The Mongoliad: Book Two

His hand resting on the hilt of his father’s knife, Ogedei strode toward the door. “To the hunt,” he cried, and all activity in the room resumed. Guards opened the door as the Khagan approached, and the remaining servants, tottering under overflowing bags, scampered after him.

Toregene caught sight of Jachin’s face as she followed the Khagan. Second Wife was still trying to decide if she should be elated or furious, and Toregene gave her no satisfaction either way. She remained slumped over, her body quivering, until the wives and their servants were gone.

She sat upright and waved over one of the remaining guards. “Find my son,” she said.

“I’m sure he’s with the caravan,” the guard replied.

“Find him,” she snapped. “And his bags.” When the guard hesitated, she explained her desire more plainly. “He isn’t going. If I stay, so does he.”

The guard nodded and, taking another man with him, departed to find Guyuk.

Toregene smoothed her hair back, running her fingers along the ribbons woven into the thick braids. Her blood was still racing, and her hands shook slightly as she worked. Her mind was no longer frozen in shock; in fact, it felt like there was a river in her head. Her thoughts raced and leaped like a torrent of fresh mountain water, released from the cold captivity of winter.

The Khagan had left her in charge. If he didn’t come back…

“Guyuk,” she whispered. My son. The Khagan’s son.

None of Genghis’s progeny had enough patience. Not like she did.

* * *

Master Chucai met Ogedei as he emerged from the palace. His tall advisor bowed deeply, acknowledging the significance of Ogedei’s appearance this morning. The Khagan had left his palace, and as soon as he climbed aboard his magnificent wheeled ger, he would be leaving Karakorum. “The sun shines brightly this morning, O great Khagan,” Chucai said. “It is an auspicious day to begin your journey.”

Ogedei nodded absently as he looked out over the assembled caravan. Hundreds of carts and wagons and wheeled tents, thousands of horses, his Imperial Guard, many of his courtiers, and a host of merchants, craftsmen, and nomadic camp followers-all ready to chase after him to the place where the Blue Wolf had lain with the Fallow Doe, the sacred grove where the Mongol race had been born and where his father had been buried. Where he must go to face his destiny. This is my empire, he thought, and even though the sun was warm on his face and chest, he shivered slightly. They will follow me anywhere.

“Everything is prepared, my Khan,” Chucai reminded him. “We are ready to leave at your command.”

“It is time,” Ogedei said. Chucai nodded, but when no one else seemed to react to his words, he raised his voice to address the entire host. “I am Ogedei, son of Genghis, Khagan,” he bellowed, “and I go to Burqan-qaldun, the Place of the Cliff.”

He strode down the steps from the palace as the host cheered, and while the roaring sound stunned him, he kept moving. His gait faltered as he approached the seething press of bodies, but they parted before him, opening a path to the wooden steps that had been placed beside his mobile tent. He strode through the gap, buffeted by hands that grasped and pressed against him. He kept his gaze forward and his expression fixed in what he hoped was an appropriately grim scowl. The noise was overwhelming and showed no sign of weakening. He found himself wondering if this was akin to being buried in sand or what it was like to drown in a raging river.

At the top of the steps, two attendants held open the flaps on the ger, and he ducked through the opening. The attendants dropped the flaps behind him, and he paused to let his eyes adjust to the dim light inside. The heavy hide of the tent blocked the bulk of the cheering and shouting outside.

The ger had been arranged as a replica of his rooms in the palace. Half a dozen people waited to serve him. A fire crackled in a large stone-lined pit, and Ogedei could hear and smell meat cooking. Animal furs lined the floor, and at the back of the ger stood his great chair from the main hall in the palace. Borakchin and Mukha lounged on low couches near his chair; they were dressed as if for a court dinner, and the gold threads in their gowns glittered in the candlelight. On his right, Mukha’s favorite entertainers, a troop of Chinese acrobats, were juggling a dizzying number of colored balls.

“This is not how my father hunted,” Ogedei sighed.

The floor lurched beneath him and then began to rock gently as the ger’s driver got the team of oxen moving.

19

Grave Gravatae

Ferenc had willingly followed Ocyrhoe through the city, had even let her hold his hand as they walked, as if they were young lovers; in the passing throngs, they risked being separated, and she was concerned that the wide-eyed country boy could be carried away in the current of people. The initial fear he had expressed about standing out as clearly Other was soothed within a quarter hour, once she showed him that half the city was made of people from foreign lands: priests, pilgrims, merchants, and travelers of all hues and costumes.

Eventually, Ocyrhoe turned them from a major thoroughfare down a smaller, almost empty side street. They followed this, unpaved and dusty, for the length of a bowshot. The buildings to either side were stone and old; they were not decorated and had few, if any, windows. She turned again into a narrow alley to the right, between two high buildings with no windows at all. It was cool in here; the sun never peeked between those walls except perhaps at noon in high summer, and then briefly.

The alley dead-ended where the buildings did, against a third building. It was like being in a deep, deep canyon: a narrow slot of sky above, shadow below, and no escape except back the way they’d come. There were no doors, no smaller alleys, nothing. Ocyrhoe approached the crumbling stone and brick of the dead-end wall and began to examine it, as if for cracks. After a few fruitless moments, she turned and faced Ferenc expectantly. He gave her a blank, confused look and shook his head.

Ocyrhoe was sure she had explained this to him in the outpouring of their first “conversation,” when they suddenly realized they could communicate through the silent language she had learned from her kin-sisters, and known to them in some ancient tongue as Rankos Kalba, or Rankalba. She was still confused that he, a male, could know this code, but there was no time to wonder about that now.

Perhaps he had not really understood what she’d said before. Admittedly, she had simplified it; it would be exhausting and very time-consuming to try to explain the Septizodium and the elections and Orsini and Fieschi and too many other things. She sent a silent prayer to the Bind-Mother. Oh, please, let him understand me.

She slapped the cool stone wall, then took Ferenc’s wrists and tapped her fingers on the bony flesh in alternating singles, pairs, threes, fours, grip, then three, then one, and so on-variations signing out the basic message, as if she were leaving notches in a long piece of wood or on a cornice, or tying knots in a cord or her own hair: “Father Rodrigo is inside. Prisoner.” Ferenc blinked, then nodded. “Many rooms, in many buildings,” she continued. “Different rooms with tunnels connecting all. We are close. We must get in.” She noticed confusion in Ferenc’s expression. Too fast, she thought. Whoever taught him Rankalba didn’t finish the lesson. “Understand?” she asked, signing more slowly against his inner arm and wrist.

He mused on that for a moment, then nodded, though his expression suggested he was still unsure. She chewed her lower lip, looked up, then down, then decided to try drawing a map on the dust of the ground. She held out her hand. “Pugio?” she asked, using the Latin word. At his blank look, she mimed holding the weapon and stabbing the air with it, then again held out her hand.

“Pugio,” he said, and he repeated it once more as he gave her his knife. He was, she realized, learning the Latin word.

In the dirt of the alley, Ocyrhoe crouched and drew a bird’s-eye view of this alley and the immediate surrounding streets and buildings. She placed the facade of the Septizodium in the center of it and then drew the