Steles of the Sky (8 page)

They made a catalogue, or Hsiung did: the Eremite symbols, and a very approximate—and intentionally flawed—transliteration in the syllabary of Song. Hsiung rendered those in bound and layered characters of spell-sigils, to render them a little more opaque. This was a precaution against anyone accidentally reading them aloud in a close enough approximation of the tongue of Erem to wither their own tongue, or deafen any bystanders.

Temur wondered what protections the Nameless cult of the Rahazeen had in place, that they could bear to hear these words read aloud. And why those protections were not sufficient to save the reader from the creeping blindness that was the price of Erem’s knowledge. But they did claim philosophical and possibly blood descent from Sepehr the Sorcerer-Prince himself—conqueror of the entire known world and himself perhaps the greatest scholar and practitioner of the poison magics of ancient Erem since its fall.

“If you want to know how to handle quicksilver safely,” as Samarkar had said when Temur raised his questions to her, “or as safely as possible, anyway—ask a feltmaker.”

“Feltmakers are known to go mad,” Temur rebutted.

Beyond the fire, Tolui had looked up from braiding a horsehair bridle and said, “The traditional means of avoiding the consequences of a curse, Temur Khagan, is to pass the evil on to another.”

Temur had not even realized he was listening.

There was a silence. Then, “Of course,” Samarkar said.

It was some days’ study before Samarkar and Hsiung felt ready to try to activate a gate. The doorways were marked by large inscriptions either on their uprights or lintels, or on stones or walls nearby. They had found a repeated symbol carved near this particular one, one Hsiung had seen before and which he believed associated with the Steles of the Sky, according to Samarkar’s reports. Temur and Samarkar had argued about whether she would do this thing—take this risk, meddle with these cursed magics—and Samarkar had won.

“Is it more dangerous than crossing the steppe with al-Sepehr and his birds seeking us?”

“The danger is more certain,” Temur had said.

But Samarkar had put a hand on her barren belly, the price of her power, and Temur had subsided.

“Do as you will.”

She’d kissed him on the cheek and gone to find Hsiung.

Now all of them gathered before a pair of pillars that stood alone in the forest as if they were merely another pair of trees sawn off even and joined with a lintel across the top. The fluting and the footings gave that the lie, but nevertheless Temur found himself indulging in the fantasy that they had just grown there.

They had all gathered for the opening, even the shaman-rememberer. Each one was armed in his or her own way for whatever might follow.

Temur wore his padded armor coat with the splints and leather sewn into it, and sat on Bansh’s back with his long knife sheathed at his knee and his bow strung in his hand. Samarkar wore the black wizard’s battle armor that Temur’s grandfather, Ato Tesefahun, had given her. Hsiung wore only his robes, much-mended sandals on his broad, soft-looking feet. Tolui held his shallow tasseled drum by the crosspiece at the back, wearing a coat the color of the Eternal Sky hung with strings of mirrors and sky-blue knots. And Hrahima looked as Hrahima always looked, naked except for the harness that held her rope, her wallet, and her knives.

Samarkar’s armor rustled as she squared her shoulders. Temur’s mood must have transferred itself to Bansh, as the bay mare tossed her head against the iron nosepiece of her bridle and thumped the earth with her white fore hoof once—twice—stiff-legged. She glanced around for her foal; Afrit stood unhappily beside Hsiung, tugging at the rope that held his halter. Hrahima’s ears twitched forward, focused with predator intensity on the space between the pillars, which for now showed only the forest beyond.

Hsiung patted the wizard on the small of the back, and Samarkar started forward.

She raised one arm toward the doorway and showed it her palm, naked within the half-gauntlets that protected the backs of her hands. She stepped forward, bowed before the empty space, and when she straightened made a gesture as if depressing the handle of an Uthman-style latching door.

A cool black shimmer swept across the doorway, as if someone had let fall a gauzy curtain sewn with sparkles. It moved faintly, as if a breeze stirred the curtain. Temur heard the sound of wind from beyond and only then realized how silent the empty, daylit jungle really was. He’d grown accustomed to its absences so fast.

The wind from beyond the door was icy and wet and bore the scent of snow. “Careful passing through—”

Samarkar shook her head. She hunched forward, the hand that had been extended resting on a framing pillar, her head hanging. Even the warm light of the Qersnyk sun could not quite wash the reflected green shining from Hsiung’s eyes from the curves of her armor.

“Helmet,” she managed.

Hsiung handed off Afrit’s lead rope to Hrahima and knelt beside her, supporting her, levering the thing off before Temur had quite realized he needed to dismount—and so Temur stayed frozen in the saddle, Bansh increasingly restive as his hands squeezed hard on the reins. Hsiung dropped the helm and got an arm across Samarkar’s breastplate as she leaned forward in his arms, vomiting hard. A thin sour-smelling stream of liquid was all that resulted, though she retched again and again.

The barrel-bodied, thick-armed monk bore her up easily, armor and all—which was good, because she leaned on him with some force. When she finally got a breath, she half-straightened, then pressed her hand to her stomach again. “Owwww.”

“Samarkar—”

She wiped her mouth on her palm. “You go through, Temur,” she said. “We should see what we’re at risk of, anyway. And I”—she gagged, swallowed, retched again—“am very glad indeed that I did not eat much breakfast. I’d hate to … waste food.”

He wanted to stay, to dismount, to put his arms around her. But he heard the jangle of Tolui shifting his weight, and felt Samarkar’s gaze upon him like a hand.

Hrahima flexed one set of claws and examined them. “Do you suppose al-Sepehr’s eyes glow green when
we
do magic?”

“If so,” Temur said, “I hope it keeps
him
up at night as well.”

He shouldered his bow, stroked a hand down his mare’s shining neck, and sent her forward through the veil.

6

There was a covered wagon set aside for Yangchen and Tsechen to sleep in, with their ladies beneath. It was guarded night and day because it also held what remained of the royal wardrobes and crown jewels. Largely, Yangchen and Tsechen went about their business there in mutually agreed-upon silence, and slept against opposite sides.

In the swallowing dark within the heavy carpet-hung walls, Yangchen lay alone and warm and listened to her sister-wife’s breathing. It seemed steady—but perhaps
too
steady, as one who seeks to train herself to sleep through concentration. Yangchen wanted to rise and open the swaddling hangings, let some air and firelight in. Not too long ago, she would have merely done it—would have ordered it done, rather. But now—

“Honored sister-wife,” she said—not a whisper, but a low tone that would not carry.

Tsechen was not sleeping. “Elder sister?” she replied. Though she was several years Yangchen’s senior, what mattered was that Yangchen was the emperor’s mother, and Tsechen was merely a relict of the old emperor.

Yangchen meant to ask about the carpets. But what came out of her mouth, unbidden, was the question—“Do you suppose we should let the wizards who are doing the warding sleep in here during the day?”

Tsechen had always been the plainest and most practical of the emperor’s women, court dress and protocol a bit of a struggle for her. Yangchen had always felt envy at how impervious Tsechen had seemed to any desire for her husbands’ attentions, allowing Yangchen and Payma to cultivate Songtsan and Tsansong, respectively, without interference or politics. She had always seemed complete in herself, impervious, stern as stone.

Tsechen’s long silence told Yangchen that whatever she had been anticipating, this request was not it. When she broke it, her tone was hesitant in a manner that Yangchen was not sure she’d ever heard. “I think that would be very gracious,” she said, then amended, “very kind.”

“They are needful,” Yangchen answered, with a wave of her hand no one could see in the dark.

Tsechen’s chuckle told her she wasn’t fooling anyone. Then—“You are doing well,” Tsechen said, as if it pained her. “You are doing better than I would have thought.”

Yangchen felt a flare of anger—
how dare she!
—and knew it for a demon emotion even before it faded. She needed Tsechen—for her safety, for her son’s. For the future of these adopted Rasan people. “I am lucky in my advisors.”

Tsechen’s soft huff of muffled half laughter said she agreed.

“I want you to be one of them.”

“Elder sister—”

“Please.”

Silence, long and dark. Yangchen began to fear that Tsechen had drifted off to sleep after all. She laid her head back on silken pillows scented with the jungle green smell of ylang ylang and closed her eyes. She’d try the same trick Tsechen had been utilizing, and get to sleep one way or another.

But she was not even drifting when Tsechen spoke again, reluctantly. “We ought to wear mourning.”

Yangchen heard her shifting against the pillows. Tsechen had worn mourning for Tsansong, when Yangchen had not. And it was Yangchen who knew he was not a traitor, that she had planted the evidence that made it seem he had poisoned his mother.

If there were any justice in this world, his ghost will haunt me from life into death, and after.

She was far more inclined to wear mourning for the emperor’s younger brother, she realized, than for the emperor. But as the situation in the refugee train grew more normal, people would begin to expect at least a public show of grief.

She wondered if Tsechen could hear her hair on the pillow as she nodded. “Yes. I suppose we ought. Do you think you can find us some white rags?”

*   *   *

In Erem of the Pillars, under a night so thickly sown with stars and moons that the land beneath it had never known darkness, the Queen of Broken Places, the Lady of Ruins, stood and nursed her newborn son and argued with two ghulim and a djinn. One of the ghulim was named Besha, and it had been the queen’s guide almost since she put on the Green Ring of Erem and became the queen. The other ghul was called Ka-asha, and it was a sort of … spiritual leader of the ghulim. It had attended Edene’s childbed.

The djinn’s name, the queen did not know, although she was certain her enemy did.

The ghulim were dog-faced, soft-eyed, vulturous in their cowled robes of sapphire, spinel, jade, amethyst. The nails on their hard-palmed hands were long, and they clicked them like castanets for emphasis when they were agitated. They were agitated now.

The djinn wore the form of a man, not too tall of stature, clever-eyed and sharp-featured. His skin was the cerulean of heaven, his hair the indigo of night. His eyes were blue as static sparks, as the hottest part of a flame, and Edene found them hard to gaze into. She made herself do it anyway. She was a queen. And the weight of the ring burdening her finger—the Green Ring of Erem, a band of gold with a viridian cast—gave her the courage to press that claim.

It also told her that someone, somewhere, had just stolen away a part of her realm, and this was the root of her argument with the ghulim—and the djinn.

Edene cradled her babe at her breast, the split skin across her shoulders pulling and aching whether she hunched forward or tried to stand straight. With her free hand, she touched the boy’s black hair, tracing the whorl around the soft part of his head. She thought she could already see the traces of Temur in him—his complexion, darker than hers. The height of his cheekbones.
I do not care if you are as handsome as your father,
she thought,
as long as you are as kind.

“I will go to … to
Reason,
” she said. “I will see for myself what has happened to change the sky. Perhaps I will take it back.”

“Send your ghulim,” Ka-asha argued. It had wider-set eyes than Besha Ghul, longer ears. The fur on its face was less like shorn silk velvet and more like the rippled waves of the curly-coated ponies of Kyiv. “Do not go yourself, my queen. Stay safe here in Erem.”

“Safe?” Edene reached over her shoulder with her free hand, touching the robe over the bandages. Her son made a noise of protest as he struggled to keep the nipple. “When the glass demons come as they will? And moreover, I should send you, my people, into danger I would not face myself?”

Ka-asha looked at Besha for support. Besha’s shrug could not have been more eloquent of futility if it were shrugged by a Messaline smoke merchant.

The djinn said, “What of Rakasa, my queen?”

Destroy that creature.

When Edene’s fist clenched, the ring bit into her flesh.
Show me how,
she answered.
And promise me that there is no way to use him against al-Sepehr.

Of course, the ring could not make that promise. The djinn did not serve al-Sepehr willingly. He was bound, somehow—because it was al-Sepehr’s way never to ask what he could coerce, never to trust where he could enslave.

She could use the ring to force the ghulim to do her bidding. She did not have to stand here and argue with them. She chose to debate, to prove—among other things—that she was not al-Sepehr. That she was a different sort of queen, even if all she was queen of was the dead cities, the broken places, the lost world of Erem. How much of this anger was the ring’s, at being thwarted? How much of it was her own: a mother’s righteous fury on behalf of her child?

Her son had a name, but she would not think of him by it—even the portion of it that was all she knew because the djinn had not told her its entirety. She would not acknowledge it. It had not been her choosing, and she had not bestowed it. Rather, the djinn had, at the command of her enemy and Temur’s enemy, al-Sepehr.