The Book of a Thousand Days (19 page)

Day 150

We've all been in such a flurry only now am I able to write. Khan Tegus is back, wounded, a tenth of his warriors dead. They rode hard into Song for Evela, bringing in villagers and shutting the city gates behind them.

I spent an entire helpless day scrubbing so hard I feared I'd make holes in the pots, until at last Shria came for me. Since then I haven't spent much time here in my quiet little room. I only came now to get some sleep because I was so tired I was beginning to see frogs leaping about in the corner of my eye. It'd make me laugh if times weren't so scary.

Three days I've spent with the shaman healers in Khan Tegus's room, singing until my throat's fair

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scalded with songs. He bears an arrow wound through his side and it's turned to fever. His breath wheezes while he sleeps, a sound that makes my own skin hurt as if a thousand red ants bit me at once.

The shamans change his bandages, give him drinks, dance with their drums, pray toward the Sacred Mountain, burn incense, and read the cracks in fire-heated sheep bones for any signs of hope. I hold Tegus's warm hand and sing and sing. My lord, my poor lord. It's too much like my mama's end. Times there are these past days when I lay my head on his couch and begin to dream as soon as my eyes shut, and my dreams are always the blackness of the tower falling over all the world, an endless city of corpses, and my lord's body there, too, cast on the ground.

I need to try and rest so I can return to him and sing some more.

Day 151

The shaman healers dismissed me. Tegus isn't improving. My singing does nothing. So they said. And I was lying here on my horsehair blanket and believing them. But then I remembered how Tegus asked

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me to help Batu, how he said please. Please, Dashti. And I did. And he got better.

Then I got to wake-dreaming about a time when I was ten and I fell into a thorn bush and scraped my arm, and it swelled and swelled, my arm on fire, my whole body trembling with heat. Mama and I were alone on the edge of a great forest, with no one around to help for miles, but I remember how calm she was, how cool her hands on my face. And while I thrashed and sweated on my bed, she never stopped singing. On the third night, I woke from death dreams and looked up into her eyes, and I remember how I could see her confidence. She knew I could heal. So I curled up on her lap and felt her song move inside me until my skin cooled and I could sleep a healing sleep.

I'm going to go back to the khan's chamber now. I'm going to keep singing.

Day 153

It's still dark, the autumn morning too tired to rise, and I'm writing by firelight. The shaman healers feared that the khan's fever was the kind that comes with an open wound and stays and stays until it takes a warrior down days after battle. But at midnight his

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fever broke. They said it was a miracle, mumbled prayers to the north, then left or curled up to sleep on pallets on the floor.

I stayed by my lord's couch. It was the same couch where Batu had lain ill, where Tegus and I had leaned back together and stared at the fire, touching Batu's arm. This time, I touched the khan's arm and watched his chest rise and fall.

Over the past six days, I'd sung all the healing songs I knew, I'd stitched each one with my memories of sunlight, I'd poured any blue sky from my soul into the sounds. Now I was a snail's shell. There was nothing left for me to give.

So I sang him the nonsense song he'd given me in the tower. My voice was a horse's bray, I'm sure, raw with little sleep and so much singing. But I didn't want him to feel alone without any music to keep him company. "The piglet rolled while squealing, moving by snout and by jaw, happily snuffling for treats without use of hoof or paw." I sang it wrong. It needs a happy voice, the words jigging and the tune lilting up. All I could manage was a slow whisper, but I think it served.

I kept one hand on his arm and smoothed the hair back from his brow with the other. I sang. His eyes opened, and I should've withdrawn my hands. Really, I should've scuttled under the couch and hidden for

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shame. But I kept singing. And I kept one hand on his arm and the other on his forehead. And I stroked his hair back.

He watched me while I sang. He looked at my eyes. My heart felt so big, it hurt against my ribs. At last I felt some shame and started to pull away, but he put his hand over mine on his chest to hold me there longer. He knew I was just the mucker girl, the scrubber, and still he wanted to keep me close. I don't think I breathed for a long, long while.

I remembered in the tower before he came to visit, wondering if he'd been formed by Evela, goddess of sunlight. I think it might be true after all, because I began to squint wretchedly and couldn't look at his face.

When he slept again, I left him with the healers. I think I'll curl up in my horsehair blanket until the shivering in my limbs stops.

Day 155

This morning when I entered her khan's chamber, he was sitting up, his face not so pale. The icy fear that had lodged in my belly this last week at last began to melt. He was speaking with one of his chiefs, his face

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troubled, but when he saw me, he broke out in a grin so wide I have to believe it came right from his soul. Then he held his arms out before him, palms down, inviting me to clasp forearms as though we were of a clan, meeting again after a long absence.

"A warm greeting, Dashti," he spoke in the formal manner, though the cheerfulness in his smile made me think he wanted to laugh.

"A warm greeting, my lord," I replied, kneeling beside his bed and grasping his forearms with my palms up.

Then he did what I didn't expect from gentry to commoner --as we gripped arms, he pulled me closer, resting his cheek against mine, and inhaled through his nose, taking in the breath of my soul. I was too terrified to breathe. I hope he didn't notice that I didn't sniff as well, because refusing would mean insult, but I couldn't help but think,

Did he keep my shirt from the tower? Does he remember the scent?

When he released me, he said, "So, just come from milking the sheep, have you?" which made me snort in laughter. It's a common mucker tease after a cheek greeting and means, of course, that I smell like a ewe, which I know I don't because I've been indoors for two weeks and bathed two days ago. His sly half smile made me think he'd actually sought out

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some other mucker and asked for something right silly to say to me.

So I answered, "I have, in fact. They send greeting to their brother Tegus."

Day 156

This morning, Tegus welcomed me again with an arm clasp and cheek touch. I wasn't startled this time, and I breathed in at his neck. How can I describe the scent of his skin? He smells something like cinnamon--brown and dry and sweet and warm. Ancestors, is it wrong for me to know that? To write it? Is it wrong for me to imagine laying my head on his chest and closing my eyes and breathing in his smell?

Yes, it is wrong. I won't think it again.

He told me he likes me close by, says my singing eases the pain. Even though I don't always sing. Mostly we talk. Often we laugh, at least until his arrow wound pierces him and the shaman healers shoo me away. But I always return before long, and they always let me back in. And I sing and we laugh.

I haven't touched him again, as I did when he

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first woke from the fever sleep. I wonder if he remembers or if he thinks it was a dream.

[Image of a Man Lying On a Bed)

Day 157

I've seen Lady Vachir at last, and she dresses in all the splendor I would imagine for a lady of a realm. Indigo powder colors her eyelids, sandlewood perfume wafts from her skin, and when she moves, the dangling pearls in her hair click against her tortoise-shell combs. One would imagine such finery could

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make a lady happy. Not so. I find it easier to imagine a snake smiling than our Lady Vachir. Her mouth is stern, her eyes are sad, her hands lie in her lap like frozen things. For the past two days, she's been attending Tegus in his resting chamber. They brought in a second couch for her and her three lady's maids, and they sit with their backs straight, look at us, and whisper. Khan Tegus and I don't laugh much anymore.

When he's awake, I rest my hands on his belly wound and sing to his bones and skin, his muscles and blood. When he sleeps, I sit in the corner and do scribe work. To tell the truth, the scribbling has become about as much fun as picking lice out of a goat's hair. While I write, I can feel Lady Vachir's gaze prickling me. I don't like it much.

Today when the khan was asleep, Lady Vachir said, "My back pains me. What is that girl's name, the commoner there?"

Batu the war chief was present, and he answered, "Dashti, my lady."

"I want her to use her healing songs on me. Tell her to come to my chamber."

She and her ladies rose and left, and I supposed she meant me to follow, so I did. Halfway there, she claimed that her own chamber was being cleaned and I should take her to mine. So I led her to my

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little room and lay her on my horsehair blanket. Her three lady's maids stood around me like so many vultures waiting for something meaty to die. I placed my hands on the lady's back and sang the tune with the lilting high parts that says, "Tell me again, how does it go?"

When I finished, she stood and said, "I don't know why they let you hang about. Your song didn't make a drop of difference."

Well, that put some fire in my lungs, sure enough, so I said, "A song can only work if the hearer wills it. Do you perhaps enjoy the back pain? Or maybe your back didn't pain you to begin with?"

She slapped my mouth. What is it about gentry that they're always slapping people? It made me giggle, which made her glare. What's come over me to speak casually and laugh at an honored lady? As she swept out of the room, I noticed her gaze fall on this book, lying in the corner.

From now on, I'll keep it with me. Lady Vachir is the last person in the Eight Realms I'd want to see these words.

I like that woman about as much as I like skin rot in the summer. Maybe she rankles me so because she's standing between my lady and her beloved. Or maybe the woman is just plain unpleasant. I shouldn't be so

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hard, but there it is. I look at Lady Vachir and I see someone who loves nothing much, who's seen a great deal of death in a short amount of time, and rather than feel sorrow, has decided to turn into stone.

[Image of Woman in a Kimono]

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Day 159

These past days in my lord's chamber, all the talk is on Khasar. I try to ignore it and focus on what I'm copying on parchment, because there's nothing more frustrating than hearing of a problem you can't do anything to fix. But I can't help hearing some, and my mind keeps working over the trouble, like chewing on tough meat till my jaw's sore.

I don't like Khasar. I guess I've never been so terrified in my life as the time he flicked burning wood chips into our tower. His voice, even in memory, makes my bones shiver. The sounds of the healing songs remind the body of how it should be, but the sound of his voice had the opposite effect on me. Whatever he uttered, his laugh, his snarl, his words, seemed a song of ill. Just the memory of that sound greases my dreams some nights like fatty pot scrapings smeared on my hands.

The news today was that Khasar's warriors have rested and regrouped from their assault on Lady Vachir s land and are on the march again.

"He'd been laying siege on Beloved of Ris, my lord," said Batu, the war chief, who was healed and

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standing, strong as a yak after a good summer. "We thought he'd continue his siege through the winter, but he's moving again. Coming this way."

Khan Tegus winced as he sat upright. "I'd hoped to lead our army against him before the bitter cold comes, drive him away from Beloved of Ris. We can't risk the defeat of that realm and the warriors Khasar would add to his own."

"Is he marching to attack Song for Evela?" asked the chief of night, an old man whose fading brown eyes always seemed kindly to me. "Or is he returning to Thoughts of Under for winter?"

"There is no more Thoughts of Under," said Batu. "He's changed the name of his realm to Carthen's Glory."