“You wish to learn?” demanded Strong Tongue. “Then your lessons may begin now. Kneel down and place your hand upon my spirit drum.”
How trivial a thing that demand seemed to be. Kneel, touch the drum, assist this woman to purify the hearth. Strong Tongue’s eyes had darkened again so that they seemed all pupil, and, at their centers, that greenish point of flame was forming, intensifying, would soon dart out and . . .
Elder sister, no! A cry seemed to explode in Silver Snow’s ears, and she rocked back on her heels. For a moment her mind and Willow’s mind were twinned. Her hearing and her sense of smell were as sharp as those of a fox that had retreated to her earth to protect her kits. Though the scents of dung fire, sweat, and food threatened to overwhelm them, Silver Snow perceived what her maid did, as Willow projected to her mistress the smells of fear, of rage, and—from Strong Tongue—a great satisfaction. She heard the rustlings and whispers of the Hsiung-nu, the half-stifled protest as she watched as her hand went out, poised, to touch Strong Tongue’s drum . . .
Skin reaching to touch drumhead . . . Scrape off the smoke and fat, and the drumhead’s leather—it looked like her skin. Silver Snow recoiled.
“Afraid?” jeered the woman.
Silver Snow shook her head and knew that that was a lie. “How would I presume to touch the tools of a shaman?” she asked. “That is a thing of power.”
Tadiqan laughed. “How powerful, you do not know,” he said. “That drum was the result of a great hunt . .
And the beast that they hunted, Silver Snow thought, almost paralyzed, ran on two legs, gasping, sobbing in Hsiung-nu and in the tongue of the Middle Kingdom, beseeching the Fire , the Sky, or the Ancestors to preserve him, or, at least, to grant him a clean, sudden death.
There would have been no whistling arrows to bring down such a one mercifully, sacrificed to provide a covering for Strong Tongue’s spirit drum. Do I look upon the remains of some kih of mine? thought Silver Snow. After the disgrace of his defeat and captivity, her father had sheltered among the Hsiung-nu, had wed, had sired a child whom he had perforce to abandon when he fled back to the Middle Kingdom.
Strong Tongue reached out, as if to force Silver Snow’s fingers down to the drum, but the younger woman was quicker.
“Do what you must to purify the hearth,” she commanded, all desire to mend her quarrel with Strong Tongue gone. “I shall not sully it again.”
“We shall see,” muttered Strong Tongue.
She beat upon the drum, kindled her fire, and hurled her incense, none producing the scents that were spicy, clean, or sweet, those that Silver Snow recalled from home. These odors were wilder, muskier. The drum beat faster, and Tadiqan took a step forward, laying his hands upon his mother’s shoulders as if to give her strength. He smiled at Silver Snow, and the healing gashes on his face made his expression a demon’s mask. He did not want her just for pleasure, then, but for power; as if, in wishing to violate her, he somehow sought to ravish all of the land from which she came.
Silver Snow could hear the drumbeats resonate in the air and underfoot as Strong Tongue chanted, as she leaned closer over the ashes in the hearth, and labored to kindle flame.
His fact taut with disgust and apprehension, Vughturoi bent toward his father and eased him down onto a pile of soft furs. The old man did not seem to share the disquiet that filled the great central tent; instead, he smiled with what looked like benign pleasure at the sight of his wives, the new chief consort and the old, seated beside his hearth, tending his fire.
Abruptly fire rose where no fire had been before, and a beam of white light blinked out and was instantly gone. The beat of that vile little drum ceased, and Silver Snow found herself able to breathe normally.
A muffled cry rose, and Silver Snow whirled to see Willow sink onto her knees in a shadowed corner. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, and she seemed to be about to swoon, but she thrust her mirror into the bosom of her robe before wrapping arms about herself as if she were so cold that never again might she be warmed. Faintly, as if from a great distance, Silver Snow “heard” her maid’s voice in her head. How should I let my mistress, my pretty little elder sister, be welcomed to a hearthfire kindled by ... by that!
Willow crumpled to one side, and Sable and Bronze Mirror leapt to her aid.
“What is it, child?” asked the shan-yu.
“We . . . my maid and I . . . are not used to so many people after such a long journey, Heavenly Majesty,” she ventured.
“Say ‘husband,’” urged Khujanga, as one might encourage a child to swallow food.
Silver Snow cast down her eyes with an artistic imitation of shyness, learned from observing some of the more successful concubines, and repeated the word, winning a smile. By my Ancestors, he is weak, feeble. How does he hold these mens loyalties?
This was the man who had defeated her father and Li Ling? This was the man who had made a goblet out of the skull of Modun, enemy to the Empire as well as to his own hordes? This wizened, smiling man, with his wives and his many sons, two of whom glared at one another at this very moment? There must be more to him than Silver Snow perceived. There must be, or she faced a fate that she did not even wish to think about.
“We need air, perhaps,” Silver Snow said, playing for time.
“I had not thought that you would wish or have the strength to move about so soon after your arrival,” said the shan-yu indulgently, “but, then, I expected no one so fair either. Should you wish to see ... it is mean, humble, nothing at all, but the Hsiung-nu have wintered here since before my grandfather was a lad.”
Smiling, he gestured, and a woman opened the flap of the great tent. The gust of cold wind that plucked at tent, furs, rugs, and the newly kindled fire was doubly sweet after the tdhsion of quarrel and ritual that—every bit as much as the ever-present smells of fuel, sweat, leather, and seethed meat— had fouled the air.
“Yurts have been prepared that are your own, lady. And now, I shall show you your home,” the shan-yu said.
“Heavenly Majesty, should you—” began Tadiqan.
“My eldest son,” said Khujanga. “Let me remind you for the last time. I fought Modun. Side by side with my kinsman the Emperor, I fought Modun and his Yueh-chih. I have ridden our plains since my mother foaled me. When I cannot withstand the kiss of the wind, it will be time to dig my grave-pit. But until then, I rule here, and I decide what I shall do.
“Attend me!” he commanded, but to Vughturoi, not to Tadiqan. Silver Snow drew her robes about her and left the dusky yurt before she could see Strong Tongue’s face.
In the days that followed, Silver Snow learned more of the temper of the people over whom Fate, the lords of the land, and her own faithfulness had set her. None walked when he could ride, and the women were just as fierce as the men, just as skilled with the deadly, matchless bows of the grassland riders.
In the lavish yurts that the shan-yu had ordained as her own, Silver Snow set up her own tiny court. In the days and weeks that followed, she learned much. She had expected stark simplicity, such as she had known in her own home; she had been prepared for actual hardship. What she found, instead, was a curious combination of rigor and luxury. She might dwell in a tent of felt and leather, but it was warmer, by far, than the Cold Palace of her disgrace in Ch’ang-an. She had furs and rugs and silken hangings that a Brilliant Companion might envy, the deference due to the shan-yu s chief consort and a woman who had been adopted by the Son of Heaven. True, the tea that Bronze Mirror and Sable brewed from blocks that seemed to be as hard as jade and as old as the nearly forgotten Shang was strong, bitter, and black, but it put heat into her in cold mornings as she rose from her quilts of sable and marten.