again, how does it go?'
When I finished, she stood and said, 'I don't know why they let you hang about. Your song didn't make a drop of difference.'
Well, that put some fire in my lungs, sure enough, so I said, 'A song can only work if the hearer wills it. Do you perhaps enjoy the back pain? Or maybe your back didn't pain you to begin with?'
She slapped my mouth. What is it about gentry that they're always slapping people? It made me giggle, which made her glare. What's come over me to speak casually and laugh at an honored lady? As she swept out of the room, I noticed her gaze fall on this book, lying in the corner.
From now on, I'll keep it with me. Lady Vachir is the last person in the Eight Realms I'd want to see these words.
I like that woman about as much as I like skin rot in the summer. Maybe she rankles me so because she's standing between my lady and her beloved. Or maybe the woman is just plain unpleasant. I shouldn't be so hard, but there it is. I look at Lady Vachir and I see someone who loves nothing much, who's seen a great deal of death in a short amount of time, and rather than feel sorrow, has decided to turn into stone.
[Image of Woman in a Kimono]
Day 159
These past days in my lord's chamber, all the talk is on Khasar. I try to ignore it and focus on what I'm copying on parchment, because there's nothing more frustrating than hearing of a problem you can't do anything to fix. But I can't help hearing some, and my mind keeps working over the trouble, like chewing on tough meat till my jaw's sore.
I don't like Khasar. I guess I've never been so terrified in my life as the time he flicked burning wood chips into our tower. His voice, even in memory, makes my bones shiver. The sounds of the healing songs remind the body of how it should be, but the sound of his voice had the opposite effect on me. Whatever he uttered, his laugh, his snarl, his words, seemed a song of ill. Just the memory of that sound greases my dreams some nights like fatty pot scrapings smeared on my hands.
The news today was that Khasar's warriors have rested and regrouped from their assault on Lady Vachir s land and are on the march again.
'He'd been laying siege on Beloved of Ris, my lord,' said Batu, the war chief, who was healed and standing, strong as a yak after a good summer. 'We thought he'd continue his siege through the winter, but he's moving again.
Coming this way.'
Khan Tegus winced as he sat upright. 'I'd hoped to lead our army against him before the bitter cold comes, drive him away from Beloved of Ris. We can't risk the defeat of that realm and the warriors Khasar would add to his own.'
'Is he marching to attack Song for Evela?' asked the chief of night, an old man whose fading brown eyes always seemed kindly to me. 'Or is he returning to Thoughts of Under for winter?'
'There is no more Thoughts of Under,' said Batu. 'He's changed the name of his realm to Carthen's Glory.'
That silenced everyone. Changed the name of his realm! I'd never heard of, never imagined such a thing. He must mean the change as a mighty prayer to Carthen, goddess of strength.
'Ancestors spare us,' someone whispered.
They kept talking about strategy, numbers versus numbers, tactics if he marches on our khan's city and such, but my thoughts were running through a different forest. And though now I should be curled up in my horsehair blanket and long ago asleep, I had to write these thoughts first. They gnaw at me, like to chew me to bits before morning.
Khasar has betrayed Under, god of tricks, by abandoning his name, and pledged himself to Car-then. That makes me think the means to defeat him will be through trickery, not strength. He destroyed the realm of Titor, god of animals, and overthrew the land named for Goda, goddess of sleep. Animals, sleep, and trickery will not be his friends.
These thoughts feel true, but they also seem like the bones of some animal all in a jumble, and I can't see how they fit together and what they form. Maybe the Ancestors are trying to help me, if I could only see.
Day 161
Khasar s warriors are coming closer. It doesn't seem they mean to pass us by. I spend all my time in my lord's chamber now with his chiefs, Lady Vachir, and her whispering maids. When Tegus hurts too much to continue, I'm there to sing. But I miss the laughing parts.
Outside, the world is starting to crack with cold.
Day 162
Many were gathered in the khan's chamber today, the mood stiffer than winter laundry.
'His army is setting up camp outside our walls,' said Batu. 'They're well equipped with ghers and supplies.
They can hunt our woods all winter and get on well.'
'But we won't,' said the town chief. She has gray and black hair, thick and tangled in braids all over her head.
To me, her eyes look as dark as deep wells.
'We were prepared for a siege before,' said the food chief, 'but now with all the people we've taken in from Titor's Garden, Beloved of Ris, and Goda's Second Gift, not to mention our own villagers who have sought refuge inside the city walls, our stored food won't last two months.'
'Longer if we eat the livestock,' said the chief of animals. 'But that choice is death still, just a slower death, if
