Mary Calmes - Change of Heart 03 - Honored Vow by Mary Calmes

Author:Mary Calmes [Calmes, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I had thought we would be inside, in the home built into the rock. I had misunderstood. We were guests, so we would sleep in a ger, or a yurt, a large, round wooden-framed hut covered in waterproof canvas that was extremely durable and able to stand up to the snow and wind. The gers, all six of them, one for each house of the challengers, had been erected along a small river that cut through beautiful pastureland. In the summer, or anytime it wasn’t winter, I could imagine how green it must have been, but now everything was covered with heavy white snow. The river water was still clear and turquoise because it was reflecting the magnificent color as far as the eye could see. The travel books called Mongolia the country of blue sky, and as I stood, turning in every direction, I understood why. It was just endless. I felt like I was on another planet, as alien as everything felt.

Absolutely nothing was like I thought. We were outsiders, so we stayed, literally, outside. There were no sleeping quarters for us. We were allowed only into common areas, the pit, corrals for animals, food stores, and a large main hall where the semel received visitors. It was where we were supposed to go after we were brought our morning meal of tea with milk and rice congee, which was porridge with pickled vegetables and tiny freshwater fish.

I was standing outside the ger I shared with the other six men who had made the trip with me when I saw Chuluun walking toward me with two other men that I had not met before. He himself looked exhausted.

“Good morning,” I greeted him when he was close to me. He squinted, and his brows furrowed. “Good morning, my reah. May I introduce my sylvan, Naran, and my sheseru, Sükh?”

I bowed quickly as they both went to their knees. I had forgotten that

their tribe was much more formal than my own.

There was a grumble of sound before Chuluun too went very slowly

to his knees.

What was I… oh. “Please,” I prodded them, “rise and be at ease in

my presence.”

They both stood. Naran helped Chuluun up and then shook his head. I smiled at the maahes. “Uhm, I’m gonna guess drinkin’?” He groaned, and the sheseru, who was trying really hard to hold onto

his glower, had to give me a trace of a smile. “It seems that your own

sheseru can hold his liquor better than the maahes of our tribe.” I nodded.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I had woken to hushed voices

whispering in the dark and had gotten up, gone around the partition that

stood to give me, and only me, some semblance of privacy, and walked

toward the front of the ger. It had gotten colder the further I moved from

the wood-burning stove that gave off the only heat, but when I had

discovered the source of the sound, I had doubted that the two men were

concerned with the freezing temperature in the least.

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