David felt at peace. Not for the past, not for the future, but for this moment. For now.
EPILOGUE
'We'll lead you to the stately tent of war. Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world in high astounding terms And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. View but his picture in this tragic glass, And then applaud his fortunes as you please.'
The riders left the sprawl of the jaran camp at dawn, a pack of fifty soldiers, lightly armed, and one khaja man dressed in a drab tunic, carrying a heavy wooden tube strapped along his back. They rode that day across grassy plains transformed into pale gold by the summer sun. They camped, tentless and fireless, under the cloud- streaked sky, and stars and the full moon watched over them.
The next day they came to a low range of hills and a khaja village with tumbled-down walls, and through this they rode without a passing glance, and the khaja villagers trudged on about their tasks with scarcely a look in their direction. In the afternoon they saw a great butte looming before them.
'Goddess in Heaven,' said Marco, 'that's an impressive thing.'
'It is the khayan-sarmiia,' explained Aleksi, 'Her Crown Fallen from Heaven to Earth.'
'Whose crown?'
'Mother Sun's crown. There's the camp.'
Five and a half years ago, Aleksi had ridden here bringing the news of Sergei Veselov's death to the army. Now he delivered a messenger from a dead man. No army camped now in the shadow of the huge rock, and yet the camp pitched here was large, riders and archers and women cooking and children carrying water. Set out in a great spiral at the northeastern corner of the butte stood the ten great tents of the ten etsanas of the Eldest Tribes. Two tents shared the middle ground: that of Mother Sakhalin and that of Mother Orzhekov, Bakhliian's aunt.
'I don't see Bakhtiian's tent,' said Marco as they rode into the Orzhekov encampment.
Aleksi pointed up, toward the heavens. 'His tent is pitched up there,' he said.
Marco tilted his head back and stared up at the grainy cliffs mat blocked off half the southern horizon from this angle. The sun was already hidden behind it, and its shadow made a cooling screen for the camp against the summer heat. Aleksi dismounted and gave his mount to one of his riders. Marco did the same.
'Papa!' An instant later, a small but fierce object hit Aleksi broadside, and he grunted and laughed and grabbed his daughter under her arms and swung her around. 'Dania, you imp,' he scolded, setting her down. She wore a little bow and quiver strapped on her back, and a curved stick thrust in her belt. 'Marco, this is my daughter Dania.'
Marco eyed the child with distrust. She folded her arms across her chest and regarded him with disdain. 'Your daughter?' he asked, clearly puzzled.
'Yes,' said Aleksi, taking pity on him, khaja that he was, for not understanding immediately how Aleksi could be the father of a child too old to have been born to his wife in the nearly two years since he had seen Marco Burckhardt last. 'I married her mother, Svetlana, some months after you left us.'
'Papa,' Dania announced, 'Kolia got into trouble again. He burnt his fingers because he was trying to-'
'Hush. I don't want to hear about it. Did Tess have the baby yet?'
'No, but the doctor sent a runner down today and called Mama and Aunt Sonia to attend, so perhaps she's having it now.'
Marco gaped up at the rock. It towered up into the heavens, its flat peak seeming to scrape the pale down of clouds that streaked the sky. 'Tess is up there having a baby?' he exclaimed.
'She got so huge, and the baby still hadn't come, so she decided that since she wanted to stay with Bakhtiian anyway, through the council, that she might as well walk up with him and try to start her labor that way.'
A sudden gleam lit Marco's eyes. Aleksi recognized it: Nadine got the same gleam in her eyes when it came time to scout a new path. 'There's a path that goes up to the top? Can we hike up there?'
'No, you can't,' said Dania severely. 'Only the etsanas and the dyans have walked up. They're speaking to the gods.'
'Yes, you can,' said Aleksi mildly, bending down to kiss the girl on either cheek. 'Go on, little one. Go find your Aunt Nadine and send her to us.' He straightened up to regard Marco, who still had his head thrown back, gazing up at the height. 'Tess said we should come up, you and I, once we arrived. But it's true that it's a holy place, and that the gathering going on there now is not for any eyes and ears but those of the Ten Elder Tribes.'
'What is going on?' demanded Marco. 'Are they all overseeing the birth, or something? To make sure it's legitimate?'
'What is legitimate?' asked Aleksi. 'Well, never mind. Let's go to Nadine's tent. She'll want to see the maps.'
Nadine arrived at her tent at the same time as they did, and she greeted Marco with every show of sincerity. While he unsealed the tube and drew out the maps, she asked him a string of questions about the voyage and what the great seas were like to sail on and if it was true that there were monsters sunk in the deeps. Nadine had furnished her outer chamber in a khaja manner, with a table and chairs and a cabinet built and carved in Jeds. Marco unrolled the maps on the table and she gasped and leaned beside him, smoothing her hand out over the heavy parchment.
'David did these, didn't he?' she said in a low voice.
'David and Rajiv Caer Linn, yes,' answered Marco. 'David is well.'
Nadine glanced up at him, at these innocuous words, and then down at the map again. 'They're beautiful maps, and so detailed. How comes it, Marco, that you can sail over the far seas and back again, and yet none of the others can?'
Marco grinned. 'I don't ask permission, for one, and for the other, I'm willing to take the risks onto myself.' Then his face changed abruptly, and he turned to stare at the curtain that separated the outer chamber from the sleeping chamber. 'I've no one waiting for me, back there, in any case.'
Nadine traced a warren of chambers in a finely detailed corner of the map of the shrine of Morava, and her finger came to rest on one particular room, a tiny little chamber that bore no distinguishing mark to separate it from the rest, nothing except what lay in her memory. 'Kirill Zvertkov is taking a jahar of twenty thousands and riding east along the Golden Road, to scout it,' she said, sounding casual. But Aleksi knew her well enough-and had been privy to the arguments-to know how badly she had wanted to go on that expedition, and how firmly Bakhtiian had refused her request. One daughter was not enough to secure the succession.
'East from the plains?' asked Marco. 'I haven't been that way. The Empire of Yarial lies on the eastern shore, they say.'
'There's a country that lies athwart the Golden Road in the midst of an empty desert,' said Nadine, her voice becoming rich with eagerness, 'where the lands shift, where no traveler can walk without becoming lost, where the mountains move at night, and the rivers change their course between the seasons.'
'But, Dina,' said Aleksi, 'a country like that could only exist if the khaja there were all sorcerers, or if the gods had put a curse on it.'
'That may be,' said Nadine tartly, 'but I'd still like to see it for myself.'
'When did you say that Zvertkov is riding east?' Marco asked.
'In a few days,' answered Nadine. 'Are you going to go with him?'
'I just might, at that,' murmured Marco. 'I just might.' Then, to his credit, he read her expression. 'I promise to send you reports by every courier who returns to the army.'
Nadine sighed and placed her hands on two corners of the maps, holding them down and staring at them. The entrance flap got pushed aside. A baby announced its presence in a long musical trill, complete with a babble of meaningless but perfectly sweet syllables. 'Hello, Feodor,' Nadine said to the table.
Aleksi turned. It was Feodor, of course. Grekov was so proud of his fat baby daughter that the whole camp
