The Mongoliad: Book Two by Neal Stephenson & Erik Bear & Greg Bear & Joseph Brassey & Nicole Galland & Cooper Moo & Mark Teppo

Author:Neal Stephenson & Erik Bear & Greg Bear & Joseph Brassey & Nicole Galland & Cooper Moo & Mark Teppo [Stephenson, Neal & Bear, Erik & Bear, Greg & Brassey, Joseph & Galland, Nicole & Moo, Cooper & Teppo, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9781612182377
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2012-09-24T14:00:00+00:00

17

Rumors of My Demise

KIM GRUNTED AS the masseuse worked his shoulders, her fingers digging into the tense muscles. He lay facedown on a narrow platform, his eyes closed, and the scent of the oils she was using took his mind to other places. Guilt and anguish were not his way, nor dwelling on what was gone, but smells and sounds were powerful things, and in an effort to relax, he let himself fall into the embrace of his memory.

Books, he recalled—halls of learning where golden sunlight poured in through the windows, illuminating courtiers draped in silk. Sweat also, and blood, shared by brothers and friends in times of war and peace, and dark caves in the mountains where secrets of a long-hidden brotherhood were passed from generation to generation. The recollections were sweet, better than the reality had been, but that was the nature of memory: the past turned to silver and polish as time went by. A mercy for most, that the hardships faded in time, but when the memory lost its sting, it became something of a torment.

He grunted as she found a particularly hard knot below his left shoulder blade, the exhalation more agitated than the last. Her hands paused and then vanished, and he heard her sharp, shallow breaths. Fear, he thought, fear that her tiny yet muscular hands had injured him.

“Not your hands,” he apologized in the Mongol tongue. He opened his eyes and looked at her. “It is my history that pains me.” She was not Mongolian, and truth be told, he had no idea what languages the girl spoke, but she seemed to understand.

She was a pretty Chinese woman, brought west with the endless train of wagons that followed the great Mongol Horde. Her long black hair was twisted up and held in a bundle by a pair of lacquered sticks, and her face, though downcast, was soft and young. She wore fine clothes and smelled of the oils of her trade. She was part of the comforts he and his fellow fighters enjoyed, fanciful things that were meant to make it easy to forget where he was and why, but her beauty and her scent had the opposite effect, reminding him of what he had lost. She was just another bar in his cage.

He made no move to rise from the platform, and she shifted from side to side in her kneeling position, unsure of what he wanted of her. “Please,” he said, “you need not fear me.”

With a look halfway between relief and resignation, she gestured for him to put his head down again. As if taking permission from his statement, she set her fingers into the work harder, and he clenched his teeth. Some pain is good; some pain is necessary.

Most of the discoloration from his bruises was gone, but underneath, he was still stiff and sore. The beating he received from Tegusgal’s men could have been worse, and the fact that he was allowed the luxury of this massage was a sign of how his punishment had been a matter of formality rather than severity.