Weakly, Tess brushed dry grass off her trousers. She lifted her hand and squinted at the ring on her middle finger. "My God," she said, to no one.
"Is that how the gods travel in the heavens?" Aleksi asked, looking from her up into the sky. Were any of those stars the ship? Were all of them ships? But, no, the doctor had said they were worlds-or not worlds, but suns. He shook his head. He was too tired to sort it all out now.
Tess sighed. "They're just machines, Aleksi."
"I've got a perimeter alert," said Maggie. "Horses and men."
Aleksi leapt to his feet and drew his saber. Maggie pulled a knife from her belt. Slowly, Tess drew her saber and rested it on her knees, but anyone could see she hadn't the strength to wield it.
But it was only a group of jaran riders, twelve of them, picking their way down the western slope. It didn't surprise Aleksi to see how astounded they looked when they discovered that they had stumbled upon a daughter of Mother Orzhekov, the woman who was also, of course, Bakhtiian's wife.
"We saw a strange light in the sky," said their captain.
"I saw it, too," said Tess, without moving from the ground. "It was an omen."
"We'll escort you back to camp, then."
"Tomorrow," she said. "I just can't go any farther tonight."
So they spent the night in the little valley, Tess sleeping on coats and under blankets provided by the riders, guarded by a ring of fires, and in the morning they remarked on the strange burn on the ground in the center of the valley and saddled their horses and formed up around Tess. If they thought it strange to have found her out here, practically alone, they did not discuss their thoughts with Aleksi. Tess was pale and still horribly tired. They rode back toward Karkand slowly, stopping frequently. The day was overcast, and the light had an eerie yellow quality to it.
Soon enough they began to pass refugees from the city. At first clumps of them, cowering away from the patrol. A woman carried a baby on her back and held another child by the hand. An old woman stumbled along, weak and crying, and a little boy dragged a bundle behind him and followed in her wake. Larger groups, families, trudged along the road. Children wailed. A broken-down old horse bore an injured woman slumped over its neck, her thigh a bloody mass of tissue, open to the air. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs, and a few of the lucky ones, a handful of possessions wrapped in cloth, whatever they had grabbed before being driven from the city. A gray-haired woman walked under the weight of a silk bundle. A tall woman with a strong, dark face stopped to shift a pack of roughspun cloth to a better position on her back. A baby shrieked. A woman clad in rich damask linen sobbed with each step, holding a hand to her throat. Two girls held a limping crone between them, helping her along. Most kept their heads bowed. An adolescent girl, her face veiled, balanced a large ceramic vase on her head, walking steadily, only her eyes showing dark and angry as she watched the riders pass.
Tess wept, to see them struggling along.
As they rode on, as morning passed to midday and midday into afternoon, the trickle became a stream, the stream a flood. Hordes of them; Aleksi had not known so many people, even khaja, could live together in one place. No wonder they were weak, crammed like insects into a rotted stump or an old hollow log. They walked, heads bowed. A layer of ash covered their clothes, and at their backs smoke rose into the heavens, a dark blot against the gray clouds far above. As the riders neared the jaran camp, they could see Karkand burning.
"My God," said Tess. "Isn't there a rise, where we can lookr
It was a relief to veer away from the road and along a trampled field until they reached a low ridge which gave them a vantage of the city.
Karkand burned. A huge black funnel of smoke marked it, and spits of flame. Aleksi watched the lines of refugees, like tiny insects, leaving the city along the roads and out through the fields. He saw the riders, moving among them, and wagons trundling away toward the jaran camp. In the middle of the blazing city, the huge dome of the temple glowed red with fire. Clouds of heat shimmered out from it, and the intense glow of the flames cast a hot, violent light up into the sky. As they watched, the dome collapsed into a monstrous cloud of ash and smoke that billowed into the air and shrouded the western horizon so that they could not even see the setting sun.
"Goddess save us," murmured Maggie. "Why did he order this? The whole city is going, all of it, even the suburbs are in flames. And it was so beautiful. Now it looks like a funeral pyre."
Tears streaked Tess's face. "Don't you see?" she asked, shaking her head. "It is a funeral pyre. For our son. For everyone who died today, for everyone who will die. For Charles." She wiped her face with the back of one hand, but it only streaked grime over her cheeks, blending with her tears. "For Rhui."
"Look." Aleksi pointed at the same time that the patrol captain did. "There is Bakhtiian's banner. He must be riding out to look for you."
"We'll wait for him here," said Tess.
So they met on the ridge, Tess and Bakhtiian, he with the pall of the dying city at his back, she with her face to it.
He said nothing, only drew his horse in beside her and raised one eyebrow, questioning. He looked remarkably neat for a man who had just destroyed a city and defeated an entire kingdom, with his armor newly polished and his surcoat untorn and marked only by a fine layer of ash. He wore his victory with pride but without gloating.
Tess lifted her right hand, to show him the ring. "I am now the Prince of Jeds."
He regarded her measuringly, as he might measure any threat to his power. "Where is your brother?"
"He's dead."
He took the news with no change of expression. "We still have no treaty between your lands and mine," he said quietly.
"That's true." She looked beyond him, toward Karkand. "I have seen what you and I must do: We must unite all the lands against the coming of the khepelli, whether while we live or when our grandchildren rule. What can you offer me, Bakhtiian, in return for my alliance?"
His mouth lifted, not quite into a smile. He twisted for the first time and cast a glance back toward the conflagration. Then he turned back to gaze on her again.
He drew his saber and held it up between them. "My army, which is my sword. And my vision, which was granted to me by the gods. That is all I have, and everything I have."
Tess stared at the inferno that was Karkand. Over the night and on that day's journey, she had seemed to Aleksi to change somehow, as if the ring her brother had given her had altered her forever. She was still Tess, but she was also a prince now, invested with a greater power than anyone here but Aleksi and Maggie, and she herself, knew. It was almost as if Karkand was her own pyre, burning away what she once was and creating her anew.
"Your army and your vision," she said, meeting her husband's gaze. "That will do."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Fine ash rained down on David's head. He brushed at his hair, but it was useless. It coated everything, fine white ash and grittier black chunks. His boots crunched on it, and the beautiful woven patterns of the jaran tents lay hidden beneath it. He coughed, and coughed again, and finally gave up and held a scrap of cloth over his mouth and nose.
Although it was late afternoon, some of the encampments were breaking up, loading their goods into wagons and heading south to escape the constant shower. He arrived at their own camp just as Maggie rode in, looking soot-stained and tired.
"David!" She swung down from her horse and beckoned him over. A jaran boy ran up and took the horse from her, and Maggie wiped her nose with the back of her hand and sneezed. "Goddess, this is terrible. David. Have you heard about Charles?"