Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1)

by Andre Norton

  Then Strong Tongue tramped out of the tent, discreetly trailed by Willow. Silver Snow’s brief moment of satisfaction faded. Instinctively she glanced around. No, Vughturoi rode out to inspect the horse herds and count the foals: that was a shame. Still, he might return tonight, and if not tonight, then tomorrow: he was a free man and could come and go as he chose. Yet, Silver Snow could find some ease in knowing that, only that dawn, Tadiqan too had ridden out with a troop of his followers, declaring his intention once again to overawe the Fu Yu.

  The melancholy song of the flute faded, to be replaced by the far-less-sonorous reproof of the musician’s mother, angry at the child’s idleness. Silver Snow finished her song. Khujanga’s gap-toothed grin and laughter encouraged her to begin another, this time a merry drinking song that she had heard in Ch’ang-an. She ignored Strong Tongue’s sigh of aggravation and the too-obvious tap-tap-tap of her booted foot.

  Even as Silver Snow sang, however, that tapping occupied more and more of her consciousness. She dared not glance over to see whether or not Strong Tongue had brought out her spirit drum with its hateful skin cover, but surely that tapping bore some of the same insistent cadence of the drum, set to pulse in rhythm with a beating heart.

  Hoofbeats broke her fascination with the sound and ended her song. She glanced at Khujanga, the shan-yu, who would surely know what horsemen might be expected to return to camp this night. He tensed, clearly mustering strength to rise and seize a spear. Then he grimaced.

  “Who would ride the grasslands alone?” muttered the shan-yu.

  Now that Silver Snow turned all her concentration to the task, she found much in the sound of those hoofbeats to disquiet her. As the shan-yu’s more experienced ears had told him, only one man rode toward the camp; the rhythm of the hoofbeats indicated that his mount was in some distress, a severe failing, given the care that the Hsiung-nu took of their favorite horses.

  “Brother!” Keen-eyed from a lifetime gazing into the distance, Sable broke the silence that she had maintained and raced forward, her braids and leather garments flapping. Willow lurched to her feet, took a halting step forward, then stopped. Never before had Silver Snow seen such misery, such hatred of her lameness on the girl’s face.

  Sable reached the foundering horse just as several of the old warriors did. Seizing its bridle, she tugged it toward the tent and the shan-yu, who now stood, grasping a spear. Silver Snow’s own hand strayed from her lute to her knife. She too turned to watch and gasped as she got her first good look at Basich.

  The once-robust warrior was much changed. Clawmarks scored one side of his face, drawing it into scars, and he had one arm strapped against his chest. Silver Snow swallowed against sickness as she noted that the crippled arm ended in a tangle of stained bandages that looked too small to be a full hand.

  As Basich spotted her, he jerked his arm free of its strappings as if to hail her. That gesture drained him, and he sagged in the saddle, to tumble off into his sister’s sturdy, waiting arms. Silver Snow leapt forward, followed by Willow. Sable sobbed once, then swallowed her tears.

  “Who did this?” she demanded of her half-conscious brother, shaking him before Willow could catch her hands and restrain her. “Who?”

  Willow crushed herbs beneath Basich’s nose, and he gasped and choked. “White tiger . . . ” he whispered. “I fled . . . wandered until I found . . . ” He gasped, a sound that ended with an ominous rattle.

  Will he live, do you think? Silver Snow looked at Willow, trusting the maid to understand her thought and hoping that she might reassure her. Willow shrugged almost imperceptibly and bent to unwrap the bandages that confined Basich’s hand. If the man had lived this long after the white tiger’s onslaught, the wounds must not have festered, notoriously foul though the bites of great cats were. But he was still weak, especially for one of the Hsiung-nu, whose endurance was legendary. If Basich could rest, if a fever did not strike him, and his will to live held, then he might indeed survive.

  “Ask who did this to him,” she whispered urgently to Willow. The maid headed back toward Basich, her limp making her long, dark shadow dance almost threateningly across the land. Seeing it, several of the Hsiung-nu stepped back, and Strong Tongue’s drum throbbed out, a brief rumbling of thunder before the storm strikes.

  “They . . . cast me out,” he rasped.

  “They tortured him,” Willow mouthed at Silver Snow, then bent over the warrior who lay against his sister’s shoulder. “Who cast you out?”

  “The Fu Yu,” he moaned, then fell silent, his head lolling to one side. Sable let out the wail that she had suppressed throughout all of the weeks that she did not know whether her brother lived or died.

  “He is not dead,” Willow told her. “Not yet, and perhaps not for many years.”

  And he may have saved all of our lives, Silver Snow thought. She watched as Willow and Sable attempted to make Basich more comfortable. When they tried to lift him, to move him toward Sable’s tents, however, he resisted, content for the moment to stare out at the camp and the familiar faces, sights that he obviously had abandoned all hope of ever seeing again. So, the Fu Yu had succored him, then cast him out. And the Fu Yu were the tribe about which Tadiqan had expressed such concern. She stood toying with the seals of the letter tube until her husband’s voice made her jump up in guilty surprise.

  “It is not a call to war,” complained the shan-yu. “Let us call for a feast. Basich, whom we mourned as dead, has come back to us, and my elder son will avenge upon the miserable Fu Yu every injury that he has received. Perhaps I shall demand the skull of their leader and make it into a goblet, as I did with the skull of that Yueh-chih traitor. It is not every day that one of my children returns from the other world. Let us drink to him!” He drank—out of that terrible skull cup, Silver Snow noted with distaste. Then he ended his speech in a spasm of coughing, and Silver Snow darted forward to support him.

  “This is not yet my funeral feast,” Khujanga grumbled at her as she urged him back toward the comfortable rugs and curtains. Yet satisfaction at Silver Snow’s pretty show of concern underlay his grumbles, and he seemed pleased to lean more heavily upon his young wife than he did upon his long spear. The skull cup lay untended outside until Strong Tongue sent a child to take charge of it.

  Shadows like the strokes of a master calligrapher’s brush fell across the grasslands, tingeing their green with evening by the time that Willow pronounced herself satisfied with Basich’s condition and Silver Snow could persuade Khujanga to take a little more of the dwindling supply of restoratives that she had brought with her from Ch’ang-an. They were doubly precious now: who could tell whether a letter requesting more of the elixirs or the herbs from which Willow might possibly be able to compound them would ever reach its destination, or whether she could believe that a reply to such an appeal, would fall into her hands, rather than the jaws of the white tiger?

  There would be time, Silver Snow hoped, to concern herself with her future fortunes: for now, for this moment, those whom she guarded and who guarded her were safe; she herself was safe; and Strong Tongue, her son sent away at the shan-yu’s orders, was held at bay. She sat glowering, tending the glowing fire whose sanctity, she clearly appeared to feel, would be polluted if Silver Snow or Willow dared even to approach it. Or was it simply the envy of a woman supplanted by a younger wife, whom she was now determined to outcook and excel in all other ways?

  Silver Snow shook her head and pursed her lips; though, when Khujanga pressed her to speak her sad thoughts, she smiled and turned the subject. Had she the strength, she knew, she should call for music and sing. A melancholy as terrible in its way as the dreams that she had had possessed her. Today she was safe; this hour she might sing for a lord who was as benevolent to her as she dared expect: but what of tomorrow? She dared not even confide her fears either to her lord, whom they might agitate fatally, or to his younger son, who might consider them disloyal or a sign of weakness. Even to admit them might make her vul
nerable to worse assaults than she already had endured.

  Though the light outside the shan-yu’s tent was fading toward nightfall, the heat of the day had not yet subsided. Only the day before, Khujanga had spoken of breaking camp and riding toward the highest summer pastures in the foothills of the Heavenly Mountains where the streams, fed as they were by the ice of the highest peaks, never failed, even in the hottest weather.

  The constant arrival of more and more Hsiung-nu—who reined their horses sharply in, then leapt down—cast up clouds of dust that danced in the light of the fire and the sunset at the far-off western horizon. What lay there? she wondered. Not even the Hsiung-nu, great travelers that they were, could say for certain.

  She coughed, restrained an urge to tear at the high-throated closing of her silken gown and jacket, and forced her hands to rest in her lap. Surely the dust would cast Khujanga into spasms of coughing? But no, after a life spent on the grasslands., the shan-yu was inured; he only wheezed slightly, his slits of eyes closed, his head falling forward onto his chest in what looked like the easy slumbers of an old man.

  Old men dozed in the warmth, she thought, while it fell to others, as well it should, to labor to tend them. Who tended her father now? she wondered. Lands, wealth, and honor he had once again; but no obedient daughter to kneel near to hand, to provide him with every comfort including the strong support of a son-in-law and the joy of sturdy grandsons to honor the Ancestors and plump, pretty grandchildren who would form alliances with other ancient lines.

  For a moment, the shan-yu, though he meant her nothing but good, seemed to be one with all of the other Hsiung-nu. They were all aliens, savages, and she was stranded among them in this endless ocean of dust and grass.

  She was young, lovely, yet she had been given more as daughter than as bride to a withered barbarian, given in trade, though custom and courtesy called it a marriage; she would never have children, and when the heat in her blood finally cooled, when its pulsing finally slowed, she would die alone, unhonored. She could feel that pulse now. Already it was growing slower, and soon it might stop, and she would gasp and die, of the loneliness and dust, if of nothing else. All of the old songs had been right; the life of a man or woman of Han among the grasslands was arid, bitter, and short.

  Only that slowing throb broke the silence of her despair. She had known sorrow as absolute only once before. And then, she thought, then I wrote out my sadness on a leaf, and Willow hurled it over the wall. And that one thing, that insignificant little leaf, brought me friendship such as I had never known.

  Perhaps such a joy could come out of this sorrow too. The throbbing subsided, then ceased; but the silence was welcome this time. Out of sorrow might come satisfaction. Silver Snow thought of the words of the Master, Confucius, of her months in the Cold Palace, and of the far worse fates that Li Ling and her father had endured for years without complaining. By her own exile, she brought them wealth and honor; and she brought even more to Ch’in. After all, was she not hailed as the queen who brought peace to the Hsiung-nu? Whether or not they wanted such peace, the Middle Kingdom did. Weighed against that, what was her one small life? Obedience had been her duty lifelong; she was privileged that her obedience could bring her land, her race, and her loved ones such a rich gift.

  The thought made her able to smile once again as she glanced over at her husband, who snatched sleep when he might, as any proven warrior knew was only prudent. His cup—a plain one of incised bronze—had fallen from his hand. Carefully Silver Snow reached across him and set it upright, then turned back to regard Willow, as she sat with Sable beside Basich, her head lowered as befitted a modest maid of Ch’in, if not these Hsiung-nu, and offered him food and drink. Now that, Silver Snow thought, as Basich laughed and tried to trick Willow into looking up, was an interesting sight. Basich had young children, lacked neither horses nor power within the clan, and obviously did not despise Willow for being lame and ill-favored . . . if indeed she was. Here, so far away from Ch’ang-an and the Bright Court’s inflexible pronouncements about beauty, Willow’s burnished hair and level brows had a kind of comeliness all their own.

  Ah, so he had won a smile from the maid, Silver Snow observed. To think she had taunted Willow about fox kits. Well, to all creatures there was a season; perhaps she did wrong to keep the maid so closely tied to her. It might be auspicious should a marriage be arranged. I should ask Vughturoi. The thought flickered into Silver Snow’s consciousness and out again so quickly that she barely had time to flush.

  Even as she watched, Basich too seemed to relax upon the rug that Willow had dragged out to him, resting as did his lord before the promised feast that, even now, Strong Tongue was supervising.

  How hot the cookfires were! Silver Snow forced herself not to gasp and reached for her own cup. Even the fermented sourness of mare’s milk would cool her throat and dissolve what felt like a thick layer of dust that coated it. She could almost feel the liquid trickling down her parched throat.

  “Nay, little one! Do not drink that!”

  The harsh crack of that order came so quickly that Silver Snow’s hand jerked. Almost immediately thereafter, the shan-yu flung himself at her, the impact of his body, which was still wiry from a lifetime in the saddle, knocking the goblet from her hand and hurling her back against her cushions and carpets with him above her as if they were, in flesh as in oath, truly man and wife.

  The cup rolled on the carpets, light striking silver and the yellowed hue of old bone. Bone? That was not her cup at all, then, but the skull cup that she detested so much that she would not look at it, much less drink from it. How had the cups been exchanged . . . and why?

  The shan-yu thrust himself upright again, the skin from which the mare’s milk had been poured dangling half empty from his hand. Even as Silver Snow gasped and sought to raise herself, he reeled and caught himself with one gnarled hand, snatching at one of the struts that supported the tent. The skin gurgled as he struggled to regain his balance, and the firelight cast a brazen light upon him. Half of his face seemed to blaze; the other half lay in shadow and appeared to sag, as if it were formed of wax onto which some careless artisan had spilled boiling water. The brazier’s smoldering embers seemed to have kindled in his eyes: tiny demons danced and glared fearsomely in their depths.

  With his free hand, Khujanga reached out and smoothed Silver Snow’s hair, disordered from her fall. “I shall guard thee, little one,” he whispered, and his words were slurred.

  The skin of mare’s milk sloshing in his hand, he lurched toward the cookfire and poured the mare’s milk into its flames, which flickered up in eerie, shimmering colors. Then, with a hiss, the fire died. All about, women shrieked in outrage at the ruin of good food and the pollution of the sacred flame. Something acrid, with the scent of bitter almonds, blended with the small of burnt food, ash, and meat. Silver Snow bent her head to sniff at the stain on her cushions from the spilled mare’s milk. The same bitter almond scent was there. Willow, with her fox-keen senses and her lifelong training in herbs, would have sensed it immediately; the shan-yu, with a hunter’s sense of smell, had also known, even had he not noticed the exchange of cups.

  The mare’s milk had been poisoned. Carefully Silver Snow wiped her fingers on a cloth and tossed the cloth away lest she touch it once more.

  As Strong Tongue had done on Silver Snow’s very first appearance in the shan-yu’s tent, she hastened toward the contaminated fire. Her callused fingers alternately curled and unclenched on the sallow hide that covered her spirit drum, which throbbed as if she held a beating human heart. She gestured imperiously at the women who clustered by the hearth, as dismayed as Hsiung-nu women ever got, and they cowered before her, afraid—just as she had planned—of a woman of whom it was said that she knew the speech of grass and rocks and the very dead themselves.

  “Throw that trash out!” she commanded in a whisper. Among people who were famous for never wasting a thing, her order created shock—and instant obedience. T
he meat must be poisoned: why else discard it if it were only burnt or smeared with ashes? Then she turned to the shan-yu, who had mastered his failing body and now drew himself up to confront her.

  “You are ill, husband,” began Strong Tongue, that tongue of hers harnessed all to wifely support, then lashing free to accuse, “That little viper in silks has bewitched you, poisoned your mind so that now you pollute the sacred flame . . .”

  “It is not my mind that is poisoned,” Khujanga’s voice was still slurred, and though he tried to shout until the veins bulged in his temples, what emerged was a strangling rasp. “It was this!”

  Even as Silver Snow leapt to her feet, one hand reaching for her tiny jade-hilted dagger, determined to run to the shan-yu’s side, he hurled the skin that had held mare’s milk at Strong Tongue. She stepped neatly aside, lest she be splashed by even a stray drop of what that skin had held, more proof, if any more were needed, that she had known what it held.

  “You tried to kill my wife,” he whispered. “Kill her, and kill . . . ”

  “Aye, and slay you too, dotard, as one clubs on the head a beast that eats more than it is worth. Your sun has set; it is time to let the power pass to younger, braver men. Like Tadiqan, whose blood has not turned to milk because some spoiled child smiles and sings through her pointed nose!”

  You bear that! Silver Snow wanted to cry; but there was no one about to obey her. All of the women had fled at Strong Tongue’s command. The old men, like Khujanga himself, had been napping, and only now were the warriors riding in.

  “I shall have you trampled by a herd of horses!” he vowed at the eldest wife.

  “You?” She laughed, seemingly well content. “You will be lying beneath your gravemound!”

  Once again, her fingers moved on her spirit drum, beating out a rhythm so fast that not even a young, vital man’s heart could withstand it for long. Though Khujanga clawed with one hand at his throat, his face purpled, and he gagged as if he had swallowed his tongue, hurled himself at her across the sodden firepit as he had done at Silver Snow only instants before.