Naamah's Curse

FORTY-SIX

Two days into the steppe, my path diverged with that of Vachir and his folk.

He offered to send a couple of the young men of his tribe with me, an offer I declined with reluctance.

“You’ve given me so much already,” I said to Vachir. “I cannot accept further aid. It would leave too great a balance of debt between us. Besides,” I added, gazing south toward the faint, distant spark of Bao’s diadh-anam, “I suspect I am going far beyond the boundaries of Tatar lands.”

Vachir didn’t argue with me, only smiled his quiet smile, this time tinged with sadness. “I wish you well, Moirin.”

I hugged him. “And you, lord archer. May your cattle ever prosper.”

His wife, Arigh, hugged me, too, and presented me with a blue silk scarf. “A small gift to replace the one that was lost to you. Now you are kin to our tribe, too.”

“Thank you so very much, my lady.” It brought tears to my eyes. I wrapped the scarf around my neck and kissed her cheek. “May I ask one last kindness of you?”

“Of course.” Arigh smiled, her eyes crinkling. “You are kin now.”

“When next you encounter Batu and his folk, will you tell them I am well?” I asked. “That I think of them with great fondness, and that the honor of their hospitality has been restored through your generosity.”

Both of them nodded. “We will do this gladly,” Vachir added.

I watched them ride eastward, watched until their company began to dwindle in the distance.

Once again, I was alone, save for my horses. “Well, my friends,” I said to them. “Are you ready?”

They agreed they were.

And once again, I set out across the steppe.

At least this time the journey was easier. I was familiar with the terrain. The weather was temperate and mild, the skies largely cloudless. Most nights, I didn’t bother pitching my tent, but slept in the open as I had been doing with Vachir’s folk. The grazing was rich and my Tatar-stock horses were hardier than those the Emperor had given me, requiring less time to feed.

I was able to augment the stores of dried meat and hardened cheese that Vachir had given me with fresh game, mostly groundhog. I’d had the sense to gather as much timber as my pack-horse could carry before we left the mountains, and I parceled it out carefully, allowing myself a small fire to cook with when I had fresh meat.

The gamey, greasy groundhogs were no tastier than I remembered, but I came across wild onions from time to time. With those and a handful of barley from a sack Aleksei and I had purchased in Udinsk, groundhog made for a tolerable stew.

One good thing about the wide-open steppe was that one could see for leagues beneath the immense blue sky. I had no trouble spotting encampments and giving them a wide berth, nor avoiding travellers and herdsmen, summoning the twilight if necessary.

All in all, I made good progress.

Despite it, Bao’s diadh-anam remained dim and distant.

I’d been travelling alone for over a week when I spotted a Tatar camp larger than any I’d seen since the spring gathering on the horizon. Out of habit, I began to veer well away from it, but curiosity niggled at me. One ger amidst the camp dwarfed the others, a mighty dome of white felt. I’d seen one that large only once before, and it had belonged to the Great Khan Naram.

Impulse warred with common sense within me.

I had no desire to confront the Great Khan himself, suspecting he wouldn’t hesitate to clap me in chains and send me back to Vralia.

And yet…

The Great Khan Naram had sent Bao toward whatever fate had befallen him. If the Khan knew, mayhap others did, too.

Others, like his daughter, the Tatar princess Erdene, who was said to be angry with her father.

I breathed the Breath of Earth’s Pulse, centering myself and thinking. I was riding toward the unknown, and like as not, danger. The D’Angelines of Siovale province, Shemhazai’s folk, had a saying: All knowledge is worth having. And now when I thought of Shemhazai, the most scholarly of Blessed Elua’s Companions, I pictured Aleksei’s face-grave, ascetic, and beautiful.

“What do you think, my friends?” I asked the horses. “Is it a sign?”

They flicked their ears, not understanding. The pack-horse lowered his head and cropped at the grass.

It would be good, very good, to have some idea what I was getting myself into, to have some idea what had already befallen Bao. I made up my mind, choosing impulse over common sense.

Even so, I did not intend to be foolish about it. I studied the Great Khan’s encampment and its movements, then stuck to my original plan, veering east to pass it, then veering back west to set up my own small camp alongside a bend in the river I had been following, well to the south where herds had already been pastured.

I watered the horses and turned them loose to graze, apologizing to them for the sparse fare. I gnawed on strips of dried meat for my supper. And when dusk began to settle over the plain, I saddled my mount, summoned the twilight, and backtracked toward the Great Khan’s camp.

It was almost dark by the time I drew near, although I could see clearly in the twilight. At a hundred yards out, I dismounted and tethered my mare to a stake.

“Be silent, great heart,” I whispered to her, touching her thoughts. I stroked her thick, coarse forelock and scratched the base of her ears. “The darkness will hide you, but I cannot shield us both.”

She bent her neck and turned her head to lip softly at my palm, huffing through her nostrils.

I kissed her muzzle. “Good girl.”

The last hundred yards, I crossed on foot, my Tatar bow held loosely in one hand, the quiver slung over my shoulder.

It was a familiar scene, albeit one rendered strange by the twilight. The Great Khan and his folk were celebrating and the airag was flowing freely, the pungent scent of fermented mare’s milk riding the night air. Fires of dried dung burned, silvery in the twilight, folk gathered around them.

Unseen, I prowled through the camp until I spotted Erdene.

Bao’s wife.

In so many cultures, this would have been unthinkable, that a princess should be so accessible and ordinary. But the Tatars, like the Maghuin Dhonn, live close to nature. I waited until Erdene excused herself, made her unsteady way to the latrine alone.

I followed her.

I waited until she had finished.

And when Bao’s Tatar princess began to make her way back to her father’s great ger, I drew the twilight deeper into my lungs and blew it softly around her, spinning it around her like a web, drawing and nocking an arrow as I did.

Erdene shrieked.

“Hello, my lady,” I said softly.

Her almond-shaped eyes were stretched wide, showing the whites. “Are you a ghost? Have you come to haunt me?” Her chest rose and fell in a panic. “I swear, I did not know what my father intended!”

“I know.” I kept my voice gentle, but I also kept my arrow trained on her. “I am no ghost, my lady. You are encompassed in my magic, nothing more. It will not harm you. Nor will I, if you are truthful. Tell me, where did your father send Bao, and what has befallen him?”

“No ghost?” Her voice trembled.

I shook my head, hoping to coax a measure of trust from her. “Flesh and blood, I promise you.”

She wasn’t convinced. “How did you escape from the Falconer’s men if Bao did not find you? No one escapes.”

“The Falconer?” I was puzzled. “Is that what you call the Patriarch?”

Erdene looked blankly at me. “Who is the Patriarch?”

“Pyotr Rostov, the Patriarch of Riva. Your father betrayed me to a pair of Vralian priests in his service…” I could see that the words meant nothing to her. “You didn’t know.”

She shook her head. “No. He said the Falconer had sent for you.”

“Who is this Falconer? Is that where Bao’s gone?” I lowered the bow a few inches. “He’s in trouble, my lady. Far away, and in trouble. Mayhap injured, mayhap ill, mayhap imprisoned-mayhap all three, or worse. I don’t know. If you care for him at all, I beg you to tell me the truth.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Erdene gave a curt nod. “For Bao’s sake, I will help you, even though he does not deserve it. But not here. There is too much to tell. If I don’t return soon, someone will come searching for me, and it’s not safe for you to be here.”

“They will not find us unless I release the twilight,” I assured her.

She shook her head again, stubbornly. “I need to see you in daylight, to be certain you are flesh and blood. Tell me where to find you. Tomorrow at dawn, I will ride out to hunt alone.”

It was my turn to hesitate.

“It’s not a trick.” Erdene read my thoughts and gave a grim little smile. “I swear by the sky itself, I will not lead anyone to you. And I have your things,” she added. “I can bring them to you.”

“My things?” I echoed.

The Great Khan’s daughter nodded, plucking a dagger from her belt. I raised the bow automatically, but she only showed the blade to me. It had a hilt of white ivory carved in the shape of a dragon’s coils. “See? This my father gave to me after it was taken from you. The rest I had fetched from Batu’s ger before they knew you were missing. Your bow, your satchel of trinkets.”

“Why?” I felt bewildered. “Were they trophies?”

“Trophies?” Erdene gave a forlorn laugh. “No. Oh, perhaps at first. But after Bao left…” She lifted her shoulders in a faint, weary shrug. “In a strange way, they were all I had to remember him by.” Reversing the dagger, she held it out to me hilt-first. “Take it. It’s yours, as surely as he was. I’ll bring the rest tomorrow.”

Warily, I eased my drawn bowstring and reached out to take the blade. I had not forgotten that Erdene had held a dagger to my throat and threatened to cut out my tongue during our only previous conversation, nor that she was quick and strong.

But she only smiled sadly and let go of the hilt. “Tomorrow, then?”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll be camped along the river in the southern pastures. And if you’ve sworn falsely, I will kill you.”

With that, I unspun the twilight around her, leaving only myself cloaked in it.

Erdene blinked at the return of true darkness and my sudden absence. “Tomorrow,” she said to the seemingly empty air, an edge of defiance in her voice. “And you will see! I am no oath-breaker.”

I hoped it was true.