I was about to tilt my head, to indicate my question, when the wolf of shadow howled again. Koryak's blade flashed back into its sheath when he heard the creature had moved further away. We waited another few minutes before leaving, but I knew the danger was far from over.
On the third day, we came to a stop. Koryak and Anastasia argued at the front of the line, their voices muted by the snowy expanse. The moon was thicker, giving a silver cast to their forms. Ana was pointing a northwesterly direction, while Koryak was pointing east.
After a ten-minute argument, Koryak gathered three other warriors with him and disappeared into the night, heading east. The rest of the party murmured amongst themselves.
Ana came to the middle and spoke to me quietly in Russian.
"Koryak won't be gone long. We must speak quickly."
"You know who am I?" I asked.
She nodded tightly. "Of course, Mother. I knew it as soon as I heard your voice. Later you must reveal your secret of youth and our magical heritage."
"I only learned of it a few years ago. How did you guess?" I asked.
"How else do two women wander the snowy wastes of Siberia with few weapons," she said mockingly. "But we don't have time for this. I need to warn you about the village and the khan."
She glanced behind her, checking to see if Koryak was returning. "My husband, Anton, is khan of the Yaran people."
This was not good news. Anton had been the reason Ana had fled Moscow. I had not been kind to him, and he had no love for me.
Ana frowned.
"In Ice Lake, there's a way to heal your hands that won't draw the wolves, but we'll need his permission," she said.
"What makes you think he'll help me after what I said to him all those years ago?" I asked.
Before I could ask another question, Koryak returned. Ana marched to the front of the line, and after an explanation from Koryak, the party continued the journey.
I hoped when we arrived in Ice Lake, I'd find that time had healed old wounds. Anton had been a jealous husband. He did not appreciate my influence with Ana. If only he had realized that it would have benefited him. But I had let my sharp tongue rule that final day before they left.
As khan, the leader of his people, he could make life difficult for me. Especially since it did not appear that Ana and he were in good relations, or she would have remained in the village, rather than live at the outpost.
I relayed the information to Rowan, who wouldn't speculate on how they might heal me. She said she had learned long ago that the universe was always stranger than one realized, and whatever could happen, had or would happen eventually, given enough time.
That evening, by the time I crawled into my tent, I was shivering so hard my teeth chattered. At first, I thought it was from the cold, but as soon as Rowan pulled the gloves from my hands, I knew the cause. My left index finger was dead black, and angry red blotches ran down my forearm. Rowan took one look at it and yelled for Koryak.
We were cut back out of the tent, and Rowan used the little private lantern we were allowed to show Koryak my arm. Ana appeared out of the gloom at that moment.
"Should have let me cut hand off," said Koryak. "Now she die."
Translated through me, Ana asked Rowan, "Can you do anything else for the hand?"
Rowan replied, "It needs to be removed or healed. She doesn't have the two days it takes to get to Ice Lake."
Koryak spoke in Russian, staring at me the whole time. "Then we kill her and bury her corpse. We have one spy, why do we need a second?"
"I am yanyani tadibya and wife of khan," said Ana. "I say who lives and dies."
"If you still wife of khan, why hiding in outpost?" sneered Koryak.
Shame and anger rippled across her face, but Koryak didn't back down. That he would challenge her spoke deeply about her current position within the Yaran people. Only that he had chosen to speak his rebuttal in Russian gave me any hope that I wouldn't be killed upon arrival, assuming I lived that long.
"If you want to be yanyani so badly, then challenge me. Or do you already know that you can never win?" said Ana. "So until that day, you will listen to me."
She shifted into the language of the Yaran people and spoke to the group. Her voice carried the challenge that she'd made to Koryak. Most met her gaze and nodded, while a few stared at their feet. After speaking to them, she turned back to us, while Koryak stalked off. The rest of the party moved to the sleds and started unloading one.
"I'm taking you to Ice Lake on my sled," said Ana.
"But it's almost daylight. Won't that risk your village?" I asked.
"It's only a risk to us. As long as we travel the final miles at night, we'll keep the village safe. Traveling during the day will be faster, too," she said.
"And your food?" I asked, teeth chattering.
"They can carry it on their backs," she said. "Your friend will have to travel with the others."
Koryak appeared from the darkness, startling us. "I'm coming. You can't pull sled long time without help."
"I want you to stay with the others," said Ana.
"I'm coming. Haida watch witch woman. If don't like then tell khan when I arrive," he said, bearing his teeth in a defiant manner.
Then he moved off to gather his supplies.
"I suppose I should be thankful. It'll get me there faster," I said.
My daughter's flat gaze told me otherwise.
Within twenty minutes, I was lying on the sled, shivering beneath heavy furs. Rowan had replaced my poultice, and they gave me food and drink. Before we left, Rowan gave me a sisterly kiss on the cheek.
"Save your strength and keep drinking, even if you don't feel like it. Rest as much as you can. I will see you in a few days," she said.
Then the sled started moving. Ana was pulling, while Koryak ran behind the sled. His black-eyed stare was the last thing I remembered before I passed out.
Chapter Nine
I awoke to the glare of sunlight in time to curl out of the furs and vomit into the snow. A passing bush smacked my outstretched head, nearly ripping me off the sled.
Once I righted myself, I burrowed back into the furs, too weak to lift my hands, delirious from the sickness. I had soaked through my underclothes. Only the heavy furs and warm sunlight kept me from freezing to death.
It wasn't until I lay within my cocoon that I realized two things: no one was running behind the sled, and we were traveling across a snowy plain, in full sight of the open sky.
The sled moved at a good clip, as the slope was gently downward. A few trees lurked in my peripheral vision, but not close enough to provide cover from dragons.
Who was pulling the sled? I rotated around, trying to get a glimpse of the person at the lead, but unless I was willing to climb onto my knees, I wouldn't be able to tell. At first, I worried that Koryak had attacked Ana, but if he had, he would have killed me and dumped me off the sled. The other way around was possible, and if so, then I had nothing to worry about and could concentrate on not biting my tongue off from shivering.
My left arm was numb from the elbow to the hand while my right still throbbed. I hoped it wasn't too late. I couldn't imagine losing my arm.
Which made me think of Brassy back in the fort. She seemed to do fine without the arm, except she had a glass version that worked as well as the original. I would have a stump.
I heard someone speaking to me and answered, "Who's there?"
Was it whoever was pulling the sled? I turned on my side, hoping to get a glimpse. Was anyone even pulling my sled? Was I sliding down a mountain, headed towards a ravine?
I could barely produce enough saliva to speak.
"Anasta...Ana." The words were ashy in my mouth.
Had we been attacked and someone had commandeered the sled?
I struggled onto my knees, pushing the heavy furs off my body in a herculean effort.
What was happening? Where were they?
The sled hit a bump, and I crashed forward o
nto my face, buried in the furs. The darkness rose up and swallowed me.
When I woke again, Ana was shaking me. It was still daylight, but the sun had moved in the sky. I couldn't tell what that meant.
The furs had been pulled off my body. I was no longer shivering. I wasn't sure what that meant either, but I knew it wasn't good.
"We're taking a shortcut," said Ana, leaning into my field of view. "You're getting worse. Much worse. We're going to take the hard path."
I nodded, or maybe I just closed my eyes for a bit. When I opened them again, Koryak was looping a rope around my waist and wrapping straps over my shoulders.
Ana spoke to me again from the side, but I couldn't turn my head. "We're lowering you down a cliff. It's only about fifty feet, but it'll save us half a day."
Sled. I tried to say the word sled. How would I ride on the sled if they left it at the top?
Before I could mouth the words, the sled shifted towards the edge, and for a brief, terrifying moment, the yawning expanse sucked me over. I was falling. Pure fear annihilated my thoughts.
Then the slack in the rope pulled taut, cinching beneath my arms until my shoulders were squeezed around my head. I felt like a sack being lowered onto a merchant ship. I worried they hadn't made the rope tight enough. I slipped down and jerked to a stop. Slip. Jerk. Slip. Jerk.
As they eased me down the cliff, the pressure on my arm enflamed my hand with agony. I tried to yell, to tell them to stop, but I knew it was useless since they couldn't hear me and wouldn't want to leave me hanging halfway down the cliff. The only way it would end would be to reach the bottom.
Miraculously, I stopped moving downward and hung in place, swaying back and forth. Was something wrong? Had they misjudged the rope length? Was the storm curling north?
To the south, the wall of snow clouds remained, a grayish-white sheet of fury. As I panned my head to the east, I saw what had made them halt progress. In the distance, moving across the pale blue sky in successive bulges, was an unnatural cloud. It hadn't noticed us. Yet. But it was moving in a direction that would lead it right over our heads.
I imagined they were debating whether or not to drop me so they could take shelter from the dragon. If I had a knife, I might have saved them the trouble. I was delirious from fever. The sickness had taken hold, and the only person who could save me was back with the others.
I knew I shouldn't have left Rowan. Only she had the magic to heal me, wolves of shadow be damned.
The cloud moved through the sky like a lazy snake, undulating from left to right and back again. For a moment, the wind shifted and brought a toothy growl from the beast. I wished I could see its magnificent form.
But maybe that was why I'd never seen a dragon before. They were beings of myth because they hid themselves in the clouds when they took to the air.
The cloud dragon moved inexorably closer. The longer I hung on the cliff, the more likely the dragon would see me and come to investigate, killing Anastasia in the process. I shifted, trying to wiggle out of the makeshift harness, but I was too weak and Koryak had done his job too well.
As it neared, I was transfixed by the way the clouds puffed out at the front, forming in midair like a pillowcase being stuffed with cotton.
When I knew that there was no doubt that it would see me, the creature veered south, towards the sorcerous snowstorm. As it turned, the cloud parted briefly near the bottom, revealing a claw hanging beneath the beast. The talons caught the easterly sun, keratin glittering like jewels before it disappeared in the fog.
The rest of the trip down the cliff was uneventful. My mind whirled with the vision of that one clawed foot, wondering at the majesty of the beast. Despite the likelihood of my demise, should I meet such a creature, I desired above anything else to gaze upon it.
Although I was lost in the delirium of dragons and clouds, somehow I was tucked back onto the sled, and my daughter and Koryak made the journey down the treacherous face of the cliff.
When I awoke later, throat too dry to speak, arms too weak to find water, I found we moved through an earthen tunnel lit with flickering torches. The rock was black, with hazy ice clinging to the surface.
Anastasia ran behind the sled, looking exhausted but determined. When she saw me peeking out from the furs, she gave me a reassuring smile.
The sled passed through a massive gate, a stone door providing a potent seal should intruders arrive. Guards with crossbows and spears, wearing caribou coats, stood behind barriers.
We pulled to a stop inside the cave. Did we have to take a detour? How much further was it to Ice Lake?
I heard Ana's voice along with a few others speaking in the Yaran tongue.
Mustering what strength I could, I sat up, using my right arm since my left was in perpetual agony.
The cave was unlike anything I'd seen before. First, it was immense, stretching out across a vast area. The stone above my head was a dark blue, the color of the sky at dusk. Massive pillars held the ceiling up, which suggested the cave was unnatural, but I'd never heard of an excavation of this size, nor did the Yaran people look capable of such an endeavor.
Had they used magic? Or found this place? It had some vague similarities to Matka, the earth goddess', realm, but it was different enough that I knew that wasn't the case.
As I looked out over the wooden houses, seeing people move between them as they would in any village, I realized the floor of this cave was lower than my present position. The whole cave floor seemed like a bowl.
Some of the houses had fallen into disrepair, with holes in the roof. I saw no dogs or other animals, not even chickens in pens.
Ana appeared at my side with a water pouch in her hand. She squirted the cold liquid into my mouth.
"How much further?" I croaked.
Ana's tired face broke into weak laughter. "How much further? We're here. This is Ice Lake."
Ice Lake?
I looked again at the dark blue ceiling, the tall pillars, and the bowl that formed the bottom of the village. The stone walls were encrusted with ice falls, like jewelry hanging from a dark neck.
Then I realized where I was. Ice Lake. Inside the lake. Somehow they'd removed the water while keeping the upper crust, forming a shield over the village. From above it would look like a snow covered lake, which meant we were far enough north that it never melted.
Ana's face grew serious when two men arrived with a pull cart. I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn't work, so they plucked me from the furs and put me on the cart. I was as weak as a kitten.
Ana patted my leg as she walked beside the cart. I didn't see Koryak, but knew without a doubt he was stirring up trouble.
"We're going to see the khan."
Chapter Ten
The khan's residence had similarities to an Ostrog fort with tall timber-made walls, a heavy wooden door, and a secondary platform above the gate for dropping hot oil and heavy rocks on intruders while they tried to break through the door. The timbers had been coated in an ochre, tarry substance. The structure reminded me of the mead halls of Scandinavia, except with Siberian touches.
Men in caribou coats stained red stood guard outside the doors, wielding spears decorated with colorful strips of cloth. The folds around their eyes made them look restful, but they slammed the butts of their spears onto the wooden floor to signal our arrival.
That the khan, my daughter's husband, would build a defensive structure within the hidden village told me much about his state of mind.
After speaking to the guards, Ana helped me out of the cart, holding onto my side with surprising strength.
"The khan refuses to let anyone come before him who cannot walk on their own feet," she said. "Gather your strength for a little bit longer, Mother, and pray he does not recognize you as I have. I will speak to him and try to convince him that you must be saved."
Though my legs wobbled at each step like a drunken stilt-walker, with Ana's help, I walked into the grand hall of the khan.
&n
bsp; The place was filled with men and women in red caribou coats. They were seated at tables, eating and drinking with hard laughter on their lips. The Yaran people were dark-haired with rosy cheeks. Though the table was sparse, the soldiers seemed well fed compared to the few villagers I'd spied.
A central fire pit filled with glowing coals kept the space comfortable. A younger warrior with a splint on his arm threw fresh wood on the fire. The scents of smoke and pine needles permeated the hall.
Beneath the angled roof, in the area above the rafters, were hundreds of elk and caribou antlers. A thin netting kept them from falling.
At the far end of the room, two chairs were upon a dias. In the first, I recognized the broad shoulders and long dark hair of Anton. The pockmarks across his cheeks had made him less handsome in his youth. As a man in his mid-forties with time and experience etched into his grim countenance, the markings enhanced his looks.
He'd been an accomplished soldier before he fled North with Ana, a dangerous man in the right circumstances. That air about him had deepened; he lounged in his seat like a bored predator waiting for the next hunt.
Next to him, in the seat that should have been my daughter's, was a woman of uncommon beauty. She was half his age, tall, had high cheekbones, and had the annoyed expression of a woman stuck in a place too small for her ambitions.
Worse still, Koryak was by Anton's side, whispering in his ear upon our approach. The room quieted as we made our way across the floor, laughter dying and eyes turning hard, until the clink of Ana's bone trinkets could be heard above the hiss of coals.
Anton spoke first in the language of the Yaran people. His tone was harsh and confrontational, dismissive. Ana's voice did not back down, and though I was sickly and injured, I noticed she did not acknowledge the woman at Anton's side.
Though their exchange continued in Yaran, I was able to follow it by their tone and the heavy glances. Of course, I knew they were speaking about me. A few words that I assumed meant spy were repeated by the khan. Ana responded using a different word for me.
Dragons of Siberia (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 7) Page 5
