Range of Ghosts (36 page)

Meanwhile, Brother Hsiung was still writing.
Yes. You have been there?

“I served the Khagan,” Temur said. “When there was a Khagan to serve.”

Then you know of the fall of Qarash.

“We do. And also the destruction of Qeshqer.”

He paused. Samarkar saw his hand tremble, a droplet of ink shivering at the tip of the brush.
I did not know Qeshqer had fallen.

“Blood ghosts,” she said, as softly as she could. She
felt
more than saw Nilufer stiffen. There was a rustle of filthy silk as Payma pressed her hand to her mouth.

One quick tear rounded the plump curve of the monk’s cheek. Then another. He leaned back to keep them from splashing the page. Samarkar saw him squint against his clouded vision. Writing at arm’s length, he scribed:
I myself saw flights of butterflies, some of them red. I traveled with a caravan and heard from the caravanners that in the east, many were dying of
—his hand hesitated, then he wrote hastily, as if to get by the words as fast as possible—
the black bloat.

Samarkar tasted bile and disbelief. She’d read histories of the plague years, accounts by survivors, wizards, physicians, historians. She knew that it could sweep from Song to Messaline along the Celadon Highway, that it would keep going beyond the borders of the known world and into strange realms, where it would kill stranger people. That when it came, whole tribes died. That villages starved, everyone too ill to harvest. That in cities too decimated to bury their dead, piled corpses rotted in market squares. But there had not been an outbreak of the bloat in her lifetime.

“You’re sure?” she asked, aware it was stupid, but needing reassurance in her horror.

I have read,
Hsiung wrote,
the writings of the Joy-of-Vultures. I am certain.

It was the Song name for the Carrion-King, the one the Uthmans and Qersnyk called the Sorcerer-Prince. Samarkar fearfully swallowed saliva and leaned forward to see what else he wrote.

They had heard, too, that a great bird, large as an Indrik-zver, hunts the plains.

“A terror bird?” They were not unheard of, deadly, flightless things whose shoulders stood as high as a man, which could stalk human children as a hen stalked grubs.

No. One that flew.
He laid the brush down beside the block of ink and spread his hands, illustrating a vast wingspread.

Samarkar stepped back. She glanced at Hrahima and saw the Cho-tse’s ears laid flat. “Rukh,” Hrahima said.

Beside her, Payma hugged her arms to herself. “A what?”

“A kind of western devil-bird,” Samarkar said. “Supposedly, it can carry off an elephant. To feed its young.”

“It can,” Hrahima said.

Samarkar almost asked, but this didn’t seem the time for a digression. She looked back at Brother Hsiung. He had picked up his brush again and appeared to be waiting.

Nilufer asked. “So, what is an Uthman monster doing on the steppe?”

Samarkar had to wet her lips before she spoke. “It’s said they can be tamed,” she offered. “And used in war. If you can find one.”

Temur’s chest rose and fell once or twice, as if he fought to control his breath. His hands were clasped. Samarkar wondered if it was to control the shaking. She’d pulled her own into the sleeves of her coat, as if she felt a draft, though the room was warm. The witch rattled beads, and when Samarkar looked up, she saw that the old woman had cast them across the table and was studying the way they fell.

She grunted. When she stood, everyone in the room turned to her, and Brother Hsiung started up. She ignored them all, though, stumping to the doorway with her mossy cloak sweeping the floor by her ankles, shedding raveled threads.

She must have found a servant when she opened the door and leaned out, because Samarkar heard her ask for tea in tones of surprising normalcy.

It was curious to watch, everyone else standing around the room artlessly, twisting their hands, waiting for some instruction or direction. The old woman settled herself again and set about sweeping together the beads she’d cast.

“What do you see?” said Nilufer.

The witch looked up. “I see red,” she said. “Come and sit. All of you.”

Peremptorily, she waved Brother Hsiung back to his place. He folded himself up and set his hands on his knees, assuming an attitude of waiting.

Samarkar sat beside him. Three beads remained before her place—crazed glass, moonstone, and a nugget of copper. She brushed them lightly with a fingertip and felt a tingle.

“Give those here,” the witch said.

Samarkar obeyed, and around the table the others helped sweep together bright jackdaw baubles and pass them to the witch. By the time the tea arrived, the surface was clear.

Samarkar watched carefully, unsure of the etiquette. The servant placed the tray before the witch, and the witch poured tea into tall-sided bowls and passed them around. Samarkar took hers from Brother Hsiung after first passing one to her right, to Payma. The thick clay was ridged where fingers had shaped it, glazed softly in browns and grays. She realized her hands were aching only as the heat eased them.

“Drink your tea,” the witch said. She demonstrated, downing the steaming fluid almost to the dregs. She swirled those in the cup, then quickly inverted it.

Nilufer did the same, and so Samarkar and the others copied her, some with more grace and some with less. The witch gestured for the upturned cups, and all were returned to her.

One by one, she righted them, and studied what lay inside.

She looked at Payma first. “It is a girl,” she told the woman. “And healthy. You will stay here, of course.”

“Of course,” Nilufer echoed, with a raised eyebrow that Samarkar interpreted easily:
Am I not mistress in my own house?

The old did what they would.

Payma looked down, nodding. “Thank you,” she said.

The witch frowned at Samarkar. “You will need all your strength, Once-Princess and Wizard,” she said. “It is upon you that the outcome rests.”

“What outcome?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

“The outcome of the war.” The witch looked at Temur. “You cannot be Khan without a sworn band. You will not find them in the west, but it is to the west you must go. You are hunted.”

“I had gathered,” Temur said. He softened it with a smile.

The witch smiled, too, showing sunken gums. “When it comes time, remember to seek the dragon. In the early part of your journey, you will meet a warrior woman, with tens of chariots and tens of consorts. Ask after her ancestors; it may help you find something you need to know. And watch for the black birds. The eaters of carrion are your allies, you who will feed them so well in time to come.”

Temur frowned at her. But he was obviously wise to the ways of soothsayers, because he said nothing.

The witch gestured to Brother Hsiung. He leaned forward on his elbows, listening. “You,” she said. “Your path lies west as well.”

He nodded. Samarkar wondered, as the monk sat back, what questions he harbored and would not ask. Samarkar rubbed absently at the palm of her right hand, where a dull ache still sometimes lingered. She was healing, but healing took time. At least it took her mind off the itching in her arrow-shot arm.

But the witch had already turned to Hrahima. The Cho-tse looked … defensive. Arms crossed over her chest, whiskers slicked back.

Steadily, the witch regarded her.

“You are a tangle,” she said. “But I suppose you know that. So many threads lead in, and none out.”

“I do not subscribe,” Hrahima said, “to this ideal of destiny.”

“I had gathered,” the witch said, a dry mockery of Temur’s earlier tone, which made Samarkar bite her lip to keep the smirk in.

That was the end of it, it seemed, because Nilufer stood and moved away from the table, obliging everyone else to follow. Samarkar was surprised when the witch caught her at the end of the line and pulled her arm to bend her down so she could speak in her ear. “She may not survive the childbirth,” the witch whispered. “She is young and small. And I cannot see her future, one way or the other.”

Samarkar swallowed. She’d harbored that fear all along. “If I send Temur on ahead with Hrahima—”

The witch huffed. “You are new to your skill. I have brought more babies into this world than you have years. What can you do for her that I cannot? Your place is in the war, Wizard.”

Samarkar stared at her, then pulled away. But in her ears she heard Hrahima’s voice—
I do not subscribe to this ideal of destiny
—and wondered.

*   *   *

The beds here were very high, stuffed with straw and feathers and dressed with layers of bedclothes and hung about with tapestries to keep the draft off. Climbing the steps to the bed he’d been given to sleep in, Temur thought how like it was to a frame for a sky-burial. If he were being left for the vultures, though, no one would have given him such soft blankets.

He lay his head on a pillow that must have been filled with wool or down. Under the pressure of his head, it breathed forth a delicate scent of mint. What would it be like, he wondered, to sleep in this softness each night, to awaken to the silhouettes of the mountains against the dawn?

They hemmed him. Through the wide windows of the white tower in which he slept, he could see how their bulks shadowed the bright night sky. He could see how the snowy mountains gathered starlight, how it glimmered blue, flattened distance and made each facet of the peaks seem like a small close thing he could reach out and brush with his hand.

In the softness, he could not sleep. Despite the exhaustion of travel, despite a bellyful of Nilufer’s peculiar food, despite being scrubbed clean in an entire tub of hot water, his thoughts refused to silence themselves. His heart hummed with worry and questions, and they were enough to keep the ache of weariness that weighed his limbs from pulling him into slumber.

And so he lay and watched the stars cross the sky, measuring their stately progress against the window frame. He imagined his death and what it would be like to lie motionless and watch the stars wheel over him as he lay naked on a cold frame.

It would be easier than this, he imagined.

It was with almost a sense of relief that he saw the shadow rise above the window frame and lean in. One leg, dark clad, crept across the threshold. The intruder was only a silhouette, but Temur saw him plainly until he dropped below the level of the sill and was hidden by the edge of the ridiculous bed.

He made no sound, but Temur knew he was creeping closer. And Temur’s knife was with his kit, on the chest at the foot of the bed.

Once he moved, Temur knew the fight would be on. And perhaps death might be easier, but he found he was not ready to lie down just yet.

He gathered himself and rolled into a crouch, moving before he entirely had his balance under him. The soft bed shifted, ropes supporting the mattress creaking. The featherbed grabbed at his ankles. But he managed to jump, lunging toward the foot of the bed, and clawed the things heaped atop the chest into a clattering pile on the floor.

The room was dark, but his eyes were adapted. He saw the glitter of the partially sheathed blade against a knotted wool rug as the assassin came around the corner of the bed, no longer bothering with stealth. The knife that flashed in
his
hand was not sheathed.

Temur rolled aside as the assassin lunged for him. Stones beneath thick wool bruised his shoulder. Scar tissue binding his neck and chest pulled as he tucked and let the roll carry him out of the way.

He lashed out left-handed and felt the cool hilt of his knife. Ridges on the grip dug into his palm as he got a foot down and stood, dancing back almost immediately to avoid the glittering sweep of a blade.

He dodged the knife but not the boot that followed. The kick knocked him sharply to the wall. Something behind him clattered as it fell. He wheezed, lungs spasming, and barely drew a breath.

Temur’s knife was longer, but the other man had more reach. And there was always the threat that the blade might be poisoned.

In songs, they sang always of the red tide of war fury rising. Temur had never experienced it so. Instead, he found himself detached and aloof, as if he floated above his body while it calmly made decisions and moved to kill or be killed.

The assassin’s dark shape was more a blur of motion than the outline of a man. Temur’s body darted forward, reaching with the knife. The assassin moved aside as effortlessly as if he had never been there. Temur let the lunge turn to a roll and came back to his feet, but not before the assassin’s blade touched him. The force of the blow rocked him, but he felt no pain.

He’d felt no pain from the blow that could have severed his head, either. A thick streamer of wetness crossed his right hand, slicking his grip on the knife. But now the assassin was between Temur and the window and clearly silhouetted.

Not too big of a man, though taller than Temur. Temur thought he might be stronger than the assassin. The other man did not look broad across the shoulders.

He kicked out for the knee, a feint, ready to follow with a knife thrust if the assassin moved the way Temur wanted. But instead he stepped inside the arc of the blow, and Temur’s shin bounced harmlessly off the other man’s thigh. The assassin closed, pressing his advantage. Temur lashed out with his blade, trying for the assassin’s knife arm. Something dragged; perhaps he had just caught cloth, but the assassin’s breath changed—a grunt and a hiss. The knife scored Temur’s shoulder instead of plunging into his chest.

They broke apart, breathing hard. Temur had managed to keep his back to the wall. The silhouette helped, but not enough.

Unless he managed something quickly, he was going to lose this fight. The battle-ready animal in charge of his body now did not know it. But Temur, above and behind himself, understood. He knew his chest heaved; he knew his heart thundered. But it was as if the body that knowledge encompassed belonged to someone else.