Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  Mergen’s voice, full-throated to reach the crowd, brought him out of his reverie. “Salute your victors!” he cried, meaning the soldiers of his army who filled the grand avenue. Half would go with General Yesugei to subdue the Uulgar while the remainder would stay behind to serve the khan at home. And then he gave the word to break camp. “We move before Little Sun reaches the horizon!” he declared. Enough time to fold the tents and pack them on the carts, not longer. Great Sun would still be on the rise. Some would head out in their own directions, but the army and those who supplied it would follow the khan to the court’s next camp, farther up the river. And with Jumal gone, Prince Tayy would need his company all the more.

  With a smile that might have been joy that the camp was moving again, Qutula asked permission to help his mother fold her tent. When it was given, he bowed his thanks and turned his horse down the avenue where a conquered army had just passed. The crowd had not yet dispersed and would have seen him speaking familiarly with the gur-khan. He rode with his head high, therefore, and with a stern and courtly expression on his face, so that all who saw him would wonder at his heroic profile and remember him when he had passed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  BEKTER LEFT HIS HORSE to crop the wet grass by the shamaness’ tent. The rains of late summer had begun soon after they’d made camp, and he cursed his luck at having to be out in the wet. He had songs to write and music to work out on nice dry instruments in the comfort of the ger-tent palace. Instead, he was out on the ragged edges of the tent city, following the gur-khan’s secret instructions.

  “Find out what you can about this girl,” his father had charged him, “but don’t tell anyone—especially Prince Tayyichiut.”

  He hadn’t understood at first. Then it was clear that Mergen had seen Tayy looking at the girl on their way home from the hunt for Nogai’s Bear, as it had become known. He’d protested the gur-khan’s concern.

  “It was nothing, a chance encounter with a stranger. Neither of them spoke a word. I’m sure the prince hasn’t seen her since the hunt.” Tayy knew better than to look at a lowborn girl for a wife, and he knew better than to take on a shamaness as a mistress. Lady Chaiujin had taught them all a bitter lesson about the power of potions in a royal bed. But something in the way Mergen-Gur-Khan had looked at him cautioned Bekter against saying any of that to his father.

  So here he was, out in the rain and the mud, tracking down an apprentice shaman in a clan that didn’t have two sheep to warm a pen together while his brother got the easy task, keeping an eye on the prince. Qutula already sat at Prince Tayyichiut’s right hand, tasted his food, and rode with him in the hunt, all of which gave him every opportunity to serve the khan in his request. How was Bekter to explain his presence in the tent of a lowly shamaness who served a nameless clan?

  Above the lintel the shamaness’ totem—a stuffed raven—watched him with a penetrating glassy gaze. “What are you looking at?” he mumbled at the bird. Shaking the water off of his oiled coat he reached out to open the door and halted, frozen where he stood. He could hear the shuffle of bodies on the other side, more than seemed reasonable for a tent of just two lattices. A religious ceremony? When the visitors settled, a woman began to tell a story familiar to Bekter. He would have thought to no one else, however. Had Mergen been right about the political danger all along?

  “Thisisthe story of two kings, and two wars, and a princess of the Qubal people whose name was Alaghai the Beautiful.”

  Toragana sat on the stool normally reserved for patients, the hem of her feathered robes puddling around her feet. On her head the raven headdress gazed down on the children who huddled together on the floor in rapt attention as she began the seldom-told tale of the Unfaithful Brothers. Until the coming of the god-king, few among the Qubal even remembered that such a tale existed, or that a foreign king had ever held the reins in the grasslands. Now people wanted to know why their khan had taken the Qubal to war for the Cloud Country in the god-king’s name. And so the story had come full circle. The shameful tale of betrayal by the Unfaithful Brothers had become the tale of Two Kings and honor restored.

  “In that long-ago time, the Qubal-Khan had two warrior sons renowned for their cunning in battle and a daughter, Alaghai, known for her wisdom and beauty. Swift as the movement of caravans over the grass, reports of the princess had traveled, from the Shan Empire to the Cloud Country on the roof of the world.”

  The eyes of the children grew wide with awe. A thousand li of grasslands lay between those two great powers, and a thousand more. She might have said heaven for all they comprehended such distances. They understood the next part easily enough, though—

  “She had eyes warm and deep as a doe, the poets said, and a figure graceful as the summer wind in the grass. All the nobles and the princes from afar came to win the hand of Princess Alaghai the Beautiful, but she loved the Qubal people dearly and honored her father above all men.”

  The children applauded Alaghai’s loyalty. “Loved us best of all!” they crowed. “I love my papa best, too!”

  Toragana took up the story firmly, and her audience fell still again, listening as she set her hands to her heart and recited Alaghai’s challenge: “ ‘Find me a husband as brave, as true as our own khan. Let him set up his tents among the Qubal. Then perhaps I will choose differently,’ she told the old grandmothers who came to the ger-tent palace with suitable young men for the princess to wed. They went away again shaking their heads, for who could find a man of more regal bearing, of greater strength of arm or spirit than the great khan of the Qubal people?”

  A stirring at the door brought Toragana’s head up. The young man who stood there made her smile in spite of herself. He had opened his oiled coat to reveal rich clothes of embroidered silk he wore thoughtlessly, as if they meant nothing to him. And yet this was no handsome hero to sway a princess out of tales. He stood no more than middling height, but with a girth to make up for his lack in length. His face was soft and welcoming, though caution warred with a natural lively curiosity in his eyes.

  “How may I help you?” she asked him, while a suggestion or two passed wistfully through her mind. She might have shared at least the offer with him if not for the children gathered at her feet. Too young, she amended her own unspoken thoughts; her visitor had seen barely nineteen summers, she guessed. Not much older than her apprentice, and the wary expression he’d worn on entering had turned to confusion. He might have come for the answer to one riddle only to discover suddenly that his questions had become irrelevant. She didn’t see how the story of Alaghai the Beautiful could have troubled him so. It ended sadly, of course, but that all happened long ago.

  With a wave of his fingers he set aside his own errand, however. “I can wait. The story is more important.”

  Any well-mannered Qubal would withdraw with some polite phrase until the lessons were done. But the young man in clothes more suited to the ger-tent palace of a khan than the poor tent of a shamaness didn’t excuse himself. Instead, he curled one leg under him, propped his chin on his other knee, and prepared to listen. The children made room for him with their own solemn courtesy and together they turned their watchful eyes to her, willing her to continue.

  There seemed no way to budge him short of rudeness or some spell of magic, extreme measures and uncalled for given his benign regard. With a little shrug to settle her robes more comfortably about her, therefore, Toragana picked up the tale where she had left it.

  “Like our own times, the days of Alaghai the Beautiful were filled with war and suffering until a king came down from the Cloud Country with his tents and armies, bearing peace in his right hand and demanding tribute with his left. At the great feast of his goddess the clans must come forward with their offerings, from each a horse or sheep as they might spare. In the peace he brought, the sheep grew fat and the herds thundered over the grass like a great dark storm sweeping the land. No Qubal would lack, and some called the king from the Cloud Country Llesho the Great.
But some chafed at a foreign ruler and some took insult at foreign gods. And some burned with jealousy for the love of Alaghai the Beautiful.”

  Bekter smiled in spite of himself as the shamaness acted out the tale, puffing out her cheeks like a fat sheep and swaying her arm in elegant waves to mimic clouds of horses running on the plains. He hadn’t found the girl he’d been sent to investigate, or a conspiracy. Rather, ten small children—he counted them for his report—stared up at the shamaness with shining eyes as she told the story of the Qubal debt of honor.

  The old tale drew him in and, against his better judgment, so did the subtle power of the teller. When she smiled at the children, they followed her every move like flowers to sunshine. Bekter found himself doing the same. Bolghai didn’t have that effect on his audiences, so he figured it wasn’t the dangerous influence of a shaman’s knowledge. She wasn’t beautiful in the usual way either. He knew the pitfalls of a beautiful woman; Sechule had raised him, after all. She was too tall, for one thing, her features sharp and alert like her totem animal.

  And she was too old, nearly as old as his mother, he guessed. He’d looked at girls his own age before, even visited a tent or two, though he’d never exposed his own timid experiences to his brother’s ridicule. He didn’t feel that way about the shamaness, though. Modesty and his own taste had turned his eye from the matrons and widows and that hadn’t changed suddenly.

  But the shamaness loved the tale and the children. He felt a stern and demanding affection for all things in the living world and the dead rolling from her robes like a summer breeze, warming each heart she touched. When she smiled, he wanted to smile. And if she walked, he thought, his feet would carry him along behind her.

  “Was he handsome?” a little girl at her knee asked. It took Bekter a minute to realize that she was talking about King Llesho in the story.

  “Was he brave?” a boy’s voice demanded.

  Bekter remembered the story as Chimbai-Khan had told it, before he died and Mergen took his place to lead them against the mad magician for the Cloud Country. Was love worth the price he paid for it? The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. But the ending wasn’t always the point of the tale. . . .

  “Was he a good king?” the young man asked with a bittersweet smile, secret knowledge curled at the corner of his upturned lip. In his eyes, Toragana saw layers to his question, none of them simple enough to reassure children.

  “Brave, surely,” she answered the easiest question first. “King Llesho drove the Tinglut from the western grasslands and set the Uulgar lands under his own watch in the South. By strength of his arms and the might of his sons he brought peace to all the grasslands.

  “As for handsome, his hair was streaked with gray and his face lined with the cares of a king and a father. Alaghai the Beautiful could have chosen a prince of Shan, or a khan’s son. The king of the Cloud Country himself had many sons, all swift and strong and handsome and some in need of a first wife. In the king’s eyes, however, she saw understanding, like sunlight glinting off the mountains, and a yearning kindness that belied his prowess in battle. So I would say that Princess Alaghai thought him good, and that his goodness made him handsome in her eyes.”

  The children giggled. Behind them, the young man smiled. I know how that girl felt, she realized, though he was too young instead of too old, and not a king. One never knew what the winds of fate would blow up against one’s tent, of course. He wouldn’t be the first king to sweep into the city of the khan, but it didn’t seem likely in spite of the casual wealth he wore about him. Toragana trusted her shaman’s instincts, but they were confused today, except for the absolute clarity of the young man’s goodness.

  Foolishness. A woman her age had better things to do than contemplate the virtues of young men. She would finish her story, give him the charm or potion he’d come for, and be done with it.

  “Now it happened that King Llesho’s first wife had died. He had his second wife and his concubines to keep him company, but his heart wept for what he had lost, a true companion his equal in wisdom and charity.”

  “Alaghai the Beautiful,” the children whispered among themselves, for who would better suit this wise king out of the clouds.

  “Alaghai the Beautiful,” she agreed. “The great king came down from the Cloud Country to accept the tribute of the Qubal people. At her father’s side, he saw the princess so renowned for her beauty and instantly he fell in love. When he returned home, he sent many gifts to her father the khan, and asked for his daughter in marriage.

  “At first, Alaghai saw only the sorrow that wrapped the king like a cloak. Gradually, her pity turned to admiration, then to love as well.

  “The swan drank deeply from the rivers between them . . .” Love letters. An old riddle, even the children knew the answer to that one and giggled behind their hands at an old king behaving like a young lover.

  Toragana nodded, accepting their judgment of their elders. “Yes, it seems foolish now. But the king yearned for love, and Alaghai called to his heart.

  “Her father refused him, unwilling to give the greatest gift of the Qubal people to a far country. King Llesho would not be denied, however. Disguised to hide his kingly state, he traveled by caravan to the ger-tent palace itself, and it seemed that no one recognized him except for Alaghai.”

  As she spoke, Bekter fell more deeply under the spell of the tale until it seemed that he lived it. Taking the part of neither lover, he saw out of the eyes of the khan, first of his line on a dais so like the one he knew that it might have been the palace of Chimbai-Khan and not his ancestor. He knew the look of that old king as well; the bust he’d sent as a bride’s gift had stood on a chest in Chimbai’s court for all the generations his line had ruled. The god-king Llesho had worn the same face when he crossed the grasslands, asking Chimbai for soldiers to reclaim his throne.

  Half in a dream he saw the old king hidden among strangers come to pay their respects below the firebox. He saw Alaghai’s eyes turn toward him and hold like a doe caught in the gaze of a tiger. Not prey, though. Color darkened his imaginary daughter’s cheeks, then she cast her eyes down modestly. When she left her blankets late at night to meet her lover in some traveler’s tent, the khan wept, for he had heard his sons plotting murder if the foreign king should return. For the honor of their sister, they muttered among their guardsmen. For the honor of the Qubal people they would take back the grasslands from the Cloud Country and lay waste to their oppressors.

  “The khan feared there would be a child come of this late meeting,” the shamaness recited. “If he refused the king his daughter in marriage, Alaghai’s honor would lie in ruin. Her brothers would avenge the insult to their line with murder. They would kill their sister and her lover, bringing war again to a weary land, and the khan would lose the brightest jewel of the Qubal clans—Alaghai the Beautiful.

  “But if that long-ago khan acquiesced, gave in to the demands of the importunate lovers and let his daughter marry the king, what would his sons do then? What would the sons of Llesho the Great do, seeing a new wife put above their mothers? Seeing a new heir to supplant them at home? As bitter as any war of conquest, more so is a war between those who count themselves cast aside by a father’s love.”

  And so the king wept in the tale, and so Bekter wept to be that king, as if ensorcelled by the steady rhythm of the words.

  “The day was set when the two lovers would wed.” The shamaness drew the story to its early conclusion, before treachery and murder entered it. “King Llesho the Great went out to meet his sons as they came down from the mountains and rode with them in his own true form to greet the khan who waited, surrounded by his own sons and his daughter and the nobles of the Qubal people.”

  Bekter met her eye and it seemed the world turned in that meeting. This is the center of the storm. The certainty welled up in him as though his heart was too full; dread chilled the sweat that trickled down his back under his clothes. We thought the worst was over, but thi
s is just the calm before the arms of chaos embrace us again. The notion tied his guts in a queasy knot. Whatever was going to happen, the shamaness was part of it. And her apprentice, no doubt. If he were a different kind of man, he would have recommended that his father kill them both to protect the ulus. But he wasn’t, so he added a last coda to the story as a warning.

  “At the wedding, Alaghai danced with her husband and her husband’s sons,” he said. “Each son kissed her on the cheek and called her ‘mother.’ But her brothers gave no blessings and her father wept.”

  The children wouldn’t understand, hearing only the part of the story she had just told them. But the shamaness would know how history ended the tale. Warned that her plots had been found out, if such they were, he hoped that she might set aside the whirlwind.

  “We’re finished here,” she told the children, rising and flapping her feathered sleeves at them. “I have work to do. Potions to mix, patients to see. This young man has waited long enough to have his needs tended.”

  She waited until they had all run squealing with energy out into the rain. Then, settling the ruffled feathers of her robes, she turned her inquisitive, birdlike gaze on him.

  “So, then, good sir. What can I do for you that the shaman who serves your own clan cannot give you?”

  Poison, he thought to ask, an unfaithful lover to probe the areas of her complicity against the khan. But he saw no guilt in the birdlike eyes that watched him, only a wry amusement. Young men wishing to keep their affairs secret had crept into her tent more than once, he figured, and from her expression guessed that they went away again no more satisfied than when they had come. Or at least, in the matter that had brought them. He’d seen that look on women’s faces when they gazed at the prince or even Qutula, but he’d never seen it turned on himself before. Not even in the beds he’d found his way to in his own sooty nights.