The Mongoliad: Book Three

and rolled his shoulders as their horses picked up their pace, sensing the end of the journey. When the two men reached the edge of the camp, Ghaltai reined his horse to a stop. “I will go join my men,” he said.

Chucai nodded. Chucai had had a number of questions for the Darkhat commander after they had emerged from the subterranean temple, but Ghaltai had refused to provide any answers. I have shown you, was all that he had offered. I will not speak of what we have seen. It is not for me to offer any explanation.

On one hand, Chucai suspected Ghaltai’s words were motivated by petty revenge for Chucai having pulled him away from the feast, but Chucai suspected Ghaltai’s reticence also stemmed from a long-standing superstitious apprehension.

Not that he could blame the Darkhat chieftain. The banner unnerved him too.

He was tired. Everything seemed too obtuse for him to figure out. A good rest would reinvigorate his brain; he would see things much more clearly after a few hours of sleep.

His servants were all still sleeping, and he didn’t bother waking them. He could manage his own preparations. He would just sneak into his ger, lie down for a few hours, and-

There was someone in his ger, lying on the floor beneath a pair of fur skins. A brazier sat nearby, its coals cold and gray. Chucai kicked the supine figure-none too gently-startling him awake. The man sat up.

“Master Chucai,” Gansukh said sleepily. “I have been waiting-” The young man yawned mightily, his words getting lost in the open depths of his mouth.

“Whatever it is,” Chucai snapped, “It could have waited until midday, at least.”

Gansukh adjusted the skins around his shoulders. “I doubt that,” he said. “I would not count patience among Munokhoi’s qualities.”

“What does Munokhoi have to do with you sleeping in my ger?”

“I couldn’t very well go back to mine, could I?”

“Why?” Chucai sat down in his chair. “What are you talking about?”

“You missed the fights last night, didn’t you?” A sleepy smile crawled across Gansukh’s face. “Well, let me tell you a story then…”

It seemed like only moments after he had gotten rid of Gansukh and laid down, intending to get a few hours of sleep, that Chucai started awake. Where there had been darkness in his tent, there was now light.

Seated in the center of his ger was the Khagan’s shaman. Beside the old man, the brazier-which had previously been filled with cold ash-glowed with an orange light. The bits of metal attached to the shaman’s clothing gleamed as if they were tiny chips of fire clinging to the oily cloth.

“What do you want, old man?” Chucai growled. Part of him thought this was nothing more than a dream, and he resented the phantasmal intrusion.

The shaman chose this moment to fall into a paroxysm of coughing that made every shard of bone and bit of metal attached to his headdress and robe jangle frantically. With a final wheezing cough, he got something unstuck. He worked it around in his mouth for a moment and then spat in the brazier. A finger of flame reached up and grabbed whatever noisome thing that had come from the shaman’s throat. “Nothing is more visible than what is hidden directly in front of you,” the old man intoned.

Chucai slumped back on his bedding, turning his face toward the ceiling of his ger. “I am tired, old man,” he said. “I do not have time for your games.”

“The empire does not sleep,” the shaman said.

Chucai shook his head. Hadn’t he said something similar to Ogedei once? Years ago, when the Khagan had first started drinking heavily.

“Does a tree ever stop growing?” the shaman asked.

Chucai sat up in a rush. “You told me about the spirit that never dies,” he heard himself saying as he recalled his previous conversation with the old shaman. “Is that what the tree is? Is that what the banner is? A living spirit?”

“All life comes from Tengri,” the shaman whispered. “All life returns. Nothing is lost.”

“What is the banner?” Chucai demanded.

“The banner is a piece of wood,” the shaman said.

He said that before, Chucai remembered, fighting a swell of frustration. “And what of pieces that might be cut from it?” he asked.

The shaman smiled, and an involuntary shiver raced up Chucai’s spine. The light from the brazier highlighted the lines on the shaman’s face, a pattern that resembled the twisted branches of the tree carved on the wall of the temple.

“Not what,” the shaman said, shaking his head. “Ask yourself why.” He clapped his hands, and a cloud of smoke erupted from the brazier.

The smoke filled the ger and Chucai tried to wave it away, succumbing to a coughing fit nearly as physically wracking as the one he had seen the shaman suffer. His eyes watered, and he squeezed them shut, wiping at the tears.

When he opened his eyes, the shaman was gone. As was the smoke and the fire in the brazier. The coals were cold and gray, much like they had been when he had first found Gansukh in his ger.

There was no sign the shaman had been anything other than a dream.

Ogedei hurt all over. He wanted to lie still beneath the pile of furs on his sleeping platform until the pain went away, but the aches in his body were there even when he was immobile. He groaned, shuffling around beneath the pile of furs, and he felt someone grab his foot. He tried to pull away, but their grip was strong. Dimly, he heard the muffled sound of a woman’s voice, and he gradually realized it belonged to Jachin. She was telling someone that the Khagan was not to be disturbed, a sentiment which he heartily endorsed.

She remained, though, and her hands began working on his foot. She massaged each toe individually, her hands slick with scented oils, and once each toe had been worked on, she moved on to his ankle, and then his calf, and then his thigh, and then…

Her ministrations helped, albeit briefly. For all her efforts, the headache remained, and its pounding rhythm sent aching waves cascading through his body-down his spine, echoing through his chest, into his pelvis, and down his legs to his feet and toes, which started to throb again.

He dug his way out of his bedding, and squinted at both the light and the sight of Jachin hovering nearby. She had a cup in her hand. “Water,” she said.

He groaned and started to burrow under the furs again, but she stopped him. “Drink it,” she said. She did not have the same forceful personality as Toregene, but the concern in her voice was enough to arrest his burrowing. Lifting his head slightly, he accepted the cup and sipped from it. The water was cold, freshly drawn from the nearby river, and his body shivered as he found himself gulping the water. She poured him another cup, and this one he drank more slowly.

“I have sent someone to get your cook, who will make you soup,” she said, and when he started to protest, she shook her head and pressed her hand against his chest. “It will ease your discomfort,” she said. “Lie still. Rest.”

It was all that he wanted to do, anyway. He felt a distant urge to piss, brought about by drinking the water, but he couldn’t imagine getting up right now to do so. He would have to venture outside his ger-into the sunlight-and he feared he would burst into flames.

It was best to stay here, lying very still, as Jachin commanded. The aches would pass. They always did. This was the spirits’ revenge for his drinking. In the past, he simply kept the pain at bay with another cup of wine, but as he sprawled on his bed, covered by a heavy layers of furs, he knew such succor would not be forthcoming. He could smell the fermented stink of his own sweat, a stench that made his stomach rebel.

He was a drunk. He knew his father would not have approved. For the most part, such awareness didn’t