by Harold Lamb
“Dolt, offspring of a wild ass! Speak not to me of your thoughts. Silence is sweeter than the bellow of an ass.”
Khlit, knowing the uselessness of arguing with the sturdy sword-bearer, put spurs to his horse and sped away into the darkness. Chagan lost no time in following.
A streak of crimson showed to the east. The light of the stars paled overhead. From the occasional thickets that the riders passed, bird notes trilled. The crimson spread into yellow and violet. The rays of the morning sun shot up over the plain and showed Chagan with his led horses galloping a scant mile behind Khlit. By shifting, as he rode, from one mount to another, he had managed to keep within sight of the better-mettled steed of the Cossack.
Once Chagan sighted Khlit, he drew up rapidly. Seeing this, the Cossack stopped. His first words to the sword-bearer showed that his mood had altered.
“Devil roast me, Chagan, but this is a ride fit for an emperor. Hey, man, you would come to Talas? Ride then—ride! Let the horse leap between your knees. Light your pipe and feel the kiss of the harlot wind in your face. Ride to meet Erlik on his black steed of death. Hey, Tatar, come!”
Taking two of the horses from the sword-bearer, who echoed his words with an exultant shout, Khlit led the way to the south. Through the day they rode, after the manner of their kind, sleeping at intervals in the saddle and chewing on the dried meat when they were hungry.
In this manner Khlit, called the Wolf, and Chagan, the sword-bearer, made their way to the passes of the Thian Shan Mountains, swimming the river Ili, and crossing the southern steppe, to the Ice Pass. To the sands of Taklamaklan and the Jallat Kum.
This was the route from Khamil south to Talas and the caravan track, as written in the annals of Batur Madi, who had inscribed after the words Jallat Kum a mark to ward off evil spirits. For Batur Madi declared that the bones of many men were drying in the Jallat Kum and that the caravans from the east went a week's journey to the north to avoid the Jallat Kum, where no men went willingly, unless they knew that their graves were dug there.
IV
Of the numerous passes leading through the Thian Shan Mountains to the south, Khlit chose the Ice Pass mentioned by Dongkor Gelong for two reasons. It was well to the north of the Tarim, beneath the snow-crest of the mighty Khan Tengri, and rather beyond the territory of the Khirghiz chieftains. While the defiles of the pass might well be infested with mountaineers—who were, of course, robbers—there was less danger of meeting their enemies the Khirghiz. And Chagan pointed out that it was the quickest way to the Tarim.
Indeed Chagan was unmistakably anxious to push on with all speed. The two riders found that their choice was justified. They gained the southern end of the defile with no greater loss than two of their horses, given as toll to a chieftain of the Khan Tengri who had not demanded more because he saw that the two Tatars were well-armed and disposed to use their weapons. The high altitude of the pass, where glaciers pressed the sides of the gorge and freshets flooded the gullies, hindered their progress.
Chagan gave an exclamation of satisfaction as they began the downward path to the south, their woolen coats drawn close against the chill winds that whistled down the pass at their backs. Khlit glanced at him curiously, for the sword-bearer, who had been urging haste, was not the man to be anxious about possible danger.
“Nay, lord,” Chagan answered his blunt query, “the lamas say that spirits infest the mountain passes, and I saw no idols fastened to the trees by the way to ward them off. So—”
“So you lie like a Mussulman merchant of Samarkand. You have ridden the flesh from your horse's belly. I have watched you counting the days of our journey on your fingers as if a young maiden awaited your coming in a comfortable yurt. Speak from your mind what is true, Chagan, and save lies for thieves and shamans.”
The sword-bearer's slant eyes widened guiltily, and he looked involuntarily back along the trail down which they had come. Khlit's glance followed his. The pass was empty of all save a hovering raven. Before this, Khlit had assured himself that they were not followed. Moreover, their speed had been such that none save a Tatar or Khirghiz on picked mounts could have kept near them. Why, then, had Chagan been uneasy?
“When the Dalai Lama commands, lord,” muttered the other, “it is well to hasten.”
Khlit laughed and shook his shoulders lightly.
“Aye. There is meat to that bone, Tatar. The words of the Dalai Lama are such as to blind the eyes of children or fools. But I am neither one nor the other. Truly the words of a magician are a veil. To read the truth you must tear the veil aside.”
Chagan blinked and spat forcibly.
“The Dalai Lama is not a magician, lord. I have seen the lamas raise up a man who was dead. They know all that happens in the mountains. We must guard well our tongues, for this is their land.”
“Lamas, shamans, or conjurers—they are all one, Chagan. Hey, their tricks are as many as the wiles of the steppe fox! Yet to one who knows they are but tricks there is no danger. Wherefore I would have come alone.”
Chagan turned this over in his mind and shook his head dubiously. “Nay, lord,” he said, and hesitated. “You came by these mountains to Tatary, men say. Did you see the city of Talas?”
“Nay, nor heard of it. The Dalai Lama is fond of riddles, Chagan. When we see Talas we may know the meaning of this riddle. Not before.”
From the foothills of the Thian Shan, called in the annals of Batur Madi the Kok Shal Tau, Khlit and Chagan glimpsed in the distance the wide valley of the Tarim. Here was a country different from that they had come through. The level steppe gave way to broken, wooded ridges, through which the horses took their way slowly. The defiles gleamed brown with sandstone pinnacles of rock. Game was thick and Chagan succeeded in bringing down an arkhan—a species of mountain sheep strange to them both, but eatable.
They came out abruptly from the poplars and willows of the forest to a wide sweep of sluggish water. Neither boats nor signs of habitations were visible, and the two took their course downstream, noting that the forest thinned as they went.
The current also lost its force, and the footing became sandy. The poplars gave way to tamarisks. Khlit pushed ahead, anxious to see the end of the river, where Dongkor Gelong had promised that they would find Talas.
The silence of the place stilled Chagan's tongue. Khlit had never been fond of words. The Cossack surveyed their surroundings keenly as they advanced, looking back with a frown at the distant summits of the Thian Shan. Truly, this was a strange place. For on the Tarim they did not meet any horsemen. Even when they came to the end of the river at a willow thicket, there was no sign of habitation. Why had they been sent to such a spot?
Chagan pulled up his tired horse with an oath. Khlit pushed ahead to the summit of a sand dune beyond the thicket. Then he halted and leaned forward curiously.
The slight elevation of the dune gave him a view over the surrounding landscape. He saw that they were on the edge of a desert, for the tamarisk trees became scattering and a series of dunes stretched before him like the summits of waves on an ocean. A few paces below him was a rough shepherd's aul—tree branches and thorns woven into a small enclosure in which were a score of sheep, a horse, a felt tent and a man in tattered woolen garments asleep.
Khlit trotted up to the enclosure and scanned the man. He lay flat on his face: a short, stocky figure, legs wrapped in soiled cloths and a dingy black kollah on his tousled head. A fire of sheep dung smoldered near him.
The rustle of branches, as the Cossack's horse nibbled at the fence, startled the fellow from his sleep, and he sprang to his feet grasping at a short spear. Khlit raised his right hand reassuringly, and after a careful inspection the man advanced gingerly toward him, holding the weapon poised. Chagan came up and grinned at sight of the scared shepherd.
“Here is a poor kind of city, lord,” he grunted, “for aught but fleas. Can the man speak Tatar?”
It was soon apparent that the shepherd could not. But he sho
wed a glimmer of understanding at the Uigur that Khlit spoke—a dialect much used by the traveling merchants of Central Asia and therefore widely known. The Cossack questioned him to the best of his ability and turned to Chagan.
“The rascal is slower of wit than of tongue, Chagan. He is a Dungan—a Chinese Mussulman—and he lives here because his father was here before him. Azim, as he calls himself, says that the main caravan track from China to Samarkand runs past here, a short distance out in the desert.”
“What does he know of Talas?”
Khlit stroked the scabbard of his curved sword thoughtfully, his eyes on the swart face of Azim.
“He has heard the name of Talas. It lies a half-day's ride into the desert, away from the setting sun. He has sent men there before. They came, he says, for what is buried in Talas. And here they have stayed. What that is he does not know, or he will not tell.”
“But Dongkor Gelong swore that it was at the end of the Tarim.”
“Aye—and here Azim's words have a ring of truth. For he says that the Tarim formerly ran further into the desert. Our way lies along its riverbed.”
As the sun was still high, the two pressed on, leaving the shepherd staring at them stupidly over his aul. They found that Azim spoke the truth. They came upon a wide ravine in the sand dunes where red sandstone cropped through the soil. Khlit chose a path along the bank of the riverbed, wishing to see the nature of the country he entered.
The sun gleamed redly behind their backs when they came out upon a dune higher than the others, and Khlit pointed to the riverbed. Chagan peered at it inquisitively. Here was in truth the end of the Tarim.
The smooth sand of the dry river bed formed an arena in the gully under them. A few tamarisks clung to the slope. But at the farther end of the arena a small stream of black water, which was all that remained of the Tarim, sank into the ground.
The sword-bearer was about to urge his horse down the slope into the basin when Khlit touched him on the ann.
The Cossack pointed to the sides of the arena. The sand dunes here presented a strange appearance. Pillars of rock stood upright in the gullies; square blocks of sandstone were scattered about. Further on, walls of stone in the form of buildings were visible. But the structures had no roofs.
On the summit of the hillock at the end of the river was a mass of masonry that had once been a tower. Ruins, nearly hidden in the sand, stretched on every quarter. Khlit laughed softly to himself.
“Hey, what think you of the citadel of Talas, Chagan?”
The sword-bearer gaped at the ruins and muttered under his breath. Clearly there had once been a city of size and importance here. Now he saw only the wrecks of dwellings, unroofed and buried in the sand. Silence hung heavily over the place.
Khlit dismounted from his horse and inspected the nearest remnant of a house. To Chagan the sight of the place was unaccountable, bordering on the uncanny. The desolate city seemed to him ill-omened. But Khlit remembered that he had heard that the sands of the Taklamaklan had been advancing into the foothills of the mountains. The Cossack guessed shrewdly that the attack of the sand had driven the inhabitants from the place, perhaps several hundred years ago.
It was now clear to Khlit what Dongkor Gelong had meant. The lama had said there was a place where the sands of the Tak-lamaklan join the mountains. And where the river Tarim sank to its grave. They had come to the place.
But why had the Dalai Lama directed them here? Talas had been without inhabitants certainly for several generations. No living person was to be seen save the miserable shepherd Azim. Where was the Jallat Kum? The caravan path might run near them, but there was no caravansary in the ruined city of Talas. No human being stirred along the sand dunes except themselves.
Khlit had said to Chagan that Talas would solve the riddle of the Tsong Khapa's words. But here was a deeper riddle. Khlit shook his shaggy head moodily, watching one of the horses which was descending to the basin for the tamarisk foliage that it had sighted.
Chagan, too, eyed the horse. Suddenly both men stiffened alertly.
The animal had stepped out on the smooth, moist sand of the arena. As it did so it gave a shrill scream of terror. The sound cut the silence of the place sharply. Khlit swore.
The horse had sunk to its haunches in the sand. The surface of the soil ebbed around the beast in a sinister fashion as the horse struggled to free itself. Half its trunk was now engulfed. Its head reared frantically; then it sank down into the sand which closed over it with a dull murmur. The surface of the basin was again level and smooth.
Khlit whirled at the sound of a guttural laugh behind him. A few paces away Azim sat on his bedraggled pony. The shepherd pointed to the sand of the river bed grimly.
“Jallat Kum,” he said.
V
If shadows are seen, there is danger if the owners of the shadows are hidden. Aye, even though they come with open hands, for shadows have no tongues with which to lie.
Khirghiz proverb
Chagan yawned and stretched his limbs painfully. He pushed aside his sheepskin robe and stood up, staring with bleared eyes at the rising sun which had wakened him and stamping circulation into his booted legs. For the night on the Taklamaklan was cold.
The sword-bearer buckled his belt tight and looked around at the ruins of Talas with disgust written large on his broad face. He stiffened his muscles and shook his black tangle of hair like a dog. He was not a tall man, but his shoulders were knitted to an ox's neck, and his long arms were heavily thewed. Legs, bent to the shape of a horse's barrel, supported an erect and massive trunk. Men who had glanced only at his height and sleepy, pock-marked face had learned to their cost that the sword-bearer's strength lay in muscles invisible to the eye and in an inexorable, destructive energy when aroused.
Chagan gave vent to his disgust to Khlit when he had prepared some of the arkhan meat over a fire of tamarisk roots and added some water from a goatskin purchased from Azim to their scanty stock of kumiss.
“An ill place to water at—this,” he growled. “The Jallat Kum of the Tarim river bed swallows a horse as Azim would gulp a milk curd. Ha! Azim stayed not when the stars came out. He likes not the ruins. By signs he made plain to me that it is an unholy spot, which the caravans avoid. Twice in the night I heard wailing and sighing as if the desert spirits that hamstring straying travelers were about us. By the head of Genghis Khan, I like it not.”
Khlit finished the last of the meat and drank his share of the mare's milk calmly. Then he leaned back on the sand and scrutinized Chagan.
“How long, dog, have you been a breeder of lies? Am I a whispering maiden to be beguiled by words such as these? Not so. You have a thought, Chagan, in your thick head. You are trying to paint the thought in another guise. Why were you in a hurry to reach Talas? And now you talk of going hence.”
Chagan juggled the kumiss flask sullenly.
“Last night,” he repeated, “I wakened and heard a voice like that of a woman crying—crying and then singing. It was not far away. This is a cursed spot, for there is no woman here.”
“I heard it not.” Khlit took a twig from the fire and idly traced figures in the sand. “Harken, Chagan, I am neither magician nor oracle, but I will unravel the meaning of a riddle. It is a riddle of the master of Lhassa, who is monarch of many khans and squadrons of cavalry. Why did he send the message by Dongkor Gelong that I should come here?”
Chagan started to speak; then he thought better of it. Khlit studied his tracings in the sand idly.
“When a hunter seeks one wolf from the pack, he does not follow the pack. He sets a bait, and, when the wolf comes, he can then slay it. The master of Lhassa is crafty; he has the wisdom of many shamans. Yet it is hard to hide the bait that covers the snare. Harken, Chagan. The Jun-gar are a power on the steppe, midway between the Kallmarks and the Chinese. The Khirghiz are their own masters, yet they are not hostile to the Dalai Lama. From the Kha Khans before me, tribute in sheep, horses and cloths was sent to
Lhassa. I have not sent it. When this was known, the Dalai Lama persuaded the Khirghiz to cross our frontiers for plunder.” Chagan nodded. Most of this he had known.
“The clergy of the Yellow Hat,” went on the Cossack slowly, “are actual rulers of Kashgaria, which reaches as far north as the Thian Shan, and in Tibet to the south of the Taklamaklan. Also of portions of China by the headwaters of the Yang-tze River. To the northwest of Kashgaria and the northeast of the Yangtze the Tsong Khapa, I have heard, has pulled his magician's veil over the Khan of the Kallmarks, and the Emperor of the Chinese. They believe he is the envoy of the gods upon earth. Such is the blindness even of a ruler of millions.”
Khlit stuck his twig upright in the center of the figures he had been tracing.
“In the heart of the Tatar steppe between the Kallmarks and China is the land of the bowmen, the Jun-gar. Like an eagle flying above the mountains, the Dalai Lama has marked Jungaria for his priests. Already the khans of the kurultai council are overawed by his magician's tricks and the wiles of the shamans.”
“But you are his enemy, lord,” objected Chagan bluntly.
“Aye, for he sent the Khirghiz against us when the tribute stopped. Now the Dalai Lama has marked me as one who must be removed. The enmity of priests is more dangerous than the sting of a serpent. And I will not be a tribute-payer of Lhassa. We cannot make this a war, Chagan, for the Jun-gar will not take up arms against the Dalai Lama; and, if we did, the Khirghiz and Kallmarks together have thrice our number of horsemen.”
“They are crafty fighters,” grunted Chagan. “Yet, they are not slaves to do the will of the master of Lhassa—”
“Nay; that is truth. But they have the taste of our lands and herds in their mouth. While the plundering is good, they will invade our boundaries. The Jun-gar are too far from Lhassa to enjoy the care of the Dalai Lama, yet he desires their lands for the Khirghiz and for himself. So he sent Dongkor Gelong with all his mummery to fetch me and those that I trusted here to the desert. Why? He would remove the horns from the cattle he wishes to slaughter.”