City of Ice (7 page)

“Things have really gotten bad if the Sogdians don't feel safe from them in their own home,” Kles observed.

At that moment, a thicker, older version of Roxanna emerged from a side door. She was wearing a fur robe with embroidered cuffs and hem.

“Do you know how much of a tizzy we've been in when we noticed you were gone?” the woman demanded in Common.

“At my age, Mother, you were racing camels in the desert with your friends,” Roxanna replied sweetly in the same tongue.

Her mother glanced ruefully at the ifrit. “I see Upach has been tattling on me again. I'll deal with her once I'm done with you.”

Scirye felt a twinge, thinking about her own mother worrying about her. She decided she would ask the Sogdians to send a letter back to her.

Roxanna ran over to Leech and, grabbing his arm, she tugged him back to her mother. “Besides,” Roxanna said, switching to English, “I was perfectly safe. I was with this hero. He saved the whole caravan.”

“We all did,” Leech said, turning red again.

Roxanna's mother studied the scrawny, undersized boy uncertainly and then the others. “Did you really?”

“Mother,” Roxanna scolded, “don't embarrass our clan.”

Remembering her manners, Roxanna's mother bowed to them. “Yes, I meant to say that we're honored.”

“Extremely honored,” Roxanna corrected, and then, after introducing each of them to her mother, waved a hand. “This is my mother, Lady Miunai.”

“And a gray hair for every day since you were born,” Lady Miunai said. “Where's your father?”

“Probably coming through the pass,” Roxanna said. “He should be here in a short while.”

“We'd better get ready to unload the wagons when they get here. See that our visitors are settled in the guest apartments,” Lady Miunai instructed, and clapped her hands. Immediately, clerks and servants began to come into the courtyard, pulling on coats as they did so.

Roxanna led them through a wide doorway and into one of the clan's cavernous warehouses. From somewhere down the corridor came the faint tinking of hammers on metal.

Giving Leech a quick smile, she said, “You saved me with your magic just like I hoped. I've seen the toughest drovers break down into tears when Mother scolds them.”

A faint scent of spices and teas lingered in the air of the chamber. Many of its shelves, though, were empty because of the freebooters' siege, but there were still large containers scattered about: from huge ceramic jars to crates of medical supplies and books, baskets of woven twigs, and rolled-up straw mats that had been tied with thick ropes. All of them marked with the twin palm trees that Roxanna said were the family crest.

Leech pointed at a jar that was as tall as him. “What's in there?”

“Olive oil from the sun-kissed Italia,” Roxanna said, and began to rattle off the original countries for the other objects. China, Azteca, Serendip—the whole world seemed to have sent something here for sale.

Scirye knew that the Silk Road was the name given to several routes that connected the East to the West. Goods and ideas passed back and forth along it, but it seemed that it now extended even to the Far North.

They followed Roxanna to a set of double doors at the foot of a broad staircase where they stamped the snow from their feet. Scirye had to blink when they reached the top of the stairs, for if the caravanserai appeared utilitarian down below, up here it burned hot and bright as flame. The rugs, wall tapestries, and ceiling murals were a riot of reds, yellows, and pinks showing hunters in forests, people feasting in fabulous gardens, and the strange creatures of the air and sea. The ground floor might be the commercial heart of the caravanserai, but the upper floor was its soul.

Here the air was pungent with the smell of incense and perfume—as if Scirye had stuck her head into the center of a bouquet of exotic flowers. Fat fire imps squatted in large orange glass bowls in wall sconces, burning as fiercely as desert suns.

When Roxanna took off her fur coat, her clothes were just as vibrant as her surroundings. She was wearing a crimson and gold brocade dress with a high collar over purple slacks that belled out above her boots. And Scirye caught a faint whiff of perfume as Roxanna handed her coat to Upach.

Roxanna led them down a hallway past rooms that seemed to be furnished and decorated with souvenirs from around the world. In one, a fountain with tile mosaics tinkled musically.

“Father calls this our little Chach,” Roxanna explained. “Our clan came from that city in Sogdiana.”

“Ah, it's as lovely as this,” Kles said as he rode upon Scirye's shoulder.

“You've seen it?” Roxanna asked excitedly, and then sighed. “I've never been there myself.”

“I spent a month in Chach with the princess,” Kles said, looking around approvingly. “The temple to Nanaia—that's our name for your Nana—was magnificent.”

“Then you must see our shrine,” Roxanna said proudly. “It's small, but the statue has been with my family for generations.”

They followed Roxanna through a maze of hallways to a small chamber. As befitted a busy place, they had heard some noise in the background wherever they had gone in the caravanserai, but it was strangely silent here. Perhaps it was some quirk of the construction or, Scirye wondered, it was the power of the goddess.

Actually, the statue of Nanaia was the last thing that Scirye wanted to see. In her grief and anger over Nishke's death, Scirye had rashly promised Nanaia that she would pay any cost in exchange for the goddess's help in recovering her people's treasure and avenging her sister's death. Scirye hadn't really expected the goddess to grant her wish, and now that Nanaia seemed to be, what price was Scirye going to have to pay? Scirye didn't want to be reminded of that hasty vow.

When Roxanna opened the double set of doors, they looked into a dim room lit only by fire imps perched in a few wall sconces. The floor here was covered with tiles of rich orange and the walls and ceilings were covered with murals of the goddess's life in the same bright colors as the rest of the caravanserai's living quarters.

To Scirye's right was a large picture of an ancient emperor trying to drink from a cup even as its contents turned into ribbons of steam about his head. It was the tale of the ruler who had promised Nanaia that if she would give him good weather so he could build irrigation canals, he would give part of the newly created fields to her temple. And when he had conveniently forgotten his oath, he found one day that liquid would hiss away as a steam whether it touched his lips or hands. It was said he had gone mad before he died of thirst.

On the opposite wall was the image of a man in gorgeous robes looking amazed as he stared at a mirror and fingered the huge horns growning from his head. That was the story of the wealthy man who had sworn to Nanaia that he would tithe a medical clinic if she would only save a very valuable breeding bull that was sick. When his animal recovered, this man, too, had had a lapse of memory—only to find one morning that a pair of horns had sprouted from his head. Everywhere in the shrine were reminders of what happened to those who did not keep their word to Nanaia.

How would Nanaia punish her if she failed to carry out her end of the bargain—even though the odds against success seemed so overwhelming?

Bayang had been watching her. “Just remember what I told you before: When Nanaia does something, she doesn't always take your interests into account.”

It was on the tip of Scirye's tongue to ask to go someplace else. But eager to show them her family shrine, Roxanna pulled at Scirye's wrist.

“Please, Lady, don't be shy. Come see the goddess.”

It was either fall or follow Roxanna, so Scirye stumbled forward on stiff legs until she was standing before the four-foot-high statue of Nanaia astride her lion. Scirye shuddered. It was Nanaia the Avenger.

When they depicted Nanaia, the Kushans showed the gentler side of the goddess—the one who helped crops to grow and kept order among humans as if they were unruly children. But this Sogdian statue was the touchier Nanaia who punished those who broke the law or their oaths—like the one Scirye had made.

Scaled armor had replaced the soft gowns of the Kushans' statues and the heavenly flames about Nanaia's head and shoulders looked like swords and arrowheads. Gone was the elegant tiara. Instead, there was a helmet with a wide brim that curled downward. In one hand, She held a staff with a horse's head. In her other hands, She carried the spear, the bow, and the arrows that She used to carry out her vengeance.

Pressing her palms flat in front of her, Roxanna bowed formally three times as Kles fluttered down from Scirye's shoulder to the stones.

“Exquisite, simply exquisite,” the griffin said softly. “I see the Persian influence in the carving of the face. It's so…”

“Stern,” Scirye said, gazing upward. This was the face of a goddess who punished oath breakers like the thirsty emperor and the rich man with horns.

“Kushan art likes to depict the kindnesses that the goddess does, but the Sogdians worship another aspect of Nana,” Kles murmured.

“You Kushans are secure in your power,” Roxanna said sincerely, “but we Sogdians often live among strangers and far away from our own kind. We prosper because everyone knows we deal fairly.”

“So your goddess reminds you to keep your word,” Bayang murmured. “And She also serves as a warning to your customers of what will happen if they break a contract with you.”

For a moment, it seemed the statue's blank eyes were gazing right at Scirye and she remembered how she had stood back at the museum with the dead and injured all about her, smelling the blood and looking through the dust wreathing that other statue of Nanaia and promisng Nanaia she would pay any cost if the goddess would make her into an Avenger too.

You're being silly,
Scirye told herself.
After all, it's only a statue.

Roxanna had extended her arms with her palms upward as a suppliant. “I ask thy patience with me, O Nana,” she began in formal Sogdian. “Thou seizeth the lawbreaker like a lion, and that is Nana. Terrible is thy fury, and that is also Nana. Thou foldeth the babe and the old crone into thy dark embrace, and that, too, is still Nana….”

Scirye could not help closing her eyes and extending her arms just as Roxanna did before she began her own prayer.
I'm doing my best to get the ring back,
Scirye thought.
But don't you want someone else who's older and stronger and smarter?

Suddenly there was a grinding noise. When Roxanna gave a gasp, Scirye opened her eyes. Nanaia was slowly extending the arrows toward her, triangular points first. At they drew nearer, the arrowheads seemed to swell larger and larger until they filled her field of vision.

The shrine had been very warm, but suddenly she was shivering in a cold, bitter wind. With a shock, she realized she was no longer in the shrine but upon the slope of a mountain. Below her was a strange city. The buildings were all in ruins, the roofs collapsed, the walls disintegrating. And far in the distance was a mountain roughly shaped like a lion's head.

She was standing in the middle of a large platform. Here and there through the layers of muck, the wind had exposed a bare patch of marble. A row of pillars flanked either side, their bases covered in accumulated dirt and the flowery capitals at the top cracked and weathered. They had supported ornate arches, a few of which still rested on top of some pillars, but most had fallen and lay in piles of rubble. There was no sign that there had ever been a roof, so perhaps this place had been left to the open air.

At the very end, three giant stone columns stood just beyond the platform's edge. They rose upward into the sky, their tops crumbled by time, but they looked vaguely like the dense branches of trees.

Before the three columns was a large bronze brazier on tripod legs, and she felt invisible strings tug her toward it. Despite the layer of soil, her soles felt the grooves worn into the floor by generations of feet.

As Scirye drew closer, she saw that the brazier was green with age and time had eaten small jagged holes into the side. The pillar closest to it was blackened from the smoke of past fires in the brazier. And there was just a trace of a sweet but stale odor of incense that still lingered in the bowl.

Then from her right a flute sounded high and sweet, and from her left a drum answered with cheerful thumps. From overhead she heard rustling sounds and saw living tree branches sprouting from the stone columns, and winding around the branches were flowered vines that cast down a heavy perfume.

The flautist, a man in a fur kilt, danced by with a high kicking step. From his head sprouted a pair of antlers. The drummer was a man in checkered pants and tunic. Little bells jingled on his cap, whose peak curled at the top. The musicians glided past her, playing their songs as they wove in and out among the columns and then disappeared.

Women in robes of brown and black and white feathers twirled after them, their capes flapping like wings as they pirouetted on bare feet. Rather than singing, they trilled like birds as they waved golden staffs with the heads of horses and other animals, some of which she did not recognize.

Next, women in dresses and caps of silver scales skipped after them, bending and straightening with a motion as fluid as dolphins swimming in the sea as they joined the dancers circling around the columns. A thin red line began to trickle from one column above the mulch at its base. Scirye knew the smell of blood by now. It reminded Scirye of the battle in the museum and it made her a bit queasy, but the little scarlet ribbon had the opposite effect on the dancers, sending them into a frantic pace.

Paws padded on the platform behind her and she turned in alarm to see a huge lion moving toward her. When she saw the rider, she felt even more scared.

It was Nanaia the Avenger, sitting upon a saddle of elephant hide. Her four hands were holding the same objects as her statue, and She was clad in armor of black scales held together with gold wire. On Her head was a helmet decorated with gilt and a wide down-turned metal brim. Tongues of fire danced around Her head like a tiara and down along Her cloaked shoulders, the flaming tips taking the shapes of swords, spears, and axes that swung back and forth.

Suddenly the pillars, the dancers, and the musicians vanished and Scirye was alone with the goddess and the lion. The great creature halted in front of her, so close that Scirye could see her reflection in his golden eyes and feel his warm breath.

Scirye knew she should bow, but she was frozen to the spot.

The flames on the goddess's shoulders and head began to stream along the goddess's scarlet cloak, and as it rose rippling in the air, Scirye could see the golden lining on the inside.

Slowly the cloak floated away from the goddess, rotating so that the colors had reversed—with the gold cloth now on the outside and the red cloth inside. Then the cloak drifted back to attach itself to Her, and the fire flowed upward again to become the holy, terrible flames anointing Her head and shoulders again.

When the goddess lifted Her lower left hand, the arrows rose from it and floated over to Scirye.

Scirye's eyes were as wide as they could get. “W-what do you want me to do?”

Nanaia was as silent as ever. Scirye tried to look at Her face, but all she could see was the sharp-pointing arrowheads.

Impulsively, the girl stretched out her hand and grasped the shafts of the arrows. At her touch, they began to shine with a silvery radiance, and she felt a cold fire burn painlessly against her palm. Then the arrows melted into her skin, filling her with a pale light as if she were an empty glass. Her hand and then her arm and her whole body glowed softly, but the goddess, the pillars, the city, and the mountains disappeared and the world was dark around her.

And Scirye fell into it.