The Tiger Queens (37 page)

I set aside my sewing as the rider dismounted and fell to his knees before her. “Borte Khatun,” he said. “I bring you news from the lands of the Tanghut.”

Borte trembled so violently I thought she might collapse. “What is this news?” she asked.

“It’s the Great Khan . . . He is dying.” The messenger bent his head as if awaiting the Khatun to unsheathe a sword and strike him dead.

“What happened?” she asked. Her voice was strong, but she still shook like a leaf in a storm.

“The Khan of Khans stopped to hunt wild horses while crossing the Great Dry Sea. His favorite horse, the one the color of red earth, threw him when the herd charged.” The messenger swallowed hard, glancing up and wringing his hands. “A fever consumed him, but he insisted on continuing with the campaign against the Tanghut. The sickness has overtaken him, and he is making his way home.”

“He’s coming home to die,” Borte whispered. She spoke to herself, but the messenger nodded.

“It’s unlikely he will survive the journey,” he said.

“Then I will meet him.” Borte spoke as if merely ordering a cart to felt wool for the day, rather than commanding an entourage to escort home the conqueror of almost the entire world. “Order my horse, Fatima. Inform Toregene and Sorkhokhtani of the circumstances so they may accompany us.”

Despite her recent frailty, the wife of Genghis Khan was a great woman, a queen who might have been at ease at the elbow of any shah or emperor the world over.

Yet she was about to be widowed, a fate I’d not wish on any woman. I prayed she was strong enough to endure the coming days.

*   *   *

The Khan of Khans was still alive when we met his caravan, but barely.

I expected my first glimpse of Genghis Khan to make my knees tremble with fear, but the scourge of the world resembled neither the epic Persian hero Rostam nor Ali ibn Abi Talib at the Battle of the Camel, but instead a grizzled old man strapped into his saddle so he wouldn’t topple over and be trampled underfoot by his reddish-gray warhorse. Dressed in a boiled-leather vest over a black robe, he surveyed us from under a silver helm rimmed with mangy black sable, his long, graying beard tied with a worn leather thong and a gleaming cutlass slung at his hip. He looked as raw as I imagined did Kaiumers, the first shah of Persia, who dressed in ragged tiger skins and lived in mountain caves. This was the beast that had stood on the steps of Otrar’s famed mosque after pouring molten silver down the
governor’s throat and claimed to be the flail of Allah, sent to punish us for our sins. The winds whipped about the whispered cries of the countless souls that clung to the Khan of Khans, cut down before their time by this bloodthirsty warlord.

“You should ride in a cart,” Borte berated him, but Genghis’ eyes lit at her approach and he offered her a grimace that might have passed for a smile.

“And greet my Khatun like an old woman?” He reached out an arm for her and she was at his side in an instant. “Never.”

They dismounted and I busied myself with ordering the building of Toregene’s tent, thankful to be off the cursed beast that had carried me for the past week but unwilling to reconcile the idea of this heathen conqueror who was capable of tender feelings toward his wife. All around me, a city of tents sprang up, the family and advisers of the Thirteen Hordes of the Golden Family.

They had all come to bid farewell to the Khan of Khans and to scavenge the pieces of his empire like carrion.

Borte had hoped that Toregene’s herbs and healing hands might drive away the Khan’s deadly fever, but it soon became apparent that we were fortunate to have reached Genghis while he still drew breath.

His body crippled and his voice cracking, the Great Khan begged the representatives of the People of the Felt to help the children he left behind, implored his sons, daughters, and grandchildren to remain united. The fastest riders in the empire carried messages to bring Genghis’ daughters, but the Onggud and Uighur lands were too far for Alaqai or Al-Altun to make the journey in time. One by one, Ogodei and Toregene, Tolui and Sorkhokhtani, and all their sons bent over his bed and pressed their foreheads to his, then formed a ring around the edges of the tent while a fire blazed under the smoke hole.

“Stay,” Toregene whispered to Shigi and me when we tried to leave. “So you can write about this in your histories.”

I trembled at the oppressive weight of death that made it difficult to fill my lungs, the same lingering heaviness that had pushed upon my chest when my mother lay dying. Shigi’s arm brushed mine, and for once I let myself be comforted by his touch.

“The world shall not forget this day,” he murmured under his breath. “Nothing shall be the same once the Khan flies to the sacred mountains.”

Tolui fumbled with the wax seal on a jug of wine, and Ogodei roared for his wives to bring his horse and the cart of
airag
he’d ordered specifically for this journey. The Khan’s sons were ill equipped to rule the world they were about to inherit.

“Nothing good shall come of your splitting your lands amongst our sons.” The Khatun whispered the bitter words while I held the useless bowl of ox broth she’d ordered for the Khan. She clutched her husband’s hands as the last threads of air were pulled from his beleaguered lungs. “Our realm will shatter into a thousand pieces like jade trampled by the hooves of wild horses, and our peoples shall be scattered in the eight directions, fragile as dried leaves in the wind.”

Genghis Khan, the man who had united the Thirteen Hordes through spilled blood and the sheer force of his will, used his remaining strength to brush a strand of white hair from her temple. “You must hold them together, Borte Ujin,” he whispered. “Just as you always have, my stubborn little goat.”

In later years, travelers and foreign diplomats would speak of the Khan’s death in hushed voices and strange tongues, telling how Genghis died after taking an arrow to the knee or being struck by lightning, drinking poison hidden in his nightly cup of
airag
, or being tormented by the black curse of an enemy king. One particularly creative story claimed a captured foreign queen inserted a hideous device into her woman’s flower so when she seduced him, the Great Khan’s sex organs were ripped off and he died in agony, bleeding on a pile of black sable furs while the queen laughed over him.

There were those who believed the foul tales rampant in every corner of the empire—many of which he’d propagated himself—and who wished their gruesome revenge upon this famed scourge from the east. Since they could not conquer him in life, the Khan’s enemies sought to send him into the next world in as painful a way as possible. But those princes and ambassadors underestimated the love that the spirits held for their favored son.

My eyes stung and tears fell freely down my cheeks when Borte pulled the Khan’s head into her lap, her voice lifting in a soothing melody. I’d heard Toregene speak of the song of the dead, and I’d imagined it as rough and grating, similar to everything else about these Mongols. Instead, it reminded me of the hymns I sang while grieving for my mother and the prayers to Allah that I’d chanted over Mansoor and my father. I touched the narcissus bulbs I kept hidden in my pocket, carried here in the vain hope that Al-Altun might travel to bid her father farewell on his final journey.

Genghis Khan had been a brutal and bloodthirsty warrior who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent souls. I knew this in my mind, but as his soul fled now, all my heart felt was that he left behind a grieving widow, a woman who had loved him with all her soul. Now she—as we all must at one time—would face the world alone.

The Khan of Khans died the peaceful death of an old man, in the arms of the woman he loved.

Now only one question remained.

Who would take his place?

*   *   *

The Khan had ordered Borte to hold united the empire he left behind, but the lands he’d cobbled together began to fracture as soon as her husband lay on a simple wooden cart, dressed in a white robe and wrapped in a snowy felt blanket stuffed with sandalwood and secured with three golden straps. His face had been frozen in a stony glare as if staring down death in his final moments, but the Thirteen Hordes would never again hear the Khan’s bloodcurdling battle cry.

The evening after Genghis’ death, I came upon Shigi sitting alone as the sun set over a hill scattered with boulders shaped like pale, sleeping grizzlies. He gazed up at the moon in the night sky, reminding me of an astronomer charting the stars, and I recognized the jug cradled in his lap as one filled with Toregene’s famed
airag
.
In all my time with the Mongols, I’d never seen Shigi’s lips touch a bowl of wine or that foul fermented milk. I hesitated to approach, but he looked up and gave a wan smile.

“I’d understand if you preferred not to spend your evening with a
scowling scribe,” he said, moving on the boulder so there was space for another. “But I’d be glad of your company tonight, Fatima.”

And I, the woman who had resigned herself to a life of loneliness, felt something flare deep within my withered heart as I sat next to him, allowing Shigi’s warmth to seep from the stone through the thin silk of my robe.

“You were well loved by the Khan, were you not?” I was terribly aware of Shigi’s closeness and the scent of the inks that always clung to him. I’d never seen him angry or upset, but tonight his grief seemed to thicken the very air around us.

“When I was a child, the Khan spared me when he might have had me killed,” Shigi said, his fingers tracing the top of the wine jug. “He gave me to his mother to raise and elevated me to record the history of his Golden Family. I have much to be grateful for.”

I clasped my hands before me. “And yet it was he who ordered the destruction of your people.”

Shigi offered the remnant of a smile. “As he did yours.”

His words were true, yet it was Al-Altun whom I held responsible for the death of my family. And it was another of the Khan’s daughters who had saved me, leaving me ambivalent toward Genghis Khan himself. I drew a deep breath and dared to let my hand touch Shigi’s. “Still, I’m sorry for your loss.”

Shigi stared at our hands for a moment, and I withdrew my fingers, my bravery gone as quickly as it had come.

“Thank you,” he said, slowing the words as if he’d drunk too much from the wine jug. “But it’s more than the Khan’s death. We are neither of us happy, Fatima, you and I. With Genghis’ passing, Ogodei shall wear the Khan’s helm and take with him my only chance at happiness.”

I pondered what he meant, but he lurched to his feet. “I fear I’m poor company tonight,” he said. “Go in peace, Fatima of Nishapur.”

With that, he strode down the dark path toward the encroaching darkness, leaving me with an empty boulder and a jug of wine, wondering if perhaps the wine had loosened Shigi’s tongue and caused his erratic
behavior. I was surprised to find the clay seal on the jug intact, its contents untouched.

And I was still alone. Always alone.

*   *   *

Somber soldiers dressed in their finest silks and furs escorted Genghis’ body to the land of his birth, then to the base of Burkhan Khaldun, the holy mountaintop so high it grazed the belly of the sky. The men’s voices rumbled deep in their throats, rising in the wind only to plummet back to earth and settle amongst the steppe’s emerald grasses. I walked with Borte behind the Khan’s Spirit Banner, followed by his riderless reddish gray horse with its empty saddle. The same writers who speculated over the Great Khan’s death pondered over his burial, claiming that his funeral escort was slaughtered to keep his grave a secret and a river diverted to hide the sacred site. While the Khan’s favorite horses and many hapless souls who wandered across the entourage were killed, the Khan’s sons and grandsons—Ogodei, Chaghatai, Tolui, Güyük, Möngke, and Kublai—laid him at the foot of the mountains where he had spent his youth, bringing the world’s most brutal conqueror to the end of his journey.

Borte’s hands hadn’t stopped moving since the Khan’s death, be it sewing, milking, or churning, and Sorkhokhtani’s mournful music filled the night air. Toregene was nowhere to be found the evening of the burial—the latest in a string of many disappearances. I assumed she was off gathering plants, for she’d mentioned that her columbine and chamomile supplies were low.

I took pains with my appearance that night, silently rebuking myself for my absurdity as I applied kohl to my eyelids, slipped the jade tiger comb into my hair, and straightened my veil before Toregene’s copper mirror. Tonight I would tell Shigi of my burgeoning feelings, of my hope that together we might carve out some small piece of happiness. The idea of speaking thus to a man was foreign to me, but after these past years as Toregene’s slave, I knew I couldn’t face the wintery desolation of a lifetime alone. While I would never love another as I had Mansoor, I hoped I might find some purpose in this life if I could learn to love again. I smiled at the
thought of Shigi, of his refined nature and elegant ways, so familiar to me, as if we were meant to be together.

I was glad for the light of the half-moon and the clean air as I stepped outside and headed for Shigi’s tent. There was no smoke coming from the smoke hole, and when I peered inside it was to find everything dark, his orderly bed and the neat line of gilded chests, which I knew were filled with pens and ink, volumes of precious books and stacks of untouched paper. I walked toward the hill of grizzly boulders then, thinking to find him alone again, yet he wasn’t among the stones.

I would take the long way back to camp, through the thin excuse of a forest and along the creek. My hope waned and my nerves calmed, for more than likely, I’d return to my cold mattress in Toregene’s tent as I’d done every night since Nishapur.

I hadn’t gone far when I noticed movement across the way, two figures pressed against the base of a great fir and shielded by several scrubby birch and alder trees. Despite the chill of the night air, the woman’s
deel
was rucked around her waist, her legs wrapped around the man as their bodies moved in rhythm together. A braid hung down the man’s back, and moonlight glinted off the gold ring in his nose.