Ruler of the Sky: A Novel of Genghis Khan

by Pamela Sargent

  “It is a poor effort,” Ch'i-kuo said as she pushed the painting towards Tugai. The picture showed a burned wall and a patch of ground covered with bones.

  Tugai's smile broadened. “It's a fine picture, Ujin. That skull looks like a child's, and I can tell that bone there was part of a leg. And those ribs—you are very clever, Noble Lady.”

  “I am grateful for your praise, Elder Sister.”

  Tugai let out her breath. “Perhaps when we are home, you'll make pictures of our land.”

  “I look forward to the sight of your beautiful country,” Ch'i-kuo murmured.

  “Summer will soon be past,” Tugai said. “The Khan will tend to matters at home before returning here.” Ch'i-kuo raised a brow. But of course he would return, to ravage what was left, to destroy whatever the survivors had managed to rebuild. “I suppose he'll leave me behind then, and bring another wife, although he scarcely needs us with so many beauties to choose from among your people.”

  “Our women are but lilies compared to the rich beauty of a Mongol lady,” Ch'i-kuo said courteously; the heavy-boned Tugai looked powerful enough to ride with the Khan into battle. “Your bloom is that of the peony, which we call the king of flowers.” She offered this compliment in the Han language; Lien translated it. “I am certain none of our young swans will find more favour with him than do you.”

  “Oh, but I've never been his favourite. That honour still belongs to Khulan Khatun, even after all these years. Now there's a woman with the beauty of fire in her face—you'd find her a fitting subject for a picture. I was with the Khan when she was brought to him, and his desire for her was so great that he threw her to the floor and took her there and then.”

  Ch'i-kuo frowned at the thought of such rough affections. Tugai went on to speak of the Khan's oldest sons, who had accompanied him on this campaign. Ch'i-kuo had seen them; the three younger ones resembled their father, while the oldest was a hulking brute with small dark eyes. His name was Jochi, and it was said that he quarrelled often with his brother Chagadai. The two younger sons, Ogedei and Tolui, had drunk so heavily at a recent banquet that their men had needed to carry them from the tent; this was apparently a common occurrence.

  “And there is another with the title of the Khan's fifth son,” Tugai continued, “Barchukh, the Idukh Khut of the Uighurs.”

  “How did he earn such a great distinction, Elder Sister?”

  “His people came to hate the Kara-Khitans, who demanded much tribute from them. Barchukh decided he preferred Temujin to the Kara-Khitan Gur-Khan as a master, and proved it by driving off some of the Khan's Merkit enemies who had fled to the Uighur lands. When Barchukh came to our camp to swear his oath, the Khan was so moved that he declared he would always regard the Idukh Khut as his fifth son and brother of his four oldest sons.”

  “Indeed,” Ch'i-kuo murmured. “Perhaps the Great Khan was pleased that the Uighur saved him the trouble of subduing his people by force.”

  “Oh, our husband made a fine speech about that, saying that Barchukh hadn't caused the Khan's men to suffer or his geldings to sweat, and deserved to be honoured for that. Of course, many Uighurs had already found favour with the Khan, as scribes who set down his words. They are nearly as clever as your people.”

  Ch'i-kuo gazed into the other woman's guileless brown eyes. Tugai had clearly not meant to insult her; to a Mongol, even a Uighur would seem civilized. Tugai chattered then of her own sons, a little boy who could already ride a horse without having to be tied to it, and an older one who could unerringly hit his target with an arrow.

  “They long to win glory in battle,” Tugai said. “One's nearly old enough to tend the horses of the rearguard, and my younger takes such pleasure in seeing the tribute and slaves brought in.”

  “I am sure they will both be mighty warriors,” Ch'i-kuo said. “With the blood of the Khan in their veins, they could hardly be otherwise.”

  “You speak our tongue quite well, Noble Lady, considering how little time you've spent with us. You will soon be a Mongol yourself.”

  Ch'i-kuo winced at this high praise. “You honour me greatly, Ujin.”

  The Khan came to Ch'i-kuo that night. She had bathed earlier in a little heated water before donning a robe of blue silk; his nose wrinkled at the smell of her perfume.

  “You've washed yourself again?” he asked.

  “A month has passed since I last bathed,” she said. “I am accustomed to washing more often.”

  “Water's too precious to waste, and you risk offending the water spirits if you wash in a running stream. My Yasa decrees death for such an offence.”

  “So Lien has told me,” Ch'i-kuo said, “and that bathing during a storm will surely draw lightning to one's tent. But perhaps the spirits of your land will forgive my using a few drops of water to make my body more fragrant for my husband.”

  “A woman doesn't have to smell like a flower.”

  “Neither does she have to carry the odour of a horse.”

  He sat down on the bed. It had grown easier for her to speak to him in this way. Lien had told her that he despised timidity, although he would also take offence at any insult.

  Two of her recent paintings sat on a table near the bed, and he picked one up as she settled herself next to him. Two of her women stood near to fan them; Mu-tan approached with a jug.

  “What is this one called?” he asked.

  It was the painting she had shown to Tugai. “It is called The Great Khan Leaves His Mark Upon the Land.”

  He scowled, then grabbed for the other. In this one, a Mongol soldier stood near a mound of severed heads; she had painted the heads of women and children. “And this?”

  “The Mighty Mongol Is Triumphant Over His Enemies.”

  He threw the scroll on the table. “If you must make pictures, do horses and birds, or tents and wagons. You could do pictures like the ones in your book.”

  “I must paint what I see, my husband.”

  He said, “I see nothing like that here.”

  “I must paint what I see inside myself. Often my hand seems to find the image and begins its strokes even before I see it clearly. Once the first brushstroke is made, I am committed to it.”

  “You're painting what you think of these things, and not just what you see.”

  She said, “I shall not paint them if you don't wish—”

  “Paint what pictures you please. If they displease me enough—” He tore the second painting in two, then reached for the jug Mu-tan held.

  He drank in silence. The Khan had not been with her often that summer, with his duties to his other wives and his share of the slaves to divert him. He had travelled to the main camp of the Ongghuts, where his daughter Alakha dwelled; the Ongghut chiefs were sworn to him, but it was said that the Khan's daughter ruled through them. The rest of the time, he hunted or consulted with his generals in their ordus.

  At last he waved the women away. Lien was about to follow the others to the doorway; he summoned her back. “You'll stay,” he said.

  “If it's your wish,” Lien said, “but the Lady knows enough of your speech for you not to require my words.”

  “It isn't your words I want.”

  Ch'i-kuo felt no embarrassment at having the other woman join them; to know that Lien was near eased her. The Khan had brought her little pleasure before, but she could gaze at Lien's oval face as he caressed her, and when he entered her, it was Lien who guided him. She shuddered under him; he might think he had brought her this joy, but it was Lien who filled her thoughts.

  The Khan held his court in Ch'i-kuo's tent the next day. She sat at his left; his general Mukhali was at his right. She had learned more about some of the generals seated near Mukhali. The Khan had given the one called Jebe his name when that man had sworn an oath to him after fighting against him. Borchu had formed a bond with her husband when they were both boys, apparently after helping the Khan retrieve some stolen horses. Mongol friendships, it seemed, were sealed with such ex
ploits—shared battles and raids, missions of vengeance to settle old feuds.

  Lien sat behind her, in case she needed her interpreter, while Tugai and the Khan's other wives were at her left. The men drank wine, but the Khan contented himself with kumiss. He did not approve of too much wine-drinking. Ch'i-kuo wondered if he would make a law against it, but thought not; his sons Ogedei and Tolui would be the first to object. Their goblets had been filled several times while the Khan murmured to Mukhali, and Ogedei had already staggered outside to vomit and relieve himself.

  As Ogedei stumbled back inside, another man entered behind him, covered with yellow dust, as if he had ridden many li. He strode up to the Khan, inclining his head only a little, and Ch'i-kuo knew that he had to be one of her husband's most trusted comrades. For all the awe he inspired, Genghis Khan often dispensed with ceremony in a way unthinkable for an Emperor.

  The man rapidly recited a greeting, then said, “I bring news you should hear, Temujin.”

  “Sit down, Samukha, and tell it to me.”

  “I thought I should come myself instead of sending a messenger. It won't please you.” Samukha sat on a cushion near Mukhali and accepted a cup from a slave. “The King of Gold has abandoned Chung Tu.”

  Ch'i-kuo's hand tightened around her goblet as the man continued. She grasped enough of his hastily spoken words to understand what he was saying. The Emperor Hsun had left Chung Tu almost immediately after the Mongol army's departure, and had gone to the city of K'ai-feng, abandoning the lands north of the Yellow River to make a stand there.

  “We had a truce,” the Khan said when Samukha was finished. “He promised peace. I told him I would leave, and now he shows he distrusts my word. He'll be bolder in resisting me from K'ai-feng.” He spoke calmly, but Ch'i-kuo saw the rage in his eyes. “I would have left him his capital once he surrendered it to me and took his oath. Now I'll leave him with nothing.”

  “There is some good news amid the bad,” Samukha said. “Many of the Khitans in his own royal guard deserted him during his flight, and have joined our brother the Liao Wang.”

  Mukhali's moustache twitched as he watched the Khan. The generals wanted this war, Ch'i-kuo thought. They all wanted to fight; they would still have been trying to take Chung Tu if the Khan had not ordered them to withdraw.

  “The King of Gold has only shown how much he fears us,” Tolui said. “He knows we can take Chung Tu.”

  Samukha glanced at the young man. “Taking it won't be easy,” he said. “Twice we entered, and twice we were thrown back. They'll surely hurl their thunderclap bombs at us from the walls, and panic our horses with those terrible sounds. I wonder how we can scale such high walls, and we still lack experience in laying siege.”

  Tolui sneered. “Nothing is impossible for a Mongol.”

  The Khan lifted a hand. “We won't have to storm the city,” he said. “Those inside are weaker than they were. They won't find much to feed them in the regions we've sacked, and the loss of their Emperor will dampen their spirits. We can starve them into surrender.”

  “They're likely to send to their northern homeland for food,” Mukhali said.

  “Unless we strike there first.” The Khan leaned back in his chair. “Autumn will be upon us soon. By then, the scouts I'll send out will have prepared our way.” He moved his hands. “Two wings can strike east, across the Khingans. Another force will move south to surround Chung Tu.”

  Mukhali was speaking to the Khan, muttering of war councils to be held and the need for reinforcements. Ch'i-kuo drained her goblet; a slave refilled it.

  “You are grieving, Lady,” Lien whispered in the Han tongue. “May the wine ease your sorrow.”

  “I do not grieve,” Ch'i-kuo said in Mongol. The Khan looked away from Mukhali. “The city will fall to my husband. I rejoice that he has removed me from danger by holding out his hand to me.” She lifted her cup and drank.

  99

  Ch'i-kuo lay in her bed. Above the howl of the spring wind, she could still hear the drunken shouts of Mongol soldiers cheering the fall of Chung Tu. The Khan himself had danced that night when the news was brought to him.

  He had not returned to his homelands that past autumn, and had kept her with him. That winter, he had sent two wings of his army, one commanded by his brother Khasar and the other by Mukhali, against the Jurchen homeland; Samukha had gone south to attack Chung Tu. The Khan had followed at a distance, moving slowly south to make his camp near the Tu-shih K'ou River.

  By then, she had believed that the capital might hold out after all. The Khan, perhaps fearing that, had sent A-la-Chien to K'ai-feng to offer peace to the Emperor, but Hsun, in spite of the thousands of refugees who had fled south, had turned the Tangut envoy away. Emperor Hsun had tried, too late, to send food to the besieged capital, only to have Mongol troops capture the supplies. The people of Chung Tu had grown desperate; the Khan would wait.

  He did not have to wait long. Spring was barely upon them, and Chung Tu had surrendered. The Mongols, who could have stormed it only at great cost, had starved it into submission.

  Lien stirred next to her. “It surprises me,” Lien murmured, “that the Khan doesn't wish to go to Chung Tu.”

  “He has his triumph,” Ch'i-kuo said. “Inspecting the city himself would add only a few drops to his cup of joy.” He had sent his chief judge Shigi Khutukhu there instead to take charge of the plunder.

  She covered her belly with one hand. The child inside her did not yet show. She was likely to be in the Khan's homeland before their child was born. There was little to keep him here now; part of his army would remain behind to pillage what was left and to strike at any resistance.

  The Sung Emperor would feel safe, with what was left of the Kin lands lying between him and the Mongols. She wondered how long it would be before the Khan's thoughts turned to the south.

  Lien sighed, and Ch'i-kuo moved her hand over the other woman's abdomen. Lien's belly was rounder; she would also give the Khan a child. Perhaps the love they shared between themselves had opened their gates to his seed. A man at court would not have been jealous of what passed between two of his women when they were deprived of his attentions, but the Khan had been displeased to find out that they took such delight with each other. He might have forbidden it had Ch'i-kuo not explained that such practices would not harm them and would only make them more desirous of his mighty peak. Their pregnancies seemed to prove the truth of her words, and he had learned a little from the pictures in her book. As he often said, he was willing to learn new things.

  He did not have to know that having Lien's love made it possible for her to endure him, that without it, she could have taken no joy with him. They had created a little world of their own, in which he was only an occasional intruder. She pressed her lips to Lien's, and ran her hands over the slender body so like her own.

  The Khan was examining a few of his treasures. Ch'i-kuo watched as one man handed him a cup; the Khan held it at arm's length as he admired the porcelain. He took as much delight in fine goblets and delicately crafted and painted pottery as in the gold heaped in the carts outside his ordu.

  He had also asked that some of the more notable prisoners be sent on to him, but those men waited outside while the Khan toasted Samukha and his commanders and listened as Shigi Khutukhu listed what he had won.

  “I would see the prisoners now,” the Khan said when his chief judge fell silent.

  “You said you wanted the most important,” Shigi Khutukhu said. “Among the prisoners taken at the palace, these seem the most worthy. I asked who among them held the highest positions, and certain men were pointed out to me. Then I asked which men were the wisest, and others were led to me. Those are the ones I brought to you.”

  Ch'i-kuo looked down as the prisoners were led inside, afraid she would see men she knew. “That tall one there looks impressive,” the Khan said.

  “He was found by a cart near the palace grounds, ministering to some of the injured. The men who discove
red him thought there must be treasure in the cart, from the way he clung to it, but they found only scrolls.” Shigi Khutukhu cleared his throat. “I ordered my men to bring the cart with him—there might be useful writing in the scrolls. If not, they can feed our fires.”

  “Ask him what the scrolls say.”

  Another man translated the Khan's question. “The scrolls tell of the stars,” a man replied in the Han tongue. Ch'i-kuo had heard that voice before; she raised her head.

  Ye-lu Ch'u-ts'ai, the Khitan who had praised her paintings, was speaking. His silk robe was as spotted and worn as those of the men with him, and his face was thin and drawn, but he stood erect and gazed steadily at the Khan. “They are astronomical charts,” the Khitan continued. “The Han have studied the stars for countless years, and have made many records of their positions. Such observations not only show us the skies as they were in the past, but can also tell us what may come. I can, for instance, look at them and calculate when next a dragon will attempt to swallow the sun. I can know when certain of the tailed stars, Heaven's Banners, will return to warn of troubled times.”

  The men near the Khan made strange signs with their hands and fingers as this was translated; the Khan frowned. “Our shamans know the stars,” he said, “but I do not know if even they can tell us that. Can this man read what the stars foretell?”

  “I have some knowledge of heavenly omens,” Ye-lu Ch'u-ts'ai replied. “The Emperor has great need of such lore, which is why only men who have the court's permission may study the stars. The Son of Heaven must know when the auguries are right for conceiving an heir, or if an omen foretells disaster.”

  The Khan leaned forward. “Then why did he not see the fate in store for his capital?”

  “We saw evil omens,” the Khitan said when this was translated. “But knowledge is useless if the one who seeks it refuses to make use of it. The Emperor listened to others, not his astronomers, and in the end, events showed him what he refused to see in the stars.”