by Janzen, Tara
The Turk’s arrogance was gone now, however. Now he was nervous, hair-triggered to every breath taken by anyone in his presence. The shot at dawn had turned his cocksure demeanor to wariness. What he’d found half an hour later embedded in the gate to his compound—a khukri sunk to the hilt, spearing the torn halves of a wanted poster, a quarter section of map, and a yard’s length of roan braid—had twisted his wariness into fear. No mere man had accomplished the feat of sinking twelve inches of blade through solid wood.
“Kautilya wants you back.” The Turk’s silken voice startled her into looking up, something she’d been avoiding. “More so than I had thought possible.”
Kristine kept her silence, watching him with her own mixture of wariness and fear. Kit was out there, somewhere in the night. All she had to do was keep herself together until he came.
The Turk leaned forward and dropped another stick of wood on the fire burning in a pit in the middle of the kitchen’s dirt floor. They were alone in the room. Guards had been posted in the compound, and the other bandits had retired to bedrooms on the second floor, or to one of the other houses chinked together against the canyon wall.
Goats, pigs, and chickens milled about the stonewalled courtyard fronting the main house, adding a strangely domestic ambience to the hideaway. The two blacker-than-sin mastiffs chained to the door, however, kept her from being lulled into anything but the barest surface calm.
Stacks of woolen bags filled with salt and grains were piled high against three of the kitchen’s inner walls, giving the room the look of the inside of a quilted tent. Piled on the other side of the room were several crates of rifles, which Kristine bet were “trade goods.” Nobody needed that much firepower for personal reasons.
“I expected him to come, yes, but out of a sense of duty,” the Turk continued. “He has a great sense of duty, Kautilya does. But this . . .” He lifted the roan braid and let it slide through his fingers back to the table. “This is more than duty.” A frown etched deep lines into his lean cheeks. “I cannot help but wonder what you are to him, Kreestine Richards.”
She watched him stretch lazily back in his chair, then felt his booted foot slide next to hers.
“Maybe you are worth more to him than he is to the Chinese? A wolfish smile replaced the frown, showing a flash of crooked, brown teeth.
She jerked her foot back under her chair. If Kit had ever smiled at her with that much feral intent, she would have sent him packing long before he’d had a chance to steal her heart like the outlaw he truly had become.
She’d seen the poster and thought the sum the Chinese offered was just short of unbelievable, but she had no sympathy and no answer to the Turk’s dilemma. She didn’t know where the greatest profit lay. She couldn’t place a price on her life, let alone guess Kit’s price on her life. But he’d already given the Turk more than he’d given her, a fourth of the map to Chatren-Ma.
All in all, she was having a hell of a time sorting everything out. If he gave the Turk what he’d promised her in order to save her life, did that mean he’d broken his word? At this point, she really didn’t give a darn about Chatren-Ma, but the complicated ethics of the problem were a preferable focus for her mind than the gleam in the Turk’s eye.
“He has had many women,” the Turk said. “But the only time he ever risked his life for one was the night he took mine, the night I took this.” He fingered the braid again.
Oh brother, she didn’t want to hear this. She really didn’t.
“That he was unaware of the female’s pledge to me meant little to me then, but I wonder, Kreestine, are you pledged to him?”
She wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. All she wanted to do was go home. What was Kit waiting for? Why hadn’t he rescued her? He’d had the whole day to think of something.
Good Lord! What was she thinking? The unprecedented selfishness of her thoughts hit home with a disturbing force.
Slumping over the table, she dropped her head into her hands. It was Kit’s life she was bartering away. His life she was willing to risk for only a chance at her own freedom. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give the Turk another weapon.
“No,” she murmured, shaking her head, finally breaking the silence she’d used for sanctuary. Even as she spoke, she prayed her words weren’t true. “I am not pledged to Kautilya Carson. I am nothing to him. Nothing.”
The Turk’s low chuckle filled the room, then he pushed his chair back.
“You lie, Kreestine, but such a sweet lie.” He rounded the table and encircled her wrists with one large, rough hand, pulling her to her feet, close to his chest. She turned her head aside, hiding her face against her shoulder, but the strength of his fingers grasping her chin forced her to meet his gaze.
“Sang Phala, it seems, chose no more of a monk to replace me than the one I would have been.” His deep voice, so near, so soft, caressed her fears to new life; and the rock-solid body pressed against hers put the raw edge of terror on those fears. Neither, though, had the impact of his words.
“You!” she gasped. The Turk was Sang Phala’s nephew, whom Sang Phala had traded . . . to bandits . . . for Kit. Any flicker of hope Kristine might have nurtured, died.
“For too long I have been second to Kautilya. I will not take his leavings tonight.” He released her, and the breath rushed back into her lungs. “But if on the morrow he loses . . .” His voice trailed off in an unspoken threat.
Loses what? Kristine wondered, steadying herself with a hand on the table. Surely not his life. She’d read the characters on the poster. The Chinese wanted the outlaw Carson alive.
And what of her? What would become of her if Kit couldn’t save her? Would she be forever trapped in this lost land, some barbarian bandit’s moll?
The worst of her thoughts didn’t bear thinking, but neither would they be put to rest. They loomed large and impregnable in her mind, like the broad back the Turk turned to her as he lay down on his pallet.
The fire drew her gaze to its glowing embers, and in every flash of energy, every shift of flame, she saw spice-colored eyes, gentle and mysterious, beckoning her to sleep . . . and to dream of him.
Ten
They rode at dawn. Or rather the bandits rode and Kristine held on for dear life, her fingers tangled in a whipping ebony mane. Not that she needed to hold on, for the Turk held her securely in his iron grip on the horse’s blanketed back. Powerful muscles bunched and stretched beneath her as the steed’s flying hooves pounded the ground. But they were no more powerful than the arm wrapped around her waist or the long thighs flanking hers.
Icy wind bit at her cheeks, contrasting sharply with the heat of the masculine body surrounding her from behind. He’d given her a full-length sheepskin coat to wear, the leather softly tanned and embroidered with bright threads of gold and blue, red and green, and the downy fleece turned inward to warm her and caress her skin.
The quarter map Kit had impaled on the compound gate led them out of the canyons to a rocky plain, and then into the next set of canyons beyond. The sun had not yet penetrated the chasms stretched out before them, and after hours of riding at a mile-eating pace, the band slowed their wild mounts, picking their way through the labyrinth of towering walls.
The Turk repeatedly checked the map, leading his men deeper into the maze of rock. More than one bandit cast a wary glance behind himself as the canyons twisted and turned upon one another. A half an hour in, water began gathering in small pools on the ground, running down the striated earth and adding a melodic backdrop to the splashing hooves. Soon the pools connected into a gently flowing stream and mists began to rise, slowly at first, barely a wisp of lightness here and there on the canyon floor. But the farther they went, the thicker the mist became, obscuring both the sight and the sound of the horse’s legs.
Sitting on the lead pony and in front of the Turk, Kristine felt as if she were pushing a vanguard through the fog. The low white cloud drifted down the canyon ahead of them, rolli
ng and billowing, rising ever higher. It hung like gossamer whiffs of smoke released from the black stone that pressed in on them from either side. Unconsciously, she scooted closer to the Turk. His arm tightened around her, as if he, too, needed some kind of reassurance in this strange place Kautilya had brought them to.
A muted whinny from far behind them caused them both to jerk their heads around. Kristine couldn’t control her gasp of dismay, nor the Turk his grunt of surprise. They were surrounded, enveloped by the mists that not only rose before them, but closed behind them as well.
Three other riders, as wild eyed as the horses they rode, floated in and out of the swirling white mass, only three of the ten who’d left with them at dawn.
The Turk jerked hard on the reins, wheeling his horse about, but the animal moved no farther, stopped in midwhirl by a soft whistle penetrating the stillness.
Kristine’s heart lodged in her throat, beating furiously. Kit!
But where?
She scanned the emptiness around her, trying to see past the fog, but to no avail. The world was invisible. She turned to the Turk, but the barely masked fear chiseled on his face forced her gaze back to the riders. One by one, in growing stupefaction, she watched them being swallowed up by mists.
“You fool!” she said fiercely, turning on the man who held her and cuffing him on the shoulder. His eyes quickly lost their glazed expression, flashing at her with the same combination of fear and anger she felt inside herself. “Don’t you know any better than to—”
“Quiet, woman!” he ordered.
“—let your enemy make your choices for you?” she finished anyway, compelled by her quickening panic. She didn’t know who to trust anymore. Kit had gotten her into this, and she’d be damned if she liked his methods of getting her out.
The stallion shifted restlessly beneath them, transferring his unease to the people astride his back. Kristine tightened her grip on the mane. By God, if she was going to disappear, she wasn’t going to do it without the horse.
The soft whistle cut through the air again, and the horse picked up first one hoof, then another, following a path only he could see. A rifle came into view at Kristine’s side, brushing her arm.
“I think it’s a little late for that, bucko,” she gritted through her teeth. She wasn’t worried for Kit. He obviously had everything under control. Everything. From the horse, to her, the Turk, and the very elements of the air.
But how much control could one man wield when he turned it on nature and this maze of earth and troubled sky?
Things of power . . . The phrase came back to her, haunting in its accuracy. She’d fallen in love with a man so far above her on the evolutionary scale, there could be no hope for it. If she’d had even an ounce of adrenaline to spare, she would have used it to salve her breaking heart. But survival had a funny way of superseding all other emotions, and her survival was very much in doubt at the moment.
Could he even see her, feel her presence, in this quagmire? She hadn’t made much of a mark in the outside world, where everything was more cut and dried, more crystal clear. How could she possibly be making an impact on the bottom of a canyon to nowhere?
The stallion suddenly picked up his pace, snorting and tossing his head. Kristine bounced along for a few yards, until he broke into a full-stride gallop.
“Damn him,” she heard the Turk curse as he leaned low over her back, flattening her against the horse’s neck.
The hell-bent ride through the shifting white blindness seemed an unfitting end for a woman who had lived her life in relative calm, until an auburn-haired stranger had shown up on her doorstep. Her life had taken a turn for the worse that day—and a definite but terribly short-lived turn for the better, she admitted in the one small part of her mind not consumed with her last prayers.
The canyon walls moved ever closer, the stream grew ever deeper, and still the stallion plunged on, driven by forces Kristine was incapable of understanding and the Turk couldn’t control.
Suddenly the canyon ended in a blank wall of stone. Kristine instinctively braced herself for the inevitable crash, but the Turk hauled back on the reins, crushing her within the straining vise of his arms. The horse reared and screamed, and the echoes of that shrill cry reverberated down the length of their tomb.
Before the stallion could recover his footing, the Turk swung his leg over the hindquarters, dragging her with him off the raging beast.
So help her God, Kristine thought, slumping over the Turk’s arm, if the Turk didn’t get to him first, she just might murder Kit herself.
As a rescue attempt, his was failing on all counts. Scaring her to death was proving to be as effective and far more imaginative than anything the Turk might have come up with. She didn’t have a breath left in her body, or a muscle in working order.
“Will you die for her, Turk?”
The voice came from above them, disembodied by the mists, ringing with cold sincerity, and followed by the authority of a neatly placed gunshot. The Turk flinched and almost dropped her.
One-handed, he swung his rifle up and fired a return shot.
“And I ask once more. Will you die for her, Turk?” The voice came from a different direction.
The Turk jerked her around and fired again. Kristine knew if she’d had even half her normal strength, she could break away from him. And truly, being between two men shooting at each other seemed the most dangerous position of the three. All the nothingness around her, though, kept her firmly by the Turk’s side, or rather, firmly in front of him. She’d rather die where she stood than get swallowed up.
Ah, Kreestine . . . where is your faith?
“Oh, no,” she whispered shakily. “Oh, no, you don’t.”
“Silence!” the Turk hissed, tightening his arm around her. Kristine tightened right back, grabbing him wherever she could get a handhold.
And your courage, my love?
“Hah!” she scoffed. “Try about ten thousand miles back!”
“Silence, I say!”
He got it, about a ton and a half of it in deafening stillness. The eeriness of so much silence gnawed at her nerves and his. Even the stallion had disappeared.
Kit grinned down at them from where he knelt on his lofty perch, well satisfied with the state of her mind and the courage she denied. He took a moment—and only a moment—to rest his forehead on his upraised knee, thanking the gods for sending her to him. The meteorologically induced mists of Chatren-Ma would lift with the noonday sun, when shafts of light struck the canyon floor and warmed the air. He wanted her back before then.
The bandit was a Bonpo, a believer in shamans and demons. Kit had lured him to a place where both might reside, resisting the fierce urge for immediate reprisal in the Turk’s compound, where death would have been the only answer. Kit knew the exact limit of his own skills, and he knew the Turk’s. The match was too close to call with a degree of safety for Kristine.
But in Chatren-Ma he held the deciding factor—fear. The Turk couldn’t avoid it, and Kit had faced it before, in this very place. He’d gotten lost in the early morning mists on his search for the Kāh-gyur. They’d sneaked up on him, lapping at his feet, then his ankles, and all too quickly his knees.
The Turk was feeling their power now. Kit sensed his fear, and Kristine’s. For that he had regrets.
To further his goal he took aim again.
The Turk jumped, swore, and thrust Kristine away from him, but not before she saw the seam on the sleeve of his coat slice open. It was the last thing she saw, for in her next breath she was swallowed up.
Shadows moved within shadows, surrounding her with damp fingers of trailing moisture.
“Kit?” she whispered. When no answer was forthcoming, she tried another name, a name filled with as much mystery as the place. “Kautilya?”
Still nothing.
She took a tentative step with her hand outstretched, searching for the canyon wall. She found more nothing. Had he moved the earth too?
>
Kit dropped off the ledge, landing on his feet with his knees bent, and fired another shot. It would be so easy to kill the Turk, but the compassion he’d forsworn five days before stayed his hand. Sang Phala had not left him, and the old man had not trained him for murder.
Yet he would have a token for this week’s work, and he would retrieve his khukri. He checked Kristine and fired again at the Turk, urging the man farther away, down toward a cut in the wall, taking more cloth from the left side of his thick wool coat so the Turk would not mistake his direction.
Kristine kept creeping away from the sound of gunfire, one inching step at a time, drawn by what she thought was a lifting of the mists ahead of her. Soon she could see her hand in front of her face. Then the stone of the canyon wall came into view.
And then Chatren-Ma, the hand-chiseled walls of rock clinging like a puzzle to the steep mountainside, rimmed by morning sunlight and beckoning her nearer.
* * *
Kit knelt on the ground, tracking Kristine’s trail and swearing softly to himself. He should have known better than to leave her on her own. She’d physically wandered away from the box canyon the same way her mind often wandered off, on a tangent he hadn’t foreseen. But what set his teeth on edge and tightened his hand into a fist were things she hadn’t foreseen.
She was headed toward Chatren-Ma, and the ancient monastery was not a place for doubts or the faint of heart, or for a believer in anything but truth. He loved her, yes, but only she knew the strength of her own base mettle. If she hadn’t found it yet, she soon would. He needed to be there in case what she found was not enough.
He traced the imprint of her foot in the dust, then slowly lifted his gaze to the towering shelf of rock rimmed with a black slash. She’d passed through the shadow. He had no choice but to follow where he’d planned on going alone.
