His voice dropped to a deep mourning sound. And from the mountains the sound seemed to echo until all the universe lamented dimly with this man. No one appeared to breathe about the fire. Every hand was stilled. Bodies were lost in shadow, but each face was crimson with light. Every eye gleamed steadfastly, like the eye of an enchanted wild animal.
Jelmi’s head dropped upon his breast; he sobbed aloud. And then he was silent, as though exhausted. After a long moment, he began to speak again, very softly.
“I hear Thy holy voice, O Lord, but it is just a murmur in my ears, like the sound of distant wind in the forests—”
Suddenly he flung up his head, and an expression of unearthly joy blazed on his yellowed features. His eyes flashed with supernatural ecstasy; his mouth opened in an ineffable smile.
“I hear Thee, O Lord! I hear Thy words! O beautiful words of hope and love! For Thou dost say that though evil liveth, and the monster doth flourish, and the lamentations of the helpless resound from every mountain and every hill, Thou shalt forever prevail! The madmen come and go, but to the end the Earth is the Lord God’s, the Earth is still the Lord’s, the Earth is eternally the Lord’s!”
His voice was like a trumpet, sonorous and triumphant. His frail body appeared to expand, to swell, to vibrate with an inner power and rapture. He seemed to grow taller. Even when he no longer spoke, the air was filled with the echo of his words, so that every man shivered without knowing why.
Kurelen did not move. He stared steadily at the fire. His thin dark face wore a cryptic expression.
Neither did the Shaman move. He sat like a graven image, but in his eyes, as he regarded Jelmi, was the most baleful light.
The warriors were stupefied. Slowly, after a long time, they looked questioningly at each other. Yesukai was completely bewildered. He fixed his eyes hopefully upon the Shaman, awaiting an interpretation of this extraordinary prophecy. And then, smiling, the Shaman stood up, full of dignity and portentousness. He bowed to the oblivious monk, with great and ironic ceremony.
“He sayeth that he hath heard the words of the Great Spirit who lives in the Blue Sky. He who heareth the words of the Great Spirit standeth on the threshold of death. The Great Spirit hath indicated that He desireth that this holy man enter His presence, otherwise He would not have allowed His servant to hear His voice.”
Kurelen had been only half listening, but all at once the meaning of the Shaman struck him like a physical impact. He paled. His lips dried. His brows wrinkled, and drew together, alertly.
“It is true!” cried the warriors, vociferously.
The Shaman smiled sweetly.
“And as for the Christian priest, he, too, hath had a vision which we have not seen, and hath heard a voice we did not hear ”
“It is true!” shouted the warriors, full of ferocious delight.
The Shaman carefully and delicately put his fingers together. He lifted his eyes piously.
“Shall we bring down the wrath of the Great Spirit upon us and upon the child who was born today, by refusing to dispatch to Him the servants He desireth? Shall we refuse Him this sacrifice?”
“No!” roared the warriors. They began to struggle to their feet. They exhaled an odor like wild beasts about to kill, an odor so strong that it was a stench. They struck their shields. Their eyes had a phosphorescent glow of lust and madness. The Christian priest snored blissfully on, his feet to the fire. But Jelmi did not move. He seemed lost in a profound meditation, his head on his breast.
Then Kurelen, misshapen and bent, got to his feet, his face ghastly. He regarded the Shaman with a sick rage. “O thou stinking priest!” he cried. “Thou wouldst destroy this holy man in thy envy and littleness—”
“What holy man?” asked the Shaman, with mild wonder. “This?—” and he touched the Christian disdainfully with the tip of his sandal, “or this?—” and he pointed derisively at Jelmi. The warriors muttered ominously.
Kurelen was beside himself with fear. “Thou knowest it is forbidden to harm holy men—”
“Harm them?” repeated the Shaman, raising his eyebrows in gentle rebuke. “I have not suggested they be harmed. Holy men are sacred. And what could be more appropriate, on this auspicious occasion, than sacrificing these holy ones to the Great Spirit? Besides, hath He not indicated He desireth such a sacrifice?”
Without waiting for Kurelen’s answer, he turned to the warriors and Yesukai. “But after all, I am only a meek and priestly man. I can only interpret according to the wisdom which has been mysteriously given me. What is finally ordained must come from the Khan, himself.”
Kurelen looked despairingly from one fierce and sanguinary face to another; he saw the cruel and animal-like eyes, the untamed and barbarous wrinkling of foreheads. Once he had heard the phrase, in Cathay:—“beyond good and evil.” His lightninglike thought was that these creatures, lusting for blood, were truly beyond good and evil, and any appeal for mercy to them would have a meaningless sound. He became frantic. He turned impetuously to his sister’s husband, and cried:
“I have served thee well, Yesukai! But I have been lonely, for I have longed for no wife, and have none. Neither shall I have children, such as thou shalt have, to comfort me. But in this holy man, Jelmi, I have found a friend, and one with whom I can converse. Give me his life, as a gift!”
The Shaman’s smile became gloating. He radiated his glee. But he addressed Kurelen in a stern voice:
“And for thy small and selfish pleasure, thou wouldst sacrifice the good fortune, and perhaps the line, of the son of the Khan?”
The warriors shouted their anger at Kurelen, and brandished their weapons almost in his face. Yesukai stood in silence, doubt, uncertainty, the desire to accord Kurelen this favor, and superstition, all mingling on his handsome and simple countenance. He looked at the Shaman, and looked at Kurelen, and sank deeper into perplexity. Kurelen seized his arm, and cried pleadingly:
“Yesukai! I have never asked a favor of thee, but this—!”
Yesukai regarded the Shaman pleadingly.
“It is not possible, Kokchu?”
The Shaman shrugged. He replied respectfully, but with sorrow: “It is not possible, my lord.”
Yesukai sighed. He put his hand on Kurelen’s misshapen shoulder. He smiled placatingly. “Look thee, Kurelen, thou shalt have whatever else thou dost desire. I have a sable cape, which I took today, and new silver. If the girl I gave thee doth not please thee, thou shalt have the pick of any of them, save one. Thou shalt have the best mare, the finest silks and jade—”
Kurelen shook off his hand. “I want nothing but this man, Jelmi!” He threw himself at the feet of his brother-in-law; he embraced his knees. Tears ran down his face. “I desire nothing but this man!”
He felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned his head and looked up. Jelmi was smiling down at him, tenderly and sadly.
“It, too, is my wish, that I die, Kurelen,” he said, very gently. “I am tired. Life hath become insupportable to me. I desire to rest.”
“Thou seest, my lord,” said the Shaman to Yesukai. “The holy man, himself, hath heard his own summons.”
“No!” cried Kurelen, in despair, seizing the monk by his robe. The warriors, diverted from their desire, regarded the crippled man in astonishment. The ribald and mocking Kurelen was lost in this weeping wretch. They could scarce believe it. Deep satisfaction finally pervaded them, and they grinned.
“Let me go in peace,” said Jelmi, in his gentle and pleading voice.
Kurelen got to his feet. He put his hand on the hilt of his dagger, which was thrust through his belt. But even as he did so, he thought bitterly to himself: I would not die, even for him. Nothing, at the end, is valuable to me but myself. This is only a gesture, fit for laughter.
The Shaman saw the movement, and subtle man that he was, he saw the thoughts running through Kurelen’s dark mind. He was quick to take advantage, however, and cried loudly: “Strike him down! He would murder the Khan!”
> One of the warriors leaped upon Kurelen with a growl like the growl of a beast. He struck him full in the face with his fist, and Kurelen went down like an ox under a hammer. Blood spurted from his nose and lips, and seeing this the warriors burst into shouts of laughter and ridicule. They kicked the fallen man, crowding about him for the pleasure. But Kurelen, as though insensible to his bodily anguish, groped for the robe of the monk. His fingers twined themselves in it. He saw only Jelmi’s face, looking down at him with tender compassion. And then, like water, the robe slipped through his fingers, and blackness fell over his eyes.
Chapter 7
When Kurelen awoke, he became aware that he had been conscious of movement for a long time, and that the movement had now ceased. He also became aware that he had suffered much, and that the torment he was now enduring was nothing to what he had already endured. But these awarenesses were vague, faint gleams of consciousness in an after-darkness from which he was slowly and painfully emerging.
He lay with his eyes shut. He heard a faint dry hissing accompanied by a hollow and somber moaning and a vast tremor and shaking. These he dimly recognized; they were snow and sand and wind. He thought to himself: winter has come. We are on our way. And as he thought this, he opened his eyes abruptly, the past and present rushing together in a whirlpool of bewilderment and readjustment. Instantly, as he opened his eyes, the vague awareness of torment and lapse of time and unconscious darkness became sharper and more intolerable.
He discovered himself lying on his bed, covered with thick layers of fur and coarse felt. The yurt was filled with dimness and the odor and presence of dung smoke which emerged from the sultry brazier in the center. He saw the shadowy outlines of his cherished carved Chinese chests and tabourets. He saw the livid gleam of his pale silk Chinese paintings on the walls of the yurt. He saw the flash of the Turkish scimitars hung between the billowing banners. But confusion still had him, and he wondered dismally if he were still engrossed in the half-forgotten nightmares of his suffering dreams. Everything was very still about him, in the yurt, but he could hear distant shouts of the tribesmen, the irritable cries of camels and horses, the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep, in the wintry twilight outside. He heard the creaking and rumbling of yurts, being moved into better positions for the night’s camp, the curses of men, the abusing voices of women and the squalls of children. All these were old familiar sounds, rapidly slipping into place in the midst of his bewilderment. The thundering wind, assaulting the yurt, the hiss of mingled snow and sand upon its black felt walls, were familiar, too, and told him accurately what was transpiring and approximately the position of the ordu.
He attempted to move, and was immediately plunged into sharp agony. His right arm was bound with strips of cloth and held closely to his side. His entire body screamed out its protest in lightninglike pains and crushing aches. His head seemed to fly into tortured fragments, and scarlet lights pierced his eyes. Astonishment was in his groan as well as pain. And then he remembered the night when he had attempted to save the life of the Buddhist monk. He panted aloud in his misery and dismay.
He heard a slight sound near him, and slowly, and with agony, turned his head. Squatting beside him, and seemingly part of the shadows, was the huddled form of a woman. His heart leaped feebly. “Houlun!” he murmured. The form moved again, bent over him. And then he saw that it was not Houlun, his beloved sister, but another woman. The dung fire brightened, and by its dull red light he was able to see that this was the girl whom Yesukai had largely flung into his arms on that distant night. He saw her enormous black eyes with their thick fringes of lashes, the roundness of her pale dark cheek, the pursed tininess of her red mouth. She smiled at him, and laid her hand on his forehead. At this movement of her body and garments she exhaled the pungent odor of hot femaleness and youth, unwashed and primitive, like the earth in fecund spring. For some reason, Kurelen was nauseated, and he drew in his nostrils for protection.
“What is thy name, girl?” he asked.
“Chassa,” she answered, shyly.
Kurelen was never vicious with the simple or innocent, and delicately refrained from offending them. Therefore, though the rank female smell revolted him in his weakness, he made himself smile at the author of it.
“Have I been—like this—very long, Chassa?”
“Yes, Master, very long. Three moons have come and gone, and we have been far on our way, since they carried thee into thy yurt.” She added: “Thou wert sorely hurt, Master.”
“So I imagine,” said Kurelen kindly, wincing at the pain it caused him to speak. The noises outside increased in intensity. Inside, Kurelen was suddenly overpowered by odor and smoke and heat. “Open the flap,” he gasped.
The girl obediently opened the flap, and the dark winter wind rushed in, making the brazier flare into crimson, and forcing the smoke out in the form of gray coiling ghosts. The opening was a rectangle of dim blue light in the darkness, shaking with snow. Very faintly he could discern the blurred outlines of animated cattle and men in that snow-filled spectral blue light, as they passed and repassed the opening of the yurt. The air had a strangeness about it, pure and fierce and sterile, as if it had been blown from the transfixed mountains of the frozen moon, and Kurelen breathed it deeply into his laboring chest. Chassa crouched beside the flap, looking at the man over her shoulder, patiently and anxiously. Feathers of snow gathered on the floor of the yurt, near the flap, or scurried backwards into the interior, like white moths.
Suddenly the yurt lurched and shuddered. Yesukai’s people were on their way again, deciding to move on a little more. The shouts outside were redoubled; wood shafts creaked and strained. The cattle lamented; the heavy wooden wheels groaned, and then squeaked over the virgin snow and ice. The wind increased in fury. Kurelen rocked and rolled on his couch, his eyelids wrinkling with pain, his teeth chewing into his lips. The girl closed the flap, and resumed her place by his side. The dung fire smoldered and crackled, throwing off golden sparks.
Kurelen opened his eyes again, and smiled kindly at Chassa. “Hath my sister, Houlun, been with me?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, Master! When I slept she was beside thee, with the little one.”
“Ah.” Some of the deathly pallor lessened on Kurelen’s face, and was replaced by a look of shadowy contentment.
“And the Shaman, Master—he was often with thee, with his spells and conjurings.”
At this, Kurelen burst into weak laughter; the blood rushed achingly through his veins at the involuntary convulsion. But he felt much better, and was able to think about matters with interest. He cautiously investigated his injuries, and reflected that only excellent nursing had saved his life. Chassa was bending over him anxiously, and when he suddenly fixed his piercing eyes on her childish face she blushed, and averted her head. He took one of her hands in his feverish grasp.
“I am not worth thine efforts, Chassa,” he said. But he smiled internally, amused that he did not believe this maudlin sentiment. However, he observed to himself, it rarely did harm to say or do what was expected of one. Life was thus made more pleasant for the liar and the lied-to.
The girl was overcome with confusion and joy, and gazed at Kurelen with her innocent primitive soul in her eyes. And then an odd thing happened to him: he was faintly ashamed.
The multitude of yurts, lumbering and heaving and groaning all about Kurelen’s yurt, lumbered and heaved and groaned to another stop, and the shouting was renewed. Chassa opened the flap and peered out to discover the cause. Night had shut down into black and impenetrable chaos, in which torches were thin and streaming red banners illuminating only immediate dark faces, or the wet side of an animal or the flap of a yurt. Chassa asked a passing man the meaning of the stop, and he hoarsely replied, pausing a moment, that the ordu was halting for the night. The storm made it too dangerous to continue in that country of broken craters smoothly filled with snow, and showing only the rims of black teeth to warn the wanderer.
Again the dark and swirling air was filled with the noise and uproar of men and beasts, making ready for the night’s camp. Chassa shovelled more dung upon the fire, and blew upon it, crouching shapelessly in her thick felt garments. The fire shone in her eyes, and Kurelen observed that they were the eyes of some shy wild animal, purely savage and unhuman and untouched. The pupil was a fierce and pulsing point swimming in untamed and electric radiance. She had cupped her hands about her mouth, to concentrate her breath. Her tangled hair fell about her round cheeks and over her brow.
Some one was tugging at the flap, and, when Chassa went to answer, Kurelen’s heart leaped expectantly. But it was not Houlun who entered, but the Shaman, bending his head, with its pointed hood. He was wrapped in furs, and appeared to be a tall bear standing on its hind legs. He came to Kurelen’s bed, and when he saw that the sick man was conscious, he smiled darkly. Kurelen grimaced with amusement.
“Thou dost see, Kokchu, that thy conjurings did not kill me after all.”
The Shaman, still smiling, did not answer. He sat down on the floor near the bed. The two men regarded each other in the silence of enjoyment. At length Kokchu spoke, gravely and with mock solicitude.
“I am a healer beyond mine own expectation, and thou art the proof. It will be many days, however, before thy recovery is complete. Rest, and think of nothing.” He added, leaning towards Kurelen: “Art thou in much pain?”
“Pain,” answered Kurelen, with deliberate sententiousness, “is the price of consciousness.”
Again they regarded each other with enjoyment.
“My nephew,” said Kurelen. “The spirits were propitiated?”
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