“God grants us our fate, and we must suffer it gladly, and with faith.”
“It is true that the gods gave Bakhtiian a vision. That is why all the khaja kingdoms are falling before our armies.”
Jaelle made the sign of the Lady in front of her chest. “Your gods are false gods. If God chooses to punish His own people, it must only be because we have sinned and deserve to suffer his wrath. You are merely the instrument of God’s will.” Then she wondered why she had said such a thing to a man who could probably kill her on the spot, if she offended him.
But his lips quirked. He had a rather sweet smile. She hadn’t noticed it before. “That is true. The gods have given us their blessing.”
How could she have ever thought him a slave? she wondered now. He had the same unseemly arrogance as the rest of them.
The clatter of horses interrupted them: Princess Rusudani had returned. Jaelle told her at once of Bakhtiian’s request.
“We will go to him,” said the princess.
“My lady, he asked when it would be convenient for him to visit you.”
“A jailer visits those he has imprisoned. We will attend his court.”
They came to Bakhtiian’s court just as the lanterns were being lit around the awning that sheltered him. He sat on a pillow, and the young man who claimed to be his son, Vasil’ii, lit those lanterns and brought cups and a leather flask filled with the drink they called komis. He acted, in truth, more like a servant than like a prince’s son. Two of the women archers came forward and checked the princess and Jaelle for knives before letting them go forward.
Rusudani knelt on the edge of the carpet. Bakhtiian gestured for Vasil’ii to bring forward a pillow for her to sit on. Jaelle knelt at a respectful distance to one side. The holy book lay open on a pillow beside him.
“I give you greetings, Bakhtiian,” said the princess, and Jaelle translated, “and I render thanks to God Who has brought me from my father’s house across great distances to the tents of the jaran. I pray to Hristain, under Whose dominion we all live and die, that He grant you a long life.”
“I have a question.” He quoted from the gospel of the witness of the light that took Hristain to Heaven. “How is this explained, that a person might travel up into the heavens on light alone?”
“God’s power is great,” said Rusudani, “and by God’s will alone any man can ascend to heaven, should he only hold to the laws which God passed down through his holy book to us.”
Bakhtiian tapped his fingers on the open pages of the book, looking thoughtful. It was strange to sit so near him. He had a stern face, bearded and dark. His gaze was piercing. “I have ascended to the heavens,” he said softly, “when the gods took my spirit from my body and lifted me up to their lands. That is how the Singers of our people make their journey. Do you mean that this man you call both Hristain and the Son of God traveled himself up to the heavens, body and spirit together?”
“God lifted him, Bakhtiian. He ascended on the light. That is the account given us in the holy book.”
He made some comment in his own language to his son, who stood like a slave behind him. Vasil’ii shook his head. Bakhtiian turned back to the princess. “Did the bright light on which Hristain ascended to heaven leave a mark of its burning on the ground? After he had gone?”
“The gospels do not speak of any burning. But God’s hand is so powerful that he might blind us with the brightest light without leaving behind the least trace of its passing. In our pride we seek to imitate God’s power, but all power granted us on earth is granted to us by God.”
Bakhtiian ignored these protestations of God’s power. “In this book—” He tapped the pages again. “—there is no mention of burning, it is true, except that three of the accounts of Hristain’s ascent into the heavens mention the light. But might there be other stories, other accounts of the same events?”
“The Recitation is God’s holiest book. In it God speaks to us through his chosen witnesses.”
One of the lanterns flared and sputtered out. Jaelle took it as a sign. She felt her heart pound in her chest, drowning the world for an instant, and then it steadied and faded. She translated Rusudani’s words, but she went on, speaking her own words. “There is an account of Our Lady’s travels, my lord, as spoken by The Pilgrim herself and written down by a foreign scribe who came to the knowledge of God through her ministry. In it she speaks of the light that took Hristain into Heaven, and of the fire of God’s eye that scorched the earth beneath.”
His gaze fastened on her. She felt acutely uncomfortable. “What is this account? Why is it not in this book?”
Jaelle clasped her hands hard in her lap. Rusudani already was looking at her, looking puzzled, looking… suspicious. “It is called the Gospel of Isia of Byblos, my lord.”
Rusudani leapt to her feet and raised a hand as if to ward off Jaelle. “How dare you mention that heretical work!” Jaelle shrank back, murmuring a prayer to the Pilgrim. She had not realized how much Rusudani could understand. “Isia’s false words brought about the breach between the north and the south. She is anathema.” Jaelle had never seen Rusudani look so angry. “Granting divinity to Peregrina Pilgrim, when all know she was, like the Accursed One, daughter of the shepherd Ammion.”
Jaelle drew herself up. Her covenant was, first of all, to God. “How could she have been the daughter of Ammion when she was twined in the womb with the Holy Son, born with him wrapped in the same caul? How else could she have sought and found his sundered remains? How bathed him in the life-giving milk, if she did not partake of God’s holiness as well?”
“Heretic! Apostate! I have endured your company thus far, hoping to bring you into the True Faith, but I will endure it no longer! You are henceforth cast out from my service. If God has mercy on you, you will learn humility.”
Stunned, Jaelle clutched the cloth of her skirts in her hands and prayed.
“What does Princess Rusudani say?” asked Bakhtiian mildly. His arrogance was so complete that no disturbance troubled him.
But at his words, Rusudani’s enraged expression changed. She stilled. She drew her hand back to her side and after a long pause, her lips moving in a prayer, she sank back down on to the pillow.
Jaelle felt the fierce pain of victory. God had made His judgment. For Princess Rusudani could not speak to them except through her. Here, with the jaran, she was not expendable.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Recitation
“KIREYEVSKY! FIX MY BRIDLE.”
After six hands of days riding south with Bakhtiian and his army of twenty thousands, Vasha no longer flinched when his father spoke to him.
“I want to sit down.”
Vasha took the bridle, slung it over his shoulders, and rolled out the carpet for his father to sit on, tossing down three pillows, since Ilya would inevitably have visitors now that they had halted for the night. He examined the sky, decided that probably it was going to rain, and set up the awning as well, then his father’s traveling tent. Got him komis, and something to eat. He had grown so efficient that now Bakhtiian rarely spoke to him at all.
When all these things were taken care of, he lit the lanterns and sat down on the farthest back edge of the carpet, got out a new strip of leather, and began to fix the bridle.
Two of the commanders, Nikita Kolenin and Vladimir the Orphan, had come by, and they sat, laughing and talking about men’s concerns. Vasha saw that the komis was running low. He jumped up and refilled the flask, having to search some way through camp to find more. When he returned, Bakhtiian took the flask from him without a word.
But in some ways it was a blessing. At first, each time his father had spoken to him had felt like a stab into his flesh. Now his father’s presence was merely like salt poured continually onto an open wound.
A rider appeared, dismounted, and hurried up to the awning.
“Bakhtiian! Andrei Sakhalin is riding in with a jahar of one hundred, from Sarai.”
Ilya r
aised his eyebrows, but he did not look overly surprised. “Send him in to me when he arrives.” He glanced back at Vasha.
Vasha ducked away from his gaze. He knew what was expected of a servant. He lived in a kind of numb haze, trying to anticipate every task so that he need never actually be ordered to do anything. But he got up and trotted out to find more komis, and more food. He knew by now which of the soldiers and archers were sympathetic to him, and which ignored him.
Returning to the awning, he was brought up short by the sight of Katerina sitting perfectly at ease between her Cousin Ilya and Andrei Sakhalin. He swore under his breath. But, gods, he didn’t intend to let her defeat him. Taking in a deep breath, he walked forward and without meeting anyone’s eyes got out cups and poured komis all round. Then he sat down in his usual place and went back to the bridle.
“I am surprised to see you here, Sakhalin,” Ilya was saying, “but I am overjoyed to hear that the gods have granted Galina another healthy child.”
“Even if it was only another boy,” added Katya.
“A boy may do his part by riding in the army.” Sakhalin sipped at his komis, unnettled by Katya’s remark. “I rode to Sarai to witness the child’s birth. Now I am returning to my garrison in Dushan. I have received word of a revolt being instigated by the king’s younger son, Prince Janos, and I think I had better get there quickly and execute him. That should discourage any others.”
Vasha risked a glance at his father to see how Ilya would take this remark, but Ilya said nothing. The lantern light cast him into high relief, and Vasha wished fiercely, painfully, that he, too, might be able to sit so still and without comment or action invest his surroundings with the weight of his authority, as his father could.
“What do you intend, Katya?” Bakhtiian asked instead.
“I am returning to my jahar.”
“Your mother says it is time for you to get married.”
“Marry me to Prince Janos of Dushan, who is about to be executed. That would please me.”
“A not unthinkable idea.”
Katya’s features underwent a swift change. She leapt to her feet and stalked away from the gathering without a word.
“Surely you can’t mean it?” asked Sakhalin, sounding almost nervous.
“I know nothing about Prince Janos of Dushan. If he is a troublemaker, then certainly you must execute him. But he may have other motives. A son without prospects who has strong feelings might be amenable to other kinds of alliances.”
“Ah,” replied Andrei Sakhalin in an odd tone. “Well, I will ride with you as far as Parkilnous. After that we will ride west to Dushan.”
“You honor us by your company,” said Ilya so blandly that Vasha could not tell whether he was being polite, sincere, or sarcastic.
Sakhalin made his good-byes and left.
“You don’t mean it, do you?” asked Vasha into the silence. “That you would let a khaja prince marry Katya?”
“Why not?” Ilya did not look at him. He opened up his copy of the holy book Princess Rusudani had given him. He always started at the same place: the account of the ascension of Hristain into the heavens. “It might prove to be a worthwhile alliance.”
“Aunt Sonia would never agree. Mother Orzhekov would be furious. It is one thing to say that women have no choice in marriage, but quite another to force a jaran woman to accept the attentions of a khaja man, prince or not.”
“Have you fixed that bridle yet?”
Vasha winced. Ilya went back to reading. After a bit, another commander came back. Vasha was glad of the excuse to leave, but he had no sooner gotten out of earshot than he was waylaid by Katerina.
“What are you doing? Acting as Bakhtiian’s servant? How can you stand it?”
Vasha stiffened. “I survived two years as the most despised member of the Kireyevsky tribe. I can survive this.”
“It’s disgraceful how he treats you.”
“He may treat me any way he wishes! It’s his right—”
“—as your father? Do you think anyone acknowledges the connection?”
“Katerina Orzhekov, I politely request that you leave me alone.” He brushed past her and kept walking. To his vast surprise, and disappointment, she left him alone.
Indeed, as they rode on, one day passing into the next, she kept herself to herself. Eleven days later they rode into Parkilnous, and the city elders begged Bakhtiian to allow them to present him with gifts and to lay down a feast in his honor. Vasha served his father at the feast and managed to overhear one elder whispering to another about a traveling friar who had been imprisoned for preaching a false gospel about the imminent end of the world, in which God would obliterate the sun in a blinding flash of light and bring Heaven to earth.
He related this information to his father when they rode back to camp that night. In the morning, Ilya sent a message to the elders asking that he be allowed to speak with the arrested man. Andrei Sakhalin arrived to make his farewells just as the messenger returned with the elders’ reply.
“They’ve sent him where?” Ilya asked, annoyed.
“He was sent away two days since, Bakhtiian,” said the messenger, one of Konstans Barshai’s guardsmen, “in a cart, bound for a place called Urosh Monastery, where the khaja priests will pass judgment on him.”
“You are interested in this khaja criminal, Bakhtiian?” asked Andrei Sakhalin, sitting down suddenly.
“I am interested in certain words it is reported that he has said, yes. I would like to interview him.”
Sakhalin took his quirt out of his belt and drew it through his hands. “Urosh Monastery lies about seven days’ ride off the main road that the army is taking south, but it does lie in territory I control, and I am riding that way in any case.”
“Why would he be taken there?”
“The dyan of their priests lives there. He is named in their tongue a presbyter. He came to the king’s city to give his respects to me, which he did with proper humility. He was an old man, but my interpreter said that he had no sons or grandsons to follow after him, that it is their way to elect a new presbyter from among the ranks of the most worthy after he is gone.”
“I must think about this.”
Sakhalin rose. “I will ride with the army one more day, then, before I turn west.”
Ilya gave him a curt nod but scarcely noticed his leaving. He saddled Kriye himself, forgetting that usually he had Vasha do it for him, and rode that day tight-lipped and preoccupied. That evening when they halted for the night, he sent Konstans Barshai to ask Princess Rusudani to attend him.
“You’re still thinking about the khaja priest, aren’t you?” asked Vasha.
“I am thinking about the bright light that appeared from heaven. Here, give me that carpet. I’ll unroll it.”
“Tess taught us that the khaja might think the words our gods have spoken to us equally strange to what we think of theirs.”
“Certainly that is true. But eight years ago the captain of a group of jaran riders who found my wife wandering out in me hills beyond Karkand saw a bright light in the sky which vanished just before he found her. That same night Tess’s brother Charles disappeared. I thought nothing of the captain’s report, until I read these words.”
Vasha could see that his father was in the grip of one of his obsessions, and he knew him well enough to know that he would be impatient and cross until he had found some satisfaction. Aunt Sonia had once told Vasha that Ilya had gone for years in this state, until the tribes had united utterly behind him. But more importantly, Ilya was talking to him. “Do you think the khaja god came down and lifted Charles Soerensen up into heaven?”
“No.” Having unrolled the carpet, Ilya rose and began pacing, slapping his gloves against one thigh. “I think he went to Erthe.”
“What was the bright light?”
“I thought the captain who gave me the report saw the city burning from a distance, and mistook it. Now… I don’t know. He also said there was a freshly
burned patch of ground in the valley in which he found Tess.”
Princess Rusudani arrived, attended by a jaran girl who now helped her around camp. Jaelle, who had been given her own tent by Bakhtiian in recognition of her status as a valued interpreter, arrived a moment later. The two khaja women glanced at each other, and Vasha was surprised to see the princess look away first. Ever since the awful scene many days ago, when the princess had fallen into a rage and screamed words Vasha did not understand at her poor servant, Princess Rusudani had seemed less calm, less sure of herself, but Jaelle had oddly enough become more confident, and had even (according to one of the archers whom Vasha lay with occasionally) begun working very hard to learn khush.
Stefan appeared and threw himself down beside Vasha. He touched Vasha on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Is there something wrong with Katerina? She asked me to lie with her last night.”
Anger shot through Vasha. He hooked his fingers into his belt, a better choice, he thought, than slugging his best friend. “And?”
“But all she did was cry and hold on to me. She told me that you said you never wanted to talk to her again. Is that true? It made her very unhappy.”
Princess Rusudani and Ilya exchanged formal greetings, translated through Jaelle. While Rusudani spoke, Jaelle glanced up once, swiftly, to mark Stefan’s presence.
Vasha shoved Stefan away. “You’re too ugly for any woman to want to lie with anyway, except as a brother,” said Vasha in a low voice, weirdly happy about the story Stefan had just told him.
Stefan snorted. “That isn’t what Valisa Savko told me.”
“I don’t believe it. Why should she bother with you? You’re not even a soldier.”
Stefan smirked.
“Liar!”
Ilya glanced back at them. Vasha clamped his lips shut over his next words: Why should beautiful Valisa Savko, whose prowess with the bow was legendary and who was famous for having single-handedly killed ten khaja soldiers with ten successive arrows, want to lie with Stefan? Many young women had approached his father on this journey south. Only Valisa had actually gotten inside Bakhtiian’s tent.