Earthly Crown (27 page)

Soerensen smiled, received from Galina a platter heaped with steaming meats and a few precious slices of fruit, and set the platter carefully on the carpet. “This is a clever design.” He unhooked the spoon that dangled from the platter’s lip. “Since you have no tables. You’re well-read, Bakhtiian. Whatever made you decide to travel to Jeds and study there?”

Aleksi crouched, watching the two men. They were alike, in many ways, and underneath the uneasy truce they seemed to be honoring, he thought that perhaps they actually respected one another.

Bakhtiian drew his gaze away from the other man and stared, as he often did when confronting his destiny, at the sky. Twilight lowered over them. Anatoly Sakhalin and Feodor Grekov led two lines of young men along the length of awnings, lighting lanterns at each pole. About thirty paces in front of Bakhtiian, out on the grass, Nadine supervised the building of two stacks of wood, side by side, twin bonfires.

“I desired to know the world,” Bakhtiian said at last, glancing past Soerensen to Soerensen’s sister, who was deep in conversation with the Habakar philosopher, “and I had heard that Jeds cradled the finest university, where one could learn.”

“Know the world?” asked Soerensen, sounding curious and not at all accusatory. “Or conquer it?”

“If I know the world, then it will be mine.”

Soerensen studied the other man. The prince had an ordinary face, similar to his sister’s only in the high cheekbones and blunt chin, but like a well-made saber, his edge was clean and sharp. “You say that with conviction, but without avarice.”

“I want only to lead my people to the destiny that the gods have granted us. Surely that is not so different from what you want for your people, for Jeds.”

As the sky purpled to dusk, a single star appeared, the bright beacon of the evening star. Soerensen considered it, as if it contained some answer for him, and then regarded Bakhtiian with a steady gaze. “Not so different. I want to go to Morava. The place Tess visited when she first came here.”

“It’s north from here, out on the true plains. The ancient home of the
khepelli.
Is it true the khepelli wish to overrun these lands, to conquer them and drive we humans off them?”

“We
humans?
What has Tess told you of the Chapalii?” Soerensen pronounced it differently, but it was clearly the same word.

Bakhtiian’s smile was tight and sardonic. “Tess has told me many things, Soerensen. Which of them I can believe, and which I cannot, I have not yet divined.”

A chuckle escaped from Soerensen quite spontaneously. “My sympathies,” he said, and the comment sounded sincere enough to Aleksi’s ears.

“But it is true enough, is it not,” continued Bakhtiian, pressing this point, “that the khepelli are
zayinu.
The ancient ones. I don’t know the word in Rhuian. Not demons. Not spirits.”

“Elves,”
said Cara Hierakis from the other side, startling both men. “Of course. Ancient ones with powers unknown to humans.” Then she said something in their foreign tongue to Soerensen.

“Can it be arranged?” asked Soerensen. “I must see Morava.”

Bakhtiian’s expression had shuttered, becoming opaque and unreadable. “Is that why you came? Are the khepelli so dangerous?”

“You know why I came,” said Soerensen quietly. Neither man looked toward Tess. “But it is true that the khepelli are dangerous. To both of us.”

“I will consider this,” said Bakhtiian, and he turned to Dr. Hierakis and began to discuss wounds and medical procedures with her. Tess ceded her conversation with the philosopher to Niko and leaned toward her brother. They began to talk, rapidly and in their language. For a time, Aleksi listened. Tess had taught him Rhuian, but not the other tongue, the language of Erthe. He was beginning to be able to pick out words and meanings, but he could not string them together yet into meaningful sentences. But they were talking about the khepelli and the shrine of Morava, that much he could discern. Anatoly Sakhalin lit the lanterns, directly in front of Bakhtiian and passed on, smiling at his grandmother, pausing before Sonia and glancing once, quickly and with dislike, toward Marco Burckhardt, then going on. Soon enough he would reach the carpets where the actors sat.

Aleksi snagged a platter of meat from Mitya and retreated to the solitude of the wagon to eat. Beyond, Raysia Grekov began to sing, accompanying herself on a bowed lute. She sang the tale of how the daughter of Mother Sun came down to the earth from Highest Heaven and how the legendary dyan Yuri Sakhalin fell in love with her and followed her into the heart of demon country.

“Where the rocks littered the earth, where the mountains touched the paths of father wind, there she bore the child. Where the heat of her mother’s hands scorched the soil, where the demons swarmed at twilight, there she brought forth the child. He heard its cry on the wind, but he could not find them.”

As Aleksi always did, he lost himself in her voice. She sang so sweetly, and with such power, that it was no wonder that the gods had drawn her up to Heaven once because of their desire to hear her sing. When they came to move the wagon, he jumped, startled, and kicked over the platter, spilling the scraps onto the grass.

“What are you doing there, Aleksi?” asked Nadine. “Here, give us a hand.”

Standing, he saw that the world had changed. Raysia was still singing, and a knot of people clustered around her, sitting and kneeling: the actors, mostly, listening intently. Bakhtiian was standing off to one side, talking with Dr. Hierakis and Niko Sibirin. Charles Soerensen and Tess and the Habakar philosopher, together with Elizaveta Sakhalin, were off on the other side, leaving the central carpet clear.

Aleksi helped Nadine and a few of the men from her jahar hoist the wagon and carry it onto the carpet and set it down. Nadine tossed six pillows onto it and then, with reverent care, received the horse-tail standard which Mitya had brought from the camp and laid it on the pillow embroidered with birds that Bakhtiian always sat on.

“Shall I go get him, Uncle?” Nadine called to Bakhtiian.

“You’re sounding cheerful,” said Aleksi. “Who are you going to get?”

“Jiroannes Arthebathes,” said Nadine. “May he rot in hell.” She grinned.

Bakhtiian waited until Raysia Grekov had finished her song. Then he lifted a hand in assent, and Nadine hurried off, her soldiers at her heels.

Immediately the two bonfires were lit, and in their roar and glare, a sudden change transformed the scene. The older man and woman who headed the Company herded their actors off to one side, placing them behind a group of commanders who appeared from the right. Soerensen collected his party and retreated a discreet distance to the left. There they could watch but remain outside the action.

Bakhtiian helped Elizaveta Sakhalin up onto the overturned wagon and settled her onto one of the pillows. Sonia followed her, then Tess, then Niko Sibirin, and then old Mikhail Suvorin, the most senior of the dyans currently with the main army. Bakhtiian balanced the horse-tail staff across his knees. They waited. At last the ambassador and his party arrived, halting beyond the twin bonfires.

Aleksi saw the glitter of armor in the Vidiyan ambassador’s retinue: his guard. There was a pause. Past the shifting height of fire he saw Nadine explaining something to an older man and a younger one. The younger one, dark and bearded and dressed in wildly colorful clothing, bore himself arrogantly, by which Aleksi deduced he was the ambassador. But his bearing melted a bit when Nadine gestured him forward. To pass between the two fires, to reach Bakhtiian.

The hesitation was checked. One of the guards transferred a small chest into the hands of the older foreigner, and thus burdened, the old man followed his master forward. The fire beat on them. Aleksi could see it by the way the ambassador leaned first away from the one fire and then away from the other, caught between both, purified by their raging heat, by the furnace pressure of their light. The old man staggered after him.

The softer glow of lanterns lit them when they halted before Bakhtiian. The old man dropped the chest more than set it down, and he knelt, head bowed, as if glad of the excuse to rest. The young one stood, looking angry and impressed together, and trying to hide it.

Bakhtiian regarded him evenly. From his seat on the wagon, he stared eye-to-eye with the ambassador. The very plainness of Bakhtiian’s clothing, red shirt embroidered on the sleeves, black trousers and boots, merely added to his dignity, compared to the ambassador’s gaudy costume. Some men did not need to display their power by displaying wealth. Like Soerensen, it occurred to Aleksi very suddenly. None of the prince’s people wore gold, none wore weapons, and yet their bearing reeked of natural confidence.

At last, cowed by Bakhtiian’s stare, as fierce a pressure as the fires through which he had passed, the ambassador dipped to one knee.

“I am Jiroannes Arthebathes,” he said in queerly accented Rhuian, fluid and blurred on the consonants. “I bring you greetings from your cousin the Great King of Vidiya, and these gifts, which he hopes you will graciously accept.” He gestured, and the servant struggled forward with the chest. Jiroannes’s gaze flicked to Tess, and his eyes widened as he recognized her. Then he turned his attention back to his servant.

The chest was not just wooden, but cunningly carved and set with enameling and strips of gold into the wood. The servant opened the clasp and removed silver dishes, an amazingly lifelike bird made of bronze, two tiny jade horses, a collar of gold embossed with tiny human figures, a bolt of sheer white silk, and an arrow plated with gold and fletched with black feathers.

Bakhtiian looked them over impassively but did not touch them. Then he gestured, and the children, with proper solemnity, came forward and took away everything except the arrow. That Bakhtiian considered at length and in silence, and at last he lifted it up and leaned back to present the arrow to Elizaveta Sakhalin. “The Great King must be complimenting your prowess in hunting, Mother Sakhalin,” he said. The old woman snorted, amused and skeptical, but she took the arrow and placed it over her knees.

Jiroannes looked outraged, and then he bowed his head to stare with seeming humility at the ground.

“You are welcome to our camp,” said Bakhtiian, at last addressing the young ambassador directly. “I will send for you when it is time.” He glanced around, caught Aleksi’s eye, and gestured for him to escort the ambassador away. Then he turned to talk to Niko, as if the affair was of no more interest to him.

Leading Jiroannes away by a roundabout route, Aleksi had leisure to wonder what the young man was thinking. Nadine joined him, the Vidiyan guard marching obediently at her back, and they conducted the silent ambassador back through camp to the distant envoys’ precinct. From here, the noise of the celebration, now in full flower, reached the dark clot of tents only as faint music and fainter laughter, like a distant roar of a mountain cataract to a man trudging through the night on a desert track. Out in the deep plains, where winter met summer like a blast of snow hitting fire, where spring existed for a week, for a scant month at most, such extremes were commonplace. To these envoys, cast out to the fringe of camp, their lives dependent very much on the whim of the jaran, such contrasts must prove unsettling.

“Ilya was too lenient,” said Nadine to Aleksi as they left, walking back to the celebration. “The man was insufferable. He was angry. He showed it in his back, in the way he stood. He showed too little respect.”

“Bakhtiian will make him wait. Then he’ll get nervous.”

“It could be.” Nadine sounded peevish. “He has a slave.”

“What is a
slave?”

“Never mind. Look, the dancing has started.”

At the celebration, they were dancing on the ground around the two bonfires. The angel was dancing with Anatoly Sakhalin. He was, shyly and modestly, showing her the steps to one of the simpler partner dances. But most of the other actors were out dancing as well, partnered with jaran men and jaran women. The dance ended and another started. Aleksi saw Tess dancing with her husband. Sonia, of all people, had somehow persuaded Soerensen out, and it appeared that Soerensen was a quick learner and adept enough to dance well. The angel was still dancing with Anatoly Sakhalin.

“Someone had better talk to him,” said Nadine, voicing Aleksi’s thoughts out loud.

“Surely his grandmother will speak to him,” said Aleksi. “She’s very pretty.”

“She’s beautiful,” said Nadine. “She is also khaja. Look how the other man, Marco Burckhardt, look how he glares at them.”

The dance ended. The angel strolled out of the ring of light with Sakhalin. She held her head cocked slightly to one side, looking at him with a provocative smile on her lips as he spoke to her. Surely she could not understand what he was saying. But perhaps the
words
did not matter.

A moment later, before they could vanish into the gloom, Elizaveta Sakhalin appeared and called to her grandson. His head jerked up and he halted, hesitated visibly, and finally, reluctantly, slowly, he retreated to his grandmother’s side. The angel watched him go and with an unfathomable shrug of her delicate shoulders, she walked on out into the night, alone.

“And
that,”
said Nadine, “is that. Excuse me, Aleksi. I’ve a sudden urge to dance.” She broke away from him and strode straight toward the distant figure of Feodor Grekov.

Aleksi sighed and wandered on. He paused to watch Raysia Grekov where she sat on the now vacant wagon, playing simple songs for the amusement of a swarm of jaran men and two of the foreigners: Margaret O’Neill and the actor Gwyn Jones. The copper-haired foreign woman had her right hand on her belt buckle, and she kept toying with it, as if she was nervous. In contrast, her left hand held the bronze medallion around her throat with deliberate steadiness, canting the medallion’s onyx eye so that it faced the singer. Beside Raysia, a young man played a low accompaniment on a drum. As Aleksi listened, he caught a fainter counterpoint, a vocal one, distant, whispering on the breeze. He lifted his chin and tilted his head, sounding for direction, and drifted out into the night.