The people of Song and Rasa looked on with terrified fascination.
Until with one great sweeping motion of his spear, the Carrion-King, who had seemed almost defeated, knocked the Old Master’s staff from his hands and the Old Master himself from the sky. The Old Master tumbled down, and when he fell, he fell among the mountains called the Steles of the Sky and broke them off jagged and fierce as dragon teeth.
The wizards of Rasa wailed, for they were sure this was the end, and the emperor made plans to have them all executed before the new city of Tsarepheth itself could be destroyed by the Old Master’s struggles.
But that was not what happened.
Instead, as the Old Master heaved himself wearily up, pushing the collapsed sky above him with his staff, something came forth from the mist that collected around the broken pillars of the world.
It was the Mother Dragon, and she was angry, for the gods fighting in the skies overhead had awakened her.
First she went to confront the Old Master, but he pointed his staff to the Carrion-King, and the Mother Dragon, being a mother, could tell that he was not lying. So she flew up and took the Carrion-King in her talons, and she buried him deep in the rubble of the mountains he had shattered, and raked heaps of stone over him.
* * *
Yangchen let the scroll ease closed. The women were sewing, and Samarkar was staring into her tea. After a long gap, Payma said, “But I thought he wished to rule the world.”
“He did,” said Samarkar, when no one else answered. “But he did not ask to rule it forever. So now he waits under the mountains for his chance at vengeance, and the Mother Dragon guards him.”
Slow applause sounded in the doorway. Samarkar turned, startled as the rest of the women, to find her half brother standing there snapping his fingers gently. “Well told, Honored Wife,” he said, as she settled the baby against her chest and began to rise. He brushed her face. “You should have been a storyteller.”
“I have all my stories here,” she answered, and leaned her cheek against his hand. Samarkar swallowed a spike of envy. If Yangchen’s affection was feigned or dutiful, she had never seen any sign of it.
Samarkar gathered her legs under her and rose, aware of the skirts of her coat falling around her legs like petals furling for the night. “Honored Brother,” she said, bowing low and extending her tongue. “I understand you wished to see me?”
Songtsan bowed, too, more shallowly. When he stood, Samarkar stood with him. “Walk with me.”
Samarkar bowed her farewell to the ladies, reminding herself that she was a wizard now and not a princess as she followed Songtsan from the room. He walked slowly at first, as if favoring a woman hobbled with impractical shoes—or perhaps in deference to her presumed infirmity. But when she kept stride easily, he soon lengthened his pace.
He spoke in low tones, in the Qersnyk language, and they moved and kept moving. Samarkar was not surprised; there was no true privacy in a palace, and they had spoken so many times before.
But never of such things as he said now.
“Samarkar-la, I need your counsel. Qarash has fallen. The Old Khagan is dead, and our sources report that his sons are at war over the remains of the Khaganate.”
“Songtsan-tsa,” she said, and hesitated. They had seen each other through many troubles, her brother and herself, and together found the means to wrest advantage from more than a few. But he had also used her shamelessly as a pawn of empire, and she had no illusions that he would not do so again. He had not approved of her choice to go to the wizards, but he had not quite gone so far as to forbid it. And from his words now, it seemed she still had his confidence—as much of his confidence as he extended to anyone. “When you say Qarash has fallen…”
“News from afar is only as reliable as the wings of the birds that bear it.” He shrugged, the gold brocade on his shoulders exaggerating the gesture. “But you know we had agents in Qarash. One managed to get a pigeon away while the city was falling around her. It seems that Re Qori Buqa Khanzadeh, one of the brothers of Mongke Khagan, has claimed the succession—and that this claim is contested by some of his nephews and cousins. Most notably by Re Qulan Khanzadeh, who claimed primacy in that his father was named by the Great Khagan as heir before dying under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Qulan by rights should have inherited then, but he was ten years old, his heir a brother still on the cradleboard. And so, eighteen years ago, Mongke Khagan stepped into the void.”
“And now Mongke Khagan is dead, and those brothers are adults?”
“The older, Qulan, would have been a man of twenty-eight winters, near enough. The younger is eighteen or nineteen, by my count. Which is adult as the steppe folk reckon things. He’s accounted quite the warrior, having fought at Mongke’s behest across half of Song.” Songtsan spread his hands with a grimace. He was not yet twenty-five and still subject to the whims of his regent mother for a season—though of late, Samarkar knew, he had been concentrating more and more power in his own hands. It wasn’t coming fast enough to keep the Song from chewing away at the border, though.