Range of Ghosts (38 page)

“To pass through,” he said. “We are bound for the White Sea. I am Temur; this is Samarkar, Brother Hsiung, and the Cho-tse is Hrahima.” As he said them, it occurred to him that perhaps he should have given feigned names—but lying was a good way to attract unfavorable spirits, Hrahima would never support it, and a lie of names could not disguise the unmistakable composition of their group.

If Qori Buqa were seeking him through Nameless assassins, there was no way to conceal the news of his travel other than to avoid everyone.

One of the other men said something to the leader in a tongue Temur did not know. The leader held up a hand, which meant
Wait your turn
in any language. He said, “Do you have news of the east?”

“We do,” Temur said. “A great deal of it. And we need food and supplies, for which we wish to trade.”

A hesitant smile creased the man’s wind-tanned face. “You will come with us,” he said. “The Queen Dragon will wish to receive you.”

“Queen Dragon,” Samarkar whispered, leaning close. “These are the lizard-folk!”

They did not look like lizards, but Temur, too, had heard of the tribes to the west who rode under the banners of dragons and wore their hide as armor. These men’s mail was horse-hoof scale, and he saw no sign of the forked tongues attributed to the lizard-people by folklore. But he also knew that stories of faraway people grew stranger in the telling.

“If they are the lizard-folk,” he answered, “then we are indeed nearly to the sea.”

*   *   *

Three of the men pulled Temur, Samarkar, and Hsiung onto their mares, to ride pillion behind the saddle. One of the riders ponied Bansh behind his horse, which made Temur nervous. But he dried his hands on his thighs and held his tongue, mindful of what the witch had said over the tea leaves. Hrahima paced alongside, keeping up easily and apparently unconcerned.

At least the land they rode through was comfortingly familiar, after so many cities of farmers. The horses moved through grass that waved shoulder-high, its heads swaying with unripe grain. He spotted round white-houses with felted walls that differed in their decoration from the white-houses of home, but not in their construction. Sheep, cattle, and goats moved in flocks tended by boys and girls on horseback and guarded by curly-tailed yellow dogs. The details of dress were unfamiliar, the construction of the saddles—but the bold outlines were home. At the horizon, gold-green steppe lay like a razor’s edge against that pale Uthman sky.

Its smoothness was broken here and there by conical earth mounds girded and surmounted by standing stones. As they passed between the mounds, Temur saw that the stelae were carved with crude reliefs, representations of men and women with their hands folded before them or holding cups or weapons.

Hsiung, of course, rode with his partner in silence. Off to his left, Samarkar was holding a conversation in low tones with her guide, but Temur could not pick out more than the occasional word. He tried Qersnyk and Uthman greetings on the man he rode behind, getting a nod and a grunt on the second.

“What are these?” he asked, gesturing to the mounds. He suspected he knew, but—

“Kurgans.” The man craned over his shoulder to see if Temur understood. When Temur frowned and shook his head, the man’s brow furrowed. “Graves,” he said. “Spirit houses. The dead live in there.”

“I see,” Temur said. He hoped he hid his shudder.

*   *   *

Before long, they came up on a stockade of heavy tree boles set in the earth and lashed together, their tips axe-hewn to sharp points. Temur imagined the logs hauled from a forested slope or river valley, the labor to set them in place. It would not stand long against a concerted Qersnyk army or even a raiding band—but it was proof against most bandits, and the fact that it stood and was so well maintained proved without a doubt that they needed it.

The borders of the Uthman Caliphate suffered the same neglect as the hinterlands of any empire.

There was a conversation at the gates when the patrol approached. Temur would not have been surprised if he and his companions were bound before they were brought inside. But after a brief conference, they were led within, with the horses. Temur moved to take charge of Bansh; the patrol leader intercepted him with the same gesture of warning he’d made to his own man earlier.

“The mare will stay here. I don’t suppose she’s one of the things you are interested in trading? She looks to have good blood behind her.”

“Steppe ponies are not for sale,” Temur said, careful to keep the insult from his voice. These people could know no better, and his years with the army had taught him that not all peoples were as cosmopolitan—or as open to the beliefs and cultures of others—as the Qersnyk were.

It was the difference between an empire and a village, he supposed. He changed the subject. “I am Temur,” he said again. “If it is not impolite to ask, I would know what you are called?”

The man blinked at him. Temur was struck by his leathery appearance: skin so similar to a Qersnyk’s, but western features, with a high-bridged nose and bright, light eyes like an eagle’s almost buried in his squint.

“My name is Saura,” he said, as if Temur had honored him with the request.

Then he nodded and folded his hands over his horse-hoof breastplate. Close up, the armor did look as smooth and flexible as the scales of a snake, and Temur could see the care that had gone into arranging it in patterns of dark and light.

Idly—professionally—rather than with belligerence, he wondered how it would stand up to an arrow.

“Come,” Saura said, pulling his helm from a gray-streaked mane of hair. “It is not wise to keep the Queen Dragon waiting.”

Temur felt his companions closing around him as they marched into the hall—Samarkar on his right, Hsiung behind. On the ground, now, he realized that these westerners were tall. Not by the towering standards of the moon-white Kyivvin traders who sometimes came to Qarash, but most of them had half a head on him, if a bit less on Samarkar.

“They are very polite,” Samarkar said, in Rasan. “Should that worry me?”

“Guests are treasured on the steppe,” Temur answered, in the same language—so much more easily now, after months of practice, than before. “Perhaps by these people as much as by mine.”

She made a noise of discontent, until Hrahima leaned between them. “Rudeness is a weak person’s imitation of strength. If we are in their power, what need have they to be rude?”

Samarkar subsided, seeming somehow more comforted by Hrahima’s statement than worried. Given the politics of the court she must have grown up in, Temur tried not to be surprised.

If the white-houses on the steppe outside had seemed cozy and familiar, this structure was like nothing he had experienced. It was a great wooden hall, big as a temple in Song, with a sod roof pierced at intervals by covered apertures to allow smoke to escape. The doors were in the middle of the long side, which—judging by the unpainted planks of the wall—was the height of three tall trees taken together.

It would have sounded terribly plain had Temur tried to describe it to one of his own folk, but standing before it he could see the care and craftsmanship with which every plank dovetailed the next and how they had been sanded and oiled until they gleamed like a mirror-colored horse’s hide.

And they were carved in relief like the stelae guarding the barrows outside. Which he could see now was not crude at all, but when the rain and snow of countless winters had not weathered it, instead consisted of intricate stylized depictions of men and women, warriors and horses that intertwined in elaborate knotworks.

The moving shadow of more dragon banners fell across Temur’s face. He paused and glanced from Samarkar to Hsiung to see if they noticed what he did. Brother Hsiung was a master of subtle communication, and his eyebrows spoke volumes now.

“I have seen carvings like this,” Temur said, “in Song. But they were of jade, not wood.”

“Well, of course,” Saura said. “You are Qersnyk—”

“I have that honor.”

“—And so you know the Khagan’s empire stretches from the rising to the setting of the sun.”

“That is how I came to be in Song.”

Saura smiled. “Five hundred years ago, the empire that reached the ocean to the east and the sea to the west was ours; all the known earth was the realm of the Dragon Peoples. But men are weak; empires fall. The Dragon Peoples are subjects of the caliph, now.”

Temur felt the flash of heat through his body as he considered all his grandfather had built, as he thought of what the Nameless might plan for Uthman and Qersnyk alike, and the fate of all these little kingdoms, should they crumble back into lawless borderlands.

“You speak nothing but truth,” he said, though the words were painful.

Saura nodded. “I will need your weapons,” he said.

That was actually quite funny, as Temur divested himself of his sheath knife, and the other three showed their empty hands. The fact that each of them was more than capable of dealing death, messy or precise, with those hands went unremarked. Possibly Saura did not quite realize it, although he would have been hard-pressed to misunderstand the capabilities of the Cho-tse.

Saura stepped forward, and a pair of servants in yellow cotton coats bowed low and opened wide the bravely carved doors.

“Her name is King Tzitzik,” Saura said kindly, and pushed Temur forward into the gloom.

He did not stumble, because the floor inside was wide wooden boards smoothed and joined with every bit as much attention and care as the cladding on the walls. But his feet did scuff a little.

By the time he righted himself, Samarkar and Hsiung were beside him. Samarkar snaked a hand out and gave his wrist a squeeze, the touch gone before he knew it, but—he offered her a smile—appreciated.

And then his eyes adjusted and he gained some sense of the place in which he stood.

Wooden trusses bore the weight of the roof, supported by pillars in columns midway along each side of the hall. The long middle span was left clear, a corridor twice as wide as Temur was tall, vaulted high enough that a man on horseback could have ridden down it with no fear for lance or his plumes. Into this torchlit space Temur strode, turned toward the greatest concentration of noise and light, and made his way forward.

There was music. A woman sang, and in addition to the torches, indirect daylight trickled through the gaps where the roof overhung but did not touch the tops of the walls, which Temur had not noticed from outside.

He knew they were expected—and which of Saura’s men had ducked inside to bring the word?—because the singer did not falter. Instead, her melody ended naturally, hauntingly, on a held note, as Temur approached the table that sat athwart the end of the hall, below a dais on which rested an elaborate wooden chair.

Saura’s strange phrase at the end became plain to him. This was not a queen, Temur realized as he saw her seated there, trousered and dressed in boots, with her hair cut short beneath the hammered copper filet that marked her rank. No queen, but a woman-king—western sword on her hip, books piled on the table before her, her face as weathered by the sun as any of her riders.

She rose from the midst of her advisors as Temur approached. They all followed suit an instant later. As for Temur, he stopped several strides short and bowed as low as his road-weary body would allow. She was bare-chested, as were half her male advisors—and many of the women carven on the stelae. Her fingertips were elongated with elaborate, taloned finger-stalls which mimicked the claws of a dragon.

She was not a young woman. Her body was leathery, lean, muscular, feathery about the hips with lines of childbirth. Her arms were crossed with white scars and inked with tattoos of intertwined beasts, like those that adorned the carven walls and doors. Her trousers hissed like silk as she came forward. Her booted feet clicked softly.

A man walked with her, three steps behind.

“Speak,” he said, in the Qersnyk tongue.

“King Tzitzik,” Temur said, without raising his eyes. “I am called Temur; my companions are Samarkar-la, Hrahima, and Brother Hsiung. We have come to you as travelers passing, with news and in the hope you will trade with us.”

The man who had spoken said something—a string of liquid syllables Temur could only assume was the local language. The woman-king answered with a wave of her hand that ended—thankfully—far from her well-polished sword hilt.

The man translated. “What do you have to trade?”

“Salt,” Temur said. “Purple salt from Rasa. And Samarkar-la is a healer. We have her skills, as well.”

“And the news you bring. Is it news of great doings?”

“It’s what news there is,” Temur said.

There was a pause, longer than the pause for translation. “Rise,” she said through her advisor. “You will be brought water and clean clothing, if you need it. You will dine with us, and we will share … what news there is.”

*   *   *

The food at the woman-king’s table was horse meat, stewed long with onions, and flat, chewy cakes of baked dough. The people had not heard of the ruin of Qeshqer, although news of the Qersnyk war had reached them. Try as he might, Temur never quite found a way to ask the woman-king about her ancestors.
The witch will be disappointed in you,
he thought.

The Celadon Highway was north; it was not too far to reach, they said, but if Temur and his people were traveling to Asitaneh, it would be more direct to follow the river the Dragon Peoples called the Hard Drinker to the seacoast.

“Two days ride,” they said. And, “You will have to build a signal fire. A ship will put in, and if you can pay, they will carry you across the Strait to Asitaneh.”

They stressed the expense of travel in and near the cities. Temur, having lived in cities in Song as well as Qarash itself, could imagine. And the woman-king herself seemed very taken with him. He sat beside her on one side, Samarkar on the other—the position of honored guests—but she spent more attention on him. She brushed morsels from her plate to his, and once or twice fed him directly from her gold-armored fingers.