Who would risk the wrath to be brought down on anyone who might willfully or by negligence bring to harm a child so sacred?
The old women seemed very much to understand the nuances of the situation. They were sharing glances, and the abbess was shaking her head.
“I do not think your reign is the danger the oracles warn of,” the abbess said slowly. “I think there are mortal perils aplenty facing us, but I do not believe that any of them have to do with your proposed unsuitability for the throne.”
Sayeh breathed out slowly. Her eyes squeezed shut and she nodded, hating herself for the show of weakness and relief. “Can you tell me more of these perils?”
“We have martial neighbors,” the abbess said. “Ambitious ones, as it happens. The Boneless is raising troops, and I imagine he’ll either come to us, or south to Sarathai-tia. And then there is the poisoned water from the sea.…”
She shook her head again, a tight little shiver, and waved her hand to Ümmühan.
The poetess nodded thoughtfully. “Such things are recorded. In the old city of Ur-Sahal, which once stood not far from here, on the old shore of the Bitter Sea, which some histories refer to as the Sea of Weeping.”
Sayeh hadn’t heard that before. “Who calls it that? And why?”
“Old documents,” Ümmühan said. “Records, in fact, that I came here to study. The Bitter Sea was larger once. It has been shrinking for as long as records have been kept, and growing more salt. And tears—well, Your Abundance. Tears are very bitter.”
They endured a pause, while that sank in. Then the abbess cleared her throat and said, “The poetess’s research concurs with mine. What is not recorded, to my knowledge, is the manner of disaster these omens presage.”
A cold ache of anticipation chilled Sayeh’s spine. “But how … How is that possible?”
“No one has survived whatever catastrophe befell long enough to record the happenings,” the abbess said. “All that is known is that trade stopped, and when it resumed, the city of Ur-Sahal was empty. The buildings stood unmarked, and within were skeletons, undragged by vermin or scavengers, desiccated where they had sat or slept or fallen as they walked about their business.”
“Mother,” Sayeh swore. She looked at Ümmühan. “You say there are other incidences?”
“At least one. When the Bitter Sea was greater, its eastern reaches swept as far as the Dragon Shore, and the plains of Song. It is said that there was a city there, too—a city that is now gone.” Ümmühan shrugged. “It is not far from where the Dragon Road leads to the Singing City, though. It could be—it could even be plausible—that a dragon rose up from under the sea, and the poisoned burning water was some exhalation of the great beast. They are not known to attack cities, except in unproven legend. But it’s not as if so mighty a creature is necessarily more careful of human life than I might be of stepping on an anthill.”
Sayeh thought of the peaceable cults where members went masked and walked barefoot in order to avoid doing mischief to any living thing. She wondered if dragons had any similar religions. If they did, if she had to meet a dragon, she would prefer it be one of those.
She made herself sit up straighter, despite the weariness of worry. “So it’s a terrible augury. What can I do about it?”
“Evacuate,” the abbess said plainly. “Move our people west, as fast as possible. As far inland as possible. Away from where the bitter water flows.”
“In the rainy season,” Sayeh said. Not arguing, not quite. Just confirming that they all understood the foolishness of it all. “When we are all short of food after a long dry season. When the roads are mud, and the wind is cold. With children and the elderly in tow.”
“It will not,” Ümmühan admitted, “do very much for your popularity. Unless a true calamity does come to pass.”
“A big unless. Do we have any evidence of times this augury was not followed hard on by a catastrophe?”
“Once,” Ümmühan said. “Perhaps twice.”
The abbess shook her head. “Scraps of records only,” she said. “Undated. They could have been salvaged from Ur-Sahal. Some are even in the ancient Song dialect, and could have been from the city that perished on the eastern shore.”
“It’s a far shore,” Sayeh said. The pen moves on, and leaves a thought behind. “I can take my people west, but that is the territory of Himadra, and brings us close to Chandranath. Shall we come as refugees to one who would desire to conquer us?”
Or she could marry that pustule Anuraja, and beg him for safe harbor for her people. And then what if nothing happened? What if the augury was false? He had no fear of the Good Mother or even the terrible Good Daughter. Duty and felicity had no hold upon his conscience.
He would have her put to death and claim her lands as his own. And if her son ever grew to contest Anuraja … well, what was the likelihood he would be allowed to do so?
“Good Mother help me,” the rajni said, and did not protest when the abbess reached out to take her hand.
* * *
Ümmühan accompanied Sayeh back to the palace in the opposite seat of her plain palanquin, with the intent of seeking further information in the palace records. There might be something there that was not recorded in the archives of the nunnery. The old woman weighed next to nothing. She did not discomfit the strong young bearers, even in the pelting rain.
Along the way, she continued to charm Sayeh with her tales of a storied life, told in the rising and falling, nuanced style of an Asitaneh entertainer. She gave her characters voices, and in so doing gave them life.
Sayeh did not doubt that this woman had been a great poet of three separate courts; she would have liked to have offered her a place in her own entourage. But somehow she did not think the poetess had come to Ansh-Sahal with its bitter sea and its terraced hillsides desperate for rain—of all the godsforsaken corners of the earth under all the gods-determined skies—seeking a retirement placement. She was indeed here on research, and perhaps as a gift of the Good Mother. Or her own Scholar-God. If ever two deities were made to be allies …
It was full day when they reached Sayeh’s palace, and the sky had further darkened behind the rain. Vidhya the guard captain himself helped them out of the palanquin under a protective awning, and if he was surprised to see that the rajni had returned with a guest, his face registered only serenity. “Your son has been asking for you, Rajni,” was all he said.
Sayeh looked at Ümmühan. “Would you care to meet the prince?”
Ümmühan’s smile showed empty gums, but it lit her face. Sayeh confirmed her impression that this woman had once been a very great beauty. “How old?”
“This will be his third rainy season,” Sayeh said. She led the poetess into the palace, stopping briefly to exchange their damp sandals for warm, dry, wooly slippers covered in red and blue embroidery. The servants had provided two pairs, and guessed the visitor’s size close to exactly. Sayeh would have to remember to have the chatelaine issue praise to whoever was in charge of the door on this rainy day.
Ümmühan sighed in pleasure as she slid her knobbed feet into warmth. “The small pleasures grow greater as one ages.”
Sayeh hid a smile. She was just old enough herself to appreciate how true this might one day become—and how the small pains of life could become all the greater irritants with time as well. Whether it was down to having a son to think forward for, the faint browner spots that had begun resolving on the backs of her hands, or some combination of both, of late she had found herself often pensive of the future and all too aware of what she was leaving behind her, and how soon it might be important. And Ümmühan … at a casual guess, Ümmühan was close to twice her own age.
That was both reassuring and unnerving. Reassuring, because there might be so many more years yet to come. Unnerving, because how fast had those years passed by for this poetess? And what would Sayeh leave behind as her legend?
She found that she was greedy for a legacy in a way her younger
self could never have imagined.
That made her think of the young rajni Mrithuri, her cousin to the south and west. Mrithuri, who had as yet remained unmarried, maintained her independence, and yet … would she one day wish she had chosen differently? There was time yet for the young woman to change her mind. But that meant so much sacrifice, and Sayeh felt the pressures of those sacrifices—demanded of her now again—very keenly of the moment. You could be your own woman; or you could be part of something larger, and leave behind a legacy of your body and your heart as well as your mind.
Men.
Men did not have to make these choices.
If she could offer her cousin advice, Sayeh wondered, what exactly would it be? It was a terrible choice to have to make, autonomy against posterity.
“What are you thinking?” the poetess asked. They had been walking together in silence, but Sayeh’s pensiveness must have been written on her face.
Sayeh said, “Do you have children?”
Ümmühan shook her head. “I never lived a life I would have brought a child into, until I had no one to give me children. And then I had someone, but I was too old.”
“So it’s true what they say, that there are arts of the Asitaneh to prevent conception?”
The poetess’s lips bend in a secret smile. “The Scholar-God has many wisdoms. Some are for her daughters alone. So you were thinking of children?”
“And women,” Sayeh admitted. “And choices.”
“Choices every woman makes, in some fashion.”
“Some don’t even know there is a choice. It is so expected.”
Ümmühan nodded. “And yet you treasure your son.”
“He was badly wanted,” Sayeh replied. “And his conception was … unlikely in the extreme.”
“Your Good Mother no doubt saw that you, too, would be the best of mothers.”
It was grossest flattery, and when Sayeh glanced at the poetess she saw the sly sideways glance that told her the poetess knew that very well. But it was a conspiratorial glance, inviting her into the game—and it was, as well, the right flattery. The correct thing to say, at the perfectly correct moment.
She’s good at this, Sayeh thought. As she would be: she was Ümmühan.
The poetess paused to sigh, then continued. “I leave my mark with ink on paper, with stylus in sand. I am the mark I leave, and the mark I leave is me. I am the act of marking. You leave your mark in blood and sinew, and in the history that I shall help to record. That act is you, that act of marking. That act of leaving a mark.”
It was a pretty thought, and Sayeh liked it. But honesty compelled her to ask, “What about those who leave no mark? Or whose marks are erased by the vagaries of history? Are they real? Did they live?”
Ümmühan shook her head inside her coif. “On that, my books are silent. Or, perhaps, not silent. Contradictory.”
They had come to the nursery door. It was open, though guarded on both sides by Vidhya’s chosen men. They inclined their heads faintly to the rajni but did not bow; they would not relax their vigilance so much when they were detailed to protect their underaged king.
Voices came from within. Drupada’s piping, piercing tones, and the murmur of his nurse Jagati. And also Tsering’s crisp phrasing, sentences rising to questions at the end. It was time for Drupada’s catechism.
Sayeh paused for a moment outside, gathered her trailing hems, and swept into the room with every intention of making her son squeal delightedly. She was surprised to see he did not sit alone on his tasseled silken floor cushion. Another, larger and plainer, had been drawn up a little behind his, and Nazia the water-diver sat cross-legged on it, bent over a slate with a wet brush, figuring. The marks would endure for long enough to be examined and then fade into the air, and so keep from wasting valuable ink or paper for exercises that would only be checked and discarded, after all.
Drupada jumped to his feet and yelped, indeed. He would have run to Sayeh, but she looked down at him sternly and said, “What is your duty to your teacher, my love?”
He dragged himself to a halt with obvious effort, while Nazia looked on with a frown. Sayeh was frowning herself, inwardly—Tsering was taking a risk, adding this possibly treacherous young woman to the same classroom as Drupada. Although Nazia was starting off from scratch where the learning from books was considered, and perhaps Tsering-la had judged that a show of trust would gain her loyalty. And Tsering was the Wizard Tsering, which meant there was very little Nazia could have done to harm the prince with Tsering in attendance and paying attention.
She worried too much.
Drupada looked back at Tsering. “Teacher, may I go to Mama?”
Tsering struggled to keep a stern mouth. “You may.”
He scampered to her so fast that he would have measured his insignificant length on the rugs if Sayeh hadn’t crouched and been there to catch him. She squeezed him close against her chest and looked at Tsering and at Nazia.
Tsering-la had that Wizardly way of seeming to know what the problem is before the words were formed. He said, “Nazia, you are dismissed for now. Work on the letter-shapes you’ve learned.”
“They’re a mess,” Nazia said, not deprecatingly but with brutal self-assessment.
Tsering said, “Once you can make them confidently, I promise the line will smooth. You’re old enough that the fine control will come more quickly than it does for the prince.”
Once the girl was gone, Sayeh lifted her son into her arms—he was heavier every day—and went to shut the door. “Ümmühan,” she said, “this is my court Wizard Tsering. I think you ought to tell him what you told me, about the Bitter Sea.”
Wizard and poet eyed each other, but both seemed content to trust the rajni’s judgment for now. Ümmühan explained. At first slowly, but then with increasing trust as Tsering-la asked questions far more intelligent and knowledgeable than the ones that Sayeh had brought out. Before long, the two had entirely lost her, and she entertained herself by taking Drupada to the corner of the nursery classroom and helping him stack bright-painted and gilded wooden blocks so that he could then push them over, trumpeting like an elephant. He’d seen the elephants working only once that she could recall, in the previous dry season. She was startled to discover that he remembered.
He started to explain to her that the elephant was the prince of the animals, and all the other animals had to do what the elephant said. She listened politely, pleased to be the focus of his attention for a little while. It happened less and less often now, as she began to have the feeling that their conversations sometimes intruded on his internal world in ways he rejected or found irritating.
It was not so different from dealing with adults, she supposed—they embraced whatever supported their worldview, and rejected anything that might disrupt it. But it was far more transparent in this young child.
Sayeh was painfully aware that this would only continue. That her relationship with her son was evolving, growing into a chimerical monster with two heads, and those heads, while inextricably linked by a shared body of experiences, might have extremely different ideas of who they were and what they wanted. She had experienced this, after all, with her own mother.
So for now, she just stroked his hair when he swarmed into her lap, and said occasionally, “Is that so?”
“And the tiger is a wicked animal,” he said. “So the elephant has to explain that the tiger is bad, and make him stop eating the other animals. And sometimes because the elephant is the biggest he has to sit on the tiger.”
“He sits on the tiger.”
“He does. He tries not to hurt the tiger too much, though. Because maybe the tiger can get better. And sometimes…”
His face screwed up in thought.
“Sometimes?” she prompted, aware that Ümmühan was watching her, while Tsering-la busied himself with a page of notes. Their conversation seemed to have finished for now, though Sayeh had spent enough time around Wizards to know that they were most likely only
gathering their strength for another engagement.
“Sometimes the elephant has to get his mother to make the tiger stop being bad.”
She gave him a little squeeze. “Does the elephant always do what his mother tells him?”
He shook his head, very serious. “Not always. Because he’s the prince and princes can’t always listen to their advisors. Sometimes they have to make up their own minds. But she can make the tiger listen. The tiger’s a warlord, and he tells all the bandits what to do.”
Children, Sayeh thought, understand so much, without understanding it at all. She swallowed. “Isn’t it your bedtime, little king?”
“Kings don’t have bedtimes.” But he said it brightly, without pouting. He had never been a pouting or a whining child. Occasionally stormy and stompy, but Sayeh would rather have that any day.
She gave another thanks to the Good Mother, who had blessed her so uncritically after so long a wait, and answered, “Little ones do. They need their sleep to grow up to be big kings.”
Jagati came forward from the corner into which she’d erased herself. Her skill at doing so never stopped amusing the rajni, especially as she was so outspoken when it was just women alone. And Sayeh had always been pleased that Jagati seemed, effortlessly, to consider Sayeh as one of the women.
Sayeh nodded thanks, and they exchanged a few words on the rate of his majesty’s toilet training, which the nurse assured her was excellent—his new facility with targeted urination aside. Or perhaps that was a sign of his improving facility with controlling his bladder. Alas.
Sayeh thanked Jagati and kissed her son good night. Once they had vanished into the inner bedroom where both would sleep, Sayeh turned back to the Wizard and the poetess.
Both stared back, formality forgotten for the moment. Hard lines were graven beside Ümmühan’s mouth, her usual smile carved into a stern expression. Tsering-la merely scowled.
The Stone in the Skull Page 18