“There is nothing I can do,” she whispered.
“She struck at Bortai through me. She will try again, using others as her weapons. If she succeeds, much will be altered, for our people and for the world.” The light shining through his translucent face frightened her. “Of course, if you do nothing, no one will blame you for anything the ghost does. She'll do what she can to protect you, because you allow her to haunt you, and that makes her able to come among your husband's people. She knows how afraid you are, how you shrink from using any of your talents. She'll give you the coward's life you long for if you stay out of her way.”
She covered her face with one hand. When she drew her hand away, the shaman was gone.
Erdeni sat up; Jirghadai shifted his weight next to her. “Go back to sleep,” he mumbled.
“Jirghadai, there's something I must say.”
“Can't it wait until morning?”
“No.” She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “I must ask you for a good horse and some food. That's all I'll take with me. You told me that you wouldn't stand against what the spirits might want for me, and I must bow to the will of the spirits now. I'm going to ride out of this camp, and I have to go alone. Dei's people are still threatened by a troubled spirit. I am hoping that I can protect them somehow.” She reached for his hand. “That's all I can tell you, my husband. I can't put you in danger by telling you any more than that.”
He could forbid her to go. He was her husband; she would have to obey him. She could almost hope for that. The matter would then be out of her hands.
Jirghadai sat up slowly. “I won't stop you, Erdeni. This has something to do with the shaman and the tiger and all the other strange events that have happened. I don't need to know more.” His fingers gripped her hand tightly. “When will you return?”
“I don't know.”
“We'll be moving our camp to Lake Kolen in a few days.”
“I'll ride to you there. If you don't see me before autumn—” She slipped her hand from his and climbed out of bed. “—you will have to burn an offering to my spirit and then find another wife.”
“Erdeni.” His voice was low, and filled with grief. She turned away and began to dress.
* * * *
She rode out before dawn. Jirghadai had said that he would tell the others that a dream had told her to leave them for a time. They would have to accept that, since it was the truth.
She rode at a trot until the camp was far behind her and the land ahead only flat yellow grass nibbled down by the horses. Toward evening, she spied the grazing Onggirat horse herds and the men on horseback guarding them to the north, but did not ride to them.
A strong wind was carrying more grit and sand from the desert to the south, strewing it over the grassland; she wrapped a scarf around her face. Mount Chegcher loomed on the western horizon, a piece of Earth thrusting toward Heaven. All mountains and hills harbored spirits, and Nachin had his last resting place on Chegcher's slopes. She knew then that she would have to stop there.
She did not stop to rest for the night, fearing that Kuan would only afflict her in her dreams; better to be where the spirit of the mountain might offer her some protection. Kuan had not tried to stop her from leaving Dei's camp. That could mean that her grandmother's ghost had grown weaker after the struggle with Nachin, or perhaps only that Kuan had little to fear from Erdeni.
She reached the mountain by the afternoon of the next day, following a slender stream to the eastern slope. A few willows grew along the banks of the stream; the mountain slope was covered by a sparse forest of pines and larches. She had not been with the funeral party that had gone to bury the shaman, but was certain that the small tattered yurt on the lower slope marked his grave.
Erdeni followed the trail that the mourners had left. She wanted to stay near the grave, and suspected that Kuan was expecting to find her there. I might die here, she thought as her horse climbed the piney slope. Even if she overcame the ghost, she might have no strength left to save herself.
“You don't have to fight,” a voice said inside her. “You don't have to do anything at all. What are those Onggirats to you anyway?”
“My husband's people,” she said aloud to the trees. “The people to whom my sons will belong.” She was bound to them; if she forgot the loyalty she owed to them, any other vow she might make would be empty.
A movement caught her eye. She looked up to see an eagle land in a branch overlooking Nachin's grave. An omen, she thought, feeling reassured, and prayed silently to the mountain to protect her.
* * * *
She stayed awake until evening came and Mount Chegcher's eastern slope was cloaked in darkness. She made a shelter of branches and the sheepskin coat she had brought with her, put her pack of belongings under the shelter to use as a pillow, then went down the hillside to fill a skin with water from the small stream.
Sometimes sleeplessness brought visions, but she had seen nothing here except the eagle, which might be only what it seemed to be. She climbed back to her shelter and curled up under it. The eagle still roosted above her; her horse, now hobbled, stood under the trees. Too exhausted even to eat, she closed her eyes.
“You knew I would come,” Kuan said.
“Yes, I knew,” Erdeni replied. “I've been waiting.”
Kuan was sitting near a fire; she beckoned to Erdeni to come closer. “You are a fool. You should have stayed with those wretched barbarians. Now you will only suffer more.”
“I know your secret,” Erdeni said. “You need me. You took possession of part of me, or perhaps my own weakness allowed you to enter me.” She sat down and gazed into Kuan's black eyes. “You may be able to take the form of a tiger or enter the body of a shaman, but you are powerless without me. If I die here, you will have no way back to the camp of the Onggirats, no powers to draw on, no soul to hide in while you wait to do your evil.”
“I can make you suffer.” Kuan's eyes glittered in the light of the fire. “I can make you beg to go back to your husband and live out your wretched life while I accomplish my ends.” Even as she spoke, Erdeni felt teeth gnawing at her insides, eating at her from within; she doubled over in agony. “But you will return willingly when I show you what I have seen.”
Erdeni was suddenly in the midst of a group of wailing women. The land around her was covered with bodies; near the circles of tents were poles crowned with the heads of men. Warriors in lacquered leather armor moved among the women, dragging children from their arms. In an open space, a man on horseback gazed at the carnage; his eyes were the pale greenish-gold eyes of a demon.
“That is what awaits your Tatars,” Kuan murmured inside her, “death at the hands of that man. He is commanding that all of the boys and men here be slaughtered. He will ride against you and make of you the ashes of a fire.”
Erdeni stood on a wall. Below her, the ground was covered with human bones. Blackened stumps were all that remained of the trees that had once dotted the land, and the walled dwellings were heaps of bricks. The only signs of life were the black birds feeding on the dead.
“This is what that man will bring to my people,” Kuan continued, “death and devastation. It is what he will bring to much of the world.”
Erdeni was inside a large tent, sitting at the feet of a man in a felt-covered throne who could only be a great Khan. The tent was crowded with people, warriors on the western side, women at the east. The tables at which they sat were cluttered with jade and golden goblets, delicate pale plates, and painted vases and jugs. The people were adorned in strings of gold and pearls and wore brightly colored silk robes; they might have been wearing the wealth of the world. Erdeni turned toward the man on the throne and gazed into his merciless greenish-gold eyes.
“That man and his sons will rule the world,” Kuan whispered, “unless we set out a different trail for him to follow.”
Erdeni was at the fire again, sitting near her grandmother. “What does this have to do with Dei's p
eople?” she asked. “Why did you try to harm Bortai?”
“Because Bortai is promised to the Mongol boy who will become that man.” Kuan poked at the fire with a stick. “He will come to claim his bride, and take her back to his camp. He will fight his first great battle for her. He will subdue all your barbarian tribes and make an army of them and conquer lands to the east and west. And Bortai will be his consort, the wife who will advise him when he needs counsel and whose sons and grandsons will rule the mightiest empire under Heaven.”
Kuan put down the stick and made motions over the fire, as though casting spells; her small hands were like claws. “Or,” she went on, “we can keep Bortai from him. There are many ways for people to die in these wild lands, ways that would not lead Dei to suspect magic. And when Bortai's betrothed comes for her, he will learn of her passing. Perhaps that will be enough to alter the trail along which he is riding, or perhaps we will have to take his life as well, while he is mourning his loss in Dei's tent. I shall have to sort through the shards of chaos to find out.”
Erdeni stared at the fire. It would be easier not to struggle, to give in to what this ghost wanted. “What will I have for myself?” she asked.
“What you long for most—an uneventful life with your husband and children, doing your work and wallowing in your tales and legends, knowing that the spirits will make no more demands upon you. Dei's people will go on living as they always have, moving from pasture to pasture and buying peace with the marriages of their daughters. Bortai's betrothed and his Mongols will remain in the obscurity they so richly deserve, and another empire will rise instead of theirs, either to the east or to the west of these lands.”
Gray wings fluttered behind the ghost; an eagle alighted on the stick that Kuan had set down. Erdeni bowed her head. To give in to her grandmother's ghost would be the easiest path to follow. Perhaps it was even the best, if what Kuan said about Bortai's betrothed were true.
“Erdeni.” She had not heard that voice before in her dreams, but knew who was speaking to her. Jirghadai was calling to her, and through him his people. She had sworn an oath to them, had known that she was giving her loyalty to Jirghadai's family and his chief when she married him. “Erdeni, Erdeni.” Those were the voices of Doghuz, and Nayan, and Dei Sechen and his family. “Erdeni.” That was the lilting voice of Bortai, who had reached out in trust to her, who had known Erdeni would not harm her.
Erdeni stood up by the fire and said, “Grandmother, I will die here, on this mountain, before I allow you to harm my tribe.”
Kuan shrieked and rose up. The fire flickered out; a black tiger was gazing at Erdeni. The tiger shrieked again, then leaped. Erdeni threw up an arm as a small feathery form hurtled past her and flew at the great cat.
“Erdeni!” Nachin's voice called to her. The eagle flapped its wings fiercely as its talons dug into the tiger's neck. “Reach into yourself! Use your powers to touch your own soul!”
She plunged into a black pool; the waters closed over her. A wizened creature was below, a rat with black eyes and long teeth; it clawed at the stones on the bottom of the pool, hissing as Erdeni swam to her.
“You are nothing,” the rat whispered. “You are a pitiful woman living among wretches who pretend to be more than they are. You are a despicable female who is deluded enough to think that she has some great power. You are a madwoman, useless to all, even to yourself.”
Erdeni seized the rat between her hands. “Die,” she screamed. “I cast you out!” She squeezed the rat's neck and saw blood spurt from its mouth, then hurled the creature from herself.
* * * *
Erdeni lay in a darkness as thick and black as felt. She tried to move, and felt her fingers flutter. She opened her eyes and saw sunlight through the needled branches of the pines overhead.
She sat up. The eagle was with her, perched on a rock just outside her shelter. Her thoughts felt raw and torn, scarred by wounds that still had to heal, that might never heal.
“What are you going to do now?” the eagle asked.
She shook her head, unable to speak, then reached for her skin of water, gulping it down. Her muscles were stiff, her tunic filthy with dirt, as though she had been rolling on the ground in a frenzy.
“What can I do?” she whispered. “I must go back to my husband.” She paused. “I must follow the shaman's way as well. I know that now, but there is no one left to teach me.”
“You are wrong,” the eagle said. “Ask Chelig to teach you her idughan's lore. After that, there will be much that you can learn for yourself. You have the power to do so.”
She lifted her arm. The eagle fluttered to her and landed on her wrist. “The ghost could find you again,” the bird said. “She is still wandering. Your doubts and fears could guide her back to you.”
“No. I won't let that happen.”
The eagle flew away. She rummaged in her pack for a jug of kumiss, then crawled out from her shelter and knelt. “Koko Mongke Tengri,” she chanted, calling out to the Eternal Blue Heaven that covered all as she sprinkled a few drops of the kumiss as an offering. “Guide me now, allow me to do your will.” It came to her that Tengri had always been as merciless as the Khan seemed to be in the visions Kuan had shown to her. If this great Khan was destined to rule the world in times to come, that could only come to pass by the will of Heaven. All she could do was to follow the path she had been given and honor the oaths she had sworn. “I cannot know what you want, O great Tengri, but allow me to accept it, to give my assent to it, to do as you wish.”
The spirits in the trees whispered to one another, and Mount Chegcher seemed to sigh in the wind, but she heard no other voices.
She got to her feet and removed her coat from the shelter of sticks, then went to her horse. The Onggirats would be on the move to Lake Kolen, to hunt birds near the marshes and fatten their herds in those richer pastures. She could be there in time to raise her own tent for Jirghadai, to greet Doghuz and Nayan and tell them that the spirits had called her to follow the path of the shamaness. Bortai would likely be one of the first to welcome her. She would think of the Onggirat girl's beauty and kindness and try not to remember the visions Kuan had sent to her.
Erdeni tightened the girths of her saddle, tied her pack to the horn, mounted her horse, and made her way down the mountainside, knowing that she would do nothing when Temujin of the Mongols came for his betrothed.
* * *
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