Naamahs Curse

Page 41

 

  I was able to augment the stores of dried meat and hardened cheese that Vachir had given me with fresh game, mostly groundhog. I’d had the sense to gather as much timber as my pack-horse could carry before we left the mountains, and I parceled it out carefully, allowing myself a small fire to cook with when I had fresh meat.

  The gamey, greasy groundhogs were no tastier than I remembered, but I came across wild onions from time to time. With those and a handful of barley from a sack Aleksei and I had purchased in Udinsk, groundhog made for a tolerable stew.

  One good thing about the wide-open steppe was that one could see for leagues beneath the immense blue sky. I had no trouble spotting encampments and giving them a wide berth, nor avoiding travellers and herdsmen, summoning the twilight if necessary.

  All in all, I made good progress.

  Despite it, Bao’s diadh-anam remained dim and distant.

  I’d been travelling alone for over a week when I spotted a Tatar camp larger than any I’d seen since the spring gathering on the horizon. Out of habit, I began to veer well away from it, but curiosity niggled at me. One ger amidst the camp dwarfed the others, a mighty dome of white felt. I’d seen one that large only once before, and it had belonged to the Great Khan Naram.

  Impulse warred with common sense within me.

  I had no desire to confront the Great Khan himself, suspecting he wouldn’t hesitate to clap me in chains and send me back to Vralia.

  And yet…. .

  The Great Khan Naram had sent Bao toward whatever fate had befallen him. If the Khan knew, mayhap others did, too.

  Others, like his daughter, the Tatar princess Erdene, who was said to be angry with her father.

  I breathed the Breath of Earth’s Pulse, centering myself and thinking. I was riding toward the unknown, and like as not, danger. The D’Angelines of Siovale province, Shemhazai’s folk, had a saying: All knowledge is worth having. And now when I thought of Shemhazai, the most scholarly of Blessed Elua’s Companions, I pictured Aleksei’s face—grave, ascetic, and beautiful.

  “What do you think, my friends?” I asked the horses. “Is it a sign?”

  They flicked their ears, not understanding. The pack-horse lowered his head and cropped at the grass.

  It would be good, very good, to have some idea what I was getting myself into, to have some idea what had already befallen Bao. I made up my mind, choosing impulse over common sense.

  Even so, I did not intend to be foolish about it. I studied the Great Khan’s encampment and its movements, then stuck to my original plan, veering east to pass it, then veering back west to set up my own small camp alongside a bend in the river I had been following, well to the south where herds had already been pastured.

  I watered the horses and turned them loose to graze, apologizing to them for the sparse fare. I gnawed on strips of dried meat for my supper. And when dusk began to settle over the plain, I saddled my mount, summoned the twilight, and backtracked toward the Great Khan’s camp.

  It was almost dark by the time I drew near, although I could see clearly in the twilight. At a hundred yards out, I dismounted and tethered my mare to a stake.

  “Be silent, great heart,” I whispered to her, touching her thoughts. I stroked her thick, coarse forelock and scratched the base of her ears. “The darkness will hide you, but I cannot shield us both. ”

  She bent her neck and turned her head to lip softly at my palm, huffing through her nostrils.

  I kissed her muzzle. “Good girl. ”

  The last hundred yards, I crossed on foot, my Tatar bow held loosely in one hand, the quiver slung over my shoulder.

  It was a familiar scene, albeit one rendered strange by the twilight. The Great Khan and his folk were celebrating and the airag was flowing freely, the pungent scent of fermented mare’s milk riding the night air. Fires of dried dung burned, silvery in the twilight, folk gathered around them.

  Unseen, I prowled through the camp until I spotted Erdene.

  Bao’s wife.

  In so many cultures, this would have been unthinkable, that a princess should be so accessible and ordinary. But the Tatars, like the Maghuin Dhonn, live close to nature. I waited until Erdene excused herself, made her unsteady way to the latrine alone.

  I followed her.

  I waited until she had finished.

  And when Bao’s Tatar princess began to make her way back to her father’s great ger, I drew the twilight deeper into my lungs and blew it softly around her, spinning it around her like a web, drawing and nocking an arrow as I did.

  Erdene shrieked.

  “Hello, my lady,” I said softly.

  Her almond-shaped eyes were stretched wide, showing the whites. “Are you a ghost? Have you come to haunt me?” Her chest rose and fell in a panic. “I swear, I did not know what my father intended!”

  “I know. ” I kept my voice gentle, but I also kept my arrow trained on her. “I am no ghost, my lady. You are encompassed in my magic, nothing more. It will not harm you. Nor will I, if you are truthful. Tell me, where did your father send Bao, and what has befallen him?”

  “No ghost?” Her voice trembled.

  I shook my head, hoping to coax a measure of trust from her. “Flesh and blood, I promise you. ”

  She wasn’t convinced. “How did you escape from the Falconer’s men if Bao did not find you? No one escapes. ”

  “The Falconer?” I was puzzled. “Is that what you call the Patriarch?”

  Erdene looked blankly at me. “Who is the Patriarch?”

  “Pyotr Rostov, the Patriarch of Riva. Your father betrayed me to a pair of Vralian priests in his service…. . ” I could see that the words meant nothing to her. “You didn’t know. ”

  She shook her head. “No. He said the Falconer had sent for you. ”

  “Who is this Falconer? Is that where Bao’s gone?” I lowered the bow a few inches. “He’s in trouble, my lady. Far away, and in trouble. Mayhap injured, mayhap ill, mayhap imprisoned—mayhap all three, or worse. I don’t know. If you care for him at all, I beg you to tell me the truth. ”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Erdene gave a curt nod. “For Bao’s sake, I will help you, even though he does not deserve it. But not here. There is too much to tell. If I don’t return soon, someone will come searching for me, and it’s not safe for you to be here. ”

  “They will not find us unless I release the twilight,” I assured her.

  She shook her head again, stubbornly. “I need to see you in daylight, to be certain you are flesh and blood. Tell me where to find you. Tomorrow at dawn, I will ride out to hunt alone. ”

  It was my turn to hesitate.

  “It’s not a trick. ” Erdene read my thoughts and gave a grim little smile. “I swear by the sky itself, I will not lead anyone to you. And I have your things,” she added. “I can bring them to you. ”

  “My things?” I echoed.

  The Great Khan’s daughter nodded, plucking a dagger from her belt. I raised the bow automatically, but she only showed the blade to me. It had a hilt of white ivory carved in the shape of a dragon’s coils. “See? This my father gave to me after it was taken from you. The rest I had fetched from Batu’s ger before they knew you were missing. Your bow, your satchel of trinkets. ”

  “Why?” I felt bewildered. “Were they trophies?”

  “Trophies?” Erdene gave a forlorn laugh. “No. Oh, perhaps at first. But after Bao left…. . ” She lifted her shoulders in a faint, weary shrug. “In a strange way, they were all I had to remember him by. ” Reversing the dagger, she held it out to me hilt-first. “Take it. It’s yours, as surely as he was. I’ll bring the rest tomorrow. ”

  Warily, I eased my drawn bowstring and reached out to take the blade. I had not forgotten that Erdene had held a dagger to my throat and threatened to cut out my tongue during our only previous conversation, nor that she was quick and strong.
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  But she only smiled sadly and let go of the hilt. “Tomorrow, then?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll be camped along the river in the southern pastures. And if you’ve sworn falsely, I will kill you. ”

  With that, I unspun the twilight around her, leaving only myself cloaked in it.

  Erdene blinked at the return of true darkness and my sudden absence. “Tomorrow,” she said to the seemingly empty air, an edge of defiance in her voice. “And you will see! I am no oath-breaker. ”

  I hoped it was true.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Dawn came, breaking golden over the steppe.

  It did not bring a Tatar princess with it.

  I waited restlessly, torn between staying and going. I’d slept poorly, anxious that I’d made a bad decision once more, wishing I had pressed Erdene harder to tell me about this mysterious Falconer fellow.

  Why, oh why, had I trusted her?

  I was an idiot. Oh, I could cloak myself in the twilight when I saw the Khan’s hunting-party come searching for me, and like as not I’d get away; but they would know I was there. They would pursue me. And sooner or later, I would have to sleep—and my campsite and I would be vulnerable.

  I thought wistfully of home. I’d not had time to learn all the myriad possibilities that the gift of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself possessed, but I remembered that when my mother had taken me to attend the vigil at Clunderry, where we remembered Morwen’s folly and Berlik’s cruel sacrifice, there had been a celebration in a glade afterward, and the entire glade had been wrapped in the glimmering twilight.

  It must have been a ward of some sort, for no one was minding it, no one was concentrating on holding the cloak in place. No, they had been reveling in the aftermath of the grave vigil, drinking uisghe, feasting, playing music, and dancing—a rare party for my folk, who seldom gathered in numbers.

  I wondered how it was done.

  My mother hadn’t taught it to me. Mayhap it was a gift she didn’t possess, or mayhap she hadn’t thought it necessary. I didn’t know.

  Trying to distract myself as the sun inched higher above the horizon, I breathed through the cycle of the Five Styles and pondered the matter. I drew the twilight deep into my lungs, and flung it out as far as I could, encompassing the whole of my campsite, my neatly laden packs and gear.

  Pushing myself, I extended it farther, encompassing my grazing horses, doing their best to find fodder in the abandoned pasture. To be sure, I had grown stronger; but I had to hold it, mindful and conscious. The moment I let my awareness lapse, it faded.

  So how did they keep it in place?

  Remembering Master Lo’s teaching, I forced myself to stop thinking about it, to stop worrying at it. To let my thoughts arise one by one, one thought giving birth to another. Once again, I sat cross-legged and breathed the Five Styles, accepting what thoughts came.

  I would figure it out, or I would not.

  Erdene would betray me, or she would not.

  I would find Bao, or I would not.

  A sense of calm settled over me; and strangely, it was Aleksei’s voice that nudged at my thoughts. A memory of a passage from the endless scriptures he had read to me merged with an image in my mind, an image of a compass rose etched on a map, the four cardinal points clearly marked.

  Aleksei’s voice persisted, hesitant and faltering, but persistent nonetheless. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar…. .

  A compass rose, four cardinal points.

  A dragon-hilted dagger, lost and restored.

  All these things converged in my thoughts. “Is it that simple?” I said aloud. I opened my eyes, startled and chagrined to realize I’d had them closed for so long. A quick glance assured me that the horizon was still empty. If Erdene had betrayed me, her father’s men were not coming yet—although neither was she.

  I turned my hands palm upward on my knees, gazing at them. Gazing at the blue veins in my wrists. I breathed the Breath of Earth’s Pulse.

  Mayhap it was that simple.

  Well and so, there was one way to find out. Rising, I called in the horses, tethering them close. I paced around my camp in a circle, glancing at the sun and marking the cardinal points of the compass in my mind.

  I needed anchors.

  Where that thought came from, I could not say; but it arose unbidden in my mind, the image of the compass rose now linked with that of an anchor rising from the deep, dripping with saltwater and seaweed.

  Stones in the river called to me.

  “All right,” I murmured. “All right, then. Stone and sea and sky, and all that they encompass. The life of the flesh is in its blood. Let us see, shall we?”

  The horses watched with pricked ears and curious eyes as I shucked my boots and waded into the river, hoisting my skirts. I selected four smooth, fist-sized stones, carrying them in the apron of my skirt as I waded back to shore.

  I spared another glance toward the horizon.

  Still empty.

  Drawing the dragon-hilted dagger that my princess Snow Tiger had given me and Bao’s princess Erdene had restored to me, I set the sharp point against the ball of my left thumb and pushed, grimacing at the sting as it pierced my skin. A bead of blood welled and gathered there. I dabbed it on one of the river-stones. Another rose to take its place, another and another, until all the smooth stones were anointed.

  I stuck my thumb in my mouth, contemplating them.

  Anchors.

  The word felt right, the stones felt right. Beneath the mildly curious gazes of my horses, I retraced the steps of my circle, placing one blood-smeared stone at each of the four cardinal points of the compass.

  I retreated to the center, and summoned the twilight.

  The anchor-stones flared to life, setting and holding the cloak of the twilight within their compass. Even when I released my conscious hold on it, it remained in place.