As they rode, Teb-Tenggeri allowed Jamukha to gaze at the world through his eyes. Spring had come to the steppe, and blue and white wildflowers dotted the grassland; soon the grass would reach to a man’s waist. In the distance, a black ridge of mountains thrust up from the land, reaching toward Heaven, and Jamukha thought he could hear the spirits of the mountains calling to him, chanting that he had stayed too long among the living. He suddenly felt a fierce longing for the Earth he had lost, as if this might be the last time he would ever look upon it.
A herd of the Khan’s favorite white horses grazed beyond his camp; on the horizon, streams of smoke rose from the circles of black tents in the Khan’s ordu. They had approached the encampment from the south. By the time they had reached Temujin’s great tent to the north of the camp, the sun was in the western part of the cloudless blue sky.
Temujin’s guards watched in silence as Teb-Tenggeri and the others dismounted, then called out the names of the visitors as they approached the entrance. Teb-Tenggeri led his brothers inside, stepping carefully over the threshold. He did not bow; he had never bowed before his stepbrother the Khan, and would not do so now.
The shaman and his brothers hung up their bowcases and quivers of arrows on the western side of the entrance. An expanse covered by carpets separated them from Temujin, who sat on his felt-covered throne on top of a platform at the northern end of the tent. His chief wife Bortai was at his left, her large golden-brown eyes focused on her husband; Jamukha had not expected her to be there. To his right, the Khan’s brother Temuge sat in the place of honor, with three big broad-shouldered men near him. Members of the Khan’s day guard, wearing black lacquered leather armor and blue sashes, stood in front of the platform.
Was Temujin, Jamukha wondered, finally ready to confront Teb-Tenggeri? Would he have urged Temuge to stay there for this meeting only to humiliate him? Munglik, Teb-Tenggeri’s father and Temujin’s stepfather, was seated not far from Temuge, pulling at his long gray mustaches and smiling to himself; surely he would not have come there if he expected to see his shaman son disgraced. Temujin’s intentions were well hidden.
“I greet you, my Khan and brother,” Teb-Tenggeri murmured as he approached the back of the tent. Jamukha sensed no fear inside the shaman as he lifted his head and gazed steadily into Temujin’s pale eyes. Teb-Tenggeri had worn his white coat made from the hides of snow leopards, his hat of eagle feathers, and his necklaces of silver and jewels, all gifts from the Khan. Temujin wore a plain brown wool tunic, worn trousers, felt boots, and a simple blue headband around his shaven head; he had always scorned adornment for himself. Jamukha could read nothing in Temujin’s eyes; they seemed to be staring past Teb-Tenggeri at something unseen.
“My brother Temuge Odchigin has complained to me about you,” Temujin said in his quiet voice. Temuge sat up straight on his cushion, anger in his eyes. He had grown fatter since the years when Jamukha had known him; he had always been a slower, lazier, more placid man than his brother. Now his eyes flitted from Temujin to the shaman, as if he were waiting for a command.
Jamukha sensed danger. The wisest course for Teb-Tenggeri now would be to smooth over his differences with Temuge. That might weaken the shaman’s position for a short time, but Temujin could be brought around again. Even as he realized this, being careful to keep his thoughts masked, Jamukha knew that Teb-Tenggeri was now beyond reason.
“Your brother has no reason to complain.” The shaman’s musical voice almost sang the words. “Some of his men chose to join me. Does it matter if they serve me or Temuge Odchigin, as long as they serve their Khan?” He paused. “I suspect they came to me only because Temuge may harbor ambitions much like those of his disgraced brother Khasar.”
“I won’t listen to this!” Temuge shouted, rising from his cushion. Temujin motioned him back with one sharp movement of his hand. Teb-Tenggeri had gone too far to turn back.
Jamukha trembled in the darkness, suddenly fearful for himself and his spirit.
The shaman drew nearer to Temujin, so close that he could have reached out and touched the tops of the Khan’s boots. Bortai clung tightly to the edge of her husband’s sleeve.
“I serve my Khan above all others,” Teb-Tenggeri said softly. “My loyalty is to you and to no one else. It is not your brother who casts the spells that have brought you victory. It is not your brother who allows the spirit of your anda Jamukha to dwell inside him and to bring comfort to you.”
Temujin recoiled. Jamukha saw the pain and longing in his pale eyes and thought that the shaman would win out after all, and then the greenish-brown eyes grew hard once more.
“Once, I believed that.” Temujin’s voice was so low that Jamukha could barely hear him. “I heard his voice through you, I saw his spirit gazing out at me from your eyes. But there are things he would have said to me, words you never spoke, words that only he–”
The Khan suddenly motioned to Temuge. His younger brother jumped to his feet, shouting, “I’ll settle this myself!” Temuge rushed at the shaman. “We’ll see who’s stronger now!” His big hands closed around Teb-Tenggeri’s neck; Jamukha fluttered helplessly inside the shaman as Teb-Tenggeri gasped for breath.
“Settle this outside my tent,” Temujin called out. “You may prove who is stronger there.”
“What is this?” Munglik was rising from his seat. “What are you doing?”
Temujin spun around to face the old man. “Temuge has been insulted,” he replied. “Your son Teb-Tenggeri has overstepped his bounds. I will do nothing against him myself, and won’t shed his blood, but Temuge must be allowed to settle this.”
The shaman’s brothers were advancing toward the back of the tent; the Khan’s guards quickly massed around the throne. “You will never hear the voice of your anda again!” Teb-Tenggeri screamed, but Temuge was already dragging him across the threshold, followed by the three burly men who had been sitting with him.
Outside, Teb-Tenggeri’s terror flooded into Jamukha; his fear was the wind under the wings of a bird, lifting Jamukha swiftly from the darkness and setting his soul free. He heard a shriek as one of Temuge’s men forced the shaman’s shoulders back, bending him into a bow until his back snapped. The two other men were laughing as they talked of how poor a fighter Teb-Tenggeri had been, and how easily he had been defeated. Temuge bent over the body, poked at it to be certain that Teb-Tenggeri was dead, then kicked the corpse toward a cart.
A pale mist formed over Teb-Tenggeri, then became a falcon. The ghostly raptor flew up from the shaman’s broken body and stretched out its translucent wings as it circled Jamukha.
“You escaped me,” the falcon said with Teb-Tenggeri’s voice. “I might have kept you bound to me even after my death, but you escaped me. Now I have no power over you.”
Jamukha fluttered his own ghostly wings, then alighted near the cart. “The will of the spirits is done. Even you could not stand against it.”
“And what was the will of the spirits?” Teb-Tenggeri’s ghost asked.
“That Temujin should rule his people, and not you.”
“My spells brought him his conquests.”
“You should have been satisfied with the many rewards he gave you,” Jamukha said. “Now he will have to conquer the rest of the world without you.”
Men were coming out of the Khan’s tent to peer at the body, unaware of the spirits lingering near the corpse. “I could have ruled with Temujin,” the falcon said.
“Once I said the same,” Jamukha murmured.
“You might have had your revenge for what he did to you, Jamukha. Instead, you hid the truth from me, the truth that would have kept Temujin bound to me. I see that now, what you were to him and what he once was to you.”
“You would never have accepted that truth in life,” Jamukha said.
“That wasn’t why you kept it from me. You used it as a weapon against me.”
“I used it to free myself.”
The falcon spread its wings and sprang up, r
iding on the wind toward the bright blue sky. Temujin was coming toward the shaman’s body now, followed by his guards. The Khan’s face was slack, his eyes as dead as if his own spirit had flown from him.
Temujin leaned over the corpse of Teb-Tenggeri. “Rise,” he whispered, “rise now. Come back to life so that I can know that my sworn brother truly lived inside you. I would willingly suffer any curse you might put upon me to know for certain that the dead are not silent, that Jamukha spoke to me through you.”
Teb-Tenggeri’s glassy eyes gazed up sightlessly at the Khan. He would trouble Temujin’s realm no more; those who loved their Khan would no longer have to fear his spells. Temujin would have the triumphs that Heaven had ordained for him, but he would also have to live in an empty world where ghosts no longer spoke to him, in which his doubts about their existence would always torment him. He would fear the death of his soul as much as that of his body while he lived, for he would believe death to be only a void, one that would extinguish his spirit.
With only a few words spoken through Teb-Tenggeri while the shaman still lived, Jamukha could have banished those doubts and Temujin’s torment, but only at the cost of giving the shaman the power he craved. It came to him then that he had won some measure of revenge while also honoring his oath to watch over his anda.
“Your torment will not last long.” Jamukha extended his wings. “It will last only a man’s lifetime. You will be with me again, Temujin, when your soul flies to Heaven.”
But his anda could not hear him. The wind lifted Jamukha, and he let it carry him away from the Khan.
Amphibians
The nurse opened the white curtain around the bed as two orderlies wheeled the gurney out of the room. Lillian stayed in her chair, keeping out of the way.
“Mr. Haynes,” the nurse murmured, leaning over the bed, “you’ve got to stay flat for the rest of the day. Understand? You can’t lift your head.”
Lillian’s father did not reply.
The nurse said to her, “You make sure he doesn’t sit up. Don’t raise his bed, either, or he’ll have an awful headache.”
“I’ll make sure,” Lillian said.
“He’s got to stay flat until tomorrow.”
“I understand.”
The nurse lingered near the bed. She was a stocky gray-haired woman who always addressed Lillian’s father as “Mr. Haynes” and never lapsed into the artificial heartiness and familiarity of many on the hospital staff. “I think he’s asleep,” the nurse murmured. “Remember about not raising the bed.”
“I will.”
The nurse left the room. Lillian got up and went to her father’s side. His eyes opened slowly, as though it was an effort for him to lift his eyelids. The skin on his face was taut against his skull; the hands folded over his chest were like claws. His elongated face and bony body made her think of an El Greco painting. He allowed only Lillian’s mother to feed him or to help him on with his robe, and he accepted even this assistance with a scowl.
“Hello!” a white-haired woman called out from the door. She was dressed in black, with a cleric’s collar; a large gold cross hung from her neck.
Lillian moved toward the intruder, ready to head her off. “My father’s asleep,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t want him disturbed right now.”
“Could you give him one of these?” The woman handed Lillian a pamphlet with a picture of Jesus Christ on the cover. “I’ll try to come back later.”
Lillian shook her head. “He’s really not up for visitors today. He just came back from a myelogram.”
“Well, you tell him that all our prayers are with him. I’ll say a special one for him tonight.”
“I’ll tell him.”
The woman smiled warmly at Lillian, then left. Lillian moved a chair toward the head of the bed, setting it down next to her father’s night table, and said, “She’s gone,” as she sat down.
Her father opened his eyes. She was prepared to see anger in them again, helpless rage at all of the people willing him to live, but his brown eyes were calm.
“Thanks,” he said as she dropped the pamphlet into the wastebasket. “Let that be a lesson to you, Lilly. When you check into a hospital, don’t say ‘none’ when they ask for your religion or you’ll get them all trooping in trying to win you over, all the priests and ministers and Holy Joes.”
“I’ll remember.” Whatever her father expected to find after death, he would approach it without a spiritual guide. Death, he had told her not long ago, was a plunge into the unknown, a leap into either another existence that would have its own laws, or into nothingness. The soul, or whatever remained of a person after death, would have to discover what was there for itself. Death, according to him, was an event horizon; no signals could reach anyone here from one who had completed that irreversible passage, and no one here could aid someone making that transition. He was an engineer by training; mystical explanations that violated his view of the universe held no appeal for him.
“Damn woman’ll probably be back in a day or two.” His voice was barely more than a whisper. He had always had a strong voice, a baritone that carried to all of the rooms of the house where she had grown up. “Could you raise this end of the bed?”
“I can’t. You have to stay flat. You had a myelogram.”
“I know what I had.”
“You’re not supposed to sit up or raise your head. You’ll have one hell of a headache if you do.”
Resentment flickered in his eyes. He seemed about to argue with her, but said nothing. Lillian picked up his glass of water, positioned the straw, then guided it to his lips. “They told me when they brought you back that you should drink lots of liquids now.”
He sipped some water dutifully, then turned his head away from her. He had drifted off again by the time she put the glass back on the table, his eyes closed, his clawlike hands resting on his chest. Her father had been in and out of the hospital for months now, and Lillian had been home for less than a week before her mother had taken him there to be re-admitted again.
You should have come home more often. Her mother had called to tell her not to put off a visit any longer, and Lillian had heard that unspoken sentiment in her voice. You should have come home sooner. Lillian had been telling herself that all during the flight. Her father couldn’t be that sick; he had never been ill in his life. Her brother Brad, who had visited a month before Lillian arrived, had warned her about how serious this illness was, that he was sure the cancer had spread even if their mother wouldn’t admit it. Lillian had refused to believe Brad until she had seen for herself how frail their father was.
But she had entered into a silent conspiracy with her mother upon arriving home. There would be no talk of death; her father’s illness was only a temporary setback. Doctors knew a lot more now, and some of the patients they had met in the outpatient clinic had been going through radiation or chemotherapy for years. Lillian’s visit, and that of her brother Brad and his wife Celia, were only their usual summertime visits and had no other special significance. Their father would have whatever treatment was necessary and resume his normal life. They were, as Lillian’s mother cheerfully pointed out, still planning to take a trip to Hawaii that coming winter. She believed that her husband would recover, and her belief would make it so.
Lillian’s father had shattered their conspiracy three days ago. He could not eat or sleep; his demands for Percocet and even more powerful medications to kill the pain became more insistent. They had taken him back to the hospital. Even after that, Lillian’s mother had kept the conspiracy going right up until last night.
“They told me,” she had said to Lillian after a supper of cold cuts and salad neither of them had been able to finish. “They think they might be able to get him into the hospice at St. Joseph’s.” They had been sitting in the living room, in front of the coffee table covered with travel brochures showing palm trees and sandy beaches. “They’re supposed to be good about managing the pain.”
> “Mother–” Lillian began.
“Damn it!” her mother whispered. “He came back to me to die.”
Lillian tensed; her mother had never alluded to the separation before. That had been another conspiracy, one in which both Lillian and Brad had participated. “Your father and I need some time apart, that’s all. We’re not going to throw away thirty-three years, you know, we just need to sort things out.”
The separation had lasted for two years. Within three months after coming back to his wife, Lillian’s father had begun the cycle of hospital stays, surgery, treatments, and consulting new specialists.
“David came back to die.” Lillian had never seen her mother so furious, so agonized; her small body was bent forward from the waist, her hands clutching her knees. “Oh, God.” Her short white hair was longer, the curls more tangled; Lillian wondered when she had last had her hair done. “Maybe he knew, Lilly. Maybe he found out he was sick before he decided to come home.”
Lillian said, “I don’t believe it.” She swallowed hard. “Even if it’s true, don’t hold it against him now. He came back to you, he wanted to be with you. That must mean something.”
“Yes.”
“You said things were better between you.”
“They were.” Lillian’s mother was crying, her shoulders shaking. Lillian touched her tentatively, then slipped an arm around her; she wasn’t used to seeing her mother cry. Laura Haynes despised crybabies. She had not cried while telling Lillian and Brad that their father had gone off with a younger woman. Crying, after all, would not bring him back. A harsh rasping sound came from her, and it seemed that all the tears she had never allowed herself before were now forcing themselves from her.
As Lillian gazed at her sleeping father, she wished that she had told him that she had forgiven him for his lapses, that she knew he regretted them and had tried to make up for them. There was a lot she hadn’t said to him. They had both acquired the habit of misunderstanding each other, after having once been so close. She should have said what she had to say while he was still lucid, but the conspiracy she had entered into with her mother had kept her from speaking: he would get better, and they would have plenty of time to talk. Now his mind was so fogged with drugs that he could not follow a conversation for more than a minute or so.
Thumbprints Page 19