to the next mountains would be easy now and Nevye couldn’t imagine the same sight in the summer. He wondered how long it would take the grass to return.
“Where’s Houlun?” asked Setse. “I count everyone but Houlun and the baby.”
“Could she have made it back to the mountains?”
From the ground, Balm began to laugh.
“What?” asked Setse. “Balm, what? Do you know where she is?”
Balmataar pointed and they all turned. In the trampled mess that had been snow but was now mud, there was a skim of blood and fabric. Setse sank to her knees, covered her face with her hands.
“The baby too?” asked Nevye.
“She was whole, that one,” Zorig said. “She didn’t fit with us. Shame about the baby, though.”
Hysterical laughter echoed across the snowfield.
“We’ll make a fire,” said Nevye, more to himself than to anyone else. “A fire wi
ll be good.”
“Shar Ma’uul?” asked one of the little ones, Alagh Bayargal. “Can we eat tonight?”
“Yes,” he said. “We will eat tonight.”
“Good,” said Alagh. “I’ve been hungry forever.”
With that, Shar Ma’uul turned his white eyes to the oldling deer dying on the plain. The life spark was leaving its body so he caught it in his thoughts, rubbed it together in the palms of his mind, breathed on it with the wind of the earth’s breath. The tsaa buga erupted in flames and soon the entire basin filled with the smell of roasting flesh.
***
“I have to leave.”
Dragons in ice, dragons in the sky, dragons under the sand, Solomon spinning, blood filling up the pouch, filling up the room, filling up the world of the Dreamtime
“I have to leave.”
He opened one eye.
“The Empress has summoned me,” said Ursa.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I must go.”
“Then you must go.”
He watched her, her slim straight spine and proud posture, the long marbled tail lashing from side to side and her hair, wild and free and swinging in coarse lines across her back. He loved her more than he should, and less than she deserved, and for the first time in a long time, he wished to take her to the little pukka house in Shathkira and resume his manufacture of chairs.
He grinned sadly. She would terrify the villagers so no one would buy. They would starve to death in that little pukka house, unless of course the Ancestors came and enslaved them all before that. He sighed, despairing that all his thoughts now ended with death. He used to be a painter, seeing beauty in everything, but now his world was strife and death. He wondered if that was the lot for most people.
He yawned, stretched and rolled up to sit, looking around at the Room of Enlightened Shadows. He thought it was a perceptive name for a meditation room, and he could imagine it customarily filled with people praying. He was alone now, however, with a single lantern and leopards outside the door. The room was dark and windowless and he had made Ursa douse the incense. Incense clouded the mind rather than illuminated it, and made for surreal visions prompted by fumes. Besides, incense reminded him of Sherah al Shiva and her web of lies and death. She had given him life through her sorcery, would pay one day for all her dark bargains. But he was the result of those bargains and he wondered if Death was still bartering for him as well.
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