Andre Norton & Susan Shwartz - [Central Asia 01]

by Imperial Lady- A Fantasy of Han China (epub)

  Sable rode up. At Silver Snow’s invitation, she leapt with what seemed astonishing ease from horseback into the chariot just as Prince Vughturoi gave the command to ride.

  The narrrow eyes of the Hsiung-nu noblewoman widened and shone as Silver Snow greeted her with all the elegance that she might have used for a Brilliant Companion, then moved on to the pleasantries suitable between equals before they attended to any serious matter that might be discussed. Clearly she was impatient to get to the core of whatever Silver Snow had to say; just as clearly, she forced herself to allow her new queen to take the lead.

  Finally—less time than would have been proper in Ch’ang-an but more time than either woman wanted to squander on preliminaries—Silver Snow leaned forward and saw Sable’s eyes brighten. Finally, an end to waiting!

  “Tell me of our people,” invited Silver Snow.

  Sable was glad to expand upon the strength of the royal clan, the majesty of the shan-yu who ruled it, the wealth of its tents and herds, and the prowess of its warriors, among them Basich, her brother, and his hero, the Prince Vughturoi. Basich, Silver Snow learned, had children but no wives; Vughturoi had had a household, but “ill fortune struck, and his elder wife died in childbed,” Sable spoke dispassionately, in the even tones of one for whom such misfortunes were part of everyday life. “Then his younger wife fell from her horse when it stumbled. He was glad, this one thinks, to obey His Heavenly Majesty’s command to travel past the Purple Walls to fetch ...” she trailed off, in a kind of embarrassment that surprised both herself and Silver Snow, who had not been aware that Hsiung-nu could blush.

  “Who is Strong Tongue?” Silver Snow asked. For the first time in all her travels, she saw one of the Hsiung-nu flinch.

  Her eyes grew round, almost distending from their shallow sockets. “She is like your handmaid, only more. Strong Tongue is a woman of power who knows all about the birth or death of a man or woman and whose voice is strong, like unto the voice of gods. When she fares from her yurt, all cover their faces and abase themselves in fear of her power.”

  Or, thought Silver Snow, in fear of her son's whistling arrows.

  “She is no friend to me, then,” she concluded, and saw Sable relax a little. Now, at least, she would be able to say, should Strong Tongue question her, that she had told Silver Snow, the interloper from Ch’in, nothing except that Strong Tongue had power.

  She spoke gently, easily to Sable. Let her see that I have no fear; she thought. Then, just as swirls of dust up ahead heralded the approach of more riders from the shan-yu's camp, she released the Hsiung-nu woman to remount her horse, lest she be seen sitting at ease with Strong Tongue’s enemy.

  Silver Snow shivered and tucked both hands into her voluminous sleeves. “More than ever, Willow,” she said, “I am glad that you are with me. The day on which my father gave you to me is thrice auspicious.”

  Willow reached out, greatly daring, to pat her mistress’ arm. “It will be all right. My head upon it; you shall come to no harm, little mistress.”

  At that moment, the Hsiung-nu’s camp guards reached the caravan, surrounded it, and, with blood-chilling shrieks of welcome, escorted it into the camp of the shan-yu, the ancient husband whom Silver now had journeyed so far to meet.

  Riders flowed about the wagons and chariot of Silver Snow’s caravan, bringing it down a narrow aisle which was guarded by bowmen and over which loomed figures hacked into rocks and set up along the line of march. From where had they borne such stones, and why? Silver Snow wondered. She glanced at them, then glanced aside at the nakedness of the male and female figures, their private parts embarrassingly plain to be seen.

  She had expected a camp. What, finally, her train paused in front of was just as much a court as any assortment of pavilions and gardens in Ch’ang-an, though it was as different from the capital as she herself might be from the robust, brawling women who tended the huge cauldrons that steamed outside many of the felt yurts.

  Vughturoi gestured, and Silver Snow’s driver stopped the chariot in front of the largest and most splendid of the tents. Actually, if a palace could be wrought of silk, leather, and felt, with occasional struts of rare, precious wood, the shan-yu's tent was such a place. Despite the cold, its flaps gaped open, and fires burned within, their smoke rising through holes in the roof. So heavy and so firmly pitched was the tent that its walls scarcely rippled at gusts of wind that might have bowled over lesser structures.

  Carpets of wool and silk, brought either from Ch’in or taken from the cities even farther west, in the land of the Hu, or Persia, lay scattered in and out of the tent, piled one upon another in shining layers. Farther inside, Silver Snow could make out plump brocaded cushions, the sleek gleam of lacquered chests, and ordered heaps of furs and silks. She had expected stark necessity. What she saw now had a splendor that might be barbaric but was also curiously attractive.

  To Silver Snow’s astonishment, Vughturoi dismounted and, with a flourish, applied the key that he wore to Silver Snow’s chariot, though, since it was of Hsiung-nu design, possessed nothing that even resembled a lock. Silver Snow stepped down on ground that felt pebbled, unfamiliar beneath her feet. How odd it seemed now that she would be traveling no farther, at least until spring, she thought; and knew that for nomad thinking.

  An elderly man shuffled forward, awkward with age as well as with the gait of a man who had, lifelong, ridden more often than he had walked. Beneath swathing furs, he wore a robe of Ch’in, embroidered with dragons and trimmed with vermilion. It hung on him in such a way as to suggest that once he had been a far heavier, more muscular man. Though he too wore the soft-soled boots of a rider, his were so lavishly fur-trimmed and embroidered that it was clear that he had not set foot to stirrup in many a day. The thin, scraggly beard common to males of his race was white from extreme age. Though his eyes were sunk deep in the wrinkles formed by gazing for too many years at the trackless horizon of the steppes, they were wise, cunning, and even a little humorous.

  With great effort, he bent to touch Vughturoi’s head, from which the young man had swept his fur cap. “As you can see, my son, the Sun has not yet claimed me,” he said. “Rise.”

  “At your command, Most Heavenly Majesty,” Vughturoi answered, Then, his voice choking, he added, “It is most good to see you . . . Father. ”

  “There, now, and so it is for an old man to see you too.” The shan-yu patted his son’s arm, then turned to Silver Snow, who went immediately to her knees, Willow pulling her robes into order and away from possible contamination from straw, dust, or dung.

  “My bride,” said the shan-yu, laboriously edging forward to take Silver Snow’s chin in his hand and raise it with the eagerness of a child examining a new kite in the spring. “She is more fair than aught else I have seen from the Middle Kingdom,” he declared. “Child, I bid you welcome. You shall be chief among my consorts, and I name you the queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu. For it is peace that you have brought. Henceforward, I decree that my cousin Yuan Ti has no need to defend his Wall. From the Great River to Dun-huang, I myself shall order my sons to maintain it.”

  Silver Snow blinked. As quickly as she could, she must write that news to Li Ling and to her father, together with what she thought best to do. Yet, to do that, she must observe, must spend time within these tents. That, of course, would be easy enough; henceforward, they were to be her home.

  “Tents have been prepared for you and . . . you have brought ladies? Those sent to you were adequate?” asked Khujanga the shan-yu as if he truly cared what became of her. “They shall unpack . . . ah, I see a lute! Do you play?”

  She nodded and cast down her eyes, grateful for one thing: that her Hsiung-nu ladies had assured her that this man, old enough to be her father’s father, was past bed-sport.

  “I am glad. I favor the music of the Middle Kingdom and much else that that ancient, rich land has given us. Your name and family, child?” Abruptly he shot that question at her, and Silver Snow reali
zed that, kindly though he was, he was still every shrunken inch the ruler.

  “Before the Son of Heaven raised me up, I was Silver Snow of the house of Chao; he who begot me was Chao Kuang, marquis and general—”

  “And long-time dweller in my tents.” The shan-yu nodded.

  “But come in, come in and eat with us, drink with us, meet those over whom you will rule.”

  Silver Snow followed the shan-yu into his palacelike tent and allowed herself to be seated next to a brazier, elaborately wrought of bronze trimmed with jade, malachite, and lapis lazuli. Scented smoke coiled up from it, masking the everpresent odors of dung, sweat, beasts, and cooking meat. She was handed a delicate cup that contained a coarse dark brew at which she sipped and concealed her reaction to its taste. That it was warm and made her tingle sufficed.

  From outside came the shriek of a whistle, followed by the buzz of a flight of arrows, then a chunk as they went home in ... in what? Silver Snow remembered the words of Kursik, who had met her train on the way to the shan-yu's camp. That must have been one of Prince Tadiqan’s whistling arrows. The Ancestors send that it had found its mark only in a post, not in a human heart.

  When a squat, bandy-legged man, his face gashed, his sheepskins and furs grimy, stalked into the tent, brandishing a bow, Silver Snow knew that she had guessed aright. This must be the eldest prince, son of Strong Tongue, master of many men and horses. And if he succeeded his father as shan-yu, tribal custom decreed that he would become her husband in turn. Judging from the way his dark eyes raked her, he would most definitely be her husband in far more than name. She controlled herself before she could recoil, a movement that most probably would have tumbled her from her cushions onto the scattered carpets.

  Unfortunately, as she composed herself, with one foot she knocked over a plate, and the meat that it contained rolled into the fire. Only a quick grab by one of the other women saved her knife from going after it.

  That, Silver Snow thought, was nothing too bad compared with what might have occurred.

  Instantly she was proved wrong. The tent grew silent, the Hsiung-nu very still . . . too still. In that quiet, the pad-pad of heavy, booted feet was all too loud, all too reminiscent of the beat of a huge, hostile heart. Many of the Hsiung-nu sighed and turned their heads away, they, who prided themselves on their very fearlessness.

  Silver Snow, seeing no cause for silence or fear, looked up, expecting speedily to see a slave or servant who might clean up what she had dropped.

  Instead, she felt a sudden gust of wind as the tent flap was hurled open. The fire sparked and swirled upward toward the vent in the ceiling. A huge bulk loomed on the threshold of the tent. Even as Silver Snow watched, it resolved into the figure of an enormous woman, one hand thrust out in accusation.

  “The hearthfire is polluted!” The woman’s voice rose up in reprimand and lamentation. It was deeper than any woman’s voice that Silver Snow had ever heard, and it had about it an odd, growling rasp. “Douse it, that I may purify the hearth to warm this ignorant, frail creature whom those weaklings beyond the Wall have sent here to supplant me.”

  An immense and immensely powerful woman pushed her way through the clustering Hsiung-nu. At her approach, they laid aside mutton and mare’s milk to watch her. Many bowed. Resembling Prince Tadiqan, by whom she took up a defensive stance, she was broad and squat. Like the shaman who Silver Snow had seen on the road, she wore a robe trimmed with feathers, strips of fur, and snakeskins. Also like him, she bore a spirit drum, its drumhead taut with a skin too delicate to belong to horse or sheep or camel or aught else . . . until Silver Snow looked down at her own hand and wrist, where they emerged from her sleeves, and surmised the fate of one, at least, among the Ch’in prisoners or the children whom they had had.

  This then was Strong Tongue. Her sister-wife—and, by every readable sign, her enemy.

  = 15 =

  With a speed astonishing in one who was lame, Willow edged out from behind Silver Snow and knelt between her and Strong Tongue, by the fire’s edge. As if to obey Strong Tongue’s imperious demand that she be allowed through to purify the hearth, she carried implements for tending a fire. Her long hair gleamed russet in the light of the polluted fire, then darkened as she extinguished the blaze.

  “Get away, girl!” snarled Strong Tongue. “What do you women of Ch’in know about that which is of Tangr, of the gods?”

  She raised a foot, massive in heavy stitched leather and felt, as if to spurn Willow with her foot. Silver Snow stepped forward quickly, her jaw set, one hand flashing out to clasp her maid’s shoulder and support her. Like an animal dodging a blow, Willow twisted to one side. As she moved, her silver mirror rolled from safekeeping in the bag that Willow ever kept tucked into the breast of her robes. It clattered and rang with the sweetness of fine metal. As it glinted up at Strong Tongue, the characters incised upon it glowed.

  “Stand off, slave,” commanded Strong Tongue. “Lest I curse you and that whey-faced weakling who holds your leash.”

  “My mistress did not know; does not know,” hissed Willow. Silver Snow had not thought that her maid had learned so much of the Hsiung-nu’s speech. “But I do.” She pitched her voice with a curious little hissing whine and met the older woman’s eyes. A fox, facing off against a wild sow, each well aware of the other's will to fight, shoidd there he need, Silver Snow thought.

  “Willow, get back!” Silver Snow ordered, fear for her maid making her whisper more harsh than any she had ever before used with the girl.

  Willow grabbed after her mirror before Strong Tongue could spurn at it or someone else could snatch it away. Then she looked up at her mistress. In the half light of the shan-yu s great tent, her skin seemed very pale, her eyes huge and lustrous. Her long hair, freed of its coils, billowed and crackled about her, its reddish glints seeming to send up sparks that held the light in the way that amber, rubbed by silk, attracts and clings to it.

  Do not challenge this woman! Silver Snow wished at her maid. Sun Tzu might not have written thus in his Art of War, but it was only common sense not to go up against a strong foe in that foe’s own territory. As if Willow understood her mind, she looked aside from Strong Tongue, and the tension that crackled between the two of them subsided. There would be no battle between them: at least, not this day.

  Silver Snow glanced quickly about the great tent, past where Strong Tongue postured in righteous indignation and made great play of dispatching follower after follower for this packet of herbs or this image, or that other flute, while her son Tadiqan stood behind his mother, arms crossed on his chest, bandy legs splayed. Behind them clustered what seemed to be hundreds of Hsiung-nu, all watching.

  Silver Snow spotted Bronze Mirror and Sable, whose hand covered her mouth. None spoke to her or made those slight shifts back and forth, the faint nods and subtle gestures that can indicate support. Bronze Mirror and Sable might respect and even like Silver Snow, but they had lived all their lives in a camp of which Strong Tongue was mistress and shaman; the other Hsiung-nu knew nothing of Silver Snow, save that the Emperor of Ch’in had dispatched her as a bride to their ancient shan-yu. For all they knew, she might be just as weak, as vain, and as ignorant as Strong Tongue clearly hoped that she was. She had yet to prove herself, and right now she must distract Strong Tongue. For, if her memory was as strong as her tongue, Willow was in grave danger.

  She spared one foolish, self-indulgent second to wish that she indeed had been able to lay the skin of the white “tiger” that she and Prince Vughturoi had slain before shan-yu Khu-janga’s feet, in token of her prowess. Then Silver Snow met Strong Tongue’s eyes.

  “I had no desire to scorn the customs of the Hsiung-nu,” she declared firmly. “After all, they are my people too; their weal is my well-being; their fate, my fate. I pray you, if I have offended powers in this land, tell me how best to make it right.”

  To Silver Snow’s surprise, Strong Tongue did not glare. Ipstead, she held Silver Snow’s eyes the wa
y—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.”