Lords of Grass and Thunder (25 page)

But not a patient. The woman drew almost the right conclusion quickly enough. “As I said, I have an apprentice right now. If your granddaughter truly shows promise, you would first want to talk to the shaman who tends to your clans about taking her on.”

“It seems that he has spoken to her already,” Bortu answered dryly. “But you misunderstand me. Do you have no idea who I am?”

“I’m sorry, my lady, but I don’t believe we have ever met.”

“No,” Bortu agreed, “but you have met my granddaughter.”

“Eluneke?” The shaman was clearly bewildered. “Eluneke’s grandmother is dead.”

“One of them, perhaps.”

That got the bones rolling in the woman’s head. Click, click, click, it came together. A father, not unknown, but one who had chosen to stay out of Eluneke’s life. Who, for some reason, had sent his mother to check on the daughter after all these years. But if the old woman was indeed Eluneke’s grandmother, and her own shaman was involved in her training—Bortu saw in Toragana’s eyes the moment when she realized they were talking about Bolghai, who was giving the girl a lesson this very minute. Bolghai, who served the royal court.

“Oh, my!” Eyes satisfyingly wide, hands covering her gaping mouth, the shamaness Toragana sank to the carpets as the answer to the riddle came together. “My lady khaness!”

The Lady Bortu held out her hand to be kissed, which the shamaness did, bowing her head low over Bortu’s aged knuckles.

“But,” the woman continued, confusion wrinkling her brow, “Bolghai must have known.”

“Indeed,” Bortu agreed. “He will have much to answer for on that score. But I am an old woman, and prone to seeing spirits in the wind. Perhaps my presence here means nothing and the girl can go back to all this—” She waved a dismissive hand taking in the little tent. “As if I had never been.”

“If that were so, you would not have come,” the shamaness countered.

Bortu didn’t like the way this Toragana was gathering her cunning around her. She was right, though she couldn’t know why. The khan would need young bodies to seal the compacts he made with the clans, with the Tinglut and even the Uulgar. Yesugei would need to be placated for his failure with Mergen’s mistress, and the general had sons.

“Your spies have already been here—”

Spies?

“The court historian, Bekter the poet. I knew he could have no use for the tales of one like me. But if he said nothing of this, why are you telling me now?”

“Ah, Bekter. I doubt he knows, nor would he be competent to judge, though at tales no one can best him. He never lies about stories. If he said he was interested, he was, though you’re likely right he didn’t come to hear them in the first place.

“But this is a matter for grandmothers. I can pay you for your teaching to this point, and cover any losses you may incur from her absence. There are always girls, or boys, with the gift to replace her—”

Bortu had said too much. She saw the flicker of calculation in the woman’s eyes. Not avarice, the shamaness had scented something more valuable to her kind than money or jewels. A final piece of the riddle had fallen into place, or so the woman guessed. Which was, Bortu thought, more dangerous yet.

“Your granddaughter, if so she should be, has extraordinary gifts.”

“Bolghai has said so,” Bortu agreed. The woman carefully had not mentioned that the khaness’ granddaughter was also the daughter of the khan, and a princess, if her father chose to make her so.

“She has foreseen a grave danger.”

Bortu rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?” Nothing, it seemed, was ever easy.

The woman took a breath to answer, but Bortu stopped her with a freezing glance. “First I will see her. When do you expect her back?”

“That’s hard to say, my lady khaness.”

Bortu understood her well enough. Spirit quests seldom followed a schedule. “Then I suppose we go to her.”

“I was preparing to do just that, my lady.” With a deep bow, the shamaness returned to her workbench. She gathered crushed herbs into a loosely woven little sack which she threaded onto a string. Putting on her robes and her headdress, Toragana faced the khaness with eyes grown dark as the raven that watched with the wisdom of the dead from atop the shamaness’ head. “I had planned to fly, but if your horse doesn’t mind, I will travel with you to show you the way.”

“I think he can manage,” Bortu agreed, her answer laced with irony. She hoisted herself from the stool with her head held very high as befitted the mother of khans, though she wished she’d taken the ointment for her toe. Too late for that now. She led the way from the tent.

Toragana didn’t follow immediately. Lady Bortu mounted and brought her horse around the front, considering a suitable punishment for a shamaness who made the mother of khans wait like a beggar at her front door. None, she concluded ruefully. With the gifts came a certain disregard for the world of living men—or women. Bolghai did it all the time. Even khans knew better than to challenge the spirits for dominion over their own. She considered leaving without the woman, could have found Bolghai’s tent on her own with little trouble. That didn’t guarantee she’d find Eluneke.

While she was brooding on such thoughts, a raven flew out the smoke hole in the roof of the tent and circled the khaness’ head. Bortu shook her off when the creature settled on her shoulder. There were limits even for the spirit world. The creature rustled her wings as if miffed, but she never flew out of sight. Bortu followed with little more than a press of her knees against the flanks of her horse to keep the gelding on the course set by the raven. As she had guessed, they traveled away from Bolghai’s little camp, heading for the river.

Chapter Sixteen

S
LIDING OFF HIS HORSE, Prince Tayyichiut followed the downward path to the river on foot, drawn back to the place where his life had changed so completely. His dogs followed close on his heels, as if they feared for his safety in this place even now. He’d fought in his first real battle in this little dell and, among the dead, lost Yurki, who would in time have been his anda—the sworn friend of the heart. Here had begun his adventure with the god-king. The Lady Chaiujin had nearly killed the king-in-exile of the Cloud Country here and Llesho had nearly let her do it, or so he’d heard. And from here Tayy had taken off on an adventure that had plunged him into slavery and almost killed him.

Nothing about this place should have called to him, but it did. Nothing should have impelled him to follow that call, but he followed anyway, into the tangle of spindly hazel and scrub oak and undergrowth that lined the riverbank at its lowest point. And there, by the Onga, he found the girl who plagued his dreams. She was dressed much the same as the last time he’d seen her—the simple, dull-colored clothes of a less-than-prosperous clan and the headdress of a maiden, with none of the exaggerated curve of silver horns and cascading beads and jewels that the married women wore. In her hand she grasped a long pole with a net woven of grass at one end that she poked haphazardly at a thin, high branch.

“Hello,” he said, and cursed himself for sounding like an idiot. “Do you need some help with that? What are you trying to do, by the way—”

“I’m trying to catch that toad—” She didn’t look at him but kept her eyes sharply on something hiding among the leaves that shook violently when she jabbed at the branch. The dogs chose that moment to greet her with their cheerful baying.

“Oh!” she slapped down on something with the net, but her prey eluded her. “Damn! He got away.” With a glare at the dogs who had joined her at the tree, she added, “If these mongrel curs are yours, you owe me one large toad.”

Tayy didn’t know quite what to make of her. In front of the shaman’s tent he had felt both a connection to her and a sense of remote study, as if she read his soul and knew something he didn’t about his own spirit-life. He’d expected neither her sharp tongue nor her interest in tree toads. Lady Chaiujin had kept a tree toad in a cage in her tent. He thought perhaps she had used the exudations of its skin for her evil potions.

“Aren’t toads dangerous?” he asked, giving her the benefit of the doubt for reasons that didn’t bear too close examination. “I thought they poisoned their victims with their skins.”

“If you were a fly, you’d be in a sad way,” the girl agreed absently. “Since you are a human being, you’d feel slightly numb where you touched one, but even that wears off quickly. It would be unwise to eat one, of course. That might prove nasty in the extreme.”

Only when she had given up on the tree toad did she turn around to look at him. When she did, her mouth fell open in a round “Oh!” of surprise. “You!” she said. The dogs joined the conversation, butting her in the hip. Her net flew out of her hand as she lost her footing on the slope

There wasn’t time to think. The prince reached for her hand to keep her from falling into the river and she reached back. When their fingers met, he felt a bolt of lightning run up his arm and explode in his heart. He knew the many-branched pattern lightning made when it struck flesh and expected to find the sign of the tree burned into his breast when he looked inside his shirt. The shock so overwhelmed him that he almost pulled his hand away. That would have sent her pitching headlong into the Onga.

I’d rather plunge into the current with the capstone of my father’s shrine in my arms than let her fall,
he thought. His hand spasmed closed around her smaller one and he tugged. The girl tipped forward into his arms to the exuberant approval of the dogs.

“Excuse me.” Her voice was firm, but he felt her tremble as she carefully put him at arm’s length. “Thank you for saving me from the river, though I wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t startled me like that!”

Trying desperately to cover his confusion he stammered out an answer. “We’ve met before, sort of, though we were never introduced.”

“I know.” She primly brushed her palms off on her apron.

“I’m not that dirty,” he objected to the gesture. And then he wiped his own hands on the skirts of his coat, which made him feel even more foolish.

The maiden’s headdress she wore hid almost none of her thick, dark hair and he found himself staring at it. She, on the other hand, seemed to be waiting for him to burst into flames or turn into a demon or something equally as unlikely. “Who
are
you?”

He had a feeling she wouldn’t take the truth—“I’m the heir to the khanate”—any better than the things she was imagining behind her frown. So he didn’t exactly lie when he said, “I’m a soldier; I fought with the khan to free the Cloud Country.”

It was a selective truth, but she accepted it with a little nod, as if his sudden appearance had posed a riddle and the answer was starting to make sense. “And the prince,” she added, as if he didn’t know, which confused him even more. “I saw you wrestle for the khan.”

“That, too. Prince Tayyichiut, at your service.” He bowed, low enough to make a joke of it, but wondered. If she knew who he was, why did she ask? She was looking past his face again, like she had the first time he’d seen her, and he figured she must have understood from his answer more than: “I’m the khan’s nephew.”

The toad thing urged him to caution, however. He decided that he wouldn’t love her, no matter the fantasies that had plagued him. At least, not yet. “What else should I be that you didn’t know, then?” He dug the toe of his boot into the dirt, unwilling to meet her dark and knowing eyes. But that had been the god-king’s habit and he stopped himself, refusing to follow too closely in the footsteps of his friend.

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out.” She sounded determined to unravel all his secrets, but had turned her studious gaze away from him, to the river. Tayy was grateful. He felt a little less exposed that way.

“I think there was a battle here.” Her head moved as if she tracked the fighting even now.

“I was there,” he agreed. She would know that, of course, having recognized him for the prince, but she nodded gravely anyway, as if his words confirmed something she had only guessed.

“The wild creatures still haven’t settled. That’s why I’m having so much trouble catching toads.”

He knew nothing of toads or their habits, but figured he hadn’t yet settled himself. “I lost a good friend on this spot,” he offered, an exchange of intelligence. “The Uulgar forces drove our troops into the river, and he drowned.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. But why are you trying to catch toads anyway?” He flung himself onto the carpet of soft earth and rotting leaves, prepared to listen to her story. His black dog settled beside him and Tayy flung a careless arm around the beast’s neck, a gesture grown familiar since he’d come home.

The girl tapped her foot, but in spite of herself, he thought, a little smile sneaked onto the corners of her mouth. “If I told you, you would laugh at me, or recount your ills for me to diagnose, so perhaps I will not tell you after all.”

“I could never laugh at you! I swear it!” It took all the discipline of a warrior not to wrap his arms around her where she stood, so he figured that was as safe a promise as he’d ever made. He was far too diplomatic to mention that if he was still talking to her, in spite of the difference in their rank, then he wasn’t likely to be chased away by any other secrets she might be harboring.