Jumal cast a doubtful glance at the messenger, but they both knew Chahar would never serve the enemies working against the gur-khan. With a calming word to his Uulgar second, he gathered his guardsmen and left his khan to his private report. Yesugei had no doubt he would remain to guard the door, but no one else would hear what went on in the command tent.
“Tell me why you look like the hunting hounds of the underworld are on your heels,” Yesugei said when he was alone with the messenger. His weeks in discussion with Jumal had shown the new khan greater dangers within the ger-tent palace itself, so he felt prepared for whatever he might hear.
“My message—” Chahar stammered and stopped, his eyes suddenly empty of the deep intelligence Yesugei knew in him. At first he thought the man suffered from an exhaustion so extreme that he had temporarily lost control of both memory and senses. But with a bitter little laugh Chahar pulled himself together.
“The gur-khan sent this message: ‘Tell him that his gur-khan wishes his company, and that of his armies.’ ”
With that Chahar handed him a tourquoise bead, the signal for a threat of war, though not an imminent one. It was clear the man had missed more than one meal reaching the southbound camp at speed, however. A handful of steps brought him to the door where Jumal waited, as he had expected. The servant with a tray of food, already standing just beyond the carrying of their voices was a welcome surprise.
“He didn’t look fit for much.” Jumal passed off his foresight with a little shrug. “I thought this might help.”
“I’m sure it will.”
The servant followed him into the tent and set his tray on the floor in front of the newcomer, leaving Yesugei and the gur-khan’s messenger alone. Chahar helped himself to a cup of tea and a chunk of hard cheese, chewing for sustenance but also to gain time. He would have had the weeks of travel to order his report, so this continued hesitation knotted the breakfast in Yesugei’s belly.
When he had gathered his senses, Chahar began to tell his tale. “After you left on your errand to subdue the Uulgar South, Mergen revealed Eluneke, the apprentice shamaness, to be his own daughter . . .”
The news about Mergen’s offer of his daughter to the Tinglut-Khan and his emissary’s subsequent refusal came as little surprise. Yesugei had known about the girl since her birth and had shared her father’s dismay that she had apprenticed herself to a shamaness. He remembered the day of the hunt, when Prince Tayy had first set eyes on her. That they might have grown to love each other, while unfortunate, came as no surprise after such a fateful meeting. It was just more bad luck, perhaps, that Prince Tayyichiut and the princess had appeared at their absolute worst in front of the ambassador. But Yesugei was certain that Mergen’s ill fortune had a darker purpose behind it. Chahar’s next revelation confirmed all of his and Jumal’s suspicions.
“Last night, as I lay sleeping, my father came to me in a dream. He wore his totem form and wept, but in the way of dreams I understood him. The worst has happened. Mergen himself is dead, murdered by his own son Qutula, perhaps with the assistance of the Lady Sechule, whom the gur-khan had lately agreed to wed.”
The air went out of Yesugei’s lungs, as if he’d received a blow to the chest. “Sechule?” he repeated. Though he had believed Jumal that Qutula was dangerous, he could hardly credit that Sechule would aid in his schemes. Except, she had always championed her older son.
The jealousy he expected at the thought didn’t come. It seemed some part of him had already accepted the truth of Bolghai’s message and he mourned the loss of his dreams about Sechule almost as much as he mourned his gur-khan. How could he have been so wrong?
“But why? If Mergen meant to marry her . . .”
“He meant to hand the khanate to the prince and then marry. Which would have removed all hope for Qutula to win the dais for himself, or for his mother to become khaness. Or so my father deduces. Qutula has fled; his mother likewise cannot be found, but my father says he saw her spirit roaming lost and bitter between the worlds and that she, too, must be dead. He says that Eluneke has been missing since the Tinglut left, and he can find no trace of her in any of the realms open to his shamanic senses.”
“Is she still alive?” Yesugei was having trouble processing it all, but one thought rested uppermost in his mind: his duty to defend and protect the legitimate gur-khan and his family, whoever that might be. Eluneke was part of that.
“Bolghai has found no sign of her among the dead.” Chahar picked a cautious way through his point. “But he can’t find her among the living either. He is at a loss to explain it, but fears that Qutula may be conspiring with demons.”
He hadn’t thought it could get any worse. “The prince?” he asked.
“Safe when last I heard. But he searches for the shaman princess while there is light and mourns his uncle in the dark. My father worries for his health as well as his safety.”
Yesugei accepted this report and recalled his captains. If Tayy still lived, he was gur-khan now, or would be when Yesugei arrived to uphold his position. And he was determined to do so before Qutula had shed more royal blood. “Leave a small force to support the camp followers,” he told the captains when they had rejoined him in the command tent. “We ride to war in the name of Tayyichiut Gur-Khan.”
“Tayyichiut Gur-Khan!” Jumal’s exclamation carried equal parts of dismay and devotion. Like the new Otchigin at his side he understood the terrible loss the ulus had suffered. More than any of them, however, Jumal owed his allegiance to the new gur-khan.
“And the Uulgar prisoners?” the young Otchigin asked, with more questions than he dared ask in his eyes. Mergen had spared his life and the lives of the ten thousand Uulgar taken in the recent war for the Cloud Country. He had pledged his people and his life to serve the gur-khan, but Mergen reigned no more.
“There are no prisoners in this camp,” Yesugei assured him with a clasp on his arm. “We are all Qubal now and we ride together to defend the gur-khan.”
“As my khan orders.” Otchigin bowed so low that the crown of his cap brushed the floor. When he followed Jumal from the command tent, his face had flushed deep wine with pride.
Trust, Yesugei thought, was a dangerous weapon. Mergen’s trust in his son had led to murder and war. He hoped his own faith in the boy chieftain was not so misplaced.
Chapter Thirty-seven
TAYY PROPPED HIS HEAD on his hand, elbow resting on a map of the grasslands spread on a low table. The dogs had slept the night through at his feet but were raising their heads again in the doggy ordering of priorities: a visit outside and then breakfast.
“Go,” he told them. They both hesitated, whining their distress at leaving him before leaping from the dais. In the gray dawn filtering through the smoke hole, he watched their tangle-legged run for the door. The shadowy light had dulled the glow from the lamps but provided little illumination for the maps he’d been studying. He closed his eyes for a moment, but it didn’t help. The details, blurred and indistinct, had burned themselves onto the backs of his eyelids.
After another wakeful night of mourning, his grandmother had finally fallen asleep, allowing him to turn his attention to his general and the maps spread out between them. Like Jochi, most of the guardsmen in their blue coats and the gathered advisers who offered their opinions in respectfully lowerd voices had belonged to his uncle. Once his own cadre had guarded him. He’d expected to rely on his age-mate captains then, but Altan was dead and Jumal far to the south. And Qutula . . .
“You’re sure Prince Daritai didn’t kidnap her?”
“As you requested, I had the Tinglut party followed. The prince set a careful watch and his force moved quickly to leave Qubal lands, both reasonable precautions given the failure of his embassy.” No one mentioned that General Jochi was just repeating the significant facts he’d already covered in his report. “The Tinglut could scarcely prevent our spies from observing their progress, but none of our people saw any sign of the Princess Eluneke in
their camp, nor did they sense any undue secrecy in the Tinglut’s movements.”
Prince Tayy nodded. “So Qutula has her, as we thought, and likely murdered my uncle as well.” Staring down at the scraped horsehide map, he idly traced the branded lines that represented caravan routes and grazing boundaries. If he were Qutula, where would he go? Where would he find allies?
Beyond the ger-tent palace, the sound of horses going through their paces in the practice yard rumbled like distant thunder. His army prepared for war against an enemy who had until recently been a captain in their own ranks; who had sat on the very steps of the dais. Now he seemed to have vanished from the grasslands.
“Has anyone discovered Bekter’s whereabouts?” They would have told him if they knew, but Tayy couldn’t yet accept that Bekter had conspired with Qutula to murder their father. “Do we know if he’s hiding? Could he not know we’re looking for him?”
“I don’t have an answer yet.” Jochi shrugged a one-shouldered apology. “Until Yesugei comes, our armies are spread thin. But we’ll find him; it just takes time.”
“Do we have time?”
Trick question, when they had no choice. The general didn’t even try to answer it. They still had people out looking for Eluneke and others tracking Qutula. And, of course, Jochi had insisted that a large contingent of their warriors remain to guard the prince himself. With the gur-khan murdered and Eluneke still missing, Tayy didn’t even try to argue that point. But he needed to know where Bekter stood. And he needed to be out there looking for Eluneke himself.
“Perhaps the shamaness Toragana will know where my cousin is.” It had seemed to him that Bolghai had trusted and respected Eluneke’s teacher. But Bolghai had appeared to perform the necessary services for his uncle’s spirit only to vanish again as the funeral fires had died. Tayy wondered briefly if his own shaman had sided with Qutula, but dismissed the thought as unworthy. He didn’t want to think about his chances for victory if all the spirit world arrayed itself against him.
With an impatient sweep of his hand the map flew from the low table and fell on the steps of the dais. “I can’t sit here and wait like a child or a coward for my cousin to come to kill me. I have to find him.”
“And his followers?” Jochi asked, trying to sway him with the logistics of going against his cousin. “Your chieftains are correct in this at least—you’ll need the full force of Yesugei’s armies if you want to defeat Qutula.”
“You must mean my armies, brought home at my murdered uncle’s command by our general and vassal khan,” he corrected Jochi coldly. The man might have served Mergen well, but Prince Tayyichiut, heir to the khanate, could afford no doubt about his own position. If the chieftains wanted Yesugei as their gur-khan, they could elect him with their cups and stones. In the meantime, Mergen had named Tayy his heir. To free Eluneke, he needed the armies and the power to command them that came with his rank.
The general met his bleak and deadly gaze evenly. When Tayy didn’t back down, he accepted the rebuke with a humble bow. “The gur-khan’s army,” he said, giving Tayy the title although the chieftains had not yet voted.
Prince Tayy accepted the apology with a stiff jerk of his chin. The general hadn’t mentioned that if Qutula had indeed aligned himself with demon allies they might have no hope of defeating him at all. Tayy knew it already; he’d barely survived a war against inhuman foes with no particular interest in him. On rainy days the scars he wore from that time still ached, reminding him of the cost. His own safety mattered little to him while Eluneke suffered captivity or worse, but the thought of such powers arrayed in full force against the Qubal people tied his already abused gut in knots.
Something of what he was thinking must have shown itself on his face, because Jochi laid a restraining hand on his forearm. “You can’t command an army from the wrong side of the funeral pyre. To lead, you need to stay alive.”
“I have to find her. If I’m so easily removed from the board, Yesugei can take up the battle in his own name.” Tayy threw off the gentle restraint. “Let the chieftains elect a new line for their khan. It won’t matter to me then.”
Jochi shifted, placing his body between Tayy and the steps from the dais. “It will matter to your people,” he said.
Nearby, the Lady Bortu’s predator’s dark eyes opened slowly and closed again without rousing from sleep. Pitching his voice low so that he didn’t disturb her, Tayy growled a warning to his general. “If you try to stop me, I’ll have you killed for the affront.”
With a jerk of his chin he summoned the closest guardsmen, who approached with eyes wide and fearful. “I will step over your steaming corpse if I have to, but I will still go.” He had ridden with Jochi in battle and so his general would know he made no empty threats.
The general conceded, his frustration barely restrained in a graceful bow. “Don’t think that I value my own life over protecting yours, my prince,” Jochi assured him, “but I prefer not to ruin this poor soldier by testing his loyalties in a campaign I’ve already lost.”
“I know.” Now that he had won his point, Tayy took a precious moment to salve the wounds of the spirit he had tried. “But I could sit here and mourn ‘if only’ until the sky turned green and it wouldn’t change what has to be. Sound the call to arms. We ride.”
He didn’t wait for the general but strode toward the door down the long center aisle, past painted chests with the history of the ulus displayed on them. The bronze head of the Thebin king, Llesho the Great, once had meant no more to him than a prop to enliven the epic tale of Alaghai the Beautiful and her ill-fated king. Then the orphan king Llesho had stepped out of the tales to beg the Qubal’s aid in rescuing his country from the invading Uulgar. Chimbai-Khan had gone to war to repay the debt the Qubal had remembered for generations in its tales. Now it felt like Tayy himself was caught in a legend. Bekter, court poet as well as cousin, would understand about such things. But Bekter couldn’t be found.
Instead, he had a scattering of nobles rousing from their sleep on either side of the aisle. The ger-tent palace held six hundred when the clans gathered; now he counted just a scattered few, most of them too old to fight. Messengers had been sent with news of Mergen’s death, but it would take time for the clans to return. Some, he knew, would wait and watch while others did the bleeding, and would pledge their cautious loyalty to whoever remained alive and standing at the end of it.
But he had Jochi to advise him and Jumal would be returning with Yesugei. The Uulgar prisoners would fight for their new khan, he thought, to retain the freedom Mergen had granted them. When he found Eluneke—he refused to think of it as “if”—he was pretty sure he’d have his own allies in the spirit world to help him. He just had to find her.
Out of long habit he scarcely noticed the guardsmen who left their places along the many lattices of the palace to form a defensive phalanx at his back. But he’d lost the friends of his own age who should have been his captains, so he had no one to stand shoulder to shoulder with him when Mangkut entered the ger tent palace, blocking the doorway as Tayy moved to exit.
“A message from General Qutula, my lord,” Mangkut said, elevating his captain well beyond his rank. “I have been instructed to deliver it privately.”
“With a knife?” Jochi asked. He had followed Prince Tayyichiut from the dais, and at his signal fifty guardsmen drew their swords and surrounded the intruder.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” Mangkut begged off with a bow. “Mine is not the hand that moves the stones on this board.” He lifted his arms away from the weapons at his side.
Tayy believed him that far. “He won’t kill me,” he assured his general. “Qutula will reserve that honor to himself.”
“As you say, my lord.” This time Mangkut smirked when he bowed. Jochi was less trusting. At a meaningful glance, two of the guardsmen set aside their own weapons to search the messenger and relieve him of any threat he might have carried. Sword and spear were taken from him, and several
knives uncovered and set aside. When they were done, Mangkut reached inside his coat and brought out a delicate piece of Shannish paper.
“You will hand the paper to me, and I’ll decide what is to be done with it,” Jochi said, and held out his own hand.
The prince understood his reasons. The packet might have held a scorpion or some other danger might reveal itself when he opened the paper, though Mangkut didn’t seem nervous enough about holding it himself to cause much concern. Surrendering with a little shrug, he gestured for Mangkut to do as Jochi commanded.
The paper had a single fold and, when released, a lock of hair slipped out. Tayy ignored Jochi’s glare and grabbed the long dark strands out of the air before they could drift to the ground.
“My lord Qutula instructs me to say, ‘follow, alone, or he will kill the girl,” Mangkut recited.
“Trust Qutula? He’ll murder them both, if he hasn’t already killed the girl.” Jochi’s words might have been an ice-knife to his heart. The prince trusted Qutula no more than his general did, but only Mangkut could lead him to the hidden camp where Qutula held Eluneke prisoner.
Fortunately, Tayy was beginning to have a plan. “Kill him,” he said, and turned away in contempt, his voice colder even than Mergen had sounded when he executed the Uulgar chieftains.
Immediately, his guardsmen tightened their hold on Mangkut’s arms. Tayy remained torn between rage against his cousin and his terror that his actions might cost him Eluneke’s life. He let that conflict show on his face. Suddenly Mangkut was afraid; when Jochi drew his sword, he began to struggle.
“I’m just a messenger,” he cried, “I have no say in the message.”
“You follow Qutula. That’s reason enough to eliminate you.”
Lords of Grass and Thunder Page 43
