Guy Gavriel Kay - Under Heaven

She was known by reputation, had never allied herself with any kaghan or tribe. She was one hundred and thirty years old. Yes, they were afraid. No living creature or man frightened a Bogü rider, the thought was laughable, but spirits did. Only a fool said otherwise. A man did not let fear stop him, or he was not a man. Was this not also so among the Kitan?

The creature roaring the night before? That was a lion. They were the size of tigers, but they hunted with others of their kind, not alone. There were different bears in these woods, too, twice the height of a man when they reared up, and the northern wolves were the largest—but men of other tribes were still the greatest threat this far from home.

They saw riders the next morning, for the first time.

Ahead of them on a rise against the horizon, about fifteen or so. Not enough to fear. The horsemen fled their own approach, galloping west and out of sight. Tai considered pursuit, but there was no real point. The riders had come from the north. Tai didn’t know what that meant, he didn’t really know what anything meant. The leaves of the trees were crimson and amber and gold and beginning to fall.

They saw arrows of geese overhead all the time now, countless multitudes, as if they were fleeing something that lay where the riders were headed, the way animals fled a forest fire. They saw two more swans on another lake at dusk, floating strange and white on darkening water as the moon rose. None of Tai’s men threatened these.

A fear of ongoing transgression had grown in the Kitan riders, as if they had crossed some inward border. Tai heard his men snapping and quarrelling with each other as they broke camp in the morning, as they rode through the day. He did what he could to control it, was unsure how successful he was.

It was difficult to feel superior here, he thought. That, in itself, was disturbing for the Kitan, altering the way they dealt with the world, intersected it. He wanted to call the forest colours and the autumn landscape beautiful, but the word, the idea, didn’t rise easily through the apprehension within him.

He’d finally admitted that fear, acknowledged it, the night before they came to the shaman’s lake.

There was a cottage, he saw, as they halted on the slope above and looked down in afternoon light: unexpectedly large timbers, well fitted, with an outbuilding and a fenced yard and firewood stacked against winter. This was not a yurt. Houses changed with the climate and they had left behind the grazing lands for something else.

Meshag was still alive.

He had not moved all the way north. It was unnatural. They had shifted his body at intervals, to prevent sores, but he’d done nothing but breathe, shallowly.

Someone came out from the cabin, stood by the door staring up at them.

“Her servant,” the little shaman said. “Come!”

He started quickly down, with the litter-bearers carrying Meshag, four of the Bogü riders flanking them.

A gesture was made, rather too emphatically: the Kitan escort were being told to remain on the ridge. Tai hesitated (he remembered that moment), then shook his head.

He spoke to his next-in-command, a quiet order to stay for now and watch, then flicked his reins and moved down the slope alone, following the unconscious man and his escort. The nomads glared at him, but said nothing.

He was here to observe. His people had an interest in this man, in the Bogü succession. It was not the place of barbaric herdsmen to deny them the right to go anywhere they wanted. Not when fifteen thousand Kitan were assisting Hurok in his rising. That many soldiers gave you rights.

One way of looking at this. Considered another way, they had no proper place here among nomads’ spell-battles, no business being this far away from home at all: alien sky, bright, green-blue lake, leafdazzle forest behind and beyond in sunlight, and the first hint in a far blue distance of mountains to the north.

He wondered if any of his people had ever seen those mountains. Or the cold jewel of this lake. That possibility should have excited him. At the moment, easing his horse down the slope, it didn’t. It made him feel terribly far away.

The riders reined up before the doorway. Those carrying the litter also stopped. There was no fence in front of the cottage, only around the back where the outbuilding was. Tai assumed it was a barn or animal shed. Or maybe this servant slept there? Were there others? There was no sign of the shaman herself, or any life within. The door had been carefully closed when the one man came out.

The nomads’ leader dismounted, he and the shaman approached the servant, spoke quietly, with unwonted deference. Tai couldn’t make out the words, too quick and soft for his limited grasp of their tongue. The servant said something brisk in reply.

The Bogü leader turned and gestured to the slope. Two more riders detached from the company. They started down, leading two horses, these carrying the gifts they’d brought all this way.

Magic and healing did not come without cost.

It was the same back home, Tai thought wryly, and that realization somehow calmed him. You paid for healing, whether or not it worked. It was a transaction, an exchange.

This one would be appallingly strange, but elements of what was to come would be exactly the same as going to an alchemist in Xinan or Yenling to cure a morning-after head, or summoning the plump, white-haired physician from the village to their home by the stream when Second Mother couldn’t sleep at night, or Third Son had a dry cough.

A memory of home, with that. Very sharp. Scent of autumn fires, smoke drifting. The ripple of the stream like the sound of time passing. The paulownia leaves would have fallen by now, Tai thought. He could see them on the path from their gate, almost hear the noise they made underfoot.

The shaman’s servant spoke again as the horses approached with their gifts. It wasn’t a suitable tone, even Tai could tell that, but he did know that shamans carried enormous honour among the Bogü, and that the one here was of particular significance—and power. They’d come a long way to her, after all.

The riders unloaded the gifts. The servant went inside with some of them, came out, carried another armful back in. It took him four trips. Each time, he closed the door behind him. He didn’t hurry.

After he went in for the last time, they waited in the sunlight. The horses shuffled and snorted. The men were silent, tense and apprehensive. Their anxiety reached into Tai, a disturbance. Was it possible they could come all this way and be rejected, sent back? He wondered what his own role should be if that looked to be happening. Would it be his task to try to coerce the shaman into seeing Meshag? Would he be sparing the Bogü riders from doing that, if the Kitan took it on themselves? Or would he be performing a gross impiety that endangered all future relationships?

It occurred to him—belatedly—that he might have a serious decision to make in a few moments and he hadn’t given it any thought at all. He had considered that Meshag might die before they came here, or that whatever the shaman tried to do would fail. He had never contemplated being refused treatment.

He looked around. There was smoke rising from the cabin chimney. Little wind today, the smoke went straight up before drifting and thinning towards the lake. From where he was, a little to one side, he saw two she-goats in the yard behind, huddled against the back fence, bleating softly. They hadn’t been milked yet. It didn’t make him any more impressed with this servant. Perhaps there were others, it was not his task?

The man came out again, finally, left the door open behind him for the first time. He nodded, gestured at the litter. Tai drew a breath. One decision he wouldn’t have to make. He was angry with himself; he ought to have anticipated possibilities, worked them out ahead of time.