Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  She made no offer, not that he would have accepted, but she left him rather at a loss for a moment.

  “My name is Bekter.”

  “The khan’s great poet! ‘The prince rode out, who all men call the Son of Light, Bright shining in his armor,’ ” she recited with a slight bow. “Your songs carry your reputation before you. I am Toragana, of little repute, but you must know that already.”

  He blushed to hear his songs returning to him from this unlikely place, sufficiently flustered that the shamaness didn’t look too closely when he made no comment about her own identity. Mergen-Gur-Khan had charged him to find the girl, and he’d asked around for what he remembered—a tent with the sign of the raven above the door. In a more peaceful age those of whom he asked directions would have nodded amiably and given him her name and a story or two to go with it. But these were less trusting times; strangers had brought death into the Qubal city even before the gur-khan’s army had marched to war. So he had found her tent, but only now her name. Knowing that would give her the high ground between them, he was still trying to figure out what precarious ground they stood upon, so he let his expression answer while he posed his own excuse for being there.

  “The gur-khan has charged me to make a history of the Qubal people. With your permission, I would listen to your stories and make them into songs for the court.” He hadn’t planned it but, being mostly true, it seemed as good a reason as any for spending time in the shamaness’ tent.

  She looked at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “I am familiar with Bolghai, who serves as shaman to the court,” she said. “He knows the story at least as well as I do. Better, I have no doubt. Why search out one as insignificant as I, when better is right at hand?”

  “If you’re familiar with Bolghai, you shouldn’t need to ask!” He answered her wry smile with an effort at the sexy grin Qutula seemed to manage so easily. “His face is far less fair, his form less interesting, and—”

  “His smell is certainly not appealing,” she said with a laugh. She didn’t take his foolishness seriously, but it had distracted her from his deception.

  “May I come again? Tomorrow, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”

  “The day after,” she suggested instead. “I have heard that we move camp again tomorrow.”

  He opened his mouth to offer his help in packing but closed it again. He had Sechule to consider, and when the court moved every hand took guard duty, even Bekter. “The day after, then,” he agreed with the slight bow proper when asking a favor from one of ambiguous status. Her position as shamaness gave her rank that her lowly clan took away again.

  “Ask for Toragana,” she told him. “Anyone in these parts will know where to find me.”

  She watched him as he bowed himself out, imagining his strong, sure fingers playing the lute for the khan’s court. Other uses for those fingers came to her, but she put those thoughts aside. She had no question that Bekter’s sudden appearance bore more on Eluneke’s visions than her own personal charms or storytelling ability. “ ‘Bright shining one’ indeed,” she mused. “I wonder if you realize all that you have done with your song?”

  But he was gone, and until she knew more about him, she wouldn’t have asked it anyway.

  Chapter Fifteen

  SOMETHING WAS GOING ON between General Yesugei and his uncle. He’d been thinking about the problem ever since Mergen sent the general to hold the grasslands of the Uulgar clans in his name. Tayy figured it wasn’t exactly an argument yet, but it was enough to put him on his guard. From the dais he took a quick look around him. Yesugei’s absence left a gap in the gur-khan’s defenses not easily filled. Politics had a part in it, for one thing. Mergen had named Yesugei khan in his place among the Uulgar and had taken the title of gur-khan—khan of khans—for himself.

  That the general wasn’t happier about his sweeping change in fortunes had a lot to do with Sechule, Mergen’s poorly-kept secret since before the prince or his cousins were born. If wealth and distance didn’t mend the breach, Tayy feared the gur-khan might be compelled to end it more permanently—and to his sorrow—with an execution. Before the war he would not have credited it, but Mergen had lately proved himself in delivering swift and deadly justice against his enemies. He hoped General Yesugei saw as much and tempered his love with caution.

  Beside him on the dais, Qutula handed Tayy a meat pie with one bite missing. He accepted absently, grown used to his cousin tasting his food. When he bit into the pie, the richness of sheep fat exploded pleasantly in his mouth. He took a moment to savor it as thoughts about his elders tumbled in his head.

  For Mergen’s sake, and because her sons Qutula and Bekter had been among his first childhood companions, he tried to like his uncle’s former—probably—mistress. She was pretty enough for somebody that old, but she had a way of watching him when she thought he didn’t see it that unnerved him. Sechule always seemed to be counting up the pebbles on the board and she was never happy about the sum. He figured to stay out of her way. Licking his fingers, he decided that if his elders didn’t have the sense to do the same they deserved their broken hearts. They were too old to be chasing women anyway.

  Sechule wasn’t the only bad match on his mind, however. The khan’s tent city, much reduced from the size it had grown to during the war, had set up on the plains. As always, the khan’s city followed the Onga, but here the river disappeared into a little dell. When last they had set up camp in this place, the emerald green bamboo snake-demon, masquerading as his father’s second wife, had murdered Chimbai-Khan in his bed. Tayy planned to visit the shrine where his father’s pyre had burned and make an offering of his own to the ancestral spirit. He thought he’d kept his intentions to himself, but his grandmother had been reading his heart since he was on leading reins. It didn’t surprise him that she anticipated him now.

  “Give this to my son among the spirits for me,” Bortu told him, and put a pie into his hands.

  “I will.” He wrapped the gift in a clean bit of red silk, his own offering, and tucked it in the pocket of his lightweight yellow court coat embroidered from the upturned silver toes of his boots to his throat with the symbols of earth and sky and water. “If I have your permission?” He bowed deeply to his uncle the gur-khan, who gave it with a nod, his own sorrowful memories clear in his eyes.

  “Give my brother a good account of me,” Mergen asked, to which Tayy gave a second bow.

  “Always,” he promised. Then he kissed his grandmother respectfully first on one cheek and then on the other.

  Qutula followed him from the dais. On the way past the firebox they picked up Bekter and Mangkut and others of his cadre on duty in the ger-tent palace. Together they headed for the door, where Altan waited with the dogs and the horses. Jumal had gone south as a captain in Yesugei-Khan’s army to claim the Uulgar clans in the name of the gur-khan. The tents of his clans had gone with him, counting the young captain’s rise in fortunes as their own.

  They were gone, and Altan was already having trouble with the dogs. Tayy gave his friend a companionable nod over the heads of the hounds who snugged their bodies up close on either side of him and snarled to remind Qutula of their dislike. The dogs made his mare nervous and she kept her distance, stamping her foot and shaking the bristles of her mane in her impatience to be going.

  “Enough, both of you!” With a vigorous rub to remind them of his affection, Tayy settled the dogs with a sharp command and whistled for the mare. When his guardsmen would have mounted their own horses to join him, he put a hand on Qutula’s shoulder, to keep him on his feet. His cousin flared his nostrils, perhaps seeing in the gesture too much of the same command that had put the dogs in their place. He didn’t mean it that way.

  “Not today,” he said, and gave Qutula’s shoulder a companionable squeeze to show that there was no rift between them. “This is something I have to do alone.”

  “Your uncle won’t approve,” Bekter objected, though Tayy knew this cousin would
rather compose songs with the court musicians than ride with the warriors. “We have the khan’s orders to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what? We are in our own lands, our enemies to the north have become our allies and our enemies to the south answer to the khan through his general.”

  “Accidents—” In Duwa’s mouth, it sounded like a suggestion more than a warning, but Tayy dismissed this excuse as well.

  “Which you can’t prevent if they are to happen.”

  “There may be poisonous snakes in the grass,” Qutula suggested, a painful reminder of how Chimbai-Khan had died. He seemed unaware that his hand rubbed at his breast in the very place where Tayy had seen the emerald-green tattoo come to snaky life.

  The gesture troubled the prince. His cousin had called the mark a reminder, but Tayy had felt the bruises of Qutula’s thumbs for days after they wrestled for the khan. Try as he might to believe in his guardsman, suspicion, like a worm, had crawled into his heart and slowly ate away at his trust.

  “I’ll make plenty of noise to warn away the natural vipers,” he said. “As for the unnatural kind, the one I am thinking of had too much love of luxury to remain long in the grass. The Lady Chaiujin is long gone, off to steal the life of some less suspicious victim, I am sure.”

  At the mention of the serpent-demon the dogs took up their baying, demonstrating with their voices a will to defend their master.

  “Of course.” Qutula stepped away from the snarling dogs. He let his hand fall, but it seemed to take some effort to keep it at his side.

  Tayy guided his mount toward the open grass. “If I don’t come back, you’ll know where to look—” The last time he’d ridden off on his own, he’d been kidnapped by pirates and set to the oar as a slave. The Marmer Sea was far from here, however, and the Qubal tent city well guarded by the khan’s army.

  “But nothing is going to happen. I expect to find you waiting here for me when I get back—we’ll want a full accounting of this woman of yours. What we don’t have ourselves, we must enjoy at secondhand!”

  He had thought to lighten the tension with his gentle teasing but a furtive glance passed over Qutula’s face, quickly gone again for a bland smile.

  “And how long would I find myself welcome in any lady’s bed if word of my visits should find their way into the camp?” A lifted eyebrow promised voluptuous secrets remaining unspoken.

  Qutula hadn’t mentioned her in days, and Tayy wondered if that promise was all bluff. Perhaps his cousin no longer sneaked under the tent cloths of his mystery lady. Having a few secrets of his own he felt uncomfortable pressing the point so publicly. But secrets made excellent trade goods in private. “I think you’re afraid that one of us will steal her away from you,” he countered. “When I return, perhaps we can find something more interesting to wager on than ’Tula’s love life.”

  Urging his horse to a trot, he laughed at his companion’s suggestions for their wagers. “Races!” Altan cried out. He had the fastest horse.

  “Music!” Bekter called after him to the noisy objections of his companions. Bekter would doubtless require original songs as part of the competition, which guaranteed him the win.

  “Hunting,” Qutula’s voice whispered in his ear, though Tayy had already ridden a distance and could scarcely hear the shouted suggestions of the others. A chill wind raised the hackles on his neck; he wondered what his cousin planned to hunt.

  But the sky was clear, the tents had fallen behind with his companions, and out ahead the dogs leaped in the grass that rolled in long waves rising to the south. Outcrops of flinty rock sparkled in the afternoon light, promising mountains that were just a smudge of smoky blue in the distance. Herds of horses ran ahead of him, scattering the sheep grazing on the wildflowers that raised their heads in bunches of blue and pink and yellow and white. Tayy could feel the joy of the day surging in the horse beneath him.

  “Go, girl.” He gave her her head and she ran.

  It wasn’t until they had tired each other out and he had turned back toward camp that he saw the circle of beaten ground. The fire had reduced Chimbai-Khan’s pyre to ash that had fallen in upon itself. Hooves of animals had driven the dust into the ground until nothing remained to show that a khan had gone to the ancestors but a smudge of gray, slowly losing its battle with the hardy grasses of the plains.

  The beginning of a low stone shrine had formed at its center, however. Tayy slowed his horse to a walk and gave her the signal with his knees to turn toward the circle. He brought her to a halt a little distance away and dismounted, leaving her to lunch on the sweet grass. He saw no vipers, nor did any lady snake-demons dressed in green come across the grass to lure him to his death. Others had been there before him, leaving their own small gifts of food and drink and ornaments. A small bunch of wildflowers lay beside a dish of kumiss.

  Stones, of course, to mark the place, rose in a small heap growing larger with each offering. Stuck into the crack between two sun-flecked rocks at the top, a ribbon with a prayer on it fluttered in the breeze. Tayy found a smooth, flat stone and placed it on the others, adding to the shrine.

  “Bortu sent this pie,” he squatted in the ashes of his father’s pyre and unwrapped the offering, set it next to the kumiss. They would make a good meal together. Then he laid the red silk on the stones at the top of the shrine.

  “The cloth is my gift, Father. The seamstresses in the underworld can make you a coat suited to your rank among the dead. Or perhaps you will want to give it as a gift to your first wife, my mother, to keep her spirit in good temper. She always loved the things you gave her.”

  He stayed like that a little while, in the posture of a supplicant. The red cloth caught on the sharp edge of a stone and he watched it ripple like a banner in the breeze until invisible fingers—a doubter might have said the wind—plucked it up and carried it aloft. When it disappeared into the sun, he bowed his head. “Father, I miss you. The world has changed since you left it.”

  As if in answer, his own black hound howled mournfully. The dogs had circled in, closing around him as they did when they sensed a disturbance. This time it didn’t mean earthly danger. The hair on Tayy’s neck stood up. Spirits, he thought, brushing his sleeve as they passed in the grass. When the red bitch batted his hand with the top of her head, he admitted to himself that he was glad for their company. He sat with his back against the stones, the dogs settling around him.

  When he’d spoken about change, he’d meant politics. The Tinglut once again desired to negotiate marriages between their peoples in friendship. The conquered clans of the Uulgar no longer posed a threat to the Qubal or their neighbors far to the south. He didn’t consider himself a hero but hoped he had grown into the man his father would be proud to see as khan.

  The black hound stared up at him with such warm understanding in his eyes that Tayy felt the weight on his heart ease. The words that came to him were of more private matters. “Jumal is gone,” he said. Rubbing the dog’s neck seemed to comfort him as much as it did the dog. “Someday, when I am khan, I’ll call him back. But what can an orphan offer him now to match the advancement he’ll earn bringing the Uulgar under Mergen’s sway?”

  The black dog raised his head and uttered a high-pitched whine of sympathy, as if he shared Tayy’s pain. “I wish you’d explain it to me,” the prince muttered with his arm buried in the dark and bristly ruff. “He thinks I’m in danger, but Mergen sent him away before we could talk—”

  The dog lifted his head so abruptly that Tayy’s arm slipped from his neck. The keenly suspicious squint in the doggy eye, so like the thoughtful glare of Tayy’s own father, made him wonder if the creature understood more than a beast’s mind rightly ought. He knew better, of course, but it helped to pretend even for a little while that his father could hear and respond through the hound. To play the game properly, he first corrected the misperception his words might have given.

  “Not Mergen. He is faithful as Great Sun, and has lost none of his subtl
ety of thought while gaining your own powers of direct action.” He didn’t mention the deaths of the Uulgar chieftains, but the dog seemed to follow his meaning well enough.

  “The danger remains unclear and Jumal, if he knew more, didn’t offer his intelligence to my uncle’s general before they set out for the south. So I am left with a warning, but with no clue what it means.”

  The dog howled his anxious agreement while the red nuzzled them both like a worried mother. But no spirits spoke to him out of their mouths and Great Sun had risen almost to the zenith. His uncle would worry if he stayed too long at his mourning.

  “I’ll figure it out,” he promised himself as he regained his feet. “In the meantime, I trust only the people who have proved their loyalty by their actions.” Mergen, surely, and Lady Bortu. Qutula and Bekter, for his uncle’s sake, though his cousin’s lapse during their wrestling match still troubled him. Altan as well, perhaps, but only Jumal and Yesugei had his complete confidence. He said none of this last aloud and the dog whined his objection.

  “It’s the best I can do for now.” Whatever the dog or the spirits wanted, if indeed they did inhabit the hound, they hadn’t made it clear enough for him to act on. They’d just have to settle for what he could manage on his own.

  The mare had strayed only a little way. As he gathered up her reins, the matter of Qutula’s woman came back to devil him. Or, not the woman herself, but women in general and his own hopes for a marriage to be arranged by his uncle.

  Except that every time he thought of marrying, his mind supplied the face and form of the girl standing in the doorway of a tent far from the centers of power in the palace of the khan. He’d only seen her once, though he’d ridden with an eye to finding her almost every day since. Her family might have gone their own way as so many others had, taking their herds and flocks in search of fresh pasture. But he hoped not.