Lords of Grass and Thunder (51 page)

But first she must remove the obstacles to his ascendancy who littered the ger-tent palace: the khan’s heir, and the khan. Then Qutula, her lover, must die to make way for his own demon son. She thought perhaps she would eat him when the time came, and feed bits of him to his son, to give him strength in the nest. And, of course, the girl who stood to defend the heir, and who might produce her own offspring of power to contest the dais with Qutula’s son—first, she must be rid of the girl.

She had come to the place she had intended and, hidden by the darkness, returned to human form. Around her the painstakingly slow process of rebuilding, stone by stone, hand by hand, the shrine of the khan her former husband, had begun. No one had touched the tumble of shards from which the sliding hiss of a thousand serpents whispered on the night air.

Before she rested, she must rid her nest of the human she had used to fertilize her egg. Then she had one last task. Drawing the round flat circle of jade from between her breasts where it had fallen, she called to her serpent brethren, summoning a demon of her own kind. “Brother serpent, sister snake, my father bids you come to me.”

She repeated the incantation not once but a hundred times, until the ground beneath her feet seethed with snakes, coming not only from their nearby nests within the ruin of the khan’s shrine. Far across the grass she saw the undulation of their backs, so that the grass itself seemed to blow against the wind. All of these were mortal snakes, kin with the power to kill, but not the skills of a demon to block the magic of the shamaness. These she sent to find the human hidden in her underground nest and carry him on their backs to the surface, to the cover of sharp upthrusting rocks where he had thought to await her. She forbade them his murder, but commanded that he must be gone before he awoke. He must never find her nest.

When they had slithered away to do her bidding, she took up her chant again, searching the fading night with more than sight for one of her own kind. Most of her demon kin had been cast back into the underworld by the combined armies of gods and humans during the great battle high above the Golden City. Finally, however, when she feared the loss of darkness to the dawn, an answer came.

“Mistress.” A snake, thick and black, with markings on its back, rose up on its tail to salute her. “I bow before you and your child.” He dipped his head to her belly and continued, “What would you have of me?”

“Your power, for a day, a week,” she answered, imperious in command. Her father was a king in the underworld, and she would soon be mother to a khan in this. “A girl, to be hidden, her power muted for a while.”

Qutula had promised to kill the prince soon. She would have done it herself more efficiently, but needed something by which to control her lover. Murder of his father’s heir seemed a likely tool, and he had promised that his plan would escape suspicion, or a costly war. But just in case he failed, she added, “We may need her later, so don’t do any damage.”

“As you wish,” the serpent answered with another bow of his wedge-shaped head on its long neck.

With that, she took him in her hand and with his own sharp fangs carved the coiled rune into the bottom of the shattered cup, which like a coin now lay on her palm. He grinned at her and poison dripped from his fangs onto the fresh carving.

“You may go now,” she told him, setting him down in the grass. “You’ll know it when the token finds its way onto the throat of the girl, and you will come to my bidding as if I had summoned you that very moment. She must not use her powers, nor may shaman or magician find her. If any human comes near who is not bound to myself, or to my Lord Qutula, they must see only grass where her tents are raised, and only sheep where her guards stand watch. None may find her by magical or earthly means.”

“As you wish, my lady.” The black serpent writhed into a knot of courtesy as a lesser demon to the daughter of a king, and when she released him, sidled away in the grass. He wouldn’t go far, she knew. There were gaps among the broken stones where he might rest and many female snakes who wriggled enticingly nearby.

The wan light of Little Sun had begun to touch the sky with false dawn. She quickly made her way to her sleeping lover, now lying among his scattered clothes in the grass where the snakes had left him, and replaced the jade token on his breast. Then she adopted her serpent form again and returned, unseen, to the borrowed comforts of her nest.

Languorous in satisfaction, Mergen, great gur-khan of the Qubal and the Uulgar clans, yawned and scratched absently at his crotch. “If we are to wed,” he told Sechule, “I should start wooing you with presents.”

Sechule smiled with downcast eyes as she handed him a cup of tea. He had already forbidden her the prize she wished, and now he proposed to buy her with trifles. But scorn would come later, when her son had won for her the place her lover had refused her. Now, she gave him a flirtatious smile through gritted teeth and teased, “A fine silk coat then, or, no, two fine silk coats, with the most elaborate embroideries.” She could at least replace the finery that had vanished lately from her tent. “And a jewel bead for my hair. I must at least compete with the other noble wives.”

“You will be the most elegant of wives,” he promised, “All the coats and gowns you wish, and I’ll choose the beads personally to enhance the glory of your hair.”

He was teasing her, she knew, as well he meant it, too. She kissed him and helped him dress, thinking, she would have all the silk coats she wanted, and the headdress of a khaness if not a wife, when her son defeated him and took the dais and the ulus with it from his father’s dead hands. The thought of murder lit her eyes with pleasure that he took for admiration. With one arm he drew her close and kissed her while she thought, poison, or perhaps a dagger to his kidney, once Qutula had begun his war.

PART FOUR

THE SHAMANS’ WAR

Chapter Thirty-two

“O
UR GUESTS don’t come to us today,” Lady Bortu commented, over her breakfast, needling him between bites of crumbly cheese and millet stew. “The treaty which would have bartered your daughter for peace remains unpledged.”

Mergen had noticed. “The Tinglut packed their tents while our noble Altan made his journey to his ancestors. By now they are doubtless halfway home.” He had offered as a bride for the Tinglut-Khan a shamaness who traveled in the shape of a toad inside the coats of his heir. Daritai would have seen the insult of that match on so many levels that he might not even have considered the murder in his decision. Mergen admitted to himself that the negotiations could have gone better.

“And what do you plan to do about it?” The beads of his mother’s elaborate horned headdress clacked and swayed as she spoke, a reminder of the power of her station. She had made more than one khan, and could make another of her blood if not her womb.

Smothering a sigh, he glared in the Lady Bortu’s direction, careful not to meet her eye, however. He didn’t want to have this conversation now. Didn’t want to have it at all until he’d dealt with the unruly youths of his court, and they hadn’t shown up yet. She would not, however, leave the thing undone.

“You need Yesugei.”

She didn’t accuse him of a mistake in sending the general away with his ten thousand of Uulgar, but it was in his own mind that he had. He would certainly need Yesugei and those conquered troops if he wished to use force against the Tinglut where marriage had failed. Picking over the breakfast for which he had no appetite, he considered whom to send as messenger to bring them back. Not Jochi, who was needed here and whose grief put him at risk in a mission of personal danger. He gestured instead for Chahar, who came forward with a deep bow. He had, Mergen noted, his father’s eyes, though with none of the shaman’s otherworldly gaze.

“Take a message to our beloved Yesugei-Khan,” he said. “Tell him that his gur-khan wishes his company, and that of his armies.”

Chahar bowed and left, carrying with him a turquoise bead as a gift for the general and the understanding that he would report all he had seen and heard for the general’s intelligence. Turquoise meant the threat of war, though not at imminent approach. Yesugei would come with his armies, in good order and fresh for fighting.

Mergen would not attack his peaceful neighbor. Marriages might, after all, still join the uluses in one blood within a generation. But if there would be war, he had no doubt who would win it. His heir would take his place as gur-khan over all the grasslands, an emperor to rival that of Shan. The Lady Bortu, noting the turquoise bead, grinned at him and ate her breakfast.

His mother was out when Qutula returned home late in the day to change into the blue coat of a guardsman. The firebox was still warm, but his mother’s kettle was empty. At some time during the night, while dreams of a thousand vipers seething in the grass troubled his sleep, the Lady Chaiujin, his once-secret lover, had taken away the smooth jade shard he wore. In its place she had returned the token he had carried from a distant battlefield, with its coiled ruin carved on its face. Or she’d replaced it with another like it, though he’d thought it a rare piece when he’d picked it up. This one itched like bees swarming where it touched his skin.

Sechule kept a mirror pointed at the doorway to repel demons, or so she might tell the clients for her potions. Their own faces, reflected in the polished silver, were said to terrify the evil spirits into flight. Not all the mirrors in the ger-tent palace had stopped the Lady Chaiujin from becoming the khan’s wife, of course. Buckling his sword at the waist of his blue coat, he cast a glance in that direction, half expecting to see the reflection of his lady’s obsidian eyes. The strange serpent staring back startled him. Qutula had come to terms with his lover’s other nature, however, and accepted the sinister-looking demon as her acolyte.

“Welcome,” he greeted the creature.

“How did you know I was here?” Mangkut slipped over the threshold, staring about him for other spies in the shadows.

“I didn’t.”

“Oh.”

Mangkut hadn’t seen the serpent, which had vanished as soon as he turned away from the mirror, and Qutula chose not to enlighten him.
Let him be nervous,
he thought, as his follower licked his dry lips.
Fear will keep him sharp
. Duwa he considered a necessary loss, to part the prince from his closest allies, but he couldn’t spare Mangkut as well. At least, not yet.

“What report do you have?”

As he expected, Mangkut had gathered for his captain the intelligence of his Durluken, posted throughout the camp. He drew out a cord with small beads tied at regular intervals and fingered the first of them as he spoke.

“The Tinglut have run off. Scouts have scattered to track them,” he said, and his fingers moved to the next bead. “The gur-khan has sent for General Yesugei.”

Qutula gave a nod to acknowledge the news. “And our Prince Tayyichiut?” He had assigned Mangkut to watch the prince and report on his movements through the night.

“With the Lady Eluneke, as you surmised.” Mangkut’s fingers slipped to the next bead on the cord. “They spent the night together by the river.”

“Have they returned to the palace?”

“Not yet. They talked through the night.” Mangkut smirked. “I left when they fell asleep.”

Qutula hated the little dell with its dense and tangled span of forest where the river ran, waiting to drag him down into the underworld at the first misstep. The thought of sleeping on its banks raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Prince Tayy seemed to like it, but with the girl he’d given Qutula a powerful tool to use against him.

“The gur-khan won’t be happy. He has political marriages in mind.” He didn’t mention the toad part. That couldn’t have pleased his father either. Qutula had no such inclinations, either to become a toad or to wed one.

“If the prince won’t honor the gur-khan’s wishes,” Mangkut suggested, “he has more loyal kin to whom he may look.”

“I can’t speculate.” Qutula dropped his eyes, properly abashed. He had no right to claim his father yet. Once he freed the gur-khan from his obligation to Chimbai’s son, however, he would make of himself a more dutiful heir.