A familiar smell of badly cured stoat pelts assailed his nostrils. Then a callused but gentle hand touched him lightly above his heart. “My prince?”
Tayy had never heard the shaman Bolghai speak so tentatively. He wanted to wipe away the water so that he could see this newly chastened shaman for himself, but his arm was too heavy; he might have been trying to lift his horse and not his own hand.
“That’s all right,” Bolghai soothed. “Let me do it for you.”
The silk cloth that wiped his face was scented with sweet herbs. Tayy didn’t object, but relaxed into the soothing touch. When the cloth went away, he opened his eyes. “Where’s Eluneke?” he asked, or thought he did. But when he tried to form the words, he realized he’d forgotten how.
Just then the earth shook. Thrown from his perch on the edge of some overhang, Bolghai landed on top of the prince. Distantly, a wound in Tayy’s back protested the abuse. Now I’ll have matching scars, front and back, he thought, but didn’t, immediately, recall why.
“My lord khan, forgive me.” The shaman struggled upright but didn’t move away. “We have to get you out of here.”
Out of where? He formed the words in his mind and this time forced them past his teeth. “Where am I?”
“Where spirits rot: the dead.” Bolghai answered with a riddle that would have annoyed him, except that suddenly Tayy remembered the serpent, and Qutula’s sword separating the ribs from his spine as he fell. Other, more terrible things, half memory, half spirit-touched, drifted gossamer as a dream among his thoughts: dirt covering his eyelids. Hungry spirits devouring his flesh. Part of the awful smell didn’t come from Bolghai at all. His wounds were swollen and rotting.
“My grave,” he answered. His hand, when he looked at it, was blackened and cracked, charred to the bone. He didn’t dare open his fingers for fear they would shatter into ash.
“And about time you got him out of it.”
Eluneke.
Tayy looked up to find her watching him from the edge of the pit where Qutula’s minions had thrown him. He’d been dead, and now he wasn’t. The time between remained a lurking shadow in the back of his mind, but he was free of the details if he didn’t look too closely.
He knew Eluneke had come for him. That was worth a smile, if he could remember how to do it. He must have gotten it right, because she smiled back at him. Tayy remembered his mother then, and his father.
“My parents?” he asked as Bolghai manhandled him out of the hole in the ground. “We didn’t leave them behind?” How could he ever forgive himself if he’d committed such an unfilial crime.
Eluneke was shaking her head, barely controling the shudder of superstitious dread. “They’re gone now. They’ve done their part and are eager to start their new lives together among the ancestors.”
“I’ll miss them.” Tayy understood that he must accept their true state as his parents had themselves, but the air felt colder now that they were gone. “I think I always felt them with me.”
“As I recall, they were hard to miss,” she answered tartly. “You’re going to need new dogs.”
Tayy remembered a red head nudging his hand, a cold nose bumping his hip. Standing guard. It warmed him in spite of the rain and the chill of their absence, to know that they’d stayed behind to protect him.
While they spoke, Eluneke drew from the pouch the sky god’s daughters had given her a laurel bough with the power of heaven to cure ills of the spirit. As she brushed the laurel leaves over his wounds, Tayy felt the pain of them lessen, the swelling subside.
“Can you ride?” Bolghai asked. “We are at war. General Jochi might like to know he fights for the true khan, and not merely to avenge your murder.”
Khan. Mergen was dead. That made him gur-khan, assuming the chieftains voted to honor the chosen heir. Provided any survived the fighting to vote. His father had trained him for this duty and Mergen had trusted him to hold the ulus when his time came. Even the underworld had spit him out again to take up the reins untimely dropped by his father and his uncle.
“I can ride,” he said. But his hand still curled like a cinder at his side.
“Take this,” Eluneke said, and slipped the stem of the laurel bough into the curl of his fingers. Where it touched coals, flesh softened and grew brown and smooth as the bark of a young tree, with the flush of life running through it. Though he was not yet whole, the pain of his injuries had grown distant, and soft, tea-stained skin replaced the horrible purple and green of the serpent’s bite. The bloody wound at his back remained, but deep inside he could feel the healing had begun.
Horses were brought and the shaman-princess mounted the pale steed that had carried them in the underworld. “Where you go, my khan, there I also go,” she declared. “I won’t lose you now.”
He thought to turn her back to safety in the rear with Bolghai. But the shaman clapped his hands and smiled. “You will need your skills at banishing demons,” he advised them both. “The Lady Chaiujin has brought her serpent horde to fight in Qutula’s cause.”
Bolghai drew from a leather thong at his side a horse-head drumstick made of the shinbone of a roe deer and flung it to the grass. Where it struck, it grew hooves and legs and a tail and mane and strong, pale haunches. With a cheerful grin the shaman leaped onto the bare back of the magical steed. “Now,” he said, “begins the shamans’ war!”
“He killed our mother.” Bekter lay in her bed, shivering with fever. Half out of his senses, he muttered over and over the impossible confession, made as a boast. Sechule had murdered the khan, and her son Qutula had murdered her in turn, and then had tried to do the same to his brother.
“I know,” the shamaness soothed him with her voice. “But you are still alive, and we must make sure you stay that way.” She poured a cup of healing tea from the kettle on the firebox and scattered over it a variety of herbs for reducing fever. Already she had plastered his wounds with a poultice to draw out both foreign poisons and the kind that the body grew from its own damaged flesh. Now she held his head pillowed on her breast and tipped the cup to his lips. Withdrawing it quickly when he coughed, she wiped the escaping medicine from his lips.
“Rest, dear Bekter,” she crooned, lulling him to the sleep he needed more than any herbs she might prepare. In sleep, he might escape the pain of his injury, and the deeper wound of his brother’s betrayal. Though his breathing remained rough, his eyelids followed the gentle command of her voice. When it seemed that he had fallen into a troubled rest, she settled his head on the cushions and wrapped the bed furs tight against the hungry spirits who might steal his soul while he slept. Then she gathered her drum into her lap and began a chant to drive out the evil vapors that possessed him.
Suddenly, the ground rolled like a carpet snapped in the breeze. The brooms clacked against the lattices of her little tent and the kettle tipped over, spilling tea in a puddle that put out the fire in the firebox. A chest fell over, cascading its shelves of charms and medicines across the cushioned floor. Happily, it fell away from the sickbed so no harm was done.
“Ahh!” Bekter cried, starting up from his bed only to fall again on his side, panting.
“Eluneke’s back,” Toragana observed, setting her drum down to clean up the mess from the spilled tea.
Bekter’s eyes, bright with fever, sought her out with terrified questions he was too ill to shape. “Did the earth shake when you completed your training?” he whispered, which was all the voice he could manage.
She thought perhaps he was having second thoughts about a healer—and a lover—who could turn the grasslands themselves on end. But in fact, she had never known of such a thing. “Not for me, or for any shaman I have heard of,” she assured him. Of course, no shaman in all the collected memory of her craft had done what Eluneke had set out to do.
A second time the earth moved under her feet.
“Why now?” Bekter clung to the carpets with clenched fists and it was impossible to tell whether terror at the earth�
��s upheaval or his own fevered chills were the cause.
Toragana smiled, though in fact she was worried more than she let on to her patient. “Because she didn’t come back alone. And now you must drink, if you expect to get well.”
Bekter’s eyes went very wide. “By all the gods and ancestors,” he muttered breathlessly. She thought perhaps she had erred in telling him. He was too weak from his injuries to cope with the shamanic side of his brother’s war. But he surprised her. Or, she decided, she was more surprised that his answer didn’t shock her at all.
“I should be there. How can I record the tale if I do not see it?” He tried to rise, but already he had set the wound in his back to bleeding again.
“If you want to live, you will keep still. You’ve barely enough blood in you to keep your lungs in motion as it is.”
“But—”
“If things have gone as Bolghai and I hope, you will hear it from your sister and the khan her husband,” Toragana assured him. “If things have not . . .”
She turned without finishing what she had begun and put on her feathered headdress with the stuffed raven perched on her brow. Bekter didn’t press her to complete her prediction. They both knew that if things had not gone well, he wouldn’t live to compose the tale. And no loyal Qubal would live to hear it.
The shamaness wore the robes of her office already, but gathered the tokens of her craft about her—a flute and a drum, and a broom from its peg on the lattices.
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll send Barula to tend you.” She hoped he accepted the lightness of her tone, that he didn’t notice she was trembling. He was the court’s most famous poet, however, and his talent for observation had recovered from his injury faster than the rest of him.
“I’m not worried about myself. The danger is out there. Where are you going?”
“To fight. And so must you in your own way. Until your wounds are healed, the danger is in here as well.”
His grave eyes told her he had guessed as much, and longed to accompany and protect her.
“You’ve done your part, beloved Bekter.” She knelt and kissed him, smiled at his surprise but quickly grew serious again. “Now it’s time for the shamans’ war.”
“Be careful—”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh—now is not the time for caution.” She used a trick of her craft to muddy his senses so that he didn’t see her go.
Her horse was waiting.
“My lord general!” Mangkut fought his way to Qutula’s side. His captain’s breath came harsh and fast, more out of fear, Qutula thought, than from any struggle with sword or spear. His serpent allies terrified his Durluken as much as they did the Nirun, though with less cause. The demons usually honored the green armbands that marked Qutula’s army. Sometimes they didn’t, of course, but you could hardly expect a demon caught up in bloodlust to stop for a trifle. So far, Captain Mangkut had escaped both Nirun arrows and the fangs of his allies which, considering his betrayal, was better than he had any right to expect. With Duwa dead, however, there were few Qutula would trust more.
“What is it?” He cast an impatient glance to his side, where the Lady Chaiujin had ridden through most of the battle, commanding her serpent minions as he commanded his human ones. She wasn’t there, which irked him somewhat. He wouldn’t call it fear, that without her the army of serpent-demons might make no distinction between himself and his enemies. Nor would he say that he needed her advice. She was his, however, and she belonged where he wanted her.
“We’re under attack, Lord General.” Mangkut gestured in the direction of the Qubal city, which Prince Tayyichiut’s stubborn Nirun had so far denied him. This time, it wasn’t the Nirun.
“Damn his soul to the mouths of the hungry spirits.”
Yesugei-Khan, who should have been setting up his own court among the Uulgar far to the south, rode down on the Durluken with his sword raised in challenge. At his back came an army riding at full gallop in the lake formation. Qutula watched in disbelief as the flanks of Yesugei’s horde curved in a sweep that encircled his forces together with the Nirun who fought their desperate but useless battle against his army of serpent-demons.
What was he doing here, now, and with what appeared to be the whole army Mergen had sent away with him? Already the attack had closed the circle, and moved inward, tightening the noose.
Where was the Lady Chaiujin when he needed her?
He’d been drugged. Prince Daritai cursed himself for a fool, half surprised that he’d woken up at all this side of the pyre and half expecting the weight of chains on wrists and ankles. But small untroubled fingers carded the fringes of his braids and somewhere a little to the right of his numb backside he heard the Lady Bortu giving orders for dinner in a soft voice.
“The general has taken his troops to the battlefield,” she said. “I assume you will want to follow.”
Daritai hadn’t moved. He’d kept his breathing level and slow, but somehow she had known when he awoke. It seemed pointless to keep his eyes closed, so he opened them. The child, Princess Orda, gave him a secret smile. So the princess had known as well. He thought he’d made a better spy than that. And he still didn’t know why they’d bothered to drug him but hadn’t secured him as their prisoner. Lady Bortu answered the confusion if not the questions in his puzzled brow.
“You needed rest.” She patted him on the arm—he had a feeling she did that a lot, and that it wasn’t a compliment. “Don’t worry. You’ve slept no longer than you required of the men you brought with you from the battlefield. The effects of the drug will wear off when you’ve had something to eat.”
He was relieved to hear it, and gladder than he wished to show when a servant thrust a tray of suet pies under his nose. He took one and bit in. Even the rich, full bloom of sheep fat on his tongue couldn’t distract him from his plight, however, or from the servants and guardsmen righting fallen chests and wrapping cracked lattices along the palace wall.
“Why?” he asked. Her eyes had grown dark and intent as a hunting eagle. They made his skin crawl, but he had to know. “You had me in your power. General Yesugei commands fresher troops in greater number than my own. Why let me go?”
“I needed General Yesugei elsewhere,” she said. “As for yourself—” he found her grin more unsettling than the in tentness of her gaze “—the shamans’ war has begun. I have need of an escort.”
She didn’t wait for him to follow, but climbed down from the dais and headed for the door. The shamans’ war. He knew Yesugei would fight Qutula’s serpent horde, knew the general would see his warriors die in a vain attempt to hold back the demons. They were not mortal, after all, and not arrow nor sword nor spear could harm them, as he had grown to know too well. But shamans . . .There were too few in any camp, but perhaps the khaness knew something he didn’t.
“The earth moved while you were sleeping.” Princess Orda tugged at his hand, leading him after the khaness. “Grandmother says Prince Tayy is back.” The prince, her brother, was dead.
The princess seemed intent on following her grandmother, but to where? Into some war of magic? No child would take on such a burden while he stood to prevent it. Not if it cost him his life.
“I’ll go,” he promised the Princess Orda, “but you have to stay here. It’s too dangerous on the battlefield for little girls, even princesses.”
When she looked up at him, considering his answer, her eyes showed whiteless black, like her grandmother. Daritai shuddered in supernatural dread, but he didn’t let go of her hand. That seemed to decide something within her because she was looking at their twined fingers when she agreed, “Yes. You’d better hurry.”
What else could he do? He bowed gravely, relieved to see the whites of her eyes again. Then he put her in the care of her nobles and followed the Lady Bortu, who had disappeared by the time he reached the door. His mare was there, however, her halter in the powerful hand of a Qubal guardsman almost as ol
d as the Lady Bortu herself. On the pommel of his saddle sat a golden hunting eagle without hood or jesses.
“I think you have the season confused,” he commented. Eagles hunted in the winter, when the furs were thickest.
Some joke lurked in the eyes of the keeper. Daritai’s hand caressed his sword, but the laugh never reached the man’s mouth so Daritai could hardly show offense.
“The lady knows what she hunts.” The keeper stepped away.
Daritai eyed the pommel with some trepidation, unwilling to place his delicate regions so temptingly near the powerful claws of the unhooded bird. The creature cocked her head as if she too were laughing at him. He thought he recognized that piercing gaze, though he kept his suspicion to himself. He would not have his sanity questioned.
“I trust you will behave like the lady and grandmother you are,” he muttered under his breath, and settled himself gingerly in the saddle. She was big even for her kind; the golden head came to his shoulder. But her eyes were for the distance. The prince was back from the dead, the princess had said.
Wondering who had conquered whom, he directed his mount where the eagle’s gaze led him.
Lady Bortu flexed her clawed feet and settled her feathers, amused to see the nervous glances her escort gave her sharply curved talons. She hadn’t done this, transforming into her totem creature, since before she’d married to create a dynasty and she hadn’t been at all certain that the form would come to her when she summoned it. But Eluneke had returned from the underworld, and the second tremor of the earth had told her she hadn’t come alone. Some demon-lord might have followed the girl, but she’d gone to bring back Tayy and the Lady Bortu trusted her own blood in the veins of both. The shamans’ war had begun, and she owed her sons this much, at least.
Still, she’d spent a few uncomfortable minutes with the body of an eagle, berating her old retainer with the mouth and head of an old khaness. Surrender to the totem had come hard to her after all this time, longer than the lives of both her dead sons since she’d tried to summon the spirits of the earth. But finally, in desperation, she made the leap into the mind of the bird. None too soon—Daritai mustn’t see her hesitate. She required his total commitment to her task.
Lords of Grass and Thunder Page 52
