Jaran

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

If they treated Tess more and more like one of their own, she scarcely noticed it because it seemed to flow naturally from her time among them. The ways of the jaran lay in her hands: she examined each one and let it settle within her until her strange hybrid of customs grew so complex and interwoven that, at odd moments, she forgot where one left off and the other began. The days removed her from Fedya's death; he became increasingly the inhabitant of a sequestered dream.

For months now she had become accustomed to the swell and flow of the plain, a grand monotony alleviated by hills and the occasional watercourse slicing through it. But the plains do not continue forever, just as happiness and sorrow both eventually come to an end. Their first hint of the highlands was a rough stretch of land pitted with gorges and rugged valleys that were barren of cover and composed of rock as stubborn and sharp and unyielding as a saint. The jaran playfully called it krinye-tom, the little mountains; Tess called it hell and wondered what the big mountains were like.

They slowed their pace to a crawl and ranged wide to find enough fodder for the horses. The dirt clung to Tess. The heat baked the walls of hard stone, and sweat plastered her shirt to her back. The men veiled their heads in cloth to protect themselves from the sun. Tess's scalp itched, but she did not dare undo her braided hair, having no water to wash it in. The horses got the greatest share of the water. Was there a point past which one could not become clean again?

She dreamed of showers. At least the others looked as filthy as she felt, and they joked about it constantly, liking it as little as she did. Only the Chapalii, who did not appear to sweat at all, appeared unaffected; Tess knew that this heat was doubtless a relief to them, being closer to their natural climate.

At long last, they came out onto the watershed of the mountains, grass and shrubs and a scattering of trees on level land. Not a lush land, by any means-that would be far far south, across the great range-but a breeze cooled her cheeks and her shirt dried. They came to an isolated khaja village, and Bakhtiian traded gold trinkets and two tarpans for grain.

Two days' ride out from the village, Bakhtiian called an entire day's halt when they came to a deep-bedded stream. Tess found a pool upstream from the horses, stripped, and washed herself and her hair-that twice-and every piece of clothing in her possession, for the dirt had contaminated even the saddlebags. Surely this stream of all streams was blessed by the gods, for the clearness of its water and the lazy trickle of its flow. She spread her damp blanket over a smooth-surfaced rock and, naked, stretched out on it to dry.

Pulling her mirror case free of her gear, she undid its clasps and slid the mirror out. Her face surprised her, she had not seen it in so long: the blunt chin, the high cheekbones, the deep green of her eyes. Not a bad face, after all, though the green eyes seemed out of place; she kept thinking they ought to be blue or brown. She had grown lean. Streaks of gold lightened her hair. Her hands were strong. She felt-content.

Except for Charles. Somewhere, Charles was worrying about her, searching for her. At least she was headed in the right direction. Yet at this moment, Jeds seemed like a goal too distant to agonize over. Turning over to let her back dry, she rested her chin on her laced fingers and stared at the rippling water. Light sparked off it, ever-changing, a constant, inexorable flux.

Her privacy was assured, a privilege, not a prison, conferred on her because she was female, and that was a thing she had never known on Earth, where locked doors bought privacy and privacy could be violated by crime or, for those unlucky enough to be related to the most influential human in the Chapalii Empire, by the media and the ubiquitous

Protocol Office. Only the most degraded of outcasts would assault her here and, as for the Chapalii, she outranked them. In this land, a person's fortune could be measured in sun and sweet wind and kinship with other people. Material possessions became, in the end, a burden; what you possessed of the spirit was far more valuable. Gloom was disdained: in a world of fighters it was a hindrance; to a people beside whom freedom ran like a hound, it was absurd.

Except for Fedya. But for Fedya, it had proved fatal. With a sigh, Tess sat up. She braided her hair, pinned the braid atop her head, and went swimming. The water felt cool and soft against her skin. The sun warmed her face. She did not go back to camp until evening.

In the morning she rode out with Bakhtiian. Ahead, dark stained the land, and she asked him what it was.

"Don-usbekh. The dark wood. Days of it, east and west, and south to the mountains. The khaja say it is haunted." He smiled, looking at her to see what her reaction would be.

"Haunted by what?" she asked, not quite laughing.

He shrugged. "The khaja fear many things, not least their own nightmares. I do not know."

"Do you think it is haunted?"

"I think that no khaja will live there. But there's an old road that runs through it, so once people must not have feared it as they do now."

An old road. "Will we follow this old road?"

"It's the only track through. See there-that broken pillar. We'll follow the road from there."

But despite her fears-or hopes-the old road proved to be just that-an old road. Ancient, stone paved, half grown over in spots, it looked exactly like what she guessed it must be: some relic from an old empire, thrown across the vast land.

"Perhaps the people who built this also built the great temple on the plains," she said to Bakhtiian as they waited in the first outlying tendril of the forest for the jahar to catch up with them.

"Perhaps they did."

She spotted the first ranks of the jahar in the distance, tiny figures moving closer. "Bakhtiian, if Mikhailov's men could find you on the plain, aren't you worried that they might find you more easily on a road like this? We'll be trapped on it, on a single road surrounded by trees."

"Mikhailov, whatever else he may be, is not fool enough to follow us into khaja lands. For that is what lies beyond the don-usbekh."

"Then why are we going?"

Bakhtiian's stallion shifted beneath him. Bakhtiian stroked the black's neck with affection. "For more of these horses, I would risk much more than this."

And one hundred more of these horses he would have, should they reach the end of this journey. "Well," said Tess, but nothing more. The jahar arrived then. Bakhtiian sent Josef and Tasha and Niko back to cover their rear, and he rode ahead with Tess, leaving the main group to ride at their leisure in between.

Soon enough the close ranks of trees began to seem oppressive to her even while she told herself that this forest was far more open than many. A dank, rotting scent hung in the air. So much vegetation, falling in and covering itself, and no wind to sweep the air clear. Even the colors turned somber and dense. Now and then an animal that had ventured too close to the road would flee into the forest, a trail of sound marking its path. It was never entirely still. Noise scattered out from the undergrowth, and rodents chittered and birds called from the branches above. The light bled down in patches and stripes so that day never came completely and night came without even the grace of stars.

That night a storm blew down from the mountains. The constant drumming of rain and the patter of falling leaves and twigs disturbed her sleep as she tried to make herself comfortable inside her tent. It was a relief to ride the next morning, although the trees dripped on them all that day and the day after. By the third morning, the forest had leached itself dry in the warm summer air, though the undergrowth looked greener for the drenching. They rode on, having to cut away growth in some places to clear the road, and Tess began to wonder if the forest would ever end.

"I've never seen Ilya so cheerful," said Yuri one evening as he helped Tess set up her tent. Because the trees grew up to the very edge of the road, indeed overgrew the road in many areas, the jahar set up camp on the road itself at night. ' 'He must smile once a day now, and he never smiled but once a month before. What do you two do while you're riding?"

"We talk, Yuri."

He chuckled and sat down next to her tent, fishing in his saddlebags for his spare shirt and his embroidery needles and thread. "Do you want to try again?"

"And ruin your shirt? No, thank you."

"Well, it's true women have little hand for embroidery. But you've taken to saber well enough." He threaded a needle with a thick golden thread and began to embroider golden spirals through the thick black pattern that textured his sleeves. "I thought you might take to this if you tried it again."

"Yuri, I'm sore from my saber lesson tonight. May I just lie here for a while and watch you?"

"If you think this stone is a comfortable bed, then please, lie there as long as you wish."

She laughed. It was not quite dark yet, and a fire built within a ring of stones some ten paces away gave light as well. Here, in this deserted place, game was plentiful and easy to kill, and deadwood for smoking the meat was in vast supply. Bakhtiian had decided to halt for a few days, to hunt, to graze the horses in nearby meadows, to rest. "I'm teaching him some of the songs I know,'' Tess said at last.

"Who? Oh, Ilya."

"And he's teaching me jaran songs. Only decent ones, of course."

"My dear sister," said Yuri primly, "Bakhtiian would never think to teach a woman any songs but those that it is decent for her to know.''

"Unlike some I know."

Instead of replying, he squinted at his work in the inadequate light. Kirill and Mikhal and a few of the other young men were gambling. Farther on, the conical tents of the Chapalii thrust up among the trees, like pale ghosts lost in the leaves.

"And Newton," she said.

"Newton? Who is Newton?"

"Oh, a philosopher. Not just him, but Casiara and Narronias and-and the work of many others."

"Gods. Sometimes I'm amazed that Ilya ever came back from Jeds. How he loves khaja learning."

"You're right," she said, realizing that it was true. "I hadn't thought of it that way." It had not occurred to her before that there might be some link between his relentless ambitions and the constant, restless inquisitiveness of his mind. Just as she could not resist a new language, he could not resist a new philosopher. If she mentioned a name he did not know, he demanded that she recite every scrap of writing she could remember, a feat she usually accomplished by broad paraphrasing since she had not his training in wholesale memorization. He loved to quibble over the smallest point and discuss the large ones to the finest detail. The scope of her knowledge, fostered by a decade in the schools of a stellar empire, was balanced by his experience, his impressive memory, his capacity to assimilate new information, and his astuteness; she always had to be careful of what she said. "I guess I always thought," she said, discovering that Yuri was watching her curiously, as if wondering where she had gone, "that a man with ambitions of conquest would be too single-minded to aspire to be a philosopher as well."

"Oh, I don't think Ilya wants to be a philosopher," said Yuri lightly. He yawned, laying down his shirt, and let a hand rest on Tess's back. "He just doesn't like other people knowing something he doesn't."

Tess laughed. "That's unkind, Yuri."

"Do you think so? I don't. Ilya has no one to answer to. That means he must know everything. It would be enough to drive me mad. I think it's the reason Ilya is so harsh."

"Harsh? Maybe at first, but not lately-" She grinned. "With Kirill, yes."

"Well, Kirill deserves it."

"No, he doesn't!" She laughed again. "Maybe. But / like him. He's-he's Kirill. And you must admit that he's the only one of you who has the courage to make fun of Ilya at all."

"He's the only one stupid enough to do it in front of him."

"He's the only one who doesn't take Ilya as seriously as Ilya takes himself.''

Yuri picked up his embroidery. "I resent that. You never saw Ilya at his worst. When the mood was on him, he would come into camp and, like that, everyone walked everywhere on their toes to avoid his notice."

Tess giggled.

"He hasn't been bad at all this trip. I think he likes you."

"Likes me?" She found a perceptible crack in the stone fitting and traced it out as far as her hand could reach.

Yuri rubbed the light shadow of beard on his chin. "Did I leave my razor with you?" he asked, and then he went on, not waiting for her reply. "He likes Niko. I think he likes Vladimir, or at least is fond of him, and I know he likes Josef and Tasha and my mother, and Sonia, although he would never admit he likes Sonia. But you can never be sure who else he likes. I don't even know if he likes me, but I think he likes you."

"Oh." Tess brushed dirt out of the crack with her middle finger. "I like him. He's easy to talk to."

Now Yuri laughed. "If I'd heard anyone say that a year ago, I would have thought they were as mad as Yevich the Weaver."

"Who is Yevich the Weaver?"

"You don't know the story of Yevich the Weaver? By the gods, that will have to be settled."

The story of Yevich the Weaver took four evenings to tell as told by Josef, the best tale-teller in the jahar now that they no longer had Fedya to sing tales for them. By the time Yevich had gone mad twice and finally settled his score with the wind-maiden and her four brothers, they had ample provisions. They rode on and passed out of the tangled dark wood and into the feet of the mountains.

They traveled for a day up a series of terraces of scrubby grass linked by ridges of rock. The road had vanished entirely, and the ridges proved so devoid of paths that the riders were forced to dismount and lead their horses up each one. Now and again a drying riverbed offered easier passage and even water as they climbed from level to level through the ridges, until the last terrace spread out like a sea before them, a broad plateau brought up short by the mountains.

Tess stared. The air was so clear that it seemed only a thin sheet of glass between her and the mountains, which were surely close enough for her to touch, and yet so distant, lacking any detail, that their size alone awed her.

"Those are the children," said Bakhtiian, watching her. "The grandparents are farther in. It's said they are so high that one cannot see their tops."

"That would depend on where you were standing." She grinned. "Rather like a man's reputation, don't you think?"

"So awesome from a distance, so meager up close?"

"I thought it was the other way around. Small and insignificant from far off, but massive at its base."

"Weighed down by its own importance."

"A heavy burden," said Tess.

"Only to the man who has had it forced on him," said Bakhtiian, suddenly serious. "Fame is a light and welcome burden to the man who picks it up of his own will."

"I don't agree. Fame becomes a heavy burden either way.''

Bakhtiian raised one hand, like a teacher making a point. "But by choosing to carry it- Dismount!" She dismounted almost as quickly as he did. "Damn," he said to himself, and then to Tess, "Follow." A spur of rock jutted up, a solitary sentinel of the ridges that fell away behind it. Bushes and clinging grass patched the dark surface. They halted at its base. "Stir up the ground."

He took the horses around the rock while Tess trampled grass and scuffed dirt. "Good enough," he said, returning without the horses. He studied the spur for a moment and, choosing a path, began to climb.

Tess scrambled after him, her feet slipping on loose pebbles, her hands grabbing bare knobs of stone and long, sinuous roots. He halted at a small ledge, screened by bushes, and pulled Tess up after him, leaving his hand on her arm when she stood beside him. She could feel every point of pressure, however light, where his fingers touched her skin.

"You may as well sit, if you wish," he said. "They may not have seen us, but I know they saw the horses. This rock is the only cover, unless we wanted to risk breaking our necks by running down into the rough. Two against-I'd guess forty-two. We should go to ground."

She took the hint and sat. His hand released her, leaving a lingering tingle on her arm where he had held her. He remained standing.

"Who?" Tess asked. "Another jahar? I didn't see them."

"Another jahar, yes-" He hesitated, absently staring at his hand. "And no."

"If you thought these men really wanted to kill you, we wouldn't be sitting here."

Bakhtiian transferred his attention from his hand to the plateau. Grass and mountains, nothing else. "I just want to look at them before we exchange pleasantries."

"The weather is fine today, and my what a lovely horse that is?"

He looked down at her and smiled, a smile that lit the corners of his eyes. "The jaran have a tale of a woman who brought misfortune to her tribe because she was too curious."

She tilted her head. "Is that so? We have a story something like that."

"If two old moral tales won't teach you, I'll never be able to. What was the woman's name?"

"Pandora."

"Pandora. That's prettier than the woman's name in our story: Vlatagrebi."

"Poor thing, saddled with a bad reputation and a name like that."

"Then you'd rather be called Pandora than Vlatagrebi?"

"By whom?"

Bakhtiian leaned back against the rock face. A spray of dirt skidded down the face to settle behind his boots. He folded his arms over his chest. "By me. It's only fitting."

"We have a saying in our land: 'the pot calling the kettle black.' "

"The pot calls- Shameless woman. If I were a brave man I'd-" He checked himself.

"You'd what?"

"I take it back. I wouldn't."

"Who are they, Ilya?"

It took him a moment to answer because the smile that crept onto his face was the kind that arrives slowly and leaves reluctantly. "I surrender." He put his hands against the rock by his shoulders, palms up and open. "Arenabekh. The black riders."

"I saw nothing."

"You weren't looking. You were staring at the mountains."

"How could you tell they were these-arenabekh?"

"All in black."

"Is this a particular tribe?"

The wind rolled a single wilted leaf past his boot. "They have no tribe."

"No tribe? And they're riding, so they must all be men."

"They have renounced tribe, kin, women, any ties to order or custom or family."

"I thought my abstainers were severe."

"They don't necessarily abstain."

"They take lovers amongst themselves?"

He colored slightly. ' 'This is not a fit subject for a man and a woman to discuss."

"But I'm khaja. And fully as curious as you are."

He smiled. "So you are. Well, then, some do. Not all. Some believe that our life now is not the life the gods gave us to live, so they live as it is said jaran lived in the early days."

"Without women? How could there be jaran now if that was so?"

"Exactly. And how are we to know how the jaran lived in the early days, having only old stories to tell us, which may have been changed in the telling? Do you see them now? Don't shift forward. They're sharp-eyed, these demons."

The screen of bushes and hedge concealed them, but eventually she got a view of the approaching riders through a gap in the shrubbery. Bakhtiian hummed something under his breath, fingering the hilt of his saber. She felt his excitement, and it made her nervous; she had seen that same excitement in him before-for battle.

She wished now that she was not sitting because it made her feel vulnerable, unable to move quickly, but she could not stand up now. The black riders rode straight for the spur of rock.

"God," whispered Tess as they neared. "They look grimmer than you ever did." Because she had not meant to say it aloud, she looked up. He glanced down, a glint of amusement in his eyes, and put two fingers to his lips.

They pulled up a stone's toss away, suspicious and watchful. The dull coats of their horses, the dourness of their expressions and, most of all, the unvarying black of their dress made them cheerless and forbidding. No embroidery decorated their shirts. None wore jewelry.

"A quick night's camp," said one in a strong dialect.

If Tess had thought the jaran men of her acquaintance hard, she had no word for these. One had no right arm, only a loose, empty sleeve that stirred restlessly in the breeze. Next to him a younger man, beardless and rosy-cheeked, examined the rock with one clear eye; his other eye was scarred shut, puckered and white. These men hunted, they had their quarry trapped, and they knew it. She bit her lip to stop herself breathing through her mouth, as if even that faint sound might alert them to her presence.

"The fox has gone to the hill," said a bearded fellow with a haughty forehead and cruel eyes. His blond hair fell in a long braid to his waist.

"Patience, Sergi," said the one with the dialect, a black-haired man who had possibly been given a frown at birth and had been unable to remove it. A tic, almost hidden in his rough beard, disturbed his right cheek. "You three check around the rock.''

The three brought back the two horses. Tess saw how all the riders stared at the stallion and the mare, two creatures so obviously superior in line and breeding to their own animals that it was rather like standing a man of the jaran dressed in all his finery next to an ape dressed in skins. Bakhtiian stood utterly still, his eyes narrowed, his expression more anticipatory than apprehensive. How easily he could blend into the group of men below. Then, startling her with the suddenness of his movement, he stepped out from behind the screen of bushes to stand in full view of the jahar below, but he glanced once swiftly back at her as he did so.

"They are beautiful, aren't they?" he asked. He froze, almost as if he were posing for the benefit of his audience, with one hand on his saber hilt and the other resting on the hilt of his dagger. He looked dangerous.

"By the gods, Bakhtiian!" said the bearded Sergi. "Come here, you ill-favored son of the cold winds, and I'll show you the special trick I've learned with the saber just for you."

"You flatter me." Bakhtiian did not move. Leaves brushed at his boots.

"And bring your treasure down, too, the one you're hiding. Is it some handsome lad you're afraid we'll spirit off?"

Bakhtiian caught Tess's eye and lifted his chin. She stood up and came two steps forward. Even as she halted next to Ilya, about ten men turned their horses away and rode off to one side, backs to her, heads lowered. More than half of those left averted their faces, so as not to look at her, but the rest examined her with cold, inquisitorial interest.

"Gods!" cried Sergi. "It's a damned woman! Who would ever have thought it!"

"Shut up, Sergi," said the one with the pronounced dialect.

"Shall I come down?" asked Bakhtiian with all the familiar pleasantry of a venomous snake.

"Please do," said Sergi. "But keep the woman up on the ledge. Some of our men haven't seen a woman in five years, and I can't answer for them if they catch her scent."

Tess straightened her shoulders, met his eye, and held it. "They wouldn't dare touch me." She laid one hand on her saber hilt, though she had no illusions about her ability to use it against any of these men.

Sergi let out a whoop. "A khaja with spirit, and listen how she talks. They won't touch you. Certainly not if you're Bakhtiian's."

Bakhtiian, descending with composed dignity, stopped dead. One of his feet slipped on the incline and pebbles skittered out and rattled down to the base of the rock.

Tess drew her dagger, tossed it up into the air, and caught it. "You've got it half right, Sergi. They won't touch me. I don't know what Bakhtiian has to do with it."

Bakhtiian, regaining his balance, resumed his descent as if nothing had happened.

"Sergi, shut up," said another man. His face bore a broad, ugly white scar that stretched from forehead to chin, puckering one side of his face into a permanent leer. "You can only keep your mouth shut for as long as it takes a horse to shit."

On the pretext of sheathing her knife, Tess looked away. The jaran men she knew never swore in that way-or at least, not in front of her.

"So, you are Ilyakoria Bakhtiian," said the man with the dialect, and suddenly all attention focused on him, though he had made no obvious effort to attract it. "I am Keregin. You seem a little short for a man with such a tall reputation."

"That depends on where you're standing," said Bakhtiian, looking as though his greatest concern was the fit of his clothing.

"Choose your man," said Keregin. "I want to see if you deserve your reputation. Bakhtiian." He savored the flow of the syllables. "What kind of luck got you a name of your own?"

"Luck is only my lover, not my wife," replied Bakhtiian easily. He drew his saber. "If ever I wed, it will be skill and intelligence."

"Tedious bedfellows," said Sergi.

"Shut up," said the scarred man.

"Choose," said Keregin.

Bakhtiian looked over the arenabekh one by one, his gaze measuring and keen but never quite insulting. Watching him, Tess realized she had clenched her hands into fists without realizing it. This was to be a real fight, a real duel. What if Keregin meant it to be to the death?

"He has too heavy a hand," said Bakhtiian, "and that one, no instinct."

"Got you there, Vlacov," said Sergi.

But Bakhtiian appeared not to hear the comment and the low mutter of laughter it produced. He examined a man far to the side whose light eyes were shadowed by dark circles beneath and whose nose was broken. "He's too angry. There, too unsteady a hand, and that one, he drinks too much khaja wine." He paused, then pointed with his saber at a particularly unprepossessing man of middle years, a remarkably unkempt fellow whose only conspicuous features were a long nose and brilliant blue eyes. "That man."

Keregin laughed. "We'll concede your eye for flesh. To-bay, fight him."

"What will we do with the woman after Tobay kills him?" asked Sergi. "None of us has any use for such a thing."

'' Sergi, if you can't keep your mouth shut while they fight, we'll bury your head in the ground and stuff your saber up-"

"Silence!" shouted Keregin. "Move back. Now, Bakhtiian. Make us remember you." The lanky Tobay dismounted and came forward, holding his saber as if he did not know he had it in his hand. "Left-handed," added Keregin. "Or I might get bored."

With no change of expression, Bakhtiian switched hands and circled left, measuring his opponent. Tobay stared dumbly at him as if he had not a wit in the world. Bakhtiian had moved about a quarter of a circle when Tobay suddenly stepped left and cut in with a broad sweep toward Bakhtiian's right shoulder. Bakhtiian parried, stepping in to the blow, and there was a moment of suspension, metal pressed against metal, and then both men fell back unmarked.

"A greeting in passing," said Sergi.

Bakhtiian edged back toward the rock. He lunged forward suddenly to Tobay's right, cutting low. There was a quick exchange: low, low, and high; then low, and Bakhtiian came out to the open space with Tobay backed against the cliff.

"An exchange of kisses," said Sergi. "How passionate."

Tobay's face and demeanor changed utterly, as if, Tess thought with sudden fear, a light had been turned on inside him. He moved back until less than a meter separated him from the rough wall of rock. With his right hand he reached back to brush the rock with his fingers, and the angle of his saber changed ever so slightly. Bakhtiian circled in, trying to push Tobay completely against the rock, feinting high but striking low again. But Tobay's saber swept the cut aside and went on sweeping for Bakhtiian's head.

Tess gasped, breath suspended. Bakhtiian fell to his knees, saber barely catching the blow. For an instant the tableau held and then Bakhtiian twisted Tobay's saber around, cut free from a flurry of blows, and leapt backward, regaining his feet.

"A conversation," said Sergi. "About the weather."

But Bakhtiian was wounded. Tess stared. Blood welled and, welling to fullness, bled off a cut on Bakhtiian's wrist. She breathed again. Not deep enough to be fatal, or even perhaps, debilitating. And yet, what if Tobay was only playing with him?

They moved away from the rock. Their exchanges grew more complex. Tess saw only a mix of high and low, wide and close, movements begun in one place that ended in another until she could not recognize where one began and the other left off. And all the time, the slow drip of blood from Bakhtiian's wrist tracked his movements over the ground. She could not move. They both feinted, and feinted again, their sabers never touching. Every second she expected to see Tobay kill Bakhtiian. Every second Bakhtiian escaped.

Tobay fenced him against a slab of rock and went for his face, angled the slice into an arc that would open his stomach. Somehow Bakhtiian twisted the blade and was still whole and moving. He parried and pressed, made a bid for open ground, and gained it. They backed off, eyeing each other, breathing fast and hard. Bakhtiian's face shone with intensity. My God, she thought, watching him as he circled slowly, so concentrated that it seemed his entire being had caught fire: if he ever looks at me like that, I'll last about as long as tinder under a glass.

And she suffered an instant of stark fear, wondering what such a blaze would do to her.

"Right hands," said Keregin.

Tess watched the rest of the fight in a haze. Somehow, now that they were right-handed, they seemed more evenly matched, but still she knew that she ought to fear more for Bakhtiian than for Tobay. Until, in a furious exchange, To-bay wrenched himself free and slapped his left hand over his right arm. Blood leaked out between his fingers. He grinned.

"Enough!" yelled Keregin, dismounting.

"The woman didn't bolt," said Sergi. "I'm more impressed with her than with Bakhtiian."

Keregin strode over to Bakhtiian, who stood breathing deeply to regain his wind.

"By the gods," Keregin squinted down at him. "Maybe there's something to your reputation after all. Tobay, put up and go." Tobay sheathed his saber, looking again halfwitted and lifeless. Many of the men, who had looked up to watch the fight, turned their heads away again. "Tobay's got no interest in life but saber. He prefers fighting two or three men, since one is too easy. He wasn't going for the kill."

"I know." Blood still dripped from Bakhtiian's wrist.

Keregin laughed. "And not too proud to admit it." His expression changed. "You've got foreigners with you."

Bakhtiian shrugged. Tess crouched, balancing herself with a touch of one hand on the pebbles that littered the ledge.

"I know the ruins up in these mountains. A place to inspire the gods in you if nothing else might, but I warn you, Bakhtiian, to reach them you've got to ride through khaja lands. There have been jahar raids into khaja towns, and your name linked to them. I won't lift a hand against you, but there's been mischief done. Is it yours?"

"No."

Keregin lifted his right hand to flick a piece of grass off his beard. His little finger was missing. "I believe you. But remember, the khaja know your name now. They blame you. They are like us in one way, Bakhtiian, if not in any other: They seek revenge."

"I'll scarcely bend a blade of grass as I go."

"One blade might be too many. Well, then, can you promise me one thing?"

"How can I know until you ask?"

Keregin smiled. "I admire your companion, who wears a man's clothes with a woman's courage, who is foreign and yet speaks our tongue. Don't let her get into their hands. I've seen khaja do things to their women that made me cringe, and I'm not an easy man to sicken."

Bakhtiian's head moved slightly, as if he began to look back up at Tess and then chose not to. "That I can promise you, Keregin. No woman for whom I have accepted responsibility will ever fall into khaja hands. Don't forget that I have also seen how khaja treat their women."

" 'He who has traveled far,' " Keregin mused. "I begin to think you might even deserve it."

Bakhtiian sketched him the merest trifle of a bow, half respectful, not quite mocking. "You honor me."

Keregin chuckled. "Do I, indeed? I'd offer you a place with us, but I don't think you'd accept."

"I wouldn't." He smiled. "I love women too well, Keregin, to give them up now."

"Yet you've made no jaran woman your wife." Behind, the other riders began turning their horses away. Keregin angled his gaze toward the two horses standing quietly between them. "They're beautiful horses, Bakhtiian, as well you know." He smiled, a little mocking in return, and glanced once at Tess. "Breed strong stock if you can. I wish you luck."

He mounted without waiting for the reply that Bakhtiian seemed unlikely to give in any case, and reined his horse away from them. The rest of the arenabekh followed, not even glancing back as they galloped off. The sound of hooves drummed away, fading into silence in the clear air.

When they were out of sight, Bakhtiian sat down and rested his head in his hands. Tess scrambled down from the rock.

"Ilya, are you hurt?"

He lifted his head to give her a wan smile. "Just regaining my composure."

"I'll get the horses."

"Thank you," he said into his hands.

She busied herself with the horses, recovering her own composure. Eventually he appeared and took the black's reins from her.

"Thank you," he repeated. He rubbed his horse's nose and talked nonsense to it for a bit, slapped its neck, and mounted. Tess, who had been repelling Myshla's attempts to chew off her ear, quickly followed suit. "A congenial group," he said.

"Keregin offered you a place. Would you ever have gone with them?"

"I thought of it once, a long time ago. For them, it is the only life." He shook his head. "It can't be mine."

"I didn't like them."

He smiled and brought his left wrist up to his mouth, touching partially congealed blood to his lips. "And blood is sweet, but life is sweeter." He urged the black forward and they walked the horses parallel to the ridge. "Tobay is better than I am. Much better."

Wind touched her throat and her eyes. She blinked. "Because fighting is his whole life?"

"He could have killed me." He lowered his hand, turning it slowly, eyes on the cut, its slow well of blood almost stopped now. "He chose not to."

She put a hand on her stomach. "Good Lord." He turned his hand over; the cut no longer showed. "But Keregin was impressed."

Bakhtiian flicked several bits of grass off the knee of his trousers. "Tobay can kill any of them, too, if I'm any judge of saber. I did well. With more experience, Vladimir would give him a fight."

Silence followed for a moment, which Tess broke. "Keregin mentioned ruins. Are we near the shrine of Morava?"

"No. The shrine is farther south. This is another temple. I would rather pass it by, but the pilgrims have insisted on seeing every one. What Keregin said about the khaja-well, I shall have to discuss this with Ishii."

He did discuss it with Ishii, that night at the campfire. Bakhtiian flanked by Niko and Josef and Tasha, Ishii by Garii and Rakii.

"Because the shrine of Morava lies still on the plains, some days north of the don-tepes, the great forest, no foreign towns rest nearby and no foreign people come there but the occasional pilgrims," Bakhtiian was saying as Tess settled in next to Yuri, far enough away that she could pretend to be listening to Mikhal strum his lute, but close enough to overhear. "But this temple, the zhai'aya-tom, rests in the mountains themselves, Cha Ishii, and to reach it we must pass by a city with walls and ride up into the mountains, and thereby make ourselves vulnerable to their attack, should the war leader of this city choose to pursue us. And then we must ride back the same way. It will be very dangerous. It might mean a battle, and we are too few, and the mountains themselves too great a disadvantage to the way we jaran fight, that I can offer you with any surety what the outcome of such a battle might be."

Ishii sat with perfect impassivity, hands clasped in front of him in that arrangement known as Lord's Patience, and listened. When, after a moment, he accepted that Bakhtiian had said as much as he meant to say, he nodded. "We appreciate your concerns, Bakhtiian, but our god protects us. We fear no battle."

Tess lifted her gaze from a close examination of the knives at their belts to see Bakhtiian's face tighten in exasperation.

"Neither do I fear a battle, but it is folly to ride into a trap when the trap is there to see. It is only one temple. Cha Ishii. I promise you that the shrine of Morava is by any account the greatest temple in these northern lands. It will not disappoint you."

Ishii inclined his head. "All the temples or none. I believe, Bakhtiian, that we made this agreement."

Bakhtiian did not reply, merely giving Ishii a curt nod, and he turned away to walk out into the night, Niko and Josef and Tasha following him. The three Chapalii shifted as if with one thought to look at Tess, and she hurriedly evinced an overwhelming interest in Yuri's embroidery.

In the morning, they rode across the plateau. Fields appeared, then settlements, each one a handful of cottages surrounded by stockades of varying height and strength but all showing signs of frequent and recent repair. That first day, riding wide around these hamlets, Tess saw them as ugly squares intruding on the landscape like sores on otherwise healthy skin, their inhabitants forever bound and imprisoned by the protecting walls. The idea of defending one place seemed preposterous, until her settled sensibilities took over and the idea of always fading into the brush and never making a stand suddenly seemed cowardly. It was hardly surprising that these people, settled and wandering, could not trust each other.

Bakhtiian led them through without stopping. No one harassed them. Indeed, they saw no one at all. But at every stockaded village they passed, Tess felt, knew, that they were being watched. They halted late that night, kept a triple watch-sleeping in shifts-and rose before dawn to ride on. Somehow word had passed on ahead of them. Empty fields ripe for harvest lay quiet in the sun. No one walked the trails linking the hamlets. Every stockade gate stood shut. Now and again, they glimpsed faces, peering over the walls. Another day passed.

The next morning Bakhtiian gathered them all together.

"Today we reach the mountains. The ruins are at the head of a gorge. To reach it we must pass close beneath a city." There was little color this early. He looked mostly gray, shaded dark and light. "We'll ride fast. Expect attack but do not provoke it. They may ignore us."

The Chapalii waited, patient, unafraid. As they mounted, Garii hung back as if his horse was balking and hissed softly between his teeth as Tess went by.

"Lady Terese, I beg pardon for my presumption," he said quickly, not even looking up to see if she was slowing her horse to hear him-which she was-"but I implore you to have a care for the gift which you were so magnanimous as to accept from me." Glancing down, she saw he had a hand on his knife.

"Garii?" Ahead, Ishii had turned and was staring back at them.

"Yuri," Tess said, riding on as if no exchange had taken place, "how long until we enter the mountains?" She kept going, not even waiting to hear Yuri's reply.

At noon the scouts, hardly more than a shout away, came back from all sides. The mountains loomed before them, huge and impenetrable. But there, like a scar, a great valley slashed through the wall. Where the valley opened onto the plateau, a city rose, hard against the eastern heights of the mountain. A fortress, heavy with stone; high, castellated walls weighted it to the earth. Fields and hovels sprawled out from it like so much debris. A narrow river pushed past, curving east. The valley opened before them and then they rode up between the high sides of the mountains.

They galloped past the town, Bakhtiian leading them as far against the western heights as he could. Small figures gestured atop the stone walls, but they were too far away to attack. The jahar rode on, up the broad valley, and soon enough they left the fortress behind. The last traces of fields merged into the wild scrub of the narrowing gorge. Bakhtiian signaled a halt, and everyone dismounted, walking their horses to cool them.

It was a brief halt. They mounted again and went on. Tess stared at the sheer dark cliff faces, veined with white, that rose like an iron stockade to her left, at the rocky defiles that climbed up and up to her right. Ahead, the gorge ascended toward the white-topped peaks in a gentle but narrowing incline, colored in greens and grays and dry golds. Tess urged Myshla up to ride next to Bakhtiian. He had a slight smile on his face that disturbed her.

"What if they do pursue us?" she asked.

He laughed. "They can't catch us, not on foot. Certainly not on horses. Khaja don't know how to ride."

Tess began to make a comment about how she was a khaja, and then thought better of it. "But Ilya, even if they don't catch us, we're going to run into the peaks eventually. And then we'll have to ride out this way again. They can simply wait for us."

"They can wait," he agreed. He did not glance back. "But I have heard there is another path out of this gorge, a rough trail, but better, I think, than returning the way we came."

Tess chuckled. "Yes. Nature is so much safer than men are."

"Is she?" A cold wind stirred her sleeves, chilling her fingers. "I wonder."

"How far to the ruins?"

"Two days."

"But look how close the mountains are. We'll run into them before then."

His mount shied. A small rodent ran chittering off the trail to disappear under rock and moss. He pulled the black in, undisturbed. "The mountains have as many twists and turns as a devious man."

"As many as you, Bakhtiian?"

"Oh, far more."

She smiled, and then sobered, glancing back. "But what if they follow us? What happens then? I don't think these khaja like the jaran."

"Neither do I." He did not answer her question.