Ursa looked back at the lion.
“The lion in charge?” she asked.
“Yes, Major. This way,” and the black gates swung open to let them through.
***
It was a marvel how she could light so many candles and yet not have the little gar fill with smoke. Magic, he knew it. Witches were skilled at that sort of thing. It was late afternoon and he knew that if there were smoke, the Enemy on the Wall high above would spot it in a heartbeat. She was a deceiver. He wondered how many men she had killed.
He looked down at the baby in his arms. How he had let them convince him was also a marvel, a testimony to his sister’s large heart and the witch’s innate cunning. But here he was, sitting cross-legged under a tent of branches and silk, breathing in incense that did not smoke and holding a baby that did not cry. Life was far too strange for him.
Setse and the witch were also seated cross-legged. They were holding hands, eyes closed and he knew it was some sort of spell that the witch had cast on his sister. They were both whispering in the language of the Enemy—how Setse had learned it was also a mystery. Her Oracle gift was as unnerving as it was exhausting. He was certain it affected him more than her.
The baby yawned and stretched its tiny fists, blinked its bicoloured eyes slowly at him. He remembered the first time his mother had let him hold Setse, how she had blinked her strange, unnatural eyes at him and he had sworn from that moment on to protect her with his life. He had survived five winters by then. Already a man. And now this.
The baby was purring.
He glanced up, back at his sister and the witch. They were whispering and chanting. They hadn’t heard. They didn’t know. He looked back down at the thing in his arms.
He studied the hands, so tiny and unnatural, the tips of the claws dark as a winter’s night. He wondered what it took to move them. Just a thought? An act of the will? He shifted slightly so that his own hand was free, dabbed at the tiny hand with the blunted tip of his own claw, marveled at the sight as a hook as sharp and curved as a jamviyeh slid out through its finger to catch his pelt. No wonder his people were mortified. It was a mystery.
He touched the little hand, felt the pelt so soft as the fingers wrapped around his own. He tugged back but the grip was strong. Just like Setse.
And suddenly, the baby smiled at him.
He tried to look away, to send his eyes to the figures of his sister and the witch but it was pointless. He had been caught now as surely as Setse had caught him so many years ago. He hated the witch with his entire soul for doing this, for giving him this little creature. It was her plan. It had to be.
He would protect it with his life.
He looked up to see the witch smiling at him, Setse smiling at him and he scowled at them both.
His sister laughed, clapped her hands together.
“Now, Rah! Can you feel them? Can you?”
“Yes,” said the witch. “Now is the time.”
“For what?” growled Naranbataar as he tried to disentangle his finger from the kitten’s grip. “More candles? More broth?”
“Singing!” laughed Setse.
“Of course,” said the witch. “Now we sing.”
And both women closed their eyes and said no more.
The baby in his arms purred contentedly and Naranbataar shook his head, wondering at what could possibly come of songs sung in silence.
***
“Can you hear that?”
“What?”
“The singing?”
Nevye frowned and turned back from the window. “What singing?”
“Listen.”
He stared at the man, the last Seer of Sha’Hadin, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, a cup of hot sweet tea at his side. They were in the top of the battle tower and preparing for sleep on mattresses stuffed with straw. They had eaten stew and dumplings, rice bread and curried chicken and his belly was the happiest it had been in days. The woman was gone, off speaking with the captain of the battlefort and being informed on the state of high alert that was sweeping the Empire. Dogs and monkeys, although he could only see dogs, and not for the first time, he cursed the way his life had rolled out. He was glad she was gone. She terrified him.
Through closed eyes, the Seer smiled at him. “Sit, Yahn, and listen.”
Slowly, Nevye did as he was asked, bending his knees in the learning pose. Odd, he thought to himself. He never sat like this, hadn’t since he was a child in Ban’lahore. Damn this mongrel for suggesting it. Damn himself for obeying.
“Give me your hands.”
“I’m not giving you my hands!” he growled. “You think I’m a novice. It’s insulting.”
And he lashed his tail, which proved to be painful. He knew it had been bitten severely by the frost, just like his ears. He was glad he was inside.
“Can you hear the singing?”
“What singing? You’re mad.”
“Your Oracle. She’s singing. She has a lovely voice.”
His tail lashing stopped, as did his heart.
“My Oracle? She-she’s not my Oracle.”
“Oh. I thought she was.”
He glanced down at the Seer’s hands, ungloved and exposed, long tan fingers and spotted wrists. Mongrels. A scourge on the Kingdom. They should all be killed.
And yet, here he was, searching the stretch of Wall for a dog. His Oracle. How much worse could his life grow?
At the window, a rattle and he looked over his shoulder to see a dark shape. An owl, beating at the glass with speckled wings. He frowned again, wondering at the meaning.
“You could let him in,” said the Seer. “Mi-Hahn has gone to Pol’Lhasa. She won’t be back for days.”
“It’s just an owl,” he answered.
“My mistake. Your hands?”
With a deep breath, he looked down at his gloves.
“If you’d rather not—” said Sireth.
“You will close your eyes?”
The Seer did as he was asked. After a long moment, the jaguar removed his gloves, reached out his hands, which the Seer did not see.
But at the touch, his soul rang with the sound of singing.
***
Run, run, run run. Run like a deer, run like the rain, run like the river. Run, run, run, run.
The songs of the army beat in time with their feet. It was good to keep rhythm, keep all their feet moving as one. It kept them strong and fast and focused on their moving. But for Swift Sumalbayar, there was a different song ringing in his head.
He shook his head, ears flattened against his skull. He was careful not to lose balance, however, for he was on point and to stumble might cause him to be trampled by the Ten Thousand running behind.
At his side, the Khargan ran like a bull, steady and strong, his legs churning up the snow like iron, his claw-necklaces rattling against the lion skull he wore on one shoulder. They made the sound of tambours, a perfect accompaniment to the strange new music that had started in his head.
They were the songs of women. He had not known a woman for a long time and he found himself missing their company, their soft bodies and their strong wills. His wife had been his lifemate. He had been lucky to find her, unlucky to have lost her at the birth of his son. Their deaths still saddened him.
The singing was becoming worrisome, but he could not tell the Khargan. The Khargan would think him an Oracle and would likely torture him to death, friendship not withstanding. The Bear was such a man.
And so he shook his head again and ran, concentrating on the sound of the claws against the skull and hoping the songs of soldiers would drown out the songs of women.
***
It was almost night when they moved the basket to the edge of the Wall. It was not a traditional basket as one might imagine a basket, but rather a cage made of wood and ropes and wire cables. It was used to transport firewood, stones and armour from deep in the earth to the foundry. It had taken ten tigers just to get it and it’s massive wheeled pul
ley there. The wind had picked up, bringing with it daggers of snow and it took those same ten tigers—accompanied by a half-division of soldiers and Captain Yuri Oldsmith-Pak, the ‘lion in charge’—to set it up at the edge of the Wall.
As Ursa paced and Nevye watched, Sireth benAramis walked along the parapet of the Great Wall, eyes closed, hands extended at his side as if expecting to fly like his falcon. His brown robes and long hair whipped like banners, threatening to lift him from his feet and send him up into the air and over the Wall with the force. They had passed three battle towers as they walked along this section and they had lost most of the sun. Snow clouds were rolling in once again and it looked to be a very bad night.
Finally the last Seer of Sha’Hadin slowed, began to circle like a top, hands spread wide. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open and he moved to the cornice, peered over the edge to the very dark and distant crags below.
“Here?” shouted Nevye and he joined him, gripping the stone carapace as he too peered over the edge. The wind was howling and words were snatched like falling leaves. “The music is louder, I agree!”
“Yes!”
“What is that? That language? Is that Dog?”
“The Language of the People, yes!”
“Can you understand it?”
“Not at all!”
“Won’t that be problematic?”
“Probably, yes!”
Nevye swallowed and looked again over the side.
“Down there, then? I don’t see anything! It’s too black! It’s all ice and rock and blackness!”
“Believe me,” the Seer turned and smiled at him. “There will be a light soon enough!”
Nevye studied the sheer drop. It was a very long way down.
Sireth turned to the Captain and the tigers. “Can we lower the basket over the side, if you please.”
The tigers looked at the lion, then back at him. Oldsmith-Pak, frowned.
“I’m afraid you are mistaken, sahidi,” he said quite formally. “That side is the Lower Kingdom. Perhaps you mean over here?”
And he gestured with his golden hand.
“No, Captain. This side, if you please.”
The lion, tigers and the soldiers all stared at him. Sireth smiled again.
“If you please.”
It was not a request.
Against the far side of the parapet, Ursa Laenskaya was scowling. She looked very small in the shadow of the mountain. As the tigers got to work setting up the pulley which would lower the basket over the wrong side of the Wall, he moved over to her.
He did not touch her.
“You have forgotten,” she hissed.
“I have not forgotten.”
“They only killed you, they did not hurt you.” Her pale eyes met his. “They hurt the Captain very much. They hurt me. Is that so easy to forget?”
“My love, you are my life,” he said quietly and now he did touch her, reaching out to stroke her cheek. “I would never, could never forget what they did to you.”
“I cannot forgive them.”
“They…are dead.”
She set her jaw. “Their people.”
“Their people are not responsible.”
“You defend them.”
“I do not. But tell me…” He stepped close. “How was it any different than what our people did when you were small?”
Her eyes flashed at him, furious.
“And yet,” he said, undeterred. “You would serve the Empire of the people who did what they did to you. Tell me, my love, how is this any different?”
She looked away, her profile sharp in the setting purple of the sky. Her hair rose and fell with the breeze and he reached to smooth it from her face. She did not fight.
“You forge the steel, my love,” he said. “Find it in yourself. For yourself.”
Her silver cheek rippled as tiny muscles twitched but swiftly, she turned to him.
“I will not kill them.”
He kissed her forehead.
“Thank you. There will be blood soon enough.”
He slid his eyes to the jaguar, standing with cloak wrapped tightly around his body near the cornice of the Wall. The wind was strong and his hair was finally breaking free of the knot at his neck. Things would change for them all soon.
There was shouting from the tigers as the basket went over the Wrong Side of the Wall.
***
The devastation of Karan’Uurt was as swift as it was complete as houses, gars and farms were burned to cinders. All villagers were slaughtered in their beds and those who dared flee were set alight and released in fields of snow and dried wheat. The skies above Karan’Urt were black that day and almost without exception, it would be forgotten, erased from the history of the People at the word of the Khargan, Khan Baitsukhan the Bear. Burned from history, gone from memory. The wheat and the bread, the soups and the stews. The songs of childhood, the legends of old men and the wisdom of women, no more than ashes on the wind.
Jalair Naranbataar and Jalair Naransetseg, Grandchildren of the Blue Wolf, would remember Karan’Uurt but they would not weep. There was a basket coming over the Wall and the time for weeping was done.
***
It took more than ten tigers to pull the basket up from the Wrong Side of the Wall. The wind was so strong that the cage was swinging at the end of the pulley and it was a miracle that it had reached the top without shattering entirely. They shouted and strained but maneuvered it closer to the side, managing to snag the slats and draw it to safety on the stone parapet of the Wall.
The distant cauldrons sent orange and white lights dancing across the stone, distorting snow and faces in colour but suddenly, an unnatural light flared to life within the cage, revealing three passengers, shrouded in black.
Sireth benAramis stepped forward to spring the latch for the cage.
“Sidi,” purred a familiar voice and like a shadow, the Alchemist came from the basket, her palm glowing like a beacon. Her eyes were golden orbs behind the wrappings of black silk and magic.
“Sidala,” he answered and he could sense the shift in the soldiers behind him. This was sorcery, they knew it, and while they were proud of the way the Gifts and the Arts served the Kingdom, they were superstitious to the bone. Cats are, after all, a superstitious people.
The golden eyes slid past him to the small figure dressed in winter bear. Both swords were out and at the ready.
“Major,” the Alchemist smiled.
“I have promised not to kill you,” growled Ursa.
“That is something, then.”
Sireth noticed Yahn Nevye, several paces away, arms still crossed over his chest. The man was a puzzle.
He turned back to the cheetah.
“And your friends?”
“Mmm. Yes. My friends.”
She stepped aside but the two stayed in the protection of the basket. The taller had an arm around the smaller, and with the many layers of fabric and night-black silk, their features were almost indistinguishable.
“Perhaps,” said the Alchemist. “We might make introductions in the warmth of a battle tower? My friends have been wounded and they need rest.”
He met her eyes. It was because of her that both could see.
“Of course,” he said archly.
He turned to the Captain, but there was movement as the smaller of the two figures slipped out of the cage.
The soldiers shifted but she moved through them like a dancer, pausing only to stand before Yahn Nevye. He stepped back. She stepped forward.
“You,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the wailing of the wind. She turned her head back toward the other, her profile unmistakable under the moonlight and the stars. “Rani, look…”
“Setse, ugayi!” in a language understood by few on the Wall and the second figure stepped forward, not bothering to cover his face. The Alchemist laid a hand on his chest, holding him back with a strength she should not have.
A current went through t
he soldiers and they snapped to attention, swords and bos drawn. The Captain stepped forward now but was blocked by a katanah, razor tip poking a small hole in his uniform.
“Do not,” growled Ursa, kodai’chi held mantis-like over her head.
Another shift and both sword and spear formed a ring of steel around the Major when suddenly, a wall of flame leapt into life, surrounding all of them in heat and brilliant light. Even the roaring, whipping wind could do little to dissuade it and tongues of fire licked pelt and uniform alike.
“Enough,” bellowed the last Seer of Sha’Hadin. “Sheathe your weapons! All of you!”
They did not but at least they did not lunge. He turned to watch the figures outside of the flames, the dancer still poised before the jaguar.
“I know you,” she said, her voice young and halting as she wrapped her thoughts around a new tongue. “I have seen…”
Nevye stepped back again.
She cocked her head as if hearing a faraway sound.
“Shar Ma’uul. You Shar Ma’uul. I have known for my life…”
He stepped back again.
“Ulaan Baator coming,” she said, moving closer. “Is all coming. Blood. Can see it? Can see dragons and eyes and blood? Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Storm. The fall of Ulaan Baator at steel of Ulaan Baator?”
And from the shadows of her reindeer cloak, she reached a hand up to his face.
Suddenly, he whirled and marched off down the parapet, the way they had come. He was silhouetted by the flames of the cauldrons, disappearing in a heartbeat.
Slowly the dancer turned.
“He can’t see,” she moaned and she pulled the silk from her face. There were tears streaking her strange cheeks, her one blue eye glittering in the moonlight. “Shar Ma’uul can’t see. Too terrible. It consume us all…”
And she began to shake.
The other pushed past the hand of the Alchemist and bolted to the dancer’s side, catching her as she folded like paper to the ground.
The flames died away as quickly as they had come and the Captain marched up to the last Seer of Sha’Hadin.
“What is this?” he demanded. “Tell me or I will toss you all over the Wall, monasteries and palaces be damned.”
The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom Page 89