His Conquering Sword (64 page)

The singers did not move, as they walked and sang, with the fluidity of the actors, but perhaps Raysia did not want to create the same kind of story as the actors had. Here the song itself was preeminent, supported by slow, sweeping gestures and the long frozen poses taken by the singers. The plain, bold colors and simple lines of the tabards gave each singer a distinctive look. Mother Sun wore the yellow-orange, of fire. Her daughter wore the blue of the heavens, and the dyan Yuri Sakhalin wore red, which is the strength of earth and blood. One demon wore black and the other wore white. The woman who sang the sisters wore green, and the man who sang the riders of Sakhalin’s jahar wore the pale gold of grass.

Raysia had used her own telling of the tale and wound it in on itself, and Aleksi found himself rooted to the spot and unable to move, listening to it, seeing it. Mother Sun exiled her daughter to the earth, and sent with her ten sisters to be her companions. These ten sisters bore the tribes of the jaran, and one day, the first dyan of the tribes fell in love with the Daughter of the Sun. She refused him, as surely any heaven-born creature must. He led his jahar into battle, and fell to a grievous blow.

Wounded unto death, he begged her for healing. Healing him, she loved him, and together they made a child. And she gave him a saber—the sword of heaven—because of which he could from then on never lose a battle.

Just as Tess and her brother had given Ilya a sword, which not even he knew the strength of.

Yuri Sakhalin never lost a battle after that, or at least, that is how the Singers sang the tale. No battle but the one every mortal being lost—that against Grandmother Night.

Aleksi strolled back to his tent, feeling thoughtful, feeling … curious. He knew the art of moving without being seen; it had saved his life more than once, when he was an orphan. He slipped unnoticed into Dr. Hierakis’s tent, even keeping the bells from ringing, and he stood in front of her table and spoke the words he had memorized from hearing Tess say them: “Run League worlds.”

Rhui he now recognized. He could recognize the broad pale expanse that marked the plains and the tiny tiny bay far to the south that marked the city of Jeds. Then the other worlds appeared, strange spheres with yet stranger names: Three Rings. Something unpronounceable. Cassie. Hydra. Eridanaia. Tau Ceti Tierce. Sirin Five. Ophiuchi-Sei. And last,
her
planet, the only one as heart-wrenchingly beautiful as Rhui, the only other one that wore as brilliant a coat of blue, symbolizing the heavens: Earth.

Aleksi sank down into a chair and watched as the program ran on, showing paler worlds and fiercer stars, showing webs of light dangling against a black void and many-eyed globes of polished metal and ships like blunt arrows docked at piers built of sparkling gossamer threads. He watched as thousands upon thousands of towers rose up from a bleak plain and became invested with lights as numerous as the stars, or as the fires of the jaran army.

No one disturbed him, hidden here in the doctor’s private chambers. Outside, the celebration had already begun. Inside, in the quiet of the tent, Aleksi discovered the universe.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Novels of the Jaran

“In this world below the dome of heaven, nothing that is or does can be eternal, for the law of the harvest is the law of becoming. All that is sown must be reaped, and all that is reaped must be sown again back into the world from which it sprang. Thus every change becomes another turn in the great wheel of years.”

—from
The Revelation of Elia

H
E WOKE BEFORE DAWN
and snuck away from the tents to watch the sun rise, both of them solitary—he and the sun. He had done so every morning since his mother died. On cloudy days only the light changed, paling into day. When it rained, the night leached away reluctantly, spilling into the soil. In the deep winter blizzards snow settled like a blanket over everything. But on other mornings, clean, sharp mornings like this one, the sun rose like a splintering blow, sundering day from night all at once and with the promise of brilliance to come. The promise was for him. At least, that was how he thought of it; he lived here in night, but someday that would change. It had to.

“Vasha! Come here at once!”

Vassily turned away from the east and the light and trudged back into camp. Mother Kireyevsky cuffed him on the ear. “Have you milked Tatyana’s goats yet?” she demanded. “Uncle Yakalev needs your help this instant! Lazy boy! You’re a disgrace!”

A chill edged the morning, but it was no worse than the looks he got from old Tatyana and her son when he caught up with the flock. They spoke not one word to him, not even to greet him. He settled down to milk the goats. When he had finished, he slung four heavy flasks of warm milk over his shoulders and carried them back in toward camp. Passing the herd of
glariss
yearlings, he made the mistake of looking straight at the Vysotsky cousins where they stood watching over the herd.

“Watch your eyes, pest!” shouted the elder, who was only three years older than Vasha himself.

“Bastard!” The younger casually picked up a rock and threw it at Vasha, and he ducked away, but not in time. The rock stung his cheek. The Vysotsky cousins jeered and laughed. “Thought you were better than us, didn’t you?” they called, the familiar refrain. “Now you’re the lowest one of all.”

The fire flared within his heart, but Vasha hunkered down and walked on, fighting it back. It did no good to scrap with them. He had learned that quickly enough: His punishment from Mother Kireyevsky would be severe and swift. Tears of shame burned in his eyes, shame that they all despised him, shame that he had to act like any common servant, shame that he had never made any friends before, when his mother still lived. She had closed him off from everyone else. She had wrapped herself around him, and she had told him over and over again that he was special, that it was the others who were less than he was. It wasn’t fair that she had lied to him.

He swallowed the tears, forcing them down as he came back into camp. His throat choked on them.
Never cry,
his mother had said,
you are a prince’s son. Don’t play with those Vysotsky boys; they aren’t good enough for you. When your father comes, then they’ll understand exactly who you are and how much power you have.
Well, they did understand who he was: He was a bastard, the only child in the tribe who had no father and who never had had a father, despite what his mother claimed. They understood exactly how much power he had, which was none.

Mother Kireyevsky used him as a servant, and the elders themselves had refused to make his mother headwoman of the tribe, as she should have been after her own mother, his grandmother, had died. Because they had all despised his mother as well. They had rejoiced when she had died two winters ago. And he had learned how to survive their contempt and to endure alone.

As he crossed behind Mother Kireyevsky’s tent, he heard messenger bells and saw, out beyond the other tents, a figure swinging down from a spent horse. He would have liked to stop and look, but he knew someone would tell on him if he faltered at all, so he walked on.

“Vassily!” His cousin Tamara called to him. “Give me those flasks. Go to Mother Kireyevsky at once!” Her face was flushed.

He was too shocked to do anything but obey, but as he circled the tent and ducked under the awning a sudden foreboding washed over him.
Now what had he done wrong? What was she going to punish him for?

“Aha!” said Mother Kireyevsky, catching sight of him. “You will attend me here, Vasha. You will do exactly as I say, you will not speak one single word, and you will serve
komis
to our guest. Do you understand?”

He nodded, mystified. She hurried away, and he knelt down and waited. What could this be about? When guests came to visit at Mother Kireyevsky’s tent, he was banished from the family circle because he represented a shameful stain on the Kireyevsky line.

Mother Kireyevsky soon returned, bringing with her the messenger—who was a
woman
! Dressed in soldier’s clothing, too! Vasha dutifully offered the woman a cup of komis, which she accepted without looking at him. Tamara brought her food, and she ate with relish and politely complimented his cousin on the meat and the fine texture of the sweet cakes.

Then, just as Vasha moved to offer her a second cup, Mother Kireyevsky said the fateful words. “Ah, you are Bakhtiian’s niece.”

Vasha almost dropped the cup, but the woman took it from him as if she did not notice his shaking hands. As the rest of the cousins and aunts and old uncles filtered in to listen, they lapsed into a long discussion of the disposition of the Kireyevsky riders in the great jaran army, the army led by the great general and prince, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian. This dragged on endlessly while Vasha stared surreptitiously at Bakhtiian’s niece—Nadine Orzhekov—from under the screen of his dark hair. As if by examining her he could divine something—anything—about the man who was the greatest leader the jaran had ever had, the man who commanded the combined jaran tribes in their war against their ancient enemies, the khaja, the settled peoples.

“Vasha!” said Mother Kireyevsky tartly, no doubt divining his purpose in her turn and deciding now, at last, to dismiss him. “Bring more sweetcakes.”

For an instant, Vasha’s gaze met that of Nadine Orzhekov. She had a sharp, penetrating eye, but she did not appear to scorn him. Of course, she did not yet know the truth. He hurried away.

When he returned, Mother Kireyevsky did an unheard of thing. “Vasha, set those down. Then you will sit beside me.”

Sit beside her! Stunned by this sign of favor, he obeyed, sinking down beside her and folding his hands in his lap. He risked another look at their visitor.
Bakhtiian’s
niece! She looked no different, really, than other women, except that she dressed and walked like a soldier. Her black hair was caught back in single braid and her cheek bore a recent scar. Again her gaze met his, measuring, keen, but this time he forgot himself enough that he did not drop his away immediately.

“Vasha!” scolded Mother Kireyevsky. He stared at his hands. Then the horrible truth came out. “Inessa Kireyevsky was not married when her mother died, although by this time she had an eight-year-old child. She had no husband. She never married.”

“But then how—” Nadine Orzhekov broke off, looking at him.
How could she then have a child?

Shame writhed through Vasha. He felt it stain his cheeks, a visible mark of the disgrace that his mother had brought on her tribe.

“Luckily,” Mother Kireyevsky was saying, “she died a year after her mother died.”

“Leaving her son,” said Orzhekov. Vasha could not bear to look up now, knowing he would see contempt, not curiosity, in her gaze.

“Leaving a boy with no father, dead or otherwise, and no closer relatives than distant cousins. That line was not strong.” Mother Kireyevsky’s voice rang like hammer blows, unrelenting. Gods, why was she humiliating him like this? What was the point? Hadn’t he been brought low enough already, that she had to make sure that Bakhtiian’s niece knew of the scandal as well? Would she never be satisfied?

Like a spark, like his thoughts had triggered the words in her, Nadine Orzhekov spoke. “Why are you telling me this?” Then, secure as he could never be, she carelessly took another sweetcake.

Vasha felt more than heard Mother Kireyevsky take in a breath for the momentous pronouncement. “Inessa claimed to know who the child’s father was. It was her last wish, as she lay dying of a fever, that the boy be sent to his father. If it is at all possible….” His hearing hazed over as a roar of fear and hope descended on him, claiming him. Mother Kireyevsky continued to speak, but he did not hear her words, not until she pounded the final strokes: “She claimed that his father was Ilyakoria Orzhekov.”

Into the silence, Nadine Orzhekov’s reply was so light-hearted, caught on a laugh, that it seemed false. “My uncle, Bakhtiian.”

Vasha hunkered down. He knew what must come next. Now Nadine Orzhekov would repudiate the connection. She would laugh.

“Of course he must return with me,” said Orzhekov cheerfully, as if she had just been offered a prime stud. “I’m riding back to the army now. I will take responsibility for his well-being myself.”

Shocked, he looked up right at her. Did she mean it? Nadine Orzhekov eyed him coolly, disapprovingly.

“You are recently married yourself,” said Mother Kireyevsky, eyeing the scar on Orzhekov’s cheek.

“Yes,” replied Orzhekov in a cold voice. “I also command a jahar. You may be assured that the child is safe with me. What is his name? Vasha is short for—?”

“Vassily.”

“Vassily!”
Now
she looked astounded, where none of the rest of his sordid history had shocked her. “How did he come by
that
name?”

Stung, he forgot himself. “My mama told me that that is the name
he
said to give me.”

Mother Kireyevsky slapped him, and he hunched down, berating himself. Idiot twice over, for speaking at all and for giving Nadine Orzhekov any reason to think ill of him, to think he might actually
believe
the fiction that his mother had claimed was the truth: not just that Ilyakoria Bakhtiian was his father, but that Bakhtiian had known of her pregnancy and even told her what name to give the child. Only he
did
believe it. It was all he had to believe in.