THEY headed south, pausing only long enough for Shannivar to switch her saddle from the sorrel mare to Eriu. Unexpected rescue, a glimpse of Tabilit, her son in her arms, and the joy of having Eriu once more gave Shannivar a burst of energy, but it did not last long. The pace was easy compared to the gallop-and-trot of a war-party under pressure, but she felt as limp as one of the bags used in a Gathering game, flung about and trodden underfoot until it was little more than a rag. Her shoulder had gone beyond hurting. She tucked her fingers on that side into her sash to minimize jarring. That left only one hand with which to hold Chinggis and the reins. She had rarely been so glad for Eriu’s responsiveness. He seemed to sense her desire even before she shifted her weight.
This was no time for weakness, she told herself. Saramark would keep going. So would she.
Chinggis no longer protested the tightness of Shannivar’s hold. She felt as if he were keeping her in the saddle, not the other way around. Eventually, when they caught up with Shannivar’s party and Zaraya took the boy on her own horse, Shannivar was shivering continually as one wave of feverishness after another swept her.
By the time the sun kissed the western hills, the last of Shannivar’s strength was failing along with the light. Fatigue and fever blurred her senses. Her bones craved rest, but she could not summon the clarity to find a suitable campsite and signal a halt. It was easier to just keep going, her body rocking with Eriu’s strides.
By slow degrees, Kharemikhar assumed leadership of the party. He issued no orders, he simply reined his silver roan to a halt. Eriu slowed, one ear cocked back at Shannivar. Around her, the other riders dismounted and began tending their horses. She sat, too sick and weary to move, as Eriu rubbed his sweat-crusted head against his knees.
Someone, it might have been Kharemikhar, eased her down from Eriu’s back. She felt hands guiding her into the dimness of a tent, lowering her onto something soft, folding back her sleeve, and then bathing her shoulder. Voices murmured in concern. She should know them. Her eyes would not work properly. When she tried to speak, only a sigh passed her chapped lips.
She was cold, so cold . . .
Someone lifted her head and pressed the rim of a cup against her mouth. An astringent tang stung her nose. “Here, this will help.” The voice was a woman’s, one she ought to know, one who meant her kindness and not harm.
Her throat was too swollen for speech. She turned her face away.
“Shannivar, you must drink.” This time, a man spoke. By his tone, he would tolerate no opposition. When he lifted the cup to her lips, she accepted a sip and managed to swallow it. The liquid soothed her gullet and warmed her belly.
Hands touched her shoulder, pressing something wet and warm against the poisoned cuts. The pain eased, as did her shivering. Darkness rose up around her, cushioned her, lulled her. Her muscles went slack.
“Let her sleep,” the man said.
Shannivar opened her eyes to find herself lying on a pile of blankets in a trail tent. Chinggis sat cross-legged beside her, watching her with a solemn expression. For a long moment, all she could do was to stare at him and he at her. Then he threw himself on top of her, hands twisting in her vest. For some reason, she was no longer wearing a shirt.
When she raised her arms to hold him tight, the movement sent jolts of pain through her injured shoulder. A gasp escaped her. Brow furrowed, Chinggis drew back.
“Mami?”
“It’s all right, little eagle.” Mustering a smile, she cradled him with her good arm.
She remembered the arrival of Kharemikhar and his riders . . . Eriu trotting up to her . . . the bargain with the Gelonian captain . . . riding through the hills . . . Now the memories came clearer. When they halted last night, she had been feverish with the scorpion-man’s venom. Zaraya had offered her a medicinal tisane and someone had poulticed her shoulder.
“Auntie Zaru!” Chinggis sat up. “Mami’s awake!”
Zaraya crept into the tent and squatted beside Shannivar. “You’re better.”
Gritting her teeth against the rush of pain, Shannivar sat up. A wad of moistened herbs slid off her shoulder. It must have been there some time, for it was cold.
“Why did you let me sleep so long?” Shannivar grumbled. “It’s well past time we should be on our way.”
“Indeed. You have slept for two days and two nights, as well you should, for you looked half-dead when Kharemikhar brought you to us.”
Shannivar opened her mouth to say that was not possible for her to have slept so long, but her lassitude was proof enough. Craning her neck, she inspected the wounds on her bare shoulder. They had not yet closed and the edges were inflamed, but the surrounding skin looked clear. The infection had not spread.
“Are you well enough to ride?” Zaraya asked. “That is, after you’ve had something to eat? Kharemikhar went hunting, so there’s meat.”
Shannivar’s stomach roused with an audible growl. Laughing, Zaraya backed out of the tent and returned a short while later with a cup brimming with shredded, braised gazelle meat in a gravy thickened with pounded barley. Shannivar had never tasted anything so wonderful.
“Slowly now,” Zaraya cautioned.
Shannivar forced herself to pause between mouthfuls, lest she make herself ill. Chinggis sat on her lap. When she had finished, Zaraya wrapped her shoulder before helping her put on her shirt.
“May Tabilit look upon you with favor for your kindness,” Shannivar murmured.
“Chinggis is an easy child. He listens carefully. I have loved him since the first time you placed him in my care. I do not know what he endured during his captivity, but his spirit is resilient. He is a true son of the steppe.”
Shannivar remembered that Zaraya was unmarried and had no children of her own. “No,” she said, touching the bandage, “I meant this.”
“Oh! That was none of my doing. I know only camp medicine and tending horses. Kharemikhar prepared the herbs.”
Kharemikhar? “I did not know men of the Ptarmigan clan were learned in such things.”
“I do not believe they are, in general. Kharu’s brother trained as an enaree and I suppose that is how he learned it. The brother died when their kishlak was overrun. Did you not know?”
Shannivar felt ashamed that she had measured Kharemikhar’s character only as he had first appeared to her, a braggart and a bully.
Zaraya paused at the tent entrance. “Don’t say anything. He would not want you to know.”
Shannivar followed the Badger clan woman into the camp. Riders were breaking down tents, loading packs and saddling their horses. Several of them wished her a bright day, and she heard their relief at having her return to them. They had wasted enough time between her foolish adventure and her illness.
Shannivar drew Eriu to a halt at the top of the last hill looking down on the summering-place of the Golden Eagle clan. She rubbed her shoulder, wincing at the tenderness. The last day’s ride had opened up the punctures.
The dharlak occupied a teardrop-shaped valley, a broad northwestern expanse that narrowed as it angled southeast. The land itself had not changed since those long summers when she was a child. Everything was as she remembered it, the lake, the sloping pastures, the crumbling piles of stone so ancient that not even the enarees knew their purpose or who had built them. Where once herds had grazed on summer’s bounty or drunk at the lake’s edge, now she saw only scattered goats and camels, and a few horses too old to be ridden. The circle of jorts was also much reduced in size.
At the base of the hill, a mounted sentry lifted his bow in greeting. Shannivar recognized Jingutzhen’s father, Timurlenk, who did not yet know of his son’s death. The brightness of the day dimmed.
Behind her, Kharemikhar’s roan shook its head, jingling the bridle rings. Shannivar gave him an encouraging smile.
“Surely Saramark herself must have laid her hand on this place, it is so fair,” he said.
“It is not what it was,” she replied, “as must be true of the dharlak of your own clan.” Still, it was good to look upon this place, to remember what it had been and what it might yet be, to be reminded of what she fought for and not merely what she fought against.
She nudged Eriu forward. He pricked his ears, scenting familiar pastures, and began the descent. Kharemikhar followed, then Zaraya leading the sorrel mare with Chinggis on her back, and the rest of Kharemikhar’s riders.
Timurlenk booted his horse, a rusty brown mare, toward them. “Shannivar daughter of Ardellis! You are most welcome!”
“May your arrows never miss.” Shannivar introduced Kharemikhar before politely asking, “How fares my uncle?”
“Bitterness sits upon my tongue, for Esdarash son of Akhisarak took a lung fever and passed into the Pastures of the Sky in the dark of the Moon of Birds. Bennorakh performed the needful rites. But where is Alsanobal, who must now take his father’s place? Where is my son and the others who rode with you?”
“Friend of my uncle, father of my friend, we will speak more of these matters when all are gathered,” Shannivar replied formally.
Timurlenk went motionless on his horse. For a moment, it seemed as if he did not breathe, as if his heart had stilled. Shannivar had no words, no possible comfort. It was a hard thing to lose a parent or grandparent. Everything died in the fullness of Tabilit’s time. But to lose a child, a son, a son as strong and brave as Jingutzhen, a son on whom the entire clan had relied . . . Shannivar closed her eyes to shut out the old man’s anguish, but it seemed that everywhere her mind looked, she saw only death. Death after death after death. Grandmother and Mirrimal, Rhuzenjin and Jingutzhen. And now her uncle and clan chief Esdarash.
The news of her uncle’s passing had caught Shannivar unprepared. She had seen so many of her own people die in battle, so the natural death of one old man shouldn’t have affected her so. Esdarash, like Grandmother, had seemed as lasting as the sky, as the earth. She had never known a time without him. She could barely remember her own father, killed in one of the perennial clashes with the Gelon.
They followed Timurlenk down to the dharlak, where he left the others and went quietly to his wife’s jort. No explanations were needed; every member of the Golden Eagle clan knew immediately what had happened once they saw the old man’s blank features and the absence of his son. The rest of the community welcomed Shannivar and her party, although in a subdued mood. In Alsanobal’s absence, the clan had elected old Taraghay, Timurlenk’s brother, to act as chieftain for those matters that could not wait. Yvanne, chief Esdarash’s widow, who had never been friendly to Shannivar, exclaimed over Chinggis as if he were her own grandson.
Bennorakh stood aside from the others, in the manner of enarees. When Shannivar looked in his direction, he raised his dream stick in greeting. The strings of sacred stones and amulets of carved horn rattled. Like all his kind, he wore a long deerskin robe over his loose trousers. Faded symbols of power covered the yoke and shoulders of the robe. His cheeks, once moon-round, looked gaunt. He must have spent long days in fasting as he wandered through dreamsmoke visions.
Shannivar studied him, remembering how intimidating he had once seemed. Now she saw his loneliness, his apartness, and the warmth in his eyes as he nodded to her. They might never be friends, but their journey to the territory of the Snow Bear had given them the understanding of shared experience. He too had seen the rending of Tabilit’s Veil. He too had known Zevaron.
Leaving Chinggis in the care of Yvanne, Shannivar walked up to Bennorakh and bowed respectfully, her good hand tapping her chest over her heart. “May your sight be ever keen.”
“Come with me.” Bennorakh led the way to his jort. He lifted the door flap and indicated that she should enter. Moving carefully to avoid stepping on the threshold, Shannivar ducked inside. The familiar smells of the camel’s hair felt, sandalwood, and the lingering pong of dreamsmoke greeted her.
The enaree’s jort was very much like any other with its felt-covered lattice walls. Layers of worn carpet covered the earth. Set against the far wall, beside chests with intricate drawers and piles of cushions, was Grandmother’s wooden bed, which had come to the shaman after the old woman’s death. Coals glowed under a coating of ash in the three-legged brazier. A bronze bowl and an incense burner sat atop a low table, along with other utensils Shannivar could not identify.
She sat where Bennorakh pointed, on a pillow covered with embroidered felt, its designs so worn they could not be deciphered. He poured out a cup of tea from a pot set on the brazier, offered it to her, and lowered himself to a second cushion.
“Shannivar daughter of Ardellis, may your dreams bring good omens. My heart delights to see you once more.”
Shannivar almost dropped the cup. In all their dealings, Bennorakh had never expressed affection for anyone. She recovered herself enough to reply, “May Tabilit and Onjhol guide you safely between the two worlds,” meaning those of men and of women.
He waited while she sipped the tea, flavored with salt and slightly rancid butter. It slid down her throat.
“Bennorakh,” she began, “we have been comrades and friends as well, I hope. What have you seen? What is to come?”
“We will speak of these things in their proper time,” he said. “First, I must treat your wound.”
Shannivar’s good hand went unthinkingly to her shoulder. Beneath her shirt, the skin felt cold and swollen. “Leave it. It’s not getting worse and there is much else to be done.”
“You cannot lead your riders against the forces of Olash-giyn-Olash with the seeds of treachery in your own body. Yes, the outer injury gives the semblance of healing, but do not be deceived. This poison is not only physical but spiritual.”
Fear swept through her. She was too weary and sick at heart to struggle against it. How could mere human strength prevail against what even now came freezing and burning from the north?
“Give it nothing!” Bennorakh cried, his voice piercing her lassitude. “This thing feeds on despair! Do you truly believe that Tabilit would abandon her chosen people?”
“I—I don’t know.”
To her surprise, Bennorakh smiled. “Then for a time, my faith must carry us both.”
At the enaree’s instruction, Shannivar lowered herself to the worn rug. Her joints ached and a sonorous hum vibrated through her bones. She tried to relax, to open herself to the healing. The swelling in her shoulder throbbed in time with her pulse.
Bennorakh placed a bronze bowl containing herbs and incense chips on the bed of coals in his brazier. When she tried to draw the smoke into her lungs, it set off a spasm of coughing. Her eyes watered. Her head felt so light, she was sure Bennorakh had added more ingredients to the brazier, perhaps the dried roots or resins that produced visions. He began chanting, and she drifted on the rise and fall of his voice. Even though she could not understand the words, they soothed her as much as the utterances of the Qr priest had terrified her.
Shannivar felt the warmth of Bennorakh’s hand through the fabric of her sleeve, as if his physical fingers skimmed her skin while his magical fingers gently probed through layer after etheric layer. Beneath that touch lay a gnarl of putrefaction. She felt it as an icy fever, a swirl of sleet and embers.
With her inner sight, she watched a spectral image, more like the roots of a living plant than the fingers of a hand, reach inside her. Thread-like tendrils followed the path of the poison from where it had entered her skin. They penetrated muscle and nerve and blood. Sap, glowing gold and green, pulsed along them.
Her eyes no longer stung from the incense-laden smoke. Breath whispered, easy as silk, through her lungs. The chill in her flesh thawed. Vitality and a sense of well-being suffused her.
From outside the jort came the normal sounds of the dharlak, women singing, children playing, the distant whinny of a horse, the ting! ting! of the smiths at their work, and the rhythmic sounds of women beating wool for felt. She wanted to be outside, under Tabilit’s wide sky, with a bow in her hands and Eriu beneath her. But one did not rush from the presence of an enaree while there were still matters of importance to discuss.
The air in the jort was laden with the residue of dreamsmoke and incense. She sat up and waited for Bennorakh to speak first.
“I have done what I can for you, Shannivar daughter of Ardellis. When you left us many moons ago, it was to summon the riders of the steppe to war. Why have you now returned?”
Shannivar told the tale briefly. “We cannot prevail by prowess and skill, as we have against the Gelon. This is no mortal army. We need your help.” When she described her plan for a council of enarees, he understood immediately.
“It is a thing of wisdom, this council,” he said in a thoughtful tone. “Even without the prophecy, this matter is our rightful concern. Too long have we enarees held ourselves apart from the affairs of ordinary people. The time has come when we must fight together or else perish together.”
Shannivar was more than a little relieved to have his support, for if he said a thing was to be done, then no one, not even the clan chieftain, would oppose it.
“We will do what we can,” Bennorakh continued, “although we are few and scattered. Oh yes, we have seen the ancient evil arise beyond the Broken Mountains. Well do I recall the things you and I witnessed in the land of the Snow Bear clan. The smoke of dreams has shown much more, the past as well as what is and what is to come.”
The enaree’s voice went vague, as if he were speaking across a vastness of time as well as distance. “Not all the bows have been drawn, nor all the arrows flown. Olash-giyn-Olash threatens more than the steppe. Thus, more than our own riders must oppose it.”
Shannivar nodded. “We must also decide the fate of the captured Qr priest. Kharemikhar would have finished him,” she said, “but I hope the enaree council can make use of him.”
“I will see this man.”
The scorpion-man had survived the journey, weak and silent. Upon their arrival at the dharlak, he had been laid out under a screen of woven reeds, for no one was willing to take him into their jort. From time to time, one or another of the older women would bring him barley gruel.
Bennorakh squatted on his haunches beside the priest, calmly studying him. The blackened skin on the injured man’s forehead, the charred shape of a scorpion, still oozed. Shannivar stood beside the enaree, half-expecting him to be angry, to bid her not meddle in what was not her affair. To her surprise, he glanced up at her and asked, “Tell me what you see.”
“He does not seem so fearsome as when the Scorpion god acted through him.”
“I agree.” Bennorakh resumed his scrutiny of the priest. “Whatever demon once possessed this man has departed.”
“Perhaps it had no further use for him.” Shannivar made no effort to hide her disgust.
“Are we not all servants of the gods?” Bennorakh asked with unexpected mildness. “Look at his face and tell me if he was always evil.”
Shannivar did not want to examine the scorpion-man too closely. She did not know what she might see in those slack features, those sunken eyes. If what Bennorakh said was true, she must stop thinking of him as the scorpion-man and recognize his humanity. Or try to.
Until that moment, the Qr priest had not responded to his visitors. As Shannivar gazed into his face, he roused. Intelligence sparked in his eyes, but nothing of the power that had once inhabited him. Fresh blood dripped from his ears and nose.
The priest’s lips moved. Shannivar thought he was struggling to speak. If he were Azkhantian, he would beg to have his life ended, rather than live on like this. She had killed Gelon, but always in battle, never as they lay helpless and destitute in spirit.
What hope did this poor wretch have? No Sky Pastures waited for him. If the dwellers in stone had their own heavenly cities, they were far away. None of his own people would perform the funeral rites for him, according to their own customs. What would happen to his spirit, then? Would he wander until the last star had fallen from the sky, or would his god punish him for his failures with an eternity of despair?
Shannivar got to her feet. Once things had been so simple. The enemies of the steppe had been predictable. The Gelon came in waves, more frequently since Ar-Cinath-Gelon had ascended the Lion Throne, but even then, their motives had been clear, their tactics unchanging. They marched or rode in their onager-drawn chariots; they fought with sword and spear. No gods, scorpion or otherwise, haunted them.
Now it seemed the world boiled over with supernatural adversaries. Things walked the earth that were not human, or not entirely so. A man she once loved—and still did—led an army of creatures that should not exist outside of nightmares. By comparison, what was the fate of one dying priest?