The Mongoliad: Book Two

by Neal Stephenson

  Inside, he pressed his back against the door panel and shut it as gently as he could—trying not to draw anyone’s attention while he surveyed the chamber and figured out what was going on.

  A white haze of incense smoke curled about the ceiling, making the room seem larger than it was. On the far side of the chamber, Ögedei lay prone on a couch, his body wracked with heaving sobs. The Khagan, conqueror of the world, reduced to a frightened child. One of his wives—Toregene, Gansukh recalled—knelt on the floor beside the couch, leaning against his shaking bulk. She was stroking his back, speaking to him in a low voice, her words plaintive and comforting. “...such a strong speech. They loved you. Did you not hear how they cheered for you...?”

  She caught sight of Gansukh, and her face became wild—vicious, like a cornered wolf intent on killing as many as it can before it dies. “Get out!” she shrieked. “How dare you disturb the Khagan!”

  Gansukh stood his ground. “How drunk is he? During his speech, the Khagan could barely stand. Have you let him drink since then?”

  “The Khagan does as he pleases,” she snapped.

  “And what does the Khagan—the Great Khan of Khans—have to say, then?” Gansukh approached the couch. If he stayed back near the door, he feared his courage would fail. Do not let them see your fear. Be stronger than your enemy.

  Hearing Gansukh’s voice, Ögedei raised his head. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his face bloated and red. When he spotted Gansukh, he scowled and briefly looked more like the Khagan—the leader of the Mongol Empire—than a tired old man. “Get out of my sight, whelp,” he barked. “Run back to my brother and tell him I will drink as I please.”

  Toregene smiled, and the sight of her cold diplomacy chilled Gansukh. “The Khagan is pained by the death of his younger brother. He simply wishes a reprieve from the weight of those memories.”

  What she felt for Ögedei was not love, Gansukh realized. She was devoted, but not to the man. She was devoted to her position. She had given the guards their instructions. She wanted Ögedei weak and malleable, susceptible to her whims and desires. The wine gave her that power. Lian had warned him, hadn’t she? So long ago, that day in the garden. Who is closest to the Khagan at court? Not his generals. Not his warriors. His wives.

  “I...I only...” Gansukh’s head reeled as he struggled to see a solution to this new puzzle. If there was any hope of sobering up the Khagan, it had to be away from Toregene’s influence. Away from the court and its revelries and dinners, away from everything. “I only wished to bring the Khagan a message,” he blurted out in desperation.

  “There is no message,” Toregene snarled.

  But Ögedei heard him—and not only heard him but wanted to hear more. To Gansukh’s surprise, the Khagan motioned his wife to silence. Grunting, he pushed himself upright on the couch. “Tell me,” he sighed.

  Thinking quickly—this was his only chance—Gansukh tried to piece together a plan. He had to get the Khagan out of his chambers, had to get him to where there were more people. When the Khagan fell into his drink’s dark grasp tonight—and Gansukh was now certain that he would—he would need someone to slow his descent, or at the very least pull him back.

  “M-m-master Chucai requests your p-presence,” Gansukh lied, his tongue stumbling at this audacity. “Your warriors were inspired by your speech today. They want to show you their devotion. You should be seen, my Khan.”

  Toregene gave him such a hateful stare that Gansukh’s skin itched as if she had drawn a bow on him.

  I just have to get him away from her. Away from all of them...

  * * *

  The dancer twisted and swayed like a tree in the wind. Firelight made the gold threads in his belt twinkle, and the fabric of his red robe seemed to crawl and writhe on his body. He jigged a merry circle, his arms undulating to the rhythm of the horse-head fiddle. A crowd surrounded the pair, enraptured by both song and dance, mesmerized by how the two twined together.

  All the tribes were demonstrating their traditional dances this evening. Chucai had said it had been his decree—this demonstration of tribal heritages so that all Mongols would learn each other’s history and character—but he could not recall making such a noble resolution.

  Ögedei slumped in his gilded chair and stroked his beard. In fact, he could not even recall leaving his chambers. Yet he had, and now he was out here, in the open courtyard of his palace, trying not to be sick. All this motion and noise. I wish they’d all go away and let me be. Let me drink...

  The fiddler’s tempo increased, his bow skillfully gliding along the strings, and the dancer kept perfect pace. The fire behind him cast a long shadow over the ground, a tall partner matching and exaggerating each gesture. A breeze, stirred up by the energy of the revelers and the bright fire, lifted the plaintive melody aloft, making it run free, like the wild horse in the heart of every man.

  Ögedei could not move his limbs, and his head felt as if it were packed with earth. Trapped—prisons within prisons. The words kept repeating themselves in his head, and he tried to understand them. He tried to figure out where they had come from, what they meant, and why they frightened him so. He couldn’t walk, but he could raise his arm. Raising his arm was easy. It came up like so—and with it, a cup of wine. The big vessel rested against his lip naturally, and without any more effort, he could tip it back and let the wine flow into his mouth. Some of it escaped, dripping down his chin, and when he lowered the cup, he saw drops had stained his robe, a dark blotch just above the embroidered dragon’s claw. He tried to flick it away, and when it didn’t vanish, he rubbed it harder, which only served to make the stain bigger. Trapped, he thought, scraping his fingernail across the silk. I just have to get it out.

  The crowd was not paying any attention to him. They stared at the dancer, rapt, swaying unconsciously to the music. These two caste-men were all they cared about, while he, the Khagan, was invisible. He jerked the cup to his lip, drinking deeply; the wine stung his mouth, but when it flowed inside him, it warmed him, an insulating blanket that kept him safe from all the noise and light of the world.

  He focused, blearily, on the dancer.

  ...dare he...do... Ögedei thought, or had he said those words aloud? Inside was blending with outside. His spirit was being crushed beneath the enormous weight of his robes, of what they represented, of who he was supposed to be. Prisons within prisons. Only a faint persistent nausea reassured him that he even still had a body. “I’m...rullr of...” No one paid him any attention. Maybe he had just thought the words this time. Rullr... What had he said or thought he had said? Everything was running together, the way blood and mud ran together in the rain.

  He stood, or he thought he stood; it was getting so very hard to tell. He felt like a child’s toy, or worse, like he was watching someone play with a child’s toy.

  The crowd had lost interest in the dancer, finally turning their attention toward him. Look at me. He stretched, growing taller than his skin allowed, and lurching unsteadily, he stumbled toward the red-robed dancer.

  The man’s face was long where it should be narrow, pitched where it should be open. His arms spread like bird wings. Ögedei snorted, blowing snot out of his nose, and then giggled. How could this man even pretend to be a dancer? Could they not see how ugly he was? The man stumbled toward the edge of the crowd, flapping his bird wings in alarm. Ögedei laughed, and flapped his arms too. Watch me fly. Watch me dance. The ground tilted beneath him, and watching from a vast distance, he grew worried about that child’s toy. It was about to fall over—

  He caught himself at the last second and spun around. The faces of the crowd swirled past, a crazy panorama of heads, lips, eyes—laughing, shouting, smiling, crying. They loved him. He could see the glow of adoration on all their faces, and the energy of their affection made him spin faster.

  He was dancing. He could see it quite plainly—his movements had neither rhythm nor tempo, almost comic and yet almost horrifying. The fiddler kept play
ing—yes, like he should; play for your Khagan—and the birdman who thought he was a dancer flew away. Ögedei threw out his arms and flailed them wildly, chasing his opponent away with his wild display of avian aggression. He threw back his head and brayed a great laugh. They are all watching me.

  “This’s how da-da-dancing is.” It was difficult to speak and move at the same time, and he pitched back alarmingly. Whirling his arms—I am not a bird!—he arrested his fall and remained upright. Chest heaving, he stared at the crowd and realized they were silent. They were not shouting and cheering. They stood and stared, as if what they saw horrified them.

  “What’s it?” he cried. “Not enough f’r you?” He tottered as he whirled, not to dance but to glare at all of them. If he spun fast enough, he could see them all at the same time. “I’m the...greatest. Youuu’re worms. In dirt.”

  The crowd began to shrink, folding back on itself with each of his rotations. Fewer and fewer faces stared at him. They wouldn’t even look at him. Cowards, he raged. I am Khagan of an empire of cowards.

  A hand grasped his arm, and he turned to strike the man foolish enough to lay a hand on him, but he was still spinning and his legs crossed themselves. He would have fallen on his face, a discarded child’s toy, but the hand holding him was strong and it kept him upright. He grasped the hand that held him and traced his eyes up. Forearm to elbow to shoulder to head. To a face.

  A young face, with eyes that did not look away. Nor were they filled with fear or disgust. There was a bruise on the cheek and a thin line—red and scabbed. I know this face.

  Ögedei smiled and fell into the embrace of the man who had caught him. Friend, he thought, you did not run away. After that, he remembered nothing.

  5

  Custodi Animam Meam, Quonian Sanctus Sum

  IT IS ALWAYS the sound of the tree falling that wakes him—a cracking and tearing as if the sky is being torn apart by God—and it snaps him upright, gasping like a fish thrown out of the sea. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that his whole body quakes. He can’t see anything. God has hidden the world from his eyes. All he hears is the sound of wood splintering and shattering. When the bulk of the tree hits the ground, he feels the impact in his bones, and his heart skips.

  What comes next, in the wake of the thunderous collapse of the tree, is always different, although he knows he is trapped in the same nightmare: sometimes it is rain, sticky and heavy like blood; sometimes it is a howling wind; sometimes thunderous echoes that roll back and forth like an approaching storm, one that never arrives.

  The echoes are too rhythmic for thunder this time, too much like drums or hooves.

  He sees them coming. At first, they are tiny dots of light, like fireflies in the distance. But they grow too large to be fireflies, the pinpricks of light blossoming into balls of dancing flame. He sees the faces next: mouths, leering and screaming; eyes, filled with distorted gleams of Hell. The ghosts ride short-legged horses, almost ponies, and the sight would be comical if it weren’t for their number and the death they bring.

  Behind the riders looms the rest of the nightmare, a landscape that swells and opens like a malevolent flower blooming. It makes his stomach twist, seeing the world come back from nothing. It is like watching a parchment thrown into a fire come back to life, blackened ash transforming into a fire-gnawed page. The riders pass over him, the horses leap deftly over his supine form, and the world slams into him, not as ephemeral as the ghosts of the Mongol army.

  He knows this place: the battlefield at Mohi, near the Sajó River, where the Mongol armies met King Béla’s forces. The Mongols sprang a trap on the Hungarian forces, crushing them between two lines, like a blacksmith crushing a fly between calloused palms. Around him, scattered in clumps and piles, are the bodies of the fallen. They aren’t dead; the field is twitching and writhing with the mortally wounded. He realizes that every one of those who fell at Mohi is trapped with him in this nightmarish limbo, caught between death and reality. All they crave is release from the pain.

  Nearby, a man tries to hold his stomach closed, but he is missing the lower half of his left arm, and he doesn’t understand why he can get no grip on his skin with his left hand. On his left, two men who are both skewered on the same lance struggle to pull themselves free of the pole, but they keep moving in opposite directions. They bump each other or strain at the lance, and the motion only pulls at the other man. They haven’t come to blows, but they will soon. They don’t know any other way to free themselves. A man wanders by, the naked stump of his neck weeping a steady stream of blood down his back. He carries a head under his arm. It isn’t his, and it directs the body across the field, looking for its lost body.

  What is he supposed to do? Is he supposed to save them all? The one with the missing hand—is he supposed to find it and return it, and would God’s grace reattach the hand to the arm? What about the mortal slash across the belly? How is he supposed to close that wound? He has no needle, nor any thread. His hands are empty, and his satchel is gone. All that he has is his robe and his rosary.

  A man with his throat cut stares at him, and he looks away, unable to bear the sight of the soldier’s suffering, the desperate plea so plainly visible in his eyes. “I cannot help you,” he whispers. He walks away, his bare feet sticking to the damp ground. It is the only gesture of compassion that he can think of; any other action would give the wounded man hope, and he knows there is no hope in this nightmare.

  On his left, he spots a bony ridge of crumbling rock that rises out of the bloodied plain. There are five horses standing there, and four of them—each a different color—are clumped together, standing shoulder to shoulder. Sprawling across their backs is an enormous figure, a man so wide his bulk overflows the quartet of horses. Black shapes crawl across his skin. A man in armor sits on the fifth horse, and his armor is untouched by battle, neither marred by blade nor discolored by blood. His visor is down, hiding his face. There is something in his hands—

  A voice draws his attention away from the vision on the hill. Someone is shouting his name. There, on his right. “Rigo!” The figure gestures him over, and after a final glance back, he picks his way, stumbling, through the maze of bodies, to the man who knows his name.

  “I do not know you,” he says when he gets close to the other man. He is both familiar and not, like a distant relative of a close friend.

  The man smiles. He is young, though there are lines around his eyes and on his cheeks. His beard is neat and groomed, and his robes are unmarked by passage through the field. “Not like this,” he agrees. “No, you do not.”

  “And how do you know my name?” Rodrigo asks. “Are you an angel?”

  The man shakes his head. “No more than you.”

  Rodrigo looks back over his shoulder. On the distant hill, the figure sprawling across the four horses seems larger, and the shadows flow off him now, coursing down the hill and onto the field like the tumultuous spring runoff of mountain streams. Rodrigo covers his face with his hands. “I am damned,” he says. “I cannot be saved.”

  “Salus,” the young man says. He gestures for Rodrigo to come closer. “It is the secrets of your heart,” he whispers, ducking his head, when Rodrigo has taken three more steps, “that will save you, my friend. The burden asked of one man may seem impossible to bear, but God believes your heart is strong enough. He hears your pain; He hears all their pain. Is the burden He asks you to carry less than His?”

  He looks past Rodrigo’s shoulder for an instant, his eyes losing their focus. “Remember, Rigo, we are all His children, and He welcomes all of us back into His embrace.” He returns his gaze to Rodrigo, and there is a deep sadness in his eyes now. “Regardless of how or when we might return to Him.”

  A light flares behind Rodrigo, the sudden glow driving all the sorrow out of the young man’s face. His eyes vanish, and his smile transforms into a shining line. Rodrigo looks over his shoulder, squinting against the glare. A ramshackle hut appears behind him, a
nd amber light floods from the open door and through the cracks and gaps in the walls.

  “No,” Rodrigo says, shaking his head. The young man has turned into a phantom, a fading wisp of smoke that curls away from him as he tries to grab it. He doesn’t want to look at the hut again—he knows it too well—but he can’t help himself. Shoulders hunched, he peers around slowly.

  There is someone standing in the doorway, blocking the light. The figure is small, a child, and it raises a hand to Rodrigo. Other figures appear behind the child. Taller figures, limned in red, and they drag the child inside. “No,” Rodrigo shouts, and when he tries to run toward the hut, his legs are bound. Hands have seized his feet and calves, hands of the dying. He struggles, loses his balance, and is pulled to his knees.

  More of the dying grab him. “Save us,” they whimper and beg. “Save us all.”

  “I can’t,” he sobs. He strains against the mob, trying to break free. The hut’s door is still open, but the light inside is flickering. Guttering. Going out. Hands tear his robe, and cold fingers scrabble against his skin.

  When the light goes out, he’s fairly certain the scream that fills the void is his own.

  * * *

  The last thing Father Rodrigo could recall (other than this half-forgotten, fading dream) was sitting on his horse outside of Rome, looking down at the play of light across the rooftops of the city. Now everything was flush with shadows, lit only by the glitter of dust in the moonbeams. He lay on a ragged straw-filled pallet, though the straw was little more than chaff. The air was dry, choked with dust and the scent of something desiccated and moldering. He did not know where he was or how he’d gotten here...These were dangers, he knew, but he sensed there was some other danger, more sinister, that he could not consciously remember.