The Mongoliad: Book Two

8

Nothing but a vast emptiness, as if he lay naked on the steppes and the stars had all gone out…

Ogedei sat up with a gasp and then immediately fell onto his side, retching and puking. His head was caught in the grip of a horrid demon, squeezing his brain like it was wringing juice from a piece of fruit. His skin was hard and brittle over bones that seemed to smolder. Breathing was both painful and thrilling, as if he were stealing each inhalation, past the number he had been allotted for his life. He gasped and spat, trying to rid himself of the sour-tasting bile on the back of his tongue. His cheeks ached, and his vision was filled with dancing motes.

“You’re awake.” A voice from Heaven, proclaiming a great truth that he now had to live up to. Ogedei managed a guttural groan and rolled onto his back, fighting a wave of nausea that threatened to send him to the edge of the bed again.

“I have died,” Ogedei whispered.

“Not quite,” the voice replied. “Though, for a while, I was not certain you would ever wake.”

Ogedei turned his head slightly and peered around for the source of the voice. The speaker had admitted uncertainty, a lack of all-seeing knowledge. The voice could not be divine in origin; it came from a man’s throat.

He lay in a ger, the air around him heavy with smoke. A censer hung from the ceiling, seeping a hazy fog from a smoldering patch of herbs. The fog made the air fragrant and pleasing, but harder to breathe. Other braziers glowed, dull red splotches that cast dull shadows on the rough hide of the ger walls.

Sitting on a low stool near his bed was the young whelp of Chagatai’s.

Ogedei’s eyes drooped, suddenly heavy, and with a great effort, he forced them open again, forced himself to focus on the face of Gansukh.

“Where am I?” he demanded.

Gansukh roused himself at Ogedei’s question, sitting more upright. “My Khan,” he said, “you were not yourself last night. I had to escort you away…to someplace safe. Where you would not be disturbed. While you recovered from the-”

Ogedei squeezed his eyes shut and winced as sharp jabs of pain lanced back through his head. He dimly recalled a dancer-no, he had been the one dancing-and let out a long sigh as he realized there could be any number of indignities that Gansukh was not telling him.

“My Khan…” Gansukh tentatively broke the silence. “The path you have chosen for yourself. It goes nowhere. It-”

Ogedei smacked his hand against the bed. “You dare to lecture me?” His mouth moved uncontrollably, trying to swallow away the acrid taste of his saliva.

Gansukh said nothing, but in the ruddy light of the ger, the dark bruise on his face said enough.

Ogedei fumbled for another stinging accusation, but all he could think of was I’m grateful. Someone had come to his aid; someone had given him shelter and succor. Boroghul, he thought. He was seventeen again, back at Khalakhaljid Sands, lost and dying. “I made a spectacle of myself in front of the entire palace, didn’t I?”

Gansukh shrugged.

“You are right, young pony,” he sighed. “What path is this that I am on? This is not the road my father saw for me. This is not the path of the Empire.” He held his hands over his face and tried very hard to hold back the tears. “I’ve been so weak, haven’t I? I’ve been lost for so long.”

“The hardest thing,” Gansukh said, “is to admit you’re lost.”

“No,” said Ogedei, lowering his hands. “It is harder to find your way back.”

The ger belonged to a nameless shaman. As the old man mumbled and shook a deerskin rattle, Gansukh explained that he couldn’t have taken the Khagan to either of their chambers. They had to go somewhere where no one would find them, for as long as it took for Ogedei’s senses to clear. At first, Ogedei had bristled at the young man’s audacity, but he soon realized Gansukh had done the right thing. If they had been found, they would have been unable to have this moment of calm clarity. Ogedei, grudgingly, realized it was exactly what he needed, and what he never would have been able to find for himself, because no one in his court would have truly listened when he asked for such privacy.

The shaman stooped slightly under the weight of his cloak, made of thick blue-dyed wool and strung all over with dangling pieces of copper, eagle feathers, scraps of pelts, and dried herbs. His face, nearly buried beneath an elaborate feathered headdress, was leathery, almost skull-like, cheekbones sharply jutting and dark eyes twinkling. Behind him, crudely carved wooden puppets of men with animal features dangled from the ceiling, their heads hanging lifelessly.

When he spoke, the shaman’s voice was hoarser than Ogedei’s. “You seek guidance,” he wheezed.

Gansukh nodded. “We seek the insight of your wisdom and power, Wise Master. There is a weakness in our Khagan’s spirit. One we must purge.”

The shaman scrutinized Ogedei, muttering an inaudible chant in time with the rhythm of his rattle. “Your soul is an empty waterskin,” he said after a lengthy examination. “When you fill it, you fill it with poison.”

Ogedei swallowed heavily. “Yes,” he admitted.

“Why do you not fill it with life, with power?”

“I do not know.”

“This warrior who sits beside you, who speaks with the voice that should be yours-does he know?”

Gansukh started slightly, though he hid his surprise well. “I…I don’t…” he stuttered.

“Yes,” Ogedei interrupted. “He knows.”

“The poison lies within you too. Even if you filled your soul with life and power, your body would still be diseased. Do you understand?”

“I…I think so.” But he wasn’t sure. “What must I do?”

“You must free yourself from this poison-not just your soul, but your body as well.” The shaman cocked his head, his ear pointed in the direction of his puppets, as if listening to something normal men could not hear. “It is not enough to fill your waterskin with water, for the water of this valley carries all the filth that is washed from the city by the rain-by the tears shed for your pain. You must go to a place where the world is still pure, wild, and unbroken by man. You must go to the sacred grove, near the Place of the Cliff.” He pronounced its name slowly, reverently.

“Where is that?” Gansukh asked.

“It is the birthplace of our ancestors,” Ogedei said. “The home of the Blue Wolf and the Fallow Doe. The burial ground of my father.”

The shaman grinned. What teeth he had were yellow and sharp. “A powerful place where the primal spirits still live-the spirits of all the animals you have hunted and will ever hunt. There is one there, one great spirit that will truly test the soul of a warrior. A great bear. Thrice as tall as his mortal kin, with claws and fangs of iron, and the strength to cleave valleys in the earth.”

“And I am to hunt this bear?”

“If you are a true warrior, you will emerge from the forest victorious.” The shaman shrugged, as if it were a simple thing he was pronouncing. “If not, you are unworthy of being Khagan.”

A simple thing. Ogedei nodded. Prove yourself. There was nothing else to say, and so he bowed to the shaman and prepared to get up.

“Wait.” Gansukh dug inside his deel and produced a small bundle of silk. “There is something else. Something about which I need your guidance,” he said, slowly unwrapping the silk. He plucked the small item from its nestled wrappings. “Can you tell me what this is?”

It was a sprig, a tiny twig cut from a tree. Ogedei stared at it, a vague unease moving in his stomach. Should he know what it was?

The shaman took the sprig from Gansukh and brought it close to his face, alternately squinting and peering at it with wide eyes. Having examined it, he clasped his hand tightly around the twig, closed his eyes, and began to chant nasally, in the fluid language of spirits. He rocked back and forth, jangling the metal on his cloak, and began to shake his rattle. His face scrunched in on itself as the rattle clattered faster and his chanting became louder and louder. Then, opening his eyes violently, he vented a mighty shout.

“It is a powerful thing,” he said casually, as if nothing had transpired in the last few minutes. “A thing that will be reborn.” He thrust the sprig at Gansukh, as if he were eager to part with it.

“Is that all you can tell me?” Gansukh asked. “What powers does it have?”

The shaman shook his head. “Beyond my seeing,” he whispered.

Ogedei snorted, more to hide his own unease than from derision. “It is so small. Is it not just a twig?”

“Perhaps it is just a twig.” The shaman stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes. “And perhaps you are just a man.”

“Where did you get this?” Ogedei demanded of Gansukh and then belched-unease blooming in his stomach, flowing up into the back of his throat.

“The thief who came to your palace, the one I chased onto the steppes. The one…” Gansukh swallowed heavily and dropped his head toward Ogedei. “She stole this twig from you or”-his brow furrowed-“maybe she was trying to bring it to you. I don’t know which, and I regret not having brought it to you before now, but I did not know whom to trust.” He held out his hand, offering the sprig to the Khagan. “I should not have hidden it from you.”

Ogedei stared at the sprig but made no move to touch it. “Perhaps you were right to hang on to it, pony.” He shook his head slowly. He did not know what it was-he certainly had never seen it before this moment-but he felt as if he should know. As if the tiny sprig should be the most important thing in his life, but he could not fathom why. “If it was mine, Gansukh, I lost it,” he said. “I am a drunk, while you are a Mongol warrior. Maybe it is exactly where it should be-in your hands.”

He glanced at the shaman, who was slumped over as if asleep. “Perhaps it is just a twig,” he mused. Perhaps I am only a man. “But for now, it should stay in your care.”

Transformation swept across the plain outside Karakorum. Under the watchful eyes of the Torguud, an army of craftsmen worked at assembling axles and wheels, laying long platforms upon which they erected massive tents. Long lines of carts were being loaded with provisions, and countless heads of oxen milled about in makeshift corrals that threatened to burst. Surrounding this frenzy of construction was a bustling population of like-minded merchants and tribesmen, assembling their own caravans and ordu.

Master Yelu Chucai strode through the confusion, overseeing the proceedings. As he passed, men averted their eyes and bent to their tasks with extra enthusiasm, not wanting to draw his attention. Everyone knew of the chief advisor’s mood.

During the first night of the festival, the Khagan had lost control-dancing drunkenly out in the main courtyard-and before the Khevtuul had been able to assist him back to his chambers, he had been spirited away. He knew Gansukh had taken Ogedei, and he put off the increasingly aggravated captains of both the Khevtuul and the Torguud, saying that the Khagan was indisposed and not to be disturbed. The ruse had worked until someone-and he suspected Toregene’s hand in the rumor-let slip that the Khagan was not in his chambers. As the Khevtuul were on the verge of marching on the palace, the Khagan had reappeared, striding through the palace gate as if just returning from a pleasant walk, acting as if he always left the palace without a retinue of guards. He had refused to speak of what had happened or where he had gone, ordering only that the remainder of the festival be canceled. He instructed Chucai to make immediate preparations for his departure from Karakorum, without the slightest flicker of awareness of the headache his disappearance had caused.

Their destination-he blithely informed Chucai-was not to be the winter palace. They were going to Burqan-qaldun.

My Khan, he had argued, you cannot seriously expect your entire retinue to follow you across the steppes.

I don’t, Ogedei had responded. But I am not just your Khan. I am the Khagan. What else can they do?

Chucai had pressed the Khagan, possibly more than he should have-the man had, after all, been drinking heavily the last few days-but the Khagan had cut him off. I have made so many concessions to civilized ways, Ogedei said with an unexpected fervor. Now it is time for civilization to make a concession to the Mongol ways.

“Master Chucai-”

A small man stood in Chucai’s path, fearful that the tall advisor would not notice him and stride right over him. “What is it?” Chucai snapped, rocking on his heels.

The man pointed. “A caravan has arrived from Subutai, and the Khagan’s son. Gifts from the campaign in the West.”

Chucai stared at the plain, trying to pick out the one caravan among the dozens being assembled. He spotted the likely one and noticed what looked like cages on several of the wagons. He began walking toward the wagons, causing the small man to leap out of his way and then run to keep up with him. “Prisoners?” Chucai asked.

“Warriors,” the small man panted. “From Onghwe Khan’s…” He didn’t finish, not knowing if Ogedei’s displeasure about his son’s predilections extended to gladiatorial fights.

Chucai looked over the cages on the weathered oxcarts. They were filled with a ragtag assortment of men, spoils of war from the distant corners of the world-places he would never visit. One man, exotically dark-skinned, squatted in a corner of his cage, gnawing on his knuckles; another, a Southerner from the looks of him, glared murderously at Chucai, his expression so marred by malnutrition-toothless gums, crusted lips, chancres on his face and hands-that the glare was more entertaining than terrifying. A third was so enormous he barely fit in his cage.

“What should we do with them, Master?”

Chucai understood the man’s confusion. The festival celebrating Tolui had been scheduled to last a week, and while the caravan of Onghwe’s gifts was late, it should have arrived in time for the final ceremonies. The Khagan, however, had unexpectedly changed his mind about his departure date from Karakorum.

“Take them with us,” Chucai sighed and waved off the small man. “We will need entertainment on this journey.”

The small man nodded and ran off to shout orders at the weary caravan master.

Chucai paused. One of the prisoners revealed little concern about the bustle around his cage. In fact, he seemed fascinated by the strange world in which he now found himself.

The prisoner sensed Chucai looking at him and openly met the tall man’s gaze, showing neither fear nor aggression.

He was lean and muscular, with hair so pale it was almost white and light-blue eyes.