Lords of Grass and Thunder (60 page)

Bekter rubbed his face with both hands as if he could wipe away his own sorrow like so much dust. “How is it possible to hide a shamaness from the sight of her teacher?” he asked.

“Her captors must have otherworldly help.”

“Demons?” Bekter’s head came up at that. Both Toragana and Bolghai followed the white path of the shaman. But dark magics had troubled the grasslands before.

“The false Lady Chaiujin?” He shivered, remembering Chimbai-Khan’s deadly wife, and the strange woman who had come, uninvited, to his bed.

“It’s possible. I’m running out of other ideas.” Toragana’s gaze drifted. She seemed to look into a different world all of a sudden, and he wondered if she would turn back into a raven and fly away again. Presently, however, she gave herself a little shake and reined in her farseeing vision. “We are about to have company. And, maybe, some answers.”

Bekter listened for the sound of approaching horses. He heard nothing but the whisper of small creatures in the grass. Toragana was looking down at the carpet, however, and at the back of the tent rather than the door. When the fat green toad with one missing toe slipped under the tent cloths he reached for his sword.

Toragana stopped him with a warning. “You have nothing to fear as long as you offer her no threat.”

“He or she, the toad is poisonous.”

The shamaness waved his objection away, apparently unconcerned that the floor of her tent was filling with toads of all sizes. Not all were poisonous, but enough of them made Bekter nervous. Toragana, however, answered his concern without turning her attention from the regal toad who approached at the center of the hopping mass of green and brown and red. “Let me introduce the queen of the toads,” she said, “who has come as a messenger from her husband, who rules the realm of toads.”

“Greetings.” Bekter made a polite bow, but he wondered if perhaps Qutula had been right to fear for the prince. With no such fears, Toragana squatted down in front of Queen Toad and planted her elbows companionably on her knees. “Ribbit,” she said

The toad responded, “Croak!”

They proceeded to converse in a language that made Bekter’s head ache. Though he understood not a word of what passed between them, he recognized the seriousness of the debate from the sharp fan of frown lines marking Toragana’s brow. When the debate concluded, the shamaness stood up and put on her headdress again. The frown remained, her brows tilting like the wings of the raven on her head.

“The toads have found the Princess Eluneke, but we will need Bolghai to free her.”

“I can help . . .” Bekter was already reaching for his seldom-used sword, but Toragana shook her head, rejecting his offer of assistance.

“If a human could get near her, I would gratefully accept,” she said, assuaging his injured pride. “But the queen of the toads tells me that Eluneke’s captor has set a demon guard to hide her from human eyes. If you should find a way past this unearthly glamour, the demon would destroy you, body and soul.

“The toads, not being human, are untroubled by the demon’s spells. They’ve seen Eluneke and have spoken to her,” Toragana assured him. “She is still alive, they tell me.”

“Alive, but a prisoner of a demon!” He didn’t say at the command of his brother, though he knew it must be true. “If she’s so well hidden, what are we to do?”

“Queen Toad has come up with a plan. I think it will work, but it requires the stealth of Bolghai’s totem creature. And his sharp teeth.”

They needed the stoat, not the human shaman, and his sharp teeth for gnawing through bindings. One thing above all else he had learned in battle against strange forces, however; it always helped to have a backup plan. The demon’s spell might hide Qutula’s camp from his human sight, but he could follow the toads, who knew the way. His sword would sever rope or leather more quickly than the sharp teeth of a stoat. And, as Qutula’s brother, he might have a chance at reasoning their way out of this mess. Or at least surviving the attempt.

He watched, growing accustomed to the transformation, as Toragana turned into a raven and flew out the smoke hole of her tent. When he looked down again, the toads were leaving as well. He did the same, by the door, and rounded the little tent in time to see that some of the toads had scattered. A line of disturbance in the grass pointed like an arrow toward the little dell through which the Onga River flowed, where the King Toad had his dominion. A greater wave pointed him farther down the river’s bank, however. These, he thought, must be returning to assist in Eluneke’s rescue. Mounting his horse, he followed at a distance, determined to do no less.

Daritai stroked the neck of his mare but succeeded only in communicating his own tension to the beast. She sidled with dainty lifts of her feet, not willful but like himself unable to settle. As he’d expected, Tinglut-Khan had taken badly the insults of the gur-khan but had listened with an avaricious gleam in his eye when his lesser prince set out his plan.

“The Qubal are in disorder,” he’d told his father. “They’ve sent their best general to the south with half their army and all the prisoners they took during the war for the Cloud Country. Mergen Gur-Khan’s second, Jochi, is distracted by the death of his own son and there is no love between the Qubal prince and his first officer, the gur-khan’s blanket-son.”

“They’ll fight?” Tinglut-Khan had asked sharply, his hand straying across the map spread on a low table on the dais. At his side, Daritai’s half brother, Prince Hulegu, watched him with unblinking tension.

“They already do. The dead boy was no accident.” Daritai had driven the point home with his index finger, tapping the map where the Qubal usually grazed. “The cousin stands first among the prince’s retainers by rank, but leads his own band of followers he calls the Durluken. The dead boy was a champion of the prince’s own Nirun.”

“The Sons of Darkness against the Sons of Light.” Tinglut tugged at his long thin mustache. “So they play at spirit games and legend in their wars.” He chuckled softly, slanting a glance from one son to the other, as if he knew the same warfare might break out between his own heirs if he slackened his hand on the reins. “How did that son of yours do?”

“Brave, observant as you would expect.” He understood the threat behind his father’s casual question. He had wives, children, who would die first in any conflict with his father or the chosen heir. He’d thought of that. With any luck his most trusted guardsmen had already hidden them away.

“Ah, there is the boy now.”

Tumbinai strode forward between two of Hulegu’s most terrifying followers, one with a face so scarred that Daritai himself had difficulty looking at it. His son seemed unperturbed, though he had lived at the court of the Tinglut-Khan long enough to understand the threat. He smiled sweetly and kissed his grandfather first on one cheek and then on the other.

“Your father says that you were brave and observant,” Tinglut challenged him. “So what did you see? Report, like a good scout!”

“Eluneke was pretty,” Tumbinai said, “even if she did ride around in the shape of a toad sometimes. But she’s already in love with the prince and he’s in love with her, of course.” He wrinkled his nose as though he found the idea of love very strange, which made his grandfather the khan laugh out loud.

“And did you notice anything besides the pretty girls?” he asked, a little of the malice leaving his grin.

“Prince Tayyichiut was upset about his friend dying. His cousin said he was sorry, but he wasn’t. There was something funny about him.”

Tumbinai frowned and a cold hand clutched at Daritai’s heart. Sometimes the boy saw more than he should, but he usually had a good sense of when to keep his observations to himself, especially around his grandfather. He shrugged, as if he had no words to describe what he felt or saw, and ended lamely with, “I didn’t like him.”

“And did you like the prince, then?” Tinglut used a teasing tone, but he was watching his grandson carefully.

Tumbinai shrugged again. “He was sad about his friend. I guess that’s nice.”

“I’m sure it is.” Reassured in some way that the boy posed no threat, Tinglut ruffled his hair with a bejeweled hand. “Now go find your bed. You’ll be riding out with your uncle in the morning.”

“You mean I can go to battle like my father!” the boy’s face lit up with excitement, only to have his hopes dashed the next moment.

“I wouldn’t risk you to the battlefield, child. You’ll ride with the wagons and help Prince Hulegu to guard the women and children in case of attack. And when your father returns, you will take your place among the nobles in the palace.”

A hostage, then. Tumbinai flashed his father a nervous glance but bowed to show his obedience to the khan. “As you wish,” he said, and made a great display of yawning, which drew another laugh from his grandfather.

“Take this boy home to his mother,” Tinglut roared, “and find what comfort there you may tonight, my son. Tomorrow you will ride for the glory of your khan and your people!”

And so Daritai found himself horsed again and riding to war. If he succeeded, all the grasslands would come under the sway of the Tinglut-Khan. As reward, his father might permit the return of his son. If he failed, he figured he’d be dead, and so would have little to say in the matter.

The armies were loyal to him as their general and he tried not to think about what that might mean past the present battle. His unruly imagination, however, thrust a tangle of possibilities on him as he rode. Returning victorious from the conquest of all the grasslands, he might seize the dais for himself, freeing his family forever from the threats his half brother Hulegu urged in the Tinglut-Khan’s ear.

He could hold all the conquered lands in his own name, and live as gur-khan, filling the ger-tent palace of the Tinglut with the wives and children he had removed from the reach of the khan. All he had to do was sacrifice one child to Tinglut’s revenge. For Daritai had no doubt that his father would torture and kill Tumbinai before his men could reach the boy.

Hulegu would have done it, if he’d had the stomach to do his own fighting at all. Daritai, however, would trade the grasslands and all he possessed for the life of his son. A frozen corner of his heart told him even that might not be enough to save his child.

Chapter Thirty-eight

“ D
ON’T LET HIM FIND ME. Don’t let him find me. Don’t let him find me.” Eluneke chanted her private mantra like a prayer. She would have danced and beat her hands together to simulate a drum, but the demon that resided in the talisman resting over her heart had broken her legs the last time she’d tried. Oh, they hadn’t really been broken. He’d have to leave the carved jade fragment and take corporeal form to do that and Qutula still needed her reasonably intact anyway. But when she had tried to dance a shaman’s prayer, he’d convinced her mind that shattered fragments of bone were grinding agonizingly against each other. For a moment he’d even tricked her into believing that she saw the fractured points jutting from her flesh. She’d stayed mostly in her corner since then.

Except for direct invocations of the spirit world, which he punished with equally painful reminders, the demon made no objection to her chanting, taunting her with the uselessness of her efforts instead. “No one can hear you,” he whispered in her ear. “The mortal world believes you dead, the spirit world cannot find you at all. So beg all you want, little girl. Only your jailer can hear you, and he is little inclined to mercy.”

Qutula wanted Prince Tayyichiut dead and he’d be happy to kill her as well once he had what he wanted. Eluneke had given up trying to escape, but she still held out hope that Tayy wouldn’t find her. At least not until he’d defeated his cousin in battle. Qutula’s death would free the demon, who would have no further use for her. He might try to kill her, but she didn’t think he’d stand and fight against her shamanic powers unless he had to.

“Is the monster still in there?”

Eluneke flinched at the caustic words meant for her. She knew the voice well enough: Duwa, the Durluken who had killed the Nirun captain Altan. One of Qutula’s favorites, he’d escaped General Jochi’s tents and run to his chosen master. When she opened her eyes, she saw that he still wore the iron band around his neck that marked him as a slave. More to the point, he had brought her breakfast.

Duwa, like the rest, approached her with dread and only when his master required it, like now. He entered the tent with a sneer on his face but kept to the lattices, well away from where she huddled on the filthy carpets.

“Ribbit,” she said, just to annoy him.

He dropped the steaming bowl of millet boiled in whey, where it spread new stains across the muddy patterns. “Catch your own, then,” he snarled at her, backing out of the tent.

Through the felted tent cloths she heard him say to someone outside the door, “I won’t go back in there, no matter what you do to me.”

“If that’s the way you feel, then of course you won’t have to go back,” Qutula’s voice answered. Then Eluneke heard a scream which ended suddenly in the thunk of something hard hitting the ground.