“I know.” I kept my voice gentle, but I also kept my arrow trained on her. “I am no ghost, my lady. You are encompassed in my magic, nothing more. It will not harm you. Nor will I, if you are truthful. Tell me, where did your father send Bao, and what has befallen him?”
“No ghost?” Her voice trembled.
I shook my head, hoping to coax a measure of trust from her. “Flesh and blood, I promise you.”
She wasn’t convinced. “How did you escape from the Falconer’s men if Bao did not find you? No one escapes.”
“The Falconer?” I was puzzled. “Is that what you call the Patriarch?”
Erdene looked blankly at me. “Who is the Patriarch?”
“Pyotr Rostov, the Patriarch of Riva. Your father betrayed me to a pair of Vralian priests in his service…” I could see that the words meant nothing to her. “You didn’t know.”
She shook her head. “No. He said the Falconer had sent for you.”
“Who is this Falconer? Is that where Bao’s gone?” I lowered the bow a few inches. “He’s in trouble, my lady. Far away, and in trouble. Mayhap injured, mayhap ill, mayhap imprisoned-mayhap all three, or worse. I don’t know. If you care for him at all, I beg you to tell me the truth.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Erdene gave a curt nod. “For Bao’s sake, I will help you, even though he does not deserve it. But not here. There is too much to tell. If I don’t return soon, someone will come searching for me, and it’s not safe for you to be here.”
“They will not find us unless I release the twilight,” I assured her.
She shook her head again, stubbornly. “I need to see you in daylight, to be certain you are flesh and blood. Tell me where to find you. Tomorrow at dawn, I will ride out to hunt alone.”
It was my turn to hesitate.
“It’s not a trick.” Erdene read my thoughts and gave a grim little smile. “I swear by the sky itself, I will not lead anyone to you. And I have your things,” she added. “I can bring them to you.”
“My things?” I echoed.
The Great Khan’s daughter nodded, plucking a dagger from her belt. I raised the bow automatically, but she only showed the blade to me. It had a hilt of white ivory carved in the shape of a dragon’s coils. “See? This my father gave to me after it was taken from you. The rest I had fetched from Batu’s ger before they knew you were missing. Your bow, your satchel of trinkets.”
“Why?” I felt bewildered. “Were they trophies?”
“Trophies?” Erdene gave a forlorn laugh. “No. Oh, perhaps at first. But after Bao left…” She lifted her shoulders in a faint, weary shrug. “In a strange way, they were all I had to remember him by.” Reversing the dagger, she held it out to me hilt-first. “Take it. It’s yours, as surely as he was. I’ll bring the rest tomorrow.”
Warily, I eased my drawn bowstring and reached out to take the blade. I had not forgotten that Erdene had held a dagger to my throat and threatened to cut out my tongue during our only previous conversation, nor that she was quick and strong.
But she only smiled sadly and let go of the hilt. “Tomorrow, then?”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll be camped along the river in the southern pastures. And if you’ve sworn falsely, I will kill you.”
With that, I unspun the twilight around her, leaving only myself cloaked in it.
Erdene blinked at the return of true darkness and my sudden absence. “Tomorrow,” she said to the seemingly empty air, an edge of defiance in her voice. “And you will see! I am no oath-breaker.”
I hoped it was true.
FORTY-SEVEN
Dawn came, breaking golden over the steppe.
It did not bring a Tatar princess with it.
I waited restlessly, torn between staying and going. I’d slept poorly, anxious that I’d made a bad decision once more, wishing I had pressed Erdene harder to tell me about this mysterious Falconer fellow.
Why, oh why, had I trusted her?
I was an idiot. Oh, I could cloak myself in the twilight when I saw the Khan’s hunting-party come searching for me, and like as not I’d get away; but they would know I was there. They would pursue me. And sooner or later, I would have to sleep-and my campsite and I would be vulnerable.
I thought wistfully of home. I’d not had time to learn all the myriad possibilities that the gift of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself possessed, but I remembered that when my mother had taken me to attend the vigil at Clunderry, where we remembered Morwen’s folly and Berlik’s cruel sacrifice, there had been a celebration in a glade afterward, and the entire glade had been wrapped in the glimmering twilight.
It must have been a ward of some sort, for no one was minding it, no one was concentrating on holding the cloak in place. No, they had been reveling in the aftermath of the grave vigil, drinking uisghe, feasting, playing music, and dancing-a rare party for my folk, who seldom gathered in numbers.
I wondered how it was done.
My mother hadn’t taught it to me. Mayhap it was a gift she didn’t possess, or mayhap she hadn’t thought it necessary. I didn’t know.
Trying to distract myself as the sun inched higher above the horizon, I breathed through the cycle of the Five Styles and pondered the matter. I drew the twilight deep into my lungs, and flung it out as far as I could, encompassing the whole of my campsite, my neatly laden packs and gear.
Pushing myself, I extended it farther, encompassing my grazing horses, doing their best to find fodder in the abandoned pasture. To be sure, I had grown stronger; but I had to hold it, mindful and conscious. The moment I let my awareness lapse, it faded.
So how did they keep it in place?
Remembering Master Lo’s teaching, I forced myself to stop thinking about it, to stop worrying at it. To let my thoughts arise one by one, one thought giving birth to another. Once again, I sat cross-legged and breathed the Five Styles, accepting what thoughts came.
I would figure it out, or I would not.
Erdene would betray me, or she would not.
I would find Bao, or I would not.
A sense of calm settled over me; and strangely, it was Aleksei’s voice that nudged at my thoughts. A memory of a passage from the endless scriptures he had read to me merged with an image in my mind, an image of a compass rose etched on a map, the four cardinal points clearly marked.
Aleksei’s voice persisted, hesitant and faltering, but persistent nonetheless. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar…
A compass rose, four cardinal points.
A dragon-hilted dagger, lost and restored.
All these things converged in my thoughts. “Is it that simple?” I said aloud. I opened my eyes, startled and chagrined to realize I’d had them closed for so long. A quick glance assured me that the horizon was still empty. If Erdene had betrayed me, her father’s men were not coming yet-although neither was she.
I turned my hands palm upward on my knees, gazing at them. Gazing at the blue veins in my wrists. I breathed the Breath of Earth’s Pulse.
Mayhap it was that simple.
Well and so, there was one way to find out. Rising, I called in the horses, tethering them close. I paced around my camp in a circle, glancing at the sun and marking the cardinal points of the compass in my mind.
I needed anchors.
Where that thought came from, I could not say; but it arose unbidden in my mind, the image of the compass rose now linked with that of an anchor rising from the deep, dripping with saltwater and seaweed.
Stones in the river called to me.
“All right,” I murmured. “All right, then. Stone and sea and sky, and all that they encompass. The life of the flesh is in its blood. Let us see, shall we?”