by Laurence Yep
The dragon spoke with a confident patience that made Scirye shiver a little—as if she were catching a glimpse of how relentless Bayang the assassin could be.
Roxanna returned apologetically a short while later. “People saw a Trimotor fly overhead a short while ago, but it didn’t land. Roland must have fuel supplies out on the frozen ocean.”
“Did you find out what direction it was going?” Bayang asked.
“That heading would take them straight to the Wastes,” Roxanna said, “but they’ll stop or turn long before they get there.”
“How do you know that?” Scirye asked.
“Because no one goes into the Wastes,” Roxanna explained. “As long as the Inuit can remember, hunters who went into the Wastes disappeared. And every now and then some strangers come up here because they’ve heard tales of treasure.”
Koko perked up. “Oh yeah? What sort of treasure?”
Roxanna shrugged. “All kinds. We even had one pack of idiots hunting for the lost gold of Atlantis.”
“What happened to them?” Scirye asked.
“They said there were invisible phantoms that tormented them day and night until they gave up and left,” Roxanna explained. “And there are a lot of similar stories from over the centuries.”
Leech nodded up at the Mounties on their owls. “What do we do? We can’t take off with them out there.”
Roxanna dipped her head respectfully. “Lord Leech, you can’t go out onto the ice without the proper supplies and equipment. Come to the caravanserai where we can outfit you.”
As impatient as they were to be off, they had to concede that this was a better plan. Roxanna led them along another route until they came to the caravanserai.
They really couldn’t have missed it, because the massive rectangular building dominated the wharf area, covering an entire city block and standing three stories high. It peered over the roofs of the other buildings as if watching them approach. Smoke rose from numerous chimneys, rising in the cold, still air like long locks of gray hair.
Lanterns shone on the caravanserai’s sides so that, through the coating of ice, Scirye could make out blurred designs formed by different-colored bricks. The narrow windows were no more than slits. Scirye had been expecting some kind of princely palace, but this was a fortress that could have defied a thousand freebooters.
Cupping her hands around her mouth, Roxanna called out in Common, “Ho, the caravanserai! Open your gates.”
The great wooden gates of the caravanserai had been kept clear of ice and a panel slid back on a little window, but no face appeared behind the grill.
“Oh, it’s you, my girl,” a woman replied in Common from behind the gates. Her voice was thin and wispy like the wind blowing sand across a beach. “We’ve been turning the place upside down looking for you.” There followed a quick string of Common words that Scirye did not recognize, but she suspected from the annoyed look on Roxanna’s face that they were an insult and one too rude for her own nursemaid to have used when Scirye was small.
Embarrassed, Roxanna glanced at Leech and then shouted to the unseen servant, “Mother worries too much. And anyway, why are you playing gatekeeper, Upach? You’re usually huddling inside the house by a fire.”
“I came to pass on a warning,” Upach said surlily.
“Well, you’ve given it.” Roxanna stamped a foot in vexation. “Now open the gates before I freeze outside.”
“You might prefer that,” Upach gloated, “to what your mother’s going to do to you.”
“Thank Nana you’re with me,” Roxanna whispered gratefully to Leech. “Mother can’t do much too bad to me if I’m with guests.”
Scirye heard heavy iron bolts groaning as they were thrown back and then the thick doors creaked open. She blinked when the little woman waddled out.
She was about four feet high and wore so many fur coats that she was almost as wide. Boots as thick as elephant legs protected her feet. On her head was a fur hat as large as a melon, and a thick muffler hid her face except for a small slit for her eyes.
“You can’t just go traipsing off whenever you feel like it.” Upach tried to wag a finger at Roxanna, but the glove on her hand was as big and clumsy as a baseball mitt. “You’re off Nana knows where, and it’s poor old Upach that has to take the blame.”
Roxanna threw her arms around the woman in an attempt at a hug. “I’ve missed you too, Upach. What would I do without you?”
Upach stomped one booted foot. “Don’t try to honey-talk me, my girl. I didn’t leave my lovely, warm home for this sort of silliness. I won’t stand for it, do you hear? I just won’t!”
“I ordered a foot warmer for you,” Roxanna wheedled. “That should leave your toes all nice and toasty. It should be somewhere in the caravan”—she indicated Leech—“that this hero and his friends saved.”
Before Scirye could even open her mouth in protest, Kles’s paw had clamped down on her shoulder for silence.
Upach dragged one boot across the snow. “Humph. How am I going to keep the rest of me warm?”
Roxanna looked over her shoulder at them. “Upach’s an ifrit from the desert,” she explained in English. “She’s been my friend, my fussbudget and jailer, ever since I was born.”
“And nothing but trouble from day one,” Upach grumbled in thickly accented English. “I’m supposed to be the head housekeeper, not your nursemaid. Why, oh, why did I follow your mother here?”
“It was fate,” Roxanna said with an impish shrug.
“I don’t suppose”—in the layer of furs, Upach’s arm moved as stiffly as a statue’s while she tried to give Roxanna a friendly pat—“you’d tell your old nursemaid how you…?”
Roxanna affectionately adjusted the servant’s muffler. “I have to have some secrets, Upach. Otherwise, where would be the challenge for you?”
“I won’t put up with this much longer,” Upach said, but heaved a heavy sigh that suggested she was actually resigned to her fate.
“Father also brought a thermometer to replace the one you broke,” Roxanna said mischievously.
“I did nothing of the kind,” Upach snapped.
“You pounded it every day demanding to know when it was going to get hotter,” Roxanna said. “Be kinder to this one.”
They followed the Sogdian girl into a huge open cobblestone courtyard that could accommodate a dozen large wagons at one time. This hollow square, Roxanna explained, was the center of the caravanserai, with workshops for smiths and warehouses occupying the ground floor of all four sides. The two upper floors held the Sogdians’ living quarters.
As porters and clerks streamed out of rooms on all sides to help, Kles murmured to Scirye, “They’re all armed.”
“If they don’t have pistols, they at least have knives.” The girl noticed the magical charms pasted on the walls and doors. “And there are magical wards all over. Do you think it’s the freebooters?”
“Probably. The freebooters must be getting pretty daring with Roland backing them,” Bayang said.
“Things have really gotten bad if the Sogdians don’t feel safe from them in their own home,” Kles observed.
At that moment, a thicker, older version of Roxanna emerged from a side door. She was wearing a fur robe with embroidered cuffs and hem.
“Do you know how much of a tizzy we’ve been in when we noticed you were gone?” the woman demanded in Common.
“At my age, Mother, you were racing camels in the desert with your friends,” Roxanna replied sweetly in the same tongue.
Her mother glanced ruefully at the ifrit. “I see Upach has been tattling on me again. I’ll deal with her once I’m done with you.”
Scirye felt a twinge, thinking about her own mother worrying about her. She decided she would ask the Sogdians to send a letter back to her.
Roxanna ran over to Leech and, grabbing his arm, she tugged him back to her mother. “Besides,” Roxanna said, switching to English, “I was perfectly safe. I was with this h
ero. He saved the whole caravan.”
“We all did,” Leech said, turning red again.
Roxanna’s mother studied the scrawny, undersized boy uncertainly and then the others. “Did you really?”
“Mother,” Roxanna scolded, “don’t embarrass our clan.”
Remembering her manners, Roxanna’s mother bowed to them. “Yes, I meant to say that we’re honored.”
“Extremely honored,” Roxanna corrected, and then, after introducing each of them to her mother, waved a hand. “This is my mother, Lady Miunai.”
“And a gray hair for every day since you were born,” Lady Miunai said. “Where’s your father?”
“Probably coming through the pass,” Roxanna said. “He should be here in a short while.”
“We’d better get ready to unload the wagons when they get here. See that our visitors are settled in the guest apartments,” Lady Miunai instructed, and clapped her hands. Immediately, clerks and servants began to come into the courtyard, pulling on coats as they did so.
Roxanna led them through a wide doorway and into one of the clan’s cavernous warehouses. From somewhere down the corridor came the faint tinking of hammers on metal.
Giving Leech a quick smile, she said, “You saved me with your magic just like I hoped. I’ve seen the toughest drovers break down into tears when Mother scolds them.”
A faint scent of spices and teas lingered in the air of the chamber. Many of its shelves, though, were empty because of the freebooters’ siege, but there were still large containers scattered about: from huge ceramic jars to crates of medical supplies and books, baskets of woven twigs, and rolled-up straw mats that had been tied with thick ropes. All of them marked with the twin palm trees that Roxanna said were the family crest.
Leech pointed at a jar that was as tall as him. “What’s in there?”
“Olive oil from the sun-kissed Italia,” Roxanna said, and began to rattle off the original countries for the other objects. China, Azteca, Serendip—the whole world seemed to have sent something here for sale.
Scirye knew that the Silk Road was the name given to several routes that connected the East to the West. Goods and ideas passed back and forth along it, but it seemed that it now extended even to the Far North.
They followed Roxanna to a set of double doors at the foot of a broad staircase where they stamped the snow from their feet. Scirye had to blink when they reached the top of the stairs, for if the caravanserai appeared utilitarian down below, up here it burned hot and bright as flame. The rugs, wall tapestries, and ceiling murals were a riot of reds, yellows, and pinks showing hunters in forests, people feasting in fabulous gardens, and the strange creatures of the air and sea. The ground floor might be the commercial heart of the caravanserai, but the upper floor was its soul.
Here the air was pungent with the smell of incense and perfume—as if Scirye had stuck her head into the center of a bouquet of exotic flowers. Fat fire imps squatted in large orange glass bowls in wall sconces, burning as fiercely as desert suns.
When Roxanna took off her fur coat, her clothes were just as vibrant as her surroundings. She was wearing a crimson and gold brocade dress with a high collar over purple slacks that belled out above her boots. And Scirye caught a faint whiff of perfume as Roxanna handed her coat to Upach.
Roxanna led them down a hallway past rooms that seemed to be furnished and decorated with souvenirs from around the world. In one, a fountain with tile mosaics tinkled musically.
“Father calls this our little Chach,” Roxanna explained. “Our clan came from that city in Sogdiana.”
“Ah, it’s as lovely as this,” Kles said as he rode upon Scirye’s shoulder.
“You’ve seen it?” Roxanna asked excitedly, and then sighed. “I’ve never been there myself.”
“I spent a month in Chach with the princess,” Kles said, looking around approvingly. “The temple to Nanaia—that’s our name for your Nana—was magnificent.”
“Then you must see our shrine,” Roxanna said proudly. “It’s small, but the statue has been with my family for generations.”
10
Scirye
They followed Roxanna through a maze of hallways to a small chamber. As befitted a busy place, they had heard some noise in the background wherever they had gone in the caravanserai, but it was strangely silent here. Perhaps it was some quirk of the construction or, Scirye wondered, it was the power of the goddess.
Actually, the statue of Nanaia was the last thing that Scirye wanted to see. In her grief and anger over Nishke’s death, Scirye had rashly promised Nanaia that she would pay any cost in exchange for the goddess’s help in recovering her people’s treasure and avenging her sister’s death. Scirye hadn’t really expected the goddess to grant her wish, and now that Nanaia seemed to be, what price was Scirye going to have to pay? Scirye didn’t want to be reminded of that hasty vow.
When Roxanna opened the double set of doors, they looked into a dim room lit only by fire imps perched in a few wall sconces. The floor here was covered with tiles of rich orange and the walls and ceilings were covered with murals of the goddess’s life in the same bright colors as the rest of the caravanserai’s living quarters.
To Scirye’s right was a large picture of an ancient emperor trying to drink from a cup even as its contents turned into ribbons of steam about his head. It was the tale of the ruler who had promised Nanaia that if she would give him good weather so he could build irrigation canals, he would give part of the newly created fields to her temple. And when he had conveniently forgotten his oath, he found one day that liquid would hiss away as a steam whether it touched his lips or hands. It was said he had gone mad before he died of thirst.
On the opposite wall was the image of a man in gorgeous robes looking amazed as he stared at a mirror and fingered the huge horns growning from his head. That was the story of the wealthy man who had sworn to Nanaia that he would tithe a medical clinic if she would only save a very valuable breeding bull that was sick. When his animal recovered, this man, too, had had a lapse of memory—only to find one morning that a pair of horns had sprouted from his head. Everywhere in the shrine were reminders of what happened to those who did not keep their word to Nanaia.
How would Nanaia punish her if she failed to carry out her end of the bargain—even though the odds against success seemed so overwhelming?
Bayang had been watching her. “Just remember what I told you before: When Nanaia does something, she doesn’t always take your interests into account.”
It was on the tip of Scirye’s tongue to ask to go someplace else. But eager to show them her family shrine, Roxanna pulled at Scirye’s wrist.
“Please, Lady, don’t be shy. Come see the goddess.”
It was either fall or follow Roxanna, so Scirye stumbled forward on stiff legs until she was standing before the four-foot-high statue of Nanaia astride her lion. Scirye shuddered. It was Nanaia the Avenger.
When they depicted Nanaia, the Kushans showed the gentler side of the goddess—the one who helped crops to grow and kept order among humans as if they were unruly children. But this Sogdian statue was the touchier Nanaia who punished those who broke the law or their oaths—like the one Scirye had made.
Scaled armor had replaced the soft gowns of the Kushans’ statues and the heavenly flames about Nanaia’s head and shoulders looked like swords and arrowheads. Gone was the elegant tiara. Instead, there was a helmet with a wide brim that curled downward. In one hand, She held a staff with a horse’s head. In her other hands, She carried the spear, the bow, and the arrows that She used to carry out her vengeance.
Pressing her palms flat in front of her, Roxanna bowed formally three times as Kles fluttered down from Scirye’s shoulder to the stones.
“Exquisite, simply exquisite,” the griffin said softly. “I see the Persian influence in the carving of the face. It’s so…”
“Stern,” Scirye said, gazing upward. This was the face of a goddess who punished oath br
eakers like the thirsty emperor and the rich man with horns.
“Kushan art likes to depict the kindnesses that the goddess does, but the Sogdians worship another aspect of Nana,” Kles murmured.
“You Kushans are secure in your power,” Roxanna said sincerely, “but we Sogdians often live among strangers and far away from our own kind. We prosper because everyone knows we deal fairly.”
“So your goddess reminds you to keep your word,” Bayang murmured. “And She also serves as a warning to your customers of what will happen if they break a contract with you.”
For a moment, it seemed the statue’s blank eyes were gazing right at Scirye and she remembered how she had stood back at the museum with the dead and injured all about her, smelling the blood and looking through the dust wreathing that other statue of Nanaia and promisng Nanaia she would pay any cost if the goddess would make her into an Avenger too.
You’re being silly, Scirye told herself. After all, it’s only a statue.
Roxanna had extended her arms with her palms upward as a suppliant. “I ask thy patience with me, O Nana,” she began in formal Sogdian. “Thou seizeth the lawbreaker like a lion, and that is Nana. Terrible is thy fury, and that is also Nana. Thou foldeth the babe and the old crone into thy dark embrace, and that, too, is still Nana….”
Scirye could not help closing her eyes and extending her arms just as Roxanna did before she began her own prayer. I’m doing my best to get the ring back, Scirye thought. But don’t you want someone else who’s older and stronger and smarter?
Suddenly there was a grinding noise. When Roxanna gave a gasp, Scirye opened her eyes. Nanaia was slowly extending the arrows toward her, triangular points first. At they drew nearer, the arrowheads seemed to swell larger and larger until they filled her field of vision.
The shrine had been very warm, but suddenly she was shivering in a cold, bitter wind. With a shock, she realized she was no longer in the shrine but upon the slope of a mountain. Below her was a strange city. The buildings were all in ruins, the roofs collapsed, the walls disintegrating. And far in the distance was a mountain roughly shaped like a lion’s head.