I walked past the red tent toward the lake. It too was as I remembered it, surrounded by oaks and a few weeping willows. Biologists had not yet developed the silvery vines and glittering crystal trees that would be planted later. A peacock strutted past me as I headed for a nearby bench. I wanted only to sit for a while near the lake, then perhaps visit one of the tents before I had to return to my own time.
I watched my feet as I walked, being careful not to stumble. Most of those in the park ignored me rather pointedly, perhaps annoyed by an old woman who reminded them of their eventual fate. I had been the same, I thought, avoiding those who would so obviously be dead soon, uncomfortable around those who were dying when I had everything ahead of me.
Suddenly a blurred face was in front of me and I collided with a muscular young body. Unable to retain my balance, I fell.
A hand was held out to me and I grasped it as I struggled to my feet. “I’m terribly sorry,” said a voice, a voice I had come to know so well, and I looked up at the face with its wide cheekbones and clear blue eyes.
“Yuri,” I said.
He was startled. “Yuri Malenkov,” I said, trying to recover.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I attended one of your lectures,” I said quickly, “on holographic art.”
He seemed to relax a bit. “I’ve only given one,” he said. “Last week. I’m surprised you remember my name.”
“Do you think,” I said, anxious now to hang on to him for at least a few minutes, “you could help me over to that bench?”
“Certainly.”
I hobbled over to it, clinging to his arm. By the time we sat down, he was already expanding on points he had covered in the lecture. He was apparently unconcerned about my obvious aging and seemed happy to talk to me.
A thought struck me forcefully. I suddenly realized that Yuri had not yet met my past self. I had never attended that first lecture, having met him just before he was to do his second. Desperately, I tried to recall the date I had given Onel, what day it was in the past.
I had not counted on this. I was jumpy, worried that I would change something, that by meeting Yuri in the park like this I might somehow prevent his meeting me. I shuddered. I knew little of the circumstances that had brought him to my door. I could somehow be interfering with them.
Yuri finished what he had to say and waited for my reaction. “You certainly have some interesting insights,” I said. “I’m looking forward to your next lecture.” I smiled and nodded, hoping that he would now leave and go about his business.
Instead he looked at me thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I’ll give any more lectures.”
My stomach turned over. I knew he had given ten more. “Why not?” I asked as calmly as I could,
He shrugged. “A lot of reasons.”
“Maybe,” I said in desperation, “you should talk about it with somebody, it might help.” Hurriedly I dredged up all the techniques I had learned as a Counselor, carefully questioning him, until at last he opened up and flooded me with his sorrows and worries.
He became the Yuri I remembered, an intense person who concealed his emotions under a cold, business-like exterior. He had grown tired of the city’s superficiality, uncomfortable with those who grew annoyed at his seriousness and penetration. He was unsuited to the gaiety and playfulness that surrounded him, wanting to pursue whatever he did with single-minded devotion.
He looked embarrassed after telling me all this and began once more to withdraw behind his shield. “I have some tentative plans,” he said calmly, regaining control. “I may be leaving here in a couple of days with one of the scientific expeditions for Mars. I prefer the company of serious people and have been offered a place on the ship.”
My hands trembled. Neither of us had gone with an expedition until five years after our meeting. “I’m sorry for bothering you with my problems,” he went on. “I don’t usually do that to strangers, or anyone else for that matter. I’d better be on my way.”
“You’re not bothering me.”
“Anyway, I have a lot of things to do. I appreciate the time you took to listen to me.”
He stood up and prepared to walk away. No, I thought, you can’t, I can’t lose you like this. But then I realized something and was shocked that I hadn’t thought of it before. I knew what I had to do.
“Wait!” I said. “Wait a minute. Do you think you could humor an old lady, maybe take some advice? It’ll only be an hour or so of your time.”
“It depends,” he said stiffly.
“Before you go on that expedition, do you think you could visit a person I think might enjoy talking to you?”
He smiled. “I suppose,” he said. “But I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“She’s a lot like you. I think you’d find her sympathetic.” And I told him where I lived and gave him my name. “But don’t tell her an old woman sent you, she’ll think I’m meddling. Just tell her it was a friend.”
“I promise.” He turned to leave. “Thank you, friend.” I watched him as he ambled down the pebbled path that would lead him to my home.
Spirit Brother
The flat land below him was white, the color of purity and luck. Jamukha flew in the form of an eagle, feeling the wind under his wings. The steppe and mountains had also been covered by snow on the day he had first met Temujin, the companion and comrade in arms who had later become his greatest enemy.
But all of that had happened when he was a boy, years ago, in the world of the living.
“My spirit will watch over you,” Jamukha had said at the end, knowing even as he spoke that Temujin would not let him live, that he would have to punish Jamukha for turning against him. Temujin had granted him an honorable death by strangulation, so that his blood would not be shed, but Jamukha could not recall the moment when the silken cord had tightened around his neck. Temujin’s shamans had chanted over Jamukha’s body, and buried him with a horse, some dried meat, a skin of kumiss, and his weapons on a mountain overlooking the Onon River.
Jamukha had lingered near his grave after his death, unheeding of the days and nights that passed. He had feared that the world of the spirits might be as empty as the steppe, and usually it was, for the bravest of the dead had flown to Koko Mongke Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky that covered all of Etugen, the Earth. But at other times, as Jamukha flew over the land, he would see other lost spirits camped near a grave, pale wraiths feeding on the smoke of the offerings being burned by mourners for the dead.
He glimpsed one such spirit now, hovering in the form of a black bird over the ashes of a sacrificial fire near the mountain gravesite of a chief. Jamukha watched the bird avidly gulp the last of the tendrils of smoke and knew then that the creature was the ghost of Toghril, the Kereit Khan, as greedy in death as Toghril had been in life.
“I greet you, former ally and enemy,” the ghost of Toghril Khan said. The spirit-bird’s eyes were sly and crafty, its talons ready to clutch at whatever was near.
“I greet you, Toghril Ong-Khan.” Jamukha alighted near the small yurt that had been raised near the grave. “How many times did you betray me in life?”
“No more often than you betrayed me,” Toghril replied. “No more often than Temujin betrayed both of us, after claiming to be our comrade and brother. Yet you swore before your death that your ghost would watch over Temujin.”
“That is true.” The few spirits Jamukha had encountered had been able to glimpse his inner thoughts and to know all the events of his life; Toghril was no different.
“Why would you want to protect the man who sentenced you to death?” Toghril asked.
“Because he was my anda, my sworn brother,” Jamukha said, “before he became my enemy. I made my last promise to him for the sake of our old oath.” That was part of the truth, but not all of it.
“There’s no place in your world for men who won’t bow to you.” Those were the last words Jamukha had spoken to Temujin. “But my ghost will re
mind you of what you lost to gain your triumphs. A ghost is not so easily cast aside.” That had been part of his promise to his old comrade.
“In your place, I would long for revenge,” Toghril said. “I think that’s what still holds me here. Temujin took everything from me.”
“He was my anda,” Jamukha said. “I turned against him only when I knew that his heart had hardened against me. We might have ruled together, but he prefers to rule alone.”
“In Heaven, there is only one sun,” Toghril said, “and on the Earth, there can be only one Khan.”
That was not what had been said when Jamukha and Temujin were youthful comrades. “In the sky, there is a sun and a moon,” the men had sung, and for a year and a half he and Temujin had ridden together and led their clans together. They had shared the same grazing grounds, the same triumphs, the same blanket and bed.
“I didn’t leave Temujin,” Jamukha said. “It was he who left me.” At that thought, the pain and rage he had felt when Temujin had abandoned him nearly overwhelmed him once more. His sworn brother had left him without warning, sneaking away in the night, and many of the men they had led together had chosen to follow Temujin. That had been the beginning of the wars between them, the wars Temujin had at last won.
“He swore oaths to me, as he did to you,” Toghril’s spirit murmured, “and now he rules over my Kereits, as he rules over all the tribes.”
Jamukha said, “I loved him.”
“As all the chiefs now love and honor Temujin, who became Genghis Khan.”
“They do not love him as I did,” Jamukha said.
“You loved him, and swore to watch over him, but I think you also still long to punish him for what he did.”
Jamukha was silent, unable to deny the other ghost’s words.
Toghril stretched his black wings, rising toward the sky with the last of the smoke. Jamukha gazed at the ashes of the dead fire. He had come to love Temujin when they were both fatherless boys, after Temujin and his brothers had been abandoned by their people. He had known that the brave Mongol boy would not be an outcast forever, that Temujin would become an honored chief. He had ridden with Temujin against their Merkit enemies in their first great battle together. A beloved comrade, his other self – that was what he had seen in his sworn brother, and Temujin had finally used it against him.
He should have been past such feelings; they belonged to the world of the living. But he clutched at that world, unable to free himself of it.
He had not been like other men; Jamukha had always known that about himself. Others might occasionally take their pleasure with boys or young men, with a captive or a boy too weak to resist, but such pleasures were no more than the whims of a moment, or a way to take revenge on a defeated enemy. But for Jamukha, they had been a way to douse the fire that sometimes flared inside him, the flames that could not be quenched by anything else, and then with Temujin, he had found more – a companion who might share his feelings, who might honor their love above all others.
But it had not been that way for Temujin. He had shared himself with Jamukha for a time, surrendering as little of himself as possible, never allowing himself to admit the true nature of their bond, and then he had left Jamukha’s side in the night. There had been many battles and betrayals after that, and too many times when Jamukha had allowed his old feelings for Temujin to cloud his judgment and lead him to defeat.
They might have ruled together. Instead, Temujin had become Genghis Khan, the greatest Khan his people had ever known. He had united all of the Mongol clans, and had then brought all of their old enemies – the Merkits, the Tatars, the Naimans to the west – under his yoke. He would not rest now; Jamukha was sure of that. Temujin would not be satisfied until all the world bowed to him.
Such thoughts, and the anger and sorrow they evoked, were useless now; they only kept Jamukha chained to the Earth, haunting the living, unable to fly to Heaven.
The wind carried Jamukha to another snow-covered mountain. He wondered if he was doomed to haunt the world forever. He had roamed the land as a tiger or wolf, soared toward the sky as an eagle or falcon, and even when he longed most fervently to fly to Heaven, he remained bound to the Earth.
He had not kept the promise he had made, to watch over Temujin. Perhaps the spirits had condemned him to wander the world of the living until he honored that oath.
A yurt made of felt panels stood below the mountain; a stream of smoke rose from its smokehole. Three white horses were tethered outside the round black tent. A man sat on the mountain slope above the yurt, his eyes closed, his body still. Jamukha recognized him at once, and the fear that suddenly welled up inside him nearly drove him from the mountain.
The man was a shaman, and a shaman more powerful than most, able to sense the presence of spirits and ghosts and to let them take possession of him.
“Teb-Tenggeri,” Jamukha whispered as the wind whipped the feathers of the shaman’s headdress. No one called him by the name he had been given at birth; he was now Teb-Tenggeri, the All-Celestial. He was a man almost as beautiful as a woman, smooth-skinned and with no traces of a mustache; age had not yet touched him. His spells, it was said, had brought Temujin many of his victories, and his curses could make men sicken and die.
Jamukha knew that he should flee. Ghosts might be invisible to most of the living, but shamans could feel their presence. Great shamans could summon ghosts and spirits and bend them to their will. The spirit harbored by this mountain was already whispering to Jamukha in the wind, warning him to fly away from this place. Then Teb-Tenggeri turned his head toward Jamukha and opened his large dark eyes.
Jamukha circled him slowly, hoping that he remained invisible. The shaman frowned, as if sensing that Jamukha was near, and then he turned away and slowly got to his feet. Jamukha waited, powerless to flee, expecting the man to chant a spell that would bind him, but Teb-Tenggeri made his way down the slope toward the yurt below, seemingly unaware of the ghost fluttering near him.
“Flee,” the spirit of the mountain whispered, but there was no need to escape the shaman now. Perhaps Teb-Tenggeri was not as powerful as people claimed. Some, Jamukha knew, attributed more powers to shamans than they actually possessed, and his wanderings as a ghost had shown him shamans who seemed blind and deaf to the spirits around them. Teb-Tenggeri had seemed to sense that Jamukha was close to him, and yet had not tried to bind him or to ward him off with a spell.
Perhaps I have the power to possess him, Jamukha thought. A spirit could enter the body of a man, speak through him, drive him into madness, even make him sicken and die. The weak were easy prey for ghosts, as were the mad, and also those shamans who sent out their souls too often to wander among the dead.
It came to Jamukha then that, through Teb-Tenggeri, he might be able to keep the oath he had sworn before his death. He could watch over Temujin, as he had sworn to do, and honor his oath even as he awaited chances to torment his former comrade. There would be risks, but perhaps risks worth taking. Few were as close to Temujin as Teb-Tenggeri, and Temujin had always feared the powers of shamans.
“Flee,” the mountain’s spirit whispered once more, “fly away now,” but Jamukha was already following Teb-Tenggeri down the slope. The shaman seemed unaware of his presence now; that would give Jamukha the advantage. His form changed, becoming a mist with silvery tendrils slowly entwining themselves around the shaman’s body; still the man did not sense him. As he prepared to take possession of Teb-Tenggeri, the world abruptly vanished, trapping him in a darkness as thick and black as a felt blanket.
Jamukha cried out, and heard the shaman’s answering cry. He struggled against the darkness and felt it press against him more heavily. The man had been waiting for him, he realized, ready to trap him.
“I have you,” Teb-Tenggeri murmured, and his voice surrounded Jamukha. “I know who you are, who you were.”
Jamukha struggled in the blackness, blind, gasping as he had at the moment of his death. “Let me go,”
he whispered.
“But you don’t want to go,” Teb-Tenggeri replied. “You don’t want to leave me, Jamukha. You’re still dreaming of revenge against the man who was once your sworn brother.”
“No,” Jamukha said.
“You can’t hide your thoughts from me. You want to be near Temujin, to recall your old friendship and remember what he once was to you. But you also want vengeance – you dream of taking everything Temujin has won away from him, of seeing his men betray him as yours betrayed you, of leaving him with nothing.”
Jamukha was silent.
“I serve Temujin, Genghis Khan,” Teb-Tenggeri continued. “I have sensed the will of the spirits, I know that Temujin is the Son of Heaven and destined to rule over all the world. I cannot stand against the spirits, but it is I who will rule through him in the end. That is the only revenge I can grant you, sworn brother of Temujin – that you will see the great Khan grow ever more regretful as his conquests increase, that he will be haunted even at the height of his power by the ghosts and spirits of those he betrayed, and that, because of his fear and remorse, he will give me whatever I want and do whatever I wish him to do.”
“That will be enough punishment,” Jamukha said, wondering if the shaman could sense his fear of the smothering darkness in which he was embedded. Invisible ropes held him, and he understood that Teb-Tenggeri had bound him with a powerful spell. To attempt escape would be risky; if he failed, Teb-Tenggeri would bind his soul even more tightly, and see that he never got another chance to fly away from him.
Jamukha had what he had wanted, a chance to keep his promise to haunt Temujin. But already the hatred that had flared up inside him burned less brightly, replaced by a growing fear.
Teb-Tenggeri kept him blind and deaf, wrapped in the heavy darkness. Jamukha had no way of knowing if a day or a month had passed. He felt as though the shaman had buried him again, interred him in a grave from which he could never escape.
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