The Tiger Queens (7 page)

I’d cleared my throat then and blinked to ease the stinging in my eyes. Only now did I realize she’d seen this day and had known the choice I would face. I suddenly yearned to travel to the distant Onan River, to become Temujin’s senior wife and rule over his clan, yet to even wish for such a thing felt like a betrayal of everything I knew.

“You already have a seer,” I said to Temujin, clinging to my last excuse. “I won’t give up my sight.”

“Of course you won’t,” Temujin said. “I have great plans, Borte, large enough for at least two seers.”

I had no more arguments left beneath me, as if I’d been standing on lake ice that had melted out from under my feet. Still, I would not answer him now.

“Your plans will have to wait,” I said, “until I make my decision.”

“I’ll wait, then,” Temujin said, his voice so full of happiness that I almost smiled. “As long as it takes.”

I was tempted to tell him he’d wait seven years as I’d done, but I bit my tongue. I knew not what my answer would be, but he’d have it before the next full moon. Anything longer than that would be a cruelty to both of us.

*   *   *

I spent the next days with my eyes closed, listening for guidance from the spirits in the winds and in the beating of my own heart, but my ears were so full of the chatter and whispers of my clan that I had to put distance between myself and the stifling circle of
gers
, where Temujin’s hearty laugh rang out too often for my liking. I left then to sleep under the stars and read the omens of the Eternal Blue Sky, taking with me only an old horse blanket and a felt satchel of dried horsemeat and a waterskin my mother packed for me.

I camped on the banks of a river swollen with spring meltwater, relishing the peace and tranquility of the rushing waters and the occasional jump of a silver trout. One night it rained, soaking through my blanket so I smelled of wet sheep the next morning, shivering and alone.

And I knew then that I didn’t wish to face an eternity of lonely days.

I didn’t love Temujin, but he intrigued me, and my anger at him had faded since I’d realized the accident of his betrayal of me. He and I had both suffered while we were apart; perhaps together we might be stronger than we were on our own.

And so I packed the remnants of my mother’s food in the faded blanket and hiked all morning back to camp. Along the way was a deep lake, one still covered with a thick sheet of ice that wouldn’t break until the hillsides were carpeted with fresh green. Two figures glided along the ice’s dull surface, and I squinted, recognizing Temujin’s solid form and then Jamuka’s tall silhouette. They moved over the ice with polished bones strapped to the bottoms of their boots, a common winter pastime for children. The sight of two grown men skating together brought an unbidden smile to my face. A peal of Temujin’s laughter rang out, and for a moment I imagined them as boys shortly after Temujin’s father died, sensed a bond that went deeper than their taking each other’s blood into their mouths during their
anda
ceremony. I pulled my hat tighter over my ears and hurried on my way, not wishing to be seen.

I stopped by my mother’s
ger
first, where she proceeded to fill my ears with arguments against my decision. My father was easier to persuade, for Temujin had wordlessly taken my place caring for our herds during my absence. My cheeks flushed at that, for I’d given little thought to who would assist my father while I was at the river. Finally, I retraced my steps and went in search of Temujin. I found him seated by the lake, whittling what appeared to be a fishing pole from a bare birch branch.

“There are no fish this time of year,” I said, scowling first at him and then at the ice.

Temujin’s hand jerked at my voice, and he almost dropped the pole. “You’ve returned, Borte Ujin.”

“I have,” I said, sitting down next to him and stretching my legs before me. The bone skates he’d worn earlier lay discarded by his feet, but there was no sign of Jamuka.

“I hate fish,” I said, casting a glance at his pole.

He smiled. “I’d never eaten them until after my father died. They’re not so bad, especially cooked with a little sheep fat.”

I cringed then, for I’d forgotten that Temujin and his family had barely survived that first winter after Yesugei’s death. Without fish from the creeks and roots dug from the riverbeds, Temujin would be only a pile of bones and dust now.

The question was plain on his face, but I refused to answer it. Instead, I closed my eyes, feeling the caress of the breeze and hearing the cry of a hawk far off. I opened my eyes to the softness of Temujin’s expression, reminding me of the young boy I’d once made a promise to under the stars, and I drew a deep breath, knowing that this decision could only be my own. “I’ve decided to keep my promise,” I said.

Temujin’s eyes sparked, sudden flecks of silver in the gray. “Does that mean you’ll become my wife?”

He didn’t need my consent, only my father’s, but perhaps Temujin was more considerate than I gave him credit for. I could only nod my answer—the words were too heavy to speak again—but Temujin gave a sudden whoop of joy and lifted me to my feet, spinning us around until I was laughing with him.

He kissed me then, a kiss full of impatience for life. My body responded against my will, and I recalled the power this man had possessed even as a child, the ability to draw people to him. I wondered for a moment if perhaps he had managed to cast that net over me, but the heady pleasure at being wanted eclipsed my worry.

Then Temujin broke the kiss and looked at me with a new emotion in his eyes. It took me a moment to recognize the desire there, laid bare for all to see. “Jamuka was right when he said I’d be lucky to win you a second time,” he murmured.

I stiffened at the mention of Jamuka, but Temujin didn’t notice.

“I am indeed blessed by the Eternal Blue Sky and the Golden Light of the Sun,” he said, cupping my face as if I was something precious. “Today I gain not only a wise and beautiful wife, but also an alliance with the greatest khan on the steppes.”

Temujin stood to gain all. And yet I wondered if perhaps there was much we might still lose.

*   *   *

We lingered only until the new moon, an auspicious occasion for new beginnings, but scarcely enough time to prepare for the new life that awaited me. Although the ground under our feet changed as we migrated with the seasons, my mother’s
ger
was the only home I’d ever known. Now I was to leave it behind, a thought that made my hands tremble and forced the air from my lungs.

My mother would travel with us, but my father was too ill to manage the entire journey. He would turn back at the river border of our spring camp, returning to our empty
ger
and the colts Temujin had offered as my bride-price. I breathed deeply of the woodsmoke of my father’s soul, memorizing each wrinkle of his face and the flecks of copper in his eyes.

“
Bayartai
, Borte Ujin,” my father said.

Good-bye.

Those words were uttered only when someone was dying or leaving on a journey from which they would never return. We both knew this was the last time we would be together until we greeted each other on the crest of the sacred mountains. Suddenly it was difficult to swallow.

“You have made me proud every day since you fell from your mother’s womb,” he continued, pressing his wrinkled forehead to mine. “You’ll make me prouder still in the days to come.”

He released me then, inclining his head to the man standing a respectful distance behind me. “Take care of her,” he said to Temujin, offering him a single feathered arrow, carved by his own hands and symbolic of the fact that Temujin would be head of my family now.

“I will.” Temujin clasped the quarrel to his heart and held out his hand for me. I lingered for a moment, longing for nothing more than to remain in the protective circle of my father’s arms.

But we all must face our futures. I squeezed my father’s hand one final time and turned to the man who would become my husband, lifting my eyes to the east and the new life that awaited me.

W
e traveled with Temujin and his men for many days, my mother and I falling exhausted into our bedrolls each night and rising with the sun every morning. This was a stark land, where winter ice still covered the Sengur River, the forests were mere clumps of trees, and the grasses became more sparse the closer we traveled to Temujin’s homeland. We arrived to find the
gers
of his clan nestled at the base of the Burgi cliff, close enough to the river to draw water but far enough away to avoid any unseasonable ice floes that might be pushed overland as the river broke apart. I counted only ten people in all as we dismounted our horses, including his mother, Hoelun, and his father’s faded second wife, Sochigel, whose only remaining beauty was the exquisite moccasins beaded by her own hands. I would soon discover that Sochigel had fallen silent when her eldest son died, refusing to speak now that the light had gone out of her life.

Hoelun enjoyed a happy reunion with my mother, then circled me and smacked her lips, revealing several missing teeth.

“A plain face, but with fire in her eyes,” she said, echoing the words of her husband from long ago.

That wasn’t the first time I wished the spirits had gifted me with eyes like mud.

A hunchbacked crone shuffled to my side, bringing a whiff of stale
urine that made me cringe. A childless widow since her only son was killed in a raid, Mother Khogaghchin had been alone on the steppes when Hoelun found her and took her into her own tent. The old woman wore a leather girdle to keep from wetting herself, having long ago lost the power to control her waters. Her grin revealed gums as pink as a newborn’s and a whiff of the foulest breath I’d ever smelled. “She has good hips, too,” she said. “We’ll get plenty of foals from this one.”

“My daughter is more valuable than a broodmare.” My mother’s tone was biting as she first felt and then cut the ropes of the pack her horse had carried all this way. Temujin’s clan gave a collective gasp as she shook out a stunning black sable coat, a fur more valuable than a herd of the fastest horses. She held it up to the Eternal Blue Sky and then held it out in Temujin’s direction. “Dei the Wise and his wife, Chotan, wish to offer this sacred gift to the husband of our daughter, Borte Ujin.”

Temujin stared at her for a moment and reached out to touch the fur, its black hairs quivering in the breeze. He shook his head. “This is too rich a prize, even for such a woman as Borte Ujin,” he said. “I cannot accept such a gift from those who have already given so much.”

My mother pressed the fur closer. “You must take it, to give to Ong Khan.”

Temujin lifted his gaze to mine. This was no gift, then, but the price of peace. Ong Khan would never refuse such a gift and would pledge to protect Temujin and his clan, come what may. This exquisite gift might be enough to keep my prophecy at bay.

“Chotan is right,” Jamuka said. “It is a fitting gift, and one that will bring you renown and a glorious alliance with the khan.”

Still Temujin hesitated, but Teb Tengeri finally dismounted his silver-white horse and hobbled over, inspecting the fur while leaning heavily on his cane. “This gift shall indeed bring you good fortune,” he said.

I scowled at the crippled shaman. Teb Tengeri had separated himself from us during the journey, riding alone and sharing Jamuka’s fire at night. Only now, surrounded by the familiar curve of the river and the stark outline of the mountains he knew so well, did the holy man with the withered leg feel safe enough to assert himself. It was then that I knew Teb
Tengeri for the coward he was and first recognized the hunger for power in his soul.

I recognized it because now that I’d seen the camp I would rule one day, I felt its foreign teeth gnawing at my heart as well.

I shifted, blocking Temujin’s view of his shaman, and said, “Good fortune matters naught. This is a fitting gift for the man who has pledged to protect me, despite what storms may wait on the horizon.”

Temujin took my meaning and finally accepted the fur. “I am humbled,” he said to my mother. “I swear to you that I shall shelter Borte Ujin from any storm, and the steppes shall bask in the warmth of her smiles.”

My mother narrowed her eyes at him in such a way that my skin prickled with dread, for despite her blindness, it was as if she was seeing him for the first time. “You shall fail her, Temujin of the Borijin,” she said, her voice coming from far away. “Yet without you, she cannot become the woman she was meant to be.”

There was a stunned breath of silence before my mother heaved a great sigh, listing dangerously. I caught her arm, frightened by the way she leaned on me. “My mother is weary from the long journey,” I said. “Is there somewhere she can rest?”

Temujin nodded, although he didn’t meet my eyes. “She can remain in my mother’s
ger
until I’ve built her tent.”

“Thank you,” I said, pulling my mother in that direction and feeling the angry glares directed like spears at my spine. I pulled her close and hissed in her ear, “Why would you say such a thing?”

Yet my mother didn’t answer, and when I glanced back it was to find only one man staring at me.

Teb Tengeri’s eyes were narrowed into a murderous stare, aimed right at my heart.

*   *   *

No one spoke of my mother’s outburst, and she recovered well enough to duck into my
ger
on the morning of my marriage, ushering in a breath of fresh morning air. The cranes still slept and horses snorted in their slumbers, but my eyes were swollen from a sleepless night spent alone in my new tent. The wedding ceremony would take place in the spring breeze
at first light, when the wildflowers open their faces to the sun. A time of new beginnings.

Yet my dreams had been full of late snows and spring hail trampling and killing the happy blossoms.

The day before, the river ice had broken and we women had sweated next to each other to build my
ger
while the men hunted red deer and spotted marmot for the wedding feast. As my mother-in-marriage, Hoelun had pounded the felt panels for my tent with her own hands, and over the years, I would beat in new wool as the panels wore out, slowly making the
ger
mine with my own sweat. I tried not to linger over the embarrassment that my new family couldn’t afford proper doors for their tents, settling for a flap of wool to replace the carved wooden door only the bountiful southern valleys could provide.

My mother stoked the fire, adding spruce branches to purify my soul, and worked to ready me for the wedding, her gnarled hands suddenly deft as she worked by feel and memory. She undid the knot of hair I’d worn as a girl, separating and plaiting it into three sections. The braids were stiffened with goat fat and then twisted around a wooden stick and fastened with a leather lace. Her fingers brushed the worn leather thong at my neck, lingering on the white wolf tooth. For a moment I thought she would set it aside, but then she moved on without a word.

Off came my brown skirt with the hole on the hem and my worn leather boots. I stepped into a red felted skirt embroidered to match the flowered belt she cinched around my waist, the same worn by my mother and my mother’s mother, generations of nervous women awaiting their future husbands. Next came the leather cone headdress topped with white feathers and horsehair strung with mismatched beads and precious red and pink silk ribbons hanging to my chin. Holding one hand so I could balance the headdress with the other, she helped slip my feet into thin red felt slippers, the toes embroidered with elaborate flowers and upturned in the traditional manner so as not to injure the Earth Mother when I walked.

“Sochigel made them for you,” my mother whispered. The gesture made my eyes sting and I struggled to swallow.

My mother clasped my shoulders, her opaque eyes shining as she
sniffed both sides of my face in order to carry my scent, and part of my soul, with her. After today, I would no longer be a child, but a woman with a family of my own.

“Hoelun will be your mother now,” she said, pressing her cheek to mine in a final good-bye. “But you come from a family of seers. Remember that gift and use it well.”

“I will,” I said, blinking hard and flinging myself into her arms as the women of Temujin’s family burst into the tent. Outside, the air hummed with the deep vibrations of men’s
hoomii
singing, and the first blush of dawn lit the sky.

Then my mother and Hoelun took my hands and led me out into the cold air, to whatever the future held for me.

*   *   *

Hoelun sprinkled milk on the ground to begin the ceremony while the men’s voices from deep in their throats made the very air quaver. My mother passed the horn cup to Temujin, demonstrating her adoption of him as her son, and then he scattered the remainder of the milk over the earth. My husband stood especially tall in his red headdress, his skin tanned from the sun and his dark hair loose down his back. We faced each other and clasped hands while our mothers wound a single piece of blue yarn around our shoulders, a reminder that we were now bound together. Together, we dropped to our knees nine times to honor the Golden Light of the Sun, the Eternal Blue Sky, the rivers that were the lifeblood of the Earth Mother and the revered mountain Burkhan Khaldun, the khan of all mountains. Temujin shook out a red felt cloak and draped it reverently over my shoulders before allowing me to help him into the black sable jacket. Then we touched foreheads and breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of each other, sharing our very souls.

Temujin was now a part of me, come what may.

The wedding celebration afterward was small, but for the way Temujin’s family acted, one might have thought Ong Khan himself had just taken a new wife. A day-old lamb was butchered and Hoelun made the traditional sacrifice to the fire spirits, offering a small piece of purple
intestine, a tiny chunk of heart, a strip of meat, and one rib bone to pacify the flames.

Afterward, my new brothers stripped down to their breeches to circle each other in an impromptu wrestling match while taking long gulps of fermented mare’s milk. I did my best to avoid looking at the smooth muscles of Jamuka’s chest, the bare skin I’d once touched, as he took off his
deel
and shirt to join them.
An old horse had been slaughtered earlier in the day, so the meat now cooked in a giant iron cauldron over a roaring fire. I sat between mute Sochigel and my blind mother, glad for once that she couldn’t see as Temujin’s entire family slurped
airag
straight from the skin jugs and sucked the marrow from their soup bones.

The youngest member of the family approached me then, Temujin’s younger sister, Temulun, and thrust a handful of grass and wilted spring poppies at me. “These are for you,” she said, her shy smile revealing two missing milk teeth.

“Thank you,” I said, making a show of sniffing the blossoms. “Poppies are my favorite flower.”

“Mine, too,” she said. “But tonight you’re even prettier than they are.”

She scampered off before I could answer, leaving me smiling into the posy.

Temujin had shrugged off the sable jacket, shedding the black fur to reveal the thick chest and mass of muscle hidden beneath, and joined the wrestlers. He and Jamuka grappled together, laughing good-naturedly as they took turns dropping each other to the ground. I listened with half an ear as Hoelun recounted to my mother the story of when he and Jamuka took each other’s blood for the first time, lauding Jamuka’s loyalty to Temujin and Temujin’s adoration of the
anda
who was closer to him than his own brothers. I tried to close my ears, but then Hoelun shifted to a new topic.

“The Tayichigud attacked us after my husband went to the sacred mountains.” Her voice shuddered like a larch in a winter storm. “They tortured Temujin by locking him in a cangue and forcing him to beg for the very air he breathed. I doubt he would have survived had it not been
for Jamuka’s support. His
anda
saved him when he could no longer save himself.”

I didn’t care to think of the bond between my husband and his blood brother, of the kiss I’d once shared with Jamuka. I stared at the ground, glad that not even my mother or Teb Tengeri could read my thoughts.

Two scuffed boots entered my vision and I looked up to see my husband, his chest sweat slicked and dusty from wrestling, and bearing a bloody scrape across one shoulder. He held out a hand for me, the fire in his eyes making my stomach buck like a colt.

Somehow, I managed to take his hand and stumble to my feet. I did my best to ignore the heat of Jamuka’s eyes on my back, to keep from my nose the scent of pine I remembered from another celebration not long ago.

I would carry the soul of only one man to my marriage bed.

Temujin tied a leather and ivory necklace over my wolf tooth and fastened matching bracelets on my wrists. Two fires to keep evil spirits at bay roared merrily outside my new
ger
, symbolic of the trials we would face together, and we walked between them hand in hand, purifying ourselves with their heat before entering our new home.

This would be the tent where my children would be born, and one day, its walls would be my final sight before I drew my last breath.

Temujin and I ducked inside while everyone else pushed in behind us. A cheerful fire crackled in the center and thick wisps of smoke twisted through the hole in the roof, obscuring the rope that crisscrossed down the far wall in a reminder of the many paths our lives might take. My eyes stung to see new rugs on the floor, ones woven with a familiar pattern of yellow flowers like the fields back home. My mother’s final gift.

I dutifully prepared the salt tea that a bride traditionally offered to her guests, then bowed my head as the men and women drained the cups. Someone pressed a jug of
airag
into my hand and toothless Mother Khogaghchin grinned up at me. “One good drink and you won’t even feel the pain, my goat.”

It would take more than a jug of mare’s milk to numb the flutter of panic in my chest, but I took a long swallow, letting it scald my throat. Hoelun bent before me, placing a polished black stone at my feet.