“This for my son,” she shouted. That much Silver Snow could hear over the roaring of the wind and the giggling of the demons as they headed toward her.
Already she could feel the wind’s hot breath. There was no place, she knew, to flee.
“No!” A wail of rejection pierced the sounds of the black storm as Willow forced herself to her feet. Her lame leg buckled, but she caught herself by staggering sideways and steadying herself against a horse.
“Elder Sister, Elder Sister!” she cried and hurled herself, not at Strong Tongue but between Silver Snow and the storm. Her hands fumbled in her bosom and produced her greatest treasure, the silver mirror incised with magical symbols that only she could read. It looked pathetically small, no larger than the disk of the indifferent sun now high overhead, but it flashed with light and in it was reflected, in miniature, all the fury of the storm and, at its heart, Strong Tongue, who summoned it.
The storm seemed to shrink, as if somehow the mirror controlled it. Willow swayed on her feet like the tree for which she had been named. Her head dropped, her whole body sagged, but she held up her hands strongly as though she held a shield against the swordstrokes of a near-invincible opponent.
Slowly the storm reversed the direction around which it spun on its axis. Even more slowly it turned toward Strong Tongue, to engulf her who had summoned it in the first place. Strong Tongue shook her head in rejection and pounded her spirit drum, and the storm edged back toward Willow.
The maid trembled, but forced herself to limp forward, first one step, then another, always holding the mirror between the demon storm and herself, as she stood before her beloved mistress.
“No, Willow,” gasped Silver Snow, but the maid shook her head once frantically, rejecting as impossible any help that her mistress or some warrior might offer. Silver Snow herself considered drawing bow and firing into that storm; but who could tell what those winds would do to an arrow? They might send it anywhere, including back upon the archer.
That was what Willow sought to do: deflect the storm upon its sender. Just as clearly, Strong longue sought to overpower her enemy and overwhelm first Silver Snow, then the camp. Drum and mirror contended, the storm between them.
And then, as if it had waited all these years for the most auspicious moment in which to turn upon its mistress, the yellowed skin of the drumhead tore, and the wind rushed free, overwhelming Strong Tongue’s screams. Even now, they were screams of rage, not fear.
Only an instant later, Willow’s mirror broke into two pieces. Strong Tongue fell, lashed by the gale she had summoned; but the maid fell too, a slender tree exposed to a storm too strong for it.
A warrior leapt to Strong Tongue’s side, his spear poised for a stabbing thrust at her throat.
“Do not slay her!” Vughturoi shouted, his voice hoarse.
What kind of strength would allow a woman to survive that storm? More, Silver Snow feared, than poor Willow possessed. Silver Snow slid from her saddle, ignoring the pain of her foot to run toward Willow, who lay motionless upon the ground. She arrived just as Sable did, but when the Hsiung-»nu woman would have sheltered her, Silver Snow pushed forward.
“Little sister?” she asked in a tiny voice.
Strong Tongue had weathered the storm. Was it asking too much for Willow, whose only thought was to protect, to help, to serve, to have survived it too? After all, lame she might be in human guise, but she had all of the vitality of the fox kind, too. She had taken the entire brunt of the storm upon herself to deflect it; and in doing so, had saved countless lives.
Tenderly Silver Snow turned her maid over. Delicately she brushed dust and grass away from the pale, still face. Willow’s lips were blue, and her chest did not seem to rise and fall, even faintly. A mirror . . . where was a mirror? If mist formed on it, then the girl breathed, lived, and might be healed. Never taking her eyes from Willow, Silver Snow scrabbled with one hand in the grass. When a sharp edge nicked her finger, triumphantly she brought forth one of the pieces of Willow’s mirror, broken by some fate in the shape of a half-circle that bore a darker splotch at its center. Sable brought up the other half.
Yang and Yin. Neither, when held to Willow’s lips, showed any trace of mist. And then both shards of mirror dissolved.
Her own lips trembling, Silver Snow glanced over at Sable, who shook her head and began to straighten Willow’s garments, pulling them down decorously to cover her legs, the straight one and the lame. Even as she watched, whatever knot of muscle and sinew had shortened Willow’s bad leg seemed to untwist: lame in life, Willow lay whole and straight in death.
That sight broke Silver Snow’s fragile grip on self-control. She laid her head on Willow’s stilled bosom and wept as a mother would mourn for the death of her first-born.
Vughturoi knelt at her side. “She said that she would endure testing unto death,” he said. “I had no idea of subjecting her to such an ordeal, no thought but that she would prove as true as she has.” She felt a light touch on her hair, and looked up in time to see Vughturoi rise.
“Take that witch”—he pointed at Strong Tongue’s unconscious body, and his voice was chill with loathing—“and bind her. Bind her well, gag her, and guard her until a wild horse can be brought.”
In silence, Vughturoi waited while he was obeyed. “Now, tie her to its back.”
By this time, Strong Tongue had recovered consciousness, but that terrible vitality of hers showed only in the fires of her eyes.
“I cannot punish you as you deserve,” Vughturoi told her. “And being what you are, a wife of my father and, once, before you turned to evil, a mouthpiece for the spirits, I think that I dare not punish you at all. So I shall send you hence, and whatever spirits find you may do with you as they will. Hei-yahhh /” he cried, and slapped the horse’s hindquarters.
Maddened by the unfamiliar feeling of a burden lashed to its back, the horse reared, plunged, and dashed away.
Faintly Silver Snow heard Vughturoi inviting the Fu Yu and the Yueh-chih—those who had not fled, much to the mirth of their fellows—to dismount and share his hospitality.
She knew that she should rise, should greet them properly, as befitted a queen. She also knew that she had neither strength nor heart to do so, now that Willow was dead.
She shut her eyes and wished that the darkness would overpower her. To her astonishment, warm hands lifted her and held her.
“I cannot have you grieving thus,” her husband told her. “What would she say if she saw you?”
Silver Snow gulped down a sob. “She would scold me for endangering my baby, and she would dose . . . dose me with dreadful-tasting herbs.”
“Then listen to her memory,” Vughturoi ordered. “I . . . we . . . owe her everything. What would you have us do? Just say the word, and we shall give her a funeral finer than any that the grasslands have known before.”
Sable gasped. “Oh, but look!”
Two large foxes, totally against the nature of their breed, which hid from humankind whenever possible, emerged from the cover of the long grass and crouched, belly-down, beside Willow’s body, nuzzling and prodding it. When Willow did not respond, they yapped shrilly, as if in lamentation, and disappeared once more.
Sorrowfully Silver Snow watched them vanish. “A funeral finer than any that the grasslands have known before?” she repeated her husband’s words as a question. “Say, rather, the funeral of a princess. May I ask . . . ?”
“Anything,” said Vughturoi.
“Then let my Willow be buried on the border between Ch’in and the lands of the Hsiung-nu, somewhere near green trees and flowing water. Let a mound be heaped up over her, a mound that shall ever be green, even in the depths of winter. No hunter shall come to that place, which shall be as a sanctuary for all living creatures, to honor a maid who was true to Han and Hsiung-nu, to the human and the fox kind.”