Steles of the Sky (18 page)

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After Samarkar had mustered her strength enough to close the door behind them—and nearly knocked herself unconscious again—the rest of the party insisted on rigging a pony drag behind Bansh in which she could ride. Samarkar rolled her eyes and said that if they’d just consent to a meal and a rest, she’d be perfectly capable of sitting on the dun mare’s saddle—and that she’d rather walk any day than be carted about like an old woman in a barrow. But Temur assembled the pony drag over her protests, and refused to move until she was seated in it—and when she attempted to shoulder a pack and stalk away along the Dragon Road, her ankles wobbled and the world rocked back and forth until discretion won.

She plunked herself down in the stretched blanket and sulked.

“It’s only for one day,” Temur said, walking beside her. “You overextended yourself. And then overextended yourself again.” He reached down and tugged her ear. “Besides, it’s not as if you never strapped me into a pony drag. Be glad you’re not lashed to the poles, as I was.”

She had to laugh at that. It was true, and it was fair—and once she started laughing, she couldn’t keep the scowl. Even though it irritated her to let him win.

But she rode in the pony drag dutifully for the better part of the afternoon, though every time one of the poles dropped between flagstones or caught on an edge she thought enviously of the saddle. She lay on her back and watched the mare’s tail twitching over her, and the course of an enormous steppe vulture across the cloud-dyed sky.

Eventually, Hard-day gave way to Soft-day, Song’s filmy and tenuous red sun rising as the pinpoint blue one set opposite it. “I guess that’s pretty definitive, then,” Temur said.

Hsiung snorted. Samarkar did not need words to understand what he meant.
As if I’d not know my own sky.

Hrahima made a similarly guttural sound, though hers was more disgusted. “No darkness in Song,” she said. “We may as well camp now as later.”

“Let’s press on to that narrow,” Temur replied, pointing. Samarkar leaned out of her pony drag, trying to catch a glimpse around the buttocks of the mare. Ahead, one of the melted-candle mountains hugged in close to the river as if to drink from it, the Dragon Road hugging its root. The mountain came so close to the water that, because the Road would not sacrifice its width, broad jade flagstones actually projected out over the water. The flags were so undermined in places that they formed partial roofs for caverns—sinkholes—with nothing to support them but the stubborn old lingering magics that rendered them immovable and indestructible. This was a defensible position, and one with good sight lines in every direction.

“I agree,” Samarkar said. “We’ll be visible—but we can protect that.”

They made themselves cozy enough with fire and blankets. Brother Hsiung and Hrahima each separately disappeared for some time. When Hsiung returned, knees and fingers muddy, he had a cloth tied full of some crisp tubers, and some hard fruits that turned creamy once baked in the coals. Samarkar wondered if monks were trained to forage, or if it was a skill from his life before.

Hrahima, on the other hand, returned with a brace of Song water-deer—fragile-looking creatures no bigger than a lapdog, with legs as delicate as eating-sticks. And sharp, projecting fangs, which Samarkar still found completely out of place in their dainty faces.

Samarkar would have undertaken to butcher the things so they could be roasted whole, but Hsiung brushed her aside and handled everything. She felt selfish sitting and resting while others worked—but she could not deny that her bones ached with weariness, and the inactivity felt good. She might have been too tired to eat otherwise; when Hsiung brought her food, she realized she could barely remember how to chew and swallow. The deer was gamy and not precisely tender. Samarkar might have welcomed somebody to sit beside her and instruct her step-by-step in the process of getting it down her gullet.

She slept, so she did not remember the bulk of the Soft-day that followed. And no one woke her to take a watch.

She opened her eyes to the blue sun’s dawning. Temur sat by the fire, boiling water in two pots, one with the deer bones for a congee and one plain for drinking. Hsiung was sorting herbs onto a piece of leather to make the usual morning tisane. At this point of their travels, actual tea was a luxury nearly forgotten.

Samarkar blinked, relieved to find that other than the grogginess of sleep she felt alert. This sense of well-being lasted exactly until she moved, when pain shot through her neck like knife blades. Yesterday’s tenderness had been nothing compared to this. She only managed to push herself up stiff-armed, lip-bitten, the pain great enough that she sat for a moment afterward with the world spinning around her.

She must have made a sound, and Temur must have heard it, because he crouched beside her worriedly and reached out—only to leave his fingers hovering in the air a handspan from her shoulder.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

“Stiff neck,” she answered, unable to soften the strain in her voice. “I took a jarring yesterday. I’ll probably live.”

Hrahima was nowhere in sight, and even the thought of turning to look for her made sweat start on Samarkar’s forehead. Afrit was ducked under his mother, neck bowed and extended, nursing with his tail wagging like the handle of a pump. Samarkar let herself watch them quietly for a moment until the stabbing receded.

Hong-la had had some method of treating sore necks from falls and such like. A padded collar, to immobilize the victim until he or she healed. Samarkar wondered if she could improvise such a thing, and render it comfortable enough to wear without galling her flesh.

“I’ll need a hand up,” she said. “But a gentle one.”

Temur crouched beside her and let her use his shoulder as a prop. She got up mostly through the raw strength of her legs, grateful for all the time recently spent walking and in the saddle. She used up most of her native courage, however, doing it without screaming.

She was testing her balance, Temur hovering beside her like a dragonfly over a stem, when Bansh’s head came up, rich stems of grass forgotten between her lips. A moment later, sparse tail switching, Jerboa pricked her ears in the same direction and snorted. Hsiung, halfway from the fire with a steaming cup extended, paused and turned.

If Samarkar had dared to close her eyes, she would have pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. Could they go
one day
without an ambush or adventure? Maybe just long enough to drink the steeped herbs and gulp down some deer-broth-flavored rice gruel?

Apparently not. Now even Samarkar could hear the hoofbeats approaching—more than one horse, and she’d bet Temur would be able to pick out exactly how many. Whoever rode toward them was making haste, and making no attempt to conceal their presence. Those hooves rang on the stone surface of the Dragon Road.

Bansh whinnied greeting and challenge all in one. Not too distantly, they heard two horses reply.

In a moment, a rider on a golden chestnut steppe mare hove into view, trailing two remounts. It was a Qersnyk man, hatless in the autumn afternoon, his queue bouncing against the shoulders of his sheepskin coat. His horses glistened in the Hard-dawn, their coats reflecting the metallic tones peculiar to the steppe breed. They looked lean but fit, muscles gliding as they galloped easily over the stones.

The rider must have noticed the little party camped in the middle of the Dragon Road about the same time they spotted him. He did not draw up, but his mare slowed to a canter. He raised his left hand, displaying some object that—at this distance—seemed to be round and about the size of a fist.

“A mail-rider,” Temur said, his voice throbbing with excitement. He gestured Samarkar and Hsiung aside, off the Road. As they withdrew he turned to show both his hands upraised and open, the palms empty and flat. “Food for news!” he called.

Now the rider slowed further. As if understanding Temur’s intention, Hsiung thrust the bowl of steeped herbs into Samarkar’s hands and went to fetch up another. He trotted back to the fire and spooned congee into the bowl. By the time the rider had drawn level with them, Hsiung stood beside Temur, holding the food up over his head.

The rider halted his mare. She sidestepped and danced, head tossing—fresh, eager to be on her way, and only barely amenable to the will of her rider. He flashed the bronze disk in his hand again—a passport, threatening dire retribution by every man and woman of the steppe clans should harm come to him—and then tucked it into a special slit on his saddle. His hand now empty, he accepted from Hsiung the bowl.

He touched it to his lips, but before he spoke, his jet-shiny eyes flicked from Hsiung’s face to Temur’s, and then to Samarkar’s. “A mismatched team I find here.”

He drank and smacked his lips.

“Whatever the harness fits,” Temur responded, which seemed by the messenger’s quick smile to be a joke of sorts. “You ride with news, Ambassador?”

Samarkar knew that the man was unlikely to actually be what her people would consider an ambassador—a ranking dignitary of the court. Instead, the title was meant to convey his sacrosanct status, his impunity, and his immunity from harm.

“Qarash is beset by blood ghosts,” the messenger said, and paused.

“Surely, you mean Qeshqer?” Temur asked.

The messenger shook his head. He drank again, and handed down the empty bowl. “The keep was scoured, and all the council killed. The old Khagan’s foreign widow rules there now, in the name of her unborn son, but her grip on power is not secure. She claims the regency—but she claims it under a Rahazeen sky.”

Temur started. Samarkar could see the effort it took him to stay silent, even in the face of a taboo like interrupting a messenger.

“It is said that the Sorcerer-Prince has risen, exploded the smoking mountain that held him captive and burst those bonds forged upon him by the hand of the Eternal Sky himself. He stalks the land and leaves his enemies skinned behind him, dropped as if from a great height.”

Samarkar’s belly roiled. She had tried to put what Temur had dreamed in the Steles of the Sky away from her, tried to block from her mind the gnawing worry of what it meant that the Cold Fire burned hot once again. Now all those fears burst into her—fears for her family, for her brother wizards, for the Citadel and the city that she loved. She gnawed the inside of her cheek, silencing a half-dozen outbursts. Only one of which was her determination to correct this messenger, that it had been the Mother Dragon who put down the Joy-of-Ravens, and not the Qersnyk’s Eternal Sky.

“What more?” Temur asked. Despite herself, Samarkar was proud of his apparent serenity, the calm with which he took the news. Blood ghosts in Qarash as well—he, Temur, had not seen the skulls piled high in Qeshqer, as she had. But he had seen the blood ghosts in action, and survived an attack. The one during which they had stolen away his Edene.

“I bring news to the Song courts,” the messenger said. “The Khaganate grows again in strength, and is ready to reassert its alliances. Or defend its borders, if need be. The clans will not be trifled with.”

“They have been raiding on the borders?”

The messenger smirked. Of course they had. Like the borders between the Song princedoms and the Rasani, those lines were redrawn every time someone imagined an advantage—and political turmoil within the steppe clans was an advantage for their enemies that did not have to be imagined.

Samarkar asked, “You ride to the Song courts. Is that then the way to Dragon Lake?” She pointed back as he had come.

“You’re going the right way,” the messenger said, amused. With an air of ritual he added, “Have you messages?”

Temur started to shake his head, then stopped himself. The messenger, who had been reining his mare aside, made her pause.

“Hurry,” he said.

“Tell anyone who wants to know,” said Temur, lifting his chin though his voice trembled, “that the unborn child of Qori Buqa is not the only rider who would sit the Padparadscha Seat. Tell them that Re Temur Khagan, grandson of Re Temusan Khagan and brother of Re Qulan Khanzadeh raises his banner at Dragon Lake.”

Silence hung over them all as the messenger, his impatience evaporated, studied first Temur and then Samarkar and Hsiung in turn. He turned his glance to the mares and colt and frowned. “A ghost colt.”

“From a bay mare,” Temur said. “But I am no shaman-rememberer, to tell you what it means.”

“Half the time they’re making it up,” the messenger replied. “Re Temur, you say?”

“Khagan,” Temur repeated.

The messenger dipped his chin once, considering. “I am Gagun Aysh,” he said. “Smooth riding.”

“And swift,” Temur replied—almost to the messenger’s back, he was so quickly gone.

*   *   *

Mukhtar ai-Idoj, al-Sepehr of the Nameless Rahazeen, rose before sunrise in the master bedroom of a house that had once belonged to a Messaline merchant. The merchant had fled and his home was long looted, but it had doors and a roof. In the absence of an owner, with winter coming on, Saadet Khatun had claimed these things for the shelter of herself, her advisors, and her family.

As al-Sepehr wrote his first devotions by the light of a candle-stub, the heathen city of Qarash was already stirring. The sky was still dark when he rose from his altar-chest, sorted his prayers, and locked the papers, pens, and sacred inks away in the drawers set aside for that purpose. Then he drew silk gloves over the words tattooed across his hands and produced an iron key from his pocket.

The second chest was set as far across the room as possible from the altar, concealed by a screen. Al-Sepehr approached it with his lips bent in a moue of disgust. When he knelt, he did so without ceremony—merely to align the key with the lock. It turned with a heavy click. His gloved hands lingered on the edges of the lid reluctantly for a moment before he lifted it open.

From within, he drew a round object swathed in more layers of silk. He carried it across the rug-padded floors to a scarred table and set it down. So heavily padded was it that it made no sound. Efficiently, he peeled back the layers of silk—black on the outside, royal blue, then crimson—revealing the discolored ivory of an ancient skull.