The Earth Is the Lord's

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Yesukai called for the Shaman, but before the serving-woman could rise to her feet and obey, he rushed impetuously from the yurt, himself, shouting at the top of his voice. Kurelen remarked to himself that Yesukai would, without doubt, be delayed far longer than he expected. The Shaman would have many a word with him, before returning to the yurt. So Kurelen prudently decided that he must awaken Houlun.

  He stood beside her bed. The serving-woman scowled at him, covered the screaming infant’s face. But Kurelen was not interested in the child; he saw only Houlun. He laid his hand on her forehead, bent over her. His face took on an inscrutable expression, sad and somber, and very dark. He said aloud, in a quiet and steadfast voice: “Awake, my sister. Awake.”

  She did not move. The scowling serving-woman bent forward avidly, a look of malicious pleasure on her face. Houlun did not move; her smile only deepened, almost imperceptibly. He has enchanted her, thought the woman, and if she does not awaken, they will kill him. She licked her lips; her eyes gleamed with malignant hatred.

  Kurelen continued to bend over his sister, his hand on her forehead. He was silent. The inscrutable expression deepened on his face. His eyes narrowed. A terrible struggle was taking place in that yurt. A struggle between the wills of the sleeping woman and the man who sought to wake her. Above the bed two invisible antagonists clenched each other in their arms, and stood locked, immobile, staring into the other eyes. The struggle went on, moment after moment. Something in the air stilled the child’s cries, and he fell to whimpering softly, as though terrified. Beads of sweat burst out on Kurelen’s wrinkled forehead; they rolled slowly down his cheeks, like drops of quicksilver. The serving-woman lifted her shoulders to her ears in thin and unholy glee.

  Kurelen said silently, to the will of his sister: Awaken. Thou must awaken. Thou canst not triumph over me. Houlun, awaken.

  But Houlun slept. A subtle smile curved her lips.

  Kurelen lifted his head alertly. There was an approaching commotion. It was Yesukai, accompanied by Kokchu, Kurelen’s deadly enemy, and several of the rejoicing warriors. The barking of the dogs preceded them like the fanfares of an army. Kurelen’s wet lips suddenly parched; salt water filled his mouth. Anger and terror rose up in him. His eyes dilated, flashed.

  He bent over his sister again, in a rage. He seized her hands, bent them inwards, and there was a faint cracking of bones, loud in the breathless stillness of the yurt. Then he pressed his thumbs against her eyelids, and forced them open. Haste and panic and greater rage were in his gestures. He said in his mind to his sister, with contempt and fear: Thou art a coward, because thou wilt not awaken. But awaken for me. They are at the door of the yurt, and are about to enter. If thou dost not awaken, they will kill me. I command thee in the name of our love to awaken, Houlun. I hate life, but I hate death more, and greater than these, I hate pain. (Her glazed dull eyes seemed to regard him like the eyes of the dead.)

  Yesukai’s face appeared at the door, dark and ominous. He was entering. A faint moan rose like a bubble in Houlun’s throat. She moved her head. The serving-woman drew in a breath of acrid disappointment. She cried out eagerly to Yesukai, who was approaching the bed. his short curved sword in his hand: “He hath enchanted her!” Behind Yesukai loomed the tall lean figure of the robed Shaman, his long face smiling with evil anticipation.

  Kurelen stood upright. His features were pallid and sickly with exhaustion. He looked at his sister; he knew he had won. He said aloud, in a quiet voice: “She hath suffered much, and slept profoundly. But she is awakening now, to greet her lord.”

  Yesukai did not speak; he stood beside his wife’s bed. He fixed his menacing eyes on Kurelen. Then Houlun moaned again, moved her head on her pillow as though she were suffering, then opened her eyes. They were still glazed, but now there was a faint light of recognition in them. And she, too, looked only at Kurelen.

  He smiled at her, as one smiles at a child who has come back along the dim road to death. “Thou hast slept long, my sister,” he said in the gentlest of voices.

  The Shaman came forward now, in a fury of disappointment and hatred. “Thou didst enchant her!” he accused. “It is not thy fault she did not die!”

  But Kurelen ignored him as a noble might ignore the clamor of a herdsman. He said to Yesukai, with an indulgent smile: “She will live long to bear thee other mighty sons.”

  Yesukai scratched his ear, uncertainly. He began to tuck his sword within his belt. He regarded Houlun, and began to smile foolishly. He loved her very much. He bent over her and kissed her passionately upon the lips. “I have brought back many treasures, and thou shalt have the pick of them, Houlun, for thou hast given me the greatest treasure of all.”

  The Shaman grimaced contemptuously. He turned and stared at Kurelen with fury. But Kurelen only grinned, and poked him in the holy chest with one long crooked finger.

  “Again, thou must sacrifice only mutton, or horse meat, on this auspicious occasion, Kokchu,” he said. “But, go to! Thou are skillful with the knife, and doubtless thou canst delicately prolong the agony of the beast.”

  Enraged, Kokchu struck aside that crooked finger. He stepped back with a violent gesture, as though repelling a sacrilegious and unclean touch. Hatred and madness contorted his features. His eyes blazed. Kurelen burst out into a scream of laughter.

  “Waste not thy imagination upon me, Kokchu! Go out and think awhile, and prophesy greatly concerning this noble son of the Yakka Mongols! But thou wilt, I know, be able to conjure up the most amazing things in the manner of priests!”

  And he went out of the yurt, laughing louder than ever.

  Chapter 4

  He was much elated, and exquisitely amused, and kept laughing aloud to himself as he wound his crippled way through the aisles of the yurts. He did not seem to see the scowls that greeted him on every hand. Finally he stopped. Two of the captives, the Buddhist monk and the Nestorian Christian priest, were sitting disconsolately on the piles of their belongings, wiping their dusty faces with their sleeves. No one noticed them particularly, though a ring of dogs barked at them threateningly. Kurelen kicked at the leader of the dogs, and sent him howling on his way, accompanied by his followers.

  Kurelen regarded the captives with interest. The Buddhist monk had a mild and gentle face, the color of yellow ivory. His slanting eyes were full of patience. His woolen robe was in tatters, and his feet were bare and bleeding, and crusted with dirt. He had removed his pointed hat, and the bitter sun gleamed like a halo of fire about his bald pate. At his belt hung his beads and his prayer wheel. His hands were folded in his lap; he seemed to be sunken in some melancholy and supernatural revery. The Christian priest, however, had a bolder air. Kurelen commented to himself that this man was a barbarian, not a member of the civilized race of Cathay, such as was the monk. He had a dark and angry face, and a questing and hungry eye. He kept scratching his ragged beard and hair impatiently, and destroying the lice he found there, with a petty vindictiveness. His woolen robe was not tattered; the pile of his belongings was much larger than that of the monk’s. Moreover, he wore a respectable dagger in an ivory sheath. He was a bigger man, a more virile man, than the monk, and a younger. At his belt, on a rope, swung a wooden cross.

  Kurelen could not place him immediately. He said: “What is thy country, priest?”

  The man stared at him bellicosely for so long a time that Kurelen began to believe he did not understand his language. But finally he answered shortly, in Kurelen’s tongue, but with an unfamiliar accent: “I come from the land of the Sea of Aral.”

  Kurelen smiled. “Thou wilt be excellent friends with our Shaman,” he remarked. He turned to the Buddhist monk, who had not heeded him, so deep was he fallen in his melancholy revery. He spoke to him in the tongue of Cathay, and at that beloved sound the monk lifted his head, and he smiled, and his eyes filled with tears.

  “Do not be cast down,” said Kurelen, softly. He squatted beside the monk and gazed at him with a humorous smile. “We a
re not bad men. Go thy way, and hold thy tongue, and no harm will befall thee.”

  The priest, however, had lived in Cathay, and understood some of the language. He made an angry sound. “My father is a prince!” he cried.

  Kurelen glanced at him whimsically over his shoulder.

  “The whole accursed place is full of princes,” he observed. “Be wise; accustom thyself. But, as I said, no doubt thou wilt be excellent friends with our Shaman. There is a blood brother for you!”

  Again he turned his attention to the monk, who had begun to weep. Kurelen lifted his eyebrows curiously. The monk rocked on his belongings, and mourned. “The Lord sent me forth, to bring light into the heathen and the lost, and hath delivered me into the pit of the desert, where no lamp falls.”

  Kurelen shrugged. “Well, then, shed thy lamp. But I warn thee, do not compete with the Shaman. He hath nasty manners.”

  The priest had the most profound contempt for the Buddhist, and kept darting disdainful glances at him.

  “Thy god is an evil spirit, but mine is the Way of Truth. Here shall I set up his standard and his cross, and call these dwellers in the darkness into the Eternal Light.”

  Kurelen smiled at him contemplatively. The priest shifted with rage on his belongings, pulled his beard, glared about him, snorted. “Where is the chief?” he shouted. “I shall not be treated thus! I am the son of a prince!”

  Kurelen said: “Wert thou not driven out of Cathay? If I remember rightly, thou and thy kind kicked up a foul stink in that land, and the emperor courteously ejected ye.”

  But the priest only snorted again, disdainfully refusing to answer.

  Kurelen inquired as to the names of the monk and priest. The Buddhist informed him that his name was Jelmi, and that he came from an ancient family of Mandarins. Ah, thought Kurelen, that accounts for his gentleness and courtesy, his modesty and forbearance. Only the truly noble, of mind and flesh, had these qualities. The priest at first ignored Kurelen’s question, and then haughtily announced that his name was Seljuken, and repeated more loudly that his father was a prince. Kurelen grinned. He knew these wild “princes” of steppe and salt lake, these tiny potentates who ate half-cooked meat and depended for livelihood on raids and murder.

  Another lively commotion in the distance informed Kurelen that Yesukai had left his wife’s yurt, and was proceeding about the business of disposing of the loot. His new wife, the Karait girl, was assigned to a yurt, and serving-women given her. Yesukai disappeared into this yurt, and did not emerge again. Kurelen, who had begun to wander about again, kicking at the dogs, and inquisitively inspecting the piles of stolen goods, grimaced as he passed the yurt of the new wife. He paused to listen. There was no sound from behind the fastened flap.

  He went back to his sister. She was holding her son in her arms, and he was sucking her naked breast. Her face was cold and averted, and she held the child carelessly. But when her brother entered, her eyes warmed, and she smiled at him. He patted her shoulder, bent over the little one, and pinched one hard rosy cheek. The child made an impatient flapping movement with one strong hand, but in spite of the pain of the pinch he continued about his strong and earnest business.

  “Ah,” said Kurelen, “it is a fine fellow. Dost thou think he looks like me, perhaps?”

  Houlun laughed. She regarded the child with some interest, and slowly a look of pride reluctantly appeared on her face. “I think not. He hath not thy sweetness of expression.” They chuckled together. She twisted a tendril of the child’s hair about her fingers. “Look at this hair! As red-gold as the evening sunset! And his eyes are as gray as the desert sands.” Then in a hesitant voice, from which she tried to keep the newly awakened pride, she said: “Surely he will be a great man?”

  “Oh, I have no doubt,” he answered largely. She glanced at him with quick suspicion, but nothing could have been blander than his look. She pressed the child fiercely to her breast, and cried:

  “Thou shalt teach him to read, and thou shalt take him to strange lands, Kurelen! Surely he will be a great man, for he is my son, and he is all my life!”

  Kurelen pursed his lips thoughtfully. He pinched the baby’s ear. He playfully pulled the small round face away from the mother’s breast. At this insult the little one raised a great and infuriated shout, and threw his naked limbs about in a frenzy of anger. Kurelen laughed delightedly. He pushed the child’s face against the swelling breast, and after a few outraged snufflings, the child resumed his tugging.

  Then Kurelen spoke quietly, in a peculiar voice: “He is all thy life, thou dost say. But, perhaps he is also his father’s life. Do not teach him to hate his father, Houlun. It is a terrible thing for the soul of a son, if he hateth his father. I know.”

  And then he turned and went out of the yurt. Houlun watched him go, frowning. She held the child closely to her. She felt his strong lips at her breast. “He is my life,” she muttered, and frowned again.

  Chapter 5

  Yesukai exultantly celebrated his triumph and the birth of his son with a great feast, and his people celebrated joyously with him. Life was harsh for these people, these inhabitants of the mighty snowy steppes, the terrible empty plains, the red and glittering mountains, the deserts which were as dry and colorless as an old man’s beard. Wind and lightning, dust and hail, thunder and barrens, ice and tempests, were the familiars of their lives. They knew no settled home, these nomads, but must travel with the seasons, fleeing before the gale-filled white onslaughts of the most frightful winters, and fleeing, in the summer, from drought and sand, from desert heat and desert storms. Hunger was the specter that sat with them at every meal, no matter how plentiful an occasional one might be. The ease and security of the townsmen was not theirs; often they surged up to the great Wall that protected the people of Cathay from their barbarian influence, but few, except traders, ever entered within that stony guardian. Sometimes these hordes squatted outside the Walls, and looked enviously at the fat men who came and went through the gates on business. They would squat there disconsolately, when pastures had been arid, and cattle and horses had died, and they would rub their lean and empty bellies, hating the townsmen. But when the pastures had been good, and raids profitable, they despised the suetty inhabitants of the towns, and spoke ringingly of the glory of freedom, and the wild steppes with the pale shadows of the sun flying across them, and the northern lights which wheeled magnificently across the winter skies for the joy of free men, and of untrod valleys where the city men never ventured.

  Only those who live dangerously can rejoice fully. So each marriage or death or birth was the occasion for unrestrained levity and festivity. Then they killed their fat horses and sheep, and filled their cups with kumiss and rice wine, and danced, and shouted, and clapped their hands, and laughed uproariously. The laughter of the nomad was the laughter of ferocious beasts, freed for the moment of the exigencies of his life, and its constant fear and danger and strife. The townsmen, fat and fastidious and bored, did not laugh like this, for ease does not breed great laughter that rises simultaneously from the belly and the soul. The laughter of townsmen, as Kurelen said, came thinly from the brain, and was as acrid as desert water, and as brackish. The mirth that came from the brain was acid and malicious, and rose mostly from the contemplation of the folly of mankind. It was not good-mirth, though amusing to the initiated, who hated other men. Kurelen had observed that pain and suffering, privation and uncertainty, hardship and struggle, were the fuel that made the tremendous fires of revelry, and made the very earth dance in joyous sympathy, as she never danced for the luxurious and the peaceful.

  As night approached the campfires began to burn with a vivid orange flame in the plum-colored twilight. The flaps of the dome-shaped yurts were open, and the braziers blazed red within. The vault of heaven was lost in immense mauve mists, but to the east the hills, carved and turreted, jutting and falling, were inexorable ramparts hewn of a brilliant and rosy jade, rippling with heliotrope. Above the hills, the curve
of the earth, colossal and diffused, was a bow of purple. The west streamed tremendously with violent yellow banners, as raw as new gold, slashed with an icy and translucent green. The earth floated like a mirage, and took on strange colors, the broken windswept plains imbued with shadows of gray and lavender, blue and umber. The immense and lonely silence of the Gobi seemed to fall out of infinitude upon the earth, and even the voice of the gray-yellow river was lost in that silence. Brighter and brighter, with a pathetic bravery, the orange flames of the little campfires soared upwards, and the voices of the people were frail and tenuous in the unearthly and luminous air of the desert, the chirping of crickets in the face of a universal dream. Like tiny black crickets, they moved between and behind the fires, seemingly endowed with a febrile and pointless life, leaping and moving. In the near distance the spined and twisted desert trees, contorted as though tortured beyond endurance, seemed to be moving upon the ordu like aisles of menacing monsters, bristling with strange and brandished weapons, voiceless monster nightmares invading that universal dream.