Imperial Lady

12

As Silver Snow traveled north and west toward the meeting with her future lord and people, she journeyed through summer into autumn. Behind her, she left a mourning court; but she herself did not lament as her train of guards, ladies, musicians, servants, and Hsiung-nu wound slowly toward the grasslands. Gradually the grass withered, and the scrub that covered the ground turned orange, then bronze, just as Silver Snow remembered it from her earliest childhood. She could not help but compare this journey with her last. When she had left her father’s house for Ch’ang-an, she and Willow had counted themselves lucky to have clean, unpatched quilts and adequate food. A fire was a luxury.

Now, she traveled in an imperial chariot that made the one in which her former escort had traveled seem as shabby and clumsy as an ox-cart. She wore robes of quilted silk and (when there was need) a cape and hood lined with satin and wrought of fur so soft and deep that her hands sank into it. Should she express the desire to stop for an hour or a day along the line of march, she was instantly heeded and surrounded with every tender attention. Did the lady require rice wine or litchi—or the presence of her maid or a flute-player?

So many questions; so many tiny, wearisome decisions; and so many calls upon her attention to praise, to mediate, or to chastise just when she wanted to look out at the land, which, day by day, assumed the familiar aspect of her beloved northlands! She might just as well be immured at court, she thought, because her ladies insisted on behaving as if they had not left the Palace. She would be relieved, she realized, to see the last of them.

Viewing the Hsiung-nu, supposedly her future subjects, brought her more satisfaction. Though gasps and squeaks from her ladies (when they were not weeping or exclaiming in fear at what was unfamiliar—as nearly everything was) greeted her actions, she questioned her guards, both the men of Ch’in and of the plains. Each day, her command of her new people’s language grew better. She also insisted on riding out, at least for a brief time, every day. At first, she had perforce to ride the disgraceful donkey that the Hsiung-nu had deemed fit for a sheltered princess. Later, as they saw that she neither wobbled in her saddle nor complained, she was raised to the dignity of a horse; the grunts and brief words she overheard from the Hsiung-nu in her train convinced her that her riding, if nothing else, met with their approval.

Day by day, the weather grew steadily cooler, and the wind that swept down from the great bowl of Heaven to ruffle the fur of her cloak and hood became fiercer and dryer. In it, she could smell drying grass and the bruised, hardy plants of the North.

They had had music from sundown late into the night. Flutes and zithers had played, and her maids had sung. Willow passed wine and sweetmeats about on delicate plates; and, for once, no one had grimaced or recoiled from her. Seated in her tent, basking in the light of many lamps, Silver Snow, her maids, and her companions had drawn together, the music linking them in a unity that was the warmer, the finer for the wind blowing outside and the fact that it had not long to last.

Finally, as the lamps burned lower, casting shadows on the tent’s taut walls, Silver Snow had let herself be coaxed into singing.

“This is a song of the North,” she explained, and then she had sung, the wind outside and the drums within fit counterpoint for her sweet, reedy voice.

Abruptly one of the ladies gasped, hand to mouth. Roused from a trance of music-making. Silver Snow started and broke off her song.

“Forgive this wretched, foolish one, Imperial Lady,” wept the woman. “But outside, outside, I saw a shadow, and . . . oh, it frightened me!”

That had ended the night’s music. Silver Snow had had much ado to prevent that lady’s cries and tears from spreading like fire across dried-out brush. When she could spare time to look up, the shadow of which the woman had spoken was gone, assuming that it—one particular shadow among the shadow-dance that played on the tent’s walls—had ever been there.

Shortly afterward, she had dismissed all of her other attendants, laid aside her heavy garments, and sighed in the peace and solitude.

* “Good hunting, Elder Sister,” whispered Willow as the girl sank down on a pallet at the foot of Silver Snow’s own bed-place.

In the light of the one tiny jade lamp that had been left to be extinguished, she rose upon one elbow to study her maid. Willow’s eyes glowed green, reflecting the lamplight, filled with the desire to run free and to hunt. Perhaps she wanted to roam free forever, Silver Snow thought with a pang.

Then Willow blinked, and her eyes were only those of a young woman’s—tired and red-rimmed from the touch of wind and dust.

“No,” whispered the maid. “I do not speak for myself, but for you. This is a royal hunt on which we go; you hunt out a future for yourself, and I—I follow at your heels.”

Then she smiled, showing white teeth that were incongruously, delicately perfect in such an undistinguished face.

The next day, they spotted the Yellow River, the huge, unruly dragon of a river that swept across Ch’in, bringing life to the lands—or disastrous floods. They would follow the river even farther north, to the rocky pass where Yellow River met the Purple Barrier of the Great Wall, where Ch’in ended and the grasslands of the Hsiung-nu began.

For now, the river was quiescent, a strong, wide, rippling thing that extended from where they rode to the horizon.

A flicker of motion on its nearer bank drew Silver Snow’s attention, as, apparently, it drew the attention of the Hsiung-nu, who nodded among themselves, and reached for bows and quivers.

“Riverbirds,” whispered Willow, coming up beside her mistress’ horse on the donkey that sweated and sidled but, nevertheless, bore her. “Did I not tell you, lady, that we would have good hunting?”

“Quick, Willow, ride back and fetch my bow,” Silver Snow ordered. Unworthy, unseemly it might be to boast, but she would like to bring down at least one of those waterfowl before the Hsiung-nu, especially before that taciturn Prince Vughturoi. They should see that their new queen could provide food as well as eat it, and that she could ably defend herself.

Besides, some omen-making part of her mind recalled that she had been hunting wildfowl the day that the summons had come from the Palace. To shoot down another bird today would be an auspicious event.

Willow laughed mischievously, handed over the bundle that she had strapped to her saddle, and rode away. Silver Snow unrolled it: there lay a quiver of arrows and the bow that Silver Snow had borne in the North and with which she had slain the bandits during her journey to the capital. Silver Snow tested the string, nodded at its faint, sweet twang, and ignored the Hsiung-nu, who, for once, were startled into grins at the sight of the Imperial Lady, bow in hand.

A fox’s bark yapped from the riverbank, panicking the waterfowl and sending them crying and flapping into the air. The Hsiung-nu drew as one, and Silver Snow drew with them, firing once, then again, almost as rapidly as they.

Birds fell, some upon the land, some splashing into the shallows; and the Hsiung-nu rode forward to retrieve them. Their shouts of triumph rose, then changed. Quickly Prince Vughturoi rode back from the riverbank and gestured, as if begging—as much as Hsiung-nu ever could beg—permission to approach her. Draped before him on his saddle were two plump fowl. One had been felled with two arrows, so close together that their feathers touched. The second had been a clean kill—one arrow, shot neatly through the bird’s neck.

“Lady,” he said, pointing to the bird that had been killed with two arrows. He looked puzzled, so puzzled that, clearly, he gave no thought to the possibility that Silver Snow might flinch at the presence of blood and death, “This arrow I know. It is of the fletching common in the grasslands. But this arrow—and this one, a fine shot, too—I do not know at all. Is there a marksman among the soldiers of Ch’in who ride among us?”

Silver Snow reached out one tiny hand to touch the arrow. Its fletching was indeed familiar, the work of her father’s bowyer. She reached into her quiver, and brought out the arrow’s mate. Then she smiled and, very quickly, glanced away.

Finally they reached the pass where great river and Great Wall met. Strangely enough, in this sheltered place, the winds were fainter, warmer, and the grass still was green. Because the Hsiung-nu for whom Prince Vughturoi had sent had not yet arrived, soldiers and servants pitched tents and unpacked for what might prove to be a long stay.

Silver Snow dismounted without aid. After days in the saddle, she had regained all of the hardiness that she had feared that her time in the Palace might have cost her. Nevertheless, she thought, as she straightened her cloak, the land here was fair, if bleak. She would use the respite to write to her fathers, she thought, with a wry smile, all three of them: Chao Kuang, who had begotten her; Li Ling, his friend, who had saved her from despair and had taught her; and Yuan Ti, the Son of Heaven, who had adopted her to toss her away, yet who had, in the end, grieved over his decision. That was her obligation; it was also her pleasure. Thanks to Li Ling, she even had silk fit for the task.

She was not, however, to have uninterrupted tranquillity for the task. The instant that Silver Snow’s tent was pitched and that her ladies were free to come to her, they broke out in tears and wails of grief and fear.

Silver Snow sighed. Willow winced. The Hsiung-nu and Ch’in soldiers, not faced with the need for self-control, grimaced and grinned. Silver Snow bent over the most distraught of the ladies.

“What troubles you?” she crooned in the voice that they all swore was as sweet as litchi. (When they had called her the Shadowed One, however, they had condemned that very same voice as reedy and shrill; best not think of that.) “You are not ill; we shall rest here; and soon you shall return to your home.”

The mention of home made the wailing break out afresh. That was it, then. The Hsiung-nu ladies had not yet arrived, and now this flock of affrighted palace ladies feared that they never would. In that case, perforce, it would be their obligation to accompany Silver Snow to the court of the Hsiung-nu, from which, they were sure, there could be no return.

“I shall die!” shrieked one woman.

“Did you see the grass?” another lamented. “Green, ever green, like the tombs of exiles, watered with tears.”

“We will never see our homes again!”

“They will carry us off to the West, and we will never again see the Palace, or a garden, or my little courtyard with the golden carp in the pool. And they will make us eat our meat raw!”

Had their fear not been so real, and so likely to drive them into a frenzy, Silver Snow might have found it comical. But she was tired and apprehensive herself, and she wanted only to rest and compose her thoughts before she wrote out an account of her days for the men whom she revered most in all the world.

“This is my work, Elder Sister.” Blessed Willow burrowed into her baggage for the herbs that Li Ling had given her, hastened to the fire, and began to steep a soothing decoction. Her eyes met her mistress’, and Silver Snow nodded.

At least what few trees remained were stunted, flimsy things that would not hold the weight of a lady who sought to avoid worse by hanging herself with her silken sash. “We are too close to the river here, too close to the rocks,” she murmured. She would have to have the guard doubled around the ladies’ quarters until they turned back toward Ch’ang-an.

She emerged from her tent, thankful, at least, that their terror forestalled her ladies from criticizing her going out among armed men without proper supervision. Seeking the captain of her guard, she found him in attendance on Prince Vughturoi, who pointed west and gestured, but who broke off at her approach. Silver Snow nodded to him, then explained her wishes.

The guard captain abased himself, then ran off to do her bidding. The prince, however, held his ground and regarded hei»with that expressionless stare of his. “There is no illness?” he asked.

“None, save fear,” she declared. “I seek to prevent the fear driving some fragile soul mad.”

She glanced out in the direction toward which the prince had been gazing. “Our people approach,” he deigned to tell her.

How keen his sight must be! She could see nothing except, yes, surely, that was it, a puff of dust, of less size against the immensity of the land and sky than a gnat. She sighed. Uncouth the women of the Hsiung-nu might be, but, at least, they would be used to the land.

“I shall be glad when they arrive,” Silver Snow ventured to say. For the first time, the prince smiled, the merest quirk of one side of his mouth. Silver Snow withdrew, feeling that she had won a major victory.

She returned to her tent, where a more ignominious and far louder battle raged, and did her best to calm her overwrought ladies. Long into the night she and Willow labored; it was only when they had put the last of the gulping, shivering ladies to bed and hidden any knife that they might find that she and Willow had time quietly to drink some warmed rice wine themselves, eat but a morsel or two, and, finally, try to sleep.

Still, the ladies’ wailing had plucked at Silver Snow’s nerves to such an extent that she slept but shallowly. Her sleep was full of dreams of horses and blowing dust, a weird whistling sound, and blood dripping onto the land while, somewhere in the distance, came loud, cruel laughter. She woke, sweating, and breathed quiet thanks into the shaking hands that she held cupped before her lips.

Then she sat up, as stiff as if she had undertaken a day’s ride after a year’s inaction. The fire had burnt itself out; she might summon a servant to rekindle it, or do so herself, if she wanted to wake Willow, who slept deeply and enviably, with only a twitch, from time to time, to show that she indeed lived. Even if she kindled a fire, she would probably only wake the most distraught of the ladies, who also slept within her quarters.

The tent should have been dark, but moonlight shone into it, letting Silver Snow see her warm robe wadded at the foot of her pallet, her sleeping maid—and the small, hunched shadow-figure that darted from the tent toward the river.

Quickly Silver Snow rose and whipped her robe, then her cloak, about her. She thrust her feet into fur-lined boots, seized up her bow, and set out after the shadow.

Behind her Willow muttered, sleepy, but rapidly coming alert and alarmed. However, Silver Snow could not stay to reassure her. With a huntress’ care, Silver Snow stalked the figure whose shadow she had seen. Her feet in their furred boots made no sound, even on the crisp ground scrub; and soon she had reached the too-green grass that her ladies had chosen to see as a sign of ill-omen.

She was nearing the figure. It was all silver-gray in the moonlight, but Silver Snow recognized the embroideries on the gown that straggled from the woman’s shoulders, trailing after her on the grass. It was the lady who had feared that she would be made to eat raw meat. Silver Snow stifled a groan. Of all of her women, that one was the most sensitive. Let a pet bird be injured, and she was in tears; let a friend be ill, and she too took to bed.

What had caused her to walk in her sleep? Silver Snow raised her hands to clap them sharply together, thus waking the woman into sense. Then, she thought better of it. Who knew to what strange realms her spirit might have fled, or what might happen if she were waked thus unceremoniously?

She quickened her pace to catch the woman and turn her before she reached the river. That was when Silver Snow heard the whimpering. “Winds across the plains ... no rest ... no peace ... no friends. I shall die, and none will remain to mark my grave or set up a tablet in my memory . . . misery, misery ... to be cursed so far from my home.”

*To be cursed? Silver Snow stopped and drew a deep breath. As if she herself were a creature of the wilds, she sniffed at the air. It was sweet and untainted; from whence came this muttering of curses and exile?

Silver Snow felt her robe catch in the ground scrub. She freed it with a tearing sound, and hurried more quickly after the endangered lady. The long skirt caught again, and again, until she was tempted to shed it and run after the lady in her undergown. Above her, the sky seemed suddenly to whirl, and she flung out a hand to protect herself. The ground was twirling and shaking; there was no anchorage, no stability anywhere . . . she herself would fall into the river that rippled so steadily and deeply ahead and be carried away, beyond anyone’s ken . . .

Then a cold nose touched the hand she had flung out, and metal rattled against it.

Silver Snow gasped and looked down at the fox that nuzzled her fingers. Larger than most it was, with a particularly lush coat. It walked with a peculiar limp, and, in its mouth, it bore an amulet dangling from a chain.

“I cannot reach her,” she gasped, still giddy from whatever force had all but hurled her to the ground. The fox pressed its pointed muzzle into her hand, releasing the amulet into her palm.

As Silver Snow looped the cord of the amulet about her neck, the fox ran on ahead. As it had with Silver Snow’s, it nuzzled the dreaming lady’s fingers, then took them delicately in its mouth and began, ever so gently and patiently, to tug her away from the river, and back toward Silver Snow.

With one last furious tug, she freed her garments. A moment later—though it would have been too late for the sleepwalker whom the fox now guided—she had the woman by the arm and was steering her toward the tent, when a shadow fell across her path, moonlight glinting from the sharp blade that it held.

Silver Snow gasped and stopped. The fox melted into the nightshadows, and Vughturoi sheathed his blade.

“Is such night walking a custom of Ch’in?” he asked, with no amusement at all in his deep voice.

She was a princess of Ch’in, she was queen of the hordes, and she was her father’s daughter: she had the power to order him away. She did not know why she answered with the absolute truth.

“I dreamed ill,” she said, looking down, suddenly aware that she wore a thin gown and a quilted robe, and that her hair tumbled about her face and down her back. Even if the moonlight silvered over her flush, this was no time for maiden modesty.

“When I woke,” said Silver Snow, “I saw that Jade Butterfly here had left my tent. She was walking in her sleep, crying about a curse that she feared so that she would drown herself lest she yield to it. We do not curse thus in Ch’in,” she added angrily. “It is a strong tongue that can frame that sort of curse.”

“Aye,” muttered Vughturoi, as if he had bitten down on a rotten fruit. “A strong tongue indeed. Shall I see you back to your tent, lady?”

Silver Snow shook her head. “What if this one wakes and sees you? Then we shall have more tears and frenzy. I thank you, Prince, but no.” The sooner she returned to her tent, the sooner Willow might return to her true form. She thought she could hear her maid in fox-guise even now, yapping as she prowled—with a lame leg, yet!—about the outskirts of the camp thrice.

Vughturoi blended back into the shadows with a skill that set at naught her own small knowledge of trail lore. Silver Snow dragged Jade Butterfly back toward the tent and the safety of her own sleeping mats.

It was a long time until she could sleep, and when, finally, her eyes closed, the last things that she saw were Willow’s bright, wary eyes and a rigid shadow mounting guard outside the tent.

By noon of the next day, the Hsiung-nu caravan arrived.

It is as well, lady,” Willow remarked. “The novelty will distract your companions, and we shall be gone before this sleeping Butterfly of yours can awake and claim she was possessed by a fox.”

Silver Snow nodded and waved Willow into her usual, shadowed place. She herself was fascinated by the approaching troop. Leather-armored riders bore the reflexive and bone-reinforced bows of the hordes; musicians who raised weird instruments to bray music like nothing that she had ever heard before; two ladies, who seemed to be taller and broader than half of the Ch’in guardsmen; carts; an immense herd of pack animals and remounts; and the chariot that was clearly intended for Silver Snow.

That especially fascinated her, for it was drawn, not by horses nor by oxen, but by camels, the first that she had ever seen, two smooth-striding, swaying beasts that bore the double humps on their backs with the same unconcern as they pulled the chariot. The whole of the arriving escort shrieked and yelped as they approached Vughturoi, and rode in a circle just beyond the shadow of the Wall.

Above all else, it was the sight of the camels that made so very plain to Silver Snow that she had reached to the place where Ch’in met the wilderness. She drew a deep breath of fear, wonder, and—yes—delight, and turned toward her ladies. Abstracted, she handed a packet of letters, painstakingly calligraphed upon silk, to the chief of them, commended herself to the Son of Heaven and—as if in a dream—by rote to whomever else the lady considered proper, then bid the rest of her short-term companions farewell. She would never see them again, and that contented her well. It surprised her that they seemed to feel otherwise about her. They clustered about and declaimed, some in tears, the sorrow of parting.

Their tears are more than ritual, more than what is due to the Son of Heaven's favor. Yet, I was ever the Shadowed One, she thought, bemused. When and why did they come to love me?

“It is three months’ journey to where my father the shan-yu holds winter court,” Vughturoi remarked as Silver Snow mounted and prepared to ride out beyond the Wall and the only country she had ever dreamed of knowing.

“Indeed?” She raised brows that had not lost their delicacy, even if she no longer bothered to pluck and pencil them to the proper moth-wing shape. Where she rode, there would be none to care for such things, in any case. “That being the case, lord Prince, had we not better start immediately?”

They rode up to the Wall, and her Ch’in guards presented their tokens. The gate that the Son of Heaven had decreed must henceforward be called the Gate of Tears groaned open. Despite herself, Silver Snow glanced back once at the confusion as her camp beside the Yellow River was dismantled. She was disconcerted by how very little she cared for the bustle of plots and activity that she was leaving behind. She raised hand in farewell, and a wail of grief went up from those ladies who had assembled to see her go. She winced as she touched heels to her horse’s flanks.

As Silver Snow crossed through the gate, her horse’s hooves rasped against the grit and scant scrub of the true desert, deposited here by the wind. Thus, she rode out into the lands of the Hsiung-nu, and the wind, laden with dust and sand, buffeted her scarf-protected face.