"With no offense to the holy one or to Dashti," said Batu, "this isn't the time to bet our lives, our entire realm, on uncertain foretelling or mucker faith. We can't hesitate with this monster, my lord. His assault is terrible. His warriors attack night and day. All say it's as though he never sleeps. We must hit Khasar from the front with every warrior we have."
The khan nodded. "First, Dashti, tell me your thoughts."
I smiled at him. I couldn't help it. He makes me smile. "In battle, we'd have no chance. As the holy one said, with Carthen as his ally, no one can defeat him by means of arms. But Under is bound to be angered by the betrayal.
With Under s blessing, I think you can trick Khasar."
"How do you propose we trick him?"
I didn't know, to be honest. I still don't. I just felt coolness and motion inside, like underground rivers running through me, and a sureness that it could be done. Something to do with Under, some trickery involving animals.
Perhaps the very wolf Lord Khasar uses to kill warriors at night would turn on him. And somehow, we could make that happen. And then I remembered what Saren once said about Khasar, how he ripped out the throat of a goat. I'd thought she was just tower-addled at the time, but I begin to wonder what she may know.
"Well?" said the town chief. "We're waiting for your cunning plan."
I looked at the shaman for help, but he shrugged. Apparently the sheep bones didn't tell him anything more.
I cleared my throat. "Let me think about it. I --" One of the chiefs laughed. The chief of animals, I think it was.
The chief of camel dung and jackasses. I'm sitting in my room under the horsehair blanket, and I feel that laugh still crawling all over me.
Later
After last I wrote, I begged Cook for a moment with Saren. I took her into the sugar closet, where I feel suffocated but she seems to calm. Cook used to keep it locked, the sugar safe from prying fingers, but this one's empty now, what with traders from the south avoiding the Eight Realms since Khasar began his warring. I took Saren's hands.
I met her eyes. She's more relaxed of late, but she set to blinking when she heard me mention Khasar's name.
"My lady, once you told me that Khasar is a beast, that you saw him tear a goat's throat with his teeth. I need to know what you meant. Please tell me."
Her eyes went so wide I thought she'd never blink again, and she shook her head.
"He's here, my lady. His armies are camped outside the wall. They'll do here what they did to Titor's Garden if we don't --"
That was stupidity on my part. I should've kept that news silent, because then she set to shaking and moaning.
"He's here, he's coming in for me, I knew he would, he won't let me be, I'd rather be dead --"
"Please, my lady, help me stop him. You know something about Khasar that no one else knows, don't you?
What is it?"
"I can't remember," she said.
I was cruel then. I should've spared her the memory, but I pressed. I reminded her of how I've cared for her, how I stayed with her when all others left. I took her shoulders and held her, and I demanded, I ordered her as she would order me.
"By the Ancestors, Saren, tell me!"
"I'm trying, Dashti! I am. I'm trying. I try to think but my thoughts slip out of my hands and everything's darkness and..."
She started to cry, which made me realize I hadn't seen her cry in weeks. My poor lady, who is just chaff in the breeze. I held her as I used to do when she was tower-addled; I rocked her and sang the calming song, "Oh, moth on a wind, oh, leaf on a stream." Patience, I told myself, though the knowledge of Khasar's nearness pressed on me, like being out in the heaviest of cold.
I placed my hand on her forehead, and I wove the calming song into the tune for Goda's prayer. The goddess of sleep knows the mind.
After a time, Saren shuddered but stopped crying. Her eyes closed, and she leaned against me as if too tired to sit. While I was singing, My Lord the cat nosed the door ajar and leaped onto her lap, purring under her hand.
She took a deep breath, leaned into me more fully, and told the story she'd been keeping for seven years. "I was twelve years old and was visiting Lord Khasar with my father. His house was vast and cold, like my father's but darker, heavier. We ate a huge feast. I knew my father had hopes of betrothing me to Khasar, but I didn't pay any mind. It seemed as though it had nothing really to do with me. They talked and I ate and played with a little dog that begged under the table. Sometimes I felt Khasar watching me.
"I had a room to myself while we stayed in his house. I thought it was such fun at first. I'd never been alone before, and I could run around the room and climb on the furniture and not worry about my maids and my father and what they thought of me. But at sundown, one of Khasar's men came to my door. His name was Chinua. He was Khasar's war chief and had constantly been at his side. He said my father and Khasar sent him to fetch me."
Her forehead furrowed, but she didn't open her eyes. "I was afraid," she stated simply. "I thought my father would have me do something humiliating before Khasar, like make me dance while they laughed. Or he might slap me, just for show. He never slapped me when we were alone, only in front of people. While I didn't dare refuse my father's call, I did wonder why Chinua seemed full of some secret joke.
"He took me to a courtyard outside Lord Khasar's house, hidden from the eyes of windows. My father wasn't there. Lord Khasar was. He called me Saren. He said, 'Fitting that a girl named for moonlight should see me as only the moon knows me. What do you say, Chinua, is it time to show myself to this moon?' He smiled as the sun finished setting, then he took off all his clothes until he was naked."
"Naked?" This part surprised me. To be naked outside is utter submission, and to be unclothed before anyone besides family is humiliation. "That doesn't sound like Khasar. Why would he willingly debase himself?"
Saren shook her head. "It was different with him. It was as though he was naked to embarrass me. It was so strange how Khasar just stood there and laughed at my discomfort. So strange, and I was too afraid to do anything, even to look away. Then the last of the sunlight faded, and I realized why he'd taken off his clothes. It was so they wouldn't rip." She shook. "In the darkness he changed, Dashti. Right in front of me, Khasar changed from a man into a beast. A wolf."
She was quiet for a time and I was glad she was. I had to make sense of this in my own head. In one way it seemed impossible, and in another I felt as if I'd known this all along.
"At first I thought he meant to kill me," Saren continued. "But then I noticed a goat on a tether, and so did Khasar the wolf. Chinua held my head and made me watch while the wolf devoured the animal. I was sure I'd be next, but after the goat was a wrecked carcass, Chinua moved us behind a fire. The wolf ignored us, sniffed the air, and ran off into the woods.
"Chinua laughed and laughed, and while he laughed he told me things. That his lord had gone off to hunt in the woods until sunup. That his lord had made quite a bargain with the desert shamans and now was the greatest hunter in all the realms. He said, weren't we lucky to be the only ones alive to know Lord Khasar's secret? Once his lord had allowed another girl to witness his transformation, but she'd told a boy. Afterward, both were found in a pile of their own innards, and if I ever told a soul, I'd be the next goat."
Saren's eyes fluttered, then she closed them again. "I saw Lord Khasar the next morning, and he smiled at me and touched my braids and told me I was beautiful. He'd eaten that goat and hunted other things in the woods as well, and yet when I looked in his eyes, I knew he's never full."
"He killed our tower guards," I said, realizing it as I spoke. "As a wolf, he attacked them, and all those guards with their weapons couldn't kill him. You knew all along and yet you didn't dare tell me."
She sat up and opened her eyes, speaking straight at me with no fear. "I'm telling you now. Khasar becomes a beast at night. In the dark, he's a wolf. I want you to know. I guess he'll kill me like the goat now that I've told, but I don't care anymore. Even if I have to die, I want it to be over. I'm tired of being afraid."