Spirit Hunter (3 page)

At my side, I hear Shaman Tulan’s deep, steady breathing. He is already gone, leaving his body a hollow shell, but in my mind I see Yan and Tela walking away from the fire, hand-in-hand, and again I taste the sourness of jealousy. It’s like bad milk.

I push it all away. To journey to the World Above, I must think of nothing. I must be as nothing, just as I have to do when I wish to be hidden.

I feel a swift tug deep in my belly and stare at the waving bulrushes, at the sunlight on the waters: I am here, but not here. At last, at last – I am leaving my body, leaving it behind like an old jacket crumpled on the ground.

I fly free.

I’m astride my spirit-horse, up in the World Above. Tulan rides at my side. His eagle-guide swoops above us in the unstained sky. My wolf runs ahead, a swift shadow half hidden by swaying grass. Cold fear slips through me. Straying from the body for too long is dangerous, even for a shaman. All worlds touch: the worlds of spirit, the world of men – and Shaman Tulan is old. Of late, he has been out of his body more often than not. He is like a man in a boat trailing his fingers in the water, leaning further and further over the edge till he falls.

My spirit-horse rides faster, faster. Tulan keeps pace at my side. We leave the shimmering grasslands of the World Above far below, riding hard through clear blue sky.

Look down
, Shaman Tulan says, and the grasslands of the World Above fade; now we are soaring high above our own camp, high over the earth, watching sheep moving like small tufts of grey cloud down among the pine trees. Back by the tents, our horses are shifting where they stand, uneasy, ready to run. I see my horse Shadow at the herd’s edge, watching for danger.

Far to the west, a line of laden horse-folk edges onward, bound for Constantinople, where Mama was born, or perhaps even Rome. Each beast is no larger than my little finger from this great height. There are camels, too, and wagons, and folk on foot trailing like beetles. One of them is a wicked man: his spirit-horse burns white-hot with rage that never fades.

Looking east, I glimpse the pale walls and seething streets of Samarkand, and a few days’ ride further on a tangled splash of green: some trading post or other. It’s like a foal birthed by the great city, left behind.

Watch,
Tulan tells me.
They are coming home.

Higher and higher we rise, Shaman Tulan and I, circling above the mountains. Now I see the horses: first, a creamy cloud of dust moving swift from the east. Not a wild herd but men, riding. Their spirit-horses shimmer like sunlight glancing off the lake. Fear. Battle-thirst. Men who want to fight. Our men. Even from this height I see how Kul sits in the saddle with a slump, how Baba is keeping back from the front, allowing Uncle Taspar to be first. The men are riding back to camp early, the trade roads abandoned. What has happened?

I look down again; my wolf runs at my side, treading the sky with his black, ragged paws. Tulan’s eagle swoops down and lands upon his shoulder once more.

Why have the menfolk left the roads?
Tulan asks.
We had not thought to see them again till the birth of a new moon.

Tulan’s eagle-guide answers:
They have heard whispers of death and battle to come. The Empress of the T’ang seeks to destroy the Tribes and rule the roads with her own might.

Tulan shakes his head.
There was a time when the T’ang trembled in fear at the sound of galloping horses. What is to be done?

There will be a Gathering of the Tribes
, my wolf says.
Meet where the Great River comes down from the mountains and greets the plain in the shadow of Claw Rock. Together, the Tribes will choose a path. But you must beware.

And the world of men fades around us; we are back in the World Above, galloping across the golden grasslands. I hear it again. Drumming hoofbeats, the screaming of horses and men alike. The thin lonely wail of a child. The dream unfolds before my eyes, here in the World Above, as if Shaman Tulan and I are watching a children’s game of wooden dolls. It is my dream, the warning, and the dolls are real people dying on the ground without help or the rites of passing.

Watch,
Tulan tells me.
Wait
.

The din of battle fades. It is only Shaman Tulan and I in the World Above, riding our spirit-horses across a plain of wind-rippled golden grass.

Tulan’s eagle-guide is nowhere to be seen now, but my wolf comes leaping forward out of the grass till he stands before us.

Well?
Tulan asks him.
I grow tired. Speak, friend. How can we stop this coming to pass?

Our fate lies in Asena’s hands,
says my wolf. And he is gone.

So there you have it
, Tulan says, and I feel the warmth of his smile.
The task is yours, Shaman Asena. You will save us from the T’ang.

No!
I cry out.
I can’t do it alone. I am not ready to look after our people without you, and this is even worse. I can’t manage a – a
war
—

Shaman Tulan smiles again.
Many long years I have walked the earth, my wolf-girl, and I bargained with the spirits for another handful to see you grow to be a shaman. You are the most powerful of our kind in five generations, and I am so proud of you that I could weep. Yet I must stay no longer. Take the buckskin from around my shoulders. It is yours now.
Tulan’s spirit-horse rears on her hindlegs, eager to be away.

Tulan is going. He is leaving me. I reach out to hold him back but it’s no use.
Be ready
, he says, clasping my hand one last time.
Your powers will remain strong only if you live by truth alone. Heed your wolf or lose him. Trust him. Never forget: the spirits only guide those willing to be led
.

I cannot stop him. I can do nothing but watch in horror as my old friend rides away across the whispering, shifting grasslands of the World Above, leaving me with the burden of a prophecy:
Our fate lies in Asena’s hands. You will save us from the T’ang.
What am I to do? I must return to camp alone.

I sit upright, back at the fireside, back in the world of men. The light hurts my eyes; it glitters across the lake. A wind has got up, singing through the mulberry trees above my head. The waters are shifting. The sound of laughter and voices drifts from camp, the clang of a dropped pot.

I kneel at Tulan’s side. No longer sitting up, he has slumped to the ground. His face is pale and bloodless; his eyes are closed. I see the thin blue veins on his eyelids. I know he is dead. There is no breath in his body. I help him to lie down. I feel numb, as if I’ve been swimming in icy water. The T ’ang are coming to destroy the Tribes and I am the one to stop them.

I cannot do it.

“Tulan.” I clutch his hand, wildly hoping that he is not really dead, that this burden is not mine to bear alone. But he is cold to the touch already, like a stone pulled from the bottom of a river. Tears slide hot and fierce down my face.

Back at camp, someone cries out for more tea. I hear Aunt Zaka saying, “Get it yourself, slug.”

He has left me at last. My old friend, my teacher. He is gone.

How can anyone drink tea while Tulan lies here cold? The cruelty of it snatches the breath from my lungs: tonight his place by our hearth will be empty and we shall all eat our meat without him.

I cannot lift him alone. I will have to get help. I must give Tulan the death-rites or else his souls will not find their next home, and he will wander.

Take the buckskin from around my shoulders,
he had said. I obey, easing the cloak out from beneath his body. The buckskin is heavy and its fringed edges trail between my fingers. I close my eyes and in my mind I see Shaman Tulan dancing, beating his drum, the cloak spinning out around him, rising and falling like the wings of Raven, the first shaman. My tears make dark splashes on the deer-hide. I have no choice: the buckskin cloak is mine to wear. I pull it on, feeling its weight. It smells of thyme, burnt juniper. Even with the fire’s heat and the cloak, I am cold.

Wait. What’s that sound?
It’s like drumbeats. Placing one hand flat on the ground, I feel the earth trembling. Horses. I hear as keen and sharp as a wolf. The men
are
coming home. Baba is riding home and how I long to see him. But dread crushes the spark of joy. So it begins. The T ’ang are coming; there is to be a battle, which I am somehow to prevent.

How?

I stare at Tulan’s body. He looks so small and frail. He cannot help me now.

I am shaman. I must find the strength to guide the spirits of my people. I must do what I was born to do. Tears stream down my face, and the truth is they are not only for my dear wise Tulan, but for the unknown boy I will never love, the children I will never bear him. The life I want that will never be mine.

S
wiftarrow sat in a shadowy alleyway between an old woman selling leather purses and a man charring mutton over a fire in an iron bowl. They did not see him and neither did anyone else in the surging crowd: sunburnt, wind-reddened men with dirty cloaks that once were bright-dyed, now faded with the desert sun, women in dark robes with faces like rock shaped by the harsh, hot wind, and scruffy children who ran and shrieked.

Swiftarrow’s mouth filled with spit at the meat’s rich fatty smell: he’d had his first taste of dried salt pork on the roads, and he knew the pickled cabbage and mushroomy broths Hano served at home in the Forbidden Garden would never truly fill his belly again. He fought off a burst of guilt: one of his earliest memories was watching Brother Red Falcon take great care to lift a drowning worm from a puddle in the Alley of the Jingling Harness, just after his mother had died. Red Falcon was the ninth son of a powerful lord from the south, but he was also Shaolin. To rescue the worm he had crouched so low that the ragged edge of his robe was soaked in muddy water.

Why do you do that? It’s just a worm,
Swiftarrow had asked. He remembered thinking,
How can a worm be saved from death and not our mother?

Red Falcon had smiled, his scarred face bright with kindness as he patted Swiftarrow’s shoulder.
All life is sacred, child – even the worms. Come.
He had taken him to the pastry-seller for honeyed plums, which to this day Swiftarrow could never taste without the ache of grief for his mother.

Frowning, he leaned back against the wall, watching blue smoke bloom from the mutton-seller’s fire.
If all life is sacred, then why am I here? If I lead General Li to the Horse Tribes, people will die. If I take a recruit for our temple, they too will be trained to steal secrets from traitors and deliver them to death just as I have done.

But there was White Swan, captive in the house of Golden Butterflies. In truth, his sister was a hostage, and Swiftarrow had no choice.

Reaching into his tunic, he touched the silver phial of sleeping-draught hanging around his neck. Would he need it, or would the chosen victim come without a struggle?

Ensure no one ever pays heed to you,
Autumn Moon had told him.
Be as a shadow; be nothing. Watch the market places: that shall be where you find the right kind of folk – thieves, pick­pockets – those who know how to go unnoticed.
Swiftarrow stared down at his dust-pale hands. He had seen thieves in Samarkand, but they were just scrawny, scampering children made fearless by hunger. They darted about the market places and through the tangle of alleyways like young carp in a pool, snatching dried figs here, a handful of spices there.

How can I return to the Empress with such a prize? She hardly sent me across the desert for brats like those: Chang’an is full of them already. She wants someone different. She wants someone with the blood of the Tribes.

Swiftarrow got to his feet and climbed the wall, swift and silent as a falling leaf. It was easier to watch folk from the rooftops, away from the stench and crush below. Breathing easier, he walked on, making neat jumps from one rooftop to the next.

One, two, three…
Leaving his doubts behind, Swiftarrow began to count, leaping and landing in a crouch on one dusty rooftop after another. The pepper-market was long behind him now; the streets below were wider, less crowded. Camels and mules lumbered past, laden with bundles.

I must be near one of the city gates.
Swiftarrow glanced up at the sun; it was setting before his eyes, a ball of red fire sinking lower over the jumble of pale rooftops and dusty courtyards half hidden by cook-fire smoke.
The west wall.
Running towards the dying sun, Swiftarrow landed at last on the rooftop of a silk warehouse. The crowd thickened again here: traders bustled outside among the throng of camels. An old woman selling reed-woven baskets sat on the rim of a fountain; she reached back with one hand and let her crooked brown fingers trail in the water. When Swiftarrow looked straight down, he saw two men lounging by a pile of sack-wrapped silk bales, leaning against the wall of the warehouse. They were playing knuckle stones with sheeps’ teeth, not real knucklebones; the teeth clicked together softly.

Merchants from the east, selling silk to merchants from the west,
he thought
. All the way to barbarian cities, where folk are double the height of real men and have hair the colour of fire.

He could hear horses now – not far away, either: that strange, whinnying cry. Swiftarrow frowned again, glancing down at the street below.
No horses here, only camels.
Rising to his feet, he ran across the rooftop and looked down on the crumbling western city wall of Samarkand. He stopped and stared. Beyond the wall, out in the open, a rash of deer-hide tents clustered around a group of people sitting by a fire, thumb-sized from so far off. Only men, though: no women. Men with long plaited hair, rough cloaks, leggings that fitted close. Barbarian clothes, like those worn by General Li’s half-blood Horse Tribers lighting fires in the courtyard of that trader-inn.