Range of Ghosts (20 page)

“Quarter-moons,” she said.

“… Or,” Temur continued, “an agent already within the city did it, and made it look Rahazeen.”

“An agent who knows Rahazeen sorcery,” Tsering said, cautioning, after Samarkar translated. “Or it could have been a long-term Rahazeen agent, of course, or—”

“It’s curious,” Temur said, “that this should happen so soon upon the fall of Qarash.”

“And perhaps using the dead of that battle,” Hrahima said.

Samarkar shifted uncomfortably, but when Temur looked at her, she shrugged. “My brother will have his quarter-century soon.”

“Regime change.” Temur’s mouth dried unpleasantly.

Tsering moved away abruptly, thrusting odds and ends into saddlebags and piling each beside the appropriate mule. Samarkar spoke quickly in her own tongue, not pausing now to translate her words for Temur’s sake.

Whatever else Samarkar said, Hrahima crouched and listened to the whole of it. She had a trick of stilling herself, whereby she could vanish like a stone among scrub. This despite the fact that she made more than three of Temur; she was easily two-thirds of Bansh’s weight.

When Samarkar had finished, Hrahima glanced at Temur and said, “There is a man called Re Qori Buqa. ‘Twenty bulls.’ He is the chief living claimant to the Khaganate.”

“I know him,” Temur said, fingers knotting through fingers in his lap until his bones creaked with pain. “His army marched on Qarash as if it were a foreign city and not the seat of the Khagan himself. The defenders were the Great Khagan’s grandson Qulan and his warriors. They rode out to meet Qori Buqa on the steppe a day’s ride from Qarash.”

Temur took a breath. No one interrupted. “But the army of Qori Buqa rolled over them and sacked the city, like they would sack any conquered western town. Only a few of the people escaped. Qori Buqa used the Great Khagan’s tactics against the Great Khagan’s own city. Some of the refugees said that he could not have made the sack of the town so complete without sorcery.”

He hesitated, plunged ahead.

“But I have seen a city sacked, and it does not take any magic to destroy in hours what is built over centuries.”

“I too have seen a city sacked.” Samarkar said. “And what you say is true, Temur.”

Tsering said something; whatever it was, Samarkar didn’t bother to translate. It sounded like a question.

Hrahima laid down her stick. She covered her knees with her tremendous paws and seemed to hover in her powerful crouch. “Nevertheless, there is necromancy at work here. Because it is due to signs of necromancy that I came to warn your people before the worst happened. Alas that through the fault of long travel, I have arrived too late.”

“Better a storm crow than a carrion bird,” Temur said. Judging from the quizzical look Samarkar gave him, it was an idiom that didn’t translate. He spread his hands. “Better to come in warning of crisis than scavenge the remains of disaster to survive?”

“Oh,” Samarkar said. She pushed her braid behind her shoulder and straightened her back, moving back over to help Tsering finish packing the camp. “So Qeshqer was destroyed by the ghosts of a steppe war, and you’ve come from beyond the Uthman Caliphate to warn the people of Rasa, out of the goodness of your heart? Forgive me, Hrahima. I know your people have a reputation as tricksters to maintain.”

But the Cho-tse did not lie. Even Temur knew that; it was in every story.

The tiger chuffed, a great hollow sound that made her throat swell like a bellows. Her ears flicked back and forth, and Samarkar could not shake the suspicion that she was forming an opinion. When she spoke again, it was as if she had decided to grant them candor.

“Hardly,” she said. She opened her hands at shoulder level and raised them high, so they spread out as if describing the shape of a growing plant. “Do you see this sun above you?”

Temur tilted his head back. It was large and golden and indisputably in the wrong part of a strange, dusty, turquoise sky that had a look of blue cloth washed too often and left to dry in the light. The edges faded to a buff that was almost yellow; the center seemed shallow rather than deep. It was not the sky of his homeland—not the blue Eternal Sky his ancestors honored—and it seemed impossibly high and dry and far away.

“I see it,” Samarkar said. “It is not the sky of Rasa.”

“It is not the sky of the steppe,” Temur said. “And since the Great Khagan claimed Qeshqer and the Qeshqerian plateau for his own, that is the sky that should cover it.”

“It is the sky of Ctesifon,” Hrahima said. “It is the sky of the Uthman Scholar-God, of which the Nameless cult of the Rahazeen sect is a part. And as your stone demonstrates, it is a rogue Rahazeen warlord-priest who has allied with your Re Qori Buqa, Temur. That is what I have come to warn your monkey-king of. The leader of the Nameless, ai-Idoj, what they call al-Sepehr, is working with your man who would be Khagan. In return for ai-Idoj’s help, Re Qori Buqa has given the murder-cultist sovereignty over the city of Qeshqer, and the heap of skulls within is only the beginning.”

Temur leaned forward, stomach churning with apprehension. He caught himself rubbing his chin left-handed and made himself stop, but the hand naturally strayed to the flaking skin along his scar. He stretched against it. When the constriction would have twisted his head to the left, he held his gaze straight. “Rahazeen?”

Temur knew who the Rahazeen were, of course. Too many of his family had fought them for their existence, to be a mystery. A sect from within the Ctesifonin lands—some lapping over into the Uthman Caliphate—they had for many years been engaged in a power struggle with the Falzeen, another sect of the same god.

Persecuted by more populous sects, a branch of the Rahazeen religion had withdrawn to mountain fastnesses that even the Great Khagan had sometimes chosen not to lay under siege. Temur had heard of the Nameless, too, as who had not? Within those holdfasts the Nameless had blossomed—a cult that worshipped the Uthman Scholar-God in her incarnation as Lady Death.

Not all, or even the majority, of Rahazeen were martial. But the martial ones—from among whom the Nameless were derived—were a contradiction. Like some Song monks, they swore themselves to peace and service. And like those self-same Song monks, they honored that service with an unrelenting study of the disciplines of combat.

Temur had met members of both Rahazeen and Falzeen sects in his uncle Mongke’s court. He respected them as scholars and warriors but found their doctrinal differences an incomprehensible foundation for what amounted to a long-term, low-grade civil war within the Uthman Caliphate.

Still, it was the Qersnyk way not to question too much the customs of others but rather accept them as they found them—so long as they bent their heads to the Khagan. His people conquered for riches and knowledge, not to evangelize.

And if the Uthman Caliphate warred against itself, well, that made things all the better for the Qersnyk clans, didn’t it? An enemy divided was easy prey. But now Temur’s people had fallen into the same trap, and if the Cho-tse could be trusted, that division was being encouraged by equally predatory outsiders.

How long would a Rahazeen master allow Qori Buqa to rule unbowed? How long before the proud Qersnyk Empire became a vassal state to some western warlord?

The Great Khagan himself had started life as a simple herdsman. It was not unheard of for great empires to grow from humble beginnings. The Qersnyk tribes could find themselves a vassal state as easily as they had made vassals of other lands.

Samarkar turned her back to throw a set of packs across the withers of the nearest mule. It still wasn’t happy about the proximity of the tiger, but it seemed to have decided that a predator making itself as small as possible all the way across the fire was not interested in mule flesh today, so the mule contented itself with wary staring. Buldshak was not so easily convinced, but she stayed on the far side of Bansh, and Bansh was so mild that if she were a cow, Temur would have expected her to be chewing cud.

Without looking around, Samarkar said, “Are you a wizard?”

Hrahima stifled a laugh before the horses could kick themselves free. “I am Hrr-tchee. We are not wizards. But I know necromancy when it freezes my flesh.”

Casually, she dug her claws into the soil and raked dirt and vegetation over the defiled prayer stone. She stood, slowly, a controlled motion that revealed more power than jerking herself to her feet would have.

“Hrahima?” said Temur.

She turned to him, ears pricked, eyes glowing. Temur’s tongue wanted to cleave to the roof of his mouth, but he ordered himself to speak on. “You have no wizards? No shamans?”

“We need them not.” The skin across her neck and shoulders shuddered as if she flicked water from her hide.

“What do your people worship?”

Another chuffing laugh. “My people?” She paused, wiped her hands on the pillars of her thighs. “My
people
worship the Sun Within, and the Immanent Destiny.”

“But not you?”

Samarkar was watching over the mule’s back, attentive.

“I do not worship.” Hrahima passed a palm over her ears. “I prefer the illusion of free will.”

“Huh,” Samarkar said. “And what is it that motivates a Cho-tse to involve herself in human affairs of empire?”

The tiger looked down, ears flat. Temur could not shake the impression that she was abashed, though what he knew of cats suggested they were as shameless as ravens.

“The Ctesifonin,” she said, “have the same motivation anyone else does. They want to be out from under the Uthman yoke. And they do not care to replace it with a yoke of the Rahazeen.” Her ears flicked again; the rings jangled again. “Or that of the plainsmen, or the Bey of Messaline.”

She was looking directly at Temur. He found his fingertips pressed to his scar, ragged nails worrying it, and pulled them slowly away. “Empires grow or they collapse,” he said. “Everything ends. You have not answered the wizard yet.”

Tigers did not smile, but her ears flicked forward and her eyes went wide. “What do I gain in all this? Nothing, personally. Except the pay I claim for delivering the message. Even an exile must eat. And travel across the steppe is not so safe or speedy for you monkey-men as it once was, now that Mongke’s children are devouring each other like queen bees hatched in the same hive.”

Perhaps it was his own state, but Temur found himself fixating on the word
exile.
And on the scarred, rag-edged leather of her ears. He did not know the laws of Cho-tse society, but he knew the ways of cats, and no cat with ears like that stood very high in the hierarchy of such creatures. Leaning forward when he wanted to lean back, he said, “And who is your employer, then? Who is the Ctesifonin who takes such interest in the fate of my people and of the royal family of Rasa?”

“Not a Ctesifonin,” Hrahima said. “An Aezin noble in exile, who lives now in Ctesifon and who has ties to nobility in Asmaracanda—which still stands under the sky of the steppes, but I am sure the caliphate would welcome its return. This noble—his business lies along the Celadon Highway, and he is at pains to see peace restored. And as I said, the Uthman yoke can be onerous.”

Samarkar snorted, sarcastic as a mare. “Especially when it involves the murder of whole cities. So your Aezin noble uses the politics of other nations to break the back of the caliphate, but not to set the Rahazeen in power, I take it?”

“I don’t believe he cares who rules any of these cities—save Aezin, which I imagine he’d see made independent again. I can tell you he prefers to see peace the length of the Celadon Highway. And that necromancy is bad for business, especially when it involves the deaths of entire cities.”

“Qeshqer won’t be making good on any debts,” Samarkar said. “That’s truth. So his interest is less patriotic and more pecuniary?”

“War is bad for shopkeepers,” Tsering said, speaking slowly enough that Temur followed her. “Even when they keep very large shops. Who is this merchant-prince who wants to overthrow his conquerors, then?”

The Cho-tse folded her hands together, nails retracted, and fluffed her whiskers smugly. Her shrug indicated she had no intention of answering. But Temur didn’t need her to tell him.

“Ato Tesefahun,” he blurted, naming his mother’s father, and was regarded by a slow, considering cat stare. “He is well known on the steppe,” Temur continued, desperately casual. “He had married his daughter to an Asmaracandan noble. She came to the Great Khagan as tribute when Asmaracanda fell and was married to Otgonbayar Khanzadeh. She might have been Khatun, had her husband not been murdered by his brother Mongke.”

He met Hrahima’s gaze. She held the look for long instants, then blinked gently and looked down. “Of course.”

“Hrahima. If you are going to Tsarepheth,” Tsering said abruptly, breaking the dragging, uncomfortable quiet, “you could come with us. We’re going that way.”

Temur folded his own arms. In his rashness, he had already said too much.

“Thank you,” the tiger said, settling back on her haunches. “I think I shall.”

*   *   *

Temur went to help the women with the horses and mules while the big cat withdrew to a less-threatening distance. He felt well enough to walk, and he thought it wise that they not burden the mares while there was a chance for them to rest. Both Samarkar and Tsering seemed content to walk as well. If he understood Tsering correctly, with his broken Rasan, she said that they had walked here from Tsarepheth on their own two feet, an idea that Temur found startling. Riding, certainly … but to
walk
here?

Eventually, he found himself standing beside Samarkar, impassive in her wizarding black, older than he and far more imposing. He had been waiting for this moment, and now he screwed up his second-son’s courage to ask. He cleared his throat, and when she looked at him, he said, “You said … the destruction of Qeshqer. I had a friend…” he began. He swallowed. “… A friend who was stolen by the ghosts. I followed her here, hoping to bring her home again. Edene?”

“I’m sorry,” Samarkar said, her dark eyes deepening with shadows as she dropped her chin. “Everyone in the city is dead.”