Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  “What do we do now?” King Toad asked in his own language.

  “We walk,” Eluneke answered. Somewhere out there where the suns and moons shared the same sky, and rainbows arched between them, there had to be a way home.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  QUTALA WOKE AT HIS PRINCE’S side with plots seething in his mind. He had a sister, of all things, and it looked like Mergen was going to legitimize her above the sons who sat at his side in the ger-tent palace for all their lives. Prince Tayy wandered out to relieve himself. When he returned, Qutula was ready with clothes for the hunt. He slipped a linen shirt over the prince’s head and waited while the prince tucked in his arms and pulled on his leggings.

  It could have been worse, he decided. The gur-khan needed the girl as trade goods to keep the old Tinglut happy and out of the way. He’d seen her—nearly strangled her and was glad now that he’d stopped in time. She’d be out of the camp almost as soon as she showed up and he hadn’t incurred his father’s unexpected wrath over her.

  Tayy had done just that, though for different reasons. Falling in love with the girl had put him head-to-head with his uncle, and the two of them were locking horns like two rams in springtime. That could only work to Qutula’s favor. He held out the prince’s leather hunting jacket, tied the strings at his waist and offered a boot, toes upturned over the wooden sole as nearby, Chahar did the same for the gur-khan.

  The only person in more trouble than Tayy right now was the khan’s shaman. Toragana hadn’t known Eluneke’s true identity when she took the girl as an apprentice, but Bolghai had. Qutula wondered how the gur-khan planned to keep Eluneke’s shamanic training a secret long enough to marry her off to the Tinglut-Khan. He wondered what secrets a shamaness might have to extend the life of an aging mortal, and if the old khan might wonder the same things when confronted with such a wife. The more he thought around the angles, the less he saw a downside for his plans. Prince Tayy, on the other hand . . .

  “I love her. I didn’t plan it, wouldn’t have chosen it, but it happened.” Tayy pulled his boot on, brushing aside the quiver held in Qutula’s outstretched hand.

  “I’ll find you a wife, soon.” Mergen Gur-Khan raised his arms, let Chahar tie the strings on his jacket. “But this girl—my daughter and your cousin, mind you—is out of your reach, for politics in this tent and taboo in any other. She goes to the Tinglut, if they’ll take her.”

  Grabbing up his spear, Mergen had muttered, “If we find the damned girl,” under his breath.

  Tayy heard him anyway and the reminder tied another knot in his gut. Eluneke hadn’t returned. Bolghai didn’t seem to expect her back yet, but he couldn’t think of anything good coming of her prolonged absence. Maybe she had fallen back to earth somewhere out beyond the camp. She might be lying somewhere dying while he prepared for a day of sport. But where would she go if she were hurt and confused? Not Toragana’s tent; someone would have come to alert them if she’d shown up there.

  The dell near the river, where they’d bargained with the king of the toads for the aid of his people. Of course.

  “I have to go,” he said, worry tight in the flesh pulling his cheeks into a grimace. “She could be hurt.” He kept his dignity enough to walk, not run, past the nobles and chieftains gathered on either side of the firebox. He owed his uncle more than that, however, and gave a nod to acknowledge it over his shoulder. “I’ll be back in time for the hunt—”

  Mergen took a step as if to follow him from the dais, but the Lady Bortu laid a hand on his elbow. He glared at her, but he stopped. It was his uncle’s daughter, after all, and the khaness’ granddaughter. If something had happened to her, he figured they must want someone looking for her who might know where she’d go to ground. Just, it seemed, not the heir. Bolghai or Toragana might have been able to find her, but they didn’t seem inclined to look. So Mergen tilted his chin, pointing him out, and he went, his Nirun forming up behind him.

  The gur-khan held steady under his mother’s firm hand, but his heart flew after his nephew. He felt something for the girl. Not love—he hadn’t seen her since she was small, not until the afternoon when Tayy had stumbled on the shamaness’ tent. But tucking her away with a remote clan was one thing and losing her to a shamanic initiation was another. Too much rode on her delicate shoulders right here for her to go dream traveling with the gods. He needed her back, now, before the Tinglut prince discovered his father’s bride had disappeared.

  “I’ll take my Durluken and follow him.” Qutula turned to his father with a bow, long-suffering affection in the tilt of his lips when he added, “We’ll make certain he meets the hunt before our visitors take his absence as a slight.”

  Mergen nodded, unsurprised at his blanket-son’s devotion to his prince. “He should have his most trusted companions about him,” he agreed, and was pleased when the rest of the young guardsmen fell in step with his son as he took off after his cousin. His mother’s voice, soft as a whisper but more dire, shook him from his satisfaction, however.

  “Blood is coming,” she said, warning him of the greater game moving on the grasslands.

  He thought a messenger might have come, bringing news of an insulted Tinglut prince returning home empty-handed or worse, an outrider bringing doom from General Yesugei in the South. When he looked in the direction her gaze led him, however, he found that she followed the path of the Durluken, passing the firebox on their way to find the prince.

  “Blood?” he said, watching Mangkut set his shoulder to his captain’s and Duwa lay hand to the hilt of his knife.

  The Tinglut made their tents on the other side of Chimbai’s shrine. But for the warning his mother whispered in his ear, he would have said they warded against an imaginary threat within their own camp. The Lady Bortu might have been a shamaness herself, except that was too much power in a khaness. Sometimes she still spoke in shamanic riddles, however; he wondered if she delivered some arcane message from the spirit world.

  “How do I stop it?”

  “Make them whole,” she answered and he thought she was going to leave it at that, as undecipherable in her riddles as Bolghai himself. But she was first the khaness, Great Mother of the most powerful of the Qubal clans, and second the mother of khans. She put her duty to her people above the capricious demands of the unruly spirits, so she answered her own riddle for him, or at least gave him enough clues to answer it himself.

  “The boy needs the girl. The sons need a father’s hand.” He was starting to believe the first, with mounting exasperation. “You should have spoken yesterday. I have promised her to the Tinglut.”

  “Would words have mattered?”

  “Probably not.”

  Tinglut-Khan was the last remaining threat on the grasslands. Mergen had stronger ties with the Cloud Country than he had with his own neighbor and he had to fix that. The girl would appreciate the jewels and furs and other presents she would receive as a wife of a khan. She had the sense—and a shaman’s training to aid her—to practice patience and to make her own connections among the Tinglut for the day her aged husband went to his ancestors. If that meant exposing the heir to risks from which she might have saved him, well, they had shamans of their own and many ten thousands of warriors to protect him. Mergen would just have to persuade him not to run off without his guardsmen about him.

  “As for the other, you know my mind on that.” However much he privately wished to acknowledge his sons, her second warning hinted at threats he would not accept. “Soon enough, Bekter and Qutula will have what they most desire from their father. In the meantime, they love their prince even if they cannot call him cousin.”

  “It curdles in the bones left too long simmering at the back of the firebox,” she answered with another riddle.

  This one he understood well enough. Love unacknowledged, she meant, might turn to envy and sour like an old broth. “Soon,” he answered. Prince Tayyichiut was ready to be khan. Mergen would make the treaty with Tinglut, and then he would
step down, giving as his gifts to his brother’s child peace with all his neighbors, and cousins for his closest allies.

  “Soon enough?”

  There was nothing to say to that, and his nobles and chieftains awaited his call to horse. So he gave the order to mount with the exhortation, “A hungry people depend on your prowess today. Let the grass run red with the success of your hunt!”

  “Hurrah!” they called back in unison. With spear in hand and bow and arrows slung on his back Mergen strode from the dais. The hunt fell in behind him.

  When they approached the dell where Qutula had threatened the girl for her interference with the heir, Prince Tayy raised his hand to bring his guardsmen to a halt. The horses could only take the slope at a gallop, which would hardly suit the present need, so the prince dismounted and gave his reins into the hand that reached for them. Duwa, Qutula noticed. A furious Altan jostled him for the honor and lost the contest.

  “Wait here,” the prince commanded all the gathered guardsmen to silence. “The shamaness may have returned hurt or confused from her dream travel. I don’t want to startle her.”

  “If she’s hurt, she may need our help.” Pretending to worry, Qutula narrowed his eyes and peered into the gloom of the forested dell. He had nudged his own horse between that of Altan and his master, as his Durluken had intermingled with the Nirun, to watch their rivals and be among the first to protect the heir.

  “I’m hoping she just needs a familiar voice to bring her home,” Tayy rushed to assure him. “I’m more worried about the Tinglut wandering our camp. If there’s trouble below I’ll call for you, but I need you here more, in case we were followed.”

  “Leave the rest on watch on the plain above, then.” Qutula didn’t want the Nirun interfering but let his cousin believe he acquiesced to his royal wishes, save only for his own concern: “Someone should guard your back in case the Tinglut have come before us.” He handed his own reins to Altan, who hesitated but could not refuse in front of the prince. Mangkut, who watched with subtle understanding, tilted his chin to accept the unspoken order to follow. Duwa would stay to remind the Nirun of their prince’s command if they wavered.

  Satisfied that his own Durluken would hide themselves among the trees to await his own word, Qutula turned again to convincing the prince. “I cannot claim her openly, but we both now know that Eluneke is my sister,” he whispered so that none but the two of them could hear. “How do you think I will feel if something has happened to her and I stood useless and unsuspecting up above? How would you feel if you were in my place?”

  It was a dangerous question, inappropriate for someone of Qutula’s station, and he immediately withdrew it with a downcast head and apology. “I do not presume to know the mind of my prince.”

  But they were kin, even if that bond had never been acknowledged, and his question, artfully retracted, reminded the prince that he shared a close tie of blood with the shaman princess himself. How could Tayy fault him for his brotherly concern?

  “Come,” Tayy said as Qutula knew he would, giving in to his cousin’s urgent plea with a sigh. “But watch from the trees. I don’t think she knows who her father is. Certainly she knows nothing of the court or armies. I don’t want her to feel threatened.”

  “Of course, my prince.” Given permission to follow, Qutula usurped first place on their downward climb, “If some enemy lies in wait, let me be the first to feel the sting of his arrow,” he reasoned. “Of us two, whose absence would the clans feel most?”

  “My uncle would wish us both to come home,” Tayy objected, but both the Durluken and his own Nirun added their arguments in Qutula’s support, except for Altan, whose wary frown boded ill.

  He had asked only what the gur-khan would have demanded, however, and the prince had little choice but to agree. Leading the way, Qutula headed down into the dell. Both knew they must tread carefully down the steep slope, and so they fell silent, watchful but still given to their own thoughts. When the land leveled out again, the prince set a hand on his cousin’s shoulder to signal that he should wait, and went on alone. Qutula did as instructed for a moment, but then followed, silently as in the stalking hunt, until he found a tree behind which he might hide himself, close enough to the river to see all that transpired.

  Then he settled to wait, scratching idly at the place where the tattoo of the emerald green bamboo snake usually tingled under the skin. He didn’t feel it now, he realized, and knew that if he looked under his shirt the mark would be gone. He missed it, missed the warmth of her reminders and the sting of her displeasure. Had she tired of him, or had he displeased her with his failure to murder the prince? Had she abandoned him, to mark a new lover with the fire of her love bite? Surely she must understand that murder required the right moment. He wanted to be khan, not buried alive for regicide. . . .

  Frustrated, Sechule set the bedding back against the wall. Foreign dignitaries were visiting the tent city again and feasting and celebrations were planned to honor the Tinglut prince after the Great Hunt. Her sons attended the gur-khan and his heir. By the grace of their attachment to the court, she would gain entrance to the entertainments of the ger-tent palace itself. Remembering the humiliating dismissal she had lately suffered at Mergen’s hand, she had determined that this time when he summoned her to attend his sleep, she would plead a bellyache. She would conquer the conqueror with her beauty and leave him panting in his barren bed for the rich sensuality of the body she withheld from him.

  For the plan to work, however, she must appear before the court at her most bedazzling, fully adorned in her best silk coats and with precious beads hanging from her hair and ears. But her best silk coats were missing. A search of the tent had uncovered a lost earring and a dagger that Bekter had missed, but not her silk coats. She hadn’t seen them for some days. Not since . . .

  “My Lady Sechule. Take a moment for tea.”

  Not since the last time the Lady Chaiujin had come calling. Sechule set down Bekter’s dagger and smoothed her hands down her aprons. Before turning to face her visitor she took a deep breath and looked into the mirror that hung over her workbench. As she had suspected, the creature who looked back at her from within the bronze frame bore little resemblance to Lady Chaiujin, whose voice she had heard. Though the shape in the mirror was blurred, Sechule made out the flick of a restless forked tongue, the delicate tracery of scales above the lady’s dark and lidless eyes.

  “You don’t want to do that,” the voice chastised. “Our purposes require each other regardless of the form I take. Wouldn’t you rather we met as friends than as hostile allies?” That word again, friends, though Lady Chaiujin had never befriended the mistress of her brother-in-law when she sat beside her husband on the dais.

  “I may take a ram for an ewe, but it will give me no milk,” Sechule answered with a riddle clear enough in its meaning. If they were indeed hostile allies, better to know it and set one’s defenses accordingly.

  “Then know me for my milk.” The lady Chaiujin’s dark eyes glittered with malice as she waited for Sechule to decide how to take the rejoinder—as an answer to the riddle, or a warning. The milk of the emerald green bamboo snake’s fangs had killed more than once in the tent city of the Qubal.

  “Of course, my lady.” Bowing her head she accepted both the offer and the warning. She didn’t need the mirror to show her the lady’s snaky form. She had seen the serpent-demon with her own eyes and held it prisoner in her cabinet. The opening moves thus dispensed with, however, she brought out cups and filled the pot with leaves and hot water from the kettle on the firebox.

  “If you are looking for my son Qutula, he is attending the gur-khan and his heir at the Great Hunt.” Bekter likewise accompanied the hunt, eager for a new song to inspire him. She didn’t mention her second son, recalling his disappointing reticence on finding his brother’s lover in his bed.

  The lady took her cup and smiled as between confi dantes. “Qutula can manage the hunt on his own. Can’t two si
sters of the mind share a quiet conversation without bringing the men into it? We have better things to discuss between ourselves.”

  “Certainly,” Sechule agreed. “Such as?”

  The demon-Lady Chaiujin must have heard the hesitation in her voice, but she gave no appearance of offense. “The girl,” she said. “I am of two minds about the girl, and would like to hear your opinion.”

  “The girl.” Sechule sipped the hot tea to give herself time to think. What girl? The Lady Chaiujin was herself Qutula’s only lover, or at least the only one his mother knew about. As for Bekter, he confided nothing to her of such things. Sechule thought perhaps he was too much in love with his round-bellied lute to give thought to natural women. She doubted the lady much cared about him since her failed seduction there. That left the apprentice shamaness who had formed a relationship with the prince well beyond her station.

  Setting down her cup, the Lady Chaiujin confirmed Sechule’s conclusion. “The little shamaness. If Mergen sends her off with the Tinglut prince, we are rid of her interference, and with the gur-khan none the wiser about our little plot. If he decides to keep her for his heir, Qutula must dispose of her, of course.”

  None of that made sense. Mergen might allow his heir to keep the girl as his mistress, of course, but why would he try to seal a treaty with the Tinglut by offering some penniless shamaness to their khan? Neither of her sons had returned from their duties at the ger-tent palace before the hunt, so she’d had no report of what had transpired at court the night before.

  Sechule’s carefully neutral expression gave no sign of her ignorance while she considered this tidbit of information. Something had clearly changed in the status of the prince’s folly, however. Even as a nobody a shaman was a danger to their plans. If the girl had somehow found favor, she posed a serious threat. Or an opportunity.