Judith Tarr Silk Roads And Shadows

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long tread of a camel, and wanted his men's reports.
"Why, cousin? To hear what you just said."
Another possible future, Bryennius thought. But it did seem hard and damnably
unfair that even as his life expanded into a range of possibilities,
Alexandra's shrank and twisted. She was driven now by two quests: for the
silkworms she'd pledged her life (and his) to bring back to Byzantium, and now
this inexplicable fascination with the Kingdom of
Shambhala. Discreet questions had told him that it lay to the south. Well, if
they survived that long, they could always return from Ch'in by the southerly
trade routes. From what he'd heard, they were almost worse than the ones he'd
already crossed.
When they stopped to rest, he would tell her everything that
Suleiman and the other traders had told him.
Once she had all the facts, she could occupy that complex, fertile'tnind on
something considerably more profitable than pagan superstitions.
Days later, they climbed down from the foothills, reached the ordinary level
of the sand, and kept on begreater-than descending. Here the air was thick and
hot, though so backslash dry it scorched the throat and nose. Sunlight pressed
backslash upon their backs until they were surprised that the long, black
shadows that they cast were not hunched over: from the weight of it. The
coarse sand cast the heat back up at them. The camels protested at each step,
and three backslash horses had to be killed when they collapsed, unable to
walk a step farther.
"I could almost believe," Father Basil said, "that some demon had pressed his
thumb into the earth and gouged out this place. The Land of Fire indeed!"
"Please, don't joke about it!" Alexandra begged.
"This one rejoices that when he came here the first time, it was winter," said
Li Shou.
Bryennius slitted his eyes. The air was a shimmer of heat. Was the shadow up
ahead just another illusion or was that smoke? He pointed it out to Alexandra.
She stared too. "Smoke," she pronounced finally.
"And not just smoke, either. Look at the way the light moves. After Haraldr
found me, I don't think
I can ever forget how riders look, coming toward one in a desert. There are
riders coming this way."
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She adjusted her swordbelt and signaled for her
guardsmen. Haraldr rode in, his axe at hand.
Prince Shou closed in on her other side.
Bryennius spared time for a sly smile.
"Tell the men to arm," Bryennius ordered one of the men from Kashgar.
Brigands would not touch them if they showed too great a force. An army,
however . . . "Tell them also to remember that we are traders, not a war band.
We don't attack unless fired upon."
As the sun beat down on them, they waited, straining their eyes until the
shimmer blurred and re-formed into a band of riders. "Horse archers," muttered
Father Basil.
"Kazaks, probably," said the Ch'in prince.
"They ride magnificently."
For an instant, both Alexandra and Bryennius glared at him. This was no time
for artistic judgments.
"Friends?" Bryennius asked one of the traders from
Kashgar.
The man shrugged. The riders drew closer, and their own archers nocked arrows,
waiting.
They could stand like this until someone's judgment
Susan
Shwartz snapped, or they all collapsed from the sun, Alexandra thought. She
knew that as princess, it was her part to remain in such safety as there was,
until her fate-and the fate of all the other noncombatants-was decided. She
also knew that it was her fate to resent such arrangements. In her lost and
unlamented convent, she had seen two cats stalking one another. They had
crouched motionless, neither taking its eyes from the other, neither moving,
until she dropped a pebble. Then the spell was broken, and each strolled off
in a different direction. The distraction enabled her to break up what might
have been quite a fight, though nothing compared with the bloodshed (her own
included) that might come from a misstep here.
Like everything else since her escape from the kuraburan, this did not seem
real to her. It was all illusion, the abbot's voice whispered in her head. But
she didn't want it to be illusion. She didn't want to be some esoteric being.
She was human, and she wanted her hopes and fears back, needed them if she
were not to throw herself away through caprice, indifference, or despair.
She remembered Kashgar, and how she had ridden into it like a princess, her
hair flowing down her back.
Well, there was no wind here to make it fly behind her
(and it was probably too matted to do anything of the kind), but she could
try. Moving her hands slowly toward her head, she pulled off her hat and let
her hair tumble. Homer might write all he cared to about Amazons: no war party
she had ever heard of included women.
A man who looked much like her hosts in
Kashgar detached himself from the troop and rode forward.
"I am Ibrahim ibn Mulhalhil."
"Now that," rumbled Haraldr, "is what I call
a brave man!"
Alexandra touched heels delicately to her horse's flanks and moved slowly
forward. Behind her, she heard appalled hisses.
silk roads and shadows
"Bryennius," she whispered through her teeth, have the dispatches. Come . . .
but slowly,"
"Suleiman Mis'ar ibn Mulhalhil calls me brother," Bryennius said.
The man looked skeptical. He stiffened, and the warriors behind him tensed
too.
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"I have letters," Bryennius added, his voice rising a little.
"Will you let me bring them to you?" Alexandra called.
Her higher, clear voice carried, unmistakably that of a woman. She took the
letters from her cousin's hand and walked her horse toward the Turpan
merchant, holding them out to him as she might hold meat out to a growling
watchdog. From what she had seen of them, they were in Arabic. They might say
anything, including, "Put to death the bearer of these instructions."
Deliberately, the man opened the letters and read them, then stared at
Bryennius and, a little more abash-edly, at herself. She forced herself to
look around as if he could not possibly decide to harm them. Today it was
difficult to tell where the mountain peaks ended and the clouds began. Above
the clouds, the sky looked almost indigo. And what she saw drifting behind the
riders was most certainly smoke. Despite the dryness of the air, she felt
sweat run down her sides. Her heart pounded as it had done in the high passes.
Sights, smells, and sounds had never been as intense, or as precious to her.
"I ask your pardon," said ibn Mulhalhil after a time. "My house and all in it
are yours."
Alexandra made her horse back up and she put her hat back on. No need to court
sunstroke, or embarrass the man by reminding him of her presence.
Ask if there was a battle, she wished at Bryennius.
He fell into low-voiced conversation with the man, at one point grimacing in
disgust. Then each saluted the other in the Abbasid fashion of hand to lips
and brow before returning to his own troop.
"Some of the tribes here have been raiding
Turpan more than usual. Mosques have been desecrated. The
Susan
Shuuartz tribes-they say they were here before Islam and will be here long
after they have driven it into the sand and made
Turpan into a waste like the ruins down the road,"
said Bryennius. "There was plague too-high fever, convulsions, but it quit
when they found ... he doesn't want to talk about what they found. Some sort
of idol with many arms and skulls."
"Like the attempt on my nephew's life!" cried
Alexandra. Risking her life had won her back
her ability to feel. Once again, she could smell magic, close at hand. She
touched her talismans and tried to sense what might lie up ahead. It all but
made her gag.
There had indeed been war in Turpan, and the town had survived it by a hair. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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