by Shannon Hale
Yes, it is wrong. I won't think it again.
He told me he likes me close by, says my singing eases the pain. Even though I don't always sing. Mostly we talk. Often we laugh, at least until his arrow wound pierces him and the shaman healers shoo me away. But I always return before long, and they always let me back in. And I sing and we laugh.
I haven't touched him again, as I did when he first woke from the fever sleep. I wonder if he remembers or if he thinks it was a dream.
Day 157
I've seen Lady Vachir at last, and she dresses in all the splendor I would imagine for a lady of a realm. Indigo powder colors her eyelids, sandlewood perfume wafts from her skin, and when she moves, the dangling pearls in her hair click against her tortoiseshell combs. One would imagine such finery could make a lady happy. Not so. I find it easier to imagine a snake smiling than our Lady Vachir. Her mouth is stern, her eyes are sad, her hands lie in her lap like frozen things. For the past two days, she's been attending Tegus in his resting chamber. They brought in a second couch for her and her three lady's maids, and they sit with their backs straight, look at us, and whisper. Khan Tegus and I don't laugh much anymore.
When he's awake, I rest my hands on his belly wound and sing to his bones and skin, his muscles and blood. When he sleeps, I sit in the corner and do scribe work. To tell the truth, the scribbling has become about as much fun as picking lice out of a goat's hair. While I write, I can feel Lady Vachir's gaze prickling me. I don't like it much.
Today when the khan was asleep, Lady Vachir said, "My back pains me. What is that girl's name, the commoner there?"
Batu the war chief was present, and he answered, "Dashti, my lady."
"I want her to use her healing songs on me. Tell her to come to my chamber."
She and her ladies rose and left, and I supposed she meant me to follow, so I did. Halfway there, she claimed that her own chamber was being cleaned and I should take her to mine. So I led her to my little room and lay her on my horsehair blanket. Her three lady's maids stood around me like so many vultures waiting for something meaty to die. I placed my hands on the lady's back and sang the tune with the lilting high parts that says, "Tell me again, how does it go?"
When I finished, she stood and said, "I don't know why they let you hang about. Your song didn't make a drop of difference."
Well, that put some fire in my lungs, sure enough, so I said, "A song can only work if the hearer wills it. Do you perhaps enjoy the back pain? Or maybe your back didn't pain you to begin with?"
She slapped my mouth. What is it about gentry that they're always slapping people? It made me giggle, which made her glare. What's come over me to speak casually and laugh at an honored lady? As she swept out of the room, I noticed her gaze fall on this book, lying in the corner.
From now on, I'll keep it with me. Lady Vachir is the last person in the Eight Realms I'd want to see these words.
I like that woman about as much as I like skin rot in the summer. Maybe she rankles me so because she's standing between my lady and her beloved. Or maybe the woman is just plain unpleasant. I shouldn't be so hard, but there it is. I look at Lady Vachir and I see someone who loves nothing much, who's seen a great deal of death in a short amount of time, and rather than feel sorrow, has decided to turn into stone.
Day 159
These past days in my lord's chamber, all the talk is on Khasar. I try to ignore it and focus on what I'm copying on parchment, because there's nothing more frustrating than hearing of a problem you can't do anything to fix. But I can't help hearing some, and my mind keeps working over the trouble, like chewing on tough meat till my jaw's sore.
I don't like Khasar. I guess I've never been so terrified in my life as the time he flicked burning wood chips into our tower. His voice, even in memory, makes my bones shiver. The sounds of the healing songs remind the body of how it should be, but the sound of his voice had the opposite effect on me. Whatever he uttered, his laugh, his snarl, his words, seemed a song of ill. Just the memory of that sound greases my dreams some nights like fatty pot scrapings smeared on my hands.
The news today was that Khasar's warriors have rested and regrouped from their assault on Lady Vachir's land and are on the march again.
"He'd been laying siege on Beloved of Ris, my lord," said Batu, the war chief, who was healed and standing, strong as a yak after a good summer. "We thought he'd continue his siege through the winter, but he's moving again. Coming this way."
Khan Tegus winced as he sat upright. "I'd hoped to lead our army against him before the bitter cold comes, drive him away from Beloved of Ris. We can't risk the defeat of that realm and the warriors Khasar would add to his own."
"Is he marching to attack Song for Evela?" asked the chief of night, an old man whose fading brown eyes always seemed kindly to me. "Or is he returning to Thoughts of Under for winter?"
"There is no more Thoughts of Under," said Batu. "He's changed the name of his realm to Carthen's Glory."
That silenced everyone. Changed the name of his realm! I'd never heard of, never imagined such a thing. He must mean the change as a mighty prayer to Carthen, goddess of strength.
"Ancestors spare us," someone whispered.
They kept talking about strategy, numbers versus numbers, tactics if he marches on our khan's city and such, but my thoughts were running through a different forest. And though now I should be curled up in my horsehair blanket and long ago asleep, I had to write these thoughts first. They gnaw at me, like to chew me to bits before morning.
Khasar has betrayed Under, god of tricks, by abandoning his name, and pledged himself to Carthen. That makes me think the means to defeat him will be through trickery, not strength. He destroyed the realm of Titor, god of animals, and overthrew the land named for Goda, goddess of sleep. Animals, sleep, and trickery will not be his friends.
These thoughts feel true, but they also seem like the bones of some animal all in a jumble, and I can't see how they fit together and what they form. Maybe the Ancestors are trying to help me, if I could only see.
Day 161
Khasar's warriors are coming closer. It doesn't seem they mean to pass us by. I spend all my time in my lord's chamber now with his chiefs, Lady Vachir, and her whispering maids. When Tegus hurts too much to continue, I'm there to sing. But I miss the laughing parts.
Outside, the world is starting to crack with cold.
Day 162
Many were gathered in the khan's chamber today, the mood stiffer than winter laundry.
"His army is setting up camp outside our walls," said Batu. "They're well equipped with ghers and supplies. They can hunt our woods all winter and get on well."
"But we won't," said the town chief. She has gray and black hair, thick and tangled in braids all over her head. To me, her eyes look as dark as deep wells.
"We were prepared for a siege before," said the food chief, "but now with all the people we've taken in from Titor's Garden, Beloved of Ris, and Goda's Second Gift, not to mention our own villagers who have sought refuge inside the city walls, our stored food won't last two months."
"Longer if we eat the livestock," said the chief of animals. "But that choice is death still, just a slower death, if we have no animals next year."
"And there's the matter of the terror Khasar inspires," said the chief of light. He was resting his forehead on his templed fingers and just then didn't look much as if he were filled with sunshine. "Your warriors brought back tales of Khasar in battle, his ferocity, his eerie strength. And other rumors fill the barracks — the midnight killings in Beloved of Ris, how sentries and warriors disappeared from their posts and their bodies were found with their throats and organs eaten away. These stories will spread throughout the city and cause panic when Khasar attacks. Panic can defeat us as surely as lack of food."
"Worse news," said Batu. "The strange killings have already begun here. This morning, two men were found outside the city gates, ravaged as if by a wild beast."
Did Khasar have some dark alliance with predatory animals? How could he make a wild wolf attack on his command? My thoughts took me back to the tower, and I was hearing in memory the screams that night when a wolf hoveled. The screams of our guards who never appeared again. It was not a comfortable memory and it made me want to curl up somewhere with a wall at my back.
The chiefs had gone quiet and Khan Tegus was staring at the fire. At length he said, "Batu, what do you recommend?"
"We must attack. Now, before full winter. There's no choice."
"Holy one?" Tegus spoke to a shaman crouched before the fire.
The shaman was removing sheep anklebones from the embers and spreading them out on the floor. He hopped around, squinting at the cracks in the bones, humming sometimes and moaning others. We all waited.
"Foretelling is never exact, my khan," said the shaman. He peered up through his hat tassels. "But your victory won't come from strength, so I see in the bones."
"But it's not exact," said the town chief, "and if we have no other way— "
"Strength can't be your friend," said the shaman, "not since Khasar pledged himself to the goddess Carthen."
"That's right!" I said. I did shout out those words just like that, with all those people present. The shaman spoke the thoughts I'd been thinking, and now in my mind the jumble of bones was beginning to click together. "He'll have Carthen on his side, but he betrayed Under, god of tricks. My lord, I think that might be the way to defeat him."
Some scowled at my outburst, but Tegus asked me, "What hope do you see, Dashti?"
"With no offense to the holy one or to Dashti," said Batu, "this isn't the time to bet our lives, our entire realm, on uncertain foretelling or mucker faith. We can't hesitate with this monster, my lord. His assault is terrible. His warriors attack night and day. All say it's as though he never sleeps. We must hit Khasar from the front with every warrior we have."
The khan nodded. "First, Dashti, tell me your thoughts."
I smiled at him. I couldn't help it. He makes me smile. "In battle, we'd have no chance. As the holy one said, with Carthen as his ally, no one can defeat him by means of arms. But Under is bound to be angered by the betrayal. With Under's blessing, I think you can trick Khasar."
"How do you propose we trick him?"
I didn't know, to be honest. I still don't. I just felt coolness and motion inside, like underground rivers running through me, and a sureness that it could be done. Something to do with Under, some trickery involving animals. Perhaps the very wolf Lord Khasar uses to kill warriors at night would turn on him. And somehow, we could make that happen. And then I remembered what Saren once said about Khasar, how he ripped out the throat of a goat. I'd thought she was just tower-addled at the time, but I begin to wonder what she may know.
"Well?" said the town chief. "We're waiting for your cunning plan."
I looked at the shaman for help, but he shrugged. Apparently the sheep bones didn't tell him anything more.
I cleared my throat. "Let me think about it. I — "
One of the chiefs laughed. The chief of animals, I think it was. The chief of camel dung and jackasses. I'm sitting in my room under the horsehair blanket, and I feel that laugh still crawling all over me.
Later
After last I wrote, I begged Cook for a moment with Saren. I took her into the sugar closet, where I feel suffocated but she seems to calm. Cook used to keep it locked, the sugar safe from prying fingers, but this one's empty now, what with traders from the south avoiding the Eight Realms since Khasar began his warring. I took Saren's hands. I met her eyes. She's more relaxed of late, but she set to blinking when she heard me mention Khasar's name.
"My lady, once you told me that Khasar is a beast, that you save him tear a goat's throat with his teeth. I need to know what you meant. Please tell me."
Her eyes went so wide I thought she'd never blink again, and she shook her head.
"He's here, my lady. His armies are camped outside the wall. They'll do here what they did to Titor's Garden if we don't — "
That was stupidity on my part. I should've kept that news silent, because then she set to shaking and moaning. "He's here, he's coming in for me, I knew he would, he won't let me be, I'd rather be dead — "
"Please, my lady, help me stop him. You know something about Khasar that no one else knows, don't you? What is it?"
"I can't remember," she said.
I was cruel then. I should've spared her the memory, but I pressed. I reminded her of how I've cared for her, how I stayed with her when all others left. I took her shoulders and held her, and I demanded, I ordered her as she would order me.
"By the Ancestors, Saren, tell me!"
"I'm trying, Dashti! I am. I'm trying. I try to think but my thoughts slip out of my hands and everything's darkness and . . ."
She started to cry, which made me realize I hadn't seen her cry in weeks. My poor lady, who is just chaff in the breeze. I held her as I used to do when she was tower-addled; I rocked her and sang the calming song, "Oh, moth on a wind, oh, leaf on a stream." Patience, I told myself, though the knowledge of Khasar's nearness pressed on me, like being out in the heaviest of cold.
I placed my hand on her forehead, and I wove the calming song into the tune for Goda's prayer. The goddess of sleep knows the mind.
After a time, Saren shuddered but stopped crying. Her eyes closed, and she leaned against me as if too tired to sit. While I was singing, My Lord the cat nosed the door ajar and leaped onto her lap, purring under her hand.
She took a deep breath, leaned into me more fully, and told the story she'd been keeping for seven years. "I was twelve years old and was visiting Lord Khasar with my father. His house was vast and cold, like my father's but darker, heavier. We ate a huge feast. I knew my father had hopes of betrothing me to Khasar, but I didn't pay any mind. It seemed as though it had nothing really to do with me. They talked and I ate and played with a little dog that begged under the table. Sometimes I felt Khasar watching me.
"I had a room to myself while we stayed in his house. I thought it was such fun at first. I'd never been alone before, and I could run around the room and climb on the furniture and not worry about my maids and my father and what they thought of me. But at sundown, one of Khasar's men came to my door. His name was Chinua. He was Khasar's war chief and had constantly been at his side. He said my father and Khasar sent him to fetch me."
Her forehead furrowed, but she didn't open her eyes. "I was afraid," she stated simply. "I thought my father would have me do something humiliating before Khasar, like make me dance while they laughed. Or he might slap me, just for show. He never slapped me when we were alone, only in front of people. While I didn't dare refuse my father's call, I did wonder why Chinua seemed full of some secret joke.
"He took me to a courtyard outside Lord Khasar's house, hidden from the eyes of windows. My father wasn't there. Lord Khasar was. He called me Saren. He said, 'Fitting that a girl named for moonlight should see me as only the moon knows me. What do you say, Chinua, is it time to show myself to this moon?' He smiled as the sun finished setting, then he took off all his clothes until he was naked."
"Naked?" This part surprised me. To be naked outside is utter submission, and to be unclothed before anyone besides family is humiliation. "That doesn't sound like Khasar. Why would he willingly debase himself?"
Saren shook her head. "It was different with him. It was as though he was naked to embarrass me. It was so strange how Khasar just stood there and laughed at my discomfort. So strange, and I was too afraid to do anything, even to look away. Then the last of the sunlight faded, and I realized why he'd taken off his clothes. It was so they wouldn't rip." She shook. "In the darkness he changed, Dashti. Right in front of me, Khasar changed from a man into a beast. A wolf."
She was quiet for a time and I was glad she was. I had to make sense of this in my own head. In one way it seemed impossible, and in another I felt as if I'd known this all along.
"At first I thought he meant to kill me," Saren continued. "But then I noticed a goat on a tether, and so did Khasar the wolf. Chinua held my head and made me watch while the wolf devoured the animal. I was sure I'd be next, but after the goat was a wrecked carcass, Chinua moved us behind a fire. The wolf ignored us, sniffed the air, and ran off into the woods.
"Chinua laughed and laughed, and while he laughed he told me things. That his lord had gone off to hunt in the woods until sunup. That his lord had made quite a bargain with the desert shamans and now was the greatest hunter in all the realms. He said, weren't we lucky to be the only ones alive to know Lord Khasar's secret? Once his lord had allowed another girl to witness his transformation, but she'd told a boy. Afterward, both were found in a pile of their own innards, and if I ever told a soul, I'd be the next goat."
Saren's eyes fluttered, then she closed them again. "I saw Lord Khasar the next morning, and he smiled at me and touched my braids and told me I was beautiful. He'd eaten that goat and hunted other things in the woods as well, and yet when I looked in his eyes, I knew he's never full."
"He killed our tower guards," I said, realizing it as I spoke. "As a wolf, he attacked them, and all those guards with their weapons couldn't kill him. You knew all along and yet you didn't dare tell me."
She sat up and opened her eyes, speaking straight at me with no fear. "I'm telling you now. Khasar becomes a beast at night. In the dark, he's a wolf. I want you to know. I guess he'll kill me like the goat now that I've told, but I don't care anymore. Even if I have to die, I want it to be over. I'm tired of being afraid."
"I'll find a way to end it," I told her.
She rested her head on my shoulder again and didn't cry. I thanked her and I sang to her, and she sighed like a traveler who can rest at last. My poor lady. All she's been for years is a frightened little girl. I've promised her I'll make it better, and I will. I must.
