Lords of Grass and Thunder (66 page)

An adjutant stepped forward, anticipating a change in the orders given to his captains, but Daritai waved him away. “A problem we must soon consider, but not today. Unless Yesugei-Khan follows more closely than I had believed?”

“He’s closer than I expected to find him,” the scout conceded, “But he won’t reach the tent city for another day at least.”

“A tight race,” Daritai mused, more to himself than to his spy. “But with the help of our benevolent ancestors, we can still win it.

“Catch what rest you can, for we ride as planned,” he told the spy and strode from the tent to find his mount. They were going to pay a call on a lady. He hoped, for Tumbinai’s sake and that of his family in hiding, that he hadn’t judged wrong on this.

“My child!” The heartbroken cry of the spirit-khaness drew Eluneke to her side. There she found the prince lying with his back to the grassy ceiling and his face staring down at his rescuers in horror. Around him howled the hungry spirits, limbless and faceless except for their small red eyes and huge, sharp-toothed mouths that slavered as they shrieked. Already they had fallen on him, tearing great chunks of flesh out of his dead body as they devoured his living spirit.

“Stop!” Chimbai drew his sword, slashing about him at the hungry spirits, but the vaporous blade passed uselessly through bloodless bone.

“Take this!” Eluneke leaped from her mount and reached into the pouch that she had brought back from heaven.

“Don’t let go of the reins!” King Toad’s wife reminded her. Eluneke clasped the reins tightly in one hand, and drew out the spear that the sky god’s daughter had given her with the other. Along its shaft ran a dragon of silver and one of gold. The magic of the heavenly warrior goddess pulsed in her fingertips and glowed with a golden light through the spirit stuff of the khan when she handed it to him.

Chimbai took the balance of the weapon in one large hand and grinned at her. Then he turned on the spirits devouring his son. This time, when the spear touched them, the hungry spirits screamed as if heaven itself burned their fleshless souls.

Eluneke moaned a shaman’s chant that the sky god’s daughters had taught her. It was supposed to banish the spirits that brought disease to the sick and, while it didn’t send the hungry spirits flying, it did make them more wary of her. When her pale horse became again the smooth carved shaft of her horse-head drumstick, she flung herself into the fray with a crashing blow, and another.

Smoke rose in curls where the horse-head drumstick struck the hungry spirits. They scattered, screaming in rage, only to meet the sky god’s daughter’s spear in the hands of the prince’s father. The love of the ancestor spirit added its own pulsing silver glow to the weapon, entwining with the heavenly powers so that the dragons etched in silver and gold on its shaft seemed like living creatures, writhing in their own battle against the hungry spirits. Where the spear touched a devourer, rips appeared, shredding soul-stuff until it could no longer hold itself together, and shrieking, disappeared into oblivion.

Eluneke paused to chant a prayer for the lost ones as they vanished, that they might find healing. She feared that they had gone too far down the path of destruction, however, and were lost to the wheel of life forever.

“Don’t stop! You’re winning!” croaked the voices from their baskets on her robes. These souls were lost already, but she still had a chance to save Prince Tayy. Urged on by King Toad’s harem, Eluneke swung her stick about her, raising it again and again to drive off the ravening mouths. At last, when she doubted she could lift her arm for one more blow, the few who had escaped Chimbai-Khan’s deadly spear turned and fled, cursing all living things.

“There,” she said, and blew at a strand of hair that had escaped her headdress and fallen across her nose.

“They’ll be back, bringing more of their kind to fight us,” the khaness warned her. “But we’re safe for now.”

Only then did Eluneke notice the gouge chewed out of the lady’s side, and the vapors of her soul leaking like a mist from the wound.

Chimbai-Khan joined them then. A part of his leg was missing and like his wife’s injury, leaked soul-stuff like smoke from the wound. His hand, where it held the spear, had burned to char, and like the spirits he had attacked with it, his arm seemed to have shredded to tenuous threads. “Thank you,” he said, though she could see the pain of his wounds in his eyes.

“I’m sorry!” Eluneke reached for the spear in horror. “I didn’t realize.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he chided her as she took the weapon and put it back into the little pouch. “ I’m truly grateful.”

“But your wounds—”

“Are nothing,” he said, “In life, I would have given body and soul to save my son. In death, I would pay no less to preserve his spirit.”

“Leave us behind if you must,” the khaness ruled, “but free our son.” In perfect agreement on that point the khan and his khaness leaned against each other, to ease their spectral hurts.

“Where am I?” Prince Tayyichiut asked. His brows drawn tight in a confused frown, he looked to Eluneke for answers that she felt ill-equiped to give him.

“Do you remember rescuing me?” she countered. It felt odd looking up at him where he lay on the grass overhead, but she was relieved to see that the hungry spirits had had little time to do serious damage to his body. If she could get him out of here, at least he’d still have all his parts.

“I fell into Qutula’s trap,” he corrected her interpretation of events.

“You fought Qutula’s demon-servant with all the courage I could hope for in a husband,” she reminded him in turn. “No mortal could have won that battle.”

“A serpent,” he rememberd. “Did it—” Then he saw the khaness.

“Mother?”

“My son.” The two fell into each other’s arms, enfolded in the love of mother and child. Eluneke found herself torn between sorrow that she could not embrace her own mother one last time and relief that the illness hadn’t turned her mother into one of the hungry spirits. Toragana was a good shamaness. Eluneke had been certain of it before, but she felt it even more so now, when her own travels in the underworld were setting all her assumptions on their heads.

Sort of like the people. Tayy was still clinging to the roof of the underworld. His mother and father, clutching him in their desperate embrace, moved as spirits within it. The resultant confusion of her senses made Eluneke slightly queasy in spite of her full heart.

Though she hated to be the one to say it, they were running out of time for farewells. “We have to go,” she said. The prince had already sustained attacks in both the mortal realm and the underworld. The one left his body moldering in the ground, the other had nearly devoured his spirit. If she were to rescue him from his dire fate, she must do so quickly, while there remained enough of either to make him whole.

Chimbai-Khan clung more tightly to his son. When he turned to face her, Eluneke saw that his features were growing less distinct, all except for his teeth. Desire created hungry spirits, she realized. And Chimbai had within his reach the thing he most desired in all the worlds, his tragic loss restored to him. His son. The underworld had begun to fade the memory of his purpose, to return the prince to the living world. He stood in danger of devouring the very thing he loved.

But the khaness put a gentle hand on his ravaged sleeve and when he looked at her, she shook her head sadly, but very sure.

“You have to let him go,” she said. “He doesn’t belong here. If you try to keep him, you can only destroy us all.”

“He is my son.”

“You want grandchildren, don’t you?” the Lady Temulun asked him wisely. “And what about your daughter? Who will protect her?”

“You’re right, of course.” Chimbai hid his face, but slowly he let go of his son and took a drifting step back. “Take care of my children,” he begged Eluneke.

“I’ll try,” she answered him.

Tayy looked confused, as if awaking from a long sleep. He hadn’t been dead for very long, but Eluneke well knew that time moved differently in the underworld. She took his hand to lead him back to the mortal realm. Then she realized that she didn’t know the way.

They had made no secret of their coming, so it didn’t surprise Prince Daritai to find the grand avenue leading to the ger-tent palace deserted. The women and children would be hidden away, and the old men who attended the Lady Bortu would have gathered at the palace. As for the few hundreds who guarded her—ah, there they were. Daritai raised a hand to halt the war party that had followed him to the parade ground in front of the palace. There the Lady Bortu’s honor guard awaited in battle formation, some with mustaches too grizzled, and some with no mustaches at all. None of the men left behind to defend the tent city were of a fighting age, he saw.

Daritai had brought only a small portion of his force with him into the city. For the moment, they were evenly matched. The lady khaness must know that his ten thousand now circled the city, however, and were making their way to the center from all sides even as the Tinglut prince rode toward her. So he wasn’t surprised to find her mounted on a caparisoned horse at the head of her guardsmen. Her towering silver headdress rattled with beads and precious ornaments as she inclined her head in a precise nod to acknowledge him.

“My lady khaness.” Daritai crossed his hands over his pommel to show he had drawn no weapon and bowed a greeting in return from his saddle. “Your city is taken. I mean you no harm nor any insult, and will shed no Qubal blood if I can help it. But your guardsmen are outnumbered, my ten thousand to this small force. I would not have them throw away their lives in a vain attempt at glory.”

“They needn’t kill ten thousand,” she pointed out. “One would do.”

She meant him, of course, the leader of that army, but she was much too wise in statecraft to believe her own words. “You would be doing my father a favor,” he pointed out, “ridding him of a troublesome son, and you would find my half brother, Prince Hulegu, a more exacting taskmaster.”

“We’ve lately had one of those ourselves,” she groused sourly. He figured she meant Qutula and agreed with her assessment. Hulegu was very different from Mergen’s blanket-son, being his father’s heir and also less than forthcoming in battle. That Qutula might share Hulegu’s coldly ruthless streak of vicious self-interest, however, he had no doubt. He said nothing of this, but nudged his horse forward and rode past the lady, ignoring the angry rumbling of her guardsmen. He understood their frustration, but prayed no one acted on their emotions. He didn’t want to kill an old man or a child today for throwing a rock at his head. He didn’t want a massacre if they threw a spear instead.

He made it through the lady’s defenses unmolested by the glaring old men, however. A young one with more courage than sense pulled a knife on him, but a sharp cuff against the boy’s head sent him reeling from his horse. The distraction saw him safely to the door of Mergen’s ger-tent palace.

There were ritual insults to be observed when conquering a neighbor, and defiling the home of the deposed khan was one of them. So he ducked his head low and rode his horse inside. Just a handful of his men followed.

He did it well, sustaining his dignity when his horse released a steaming pile on the carpets. As he rode past the firebox, he took stock of the painted chests with all their treasures as he remembered them. They were his now, or would be if he could just outwit old Tinglut-Khan. When he neared the dais, however, his resolution failed him.

Densly packed around the center of the dais, the old and infirm among the Qubal nobles sat in all their finery. He counted perhaps forty or more, not one of whom carried a weapon more imposing than a small dagger. And yet, he knew, they would sit where they were and die without raising a hand before they would move a single step. At their center was the Princess Orda, bundled in a blanket with the silks of her little coats peeping through where it had slipped.

She started to smile at him, then cast a fearful glance at the nobles who protected her on the dais. A tiny fist seemed to have got hold of Daritai’s throat when he thought that he had frightened her. He had a daughter and shuddered to think of his own tents seized, his own family thrown into despair by a ruthless enemy. May the spirits preserve them, he’d gotten them out safely, he thought, all but Tumbinai.

Then the little princess put a warning finger to the side of her mouth. “You’re not supposed to ride your horse inside,” she whispered, loud enough for all the nobles to hear. “You’ll get in trouble.” Her little face took on a look of horror that would have been droll if he hadn’t been the cause.

Behind him he heard the rustle of silks and realized that her formidable grandmother had caused that sudden fright. For his sake, not her own. Ritual insults were fine and well in the abstract, he decided, but they made him feel foolish in practice.

“Then I suppose I should have these nice men take her outside for me, shouldn’t I?” He dismounted and gave the reins to a warrior who had the good sense to suppress his grin on the way out.

“Now the Lady Bortu won’t be mad at me.”

The snort behind him told him otherwise, but the little girl relaxed at once. The next step would be trickier. He needed to take possession of the princess. That meant making his way past the old retainers who surrounded her. But first he had to overcome his own fatherly misgivings about hurting the people who protected her. And there was the whole not wanting to scare her thing.

He hadn’t counted on the princess herself, who stood up in her little boots with their upturned toes and picked her way carefully through the rows of old nobles to stand in front of him. With her solemn, trusting eyes fixed on his, she lifted her arms to be picked up. Since that was exactly what he had wanted, he obliged.

He had not exactly feared for his life until now. Something in the very air of the ger-tent palace shifted when he lifted the princess into his arms, however. Rumor said the old khaness had strange powers of her own. His back was feeling very exposed.