“As you wish.” With another bow, Qutula turned and made his swift way from the royal presence. He would find his brother and drag him from whatever shelter from the storm he had found for himself, Mergen knew. Or he would report back that the gur-khan’s poet, like his court shaman, had disappeared. Either way he would have his answer.
Chahar seemed most suited to his next errand. Mergen’s own age-mate, he stood closest after General Jochi to the gur-khan in his guard. As Bolghai’s son he had seen many wonders, but he possessed for himself little interest in the spirit world. The shamaness wouldn’t frighten him with her magic, nor was he likely to fall under her spell. With a nod of his head he gestured for the captain to attend him.
“My gur-khan.” Chahar bowed as Qutula had done.
“This shamaness, Toragana, has crossed my wishes. I don’t care what her powers are. I want her brought to me.”
“Yes, my khan.” The slow lowering of Chahar’s lids offered only agreement. The power of a shaman must be harnessed by the will of khan or chieftain or it grew wild and dangerous. If the teacher didn’t bow to the orders of the gur-khan, Chahar would execute her before she became a threat. That would be obvious to anyone who had survived the royal court, and to the son of a shaman more than others. Mergen accepted the captain’s obedience.
“Bring her apprentice as well, but make sure the girl remains unharmed.” If the Tinglut prince refused Princess Orda in the old khan’s name, the whole court would know Eluneke for his daughter. For now, however, he would keep his secret and his hope for a more exalted match.
“As you wish.” Again, the proper answer, given with the proper bow, and Chahar, too, had gone. Mergen glanced up then to see his mother watching him with secret calculations in her eagle gaze. He said nothing but stood and let his servants strip off his clothes and replace them with the more elaborate silks he wore for court visitors.
First the servants dressed him in a full caftan of red-and-yellow brocade, which they followed with a dark-blue sleeveless coat woven in the patterns that symbolized all the worlds of heaven and earth and the underworld. At his knees, dragons flew above the waves below which the underworld lurked at the hem. White clouds drifted across a blue silk sky at his waist while the diagonal stripes of a rainbow, the kingdom of the sky god and his daughters, banded his breast. His cone-shaped silver hat and the ornate scrollwork on the fronts of the coat were richly embroidered with gold threads. Chimbai-Khan had worn the same court dress to greet visitors before him, and Mergen felt the presence of his brother at his shoulder as he took on the clothes of his office.
“What have you done to my son?”
He thought he heard the words whispered in his ear, but that would mean Chimbai’s spirit had become trapped here, between heaven and the underworld. Mergen didn’t want to consider what such an omen might presage for them all.
Tayy watched his grandmother watching Mergen Gur-Khan give his orders. His cousin’s attentions weighed on his shoulders of late, and he felt his breath come more easily when Qutula departed with a purposeful swift step on the gur-khan’s errand. The Lady Bortu seemed relieved as well, and he wondered what she knew, how many of his suspicions she might confirm. As if she felt his eyes on her, she turned her predatory gaze back on him, searching for something in his face. What she found seemed to worry her. Well, good. It worried him, too.
Surrounded by the bustling court, he could imagine that Eluneke was safe in the home of the sky god and would return soon with her toads and her secret knowledge. He hadn’t quite figured out what would happen next, though. She came from the wrong clan and wandered bootless in the mud collecting herbs and simples and consorting with the lowest of creatures as her totem. Mergen would laugh at his infatuation and auction him off to some far-off princess in exchange for a treaty.
And when had he come to view his own arranged marriage with such bitterness? Bolghai made more sense as a mate—at least he had rank, though the memory of his smell sent a shiver up the prince’s spine. Eluneke smelled warm and sweet, the scent of girl and sunlight and the moss they had rested on by the river, heated by the smooth rich skin at the curve of her neck.
He shook himself free of the direction his thoughts had gone, noted that his grandmother was still watching him, but with considerably greater interest now. Tayy knew he had to talk to someone about this feeling that somehow Eluneke was his destiny. Perhaps the khaness would understand. Maybe Bolghai had reported some whisper among the spirits that made sense of it all. But now wasn’t the time. He veiled his gaze and turned away.
Up close, Eluneke saw that the ger-tent palace of the god was made not of felt but of the stuff of clouds, embroidered everywhere with golden sunlight. She thought it must be uncomfortably hot and damp inside, but the warmth of the embroidery seemed to keep the rugs and furs of the dais dry while the clouds cooled the intemperate heat at the center of the Great Sun tent. The lattices were made of lightning and the decorations everywhere reflected the natural world as much as the heavenly one. Stars scattered between the spokes of the roof provided the light of heaven, but lakes and ponds rippled with earthly breezes in the mirrors hanging from the lattices.
Chests taller than her head were carved each out of a single tree. When she looked more closely at the scenes painted on their sides, she saw the figures moved, men and women and deer and herds of horses going about their days and nights across the sky god’s furnishings. She had never been inside the ger-tent palace of the khan, but she guessed not even Mergen-Gur-Khan could match such lavishness, or the splendor of the sky god’s retainers. Strange and terrible beasts wearing sky-blue coats and pointed caps that glowed with moonlight guarded the great ger-tent with their backs to the lattices. Nobles of the sky folk in marvelous clothes, with planets for jewels dangling from their ears, sat or moved about their business on the rich carpets. Some looked just like people, but others wore strange shapes of creatures Eluneke had never seen before. She met the eyes of a woman dressed all in silver and recognized the dragon nature looking back at her. Shivering, she dropped her gaze in a proper show of respect.
On the dais the sky god himself waited for them. The nine daughters had seemed very tall, but they looked like children next to the god, whose cone-shaped golden cap nearly brushed the roof of his palace. His coats were the hazy blue of a summer day at the shoulders, deepening to the clear, deep cerulean of a cloudless sky in autumn at their hems. Embroidered rainbows of red and gold crossed his breast, and red-and-silver stars glittered at the tops of his deep cuffs. In his hand the god held a thighbone as a staff with a horse’s head carved at one end and a flowing lock of golden mane at the other. Skins of silver wolves and golden foxes covered the dais.
The sky god gestured for her to sit and she did, holding her neck very still as the king of the toads climbed down off his perch. When they had settled on the gold-and-silver furs, the herbalist daughter handed her father a cup filled with pale yellow tea. Golden flowers floated in the cup. The sky god drank sparingly and handed the cup to Eluneke, who sipped in her turn. The tea tasted of honey and sunlight, burning away the icy cold of her climb as it soothed the tingling that remained of the lightning’s fire in her fingers.
“I would know the recipe and other herbal remedies for the ailments of humans and their creatures.” She passed the cup to the king of the toads, whose sticky tongue darted out to taste.
The sky god’s daughter whispered in her ear the secret names of the flowers and mosses and the barks of trees, and where they might be found. When she had told Eluneke all that she knew, she moved to take her place next to her father, making way for her sister. The daughter of the drum, whose clothes were embroidered in all the animals of the grasslands, followed next with food: the meat of some animal stuffed and roasted with coals and a bowl of sour yogurt for the sky god and Eluneke, a cage filled with buzzing flies for the king of the toads.
“I would know the secret languages of the animals,” Eluneke said, taking her cue from the
clothes and the drum and the dishes served by the hand of the sky god’s daughter. “I would know how to cast out animal spirits and their diseases.”
The god’s daughter leaned over and whispered all the languages of animals, and she was surprised to discover that she already knew many of them. The stoat and the raven, the language of the toads, and the language of the golden eagle, though whose totem that might be she didn’t know. When she had learned how to understand all the animals, the daughter of the spear murmured in her ear the secrets to casting out demons. She paled at this terrible knowledge, but did not faint, which the sky god’s daughters would have scorned. Then another sister took her place, and another, whispering their secrets one by one.
Eluneke listened and learned.
Chapter Twenty-four
AS HE RODE AWAY FROM the ger-tent palace, Qutula slipped his hand beneath his shirt to rub absently at the tattoo of the emerald green bamboo snake. He had grown accustomed to the way his lady seemed to know his every move and used the serpent to punish or reward him, as his actions annoyed or pleased her. He had even come to welcome the way the inky green snake would uncoil herself and slither across his flesh, moving down his arm to peer out of his sleeve on her own errands, or wrapping herself below his belly as a promise and a warning.
Something—not him, he thought, but something—had happened recently to anger the lady, however. The serpent which was her sign burned steadily, like a poison eating its way through skin and muscle to his very heart. It only made him yearn the more for the cool heat of her body, he realized, which settled a chill of fear and longing in his gut.
He had no time for pleasure now, however, and the pain was getting in the way of fulfilling his ambitions. Mergen had sent him to find his missing brother before the party of the Tinglut prince arrived at court. Qutula had little time or patience for the task. Though the thunder had subsided, rain spilled over his cap and ran down his cheeks and his nose. Home seemed the most likely place to start. If Bek had taken shelter from the storm elsewhere, Sechule would know where he had gone. She wasn’t a witch, but she had her secret ways to find her sons at need.
She was standing at the firebox, mixing some herbs that exhaled a noxious green vapor as they bubbled in a small stone pot. She didn’t immediately greet him, but he saw her glance into the mirror she had set against the lattices and frown. Self-consciously, his hand went to the tattoo writhing on his breast.
The chest where she kept her minor poisons stood open with an uncorked jar beside it, so he knew Bekter wasn’t home. Damn.
“Where is he?” Qutula growled at his mother while he futilely tossed the bedding stacked in the corner.
“Not here,” Sechule answered the obvious then deigned to give him some information he could use. “Since before the rain. It’s not the first time either.”
Surely Bekter hadn’t found himself a woman! But his mother tilted her head at him, one eyebrow raised in a silent question: “Have I raised an idiot for a son?”
So, a woman. “Who is she?”
He knew better than to poke his fingers—or his nose—into his mother’s cook pots when she was brewing her little potions, but he paced the ger-tent like a pent-up wolf, kicking at a painted chest in his frustration. “The khan wants him in the palace with his songs ready when the Tinglut prince arrives. I didn’t expect to have to hunt for him under some camp follower’s skirts!”
“Were it that easy,” his mother spat back at him, glaring as if it were his fault his brother made neither warrior nor hunter. “He went to see that shamaness, the one who teaches the prince’s folly.”
Qutula scarcely had time to register Sechule’s answer before his lady’s mark branded white heat across his skin. “Why?” He gasped into the empty air. The words came out in a raspy whisper.
“He had a visitor. It disturbed him, yet instead of talking to his mother about it, he went seeking advice from the raven woman.” Carefully wiping her hands with a soft cloth Sechule turned to face him.
Suddenly, the serpent tattoo came to life with a fire more intense than any Qutula had felt before. He forgot his brother, his mother, everything but the pain and fear. This time she would not stop. He curled in on himself around the agony burning in his breast. This time she would kill him.
“Leave him alone, fool!”
He was too breathless to ask what she was doing when his mother reached for his shirt and coat and tore them open to expose his tattooed breast. Then her sharp nails dug deep, following the burning tracks of his lady’s anger. Strips of flesh seemed to tear away from his body, screaming in a woman’s rage above the sounds of his own agony. Sechule held the serpent, an emerald green bamboo snake, fast by the back of its head. The creature lashed at her with its tail and tongue, squirming in an effort to sink its fangs into her hand.
“Not so fast, my lady. We have a bargain!”
A bargain? What bargain had Sechule made with his lover, and how did she know about the token his mysterious lady had printed like a scent on his flesh? However it had happened, his own rage equaled that of the serpent.
“Don’t!” he cried, bereft as the mark tore free of his breast. Though he welcomed the relief from the pain the creature had so recently inflicted on him, it felt as if his mother had torn out part of his soul.
But—“Don’t be a fool!” she said, and popped the serpent into a jar that stood open on her workbench. “Cover yourself up! Next time I will let her sink those sharp fangs into you and welcome. Must I do everything myself?”
“You knew her by her token!” he stumbled over the words, busy commanding his hands, which would reach for the jar that imprisoned the serpent if he relaxed his control.
“Of course I did,” she answered. Pounding the stopper into the jar with the heel of her hand she set it on a shelf in the chest that hid her poisons. “But that is neither here nor there. Your brother must be with us in the coming struggle to secure your father’s love, not with the shamaness against us. Find him and return him to the palace before he commits treason! It will be over for us all if he throws in his lot against the gur-khan’s interests.”
Qutula bowed his head in obedience to his mother, but his gaze turned longingly to the jar where the serpent lay. His mother saw and cut off the request with a bladelike fall of her hand.
“Not now,” she insisted. “You’ll need your mind clear and unfettered when you talk to your brother. And it would mean disaster to bring the lady’s token into the tent of the shamaness. The lady is more powerful, but to use that power would reveal too much before you are ready to act.”
“I’ve acted already,” he reminded her with a dull glare. The prince suffered nightly from the poison Qutula administered in his drink.
His mother made sense—until Mergen named him heir they could reveal no part of their aspirations—but her words seemed to come from too far away to matter. Only the mysterious lady mattered, and the gift of her name and her body she had promised him when he had taken the khanate. The serpent bound their conspiracy with the reality of her pleasure and her pain. He would allow no one to steal the mark of that bond from him—
Sechule stood between him and the painted chest, however, a fearsome look in her eyes. For a moment they stood that way, poised between mastery and rebellion. She was no witch, but she had powers of her own he didn’t want to cross. And of course, she was right.
“I’ll go,” he promised, and left his mother with a kiss on her cheek and a backward longing glance at the chest of poisons where his lady’s token slumbered. He would deal with his mother later, when he had the crown. . . .
Deep in the heart of the stoneware jar, the serpent demon roused from an intermittent slumber. Sechule’s voice summoned her from the other side of human.
“I’m ready to let you go, my lady, but first you must swear not to bite me or hurt me in any way.”
Once, the serpent remembered, she had walked upright among the Qubal as the Lady Chaiujin. In her snaky form the memory s
eemed to belong to some other creature. This wasn’t her true shape either, but the wiles of a serpent came closer to her demon nature. She thought of herself only as serpent now, and as serpent she slithered out of the jar with no thought more than to sink her sharp, curved fangs into the hand that had imprisoned her and kill it. Perfectly still, she rested her beady gaze on the woman, using her cold and lidless stare to freeze her prey. She could tell by the heat radiating in waves off the woman’s skin that she was afraid. Sechule’s heart thundered, as loud to the serpent as the herds running on the plains.
In spite of her fear, the woman kept a firm grip behind the serpent’s jaws, calling her back to two-legged memories. “I mean no disrespect, khaness, but feared that you would kill my unworthy child before he had served his purpose in our design.”
Ah, yes. Revenge. And motherhood.
Floating beneath the surface of her thoughts, the false Lady Chaiujin knew she needed this woman’s cooperation. So it wouldn’t serve her in the long run to sink her fangs into the meat of Sechule’s hand, where the thumb met the wrist. The serpent tongue flicked out restlessly, tasting food, though hunter-sense said the human was too big. The jaws of a bamboo snake would never stretch that wide.
“Do you hear me, lady? If we do not have an agreement, I can make a stew of your flesh and use your skin for a lovely pair of mittens.”
Sechule gave her a little shake, rattling her right down to her tail. The serpent was no lady but a daughter of the underworld. She had been gone so long that she sometimes forgot her own name in that other kingdom, but she never forgot where she belonged. So she bowed her head in submission while promising her snaky self, not for long. The mortal was too big to eat, but not too big to die.
Sechule seemed content that she had the agreement she demanded, however. “We still have the same goal. But Qutula is the weapon we must wield to attain it.” Biting nervously at her lip, the woman put her down on the floor of the tent.
Lords of Grass and Thunder Page 28
