Samarkar nodded. But she touched his hand and drew him toward Bansh’s saddlebags. “All right. But you have to eat something while we ride.”
Her palm was cold; her fingers trembled. “I will if you will,” he said.
14
In the days that followed, they never found the other rider or his horse, and Temur was forced to assume—despite the arrow, despite the Cho-tse—that he had survived. But neither did they encounter any more Rahazeen assassins—real or feigning—nor Rasan men-at-arms, and under Samarkar’s care their various wounds healed rapidly. There was something to be said for wizards.
They followed a road through passes that lead more west than north until the mountains flattened enough that they could pick their way across forested foothills, and then they followed the sun—the Rasan sun, and then the sun of the Eternal Sky. They came out of the Steles of the Sky into the western reaches of the steppe, rather than passing through the Range of Ghosts. They descended the last foothill of the mountains at midday, as summer was sweeping the plains. The smell of sweetgrass was a balm to Temur. The Eternal Sky above shone a blue like the turquoise beads adorning the eight blue knots on a shaman-rememberer’s saddle. Other than birds, the first steppe wildlife they saw was a herd of ten or so Indrik-zver. These were long-necked, dust-colored beasts so massive a mounted man could ride under their rotund bellies. They took no notice of the people or the equines, even when the party’s route brought them within four or five ayls, though one great female with a cow-sized newborn gamboling about her feet turned to watch Hrahima pass. She made a sound of alarm or threat, a deep-chested huffing rumble combined with a hollow boom, which brought the ears of all the mules and horses up and had them scanning the horizon for predators.
The mules and horses had grown accustomed to Hrahima, apparently deciding that she did not eat horses, and in return she was careful to stay away from them when she came back from a hunt bearing fresh meat. The steppe ponies were used enough to dead animals, but it seemed wise not to force them to deal with a bloody tiger.
Temur could tell from Payma and Samarkar’s wide eyes and the way they turned to stare that the women had never seen an Indrik-zver.
“What is that?” Payma asked.
Temur was glad to explain. “They only live along the edge of the steppe, where they can retreat among the hills when the rivers dry up. They’re named for a magic beast of the far west,” Temur said, “where the mushroom people live.”
“‘Mushroom people’?” Payma pointed to the ground.
Temur shook his head. “Their faces are pale, like mushrooms, and they burn in the sun, as if you held them beside a fire. They call themselves Russhi or sometimes Kyivvin, as if anybody could get a tongue around that.”
Samarkar snorted laughter. Temur let himself meet her eyes and smile.
He said, “My grandfather conquered them before I was born. They have a beast of legend called the Indrik, which is like those”—he pointed with his chin—“but it has a horn on its nose. It dwells in a sacred mountain where no other foot may tread, and when it moves, the whole earth trembles. I knew a mushroom person in Qarash, an old man whom my grandfather took as tribute when he was young. He was a goldsmith. He told me about the Indrik.”
“Huh,” Samarkar said. The set of her shoulders was uncomfortable, hunched up to her ears, but Temur did not think she was upset with him. “We say the earth moves when the Dragon Mother stirs inside the Cold Fire.”
“Different skies. Different gods,” Temur said, repeating the wisdom of his mother. Now that they were under Quersnyk skies again, he still checked the moons every nightfall, and every nightfall they remained the same. And every morning, he arose before the sun and guarded the others against ghosts—but they, too, did not come.
In some ways the lack of change was worse; it was both a hammer over his head and a peace that might lull him into complacence.
He waited until Samarkar nodded before he looked away.
“Anyway,” she said, “we should pick up some of their dung for burning.”
Temur breathed easier to find himself no longer hemmed in by mountains, foothills, and forests. Here in his homeland, you could see an enemy coming as clearly as you could see the vultures that circled overhead until the sun set and the sky darkened. The grass crushed under horse hooves smelled of sage, and there were herbs to boil for tea growing among it.
Where they stopped for the evening, the pale disks of datura blossoms shone through the dusk like small moons, nodding on vines that bound and bowed the long grasses. He made sure to hobble the horses well away from the poisonous plant. When that was done and they were all rubbed down and eating lazily, he made his way back to the fire circle. The women had prepared it by yanking up turf so the grass could not catch fire in the roots and set the whole steppe ablaze. Now Payma was sorting their supplies. Samarkar was piling dry Indrik-zver dung up with air spaces between the clods, so a fire could catch easily. Hrahima had slipped into the dusk to seek prey.