Golden Daughter (16 page)

Sairu took the road back to where Tu Syed and the others waited. Had she tried to return through the forest in the dark, she was fairly certain she would have lost herself rather miserably. How had Lady Hariawan managed it, following without Sairu’s knowledge, without a guide? It made no sense from any angle she viewed it. This was another puzzle she would understand in time, but for now she must focus on the road, avoid the pitfalls she could just discern by Chiev’s blue light, and move as fast as possible.

Of the cat she saw no sign.

She shivered as she ran, despite the sweat gathering on her brow and the pound of her heart. Deep inside, beneath the action and the need for decision-making, a small, central piece of Sairu was very quiet and very still.

She was no more than a mile from where she’d left Tu Syed and the others when she heard herself whispering, “It leaves a stain.”

The Golden Mother had not warned her. Not of this feeling, not of this sensation. Perhaps she did not know it herself, though Sairu doubted as much. Princess Safiya knew everything, or as close to everything as a mortal under Hulan’s eye could know. If she had not experienced something for herself, she would have read the experience in another’s face, studied it, pulled it to pieces, and understood it with all the acumen of a Pen-Chan man of science dissecting a dog to understand its inner workings.

But knowing the layout of organs and the function of circulatory systems is not the same as truly
knowing
a dog. No more, Sairu suspected, did Princess Safiya truly
know
this feeling.

“It leaves a stain,” Sairu repeated. “One cannot encounter death and walk away unstained.”

She found herself thinking suddenly of the first death she had caused. Of the young panther that—all according to a pre-arranged plan, no doubt—set upon her in the overgrown grounds of Manusbau. She had fended it off and successfully brought it to ground. In the end it lay broken at her feet.

But in her memory it was not the panther lying before her, nor was it panther blood on her hands. It was the blood of Idrus the slaver and his men.

Princess Safiya had never warned her. For the first time in her life Sairu resented the Golden Mother.

She found Tu Syed and his brethren where she had left them, sitting in a huddled circle, their eyes wide with terror of the night around them. They startled and a few screamed when the three dogs abruptly started barking and raced into the night beyond the firelight. Sairu called out, “Dumpling! Rice Cake! Sticky Bun!” and the slaves, hearing her voice, relaxed into quivering puddles of nerves.

“Lady Hariawan! Lady Hariawan!” Tu Syed exclaimed, blindly stumbling toward Sairu in the dark. He couldn’t find the breath to say more and was probably just as happy not to see the smile Sairu fixed upon him.

“My mistress is safe,” Sairu assured him, which wasn’t exactly a lie, at least, not so far as she knew. She had last seen Lady Hariawan sitting with the injured slave in her arms while the monk guide bowed repeatedly and assured Sairu that he would protect them all until her return.

There was no other choice. Lady Hariawan would not leave the valley without the strange slave, and he was too heavy to be carried by even the three of them combined, should such a thing be possible. The only way was to bring the donkeys and the big, stolid mule.

“Pack up,” Sairu commanded Tu Syed; and none of the slaves, however much they might resent being ordered about by a girl, dared question or complain. “We must hurry.”

She found sturdy branches, wrapped them in oiled cloth, and lit a few torches at the fire before kicking dirt over the embers and spreading the coals. Three of the slaves carried the torches, which made some of the donkeys nervous. But the end of the world itself could not perturb Lady Hariawan’s mule, and the donkeys all looked to him as their leader. So when he, led by Sairu and loaded down with the baskets containing her three dogs, followed her and the torches into the night, the donkeys fell into place behind.

Tu Syed asked questions. He asked many, many questions. Finally, Sairu silenced him with a smile and a demure question of her own: “Where is Lady Hariawan’s cloak?”

At that, Tu Syed bowed away, retreated to the back of the line, and said no more. None of the others dared come near her smile.

The wounded slave could not sit on the mule’s broad back. Sairu saw this even before the slaves attempted to heave him into the saddle, and she stopped them before they caused the poor man further agony. He whimpered and pleaded, speaking just enough for her to discern his Chhayan accent and dialect, but not his words.

“Put him down,” she commanded, and the temple slaves obeyed at once. Their gazes kept turning to the dead bodies of the slavers lying where they had fallen nearby. They knew such destruction could not be Lady Hariawan’s doing, nor that of the little Daramuti monk, who kept bobbing and grinning and offering various blessings of his order.

And they looked upon their mistress’s handmaiden with more fear than ever.

“You. Help me,” Sairu commanded Tu Domchu, and he, after spitting a brown stream out the side of his mouth, ambled after her into the forest, carrying a hatchet across his shoulders. At her command, he hewed down two stout saplings. The slender trunks bent and gave under pressure but did not break. They would do. For a short distance they would do.

Sairu lashed them together to form an angle. Between the poles she strung more rope and fixed her own cloak, Tu Domchu’s, and that of another slave to fashion a rude sort of sling.

“Steady the mule,” she ordered Tu Syed, who obediently held Lady Hariawan’s mule by the head. Then, with her dogs milling about her feet, offering snuffles and snorts of help, she affixed the narrow end of the triangle over the mule’s back so that the pole ends dragged out behind it with the sling strung between them.

“Will it work?” Tu Syed asked breathlessly even as two of his brethren loaded the fevered slave into the sling and secured him with more ropes.

“Better than leaving him here to die,” Sairu replied. But she glanced toward her mistress as she spoke, her eyes narrowed and searching.

Lady Hariawan stood off to one side. The pale light of coming dawn illuminated her face, revealing the return of her statue-like stillness. Her gaze was dull, not so much faraway as empty. She seemed unaware of the slave now that he was out of her arms.

“Come, my mistress,” Sairu said gently, approaching Lady Hariawan and taking her by the hand. “You’ll ride my donkey now. We’ll be there soon.”

“Ah,” said Lady Hariawan, slowly turning her liquid eyes to Sairu and blinking slowly. “Ah. Ah, ah.”

Perhaps she was trying to speak. But Sairu hadn’t the patience to try to discern her words. She firmly propelled her lady to the waiting donkey, helped her to mount, placed the ever-ready Sticky Bun in her arms, then took her own place at the mule’s head.

“Now,” she said, turning to their guide. “Take us to Daramuti.”

The wood thrush called across the boundless:

Won’t you follow me, Jovann?

Gladly! Oh, how gladly he would follow! Anything to step out of this cage of pain in which he existed!

So Jovann slipped into the white and, pursuing the call of the wood thrush, stepped across emptiness and onward. He saw the arching branches of two tall trees, saw the gate they formed. Beyond stood the Grandmother Tree and the circle of forest he had seen so many times before.

He escaped to it now, his mind racing from his body, out of his own world and into the Between. He passed through the tree gate, and now there was no white emptiness behind him. Only Wood before, behind, and on all sides, extending in green shelter forever.

Jovann drew a deep breath and let his mind assume the shape of a body; his own body, but not as he had left it. Here, he could be whole again. His back was not scored with the fire of whips and rods. Here his blood did not pump infection through every vein, leaving him crippled in agony. He breathed deep of the calm Wood, of its agelessness. The Grandmother creaked enormous branches in welcome.

And the wood thrush, singing sweetly, flew down to the ground at Jovann’s feet.

“Welcome, Jovann,” said the bird.

“Don’t send me back,” said Jovann. He knelt so that he could better meet the bird’s gaze. It was an intelligent gaze, brilliant even, and not one Jovann could fully understand. “Please, my Lord,” he said, once more addressing the bird in the most respectful terms he knew, “let me stay here. Let me stay here forever. I do not want to return.”

“It is not for you to spend eternity in the Between,” said the bird. “You must face your pain. You must face your future.”

“What future?” Jovann demanded. “I will surely die back there. I can feel death creeping up on me like a stalking panther.” His face twisted with anger. “Sunan did this to me. Sunan has always hated me, though I pretended otherwise. It was he who sold me to those slavers!”

“Hatred of Sunan will not heal your hurts,” said the bird. “Hatred will only cause them to fester.”

It spread its wings then and flew up into the Grandmother Tree’s branches. Jovann, startled at this sudden movement, leapt to his feet and hastened after, standing at the base of the Grandmother’s massive trunk, staring up into the leaves. He saw a flutter and a flash of white, and he knew the bird was still near.

“Please!” he cried after it. “I have seen what the future holds. You have shown me the fire my father will wield. You have shown me an image of myself standing above the emperor, my enemy. But how can this come to pass? I have failed to bring Father the secret of Long Fire. And how can I, a slave, ever stand before an emperor?”

“These are questions to which you will never find answers,” the bird replied, “so long as you remain in hiding here. You must return, Jovann. Return and trust me.”

With that, the bird took flight again and vanished beyond the circle of trees. Jovann, desperate, ran after it but stopped on the edge of the Grandmother Tree’s clearing. He had never ventured beyond into the shadows of the endless Wood. He did not know what he would find and, though he hated to admit it even to himself, he was afraid. He stood now, his fists clenched, his jaw set, staring into the darkness as though he could somehow force himself to see the bird. As though he could somehow draw the bird back by his own will.

“Please!” he whispered. And louder he cried, “Come back! Come back to me! Where are you? Why have you left me here?”