Beneath Ceaseless Skies #29 Read online

  “But what can he see?” I asked. “Or hear?”

  He shrugged. “He looks toward those trees, and if he lives I can only imagine how they must appear to him: sprouts that spring form the soil, mature, die, and decay, all the time flickering back and forth between light and dark as the sun comes and goes.”

  It was true. You will not credit it, and I did not myself, but I heard from some of the oldest men at the court that when they had been young a certain statue had been posed at one end of a certain field, and now the statue was three or four paces into the field. Their motion was such that one could stand an entire watch of the night and not perceive it, but if you would come back in another year, so these men said, you would see that a certain foot had raised a matter of inches, that an expression had changed slightly, or that a weapon had been raised or lowered.

  You may wonder why I spend so much time describing the garden of the Khan and the statues found there. This was to be an account of my flight from the land and, more than that, an explanation of why my lord the king need never again give heed to rumors of the Khan’s armies massing to the west. I certainly did not set out to bring about any such victory. Yet the statues and the artist play a role in the account of what happened, and the gardens—

  Perhaps I simply yearn to see the gardens again.

  * * *

  I was wandering through the palace one day, padding barefoot down the corridors followed demurely by my attendant-guard, when I passed one of the Khan’s daughters walking the opposite direction. I bowed, diverting my eyes respectfully, and she stopped behind me to speak with my guard. I couldn’t hear what was said, but she must have ordered him to accompany her somewhere. They left together, and for the first time since my arrival I was alone in the Khan’s palace.

  I decided to take the opportunity to continue my wandering, hoping that I might gain a better understanding of the palace’s layout and perhaps find myself in some area of interest that might otherwise be denied me had I still my guard in tow. I knew that the lower levels were devoted to kitchen staff, stables, the courtyard, stores, and (the lowest level, as I would come to find) the oubliette, so instead I made my way in and up.

  After several twistings and turnings, always taking the corridor that would lead away from the outer walls, I was in an area of the palace I had never seen. The windows I passed showed only courtyards or inner walls, so I knew I was near the structure’s center. The stone was cooler here, a polished granite. I found myself in a gently curving hallway that seemed to stretch around a large circular room. After a time, I came across a gateway that opened to the interior.

  When I stepped through I feared for a moment I had gone too far and had in fact found myself in the Khan’s own personal chambers or, even worse, those of his wives and daughters.

  Beyond the gate was a garden, so dense with ivy and climbing roses that I could not make out the opposite wall and thus had no clear perception of how large the courtyard was. Looking up I could make out the tops of the palace towers, one of which was certainly the Khan’s Tower of Birds, and beyond that the sky.

  In the center of the garden, between the trunks of slender trees so closely arrayed they might have been the bars of a cage, there stood another of the white statues. I went closer to inspect it, because I had never seen them anywhere but on the grounds by evening, and as I neared it I saw that not only was it unique in being inside the palace, it was also clearly a woman when all the other statues I had seen were men.

  I have written that the statues were beautiful, that they were more real than anything I had seen carved of stone. To say this one was beyond all that would certainly be taken simply as more words, but there is nothing else to say. The woman, of a height almost on a scale with the trees, was lovely.

  I moved closer, pushing through ivy along a thin trail of crushed chalk.

  She wore a white flowing robe of a style I had not seen, cinched at the waist with a simple stone chord. The robe had slipped from one marble shoulder, and her left arm was half-raised toward it. The other arm was held down at her side. She looked through the trees with an expression that may have been fear.

  * * *

  When I slept, you will be sure, and you will smile at your certainty, I dreamed of her. In these dreams I was still within the Silver Khan’s palace, and his palace still drifted over the gardens, but now the palace was a ship, and the gardens beneath were the rolling hills glimpsed at the bottom of a translucent sea. We were tacking before a breeze, and I went to the window and stood in the moonlight, watching the soldiers in the sea below.

  A woman passed my doorway, striding silently through the stone corridors, and when I followed I saw that she was the woman of stone. She had been brought to life, but her features seemed as marble still, bright as though a flame burned within. Then the moon beyond my windows went behind a cloud, and she dimmed as well, and I knew that she still stood in the courtyard where I had seen her.

  I cried out, asking her to wait. When I spoke she turned. Her lips were those of a woman of flesh rather than stone, and she wet my face with her tears.

  * * *

  “Are there only men then?” I asked my friend the artist when the Khan’s palace had released us into the scented air of the gardens that evening. “Have you never seen a sculpture of this type carved as a woman?”

  The artist whistled slowly. I had found him in a grove, studying a grouping of three of them standing shoulder to shoulder with swords drawn. A sapling had sprouted between two.

  “It did not take you long to ask, my friend,” he said, smiling. “Sometimes I think that is perhaps why the Khan himself shuns these images. A woman carved as these men? It would drive the men of his palace mad, I should think, to see such a form and know it to be beyond the warmth of life. One might suppose the glory of the Khan’s daughter and wives would be eclipsed at even the suggestion, though I speak this only to you as a foreigner.”

  “Then, no,” I pressed, “you have never seen a woman such as these?”

  The man sighed heavily. “Seen her here,” he said, pointing to his brow, “often. Seen her here,” he swept his arm to take in the hills and groves and garden pathways, “never. I have tried to draw how such a woman would look. Other women have purchased these drawings, supposing I was sketching their likenesses.”

  I wondered then if I should tell him about the statue I had seen, but I feared that he would insist I take him to it, and surely attempting to venture that far into the Khan’s palace again would not be wise. I doubted I would have another opportunity away from my guard-attendant, who accompanied me even more diligently since he had found me back at my room that afternoon. If I told the artist about it and he attempted to find it himself, I could only imagine the Khan’s punishment on his own subjects would be harsher than it would have been on me. (Why I was certain one would be punished, I could not say.)

  I walked alone after that, as I so often did through the Khan’s gardens. I thought of the kingdoms to the east and of those who awaited me there. What would I tell them when I returned? I had learned nothing of merit of the Khan’s plans for the future. I did not know whether he wished to send his armies north or south or east or send his flotillas on the western seas. I had learned next to nothing of how his palace flew, though I had confirmed that it did and perhaps our engineers could garner something useful from my observations.

  I had not wandered far when I realized that my own path was converging with that of the Khan’s retinue. The path I walked along ran beside a low hedge, and stepping through a break I found myself on the banks of a stone-lined canal. There were lit candles floating in the water, drifting between the lilies. The silver boats of the Khan were being poled silently down the canal, their slight wakes setting the lights bobbing.

  I stood in the shadow of the hedge, keeping my eyes averted as the boats bearing the Khan’s daughters passed, trailing behind that of their father. When it seemed they had all moved down the canal and out of sight, someone c
alled to me. I looked up to see one of the Khan’s daughters, standing in a boat at the low wall of the canal. Her gown was the deepest blue I had ever seen. I could not tell if she was the daughter I had passed in the corridor before finding the statue.

  “Foreigner,” she called, motioning me to approach.

  I did not know what games the Khan’s daughters played in the shadows of the gardens, though I had heard whispers. I did know though that when a daughter of the Khan spoke there could be no thought of disobedience, so I bowed my head and walked toward the water.

  * * *

  When the stars were bright and the night was thick, I asked her about her gown. We were lying under a tree heavy with blossoms. The blue silk was spread beside us like moonlight on the grass.

  She glanced over a dark shoulder at it. “It is wolfsilk.”

  “We have nothing like it back east.”

  She reached back and pulled it over us. It felt cool and, despite its thinness, surprisingly heavy. Now perhaps for the first time I felt I had seen the fabric somewhere else.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, smiling. “By law only the wives of the Khan’s boyars are allowed to spin it, and it can be worn by the daughters of the Khan alone.”

  “It is beautiful,” I agreed. “As I said, we have nothing like it at home.”

  “There are many things here you will not find there,” she said. She smiled again. Her teeth were ivory in the moonlight, and her skin was jade.

  * * *

  The night was beginning to fade when she woke me. “Come,” she said, handing me my robe. I had a glimpse of her form as she slipped back into her gown. We were beneath a low arbor of cherry trees. The boat rested against the bank.

  “No,” she said, following my glance. “We will take the pathways back. We must hurry.”

  She held my hand as we walked. I could hear the low trumpets sounding from the walls of the Khan’s palace, signaling all still in the gardens that the gates would soon close and the palace would rise. I had no idea how far it was, and I wondered how far we had strayed last night, first trailing behind the other boats and then choosing our own way down the meandering canals before ending at the bower of trees where we had awoken. I was about to ask her when we rounded a bend in the path and saw the palace at the bottom of the valley before us.

  “I will go now,” she said. “You must wait here and follow.” She leaned close and touched her lips to my cheek, then turned and strode down the path.

  I had meant to wait only a few minutes, as she had requested, and then follow. The gates of the palace were still open, the torches still burned in the towers, and I would have had time to reach them before the sun had fully risen. I lingered though, watching the last few stragglers of the night hurry from wherever they had passed the evening. I thought I saw her as well, a slip of cerulean in the growing light, pause in the gate and perhaps look back. As the first sunrays touched the highest towers of the palace, the trumpet sounded again and the silver gates swung shut.

  If I were honest (something I have been attempting in this account, with varying degree of success) I would admit that I was terrified of the Khan’s wrath. It was death to disobey any of the daughters of the Khan, and yet I was sure it was also death to touch any of the daughters of the Khan. There remained the possibility that he would know nothing of what had transpired that night, yet for now it seemed prudent to keep as much distance between myself and the girl as possible.

  I was also intensely curious. I had still been unable to ascertain from anyone the alleged danger of staying below when the palace rose, and I had almost convinced myself that the danger was completely imaginary, perhaps engineered by the Khan for some unknown purpose. If it was imaginary, then by remaining below I would be able to witness the action of the thermal sails from a different perspective. If it was not, I would not discover what it was by remaining in the palace each day.

  I waited then, as the sun rose, though I admit the hush that fell over the gardens was disconcerting. The great pylons fell from the palace walls one by one, like the petals of some huge flower of cloth and iron, and the sails that stretched between them billowed. I noticed that they overlapped, fitting together tightly very much like the blossoms of the bowl-lilies that floated on the canals. I saw them bobbing on the waters in my mind’s eye, and I stiffened suddenly.

  With the image came understanding. It came all at once, as they say the words do for the poets when some long-sought expression suddenly rises to their lips. I understood how the Khan’s palace flew, because it did not truly: it floated.

  I had taken two or three steps toward the palace after this realization struck me before the second realization followed.

  The stones of the palace were beginning to groan as sunlight warmed them. I turned and ran back toward the river and the princess’s boat.

  * * *

  He wanted to know how I survived the gardens by day.

  I stood before the Khan and a good portion of his court, shivering and still soaked in the growing chill of the early evening. I had waited in darkness beneath the overturned boat, standing in the canal in water up to my chest, until the evening trumpets from the palace walls signaled sunset. Many times during the day (which passed for me in complete blackness) I had been sure that I was running out of air or that the boat’s bottom was not sealed tightly enough or that I would finally acquiesce to the nearly intolerable desire to push the boat up and breathe in sunlight and air.

  Instead I stayed in the water and the darkness, shivering and half-dreaming, forcing my breathing to slow and exhaling only through a reed I had found in those panicked moments at shore that I hoped was long enough to extend beyond the boat’s overturned edge. After what seemed an eternity I thought I heard the stones of the palace grinding against each other, but still I waited until I heard the horns and knew for sure it was safe to emerge.

  The Khan’s guards, led by my own attendant-guard, found me as I wandered, half numb with the cold of the water, toward the gates. They seemed hesitant to touch me, as though my day in the gardens had rendered me an object of fear or reverence (as perhaps it had). It wasn’t until the Khan himself, followed by his retinue and his wives and daughters, came down the path that two of the guards took my shoulders and forced me to my knees.

  There was silence then until the Khan voiced his question.

  “I hid under an overturned boat in the canal, great Khan,” I told him truthfully. There didn’t seem to be any reason to lie.

  “There are no boats in the river but the Khan’s own,” the Khan said in a level voice I found impossible to interpret.

  I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the ground in front of me. I wanted to look up, past the Khan, at the rainbow cloud of colored gowns that waited behind him. I didn’t know if her eyes would meet mine or what a look from those eyes would signal.

  The Khan had spies everywhere, I was certain. I had often felt their eyes upon me in the corridors of the palace, and I am sure they walked the garden in the evenings as well. How much did he know of what had taken place? For a moment I felt like a plaything, caught up in the games of those who held power over the fate of their subjects, and I was angry. The Khan seemed to be waiting for an answer to his statement, but I bit my lip and said nothing.

  “Why did you remain outside the walls of the palace when day came?” he finally asked.

  A lie here seemed more appropriate. “I had become lost in the garden and couldn’t make it back to the walls before the gates closed.”

  “This has been known to happen,” the Khan murmured. “But they are found dead the next evening. How is it that you survived?” The Khan was walking closer. I could see his silver sandals before me. “Look at me.”

  I did, nervous now.

  I know that when I am back in the east, many will want to know what the Khan looked like. His visage was stamped on coins and crests and on his official seal that marked all documents leaving the Bird Tower, and so these will be familiar
to many. They are a fair representation. He has the dark skin of those of the west, and his expression, even when friendly, seems severe. This close to him now I could not help but notice his eyes were the color of his daughter’s in the moonlight. I swallowed and began, perhaps weakly, “I hid under—”

  “Yes,” he cut me off, “an overturned boat.” He paused for a time as if considering. “What was so interesting in my gardens that caused you to stray from the path and become lost?”

  I dropped my eyes again and felt the color coming to my cheeks. The feeling of being toyed with returned, and I knew that I needed to say something to distract him (or myself) from this line of questioning.

  “The statues, great Khan,” I said quickly. “They are scattered throughout the garden, and they are the loveliest of anything I have seen in your majesty’s realm. I wandered from the paths looking—”

  “There are no statues in my gardens!” he cried, suddenly angry. “There are no statues in the palace! They are figments, and such nonsense will not be tolerated!”

  I had never heard the Khan explode in such a manner, and I was bewildered. He made a gesture toward my guards and they hoisted me to my feet and led me, not terribly gently, to a cell in the bottom level of the palace.

  * * *

  The gowns of the Khan’s daughters finally tore as the wind bore us up against the hills between his gardens and the Great Sea. By this time night was falling and the Khan’s palace would have been settling behind us. There are trees here on the edge of the Khan’s orchards, heavy with fruit, and we gathered plenty of them for a meal this night. The women had not had time to bring food.

  They are crying now, softly, as I sit by the fire considering this account. They must suspect my role in this. I raised no hand against their father, but I killed him as surely as if I had thrown him to drown beneath the palace myself.

  I will sleep uneasily tonight.