The army assembled below gave one voice, and the sound was like an avalanche falling down a steep mountainside. He let their united voices buffet him, and then, enlivened, rejuvenated by the intensity of their adoration, and smiling like a new father, he raised his arms to silence them and focus their attention.
The sudden expectant quiet of a thousand men seemed to freeze the very air.
“Today,” he began, and then started again in a louder voice. “Today we celebrate the sacrifice of my dear brother Tolui.”
The knot in his gut gripped him once and then let go, and all the memories that he both cherished and despised flowed back. The time had come. This all meant nothing; it meant everything.
“Nine years ago…”
Nine years ago…on a night where thick clouds obscured the moon and the air pressed down heavily, threatening rain, Ögedei lay on his deathbed.
His hair was matted to his sweltering skull, and a thin robe clung to his shivering frame. Whenever he had enough strength, he would try to throw off the furs that were damp and rank with his sweat, but the healers would always replace them, ignoring his guttural grunts. Most of the time he simply stared at the wooden lattice supporting the ger’s ceiling, watching the smoke curl up and escape through the smoke hole. Shamans, like smoked mummies wrapped in patchwork robes, would appear and disappear like wraiths illuminated by the moon sneaking between clouds. They beat hide drums, droned endless prayers, and made noises like birds and foxes. He was sure one time he would look and they would all be transformed into wolf cubs, panting and whining with fear.
The fever had fallen upon him during the dark of the moon, seizing him like a malevolent demon conjured by his enemies. It grew in him, eating first the strength in his legs and arms, and now it worked on his guts and his lungs. Soon it would crawl up his throat and find a way into his brain, and then he would no longer be Ögedei Khan, but just a sack of pale skin, filled with hot ash.
Riders had gone out, summoning every shaman and healer in the land, and they continued to appear, laboring to drive out the heat demon that infected him. They sang, they danced, they burned incense; some searched for answers in the bubbling, wandering, meaningless words that dribbled from his lips, in the pattern of finger and knuckle bones they shook out on leather maps, in the striations and patterns on charred tortoiseshells.
They all failed to cure him. In defense, they decreed his malady to be a curse, a malediction set upon him by angry gods of the southern kingdoms—vengeance upon the empire that had slaughtered the tribes and despoiled their lands. Some of the shamans tried to communicate with the foreign gods, to seek a sign of what they must do in order to appease their anger. Harsh, dusty winds and sudden lightning storms were the only response.
A life precious to you, the shamans told him, in return for all those that have been taken. That is the only sacrifice they will accept.
“Brother…”
Ögedei blearily looked around the smoke-filled tent, trying to find the source of the voice that intruded on his feverish dreams. Squinting against the firelight, he could make out a tall figure, dressed in yellow and white furs. He tried to raise his arm and beckon the figure closer.
“I rode through the night…” The figure knelt at his bedside, slender fingers clutching his hot and greasy hand. “The foreign demon has not yet swallowed you,” the figure said with a smile.
“Tolui,” Ögedei murmured. He wanted to embrace his brother, but the effort required to speak his name had used all of his strength. He tried to turn his hand so that he could squeeze his brother’s fingers, but even that was beyond him. “The Blue Wolf is coming for me soon,” he whispered. His throat ached, and he could not summon any spit. His mouth was like the southern desert—arid and lifeless. “I… am glad you are here,” he managed. “When I pass from this world—”
Tolui put a leather-scented finger to Ögedei’s lips, stopping him. “You will not die,” he said. His face was drawn, and there were dark circles under his eyes, preternaturally aging his youthful face.
“You have found a cure?” Ögedei’s voice cracked, breaking into a dry cough that made his chest ache.
“I have spoken to some of the shamans, and they fear there is no hope. But an old man of the Eagle Hills has told me there is a way…” Tolui’s voice fell away, becoming lost in the rhythmic drone of the shamans who still watched over him, chanting and tapping their drums.
“No,” Ögedei managed. “I can’t allow—”
Tolui shook his head. “Father told me to watch over you, Ögedei. Is that not what I have done? When you forgot your lessons, where was I? When you dozed off, who prodded you awake? Who took care of Father’s empire while the tribes squabbled and whined about declaring you Khagan? I gave it to you gladly when it was time because I knew you, of all our brothers, to be the wisest and most capable. You were Father’s choice, and it has always been—and will always be—my greatest duty and honor to stand by you.” His eyes were bright and wet. “If you die, we will be lost. We will be weak and helpless while the tribes gather for the kuraltai and pick a successor, like an orphaned child who crawls from its ger to find its family devoured by predators.”
“It should be you, Tolui. You would make a fine Khagan.”
“Compared to you?” Tolui shook his head. “The gods fear you, my brother. Look how desperate they are to destroy Father’s dream—your dream.” He squeezed Ögedei’s hand, forestalling any argument. “I have already decided. The shamans will perform the ritual. Let me do this for you. Let me serve my Khan in the best way that I can.”
Silence had fallen in the tent, and Ögedei struggled to look around. There were more shamans than he thought the ger could hold. They all wore blue robes, and they had traded their drums and divining bones for cups and deer horns and carved wooden rods. He tried to extricate his hand from Tolui’s grip, but his younger brother held him fast. He could not sit up; he could not speak. His strength was gone, and he fell back against the sweat-stained furs. They wrapped around him like wet snow, and dark demon patterns danced at the edge of his vision…
The shamans were chanting, and the tent was illuminated by the light from four braziers burning fragrant pinewood. Had time passed? Tolui was no longer at the side of his bed, and his hand—the one so recently held by his brother—was cold and cramped. When Ögedei blinked, one of the braziers went out; in quick succession they were extinguished, and great billowing clouds of smoke began to obscure the chanting shamans.
A greasy tendril of smoke passed over his face. He reached out to touch it, but there was nothing there, nothing but a vast emptiness, as if he lay naked on the steppes and the stars had all winked out.
He could smell blood, like a fresh kill, and thought of the deer by the river—the one he had killed with his father so many years ago.
The chanting stopped, and then shamans whooped and yipped, a wolf pack cacophony.
Ögedei could not remember closing his eyes, and opening them was like lifting an iron gate. Little by little, he managed to raise his eyelids, squinting and blinking even though there was little light in the tent.
The shamans were chanting again, muttering and humming under their breath—whispers on the wind. Tolui had returned and he stood at the foot of the bed. His head was lowered, and the sound coming from his throat sounded like the noise of ten men, droning and crying. A wooden cup was passed from shaman to shaman, until it reached his brother, who accepted it, squatted next to Ögedei’s feet, and raised it to his lips.