Kaidu beckoned them to the front, where he embraced Achikh, then stepped back to arm’s length, beaming at him. “Little brother!” he said. “You’ve grown. You’ve be-come a powerful warrior, and I see scars where there were none before.” After they’d embraced again, he looked once more at his brother’s companions. “Who are these others?” he asked.
Achikh introduced them, speaking formally, giving them their appropriate surnames, titles, and group affinities. Kaidu gazed long at each of them, but especially at the giant Northman with the uncanny eyes. Then he in turn introduced the men who sat on cushions. One was Fong Jung Hing, ambassador from the Emperor of China, a calm-seeming, quiet man whose aristocratic, fine-featured face seemed as foreign among the Buriat as Nils’s Scandinavian features. Another was Teb-Tengri, whom he introduced as the principal shaman of Kaidu’s tribe, the Black Stallion Tribe. Baver recognized the name Teb-Tengri as meaning something like “Most Heavenly.” The shaman was a rather tall man of perhaps twenty-five or thirty years, and gaunt for a Buriat, with an arrogant face and bearing. Baver wondered if he was unwell, or if his gauntness was due to fasting; Achikh
152
had once said that shamans sometimes fasted to sharpen their powers.
The introductions over, Kaidu seated his new guests, Achikh on his right, and the three foreigners in the back row among those on the floor. The chief moved his gaze first to Nils, then to Svartvinge, and finally to his shaman, to whom he spoke now. “Tell me, Teb-Tengri, what you see in this great raven and its master.”
The shaman stared long at Svartvinge, then more briefly at Nils. Finally he spoke. Declaimed. “The bird is a great devil, Kaidu son of Kokchü, and the yellow-haired foreigner another. They have come here to do you great ill.”
The ger became silent for a long moment. Baver felt his heart thudding, and realized he d stopped breathing. The chief, however, had lost none of his poise.
“Indeed?” He looked at Achikh beside him. “And what would you reply, brother?”
Achikh had gotten to his feet by then, hand on sword-hilt, voice tight with anger. “Your shaman is alive this moment only because of the yassa against killing inside a dwelling.”
Kaidu’s eyebrows jumped. “Ah? And you, Teb-Tengri—what would you recommend be done with these whom you say are devils?”
Teb-Tengri’s voice was as implacable as before. “Kill the bird first, then its servant, using methods to prevent their souls from escaping their bodies.”
Kaidu still had shown no emotion deeper than very mild surprise. Looking at Nils he said: “And you—” He paused, groping for the foreign name, then gave up on it. “What do you say to this serious accusation?”
Nils bowed slightly without rising, and his voice, when he spoke, was mild. “Most men nave something they don’t want others to know of.” He turned his strange gaze toward Teb-Tengri. “Your shaman, for example.” He paused, glass eyes fixed on the gaunt face, seeming to look into and through it. “He fears I will tell what it is.”
153
The shaman’s face seemed to freeze.
“Actually,” Nils went on, “there is another man in this room, besides himself and me, who knows his secret. Another with wizard powers. As Teb-Tengri already suspects.”
“Um.” Kaidu looked curiously at Teb-Tengri. “I am interested, but perhaps it’s best to pursue this no further. Shaman, if you agree to forget this business of executing the foreigner, I will not ask him what your secret is. For secret or not, your powers are useful to our people and to me.
“As for the foreigner’s bird, it is an owned bird, and not to be harmed.”
Teb-Tengri opened his mouth as if to protest, then clamped it shut. Baver’s thuttering heart slowed a bit.
Kaidu turned to Nils. “Among us, an owned bird has protection, and he who kills one is subject to suffocation. This yassa is intended to protect falcons and other hunting birds, but it states simply birds.” He turned his face to Teb-Tengri again. “Heed me, shaman.”
Once more he stood up. “This audience is now over. Everyone will leave except my brother and—” Again he groped unsuccessfully for Nils’s name. “You,” he said, pointing. “The Northman.”