Akmaral

By Judith Lindbergh

Before the Silk Road had a name, nomads roamed the Asian steppes and women fought side by side as equals with men. Like all women of the Sauromatae, Akmaral is bound for battle from birth, training as a girl in horsemanship, archery, spear, and blade. Her prowess ignites the jealousy of Erzhan, a gifted warrior who hates her as much as he desires her. When Scythian renegades attack, the two must unite to defeat them. Among their captives is Timor, the rebels' enigmatic leader who refuses to be broken, even as he is enslaved. He fascinates Akmaral. But as attraction grows to passion, she is blinded to the dangerous alliance forming between the men who bristle against the clan' s matriarchal rule. Faced with brutal betrayal, Akmaral must find the strength to defend her people and fulfill her destiny. Drawn from legends of Amazon women warriors from ancient Greece and recent archaeological discoveries in Central Asia, AKMARAL is a sweeping tale about a powerful woman who must make peace with making war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regal House Publishing
• Release date: May 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781646034703

Book preview

Praise for Akmaral

"In Akmaral, Judith Lindbergh draws a portrait of a fierce, headstrong, yet vulnerable female warrior who lives on the Central Asian steppes in the 5th century BCE. An orphan, descended from Amazons, Akmaral’s ascent to power is fraught with conflict both internal and external. Fans of Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes will relish how Lindbergh weaves fact and fiction. Thoroughly imagined and vividly described, this novel is a gripping saga, a love story, and a convincing portrait of a time and people lost to history."

—Christina Baker Kline, #1 bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Exiles

"Judith Lindbergh’s meticulously researched, deeply imagined Akmaral brings the joy and hardship of a nomad woman warrior to vibrant, often aching life. Set against the unfolding drama of an ancient warring tribe of the Asian steppes, the novel captures both the mystery of love and the majesty of the human spirit."

—Cathy Marie Buchanan, New York Times bestselling author of Daughter of Black Lake and The Painted Girls

"Once there were female warriors more powerful than any man, with fierce wills and bodies strong as iron. Born in the ancient steppes of Asia where Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China now meet, Akmaral is the breathtaking story of a mesmerizing female warrior who is well-trained for battle but finds herself confronted and confounded by a man who is just as skilled and passionate. When young Akmaral falls in love with her proud Scythian captive, her role as protector of her clan becomes infinitely more complicated as she is forced to choose between kingdom, family, and her own heart. Akmaral delves deep into female power and confronts complex issues about womanhood, motherhood, and the sacrifices women make to protect those they love: issues as powerful today as they were in ancient times. If you love Madeline Miller’s Circe, you must read Akmaral. Lindbergh delivers a breath-taking story filled with vivid characters, haunted landscapes, powerful battle scenes, and a love story you will not soon forget."

—Laurie Lico Albanese, award-winning author of Hester

"Judith Lindbergh’s magically immersive novel, Akmaral, unfolds among an ancient matriarchal tribe of nomads living on the Ukok Plateau, in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. The story centers on the life of the anointed girl child, Akmaral, whose extraordinary bravery and fully realized humanity make her into a heroine on a par with the characters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Lindbergh combines her impressive gifts for research with an uncanny ability to evoke an exotic, remote, and meticulously imagined civilization from 2,400 years ago that nonetheless shimmers with authenticity in all its details. You will smell the sweat of the horses and feel the ache of a warrior who is also a mother and a lover. AKMARAL transported me, night after page-turning night, to a world I would never have been able to experience otherwise, an unforgettable wind-swept world before the dawn of patriarchy."

—Barbara Quick, author of Vivaldi’s Virgins and What Disappears

I was unable to put down this riveting, rugged journey of a young woman in an almost inconceivable world which vanished millenniums ago. Akmaral may be one of the most fascinating warriors in literature. She loves three things most: her beloved tribe with its relentless god, the silent captured enemy she takes into her life, and the child she bears him. But what if the stranger turns on her because she loves too much? Written with a wild poetry, the author brings to life a strong woman and her unforgettable story amid stark cliffs and green pastures, guided by a mystical exiled old woman and the ghost of her lost best friend. AKMARAL is pure literary magic.

—Stephanie Cowell, American Book Award recipient and author of Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet and The Boy in the Rain

Akmaral

Judith Lindbergh

Regal House Publishing

Copyright © 2024 Judith Lindbergh. All rights reserved.

Published by

Regal House Publishing, LLC

Raleigh, NC 27605

All rights reserved

ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646034697

ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646034703

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023942950

All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

Cover images and design by © C. B. Royal

Regal House Publishing, LLC

https://regalhousepublishing.com

The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

To my mother

and to all women who must fight to make peace.

Map

Introduction

Of the origins of the Sauromatae, it is told that, after their victory on the Thermodon, the Greeks sailed off on three ships, taking with them the surviving Amazons as captives. While at sea, the Amazons attacked and killed the Greek crews. But they knew nothing of sailing and drifted with the waves until they came aground at the cliffs of Lake Maeotis. This was the free Scythians’ country. When the Amazons landed, they set out toward their settlements. Seizing the first herd of horses they found, they mounted them and began to raid.

The Scythians wondered where they had come from, and assumed these strange raiders were men. It was only after they had met them in battle, and then examined the dead, that they realized that their foes were women.

The Scythians argued about what to do. In the end, they decided to court them. They moved nearer to the Amazon camps and imitated all they did, fleeing instead of fighting whenever the Amazons approached. Soon the women understood that the Scythian warriors meant no harm. The two camps joined together for raiding and hunts. And some of the women chose the men as lovers.

When finally they had learned each other’s languages, the men urged the Amazons to return to their settlements and become their wives. But the women refused. We could not live with your people. We shoot bows and arrows. We throw javelins and ride. Your women stay in their wagons and do women’s work. They never hunt or even travel beyond your encampments. If you wish to be our husbands, let us leave this place and live by ourselves. And the men agreed.

So they crossed the Tanaïs River and rode to the east and to the north until they came to a new land of pastures and mountains. There they settled. Ever since, the Sauromatae women have followed their ancient ways, riding out to hunt with their men or without. They dress and behave in every way the same as their men. And when needed, they go to war.

Regarding marriage, it is their custom that no maiden weds until she has killed a man in battle; and some grow old and die unmarried, because they cannot satisfy this need.

—Herodotus, The Histories, Book IV: 110-117, 5th century B.C.E.

AKMARAL

A black stork drifts onto an isle in the middle of the great shallow lake that stretches for miles—a shimmering mirage. The water in some places rises only to the great bird’s ankles. It nips at the fishes, swallowing them by lifting up its beak and choking them back whole.

Some say I am like that: stately, yet savage, as easy to call for blood as for silence, as longing for the warmth of a lover’s chest as to shove it off at the call to arms. But I do not like battle. Only know that a show of strength is required to keep the peace. Blood is strength which often forms still pools on the battlefield, like this lake or others that are formed by sudden rains. When the sun rises, it dries into the soil and cannot be seen. Blood, passing into memory.

I, too, am passing into memory. I am dying and will lie soon within the earth and be forgotten. For most of us, it does not last long—this life. A warrior’s death always comes early. Yet mine has lasted long enough, longer than I would have thought. I should be proud of what I’ve done, of defending my people, of guiding them such a great distance from where we had begun.

They call us Sauromatae—the Greeks do and the Scythians also—lizard breasts for our glittering armor scales. But I remember a time when our people had no name, when we were a disparate multitude of wandering herders—a thousand, thousand isolated clans clustered into petty camps, our wind-rattled yurts scattered like dung clots across the undulating steppes. Half our horses then were wild, raising dust into dry showers; our sheep, goats, and camels tirelessly gnawing at the tall, sharp grass, turning the hapless earth from emerald to amber to ashen.

Out of this I made a nation, though it was nothing I ever sought, never my intent, nothing I would have chosen. This throng that surrounds me now they call a confederacy; and of its greatness, they name me leader—this, my legacy that will linger long beyond my death, exalting all the mighty strife that I abhor.

For most of my life, I have served the war god Targitai. In his duty, I have worn the pelts of wolves and leopards, and hung the horns of wild boars upon my belt. Many other beasts I have hunted roaming across our grasslands. And I have led my people into battle, and I have regretted it.

What I did was as anyone would do to protect her people, her family, her children.

I have tried to make amends for the damage I have done. If they call me queen, it is little honor for my sorrows. My people gather around me, singing chants and ringing small bronze bells. Hewana, they call me—mother of our tribe—but I have been a mother only once, and not for very long. Most of them do not recall.

This has been my journey; and I will leave it—now, or very soon. Though these last breaths before death are anything but sweet. Perhaps no one is proud on the day of their death. All are filled with question and doubt. As am I. As I have been, almost from the beginning.

Part I

The Snow Leopard

1

The Flying Deer

The Kara Kam foretold that I would be important. I was five winters old and had just begun to learn the skill of sewing felt. I sat beside our fire working at two small patches with a thin wool thread when my mother stepped inside our winter hut, kneeling low to warm her hands.

It is time, she murmured, cupping her icy fingers around my elbow, looking across at my father who sat on a cushion with his long legs crossed. He’d been sharpening the edge of a new-made dagger, the tools of his craft scattered over the thick felt mat. Blood moon. My mother gestured toward a sudden light that had broken over the snow drifting through our roof’s eye.

My father nodded, put down the blade, then rose to his feet, brushing the bronze filings from his leather trousers. His gaze drifted upward toward the wafting flakes—the air, laced with some foreboding I could not fathom.

I knew better than to question, as my mother pried a spouted jug from the pile of our stores. It was her favorite—made of pounded silver etched with the shapes of warriors, horses, and thick-maned lions, in a style I had rarely seen, unlike anything my father or any other craftsman could have fashioned. Perhaps the jug was bartered from a caravan of Persian merchants along the trade road—Six sacks of colored ores, I offer you! Add seven blocks of cheese! And three wool felts! No, I must have one of those fine daggers! I could almost hear the traders’ voices as my mother gestured for my attention back. She handed me the jug and helped me polish it with milk and sand, then gave me the small bronze bowl that always lay beside our fire. There, our earthen cauldron steamed with fermented mare’s milk—koumiss, the intoxicating drink whose bitter sips bring us closer to our ancestors.

I took up the bowl and ladled the koumiss carefully. When the jug was full, my mother wrapped it tightly in soft leather and bound the bundle with a thin gut cord. She wrapped me, too, in a heavy felt-sewn cloak. Outside, the snow was falling harder as my father loaded up our horses.

So late at night and all the other shelters of our camp already still—I sensed the burden of my parents’ silence as we rode single file into the storm. My gaze fixed ahead at my mother’s horse’s hoof-falls pricking the perfect blanket like small stitches through the white. We traveled eastward to where our narrow valley widened and windswept veils of forgotten spirits danced across a snow-draped steppe. There, beneath an overhanging cliff, stood a single yurt—a low, round tent—not even a winter cabin.

I gasped and reined my horse, but my mother had already drawn up close beside me. Akmaral, a warrior is never frightened. I nodded, clutching my cloak a little closer.

It was the Kara Kam’s yurt, as any child of our aul would know, swathed in felts so dark, they matched the high cliff’s walls. My mother had often told me how the Kara Kam could ride on the tails of golden eagles, how she knew the twisting fishes’ waters and could swim them out to the distant sea, that she flew between the altars of the stars and had traveled every passage to the heaven realm. But hers was a blackened path. She practiced in darkness, painted with ashes, her yurt filled with acrid smoke—so different from the Ak Kam, our people’s priestess, who sacrificed beneath the sky’s wide gaze before the aul and all the elders, where everyone could see and hear and understand her meaning.

My mother urged her horse and led us closer, settling our mounts before a frail wood post. My father raised his arms to ease me from my saddle. He clung to me—only for a moment until my mother tugged me off. I willed myself not to linger as I followed, trying not to stumble through the new, thick snow.

I entered last, behind my mother and then my father. They each knelt to give their offerings: a heavy sack of winter meat, small beads carved of colored stone, six pelts each of fox and marmot, the fleece of a yearling sheep, and my father’s new-honed blade. I carried the heavy jug filled with the drink my mother and I had prepared. And a tunic of colored felt, carefully embroidered, stretched across my mother’s arms. I’d seen her working at it, stitching in the dark, strange murmurs sputtering from her lips—prayers to our ancient ancestors.

The Kara Kam sat alone in her frigid hut before the embers of a failing fire. Her shoulders were slender, stooped beneath a rough silk tunic too large for her fragile frame. Her bare legs stuck out like brittle twigs from a long, thick skirt of crimson wool. Around her waist she wore a woven belt tied with heavy tassels, and from her head arose a headdress as tall as the lattice walls, dangling with fine, carved birds, gilded leaping horses, and twisted lions attacking rams. At its peak protruded sharp-fletched arrows wrapped in strips of gold. They spread like branches, reaching up as if to pierce the roof’s eye. Before her lay powders of ochre, cinnabar, and ash, each pressed into oyster shells, though there was no ocean near. Across her bare arms traced the tortured struggles of straining beasts—deer with griffins’ heads caught in the jaws of winged snow leopards—etched into her skin as dark indigo tattoos.

I had never seen her properly before. The black kam always lived alone, following our paths, settling her yurt at the distant edge of our encampments. Only sometimes she’d appear in the shadows beyond our fires. All knew her for the sudden flash of her round bronze mirror which she would hold in the dark to capture the hearth goddess Rada Mai’s homely light; then, she’d hurl the spark into a startling flare that would tear across the looming darkness. We all would scurry from the light, frightened and blinded.

Now she held the mirror before her face, and I could make out the figures of five stags flying and a single mountain goat caught in an endless whirl. She turned, moving the mirror through the air, softly, slowly, making the thin white smoke before her curl and dance. And she sang—strange, unintelligible chants—her mouth moving, revealing livid gums, pegged teeth between purple lips.

I squirmed to avoid her mirror’s cutting light. But my father held me still as my mother bowed low, offering her food. She unwrapped the jug and poured our koumiss into the small bronze bowl. The Kara Kam paused in her incantations, greeting my mother with a hard, quick glance, followed slowly by a guileless, almost tearful smile. She took the bowl and tipped it, scattering the droplets several times in all directions. Then she slurped the last down loudly. My mother poured another bowl and passed it round for each of us to sip. Even me. I choked a bit before I swallowed.

At the black kam’s beckon, my father pressed me forward. My mother took my wrapper off so that the icy air rushed around my frame. The Kara Kam did not seem to feel the cold, her shoulders fully bare now as her eyes rolled back deep inside her skull. I willed myself not to turn away as again she chanted, reaching blindly for a tall alabaster jug from which she sprinkled small black seeds over her smoldering fire.

Soon the yurt smelled strange. Another puff of smoke and then a haze. In time—I do not recall how long—the Kara Kam’s arms grew wide, then sprouted feathers. Flapping, she began to screech—she had become a bird—a vulture circling, with wings all black and an ashen-colored ruff. Then the stubbled head transformed again into the woman’s. I shuddered in mounting terror, for everything around me had transformed—even my mother and my father, who had become long-limbed gazelles.

Then the Kara Kam spoke. Look down at your feet, Akmaral, my sister’s daughter’s daughter. I looked and saw the hooves of a powerful steppe deer; then, almost without thought, I leapt through the roof’s eye and flew across the open sky.

***

When I awoke, I was still shaking.

It was morning. The light shone bluish through the roof’s eye, left open to release the smoke that rose coldly from the black kam’s fire. She sat in silence, looking feeble and diminished. Her headdress was gone. Her eyes were pale and clouded. She seemed now truly blind as she grinned at a space beyond me.

We left. My mother and my father both seemed pleased, each bending to take an arm, for I could barely stand, my limbs leaden after so much flying. But out of view of the old woman’s yurt, I began to feel my feet. They had left me, but now were firm and solid.

What do you remember, Akmaral? my mother asked as we rode slowly back. When I told her, she nodded to my father. I will make you the flying deer.

Some weeks elapsed before a caravan stirred the traders’ road. We trotted close, our warriors lowering their weapons so they would know we posed no threat. We offered thick felted mats, raw wool, and cheeses in exchange for unworked ore. In the days that followed, my mother carved a beeswax mold, her nimble fingers paring a graceful shape before casting it in clay. Finally, she set it in the fire to burn away the dross, then poured the metal. When the mold was broken, she withdrew the perfect figure of a deer with tiny, delicate antlers—threads made strong by the wisdom of a thousand generations.

My mother strung the little deer on a leather strand and hung it around my neck. I felt its heat. It was a long time cooling, and the fire left a little scar that I still treasure.

2

Horses

Of course, I did not start a warrior. I was a girl with long braids running down my back, just like these guileless girls I see on this highland pasture. Here they settle with their families in dome-shaped yurts and are sent to the mountain stream to bring back water. They are sturdy, often laughing, with a rosy flush about their cheeks. When I was young, I recall the skin was chapped and sometimes hurt from the constant, callous touch of the wind.

As a girl I rode horses, as all our people do. As soon as we can speak, we are set atop wool blankets on wooden saddles and taught to grip with all the strength in our calves and thighs. There we wobble from side to side until we fall from the horses’ backs into our parents’ waiting arms. I remember my mother catching me, warm and lusty as she hugged me to her breast, stroking my ruddy cheek, briskly clutching a thick hank of my sun-washed hair.

What color is it today, Akmaral? Copper or bronze or almost golden? she marveled as she plaited it into a smooth, taut braid, catching up the wind-scattered wisps and tucking them behind my ears. Now you can ride and it won’t distract you. She stroked the sleek, long tress which shimmered with a touch of embers. She said it was because of the fire she raised to form her craft: my mother knew the ways of shaping melted gold. She had learned them from my father who had been a captive—a villager, they say, but kept alive because he was useful. He knew the art of smithing. He worked in bronze, she mostly in gold. Each served our people, smelting ores and casting them into tools, armor, finery, and weapons.

When our people raid, we rarely take captives—better to be burdened only with what we need, to travel light and swift as the flash and thunder of the warrior god Targitai. In a nomads’ camp, we rarely rest unharried, our aul always moving from place to place, following the good grass with every season, always on alert even as our herds graze, ever ready with our arms. On the steppes, there is no horizon without its dangers. Any advantage we can muster to keep our people safe, we take. So we kept the village smith alive.

My father made swords and daggers, arrowheads, fine-etched drinking bowls, and horse’s tack—all beautiful as well as useful. But finest of all were my mother’s warriors’ plaques: medallions shaped as golden eagles, wolves, and leopards bearing twisted, straining prey. These were the ancient symbols of our clan, given to our warriors in honor of great deeds. In my dim memory, I hear them laughing or talking quietly while they work beside the sparking pit dug beneath our hearth—such comforting sounds as they melted chunks of ores into reddish and golden fire.

I remember, too, that dawn—little different from any other, with its first softening of crickets’ song and then the swelling breeze as the sun caressed the horizon’s breast. We lay, all three together in the darkness, my eyes cracked open but unfocused, gazing at the smoke-edged rafters rising to the open roof’s eye. That is what our people call the smoke-hole, for through it our ancestors look down from the heaven pasture and keep watch on us and all our earthly dealings. From its circular rim, the sloping wood beams reach like a camel’s spreading lashes down to sturdy lattice walls wrapped around with felt. I recall that my mother’s yurt felts were soft white and, on that morning, slightly raised above the grass to let in the late spring breeze.

I felt, more than heard, the oncoming riders—the earth rumbling beneath us and a pallid smell of dust. They startled me alert and, when I breathed in, made me cough. So I nudged my mother’s shoulder. Mama, horses. She murmured, then softly brushed me off. Next I tried to stir my father. Horses, I whispered. He only squinted at me vaguely. I said it again, this time with more force. Horses. He opened up his eyes.

My father looked frightened then—I remember that. Since he had been a villager, he lacked the proper skill to defend himself; though my mother had more than skill enough, having served Targitai in the warriors’ yurt, as all our people must, before she was allowed to become an ana-woman and bear a child.

When I shut my eyes, still I can hear the strangers’ horse hooves skittering and scraping just outside our yurt. The dust they churned rose into chalky, golden clouds. Then came garbled voices, and their leathery shadows blocking the early sun as they tore away our woolen door-flap and stormed into our yurt, tossing back rugs and bedclothes and scattering our embers in search of food or weapons or perhaps my parents’ hidden ores.

We would never know why they came, only that they did not find what they sought. The battle raged beyond our yurt as loudly as inside. Soon there rose the scent of burning blanket wool and choking, thick black smoke. They smashed our earthen cauldron—I heard the crack, then felt the sting of boiling mare’s milk splashing against my skin. The liquid seeped into the porous soil, mixing to hot mud that slipped between our packing sacks and trunks where my mother had shoved me. A warrior does not cry out, she’d said. No matter what, Akmaral, stay hidden.

So I tried. Deep among our bundles, beneath our yurt’s low sleeping cot, I held my breath and listened to the clank of my mother’s dagger and then her sword. I had never seen her fight before, but now I saw her skill. Again, again came the fierceness of her battle cries, then the strangers’ stabbing groans, and then their falls. So I began to hope, but in the end, there were too many. One and then another charged until she could not escape. After a time, each of her weapons clattered down, and then I didn’t listen anymore.

My hands pressed against my ears so hard, I could hear the rhythm of my own heart beating as loudly as any thunder Targitai could raise. There was blood pooled on the yurt’s grass floor. I remember the smell of it, and when I opened my eyes at last, the color: dark crimson mixing to pink where the cream milk pooled. At its edge were Meiramgul’s soft felt boots, beaded and trimmed with fox fur. Death is the risk of life, she said. You must learn to accept it. Her words cut like a horsewhip, but her hands on my back were gentle as she raised me up. She said nothing of the thick tears streaming down my cheeks while the Ak Kam tended to my arms and legs—no wounds, but sodden with gore, slightly scorched, and shaking.

My parents were buried in a kurgan mound—only two of half a dozen lost in that dawn raid. It was the first burial that I remember—and how we dug the narrow pits, clearing away hard stones beneath the grass-bound hillock to expose the yellow earth at the center of the open plain. Our people build our houses for the dead to echo the caves that the gods tuck high among the mountains. It is said these cliff-bound hollows reveal one passage to the nether realm, while these kurgans, set deep into the earth, offer another.

I stared into the pit we’d made, searching for a path, but there was none; though I knew too well that the flying deer could only guide the dead. And I was still alive, clutching my amulet as the wind swept across the steppe, my bare hands raw as they warmed the small, cold metal. My eyes shut tight, but still the steppe’s dust struck my tears, churning till they turned to yellow mud. With my forearm I wiped them off and continued digging.

"Alel bam, alal bam. We are one fire. We are one hearth," the Ak Kam chanted as sacrifice was made—fine horses given to each of the dead to ride to the heaven pasture and, for my parents, the many tools they’d used to shape new blades. Their deaths, she claimed, were an especially hard loss, for no others of our aul knew how to use them. But I did not care for tools as I knelt and touched my mother’s and then my father’s hands—their fine calluses made smooth with wax and honey the Ak Kam had smeared, their bodies emptied, stuffed with herbs, readying them to make their journey.

My tears welled up, but I fought them back, my fingers stroking their skin already caked with a thin cast of dust, all of me longing only for my mother’s voice: A warrior, she would whisper, calm, is not afraid. Though this I could no longer believe, for fear had settled in my own heart’s beating; instead, I clung to something else my mother had sometimes told: A warrior is not alone, Akmaral. She is accompanied always by those who have gone before her.

Finally Meiramgul’s gentle fingers drew me off. The niches were covered up and the stones replaced. When the aul rode away before the fall of dusk, few signs that my parents had ever lived remained.

Meiramgul was Hewana, the keeper of our fire and the wisdom of its tales. I had known her all my life. Still I was afraid. Already seven children slept within her yurt’s dark heart—most, like me, not born of her womb. They paid me little mind as I stepped beyond the wool-flap door and set down my few things—a cast-off tunic, a pair of well-worn riding trousers, a blanket stained with useless tears, and the goddess Umai’s gifts: a tiny bow and sheath of arrows made by my mother’s hand. When I clutched them now, wrapped in their bit of charry felt, I could recall only that cursed dawn—how my mother had pressed them into my arms, saying that they would protect me.

Now I knelt and the Hewana’s eyes followed, shining beneath her heavy shadowed brows like the heated stones surrounding Rada Mai’s hearth-fire. She offered me a bowl of koumiss and