Khulan still had her guards, her servants and slaves, her herds and wagons of booty. Temujin would not dishonour her publicly; that would only show his bad judgement in having made her a favourite. She would always be his Khatun, living on his plunder, viewed by others as the beloved wife who inspired him to his bloody triumphs. That was also part of her punishment.
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In autumn, after the Khan defeated the last of his enemies in the south, his people broke camp. They skirted ruined Balkh, crossed the Amu Darya River over a pontoon bridge, and camped south of Samarkand. Occupying troops, along with the Khitans and Muslims who were to govern the conquered lands, would remain behind, but most of the Mongols would return to their homeland.
Delegations and wagons of provisions arrived from Samarkand. Jars of red wines, newly picked almonds, melons packed in ice brought from the mountains near the city, silks, and jewels were conveyed to Khulan's tent. To the north of the camp, a pavilion was raised, where the Khan would at last have his delayed audience with the Taoist sage.
The autumn weather, clear and dry, was still holding when the monks arrived, accompanied by A-li-hsien, the Khitan governor of Samarkand who would act as interpreter. The Khan sent nearly everyone from his pavilion when Ch'ang-ch'un was ready to preach to him. Only three of Temujin's men—A-li-hsien, Liu Wen, and Chinkai—would have the privilege of hearing the monk's teachings this time.
The old man had failed to bring the Khan eternal life, yet Temujin grasped at his teachings. People murmured of the changes that had come to Genghis Khan. When he was not with the monk, he consulted with advisers and received envoys; his only recreation was an occasional foray with his hawks. He kept away from the tents of his women, and Khulan remembered that Ch'ang-ch'un had advised him to sleep alone.
The Khan, some said, had grown more contemplative. Khulan suspected that he was only more desperate, still hoping that he might cheat death after all.
“You are with child,” Khulan said; she knew the signs.
Zulaika looked up from her sewing. “I have known it for some time, Lady.”
Kulgan had taken the girl to his tent nearly two months ago. She had gone passively, without protest, so Khulan had said nothing. Zulaika was only a slave, and Khulan lacked the power to defy her son now. The girl had been with him for three nights; he had tired of her quickly, as he did of all his bedfellows.
“I am pleased,” Khulan said. The other slaves gazed at Zulaika with narrowed eyes, clearly wondering what favours the girl might win for herself. “You'll give my son his first child.” Khulan thought of when she had first known that Kulgan was growing inside her. The child would console her; that was what she had believed. There would be someone she could love fully, who would return that love to her. “The greatest happiness a woman can have is a child,” she murmured, but her words sounded hollow even to herself.
The girl said nothing. The other slaves shook their heads; any of them would have been exulting, ready to claim any privilege a woman carrying a grandchild of the Khan deserved.
“I'll see that you're cared for,” Khulan continued. “We are bound by the Yasa, and it imposes certain obligations. My son will have another wife to give him heirs, but you should have a second wife's place. You'll have a share of Kulgan's herds, and slaves to serve you. You'll have your own tent.”
“Forgive me, Lady, but I would rather remain with you.”
“There is an order to these things. You must dwell in my son's ordu if you are to be his wife.”
The girl bowed her head. “Yes, Lady.”
Khulan was at a loss. This was what her kindness had brought; the girl preferred being her slave to becoming Kulgan's wife. “Perhaps,” she said at last, “you may stay with me until your time's nearly upon you. I'll tell my son you will go to his tents after that.”
“I am grateful.” Zulaika's dark eyes glistened as she bent over her sewing.
They broke camp and moved to the east of Samarkand. Ch'ang-ch'un and his disciples were allowed to move back to their former resting place inside the city, and several of the Khan's retinue took up residence there, but Temujin remained outside the walls; what he wanted from Samarkand could be brought to him. The pavilion where he met with his men and listened to Ch'ang-ch'un's discourses had been raised to the north of the circles of wagons and tents.
In the west, Khulan could see the domes and minarets of the city. Samarkand sat on the bank of the Zerafshan River, which the people here called the Bringer of Gold. Often, when the sun was high, golden lights glistened in the water as it flowed west from the mountains towards the plain on which Samarkand stood. The city on the horizon beckoned to her. Once, she might have gone to her husband and asked if she could stay in the palace that overlooked the city from a high hill, and he would have granted her wish. Those of her slaves who were taken from Samarkand had told her of the canals that carried water along its streets, and of terraces that overlooked gardens and orchards. She might have gone to the markets teeming with traders from Khitai, the Uighur oases, and the west. She longed for the city, as unreachable for her as a desert mirage.
Perhaps it was better not to enter it. Inside its walls, she would also see the marks of her husband's work—empty houses whose residents were dead, faces made thin by the recent famine, eyes filled with sorrow and hatred.
The clear autumn sky soon turned grey. A misty rain fell, sifting down lightly from the sky. The city faded in the mist, then vanished behind the veil of rain, lost to her.
Ye-lu Ch'u-ts'ai, after returning from Samarkand, had been in the Khan's camp for three days before Khulan sent a servant to ask if she might speak to him. The Khitan had said that he would receive her.
This afternoon's rain was heavier and colder, threatening to become snow. Khulan was apprehensive as she climbed down from her cart and approached the Khitan's tent. When the Khan learned of this visit, he might order his adviser to avoid her. A guard at the doorway called out her name; she entered, followed by the two slaves she had brought with her.
Beyond the hearth fire, the back of the large yurt was bright with light; oil lamps covered the low table where the scholar sat. Scrolls and bound books from Khitai sat on shelves, along with jars of herbs. She saw no colourful tapestries, golden cups, or treasure looted from the cities, and no retinue of slaves hovering around the Khan's most trusted adviser. Except for a boy pouring tea into cups, the Khitan was alone.
He looked up as Khulan's women knelt by the hearth. “I greet you, Honoured Lady,” he murmured, then set his brush next to his scroll.
“I greet you, Wise Chancellor, and am grateful you are willing to see me.” She sat on a cushion to his left; the boy set out a cup and a plate of almonds. “I have heard you spent much time with the learned men of Samarkand.”
“Indeed I have. Their astronomers are as wise as those I knew at court.”
Khulan sipped her tea. Unlike her husband's other advisers, Ch'u-ts'ai had always addressed her with warmth in his voice. “My husband,” she said, “has been much interested in knowledge lately.”
“He has been trying to follow a few of the Master's prescriptions. He drinks less often, but as your people say, a man cannot stand on one leg, so he hasn't given it up entirely. He spends his nights alone, and surely that is the Master's doing, or he would have honoured you, Gracious Khatun, with his presence.” His handsome face was pensive; she was suddenly sure he suspected the truth. “I have been setting down one of the Master's discourses, as the Khan requested.”
“The Master is a wise man,” she said.
“A wise man,” the Khitan said, “and one willing to display virtue. He's given much of what the Khan gave him to the most wretched people of the city. The Master has also presented a few of his poems to me. I believe he expects me to render a few verses to the rhymes of his own. I hope my efforts don't disappoint him. Even the wisest men sometimes lack the gift for poetry.”
Ch'u-ts'ai was too subtle for her. She could not tell if he was
disparaging his own skill at that art, or Ch'ang-ch'un's. “I would have enjoyed hearing the Master again,” she said, “although I don't have the learning to understand all he might say.”
“Many wise men haven't understood all that the Taoist Masters say and write. Some say that their alchemists have powerful magic, others that such alchemy can only show the workings of Nature, and still others that it is the alchemy of souls rather than matter that concerns them.” He stroked the short dark beard that covered his chin. “The confusion you may feel is common among others.”
Such words, from another man, would be only flattery, but this Khitan was not given to flattering anyone. He was not speaking to her now as a Khatun, or even as a woman, but as another questioning soul.
A strange joy, unlike any she had ever felt, filled her; she felt removed from herself, yet at peace. A vision came to her of a world filled with such men, ones who would share their learning freely across the barriers that separated them now, and then it faded, another mirage, another city swallowed by mists.
“I have come to you, Learned Brother,” she said, “because I have something to ask of you. As you may know, another grandchild to the Khan will be born this spring—my son's first child.”
The Khitan nodded. “The Khan is always happy to see more additions to his numerous progeny.”
“I wish to ask you to find a teacher for this child, if he is a boy, one who could teach him the Uighur script and maybe yours as well. I know you can be trusted to find a wise man.”
“Is this also the wish of your son?” he asked.
“I haven't spoken to him. He isn't drawn to such learning, but I can't see why he would object.”
“I am certain the Khan wouldn't object, either.”
“I'd rather not ask him myself,” she said. “He has so many children and grandchildren—he can hardly be bothered with all their doings. Perhaps, when the time comes, you might suggest it.”
His eyes widened; he understood. He had seen that she could not ask Temujin herself. “Yes, Honourable Lady,” he murmured. “When the boy is old enough, and if he has the makings of a scholar, I may suggest it. But I must wait until then. The Taoist Master would tell you that it's useless to force things to perform functions unsuited to them. The Khan's four heirs, for all their greatness as warriors, have only learned to scorn the knowledge that was forced on them.”
“For all their greatness,” she said, “I can hope that my grandson is a different sort of man. I would wish he might be more like you, Wise Councillor. I've sometimes wondered why a man such as you entered my husband's service, one who seems more at ease with quiet pursuits than with war.”
Ch'u-ts'ai laughed softly. “If I had not, my bones would lie in my land now, and my people are cousins to yours—we are not unacquainted with war.”
“You don't glory in it.”
“Some of us do not. We learned that from the Han, to fight and yet weep at what war brings.”
She said, “All my husband knows is war.”
“Yet he must rule now, and a ruler needs more than force, even though it is one of his tools.” He sipped his tea. “When I was brought before the Khan,” he continued, “I saw that he honoured men of learning, even if he does not—forgive me for saying this—comprehend much of their lore. His nature made him a conqueror, and he could not go against it, but his nature isn't only that of a warrior. He is also a man who longs for the answers to things. Isn't that why he sent for the Master?”
“He sent for him,” she said, “because he wanted to live forever.”
“And isn't such a wish a longing for answers, for the time to find them? The Master can't give him that, but if the Khan learns no more than to nurture his conquests, rather than pillaging them, that will be enough. If there were no men around him who could touch the thirst for wisdom in him, his warrior's nature would have overpowered the rest.”
“I've always hated war.” She should not be saying that, but the Khitan had somehow opened the dam inside her. “I am the wife of the greatest of warriors, yet I can long for a world without war.” She steadied herself. The two slaves she had brought knew only a little of her tongue, and the Khitan's boy seemed as uncomprehending as they, but she had said too much already.
“This is not the world you dream about,” Ch'u-ts'ai said gently. “We must live in this one as it is. It gains a man nothing to turn away from war when he's surrounded by those who embrace it. That would truly be going against the nature of things.”
He gazed past her. “Perhaps if the Khan had lived in ancient times, when men knew nothing of war, he would have served his nature in seizing at questions, making spears of them to thrust at the universe, but he doesn't live in such a world. You wish that things were otherwise, Lady, and suffer because you can't change them. I accept them as they are, and do what I can with what I am given. I tell myself that many here, and others in Khitai, may live and preserve some of what they have built because I have the ear of the Great Khan. The Master himself tells us that there's peace in acceptance.” His hands trembled; he set his cup down. Whatever he said, he had not found that peace; she glimpsed the torment in his dark eyes before they cleared.
“I can't accept it,” she said. “I can do nothing about it, but I can never accept it.”
“When a storm comes,” he said, “a man must run to his tent or cover himself. To stand and rail at the storm for being what it is would only bring a bolt from Heaven. Storms pass, Honoured Lady.” He leaned towards her. “I think you didn't come here only to ask for a teacher for your grandchild. Perhaps you also wanted some wisdom from me, and I have little to give you.”
“You are mistaken, Learned Councillor. You are wise, and I am foolish.” Khulan stood up. “Your wisdom is wasted on one so ignorant, a woman who can only wish for the impossible and mourn for what men do.”
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When the snow stopped falling, and the wet ground was turning green, the Khan prepared to leave the region near Samarkand. Wagons and carts were lashed together; horses, cattle, and sheep were gathered by herders. The Khan and Tolui rode at the head of the army, followed by the women and their carts, then the herds. The ox-drawn platforms carrying the great tents trailed the herds with a mounted rearguard and thousands of slaves on foot.
Khulan rode in one of the lead wagons, with a slave to hold her camel's reins. Ahead of her, rows of mounted men and strings of horses stretched to the horizon; tughs and banners fluttered above clouds of sand and dust.
They soon came to a village, where orchards of almond and apricot trees, fed by a canal, were in bloom. Khulan heard a high, piercing wail before she saw the crowd of women and children at the side of the road. The women's heads were covered by long, gauzy scarves of purple or black; some lifted their arms to Heaven as they wailed while others knelt and pressed their heads to the ground. The women had belonged to the Shah Muhammad's household; the Khan had ordered them brought there, to lament their lost empire before they joined the other prisoners. They screamed out their despair as the procession wound past them, crying out for the land they would never see again.
The progress of the Mongols was slow and halting. In the evening, the animals were grazed and milked, camp-fires were built, and the people slept inside wagons and field tents. Khulan often dreamed of the homeland she had left nearly four years ago, the land that was at peace because the Khan had carried war elsewhere. Three days after the beginning of their journey, a fierce storm forced them to halt; when it passed, the ground was covered by the bodies of sheep, cattle, and people frozen by the cold and ice. Men and women lit fires to thaw carcasses and butcher them, saving what meat they could. The bodies of soldiers who would never see their homeland again were covered with stones, but the bodies of dead slaves were abandoned.
They came to the Syr Darya River and forded it on bridges of boats lashed to each bank, then moved on until they came to a valley bordering the great plateau. Here, along a smaller river, they would rest. The Khan's pavil
ion was raised once more, and riders were sent to fetch Ch'ang-ch'un from Samarkand.
Khulan gazed at the pavilion to the north. Except for the men guarding it, there was little sign of activity. The Khan was out hunting. When he was not holding court, listening to Ch'ang-ch'un, or greeting messengers and envoys, the Khan hunted, despite the monk's disapproval. It was rumoured that the Master was impatient to leave for Khitai, but Temujin still held him, urging him to stay until the weather was better for travel, then to wait until Chagadai and Ogedei arrived there from Bukhara with their men.
Khulan's great tent and wagons still stood to the east of his, but her husband's pretence deceived few now. She had fallen from favour. His other women said that openly, although not to her face. He went to their tents, as he had before, but not to Khulan's. She knew the women said such things, so she snapped at them as they tended the sheep, butchered game, worked on embroidered flaps for their doorways, and did their weaving.
Tents and wagons covered the valley, stretching as far as the mountain foothills to the east and south along the river-banks. The city of tents would have to move on soon to new pastures before the ewes lambed and the horses dropped their foals. Perhaps her husband would finally let Ch'ang-ch'un and his followers depart. The Khan had been waiting for Jochi to join him, but his oldest son had sent a carefully phrased message, according to Kulgan, saying that he would remain in the lands to the north of Khwarezm, the pastures his father had promised him, and hold them for the Khan. Temujin might have ordered him to return, but seemed resigned to leaving Jochi where he was.
A cloud of dust to the east caught her eye; men were riding towards the camp. Her husband was among the distant riders; she could not let him see her. Khulan turned, walked past the women working their looms, and climbed the steps to her entrance.
Ruler of the Sky: A Novel of Genghis Khan Page 68
