Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  Just curiosity. Mergen would find him a first wife to bind the clans, and he would learn to love her as his father had loved the Lady Temulun, his mother. Perhaps some day, when he had the age and experience of a khan, he might take a second wife of his own choosing. But even then she must be of a proper family. He couldn’t debase his father’s blood by reaching too far beneath him, and he wouldn’t dishonor the girl by sneaking into her tent at night and pretending not to know her in the day.

  “I won’t bring any shame to your name,” he promised his father. No matter what happened, he’d never dishonor the khanate. He thought he knew that much about himself. But he longed for his father’s arm around his shoulder and his gentle chiding as he explained how it must be for a young prince of royal blood.

  He tried to let thoughts of the girl slide off his shoulders like rain off an oily woolen cloak, but it didn’t work. In his imagination Qutula writhed in a tangle of limbs with his mystery lady. His blood leaped as he imagined himself in the scene. Setting his cousin aside, he took his place under the seductive heaps of blankets, finding there his own lady of mystery, the girl with the wide dark eyes who had entranced him with no more than a glance.

  He couldn’t face his guardsmen like this, so he headed away from the camp, to the place where the grasslands fell away to meet the river at the bottom of the dell.

  The Lady Bortu, who had slit a throat or two in her day and knew the ways of a spy, had grown old on the path of politics. She had seen the love her sons bore each other ease the conflicts both necessary and inadvertent that often came between two headstrong men. Then she’d seen one die and the second take his place in honorable stewardship.

  Chimbai had made mistakes. His mother thanked the gods and all the spirits that his own errors hadn’t killed him. That had taken treachery from outside the Qubal ulus. But they still had the aftermath of bad decisions to deal with. Mergen would recognize his sons, or not, as his conscience led him. A girl, however, was the responsibility of her grandmother. And one who set herself upon the shaman’s path required more than the usual tasks of matchmaking.

  Which presupposed she was the offspring of the khan and that she had the skills to take her to the underworld and back again in the rites of initiation. Many years ago Bortu herself had traveled far on that path. She had danced with the broom and in the shape of her totem had journeyed in dreams. When faced with the tree at the center of the world, however, she had turned back, choosing khan-maker over healer as her fate. She had not sought her totem form again.

  How many times had she regretted that decision? When her husband died? Her daughter-in-law? Her son? The children dead in her womb before she ever bore them?

  Wind in the grass, the past. Impossible to catch it or change its flight. But she would have some say in the fate of this girl. First, however, to test the truth. Did she have the shaman’s gift? Was she Mergen’s daughter?

  Lady Bortu had to know, to have her persuasions ready before Mergen turned his eye on her. So she had outfitted both herself and her horse as drably as she might, and left at home the better part of the decorations that usually hung from the silver horns of her headdress—the fine wires laden with a curtain of beads that dangled from her lobes at court—to pass unnoticed as any old grandmother through the camp.

  She asked no questions of the ranks that surrounded the ger-tent palace, who would look to Bolghai for their healing and scorn the gifts of a minor seeress of no rank at all. As she expected, however, many of the lesser folk who made their camps out of sight of the silver palace knew the tent of this shamaness, Toragana. With a weary sigh and a suggestion of the true pain in her joints she had no trouble drawing out the direction.

  Leaving her mount behind the little tent, she made her way to the door at the front. Above the door the gleaming eyes of a raven greeted her, sharp and wise even in death. She knocked once, to announce herself, and entered. The tent surprised her. For one thing, it smelled of herbs and fresh things. The shamaness preserved her totem animals more carefully than Bolghai did, it seemed, using sweet herbs and scented smoke as well as other things. For another she maintained a level of tidiness that Bolghai had never imagined. The tent reminded her of her own girlhood studies and a shaman dead in battle before her grandchildren were born. There was no sign of Eluneke, however.

  “You’re the shamaness Toragana, then?” Lady Bortu inquired as a new patient might, cranky with her age. It disturbed her that the part came so easily to her.

  “Yes, that’s me. Come in.” The shamaness looked up from the scrubbed workbench where she was crushing fragrant spices with a mortar and pestle. “Here, sit down.” The woman gestured to a low stool by the door for the khaness to sit and reached into a small chest, painted with elaborate designs and polished until it gleamed. The corners of her gray eyes lifted in her open, friendly face, ready to sympathize with her patient. She didn’t smile, which would have been improper when addressing one who needed her services, but the lines around her mouth gave her away.

  The Lady Bortu declined the stool. Stealing a glance around the little tent, however, she noted that Toragana kept her rugs tidy, her brooms neatly tucked away on strings of sinew hung from pegs on the lattices. The furs of the beds were neatly stacked on the far side of the firebox, well away from the stool that marked the space by the door where the shamaness saw her clients.

  “May I give you something for that toe? I have an ointment that often helps in such cases.” The woman held out a small stone pot. “Apply it with a clean soft cloth on rising and before you go to sleep. The pain will come back if you stop using the ointment, but I’ve had no complaints of those who are faithful in its use.”

  Bortu turned up her nose, though it took an effort of will. “I didn’t come about feet.” The second joint of her right big toe certainly ached, but she thought she kept the pain reasonably hidden from the interest of strangers. Certainly she wanted to show no weakness in front of one who might prove to be a potential enemy.

  “I understand.” The woman’s expression subtly sharpened and she put off her apron with birdlike movements. Hanging the discarded garment on a peg beside a mirror on the wall, she moved to her robes, soft deerskin covered with the feathers of ravens.

  “My apprentice isn’t here at the moment. I can’t leave until she returns, but we can have a cup of tea while we wait. Or you can give me directions to the patient and I will follow when I can. If it’s someone I’ve treated before, a name should suffice. We don’t often see strangers here.” The shamaness combined both interest and concern in her request for directions, something Bolghai had never succeeded in suggesting even under the most dire circumstances.

  The Lady Bortu stopped her with a raised hand, however, as if she would physically restrain the shamaness with the gesture. For the first time since she had entered the tent, this Toragana looked uncomfortable, which was just the way Bortu wanted her. Now that she had the upper hand, she allowed herself to sit on the little stool. “I didn’t come about a patient. I am here about my granddaughter.”

  But not a patient. The woman drew almost the right conclusion quickly enough. “As I said, I have an apprentice right now. If your granddaughter truly shows promise, you would first want to talk to the shaman who tends to your clans about taking her on.”

  “It seems that he has spoken to her already,” Bortu answered dryly. “But you misunderstand me. Do you have no idea who I am?”

  “I’m sorry, my lady, but I don’t believe we have ever met.”

  “No,” Bortu agreed, “but you have met my granddaughter.”

  “Eluneke?” The shaman was clearly bewildered. “Eluneke’s grandmother is dead.”

  “One of them, perhaps.”

  That got the bones rolling in the woman’s head. Click, click, click, it came together. A father, not unknown, but one who had chosen to stay out of Eluneke’s life. Who, for some reason, had sent his mother to check on the daughter after all these years. But if the old woman wa
s indeed Eluneke’s grandmother, and her own shaman was involved in her training—Bortu saw in Toragana’s eyes the moment when she realized they were talking about Bolghai, who was giving the girl a lesson this very minute. Bolghai, who served the royal court.

  “Oh, my!” Eyes satisfyingly wide, hands covering her gaping mouth, the shamaness Toragana sank to the carpets as the answer to the riddle came together. “My lady khaness!”

  The Lady Bortu held out her hand to be kissed, which the shamaness did, bowing her head low over Bortu’s aged knuckles.

  “But,” the woman continued, confusion wrinkling her brow, “Bolghai must have known.”

  “Indeed,” Bortu agreed. “He will have much to answer for on that score. But I am an old woman, and prone to seeing spirits in the wind. Perhaps my presence here means nothing and the girl can go back to all this—” She waved a dismissive hand taking in the little tent. “As if I had never been.”

  “If that were so, you would not have come,” the shamaness countered.

  Bortu didn’t like the way this Toragana was gathering her cunning around her. She was right, though she couldn’t know why. The khan would need young bodies to seal the compacts he made with the clans, with the Tinglut and even the Uulgar. Yesugei would need to be placated for his failure with Mergen’s mistress, and the general had sons.

  “Your spies have already been here—”

  Spies?

  “The court historian, Bekter the poet. I knew he could have no use for the tales of one like me. But if he said nothing of this, why are you telling me now?”

  “Ah, Bekter. I doubt he knows, nor would he be competent to judge, though at tales no one can best him. He never lies about stories. If he said he was interested, he was, though you’re likely right he didn’t come to hear them in the first place.

  “But this is a matter for grandmothers. I can pay you for your teaching to this point, and cover any losses you may incur from her absence. There are always girls, or boys, with the gift to replace her—”

  Bortu had said too much. She saw the flicker of calculation in the woman’s eyes. Not avarice, the shamaness had scented something more valuable to her kind than money or jewels. A final piece of the riddle had fallen into place, or so the woman guessed. Which was, Bortu thought, more dangerous yet.

  “Your granddaughter, if so she should be, has extraordinary gifts.”

  “Bolghai has said so,” Bortu agreed. The woman carefully had not mentioned that the khaness’ granddaughter was also the daughter of the khan, and a princess, if her father chose to make her so.

  “She has foreseen a grave danger.”

  Bortu rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?” Nothing, it seemed, was ever easy.

  The woman took a breath to answer, but Bortu stopped her with a freezing glance. “First I will see her. When do you expect her back?”

  “That’s hard to say, my lady khaness.”

  Bortu understood her well enough. Spirit quests seldom followed a schedule. “Then I suppose we go to her.”

  “I was preparing to do just that, my lady.” With a deep bow, the shamaness returned to her workbench. She gathered crushed herbs into a loosely woven little sack which she threaded onto a string. Putting on her robes and her headdress, Toragana faced the khaness with eyes grown dark as the raven that watched with the wisdom of the dead from atop the shamaness’ head. “I had planned to fly, but if your horse doesn’t mind, I will travel with you to show you the way.”

  “I think he can manage,” Bortu agreed, her answer laced with irony. She hoisted herself from the stool with her head held very high as befitted the mother of khans, though she wished she’d taken the ointment for her toe. Too late for that now. She led the way from the tent.

  Toragana didn’t follow immediately. Lady Bortu mounted and brought her horse around the front, considering a suitable punishment for a shamaness who made the mother of khans wait like a beggar at her front door. None, she concluded ruefully. With the gifts came a certain disregard for the world of living men—or women. Bolghai did it all the time. Even khans knew better than to challenge the spirits for dominion over their own. She considered leaving without the woman, could have found Bolghai’s tent on her own with little trouble. That didn’t guarantee she’d find Eluneke.

  While she was brooding on such thoughts, a raven flew out the smoke hole in the roof of the tent and circled the khaness’ head. Bortu shook her off when the creature settled on her shoulder. There were limits even for the spirit world. The creature rustled her wings as if miffed, but she never flew out of sight. Bortu followed with little more than a press of her knees against the flanks of her horse to keep the gelding on the course set by the raven. As she had guessed, they traveled away from Bolghai’s little camp, heading for the river.

  Chapter Sixteen

  SLIDING OFF HIS HORSE, Prince Tayyichiut followed the downward path to the river on foot, drawn back to the place where his life had changed so completely. His dogs followed close on his heels, as if they feared for his safety in this place even now. He’d fought in his first real battle in this little dell and, among the dead, lost Yurki, who would in time have been his anda—the sworn friend of the heart. Here had begun his adventure with the god-king. The Lady Chaiujin had nearly killed the king-in-exile of the Cloud Country here and Llesho had nearly let her do it, or so he’d heard. And from here Tayy had taken off on an adventure that had plunged him into slavery and almost killed him.

  Nothing about this place should have called to him, but it did. Nothing should have impelled him to follow that call, but he followed anyway, into the tangle of spindly hazel and scrub oak and undergrowth that lined the riverbank at its lowest point. And there, by the Onga, he found the girl who plagued his dreams. She was dressed much the same as the last time he’d seen her—the simple, dull-colored clothes of a less-than-prosperous clan and the headdress of a maiden, with none of the exaggerated curve of silver horns and cascading beads and jewels that the married women wore. In her hand she grasped a long pole with a net woven of grass at one end that she poked haphazardly at a thin, high branch.

  “Hello,” he said, and cursed himself for sounding like an idiot. “Do you need some help with that? What are you trying to do, by the way—”

  “I’m trying to catch that toad—” She didn’t look at him but kept her eyes sharply on something hiding among the leaves that shook violently when she jabbed at the branch. The dogs chose that moment to greet her with their cheerful baying.

  “Oh!” she slapped down on something with the net, but her prey eluded her. “Damn! He got away.” With a glare at the dogs who had joined her at the tree, she added, “If these mongrel curs are yours, you owe me one large toad.”

  Tayy didn’t know quite what to make of her. In front of the shaman’s tent he had felt both a connection to her and a sense of remote study, as if she read his soul and knew something he didn’t about his own spirit-life. He’d expected neither her sharp tongue nor her interest in tree toads. Lady Chaiujin had kept a tree toad in a cage in her tent. He thought perhaps she had used the exudations of its skin for her evil potions.

  “Aren’t toads dangerous?” he asked, giving her the benefit of the doubt for reasons that didn’t bear too close examination. “I thought they poisoned their victims with their skins.”

  “If you were a fly, you’d be in a sad way,” the girl agreed absently. “Since you are a human being, you’d feel slightly numb where you touched one, but even that wears off quickly. It would be unwise to eat one, of course. That might prove nasty in the extreme.”

  Only when she had given up on the tree toad did she turn around to look at him. When she did, her mouth fell open in a round “Oh!” of surprise. “You!” she said. The dogs joined the conversation, butting her in the hip. Her net flew out of her hand as she lost her footing on the slope

  There wasn’t time to think. The prince reached for her hand to keep her from falling into the river and she reached back. When
their fingers met, he felt a bolt of lightning run up his arm and explode in his heart. He knew the many-branched pattern lightning made when it struck flesh and expected to find the sign of the tree burned into his breast when he looked inside his shirt. The shock so overwhelmed him that he almost pulled his hand away. That would have sent her pitching headlong into the Onga.

  I’d rather plunge into the current with the capstone of my father’s shrine in my arms than let her fall, he thought. His hand spasmed closed around her smaller one and he tugged. The girl tipped forward into his arms to the exuberant approval of the dogs.

  “Excuse me.” Her voice was firm, but he felt her tremble as she carefully put him at arm’s length. “Thank you for saving me from the river, though I wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t startled me like that!”

  Trying desperately to cover his confusion he stammered out an answer. “We’ve met before, sort of, though we were never introduced.”

  “I know.” She primly brushed her palms off on her apron.

  “I’m not that dirty,” he objected to the gesture. And then he wiped his own hands on the skirts of his coat, which made him feel even more foolish.

  The maiden’s headdress she wore hid almost none of her thick, dark hair and he found himself staring at it. She, on the other hand, seemed to be waiting for him to burst into flames or turn into a demon or something equally as unlikely. “Who are you?”

  He had a feeling she wouldn’t take the truth—“I’m the heir to the khanate”—any better than the things she was imagining behind her frown. So he didn’t exactly lie when he said, “I’m a soldier; I fought with the khan to free the Cloud Country.”