Queen of the Eight Banners

Part 4, Scene 8 - Past

Ilha entered the ceremonial chamber with Ojombi trotting warily at her side, hand clutched in her left, and Dorgon striding purposefully at her right. Behind her followed Enebish who had linked her arm with Nomin's. A contingent of Bannermen and women already stood guard along the chamber's walls.   They saluted her arrival and she smiled, giving them a nod.  She wished she could pick out their individual faces but they--along with the rest of the room--shifted strangely past her eyes.   She took a deep breath and fought back nervousness, though already panic threatened to consume her.  If she was indeed walking into a trap, she was in no condition to fight. How foolish of her.  And yet, she had stuck her short sword in her belt and insisted the Bannermen and women accompanying her do the same.  The Gui would not know her order was a breach of custom, and even if they did, there would be little they could do about it.

She halted in the center of the room to get her bearings.  The room stopped blurring and she set her focus on first one individual then the next.

The Empress stood, clothed all in white like the dead.  Her hair was loose tonight, and it fell, artfully disheveled, to her knees.  Her face was unpainted and long sleeves hid her hands.  She did not look up as Ilha approached, but kept her gaze locked on her husband's funeral pyre.  Her baby was absent, but her son and daughter stood on either side of her.  They, too, were clothed all in white.  Liewei, her son and Heir, was silent and stoic, though his eyes shone a little too brightly in the torchlight. The daughter wept quietly, her mother's skirt bunched in her fists.

Beyond the Empress, facing North into the land of the dead, stood the Deathworker.  He wore black silks embroidered in white and his hair bound up in a topknot.  He was younger than she'd expected for one banished, perhaps in his thirties, and his figure was lean and strong.  He looked more like a fighter than a scholar.  She only barely hid her puzzlement.

General Sangui watched her from behind the Gui Empress; she felt his gaze and met it with her own.  He gave a small bow of greeting which she acknowledged with a nod.  His expression was impassive.  If he knew his Empress' plans, he gave no sign. 

She hoped that meant there were no plans, not that he wanted her dead.

Then, finally, she turned to regard the funeral pyre closest to her.  There lay her husband, the first time she'd seen him since he'd left her to go off to battle. A white shroud hid his face, but his shape was recognizable and deeply, intimately familiar.  Like a pure note of music reverberating in the heart.  If he had fallen closer to home, she would have returned his body to the wilderness that gave both their peoples birth.  But he had died in a city--a foreign city, surrounded by foreign buildings, foreign faces, language and clothing.  The fastest way to bring him safely home was by fire and ascending smoke.  The starlit sky that sheltered them all tonight would guide him home.

She took her place above his head and sensed Enebish approaching with a torch as Nomin lead her to her place alongside the bier.  Now was the time to say a few words for the departed and a few for those left behind.  None came.  Her head was filled with too much smoke already. Her eyes stung and her heart ached with loss and fear.  She looked down at Ojombi who stood, clinging to her hand, as confused and as lost as she felt.

She remembered the way Dorgide had broke with tradition in order to comfort her when he'd welcomed her to his people.  They had hunted, and she'd shown him her skill with a bow to make him proud. He'd given her the gift of familiarity on a wholly new, unfamiliar day.

Slowly she knelt by her son's side, ignoring the startled looks the Gui sent her for her breach in etiquette.  She let her fingers brush her son's cheeks. A song rose within her, and she opened herself to sing it.

It began as a lullaby in her own language, one she had often sung as a child. One her mother had sung.  The words themselves did not matter, except that they came easily to her lips.  It was the melody she sought.  Soft and aching, but soothing and hopeful. Sung by a thousand young mothers before her who feared and hoped and feared to hope.  The notes echoed strangely in the room.  This was no wool-felt ger.  This was no hideskin tent.  This was no open plain or wind-swept steppe.  But she gathered Ojombi to her and felt him sing softly with her as he hid in the circle of her arms.

She made it through the chorus before she dared look up at the pyre; and the song shifted.  A Hu hunting song awoke within her, and like a sinuous predator rising, the lullaby gathered itself and began to echo the call of the familiar hunt.  His hunt. Their hunt. 

Then, as if the shaman's actions were part of the song, as if this had been the tradition all along, Enebish lowered her torch and lit the pyre.