Authors: Pamela Sargent

Eye of Flame (31 page)

BOOK: Eye of Flame

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The wind rose. She heard the wind shriek above them, crying out as it swept toward the plain. She felt it rise inside herself and knew that Jali-gulug was drawing on her strength. Khokakhchin screamed; the wind howled back at her, wailing through the trees.

Jali-gulug kept chanting. The wind was coming over the mountain ridge, gusting to the southeast. If the wind did not change, Yesugei’s people, behind their barricades at the bottom of the ridge, would escape the brunt of the storm. The wind would not shift; she would aim it at the enemy. She screamed again, feeling her soul feed the storm.

Thunder rolled over the ridge, bringing thick clouds as black as felt. The dark clouds billowed over the sky above the plain; lightning slashed through the darkness. The Tatars milled around on the plain, their battle plan forgotten in their terror of storms and lightning. Horses reared, throwing their riders. Men threw themselves to the ground as a bolt of lightning flashed from Heaven and struck the Earth.

The trees below bowed in the wind. Khokakhchin’s skin prickled; her face flamed as more lightning forked and struck the plain. Lightning severed a mass of dark clouds. A gust tore Ghunan’s standard from the hand of the Tatar warrior holding it. A bolt shot down from the sky, stabbing into the midst of a knot of Tatar warriors on horseback. Some of the enemy rear forces were already in retreat, streaming east.

The rain came in sheets, hiding the battlefield from Khokakhchin. She called out to the spirits and another bolt pierced the plain. Thunder beat against her ears with the sound of a war drum. Jali-gulug was taking all her power. The air grew sharply colder, and soon the rain had turned to ice.

Sleet lashed her face; ice glittered on Jali-gulug’s coat. Shielded as they were on this side of the ridge, they could not escape the storm altogether. Khokakhchin huddled against the tree trunk and covered her face with her arms, feeling her power ebb from her. There was a hollowness inside her; the strength given to her by the spirits had been spent. She would die here, she supposed. It did not matter. Yesugei’s people would survive, and her mistress’s children would be safe. Her husband’s spirit would be at peace; she would join him at last.

The wind was dying. Khokakhchin lay still, waiting until the spirits among the trees were speaking only in sighs. She sat up slowly, marveling that she still lived.

Tatar bodies littered the plain. Panic had probably killed as many of the enemy as the storm. The enemy was retreating. Two wings of Yesugei’s force were already in pursuit, fanning out as they galloped after the Tatars. They would pick off more of the enemy, then close around them like talons. Both the Tatars and Yesugei’s allies would tell stories of how Heaven had come to the Bahadur’s aid.

“Jali-gulug,” Khokakhchin said, “you are the greatest of shamans. Even Bughu would admit that now.”

He did not reply.

“He will of course claim that his prophecy of victory turned out to be true after all.”

Jali-gulug was silent. She turned to him. He lay against the tree trunk, his legs folded, his bony hands resting against his thighs. His lips were drawn back from his teeth; his dark eyes stared sightlessly at Heaven. His chest did not move, he made no sound, and she saw that his spirit had left him.

Yesugei’s people would never know of his greatness. They would not believe an old woman who was the only witness to his power, and who had lost what power she had in aiding him. She bowed her head and let her tears fall, mourning Jali-gulug and the honor he should have been granted but would never have, then wiped her face.

Some of the Mongol men and boys were moving among the enemy dead, stripping the bodies. She reached for Jali-gulug’s jada stones, put them into his pouch, then slipped the pouch under his shirt. She would make a shelter of tree limbs to house his body before she left him.

She stood up and began searching the ground near the outcropping for dead branches. Munglik would be waiting with Yesugei’s children, perhaps fearing that she had been lost, and Hoelun Ujin would be worrying about her sons. She could tell Munglik truthfully that she had found Jali-gulug and that he had died on the mountainside. She would have to pay her respects to the young shaman quickly. She would pray for him later, when Yesugei and his people celebrated their victory.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without
the express written permission of the publisher.

These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“The Broken Hoop,” copyright © 1982 by TZ Publications. First published in
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine,
June 1982.

“The Soul’s Shadow,” copyright © 1986 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
December 1986.

“Ringer,” copyright © 1995 by Pamela Sargent. First published in
More Phobias
, edited by Wendy Webb, Richard Gilliam, Edward E. Kramer, and Martin H. Greenberg (Pocket Books, 1995).

“Bond and Free,” copyright © 1974 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, June 1974. Copyright reassigned to the author in 1977.

“Big Roots,” copyright © 1994 by Pamela Sargent. First published in
Return to the Twilight Zone
, edited by Carol Serling (DAW Books, 1994).

“The Shrine,” copyright © 1982 by TZ Publications. First published in
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine,
December 1982.

“The Leash,” copyright © 1987 by TZ Publications. First published in
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine
, April 1987.

“Outside the Windows,” copyright © 1993 by Pamela Sargent. First published in
Journeys to the Twilight Zone,
edited by Carol Serling (DAW Books, 1993).

“Eye of Flame,” copyright © 1996 by Pamela Sargent. First published in
Warrior Enchantresses
, edited by Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch and Martin H. Greenberg (DAW Books, 1996).

Cover design by Andy Ross

978-1-5040-1039-9

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