Ruler of the Sky: A Novel of Genghis Khan

by Pamela Sargent

  Gurbesu swallowed. “If the Khan knew, he would kill you both.”

  “I think not.” Ch'i-kuo's lips parted, showing her small white teeth. “There is nothing the Khan likes better than to see Lien's dainty fingers parting the petals of my lotus, or to watch as Mu-tan tastes of the dew on its folds. You are easily shocked, Lady. I haven't noticed that Mongol women are modest in their talk of the bedchamber, and the Khan has been known to enjoy more than one woman at a time in his bed.”

  “I'm not speaking of your doings with him, but of what you do alone.”

  “And how can that offend him?” Ch'i-kuo asked. “What we do results in no bastard, and our sweet yearnings are satisfied when we're deprived of his attentions. This only ensures that we remain faithful to him, and when he's fatigued, he takes pleasure in watching our frolics. Still, I am grateful you spoke of this to me. The Khan would only laugh at your accusations, but I would not want the Khatun Bortai angry with me. That honourable Lady isn't as open to different ways as is our husband, so we shall be more discreet in the future.”

  Gurbesu could not speak.

  “I hope you won't speak of this to others, Lady,” Ch'i-kuo continued. “It would only bring more discord to the Khan's household than you intend. Others among the Khan's wives sometimes seek such solace. They wouldn't look kindly on you for bringing this to the Khatun's attention, and perhaps that great and wise Lady is aware of our deeds and simply chooses to ignore them. You might do well to ease your loneliness in such ways. The Khan visits your tent less often than he visits mine.”

  Gurbesu stood up, longing to be away from these women. “But of course that's why you spoke to us,” Ch'i-kuo said, “not to warn us, or to prevent trouble, but because you envy us our small pleasures. You would have us all pining for our mighty stag, with no solace, as you do. Carry your tales to the Khatun, if you wish. Others will whisper the true reason for your telling them.”

  Gurbesu made the sign against evil as she walked down the hill. The trilling laughter of the women under the canopy was a lash stinging her. She did not know what disturbed her more—that the women sought such pleasures or that Temujin enjoyed viewing them.

  The Khan wanted to conquer the world. That world would bring its evils to his people.

  101

  Sorkhatani lifted Hulegu from his cradle. Tolui sat by the bed with their two older sons, speaking of what he had seen in Khitai.

  “Their soldiers wear shirts of raw silk under their armour,” Tolui was saying to the boys. “If an arrow goes through the armour, it doesn't pierce the shirt. A man can pull it out and go on fighting.”

  Mongke, his oldest son, nodded. Khubilai, who was only three, toyed with an arrow his father had given him. “But here's something even more useful.” Tolui held up a thread from which a flat piece of iron shaped like a fish dangled. “This is a south-pointing fish. A man can float it on a small bowl of water and, when the bow's shielded from wind, the head of the fish will always point south. Rubbing the metal against a magic stone gives the fish its power. A commander can know where to move his troops, even under an overcast night sky in land he doesn't know.”

  Sorkhatani had rarely heard Tolui speak of the treasures he had seen in Khitai, or the ways of the craftsmen who made them. Her husband talked of what he had learned about war. He reddened with pleasure when he spoke of catapults that could hurl stones over a wall, or of vessels called cannons that made a sound like thunder as balls flew from them. His father the Khan might value his Khitan scholars; Tolui sought out those who knew the secret of the explosive powder that fuelled the cannons, or how to erect a siege engine.

  Sorkhatani rocked Hulegu gently as she suckled him. She had given the Khan three grandsons, and saw more of Temujin in Mongke's thoughtful eyes and Khubilai's curious ones than she did of Tolui.

  A slave refilled Tolui's cup. She had to speak to him before drink dulled his senses. The Khan rarely let drink get the better of him, but Tolui could match even his brother Ogedei cup for cup. Ogedei grew more placid with drinking; Tolui bellowed songs and danced, staggering around his father's tent, restless for another war.

  “While I'm hunting with Toguchar,” Tolui said, “you two may practise archery with your aunt Khojin—you'll learn something about how to shoot from her.”

  Sorkhatani tied Hulegu to his cradle. Khojin did not wait in her tent when her husband Toguchar fought, but rode into battle at his side. Some called her Toguchar's Hawk; she loved battle as much as the general and her brother Tolui did.

  “Our sons should also know other things,” Sorkhatani said. “I would like the scribe Tolochu to teach Mongke the Uighur script, and Khubilai will soon be old enough to learn it.”

  Tolui scowled. “It will ruin their eyes,” he said.

  “I'll see they don't strain their eyes.”

  “I struggled with those markings for years, and still mistake one word for another. What good will it do them?”

  “They'll have to help rule the lands you and your brothers win for them. Such learning may make them better advisers to the one who follows your father to the throne.”

  Tolui shook his head and made a sign to avert misfortune. With all the death he had seen, he was as wary of such talk as Temujin-echige. The Khan, Sorkhatani thought, thinks he will live forever. She could almost imagine that was possible, that Heaven itself would preserve the greatest of Khans.

  “They can't rule without fighting.” Tolui draped one muscular arm over Mongke. “Listen, boys, and remember this. Any man who hasn't surrendered to us, or sworn an oath to the Khan, is our enemy. I've seen more of the world than you have, and countless numbers of people live under Heaven. No matter how many lands we win, there may be others beyond them still, and until those in them bow to us, we must regard them as enemies. The Yasa commands it.”

  “Yes, Father,” Mongke said.

  “Fear and swiftness are your weapons as much as the arrow and the sword. Move fast enough, and your speed will give every man under your command the strength of ten—the enemy will no sooner halt his retreat to regroup than you'll have struck at his rear. Terror in the heart of your enemy can win you a battle even before you march against him.”

  “When are you going back to war?” Mongke asked.

  “Soon, I hope,” Tolui said, his pale eyes brightening. “When your grandfather has a treaty with the western Khan, we'll launch a final sweep against the Kin. Mukhali's army will have softened them up by then.”

  Mongke tugged at his father's sleeve. “But why does Grandfather want a treaty?”

  “Because a wise man never leaves a potential enemy at his back.”

  Sorkhatani picked up her sewing. The Khan had sent an envoy to the western land of Khwarezm. The envoy, a trader named Mahmoud Yalavach from the Khwarezmian city of Bukhara, was a suitable choice to deal with the Shah Muhammad who ruled that land. The Khan wanted trade with Khwarezm, but wanted a promise of peace even more. With Kara-Khitai part of the Mongol ulus, the Khan's domain now bordered the Shah's; the Mongols had to be certain that the vast Khwarezmian army would not encroach on their territory when the flower of their army moved east. In the meantime, the Mongol caravan that was following the Khan's envoy would trade and gather more information about the western lands. Temujin-echige might want peace, but would also be prepared for war.

  The Khan still had much to conquer, and her sons might have to rule people unlike themselves. They would need to know more than the arts of war.

  “May I summon the scribe Tolochu?” Sorkhatani asked.

  “You may do as you like, Sorkhatani.” Tolui grinned at her, then took out his knuckle-bone dice. “Let's see if you two can beat me. There's a game called chess I'm learning from a trader, with pieces on a board. I'll have to teach it to you—it's like war.” He sprawled on the carpet with his sons. With his broad, ruddy face and sparse moustache, he looked little older than a boy himself.

  Sorkhatani wondered how suited Tolui would be to his future duties. As the
Khan's youngest son by Bortai, he was the Prince of the Hearth and would have to look after the homelands when a new Khan was chosen. He would be a war-horse champing at the bit, yearning for battles in far lands, longing to be the sword of the one who was Khan.

  She did not know who that Khan would be. Temujin shunned any talk of his dying, and the Noyans might not have his wishes to guide them when the time for a choice came. If the kuriltai turned to either of his older sons, the one who was passed over might even take up arms against his brother. How could Jochi be Khan, with people still whispering that he was not his father's son? How could Chagadai rule, who thought of his father's Yasa as something that could never be bent, even in the interests of justice? Neither of them would ever bow to the other. If the two contended over the throne, Temujin's ulus might not outlive him.

  102

  Bortai glanced at her husband. He had been pacing by the hearth all evening. Apparently he planned to spend the night here. Once, he had come to her with fire inside him. Now, he came to her tent to rest, to have a night of unbroken sleep.

  He was troubled, and she did not know why. His envoy Mahmoud Yalavach had returned only a day ago to tell him that the Shah Muhammad would welcome trade and had no designs on territory the Mongols held.

  “Temujin,” she said at last, “one would think the western Khan had rejected your offer.”

  “Perhaps he wished to do so.” He stopped pacing and turned towards her. “Mahmoud spoke to me alone after he told me the words of the Shah. I'm not sure Muhammad really wants peace.”

  “But he sent envoys to you even before you left Khitai. He spoke of peace then.”

  “I thought he feared our armies,” he said, “and wanted to avoid a battle. But I've learned more about him since then. His father and then he made an ulus in the west while I was uniting our people, and maybe he thinks Heaven will favour him.” He tugged at his beard. “His forces are greater than ours. If I lead my armies to Khitai, there would be little to stop him from attacking in the west.”

  He glanced at the two slaves sleeping by the doorway, then came towards her and sat down on the bed. “Mahmoud delivered my message,” he said, “and then the Shah took him aside. Mahmoud repeated my words, that I would honour the Shah as I do my own sons, and that peace would be to the advantage of both of us. The Shah was angry that I called him my son, and said I was an infidel who demeaned him with such words.” He let out his breath. “He then appealed to Mahmoud, as a man of Bukhara, to return here as his spy.”

  “And what did Mahmoud Yalavach say to that?” Bortai asked.

  “He accepted a bribe from the Shah—he would have gained nothing by rousing Muhammad's suspicions. He told the Shah that I had taken many of the Kin cities, but that my armies weren't as strong as Khwarezm's. That seemed to placate Muhammad, and he renewed his offer of peace.”

  “Then I don't see why you're worried. When your caravan arrives, he'll see what he can gain with peace.” The caravan was carrying gold, silver, and silk from Khitai, furs from the north, and the camel-hair coats of the Tanguts—a taste of what trade supervised by the Mongols would bring to Khwarezm. “He'll have more than he could win through war.”

  “But I don't yet have what I want from him.”

  Temujin, she thought, would see it that way. Become my son; that was his message to the Shah. Keep what you have, as long as you acknowledge that I am your superior, that I am meant to rule over all. Temujin would never accept peace with a ruler who saw himself as the Khan's equal.

  “Swallow your pride,” she said, “and accept whatever peace he offers. You have a war to fight in Khitai. My sons are itching to fight there again, and at least that would keep Chagadai and Jochi from fighting each other.”

  “I have forbidden them to fight.”

  “That hasn't made them love each other. They restrain themselves only because they fear you.” He could settle matters by choosing an heir, but she could not say that to him. Perhaps his refusal to face his own mortality was what gave him his strength.

  A few days after Mahmoud's return, a camel-driver who had been with the Mongol caravan rode into the Khan's camp and was hastily brought before Temujin. At the Khwarezmian border town of Otrar, the trade goods had been seized by the town's governor Inalchik, and all those travelling with the caravan slaughtered. Only the camel-driver had managed to escape.

  Somehow, the Khan conquered his anger, but Bortai knew how deeply this news had wounded him when he left for Burkhan Khaldun. He often prayed on the mountain when he was most unsure of himself, when the will of Heaven seemed hidden. Her unease grew when she learned that Temujin had sent two Mongol envoys and a Muslim named Ibn-Kafraj Boghra to the Shah, demanding that he surrender Inalchik to the Mongols for punishment. If Muhammad gave the man up, there could still be peace, but Bortai remembered what her husband had said about the Shah. Muhammad might see Temujin's offer as a sign of weakness; the Shah might be willing to risk war.

  When the northern winds began to howl, the Khan moved his main camp towards the former Naiman lands, and Bortai realized that he was preparing for war in the west. The men set out on their great hunt that autumn, and people murmured that the Khan had killed the game driven to him with unusual ferocity, slaughtering animals until the carcasses were heaped as high as hills.

  Not long after the hunt, the two Mongol envoys returned, with heads shorn of their braids and word that the Shah had put Ibn-Kafraj Boghra to death. Bortai did not have to ask what Temujin had said when faced with this affront. An envoy had been killed, and two others shamed; there could be only one response to this crime. The final assault on Khitai would have to wait until the Shah paid for his deed.

  103

  Yisui took up her sewing as her sister sat down. “You haven't asked about your children since I entered your tent,” Yisugen said.

  “I assume they're well,” Yisui murmured. “You would have sent word if they weren't, and they're only a short ride away, hardly the far end of the earth.”

  “They should be here with you,” Yisugen said. “You are a poor mother, Yisui.”

  “Then it's fortunate you're such a good one.” Temujin would come to her tent soon. Yisui would tell him, as she often did whenever they were absent, that she missed them but hated to keep them apart from Yisugen's children, to whom they were so close. He probably suspected that she did not yearn for their company, but he seemed content to leave them in her sister's care.

  She looked up at Yisugen's long dark eyes and high-boned face, still so much like her own. Some of the newer concubines often mistook one sister for the other, but the bond between them had frayed just a little. Yisugen's duties to her household took much of her time, as did Yisui's to her own, and they did not see each other as often.

  Even after seventeen years with their husband, she felt her bond with Yisugen most when they shared him. They were one soul then, feeling each other's joy.

  “You might spend a little more time with your oldest,” Yisugen said, “before he goes away.”

  “He'll stay in the rear at his age—he'll be safe enough.” Temujin was sending her oldest son, and Yisugen's, to fight with Mukhali in Khitai. It was useless to fret over one's children. Her sons would ride away to fight, and her daughters would leave her ordu when they married. “I'm worrying more about what may happen here if Temujin doesn't return from Khwarezm.”

  Yisugen made a sign. “Don't say it.” She glanced towards Yisui's slaves, as if fearing they might be listening. Two of the girls were skimming curds from the kettle while the other three laid down carpets they had beaten clean. None of these Han slaves could hear, and they were unable to speak of what they saw. It was clever of the Han to make them that way, to put hot pincers into their ears to deafen them and to cut away the power of speech. Yisui had seen their usefulness immediately, and had asked the Khan to give them to her. Now some of the other wives wanted such slaves for themselves.

  “My dear sister,” Yisui said, “I pray that our hus
band will live for a thousand years, but consider what may happen if he doesn't. He says nothing about which of his sons should succeed him. Jochi will have his supporters, and so will Chagadai. Neither of them will ever bow to the other, and our fate will be in the hands of the one who becomes Khan. He might not decide to keep us both as wives, especially if he wants to use us to reward men who supported him. We could easily end up far from each other, in different camps.”

  Yisugen lifted a hand to her mouth. “I can't bear to think of it.”

  “We had better think of it, and do what we can to prevent it. Temujin must decide on an heir before he goes to war.”

  “He won't listen. Even Borchu and Jelme wouldn't dare to bring it up, especially now.”

  That was true. The Khan had more to worry about than a war with Khwarezm, now that his Tangut minions had refused to send a force to fight with him. If you cannot fight alone, their envoy had said, then why are you Khan? The reply had enraged Temujin, but he could not punish the Tanguts for their insolence without abandoning his plans. Perhaps the people of Hsi-Hsia suspected he would not return from Khwarezm, that the Khan would not live long enough to punish them.

  Yisui said, “I'll speak to our husband about this.”

  Yisugen leaned towards her. “You can't.”

  “I have no choice.” Her needle pricked her, drawing blood. Yisui raised her finger to her mouth. She thought of the time she had confronted him before his men, how close she had been to death. She remembered how he had looked at her, almost daring her to protest, when her first husband's head had rolled across the ground. She would have to face him again, and in front of others, hoping that some of them found the courage to echo her words.

  Yisui lifted her cup. The Khan had decided to hold a banquet in honour of Mukhali, who would soon return to Khitai, where the Liao Wang's Khitans would aid the Mongols against the Kin. This was the last easy moment Temujin was likely to enjoy before he said his prayers, made his sacrifices, and had his shamans and his Khitan adviser read the bones. His spies and scouts were already at work in Khwarezm.