Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  “I only talked with him.”

  “Still—”

  “Yuri.” Bakhtiian drew up beside them. “North scout. You and Kirill.” Yuri opened his mouth, shut it, and rode away. Bakhtiian kept his horse even with Tess’s. He rode at one with the animal, as always, but his back was so stiff that a board could have been nailed there to hold the shape. There was a tight, drawn edge to his mouth, dark smudges of sleeplessness under his eyes. He neither spoke nor looked at her.

  They rode on for some time in this manner. Clipped, drying grass rustled under their horses’ hooves. A golden brown haze marked the distant hills. His eyes remained fixed on some unmoving point situated just in front of Kriye’s head. Now and again an irregularity in the ground interrupted the black’s steady pace and she would see Bakhtiian’s eyes tighten at the corners and his lips pale from the pain. Still he said nothing.

  “Nice day, isn’t it?” she asked finally.

  His head turned. He fixed her with a stare so turbulent that she almost reined in Myshla to get away from him. “When my aunt gave you that tent,” he said, his voice so level that a brimful glass would not have spilled a drop if set upon it, “she expected you would behave properly. If you persist in flaunting your flirtations, especially with married men, so that you lose whatever reputation you have, you will no longer have the right to call it your own.”

  “What I’m wondering,” said Tess, smiling, “is who got the beauty and who got the beast last night. Why don’t you come back when you’ve got something civil to say to me?”

  Kriye shifted pace with a slight jolt. Bakhtiian’s eyes went almost vacant. The moment passed, and he stared straight at her again.

  “This is advice,” he said tonelessly, “that you had better heed.”

  “Had I?” She flipped her braid back over her shoulder with all the blithe unconcern of a very popular girl confronted with the plainest and least interesting of her rivals. “Forgive me if I choose to consult with Sonia about such matters first.”

  He continued to stare at her, his eyes fixed on her face with the intensity of a panther which, hidden in the grass, watches its prey.

  “You’d better say what you want right now, Bakhtiian, because I’m going to go find more congenial company.”

  His right hand tightened. Slowly, he moved it so that it came to rest on the hilt of his saber.

  Her hand was on hers in an instant.

  He opened his hand and reclosed it finger by finger around the hilt. “I don’t give advice lightly.”

  “No one ever does.” She had tried to keep her tone light and sarcastic. Now she simply lost her temper. “And how do you—by God!—how do you intend to make me heed your advice?”

  She regretted it immediately. The color banished from his cheeks by her comments, he regarded her with the expression of a man who has that instant conceived a diabolical plan. He took his hand off his saber. Fear, receiving no answer to its knock, opened the door and walked in.

  “By the gods,” said Ilya. “I will.” He turned his horse and cantered to the back of the group.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “Desire when doubled is love, love when doubled is madness.”

  —PRODICUS OF CEAS

  SHE CAUGHT KIRILL LOOKING at her over the campfire that evening, and he smiled at her, but it was a serious smile and rather sober. She smiled back and then he looked like Kirill again, and he went back to his supper, satisfied. Tess ate slowly, ignoring the Chapalii. But when she rose and walked out onto the plain, she saw a tall, thin, angular form shadowing her far to her right. She went back into camp.

  “Walk with me, Yuri,” she said within Kirill’s hearing.

  Yuri obeyed. “We’re being followed,” he said as soon as they were out of sight of camp.

  “I know.” She turned.

  “I should have known,” said Yuri, seeing that it was Kirill coming up behind them. “Somehow, I think I’m wanted back in camp.”

  Kirill greeted him cheerfully as they passed. “I brought blankets,” he said to Tess. Then, reconsidering his words, he hesitated. “I mean, if you’re cold…Do you want me to go away?”

  “Oh, Kirill, I’m sorry. I have an awful temper.”

  “No, I’m sorry, Tess. I ought to have known better. It was an ill-bred thing to do. I’m no better than that loathsome Veselov woman. But then, I never have liked any of that family.”

  “You liked Arina Veselov well enough.”

  “She’s a pretty enough woman. You took Petya, after all.”

  “Oho! You were jealous! But you encouraged me to make up to him.”

  “Doing what is right,” said Kirill with dignity, “is not always easy.”

  Tess laughed and put her arms around him. It felt very good to hug him. “My sweet Kirill.”

  “Were you really jealous?” he asked in a low voice, as if he had no right to.

  “Terribly.”

  “My heart,” he said, and then nothing more.

  In the morning, Yuri and Kirill were sent out to scout again. And again on the third morning. Bakhtiian did not so much not speak to her as ignore her with so much force that she knew the entire jahar was aware of it. How could she ever have thought he and Charles were men cut from the same cloth? Charles would never let his anger show. He would certainly never let the world know of his disapproval. That entire dinner party, soon after she had come to Jeds after their parents’ death, still loomed large in her memory. She had been a reckless and troubled ten-year-old girl intent on ruining everything Charles had worked for on Rhui, that delicate balance of his off-world retinue and the Rhuian guests ignorant of his off-world origins. Charles had dealt with her all evening in a firm but pleasant manner. He had even warned Dr. Hierakis off when the doctor had rebuked her. Then, in the privacy of Tess’s room, she had gotten the scolding. She could not now remember what he had said. But she remembered that he had never raised his voice. She had felt bitterly ashamed of herself. She had disappointed him. She had not lived up to his expectations. But that once, she had wished mightily that she could make him angry instead.

  Well, Tess, just as well, she thought wryly, staring at Bakhtiian’s profile as he rode five men over from her. The wind ruffled his dark hair. His lips were set together and he contemplated the horizon with that expression of preoccupied intensity that was habitual with him. Then he turned his head to meet her gaze and as deliberately looked away.

  That afternoon, standing apart from the others as they watered their horses at a spring, she saw Niko break away from the group and walk across the grass to her. He let his hand rest on Myshla’s withers as he considered Tess gravely. Tess crouched to look at herself in the smooth pond. The water reflected her face, the high cheekbones that sank into the deep hollows of her eyes. A single braid hung down over one shoulder, brown against the scarlet silk of her shirt. A pebble fell suddenly into the midst of the picture, dissolving her into ripples. She stood up.

  “I’m not here to scold you, you know. But I think it’s time you resolved your differences with Ilya. I will mediate, if you wish that protection.”

  “I have nothing to resolve with Ilya. My behavior has been unexceptionable.”

  “That may be, but when you stir up coals, you must be prepared for flames.”

  Tess glanced toward the jahar. They were ranged out in clusters, talking easily among themselves. Bakhtiian stood alone. Even at such a distance, she knew—she could feel—that he was watching her.

  “I won’t make up to him,” she said stubbornly.

  “I said nothing of that. Look to your own heart before you judge others. And never, never again take a lover away as blatantly as you did two nights past. It is bad manners, my girl, and you know better. For once in my life, I lay no blame on Kirill.” She flushed, angry and embarrassed. “Don’t make it worse. I know him very well. Remember that.” With a terse nod, he left her. It took her a moment to realize that his final comments referred to Bakhtiian not to Kirill.


  “Damn them all,” she muttered. Then, because any excess of ill humor in herself disgusted and bored her, she decided to walk it off. She led Myshla the long way around the spring. A curtain of half-bare trees screened the far end, though incompletely. Damp leaves squelched under her boots, and a heavy odor rose from each measured step. Rounding a clump of evergreen shrubs, she almost ran into Hon Garii, who was crouching at the lip of the pond.

  He started up. “Go back!” he whispered urgently.

  She was too surprised to ignore the order. She jerked Myshla around and returned the way she had come. A moment later, she heard voices speaking in Chapalii, inaudible if she had not been listening for it.

  “Have you obtained the water sample?”

  “Assuredly, Cha Ishii, it has been done as you commanded.”

  Then she was too far away to hear more. Go back. Meant for that moment, or meant to reiterate the warning Cha Ishii had given her at Veselov’s tribe? But there was nothing for it but to go on now, and she had never been one to be minded to turn back. Full speed ahead and damn the consequences. With a sigh, she returned to the jahar.

  That evening Bakhtiian addressed a trivial comment to her. She was so shocked that she answered him.

  As if encouraged by her reply, he paused beside her. “What do you expect the shrine to look like?”

  “I have no idea, but I’ll admit to curiosity.”

  He smiled, as if at a private joke. “I trust it will make an impression on you that you will never forget,” he said with something resembling amiability.

  Instantly suspicious, she was thwarted from further questioning because he excused himself and left. In the morning, she had scarcely gotten her tent rolled up when he limped over toward her, Niko dogging his tracks.

  “You’ll want to leave that with Yuri.” He nodded to the tent. “We’ll be riding forward scout today.”

  “Ilya,” Niko said, “are you well enough to ride scout?”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  This had nothing to do with his knee. “I’ll go saddle Myshla,” Tess said, retreating from the fray. But whatever Niko said, it evidently came to nothing, and she and Bakhtiian rode out together. Without remounts.

  It was a quiet ride. How he contrived to keep his seat on Kriye with such ease she could not imagine. Around midday, the ground began to slope and fold. By early afternoon they rode into uneven hills. Their pace did not slacken, except when it was necessary to rest the horses. They were not scouting, or at least not as she had grown used to it. When they passed a gathering of plump grazers, he neither noted them nor even suggested she try to kill one for supper. Their path veered up, away along a bare ridge, down through a hollow of high grass, and up a shallow stream until it disappeared into a chasm at the base of a hill.

  Bakhtiian pulled up his horse. “Ah. The shrine.”

  Tess stared. Nothing but grass and the stream’s underground escape. Bakhtiian rode on up the slope. She kicked Myshla to follow and came up beside him where he halted at the crest of the hill. They looked out over a long, deep valley that stretched westward, the shrine of Morava at its far end.

  She had not expected a palace.

  Long ago some wealthy noble from a far-flung empire must have taken these lands and built a home for herself befitting her exalted rank. When the empire shrank in the course of time, as empires do, the palace had been left as the last remnant of a great civilization in the wilds of the north. It could not have been that long ago.

  It shone. From this distance, she could only guess that it was built of marble. A high dome graced the center. Two towers, filigreed with windows and carvings, stood on either side of the dome. Beyond them, squat towers marked the wings. Far to the left stretched a low wall. In the very middle lay a wide expanse of white stone stairs and a broad landing bounded on the side by thin, black pillars. From this distance it looked as if time and wind and rain had left it untouched. And when the jaran, freed by horses from the limits of the eastern plains, had found it, they had thought it a marvel and made it a shrine.

  Already, he had ridden halfway down the slope. She hastened to follow him. At the base of the hill he waited for her, and they rode together into a line of trees that edged the valley floor. All of it planted, she guessed, as they rode out of the trees and into an overgrown but still patterned wilderness of shrubs and hedges and a few flowering bushes, and then back into a copse of trees, and out again. They followed a path, half concealed by grass and leaves, that led them alternately from the twilight of woods through sundrenched glades and back again.

  When they broke out of the woods for the last time, they reined in their horses at the base of a long, broad avenue that led in a direct line to the palace. The great building rose suddenly near. The setting sun streamed light across the pale stone surface of the avenue. It sank toward the low hills directly between the two high towers. Tess stared.

  “There are few things in this land as beautiful as the shrine of Morava at sunset,” said Ilya.

  His voice startled her, and she looked at him. But he was gazing at her, not at the shrine, an odd, incandescent light in his eyes. He was complimenting her not the palace, but in that awkward, restrained, ponderous way that the very shyest or most conservative jaran men used when dealing with women. Rather than answer or acknowledge his gaze, she urged Myshla forward onto the avenue. He followed her.

  Hooves rang muffled on the seamless white stone. Statues bounded the avenue, alien things, twisting, chaotic, but enticing to the eye nevertheless. Stone unlike any stone she knew: black as the void, some of them; others speckled like granite, encased in a glasslike shell; most were translucent. Their angles caught the sun, splintering delicate patterns of light out across the avenue.

  An arch of tangled vines spanned the avenue, trailing striated leaves halfway down to the ground. She put up her hand to push through. Breaking past, she saw that the pavement of the avenue was now broken by chevrons chiseled into the stone.

  “‘Like the very gods in my sight is he who sits where he can look in your eyes,’” said Ilya, “‘who listens close to you, to hear the soft voice, its sweetness murmur in love and laughter, all for him.’” Her cheeks burned with heat. His recitation did not falter. “‘But it breaks my spirit; underneath my breast all the heart is shaken. Let me only glance where you are, the voice dies, I can say nothing.’”

  How could she help it? She turned her head to look at him. Only he was staring ahead at the bright disk of the sun, at the gleaming stone of the palace, so drawn in to himself that she could read nothing from his expression, nothing from his voice, except the evidence of his words.

  “‘But my lips are stricken to silence, underneath my skin the tenuous flame suffuses; nothing shows in front of my eyes, my ears are muted in thunder. And the sweat breaks running upon me, fever shakes my body, paler I turn than grass.’” Here he faltered. Kriye paced on, eerily placid on the muffling stone. Still Ilya did not look at her, but his face bore the perplexity of a man struck by revelation. “‘I can feel that I have been changed, I feel that—’” He broke off and dropped his gaze to stare at his hands.

  They passed under a second arch, a broad curve of translucent blue stone carved with intricately figured animals. Here the chevrons melded with circles no larger than the circumference of Myshla’s hooves.

  “Can you sing?” he asked in a muted voice, as if the request might somehow break the spell with which the air of this valley had gripped them, a place untouched by time, weighted with the silence of eternity.

  All she could think of was “Greensleeves.” Afraid not to, she sang it, but she refused to look at him as she did so, all that long, slow ride until finally a third arch bridged the avenue, shimmering and silver-toned. She faltered and broke off the song. As soon as they passed under the silver arch, the palace looming huge and intricate before them, Ilya began to sing.

  Her breath caught in her throat. How could he have known? When could he have learned it? He san
g the song Fedya had made for her, about the dyan and the daughter of the sun. With whatever uncanny genius Fedya had possessed, he had made that song for Ilya to sing to her, never for any other purpose. How could it be otherwise? Not wanting to look at him, she had to look at him.

  He was completely involved in the song, his expression totally unguarded in a way Tess had never seen before, all the veils that concealed his soul blown up as if a wind had caught them, revealing his true face for an illicit moment: his beautiful eyes, scarred by sorrow, the strong, stubborn line of his mouth and chin, above everything the intensity of the passion that drove him, pervading his entire being.

  I love him.

  His eyes met hers. The song broke off mid-line as he stared, as they stared, and then, with an effort recalling himself, he haltingly picked up the thread of the song once more.

  This was the pyre of immolation. She knew it now for what it was, consuming her. If she had ever thought she was lost before, well then, better she had stayed that way.

  He finished the song and reined Kriye in. She halted Myshla beside him, aware of an arch like ruby vaulting the avenue before them. The last rays of the sun illuminated his face.

  Words rose unbidden, a scrap of a line from an ancient saga. She opened her mouth, had to touch her tongue to her lips to remind herself how to speak. Even so, her voice came out soft and a little hoarse from emotion. “‘They say that your eyes contain fire, that your face fills with light.’”

  Expression flooded his face. She had seen that look before, after battle.

  “Now,” he said triumphantly, “now you are mine.”

  “Advance, travelers. I await you.”

  Tess stared at Ilya, frozen in shock, but already that betraying expression had vanished and he wrenched his attention away from her and stared past the ruby arch, up the height of the stairs to the landing and the great doors beyond.

  Following his gaze, she got an impression of a solitary figure ridiculously small, robed in white, before her glance caught on the last four signs carved into the stone archway. She felt as though she could not breathe. Right to left she traced the carvings, and they read: