Range of Ghosts (29 page)

Eventually, Samarkar finished her story. Everyone—even the Cho-tse—breathed more easily.
Wizard,
Temur thought, with a fondness it would have been foolish to express openly. They were allies of convenience, he knew, and she of as royal and devious a line as he. They could never truly be friends when their houses were at war.

Could they?

After the story, they walked in calm quiet for a little while longer, until the tunnel began to slope up. Payma said, quietly, so Temur knew it had been gnawing at her for a good while, “Where will I go from here?”

“To the Citadel, first,” Samarkar said. She must have been thinking on the same lines, because the answer came naturally. “But we will not be able to linger there. Yongten-la will not allow even the
bstangpo
to drag a wizard from the Citadel, but if we are so unfortunate as to be trapped there … we will never leave.”

Temur bit his lip. This was where he should speak. The secret of his birth weighed on him suddenly, when before, keeping it to himself had only been a matter of modeling the life he intended to adopt. He had never felt Qulan’s passion to become Khagan, or even Khan.

“I will return to the west,” Hrahima said, and Temur’s courage failed him. “You may accompany me. Whether your monkey-king will fight or no, I assure you, there are those who will not turn away able assistance in the coming war.”

“Into exile,” Samarkar said bitterly. Her voice held so much experience that Temur understood instantly that this would not be her first such journey. “Well, better that than burning.”

“Don’t say it,” Payma begged. Temur felt a spike of pity for her, and by extension for every woman murdered in games of power where she was awarded no control. But perhaps that wasn’t fair to the women: His mother might have been traded away as a spoil of war, but she had risen high in his father’s councils and consideration, and certainly the Great Khagan had never scrupled to ask
his
mother’s advice.

And Nilufer, as Samarkar had so aptly reminded him—she had taken on bandits, rebels, and her
own
mother to make a safe haven for herself. No, women were as capable—and as dangerous—as any man. Sometimes more so.

And a good thing, too, since you are stuck in the dark with three of them.
If Hrahima could be reckoned as a woman, in this accounting.

He stopped, so abruptly that Payma almost walked up his heels. He turned to face them—Samarkar stooped, Payma leaning on her for support anyway, Hrahima crouched behind.

“Temur?” Samarkar asked.

He said, with as much conviction as he could muster, “Nilufer—the woman you just told the story about—her name is Nilufer. Her estate is called Stone Steading. She is still alive, or if she has died, she died recently.”

Samarkar watched him patiently. “I see.”

“She’s my relative. She married my uncle, Toghrul Khanzadeh. My father was Otgonbayar Khanzadeh, son of the Great Khagan.”

Payma’s hands tightened on Samarkar’s arm, rumpling the fabric of the wizard’s coat, which took on an emerald gleam under the light that surrounded her. “You’re the Great Khagan’s grandson?”

“One of.” Temur snorted. “There were hundreds. Qori Buqa has been killing his way through every one of us that he can find. But I am the one he should not have hammered on the anvil until I was forged into an enemy.”

He took a breath. The words that were coming out of him had the ring of portent, the air of a gathering storm. But he had not rehearsed them, and he did not know from what reservoir within him they sprang. “I am Re Temur. I will help you fight your Rahazeen warlord, Hrahima. And I will take back from him in turn what he first took from me. And then I will come back and see Qori Buqa put out of the place that was rightfully my brother’s.”

Something poured out from him as he spoke. He saw Samarkar’s light react to it. It sped from him like the shadow of a ripple on the sandy bottom of a river’s ebb. He saw the movement of Samarkar’s collar as she swallowed; he saw Hrahima’s whiskers come forward and her tired ears perk up. He saw Payma’s left hand fall to her side and squeeze her robes against her thigh.

“That’s what I’m going to do,” Temur said lamely, aware that something of significance had happened and yet unable to express it. “I will take you all with me, if you want.”

“That was a blood-vow,” Samarkar said, in the curious tones that Temur had already learned to associate with a wizard confronted with some new mystery. “There’s never been one observed from the beginning. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

*   *   *

Shahruz and his mercenaries had been looting the remains of a small caravan along the Celadon Highway, making it look like the work of bandits, when his sister’s summons to the presence of al-Sepehr came. He had greeted the command to move on to Tsarepheth with more pleasure than he would show his leader. “Re Temur—capture him alive if you can,” al-Sepehr said. “If not, make a martyr of him. We have his unborn child; that will serve as enough of a rallying banner to his brother’s faction. I shall send you a journeyman to assist. Brother Aban. He will come with the wind and meet you on the road. You need not wait for him: I will send Saadet with the rukh, so it may easily find you.”

“Thank you.” Shahruz studied his leader’s face through his sister’s eyes. Al-Sepehr had allowed his veil to drape low, revealing his face, and Shahruz could see too clearly the purple shadows that smudged the sockets of his eyes, the gaunt hollows below the bones of his cheeks. Al-Sepehr was worn thin, and Shahruz was not surprised that he had not risen from his divan to greet Saadet.

Saadet’s worry was there, too, a gnawing presence in the pit of Shahruz’s stomach. He knew from Saadet’s memories that since he brought down the heathen ghosts upon Qeshqer, al-Sepehr had been keeping to his private chambers as much as possible, appearing in public only to make his prayers and retreating again as soon as the ink was dry upon the page. The magic took a heavy toll, and al-Sepehr would allow very few of his followers to realize that.

A rush of warmth and affection filled Shahruz and Saadet, to be so included in their leader’s private world. It came coupled with gratitude: Shahruz understood that the Nameless were a small group, without force of arms, and that they must fight—for now—by convincing their enemies to make war on each other.

But hunting a fugitive prince was far more satisfying than robbing and slaughtering caravanners. Shahruz understood that the deaths were necessary, in order to discourage trade and set the petty princes of the Celadon Highway even more at each others’ throats in the absence of a strong Khagan to enforce the peace. But he loathed the spilling of innocent blood: These men were neither warriors nor warlords who had chosen a life and a death by the sword. They were simply men who must trade to eat.

Much better was to chase down some Qersnyk princeling. Shahruz rode hard and made sure his rented men rode hard behind him.

13

Temur and the women came out of the earth after nightfall, close to moonrise. The gate was unobserved, and Samarkar let her wards drop before they walked from the shelter of the corridor. Temur missed the light, with its implication of watchful protection; it seemed to him like a shaman’s talismans. But he had to admit the prudence of moving in darkness, with adapted vision, rather than setting a beacon for anyone to find them by.

The passage led them out high on the slope of the Island-in-the-Mist, above the Citadel, under the light of a scatter of early stars. Temur watched the single moon of Rasa rise as they descended the mountain’s rocky flank, still unsettled by its waning crescent shape—like a bow, like a horn. He’d seen it fade and return since he came to these alien lands, but he was not sure he would ever become used to it.

The moons, in his heart, should always be those of his Eternal Sky, like a scatter of coins across a merchant’s cloth, not like a fingernail paring.

Hrahima, who saw more clearly in the dark than in the day, led the way. Her stripes made her part of the moon shadows, but she moved slowly so the night-blind man and women could follow. As they came down to the Citadel, Temur saw the guards at the base of every stair. Not Citadel guards, but Songtsan’s soldiers, fully armored, standing at careful arms-span from the stones of the Citadel. Samarkar had been right; her brother was not quite ready to personally challenge the authority of the wizards, even given his recent elevation in rank.

But he could try to prevent his fugitive wife and sister—and their entourage—from gaining the safety of the Citadel. Hrahima had halted, crouched low among boulders and stunted trees; Temur came up beside her on his belly, crawling as if on a horse raid.

“It would be easy to kill three or four,” Hrahima said. Her hands flexed against the stony earth, pale claws drawing parallel lines.

“Easy,” Samarkar said from her other side. “But they are only men doing their lawful lord’s bidding. They and their fathers have served my family for generations. I will not have their blood spent cheaply—or, if I can prevent it, at all.”

“
Hruh,
” the Cho-tse said. She glanced back over her shoulder, to where Princess Payma still huddled in the shadow of a boulder, her apricot gown gleaming in the moonlight like the wings of a white owl.

Temur could read Hrahima’s thoughts quite clearly. To Samarkar, he said, “Do you have a spell to get us past them, then?”

“I could wrap us in darkness,” she said. “But that would fail when we came within their lights.”

Hrahima’s eyes seemed to gather that light and reflect it. When she closed them, Temur imagined the night grew a little dimmer—or perhaps it was not his imagination at all. She rubbed a hand down her face in a gesture he would have called tired resignation had a man performed it, and muttered something in Cho-tse.

“What was that?” Samarkar asked.

“I should not be tempted,” the Cho-tse answered. “To be tempted, and to justify that temptation, is the path to evil. You wait here; you will know the time to move.”

“Hrahima—”

But even as Temur reached out for her, she charged. Her thick pelt brushed his fingertips. He had just time enough to marvel at the texture before she was gone, bounding down the slope, her voice a guttural snarl that rose to a terrible wail. She sprang down the mountain in two great leaps, hurtled in among the nearest group of guards, and slashed about herself. From this height, looking from darkness into light, he could see how far her claws were from ever touching skin, but he imagined if you were faced with her, it would feel like blind luck only that she had not torn your throat out. And then she was away, bounding toward the next group of guards at the foot of the next stair, and the ones she had first confronted charged in pursuit.

Temur scrambled back up the slope as Samarkar rose to her feet. He found Payma in the darkness of the standing stone and grasped her arm, reminded by her shocked intake of breath that he was manhandling a princess. Well, it seemed his head was already forfeit for rescuing one; what was one more affront against her regal dignity?

He could not carry her in his arms, not and run in the moonlight. Nor could she run herself, in the thin slippers and on tender feet already worn bloody by the night’s walking. Instead he pulled her up onto his back. She got the idea quickly enough, clutching his shoulders rather than across his throat, her legs locked tight around his waist. Samarkar certainly knew how to handle a horse; now, judging by the strength of Payma-tsa’s thighs, Temur guessed all Rasan princesses rode.

Even pregnant, she was no great burden for his strength. He slithered down the slope half-sideways, Samarkar beside him and to the right, steadying him with a hand on his arm. He hopped from stone to stone, feeling the shock of each jump in ankles and hips, a scatter of small stones building to a minor landslide before him.

Samarkar and he—still bearing Payma—cascaded to the level place where the stair had landed. He swung Payma to the ground so she could run. Samarkar caught her other hand, and together they plunged for the narrow white steps. Payma whimpered between her teeth with each jarring step. She did not slow them.

A shout told Temur that one of the imperial guards had seen them, no matter how involved those guards might be in trying to pin Hrahima against the wall. The Cho-tse, he saw at a hurried glance, was still evading them with ease, leaping in and out of the skirmish like a cat playing tag with her kittens. She sprang ahead to cut off the ones who broke away to pursue Temur, Samarkar, and Payma. Temur heard one scream in undignified terror as she reared up and showed her claws, arms spread wide.

“Come on,” he urged Payma, who ran grimly as he and Samarkar dragged her along, trying to take as much of her weight as they could. Each stride of her feet left wet darkness on the stones, but she made no complaint.

Now all the guards were coming. The thing in Temur’s chest—the battle rage, the instinct that told him that flight was useless, that the only option was to stand and hew until he was in turn hewn down—flared bright. He clamped his jaw, tooth gritting on tooth, and forced himself to pick his feet up, to fall forward. To
run.

The rattle of the Rasan soldiers’ armor echoed off the great curved wall of the Citadel. They streamed around Hrahima wherever she leaped to try and slow them. Temur could feel the ground shake under their running feet: There must have been fifteen or twenty now, drawn from every neighboring stair.

Samarkar pushed Payma forward, and the momentum pulled him an extra step. The stair was there, less than an
ayl
ahead. He slung Payma in front of him and pushed her bodily up the steps—two, then four—while the stark jade light of Samarkar’s wards washed their shadows black and bottomless on white stone. Her voice boomed, rattling dust from the crevices between blocks of stone: “You will not lay hands on me!”

Above, Temur saw wizards gathering, a stream of black coats lining the battlements, trickling down the stairs, rushing to meet them. He could not leave Samarkar undefended at his back. He gave Payma one more push toward the wizards and turned around, his knife in his hand, not sure what he would do, afoot, against a score of armed and armored men.