“What troubles you?” she crooned in the voice that they all swore was as sweet as litchi. (When they had called her the Shadowed One, however, they had condemned that very same voice as reedy and shrill; best not think of that.) “You are not ill; we shall rest here; and soon you shall return to your home.”
The mention of home made the wailing break out afresh. That was it, then. The Hsiung-nu ladies had not yet arrived, and now this flock of affrighted palace ladies feared that they never would. In that case, perforce, it would be their obligation to accompany Silver Snow to the court of the Hsiung-nu, from which, they were sure, there could be no return.
“I shall die!” shrieked one woman.
“Did you see the grass?” another lamented. “Green, ever green, like the tombs of exiles, watered with tears.”
“We will never see our homes again!”
“They will carry us off to the West, and we will never again see the Palace, or a garden, or my little courtyard with the golden carp in the pool. And they will make us eat our meat raw!”
Had their fear not been so real, and so likely to drive them into a frenzy, Silver Snow might have found it comical. But she was tired and apprehensive herself, and she wanted only to rest and compose her thoughts before she wrote out an account of her days for the men whom she revered most in all the world.
“This is my work, Elder Sister.” Blessed Willow burrowed into her baggage for the herbs that Li Ling had given her, hastened to the fire, and began to steep a soothing decoction. Her eyes met her mistress’, and Silver Snow nodded.
At least what few trees remained were stunted, flimsy things that would not hold the weight of a lady who sought to avoid worse by hanging herself with her silken sash. “We are too close to the river here, too close to the rocks,” she murmured. She would have to have the guard doubled around the ladies’ quarters until they turned back toward Ch’ang-an.
She emerged from her tent, thankful, at least, that their terror forestalled her ladies from criticizing her going out among armed men without proper supervision. Seeking the captain of her guard, she found him in attendance on Prince Vughturoi, who pointed west and gestured, but who broke off at her approach. Silver Snow nodded to him, then explained her wishes.
The guard captain abased himself, then ran off to do her bidding. The prince, however, held his ground and regarded hei»with that expressionless stare of his. “There is no illness?” he asked.
“None, save fear,” she declared. “I seek to prevent the fear driving some fragile soul mad.”
She glanced out in the direction toward which the prince had been gazing. “Our people approach,” he deigned to tell her.
How keen his sight must be! She could see nothing except, yes, surely, that was it, a puff of dust, of less size against the immensity of the land and sky than a gnat. She sighed. Uncouth the women of the Hsiung-nu might be, but, at least, they would be used to the land.
“I shall be glad when they arrive,” Silver Snow ventured to say. For the first time, the prince smiled, the merest quirk of one side of his mouth. Silver Snow withdrew, feeling that she had won a major victory.
She returned to her tent, where a more ignominious and far louder battle raged, and did her best to calm her overwrought ladies. Long into the night she and Willow labored; it was only when they had put the last of the gulping, shivering ladies to bed and hidden any knife that they might find that she and Willow had time quietly to drink some warmed rice wine themselves, eat but a morsel or two, and, finally, try to sleep.
Still, the ladies’ wailing had plucked at Silver Snow’s nerves to such an extent that she slept but shallowly. Her sleep was full of dreams of horses and blowing dust, a weird whistling sound, and blood dripping onto the land while, somewhere in the distance, came loud, cruel laughter. She woke, sweating, and breathed quiet thanks into the shaking hands that she held cupped before her lips.
Then she sat up, as stiff as if she had undertaken a day’s ride after a year’s inaction. The fire had burnt itself out; she might summon a servant to rekindle it, or do so herself, if she wanted to wake Willow, who slept deeply and enviably, with only a twitch, from time to time, to show that she indeed lived. Even if she kindled a fire, she would probably only wake the most distraught of the ladies, who also slept within her quarters.
The tent should have been dark, but moonlight shone into it, letting Silver Snow see her warm robe wadded at the foot of her pallet, her sleeping maid—and the small, hunched shadow-figure that darted from the tent toward the river.
Quickly Silver Snow rose and whipped her robe, then her cloak, about her. She thrust her feet into fur-lined boots, seized up her bow, and set out after the shadow.
Behind her Willow muttered, sleepy, but rapidly coming alert and alarmed. However, Silver Snow could not stay to reassure her. With a huntress’ care, Silver Snow stalked the figure whose shadow she had seen. Her feet in their furred boots made no sound, even on the crisp ground scrub; and soon she had reached the too-green grass that her ladies had chosen to see as a sign of ill-omen.
She was nearing the figure. It was all silver-gray in the moonlight, but Silver Snow recognized the embroideries on the gown that straggled from the woman’s shoulders, trailing after her on the grass. It was the lady who had feared that she would be made to eat raw meat. Silver Snow stifled a groan. Of all of her women, that one was the most sensitive. Let a pet bird be injured, and she was in tears; let a friend be ill, and she too took to bed.
What had caused her to walk in her sleep? Silver Snow raised her hands to clap them sharply together, thus waking the woman into sense. Then, she thought better of it. Who knew to what strange realms her spirit might have fled, or what might happen if she were waked thus unceremoniously?
She quickened her pace to catch the woman and turn her before she reached the river. That was when Silver Snow heard the whimpering. “Winds across the plains ... no rest ... no peace ... no friends. I shall die, and none will remain to mark my grave or set up a tablet in my memory . . . misery, misery ... to be cursed so far from my home.”
*To be cursed? Silver Snow stopped and drew a deep breath. As if she herself were a creature of the wilds, she sniffed at the air. It was sweet and untainted; from whence came this muttering of curses and exile?
Silver Snow felt her robe catch in the ground scrub. She freed it with a tearing sound, and hurried more quickly after the endangered lady. The long skirt caught again, and again, until she was tempted to shed it and run after the lady in her undergown. Above her, the sky seemed suddenly to whirl, and she flung out a hand to protect herself. The ground was twirling and shaking; there was no anchorage, no stability anywhere . . . she herself would fall into the river that rippled so steadily and deeply ahead and be carried away, beyond anyone’s ken . . .
Then a cold nose touched the hand she had flung out, and metal rattled against it.
Silver Snow gasped and looked down at the fox that nuzzled her fingers. Larger than most it was, with a particularly lush coat. It walked with a peculiar limp, and, in its mouth, it bore an amulet dangling from a chain.
“I cannot reach her,” she gasped, still giddy from whatever force had all but hurled her to the ground. The fox pressed its pointed muzzle into her hand, releasing the amulet into her palm.
As Silver Snow looped the cord of the amulet about her neck, the fox ran on ahead. As it had with Silver Snow’s, it nuzzled the dreaming lady’s fingers, then took them delicately in its mouth and began, ever so gently and patiently, to tug her away from the river, and back toward Silver Snow.