Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (64 page)

Prince Bayan climbed the stairs and ducked into the wagon. Sapientia tried to follow him, but the young Kerayit woman set an arm across the threshold. For an instant, Sapientia began to protest, but the other woman simply stared her down, not threatening, just flatly negating, and at last Sapientia made a show of deciding to step back to the pavilion to wait. The Kerayit princess watched her go under heavy-lidded eyes, like a modest woman watching her beloved.

Ai, Lady. There was something about her...something familiar in the way Liath had always seemed familiar to Hanna, some kind of inchoate power she could not name but which Liath had held like a captive eagle inside her, waiting only to be freed—

Breschius hissed as the Kerayit woman swept her gaze over the assembly. He began to tremble. Hanna could feel his apprehension, he who had stood straight at the battle without a trace of fear. Every soul there, even to the drunkest, rowdiest young soldier, quieted in deference to her measuring eye; she possessed the imperious indifference of the sun, which never questions its own brilliance because it simply is.

In the silence, Hanna thought for an instant that she could hear the murmuring of Bayan's voice and, in reply, the cricket-like whisper of another person. Then she met the gaze of the young princess, and the woman's beautiful almond eyes widened in surprise as she stared at Hanna. Fair hair, pale eyes; Hanna knew how different she looked out here on the frontier. Few of the Wendish soldiers were as startlingly light as she was and, anyway, they were even more dust-covered from battle.

Prince Bayan shook the beaded curtain aside and clumped down the stairs, laughing. "Now! To the bed!" he cried, and everyone cheered, and when next Hanna could look past the people who suddenly swirled around her, the young Kerayit woman had vanished. The steps into the wagon had been drawn up.

"Eagle! Hanna!"

She had to go. She attended Sapientia to her bed, waited with the others until the covers were drawn back. As Eagle, she had to witness that husband and wife were put properly to bed together. Then, with the others, she discreetly withdrew.

She had a blanket, and it seemed more prudent to her not to step away from the awning that night. It was hard to sleep because it was so noisy, laughter and grunting and pleased exclamations from the tent within, singing, drumming, shouting, and, once, a scream of terror from the camp without. Breschius also had a blanket, and he snored amiably beside her, all rolled up
and
comfortable on the old carpet laid out beneath the awning. A few other servants slept peaceably as well over to one side.

She was cold and restless. She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. At last, she dozed off.

And she had the strangest dream.

All the clouds have blown east vard to harass the Quman, to bleed away the trail left by their young brothers who rode out to find the enemy but never returned. The stars stand so brilliantly in the heavens that they shine each one like a blazing spark of light, the souls of fiery daimones who exist far beyond the homely world of humankind. Stars have never shone as brightly as these, as if they have somehow bowed the great dome of the heavens inward by the force of their will, because they are seeking something lost to them, fallen far far below onto the hard cold earth.

At night, the wagon of the Kerayit shaman blazes with reflected light from the stars, and only now does the magic shimmer in its walls: marks and sigils, spirals and cones, an elaborate tree whose roots reach far below the earth and whose branches seem to grow out of the roof itself and reach toward the sky. A glimmering pole more light than substance thrusts heavenward from the smoke hole at the center of the wagon: seven notches have been carved into its branchless trunk, and the top of the pole seems to meld with the North Star around which the heavens revolve.

Beads clack and rustle as the steps unroll from the wagon's bed. The young princess steps out, and she beckons to Hanna.
Come to me.

Hanna sheds her blanket and goes. The lintel of the tiny door brushes her head as she ducks inside. But inside is not as outside. The wagon is tiny, and yet inside she seems to be in a pavilion fully as large as that in which Bayan aruLSapientia now sleep. The walls ripple as if stroked by wind; there are-two elaborate box beds, a low table, and beautifully embroidered pillows on which to sit. A green-and-gold bird stirs in its cage, eyeing her. She sits on a pillow, and one of the ancient handmaidens brings her a cup of hot liquid whose spicy scent stings her nostrils.

"Drink," speaks a cricket voice, and then Hanna sees Bayan's mother sitting veiled in the shadows, the suggestion of a face visible behind translucent silk. A tapestry hangs on the tent wall at her back: the image of a woman standing on earth and reaching toward the heavens where hangs a palace that magically glides in the aether: from the woman's navel stretches a cord which attaches to a tree in the courtyard of the floating palace: an eagle flies between, and two coiled dragons observe through slitted eyes. "What comes from earth, returns to earth," says the old woman as Hanna obediently drinks. "What have you brought me, sister's daughter? She is not my kin."

Gold flashes, and the young princess steps forward. "I have found it at last," she says. "My luck was bom into this woman."

"Ah," says the old woman, the exclamation like the rasping of crickets. There is another noise from outside, a keening moan that sends shudders down Hanna 's back, and Hanna thinks that probably they aren't in camp anymore, they have gone somewhere far away where dangerous creatures stalk the night grass because it is in the nature of dreams that one may travel quickly a long distance without moving.

"Ah, " repeats the old woman. "She will come with us, then."

"No. She will not come with me yet. She must find the man who will become my
pura,
and then she will return to me, with him."

The young princess turns to look at Hanna, and Hanna thinks maybe she can see through the dark irises of those beautiful almond eyes all the way back to the land where the Kerayits live and roam, among grass so tall that a man on horseback can't see over it, where griffins stalk the unwary and dragons guard the borders of a vast and terrible desert strewn with grains of gold and silver. There waits a woman in that place, not a true woman but a creature who is woman from the waist up and from the waist below has the body and elegant strength of a mare. She is a shaman of great power and immense age, with her face painted in stripes of green and gold and an owl perched on her wrist. She draws her bow and looses an arrow spun of starlight. Its path arcs impossibly through the North Star, and with a high chime it pierces the heart of the young princess, who gasps and falls to her knees, a hand clasped to her breast.

Hanna leaps up at once to aid her, but as soon as she touches the young woman, she feels the sting of the arrow in her own breast, as though a wasp has been trapped inside her. It hurts,
She woke up suddenly as a hand touched her, brushing her breast. She sat up fast, and hit heads with the man who bent over her. Then her eyes adjusted to the graying light that presages dawn.

"Your Highness!" she exclaimed, scooting backward as quickly as she could.

Prince Bayan smiled charmingly as he rubbed his forehead. He wore his rumpled trousers, but nothing else, revealing much of his strong, attractive body. She smelled wine on his breath. "Pretty snow maiden," he said winningly, without threat.

"Bayan!" Sapientia appeared at the entrance to the pavilion, clad only in a shift.

"She is awake!" cried Bayan enthusiastically. He staggered back inside and, after an annoyed glance at Hanna, Sapientia followed him.

Several of the servingwomen had woken and now hastened in to assist their mistress. They came out moments later, giggling, carrying the chamber pot, and Hanna felt it prudent to go with them down to the river. They washed among the rocks, finding safety in numbers, but in any case with the morning the carousing had died down, and about half of the soldiers seemed to be sleeping it off in a stupor while the other half had returned to the battlefield. When they returned to the tent, Brother Breschius asked Hanna to accompany him, and she did so reluctantly, only because she liked the old priest. In the hard glare of morning, the battleground was an ugly sight: vultures and scavengers had to be driven away, and the bodies were beginning to smell. More and more soldiers arrived to loot the enemy, but Hanna couldn't bear to touch them even when she saw a good iron knife stuck in the belt of one dead man. He, like the others, wore slung at his belt one of those ghastly tiny human heads.

A buried detail was organized. Wendish soldiers dug mass graves, stripped the bodies, and rolled them rrr~a§ Brother Breschius blessed each dead soul. But what the Ungrians did to their own honored dead was hardly less awful than the disregard with which they looted the enemy. Every corpse of their own kin was mutilated before being buried: a finger cut off, a tooth pried out of the jaw, and a hank of hair hacked off. These treasures were carefully wrapped up and given to certain soldiers, who carried them away together with the salvaged armor and weapons.

"Why do they do that?" Hanna asked finally as she and Breschius returned to camp. "Aren't they given a proper burial and laid to rest as is fitting?"

"Oh, yes, as you saw. But they also believe that some portion of the spirit resides after death in the body, and each year at midwinter they burn the remains of their relatives in a bonfire. They believe that in this way the spirits of all those who died in the previous year are sealed away into the otherworld so that they can't come back and cause mischief in this world."

"But don't they believe that their souls ascend to the Chamber of Light? How can they worship God if they don't believe j
that?"

Breschius laughed kindly. "God are tolerant, my child. So should we be. This is all Their creation. We are sent to this earth to learn about our own hearts, not to judge those of others."

"You aren't like most of the fraters I've ever met." Then she flushed, thinking of Hugh. Beautiful Hugh.

Breschius chuckled, and she had a sudden feeling that he could read her heart well enough but was too humble a soul to judge her for what she knew was a foolish and sinful yearning. "Because we are none of us the same, we must each learn something different in our time on this world."

"I had such a strange dream," she said, to change the subject. "I dreamed I went inside the wagon of Prince Bayan's mother, and that the young princess said that her luck had been born into my body."

He stopped dead and his face blanched.

She felt suddenly as if a butterfly fluttered in her throat, cap-j live, never to be free again.

"But it was only a dream. It had to be a dream. I could understand what they were saying."

"Do not discount their power," he said hoarsely. "Do not speak of it again, ever. They will know."

"How can they know? What if I'm a thousand leagues away from them?" He shook his head stubbornly. Such a change had come over him, he had become so tense and troubled, that she, too, felt frightened. "Will you answer one question, then? What is a
pura?"

He flushed. Sweat broke on his neck and forehead although it wasn't warm. The camp swarmed with movement in front of them; behind, the river murmured over smooth rocks in the shallows and on the far bank a line of soldiers reached the ford and set out across.

"A pura," he said in a hoarse voice, "is a word in the Kerayit tongue for a horse."

"Then why would the Kerayit princess say in my dream that I would find the man who would become her pura?"

He shut his eyes as though to shut out—or to see more clearly—some dim and ancient memory. "A horse can be ridden. It can carry burdens. If it is male, it can be bred to mares. Its blood, drunk hot from a vein, can strengthen you. A fine, strong, elegant horse can be a source of pride and amusement to his owner. A pura means also a young and handsome man who serves any young Kerayit princess who has been called to become a shaman. The shaman women of the Kerayit tribe live in utter seclusion. Once they have touched their luck, they may never be seen in front of any person who is not their own kin, or who is not a slave, whom they do not count as people. Shamans do not marry, as do their sisters. Prince Bayan's mother did so only because—well, I have spoken of that before. You do not take your luck as your pura. A pura is not a real person, but only a slave."

"Then why do these women take a pura at all?"

He had recovered enough to look at her with amusement lighting his eyes. "You have sworn oaths as an Eagle, my child. But do you never look at young men with desire stirring in your heart? Even Prince Bayan's mother was young once. A Kerayit woman chosen by their gods to become shaman is young, and her path is a difficult one. Not all survive it. Who would not want a horse on such a long road?"