“To tell my story to His Eminence, I’m afraid it would bore him. It is a very ordinary one, you could hear a thousand people tell the same tale across Burning Flag City.”
“I know next to nothing of the Steppes, nor its people. I would very much like to learn more. Please, Daoist Ma, speak on.”
“Well, reporting to His Eminence, the first thing I would say is that we are people of the Endless Blue Sky. There are many, many tribes, far more than exist in the steppes claimed by the Broadsky Kingdom. Indeed, the belief amongst the tribes is that the ancestor of the Broadsky Kingdom was one of our people, hence the name of the country. But that’s just hearsay, nobody can prove it.”
“Is there a name for the steppe peoples?”
“A few, depending on the language. There are a lot of us, as I said, and we are nomadic. Different languages are a common problem, as it were. In the language of the Broadsky Kingdom, we are the Yuu. Most of the tribes you might encounter will have at least some people that speak the common tongue of the Kingdom, particularly the traders and the shaman. But we must speak more of them later.”
“I do have a lot of questions about them.”
“They are a tricky bunch, even for us. Ah… Like I said, we are people of the Endless Blue Sky. It is our god and it’s hard to speak of it without describing it like a person, but it is more… detached? There isn’t good language to describe this. He is a person that operates more like a set of laws. He pays attention to how you behave, and will sooner reward a virtuous non-believer than a villainous believer.”
“I’m with you so far. Incidentally, do you eat snacks with this… caravan tea?”
“Meals, usually. Maybe some lamb jerky or day bread or something. Not a lot of snacking happening on the steppes. Food is quite precious. So we are all children of the Sky and Mother Earth. There are seven layers of heaven and seven layers of the underworld, and the… Devil? Lord of the Underworld? There isn’t a good equivalent in the kingdom. He’s a bit like King Yan, but less of a civil servant enforcing someone else’s laws and more of a king in his own right. Not a nice figure. Each level of the heavens and the netherworld have their own gods, plural, and below them are endless spirits.”
“Mmm.”
“It is a bit complicated, but you have to understand this to understand what happened to my family, why things are so bloody on the steppes, and the role of the shaman. The myriad spirits live everywhere. Some in trees, others in grass or flowers, rocks, rivers and lakes all have spirits, there may be many in one place, or one, or none. Some inhabit animals, or are spirit animals, almost any form you can think of.”
“Incredible!”
“It is. Most religious activity, particularly anything worshiping the gods, is done by the tribal leaders. Like the emperor has his own imperial cult and does ceremonies for the prosperity of the kingdom, except we are all part of the cult. So to speak.”
“Understood. Continue, please.”
“Yes. The Endless Blue Sky is everywhere and sees everything, but is generally not involved in day to day things. For that you have to look to the spirits, and it is one of the four main jobs of the shaman to handle that. Spirits, divination, medicine, and for lack of a better term, dealing with magical stuff. They can also control the weather with a magic rock they make, though the effects are debatable. It doesn’t come up much.”
Tian got a thoughtful look on his face, and had to control the urge to scratch his chin. The combination of divination and weather magic was formidable, at least on a strategic level.
“We believe that each person has three souls. One gets sent to the afterlife. They are punished for whatever crimes they committed in life, and then are allowed to go to heaven. That is, a sort of paradise realm. Ah… roughly like the Celestial Court, but for everybody, kind of?”
“Kind of?”
“It’s not as nice as it sounds. Your station in life and the goods you are buried with have a big impact on your afterlife. Very quickly, the other two souls do not go to heaven. One can become a spirit, potentially, usually on the spot where the person died and more so if their blood was spilled on that spot. Lastly, one soul goes off for reincarnation.”
“Wouldn’t that mean the heavens were impossibly crowded? If each person is born with three souls and one goes to heaven and the other reincarnates-”
“It’s a big number for sure, Your Eminence, but it is the land of the Endless Blue Sky. How crowded can it be if it is endless? Two other pieces of information, and you will have the whole background. First is that everyone in a tribe is descended from a common ancestor. Men inherit, women marry out and take a big gift, their own personal property, with them. Big tribes split into new, smaller, tribes, with new tribal leaders becoming the new founding ancestor. Rank is very complicated but usually determined by how close you are to that founding ancestor in birth order. Lastly, the tribes have always practiced slavery. It’s not something we started just because of the salt trade. It’s been going on forever. The main source of slaves are other tribes, defeated and captured in battle. Raiding villages and things is less common than you might imagine, though it does happen.”
Tian frowned. “Wait. Your station in life extends to your afterlife?”
“Yes, Your Eminence. It is as you think. That applies to slaves too. A slave in life, a slave in death. A commoner in life, a commoner in death. A noble in life, a king, or a king of kings… And the treasures you are buried with carry over as well.”
“Wives and concubines?”
“Not buried with their husbands, if that is what you are asking. They can be of any class, and their sons do inherit, but they take their mother’s rank, not their fathers. If you were asking if they remain wives and concubines in the afterlife, yes. To change your station, to rise from commoner to noble, generally requires political cunning and a good bit of killing. It is uncommon.”
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Tian felt pieces start clicking into place. “You have a culture that heavily rewards gathering treasures and slaves, and heavily rewards ambition. This leads to a lot of raiding, a lot of warfare, and a lot of blood spilled on the steppes. This means the steppes are riddled with angry spirits, and they would be most concentrated in the places where people usually camped. Near water or good pastures or something.”
“His Eminence has seen right to the heart of it. Which leads to the importance of shaman. Even those who have not gathered enough power to be equivalent to cultivators can speak with the spirits and try to negotiate with them. I wouldn’t call them reliable, but they can do it. Sometimes. But the Kings, which is the best translation for the people that lead the tribes, don’t like them. Shaman do a lot for the tribe, but crucially, they do things others can’t. The king can shoot arrows, ride horses, fight battles, settle disputes, but he can’t make peace with spirits, or secure their power for the tribe. The shamans can, and so they have enormous influence within the tribes.”
“And the shamans abuse that fact, or some of them do.” Tian nodded. “You are the son of a shaman?”
“Exactly so. The accusation was that he, my mother, and her tribe and their shaman, were conspiring against our king, seeking to depose him in favor of his brother, who would be a sort of uncle to me, and ultimately merging our two tribes. This would significantly raise all our ranks, with many benefits to us.”
The older man laughed awkwardly, and rubbed the back of his head. “There was a lot more to it than that, but the short version is, we scrammed out of there as quickly as we could, and found out very quickly that my mothers’ tribe’s king had figured out something similar about my maternal uncle in that tribe, making the shaman of both tribes, and my family in both tribes, schemers against their own people. We were declared witches, the punishment for which is to be rolled up in a carpet and kicked to death. More of a stomping than kicking, but…”
“Understood. The carpet is to prevent your blood from spilling on the steppe?”
“Exactly. Running for the Kingdom was an ugly choice, but it did give us a path to live.”
“I take it that your father was a mortal? And your mother too, I suppose.”
“Yes, no history of cultivation in our family. I should say, while daoism is known and permitted in the Steppes, daoist internal alchemy cultivation more or less doesn’t happen. Nobody is testing the youth for potential, and it is seen as not properly Yuu. It is also seen as pointless, because becoming a shaman capable of holding the spirits within you is both very properly Yuu and not any worse than becoming a cultivator.”
Tian chuckled. “I’m surprised they are willing to wait for so long before entering heaven.”
“The Shaman? Their life isn’t any longer than a normal mortal's. It’s viewed as anti-social to be an immortality cultivating daoist, because your property and your tent never get passed on through inheritance. You just keep gathering and gathering, crowding out everyone. No longer in harmony with nature or society.”
Tian blinked. “Massacrering your in-laws and taking the survivors as slaves both now and for eternity is acceptable, but not passing on your tent isn’t?”
The older man shook his head. “The tent has immense symbolic weight, and usually comes with a great deal of wealth. If you haven’t seen a ger, they are larger than you would think. About the size of a cottage, made of wooden sticks and felt. Very portable. And no, massacring your inlaws is viewed as treacherous behavior and more than just frowned upon. We have big families, and travel around a lot, and tribes split into new families after a few generations. There is usually someone unrelated to raid. There is a more practical reason too- spirits left behind by Yuu sorcerers, which is what they call Cultivators, are very powerful, very stubborn, and intensely vengeful. So the kings really don’t like them, and the Shaman really, really don’t like them, on account of being ripped in half from the inside.”
“That happens?”
“So the stories go. So daoism is fine, but being a cultivator isn’t.”
Tian nodded, then shook his head. “I can’t imagine a mortal ruler just… not caring about immortality.”
“Oh, they do. I know of six that died eating “immortality medicines.” It’s just, if they actually did manage to accumulate any cultivation, the Shaman would find out, and then so would everyone else. And enough mortals, with the right tools, can kill any Earthly cultivator.”
Tian disagreed, but he supposed it was true for a loose cultivator like Ma.
“By any chance, do you understand how the shamans use the spirits for spells?”
“Forgive me, this one is ignorant. My father never could do it, and he died of his wounds shortly before we reached the fortress. My mother never knew either. The shamans pass it on orally.”
Tian smiled humorlessly. “Master and disciple.”
“Exactly. Nobody wants too many of them running around, even if they are necessary. Their blood makes potent spirits too.”
“Makes?” Tian’s ears pricked up. Ma smiled, his eyes creasing with pain.
“It’s what you suspect, but very, very rare. You could think of such people as the Yuu version of heretics. Sometimes prisoners of war are used for such a purpose, but again, it’s rare. Other shamans hunt such people down, and we are very, very, very good hunters.”
Ma looked down into his empty bowl. “Our lives… the lives of the Yuu who live on the steppes seems hard, or cruel, perhaps, but I have always thought it was no less cruel than what the kingdom does. How many peasants die because their ‘benevolent’ overseers made a few trifling errors? Errors that coincidentally made them rich? We love our families, honor our elders, care for our children. We trust our women with considerably more power and wealth than the kingdom does. While our definition of harmony is different from the one I have learned here, we do pursue it. To disregard the needs of the tribe or the needs of nature to pursue your own wealth is considered shameful. I don’t believe it is so here. Not really. It just wears nicer clothes, and hides its meanings in flowery language.”
Tian boiled a fresh kettle of water, and made the caravan tea. He poured the water against the back wall of the pot, making the little piece of the brick tumble. Fire qi, gently applied, kept the water hot, speeding the steeping process. As it did, Tian meditated on what the endless blue sky meant to him. He had certainly considered it often enough. The azure dragon of the east, roaming its infinity. But the blue was merely a disguise. The sky showed its true face at night. The endless void that cupped the spark of life.
He poured the smokey black tea into the bowls, then added the milk. He had compared himself to the moon often enough too- cooling and healing and letting all the things of the world rest. Gathering the strength they needed to go on. His lips creased a little as he drizzled the honey. He wouldn’t describe himself as sweet, but there was a kindness there, and he worked hard to be kind. His dao was there too, water and wood, honey feeding the growth of all those buzzing bees, which in turn brought life to fruit and flowers.
A bowl full of his dao. A tea carrying his emotions and his understanding of the elements. Speaking in a voice his guest could finally hear. Tian smiled broadly as he offered it to Daoist Ma. He had made the very best Caravan Tea he could, showing his hospitality, his respect for his guest, and his self respect. His service honored the teachings of his father, but was not limited by them. Soon, he would plunge into death and danger on the Steppes. Now, though, in this garden, the heart of the West Town Outer Court beat strong.