Steles of the Sky (29 page)

Tsering had no magic of her own, but it was not the policy of the Citadel to admit which of its wizards had come into their power and which had not. She rolled the bag closed, stuffed it under her arm, and marched across the space between encampments to confront the man. It was the worst of bad manners to acknowledge anything occurring across the invisible boundaries of campsites, but as far as Tsering was concerned he’d started it.

She was almost on him before he heard her—or before he realized what he was hearing—and turned. His scarred face turned a boiled-liver color as Tsering drew herself up before him—not as tall as he or as broad, but illuminated from within by the righteous fury of her own indignation.

“You spit upon my honor, man,” she said.

“I spit,” he said, with no appearance of finding her intimidating. “What you make of it is your own business.”

“You spit upon the honor of a Wizard of Tsarepheth. That is a dangerous action.”

“Ooo,” he said. “Are you going to curse me? Bunch of conjurers and charlatans, the lot of you. Your so-called magic can’t cure the lung sickness, and it can’t stop the Cold Fire from exploding. It can’t keep the Carrion King in his grave, either, can it? And yet you’re still doing your magician games, moving rocks and banners around, gobbling up food that honest people could eat, poisoning children with your simples and ‘cures.’ And I should be afraid of you, conjuror’s bitch? Can you so much as heal a cold sore? Have you an ounce of real magic in you?”

She blinked, and only the long experience of standing up to Yongten-la interrogating her theories upon the point of his frown, unrelentingly, kept her from stepping back before the spittle-flinging force of his hate.

“I am Tsering-la. It would be wise of you to apologize.”

“Wizards,” he spat. “Well, I am Garab, and no one has ever hung a
Doctor
on my name. But I bet I could do as much for that child in there as you can. And I wouldn’t claim a pound of flesh to stand by while she died.”

He spun around, hands clenching as if he only just prevented himself from swinging them, and strode off with his boots thumping and swishing through the grass.

Tsering watched him go. She didn’t dare glance down at her shaking hands until he stomped out of sight.

The fact was, she
hadn’t
an ounce of real magic in her. And even if she did, she couldn’t do a damned thing for that little girl, except to hope and feed her tea.

She almost jumped over herself when a soft voice behind her said her name. She turned in her own bootprints, swallowing a startled scream, and found herself regarding a very definitely amused Toragana.

“Wizard,” said the Tsareg leader’s sister and lieutenant. “One of my little cousins is ill. Will you come and look at her?”

Tsering sighed and brushed escaped strands away from her face ineffectually back toward her braid.

“Of course,” she said, and hefted her medical bag—already so much lighter than it had been at the beginning of the march.

15

Temur, Samarkar, Hrahima, and the mares were travel-hardened, efficient, fit, and self-sufficient. They had a clear path before them over level ground. They had light to travel whenever they wanted it. Temur and Samarkar riding, Hrahima loping alongside, they passed over the Dragon Road at a rate Temur found almost unbelievable.

At first he worried for Afrit, but whatever his color the colt quickly showed himself Bansh’s true-bred get. Leggy and improbable, he treated the hard travel as a game, gamboling between the tolerant mares, dashing circles about the Cho-tse. He nursed when they paused to water the horses, and though he was at first pushed to keep up when they cantered, within days he was darting ahead rather than lagging behind. Samarkar, standing in the saddle to stretch aching legs, looked after him and shook her head.

“Resilience of youth,” Temur said.

Samarkar glanced at Hrahima and both burst out laughing, but neither would explain the joke to him.

*   *   *

Temur began to recognize the landscape about three days out from Dragon Lake, and felt a sharp twist of anxiety he’d been trying to ignore ease away. What if he hadn’t known where they were going? What if he’d taken them the wrong direction, along the wrong branch of the road? What if the messenger had been wrong, or had misled them? Not knowing where you started or how far you had to go made navigation a hit-or-miss business at best.

Now he pointed out landmarks with enthusiasm, and swallowed a different anxiety. Though they rode under stunning pillars of stone and beneath fantastical arches so tall that the trees at the tops were burning vermillion and crimson with fall while the ones in the valleys still held their verdancy, Temur had no eyes for the beauty. It was as if a worm gnawed his belly. There was no secret that he was raising his banner at Dragon Lake. It could not be, for the clans to rally to him—if they
would
rally to him. But that meant that al-Sepehr knew where to find him.

There could be an ambush waiting. And if there wasn’t, he and Samarkar and Hrahima would have to be prepared to defend themselves before any allied forces could be counted on—which assumed that anyone at all was going to show up and join his forces. Perhaps the clans had all already declared for Qori Buqa’s unborn son.

At least the worries chasing each other through his belly could not keep him awake. When they stopped, Hard-day or Soft, they were all so exhausted they barely managed to chew their food before falling into sleep. They made cold camps and rose again sore with sleeping on the ground. Temur could not have said why he felt such a drive for haste … but the need to be doing gnawed at him, and the others seemed willing to support his obsession, for now. He might have pushed even harder, if not for the horses—but they needed time to graze and rest, and he wasn’t about to kill the mares with work now, after everything.

By the time they came to the final bends of the road, winding around the last few limestone outcrops towering and dripping with trees aflame with autumn, Temur’s heart was thundering in his chest.
It will be nothing,
he thought, as Samarkar reached across the space between horses and said, “Should we leave the mares and scout ahead?”

Hrahima chuffed. “Keep riding. What else do you have a tiger for?”

Before he could respond, she had leapt forward and vanished into the trees lining the road. A moment, and only the swaying of branches marked her passage.

“Magic,” Temur said.

“I’d hope to know it if it was,” Samarkar replied. She paused. “If this is Qersnyk territory, how is it that a Song sky hangs over it?”

Temur shrugged. “It never changed. It never has, no matter who claims it.”

Samarkar picked at her fingernail in irritation. Another mystery she probably wasn’t going to have the time to investigate.

She sighed. “Obviously there are some interesting metaphysics at work.”

“Obviously,” Temur replied.

They allowed the horses to walk. Hrahima needed time, and the mares needed rest. If it did come down to an ambush, Temur wanted them fresh—or as fresh as possible, under the circumstances—and ready to run. Now at least the cramping of worry eased, and his heart beat even and strong. Whatever happened would happen, and the anticipation and contingency planning would be behind him for a little. And with luck, for a little, they could rest.

And if not, there might be a fight. Which was better than uncertainty as well.

He thought of not having to rise in the morning and heave himself into the saddle, and felt like a traitor to the Qersnyk people when the prospect delighted him. But even the steppe clans didn’t travel without stopping for months on end, as he and Samarkar had been.

He was not surprised to see Hrahima walking toward them down the middle of the jade-flagged road ahead. The shadows of the trees fell across her in the Soft-evening light, and her stripes camouflaged her so he only saw her because he was looking—and she was moving. He took it as a good sign; if the news were bad, she’d either emerge from concealment as if she had stepped through one of Reason’s doors, or she’d have come at a bounding run, fleeing the Sky knew how many Rahazeen assassins.

What was a surprise, however, was the mounted figure waiting behind her, and the clop of hooves as that person started forward. Temur knew the mare, a Tsareg blood bay with both forelegs bone-white past the knee as if she had splashed through a river of milk.

A moment later, he realized that he knew the rider, too—though an eye patch concealed a quarter of her face. And he knew the big black-and-tan dog trotting beside her, moth-eaten and ragged in his summer coat, his brush of a tail trailing white mats of undercoat as he waved it regally.

Bansh stopped stock-still, Jerboa halting with her nose even with the bay’s shoulder. Afrit dove beneath his mother the moment they paused, intent on the teat that might start moving again at any minute. Temur did not realize for a moment that the mare had planted her feet because he had sat back hard, boots hard in the stirrups. And then he knew, and didn’t care, sliding out of the saddle, careful not to land on the colt. He darted forward past Hrahima and dropped to his knees at Sube’s side. He threw his arms around the dog’s warm neck, buried his face in the grease-and-soot-smelling ruff, and tried not to feel the sharp prickle in eyes he could not pry open.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the dog. And to Toragana. “I have failed you. I did not bring her home. I followed her across half the world, but I did not bring her home.”

He heard boots on stone, felt the arm around his shoulder. She was hugging him and the dog, then tugging him to his feet though he tried to cling to Sube’s neck, though the dog was laving his salty face with its big slimy spotted tongue.

Tsareg Toragana was thumping his back, hugging him tight. Her face was wet, too, and he did not think it was from the dog. Finally, she put him at arm’s length, and the dog pressed between them, leaning against his legs. He made himself look at her and saw new lines, hollow cheeks—and strength.

“You have done what you could, Re Temur,” she said. Her fingers squeezed convulsively. “My sister Oljei is our leader now. Tsareg has come to your banner, Khagan, and holds Dragon Lake in your name.”

*   *   *

As they came around the last wide meander of road and river into the broad, bowl-shaped valley that held the lake, Temur found himself rubbing his eyes. Not because they were stinging—he had not stopped weeping even to remount, and Samarkar rode Jerboa shoulder to shoulder with Bansh, squeezing Temur’s hand—but because he could not believe what they revealed to him.

There was his grandfather’s summer palace, symbol of the Qersnyk conquest of Song, half-ruined and overwhelmed by vines. The tumbled remains of its walls were set in the midst of what had been gorgeous parklands, now overgrown and returning to the wild. The palace had not been abandoned long enough to crumble on its own, but it served as a useful source of finished building materials for local farmers, and many of the houses or shrines in the villages that could be glimpsed through the trees on the hills overlooking, or on the cultivated banks of Dragon Lake itself, were constructed of its smooth golden stones.

The ruin was veiled and netted by thousands of hovering white shapes, as if a cloud of moths had been frozen in place in the air. Now, in the slanting evening and at this distance, they seemed to be only white cubes, immobile and unsupported in the golden air. Temur knew their true aspect would only be revealed as twilight became dawn, and Soft-day passed to Hard. Nor was he surprised by the delicate bridge, half its span dangling, that had once connected the only intact structure of the former palace with the towering pillar of one of the limestone mountains, beside which it floated like a hummingbird feeding from a flower, or the ornate pierced ivory filigree of the winding stair that worked its way up that pillar, giving access to the violet-tiled pagoda that sat as serenely in emptiness as if on immovable stone. He felt Samarkar’s fingers tighten, the delight and unabashed awe with which even she—a Wizard of Tsarepheth—gazed upon this glorious wreckage.

But Temur had seen it before. He had seen an army camped below it, and he had slept in its shadow.

What he had not seen was the end of the valley below the broken palace filled side to side and end to end with livestock, with white-houses and carts and wagons, tents and lean-tos and improvised shelters, some of which were anything but Qersnyk in breeding or design. And above all, he had not expected to see one white-house bigger than them all, and roofed in yellow felt, with a banner of a bay horse running furling and unfurling in the soft wind over it.

Toragana, riding beyond Samarkar, grinned at him. “There’s a bunch of Rasani too. We all left Tsarepheth in a hurry; that mountain they say their dragon-Goddess dropped on top of the Sorcerer-Prince started smoking. Some of them are friends of your ally, here. And the shaman-rememberers told us what banner to stitch.”

“Cousin,” he said. “I—”

But his voice failed him. She wasn’t his cousin; she was Edene’s. His only by the courtesy of a conjugal alliance. He had no words for what crowded his throat.

“Tsareg Altantsetseg,” he began. But Toragana’s frown stopped him before he could go further. Of course; Altantsetseg had been old. So old, in fact, that it was hard to imagine her ever dying. And Toragana had said that Oljei was the clan leader now. Limpingly, he finished, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Qori Buqa’s tame sorcerer killed her to get the Padparadscha Seat,” Toragana said. “There’s other news you will not like.”

She gazed at him as steadily as a stone out of her one eye. Temur was not sure if he wished more that she would hurry and tell him, or more that he might vanish like a seed-head scattered by the wind before she could break his heart again.

The corner of her mouth twitched. “There is one topic on which you need have no fear, Khagan.
Cousin
. Against Qori Buqa’s heirs, against this al-Sepehr … Tsareg will follow you across the night sky and into the flames of the sun.”