The Book of a Thousand Days (11 page)

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entire city. What a strange, dark world that swallows people whole.

I need to know if anyone still lives. The not knowing makes me queasy. My lady said she won't go to Song for Evela, but Ancestors forgive me, I'm going to take her anyway. She won't ask where we're going, and once she arrives and sees her khan, she'll heal and forget the whispers.

Before we journey, I should go into the city. We need food, and we need vessels to carry water in case we can't follow a stream. My lady fares a bit better today after many songs of healing. If I can coax her, she'll come with me. She knows her home and may find stashes of food that pillagers would leave behind. I'll admit, I'm afraid to go in to the city. If an army did this, then warriors may still lurk there.

And if the Ancestors did this, if in anger they wiped the land clean, then why did they let my lady and me live? Did they forget about us, locked away, hidden from the gaze of the Eternal Blue Sky?

I just looked back at the beginning of my writings and the title I gave this book of thoughts. It's all wrong now. I named it so, thinking that we would be seven years in the tower, and the idea of having an adventure thereafter gave me hope. I'm a stubborn mare sometimes and must dangle my own carrot. Here we are

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two and a half years later, saved from one coffin only to find my lady's city is but a second. My title is no longer correct. Two and a half years is not seven, but I'll leave it. I don't like the look of scratched-out letters.

Day 7

My lady came with me into the city, Ancestors bless her. She shook like a thin tree caught in a wind, but she came.

I don't fault her--there was much to shake at. Not a roof left intact, not a soul alive. And many a body, burned bones, some still stuck with arrows, some missing skulls. I won't describe any more because, truth be told, I don't want to frighten my own self.

The whole place was so still, I longed to find living people. But at the same time, every moment I feared running into another soul. There could be warriors or the knocking men, and I have nothing to defend us with but my own fingernails. Every shadow, every corner seemed dangerous. The dread was so powerful, I felt like I was walking on my own studded rat traps. Even the breeze hurt against my skin.

I can't say which is more terrible, to be locked

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away from everyone or to be free in a world where all are dead. Both are different shades of darkness.

When we came at last to my lady's house, we stood and just stared. How grand it had been! So lovely and large my mama wouldn't have believed the tale. Now it was a heap of stones, green roof tiles, and cinder. My lady didn't cry. She didn't even shake. I think she hadn't had much happiness in that house.

My lady was able to point me to the spots where the kitchen had stood and the likely location of the food cellars. While I sorted through the rubble, she stared.

"Maybe it never really existed. Maybe this is all it ever was."

"No, my lady. It was real."

"I can't remember...." Her gaze didn't stray from the heap of rubble. "I can't remember, Dashti. Are you sure'.

Sometimes my lady asks me questions that I can't answer with any degree of patience.

From under the lighter rubble, I pulled out a sack half full of barley meal, some rope, a large ceramic pot with just the spout broken, a wheel of cheese still covered in wax, a jar of oil with its cork intact, and three boots. By then my arms were too tired to lift a pebble, so I wandered around the ruins, scanning for a gleam of anything useful. By the Ancestors' luck,

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eventually I did find a knife. With that tool I can sharpen sticks to dig roots, spear fish and rodents, and gut them for the eating. It gave me a bit of hope.

I hadn't realized how silent all the world was until I heard a cry that made my stomach jump up into my throat. I thought warriors had found us, that we were dog's meat for sure. But then I saw.

[Image: Picture of a Yak]

Titor, god of animals, must've taken pity on us and sent a gift for the last lady of Titor s Garden.

At first the animal looked ready to bolt, but I sang the yak song, the one that bubbles up your chest and says, "He laughs, he laughs, he moans and laughs." I've never seen any creature respond so quickly to an animal song. He came to me at a near trot and stuck his muzzle right in my palm. This one's made of the friendly stuff.

I named him Mucker, and he's the handsomest yak I ever saw, with his coat a glossy brownish black, horns so long and proud as to make any she-yak blush,

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and grand teeth all still intact. He's so strong, carrying our few possessions must feel like a fly landed on his back. Yaks are the best animals for travel and will eat whatever stubby greens the road will produce. Give me one good yak over a herd of horses any day.

And what fine company he is! He nuzzles my hands and lips my ears, he stands close to me as we walk, sometimes pressing his broad head against my side, his horn wrapped around my back like an arm. I think he has a wonderful sense of humor, too. I told him a few stories and he turned his ears, listening heartily. Just writing about him lifts my mouth into a smile. Mucker and I will get along fine.

Day 8

This landscape is as familiar to me as the inside of my eyelids. West of the city, the terrain eases back into the steppes--stretches of grass growing as tall as my knees, low, rounded hills, stripes of streams carrying away the mountains' snow, and the occasional knotty tree, wind-whipped and bending.

I'd forgotten how the wind never sleeps out here. The clean air moving against my skin was more delicious than spiced food--at first. But when

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we stopped for the night, I couldn't fall asleep for all the memories of mucker life the smell of the wind thrust into my mind.

When I did finally sleep, I dreamed I'd been running through the ruined city, trying to find a way out. When I went into a house, I found it full of bodies, and before I could turn away, the walls sealed up around me. Goda, goddess of sleep, save me from such visions. Even after I woke, the dream still felt sticky, clinging to me as if I'd walked through a spider's web. I'm lying against Mucker now and feeling a bit easier for his warmth and sleepy grunts.

Stars light my page. We'll be starting our journey in earnest come dawn and I suppose I won't have a chance to write again for some time. Song for Evela is west of Titor's Garden, so we'll follow the road that stretches toward the setting sun. If it would take two weeks for the khan's party with their horses and decent supplies, for us, I guess it'll be more than twice that. We don't have food enough, but it's spring and there are trout in the stream. If there's something a mucker knows, it's how to eat from nothing. No walls trap us now!

The smell of grass and yak is making me drunk with wishes that I'd never left the steppes--but after Mama died, I didn't know how to survive alone. Did I give up everything to learn to make letters and words on paper?

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No. I'm a lady's maid. She would've died in that tower without me, I know that. My worth lies in keeping my lady alive for her khan. The Ancestors will honor such a life as mine. I hope.

Day 33

Three weeks we've been walking and still not another soul. We spotted the remains of some villages, but whether the folk there fled when the city was destroyed or whether they were all killed, too, I don't know.

A few days ago we forded a wide river, and I believe it must be the one that marks the border of Titor's Garden and Song for Evela. If so, then we've crossed into her khan's realm. Will we find the city gutted and full of the dead unburied? Never mind, I'd rather not think on that question.

My lady's clothes begin to hang on her again. I get her off Mucker's back and walking as often as she'll allow, so her blood is moving and her breath is exhaling the tower poison from her body. But oft times she must ride, for she's so beset by darkness as to not see the road.

This morning she began to scream, "I'm drowning, I can't breathe. The air's not right, I can't breathe." She clawed at the air and grabbed her throat, and

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when my songs of healing did her little good, I found a hollowed overhang by the stream and stuck her inside. She calmed at once.

I'm sitting outside the little cave, where I can still see the sky, where the sunlight moves on my arms. Being inside that tiny space, even for a moment, that's what made me want to scream.

While she's been napping, I've combed Muckers shedding hair with my fingers, sharpened a new stick, boiled the sting out of some nettle leaves, then speared a fish in the stream, wrapped it in leaves, stuffed it with nettles, and cooked it in coals. The smell of fish cooking is rich enough to wake up the trees, but still my lady sleeps.

So I ate my portion and then lay on my back, watching the clouds. Seven years of food isn't worth trading for the sky.

[Image: Picture of a Person Sleeping In a Cave and a Yak in the Background]

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Day 41

Others live!

Since fording the river, the steppes have faded away, trees and then great woods taking over. Today we reached a crossroads and saw a group of traders traveling the north-south road. They were whole and living and speaking--real people, not ghosts. What a heavenly sight.

"How far is the city?" I asked when we were upon them. I didn't say Song for Evela, for my lady still doesn't know where we're going.

"Four days, if you walk straight. You weren't coming from the east just now, were you?"

"Sure enough, they're coming in from Titer's Garden," said another trader, then he leaned over and laughed hard.

The first rolled his eyes. "Hmph, very funny. As though anything comes from Titor's Garden."

"What happened there?" I asked.

"Lord Khasar happened. Wiped it out entirely almost a year ago. Now he's off making war with Goda's Second Gift. We're hoping he burns them down, too."

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"Hoping?"

"As should you. If he just conquers, if he adds their armies to his, all the warriors of our realm will have little chance against him. He's bound to come our way next. Tales be true, there's nowhere in all the Eight Realms where Lord Khasar's shadow won't cross."

My lady's hands covered her face, her shoulders trembling.

Day 44

Our grain meal is long gone, as is the cheese and oil, and after days on nothing but nettles, I think we were both feeling twig-thin and cranky. This morning I killed a marmot with my stick. I stuffed its belly full of hot coals and let it cook from the inside out. We had no salt or spice, and the meat was so tough it took fifty chews each bite, but even so I guess I never ate a meal so delicious. Even my lady didn't complain.

Very soon, I'll reunite her with her khan. And then? If she wishes, I'll stay with her and be nursemaid to her babies. If not, I'll find work in the city, or perhaps I will return to the steppes and find a

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mucker clan, take a seven-year oath, and work in their herds in exchange for eating their meals and sleeping on the floors of their ghers. But I'd be twenty-five by the time I was eligible to marry, and that's old for a mucker bride, even if anyone would take me without a dowry.

I'll worry about it after I see my lady settled in her happiness.

The sky no longer seems breathlessly huge, but feels to press down on me. Perhaps I'm just afraid of the uncertainty to come. When I'm moving on a journey, the ending is still unknown and possibly wonderful. But once I arrive, it's hard to keep imagining.

Day 46

Ris, god of roads and towns, has guided our feet, for we are here at last! The city of Song for Evela is greater than Titor's Garden, with a wall three-men high and a small army on horseback beside each gate. They fear Lord Khasar, I think.

A caravan from the south entered the gate ahead of us. I'd seen caravans arrive in Titor's Garden when I ran errands for Qadan, and I knew that they offer

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their goods to the lord or lady of the city before setting up in the market. Following behind seemed the fastest path to finding the house of my lady's khan.