The Tiger Queens (6 page)

“I know you can never belong to me because I am Temujin’s
anda
.” Jamuka’s tone was quiet, the same tone a man used when announcing the death of a revered elder.

Temujin. A man I hadn’t seen in seven years.

Anda
.
Blood brothers.

Jamuka and Temujin had swallowed each other’s blood, sworn sacred vows before the ancestors so they were closer than brothers of the same womb. The man before me had been Temujin’s only ally after his father’s death, and it was his support that had ensured the survival of Temujin and his family.

I will cleave two men apart and ignite a great Blood War that will rain tears and destruction upon the steppes.

Such was the curse I bore, the prophecy I refused to fulfill.

I stifled a sob as I clambered to my feet, but the darkness chased me as I stormed down the hill, silently cursing Jamuka while ignoring his pleas at my back. I ran until I could breathe no more and collapsed onto the cold riverbank, pounding my fists and screaming my frustration into the Earth Mother, feeling her silent rebuke.

Still Temujin sought to ruin me, even from afar.

M
y mother claimed the steppes had echoed with my laughter as a child, yet as a young woman of seventeen winters, I walked through this life with a heavy spirit, plucking the whispers of the ancestors from the winds and weaving the jagged cracks of bones into warnings and prophecies. The heaviness of the future and the weight of my past stooped my shoulders like an old woman’s, despite my soft cheeks and unlined skin.

And then Jamuka had come.

And I, being the fool I was, had allowed that hope to smolder to life again.

There was no trace of Jamuka the morning after our kiss, and I soon learned he had departed camp under the cover of night. I couldn’t rail at him for deceiving me but had to content myself with gathering soot from his cold hearth to curse him. And Temujin.

My shouts into the Eternal Blue Sky startled a flock of brown sparrows before I turned the curses on myself. They were black words I could never undo, just as I could never take back my moment of weakness in Jamuka’s arms. I swore to the Earth Mother that I would never waver again, that I would bear my necessary solitude like a sturdy oak. I sanctified the promise by adding drops of blood from my palm to the tears already splashing on
the ground. It would be far better to water the earth with my own blood than with that of countless men.

The short golden season burned itself out and I spent the long months of winter in dark silence. It was a bleak season full of angry winds that cut through the walls of our
ger
and threatened to crack the skin of our sheep-stomach churn as I pounded our meager supply of winter milk into butter. The wolves grew daring as temperatures plummeted, and men often had to chase the beasts away from our ever-scrawnier herds in a perpetual struggle for life over death. That terrible winter also stole my mother’s vision. Her eyes flickered and the light finally went out on the solstice. Since then her tongue had become sharper and her temper flared brighter, but I tried to keep my patience as the darkness of eternal winter surrounded her.

Finally, a false spring warmed the air, teasing the snow into melting so the fields filled with slush and, beneath that, rich, beautiful mud and the first tufts of new grass for our grazing herds. It was a hint and a promise of better days to come.

Yet some promises are easily broken.

The mountains on either side of our camp were still asleep under thick white blankets of snow on the morning I slung a dented iron milk pail over my shoulder, my father snoring beneath a mound of hides. A constant chill had settled in his bones, so deep that the earth below our tent had trembled with his shivering the night before. I dropped a feather-light kiss onto his brow, and another on my mother’s forehead, wishing I could smooth away the frown lines etched so deep around her lips that not even sleep could erase them.

I stepped outside into the bracing air, heading toward the paddock. I’d never taken much interest in my father’s herd before, yet over the winter I’d studied all the animals, learning which ewes had the thickest wool and what horses had the softest hooves. My father had no sons or brothers to take me in when my parents passed to the sacred mountains, but I was determined not to meet the same fate as Temujin’s family, cast out for my worthlessness. I would provide my own milk and meat, and my gift of sight might prove valuable to my clan. Already girls came to me eager for their
futures, and one of the old women had sought me out to read the winds on the equinox to determine the best day to move to our spring camp.

I would not be cast aside again, not while I still drew breath in my lungs.

I neared the paddock and set down the pail, blowing onto my hands to warm them and stomping my feet. My father’s white mare whinnied and threw back her head, as if to warn me of an encroaching storm or nearby beast. She was too late, for the danger had already come.

Across the field, a straw yellow mare with a hairless tail snorted, steam curling from her nose in the chill morning air. On her back sat a man with broad shoulders and two black braids hanging down his back. I’d have recognized his gray eyes anywhere, stolen from some brooding wolf.

After seven years, Temujin had finally returned.

My blood turned to water and I dropped the milking pail to clutch the rough gate of the paddock, relishing the bite of the splinters as they burrowed deep into my skin. I knew then the feeling of a deer being stalked by a predator and wished that I could flee from what was to come. At the same time I wanted to unleash the pain and fury of the last seven years, to make Temujin suffer as I’d suffered. Instead, I stiffened my spine and hardened my face into stone, hoping he couldn’t hear the drumming of my traitorous heart.

And he wasn’t alone. Two men flanked him, one with a penetrating stare above his frothy white beard and a ragged squirrel-skin hat framing a weather-beaten face. The other I knew too well, the burning dark eyes set over aristocratic features as he sat stiff-backed in a polished leather saddle decorated with gold coins.

I shuddered and pulled my cloak tighter against Jamuka’s gaze, even as my heart thudded in my chest. I’d imagined this scene many times, yet the words I’d rehearsed fled, leaving my tongue empty.

Temujin swung his leg over the horse in one fluid motion, landing with a thud that shook the ground. He was built like a battering ram meant to conquer some far-off city. I stood rooted in place, powerless to stop my future as it strode toward me.

“Borte Ujin.” He reached out his hands, but when I didn’t move they
fell empty at his sides. Temujin was a hairsbreadth shorter than me, so I had to look down my nose to meet him eye to eye. “It took longer than I planned, but I’ve finally returned to you.”

My mind felt frozen in the grip of a winter storm, unable to comprehend this man before me. “When you left you promised my father that you’d return by the next full moon. It seems time got away from you.”

“Life sent me some unexpected surprises along the way.” He rubbed his wrists, and for a moment I imagined them circled by the rough wood of the cangue. “Still, I promised I’d return.” He glanced over his shoulder at Jamuka. “And I always keep my promises.”

I didn’t answer. A fragment of my soul cried out with joy that I hadn’t been forgotten, yet another piece of me wanted to hurl a handful of horse dung in Temujin’s face. Instead, I drew myself as tall as I could while I gathered my thoughts, refusing to betray a glimmer of emotion before these men.

The silver-bearded stranger inclined his head toward me, his black felts rustling like the wings of a vulture and rattling the beads sewn with jagged stitches onto his
deel
, bits of ivory earned by a shaman for successful visions. It was only then that I realized he was crippled, his right leg withered and bent at a painful angle.

Temujin caught my recoil at the man’s impure energy. “Teb Tengeri has been with me since I left the Tayichigud,” Temujin said. “It was he who decreed this was a favorable time to ride to you. Much has happened since we last spoke.”

I did my best to ignore Teb Tengeri’s probing stare and recalled the children who made a promise under the stars so many years ago, wondering now if anything of that naïve girl still remained.

“I heard of your brother,” I told Temujin, watching his expression carefully. “I was sorry to hear of his passage to the sacred mountains.”

His passage at Temujin’s hands. I stared at those hands now, stained with dark shadows like smears of blood. A flicker of emotion lit his eyes, but it passed too quickly to name.

“Begter was more thief than my half brother,” he said. “I could manage his thieving when he stole food from me, but when he stole meat that was
meant to feed my family . . .” His voice trailed off and his eyes grew distant; then he blinked and looked at me. “My brother, Khasar, and I killed him to save my mother and younger sister. I became a murderer to save my blood family.”

The way Temujin tilted his chin told me he’d do it all again if he had to. My first reaction was revulsion that he had shed his brother’s unclean blood and touched death, but when I imagined watching my own mother die of starvation, her eyes growing sunken as her flesh melted away . . .

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the inadequacy of the words, but Temujin only inclined his head toward Jamuka and the crippled man still inspecting me from atop his silver-white gelding.

“You already know my
anda
, Jamuka,” he said. “We’ve been blood brothers almost since I could ride a horse.”

“Yes,” I said, not meeting Jamuka’s eyes. “I believe you sent him to spy on me.”

Temujin had the decency to look flustered. “Not to spy, only to confirm what Teb Tengeri had predicted.”

I scowled. There was room for only one seer in each clan, and I would not relinquish my gift, certainly not in exchange for becoming Temujin’s wife.

“And what did Teb Tengeri predict?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest. A nod from Temujin, and his seer and Jamuka backed away, out of earshot. There was no doubt who led this band of men, although Temujin seemed an unlikely choice to lead a white-bone and an accomplished shaman.

Temujin turned to me, his eyes warm. “Teb Tengeri traced the sweep of stars on the last new moon and read the blood of a newly slaughtered goat to determine that now was the best time to fulfill my promise to you. I wasn’t taking any chances.”

The fury at his presumption screamed through my veins, but I turned to stroke the nose of my father’s mare, letting the gentle nuzzle of her lips soothe me. “I still carry the curse I once warned you of,” I finally said. “Would you bring a storm of death onto the steppes?”

Temujin shrugged. “My strength in battle has already been tested.
With you as my wife I will become a great and powerful khan, and our children will multiply and rule from the Great Lake to the Great Dry Sea.”

I snorted. “Did your shaman tell you that?”

“He may have.”

I knew not whether his seer was a fraud, only that my curse still clung to me like a branch of thorns. Temujin moved closer, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist. “I want you by my side, Borte Ujin. I had hoped you might still want me, too.”

“I don’t want anyone,” I snapped. “Least of all a man who slanders my name from mountains away.”

“What?” Temujin drew away, his eyes narrowing. “That’s a heavy charge to lay at my feet.”

“Heavy, but just,” I countered. “My mother and I were the only ones who knew of my curse until I spoke of it to you. Now it’s common knowledge from Lake Balkash to Mount Burkhan Khaldun.” I hoped that I’d been mistaken, but my heart fell as the color drained from his face.

“I did speak of your prophecy,” he admitted slowly. “But not in the way you think.” I gave him the insult of my back, but he caught my hand and moved so I had no choice but to face him. “Please,” he said. “Listen before you condemn me as the worst sort of villain.”

I gritted my teeth and yanked my arm away, but I didn’t leave.

He sighed. “I told my clan your secret after my father’s bones had been returned to the earth. I thought little of the prophecy, but the elders believed differently. They argued that I must renounce the bond with you and your people, but I refused. The next morning they broke camp and left us on the riverbank, unwilling to sully themselves with a future war.”

My hands trembled so much that I had to clasp them around my elbows. “That’s why you were abandoned?”

Temujin closed his eyes, as if to shut out a painful memory. “My mother chased them with my father’s Spirit Banner, yelling at them to honor their promise to provide for my father’s widow. A few hesitated, but the elders urged them on. We were left desolate, with only our shadows to stand at our sides.”

“Your family almost starved that winter,” I said, recalling the travelers’
stories. Numbness spread up my body, the acrid taste of guilt filling my mouth as I touched the wolf-tooth necklace I still wore at my neck. “Because of me.”

Temujin’s eyes lit when he saw the necklace, and he touched it, brushing the hollow at my throat. “We became experts at catching fish and digging wild onions.” His hand covered mine, square and rough like the rest of him. “But I always hoped it wasn’t all in vain.”

I struggled then. I’d spent the last seven years watching everyone around me live their lives while my days trickled away like drops of water off melting river ice. I wanted to live, to plunge into the vibrant, ever-changing world I’d always held at bay, but there was still the prophecy, a dark shadow I could never escape.

Temujin seemed to read my thoughts. “Jamuka has pledged that his clan will support me, and our marriage will enable me to seek an alliance with Ong Khan.” This was no small thing, for among the chiefs of the scattered steppe tribes, Ong Khan was viewed as the strongest leader. “Not long from now,” Temujin continued, “your gift of sight and your father’s herds will be prizes many men will seek to steal. Marrying me will not start the war you fear. In fact, it may avert it.”

He thought to persuade me, but instead his reminder of my parents made my soul heavy. It was my responsibility to care for my father and mother until they drew their last breaths. But then I recalled my mother’s words as I had tucked a blanket around her bone-thin legs only a few days ago.

“You worry about us overmuch,” she had said, her voice uncharacteristically soft as she patted my arm. I’d never forget her hands, the wisdom in the brown stains of age and bulging veins gained by years of hard work and sacrifice. “Too much, I think.”

“I worry because I love you,” I had said, unfastening her braid so I could brush her hair.

She gave an exasperated sigh and pushed away the bone comb, the wattle under her chin swaying. “Your father and I managed to care for ourselves before I carried you in my womb. I can guarantee that we’ll continue to do so even after you’re gone.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Mother. You know that.”

She tipped my chin to look at her, her blank eyes still managing to penetrate into my soul. “Your father and I will die warm in our beds, Borte Ujin. You needn’t worry about us.”