“Ah, Shaman, we have need of thy prayers tonight.”
The Shaman regarded him with black hatred, curling his thin lips. He was a handsome man, for all his gauntness. The fierceness of the desert was in his eyes, the wildness of the plains in his face. But his mouth was the mouth of a furtive coward.
He disregarded Kurelen. He stood beside Houlun, and he saw her dishevelled beauty. The sockets of his eyes flamed. He dropped his lids. He folded his hands in his sleeves, bent his head, and his lips moved in silent prayer. Kurelen, crouching on his chest, watched him, and slowly his smile grew broader and broader. He caught Houlun’s glance, and he winked at her. She attempted to appear scandalized, but could only smile in return.
The priest prayed aloud now. He lifted his eyes to the aperture of the yurt, through which the smoke of the brazier was coiling, like a gray and nebulous snake.
“O ye spirits of the sacred Blue Sky, deliver this woman’s womb of its fruit in short order, and let her sufferings be done! For she is the wife of our Khan, the noble Yesukai, and this is her first-born son, who will rule over us in good time! Let the blessed darkness of release fall over her eyelids; let her womb throw out its burden, and let her have peace.”
His voice was vindictive, for he had seen Houlun’s furtive smile at her brother. His hands clenched and unclenched in their sleeves. His face twisted with hatred.
He bent over her. He laid his shaking hands, gaunt and roped with veins, on her head and eyes. He drew his hands slowly and lingeringly over her breasts, stopped them upon her belly. He kneaded her belly gently, and she moved restlessly in her pain, watching him closely, meanwhile. Kurelen’s brow wrinkled; his mouth drew up under his nose. He leaned forward, his shoulders rising about his ears.
Suddenly the Shaman, bending over Houlun, glanced fiercely over his shoulder at her half-brother.
“It is not good for an unbeliever to be in this yurt, while I pray,” he said. “The spirits will not hear me.”
The two men regarded each other with fiery eyes. Houlun, interested, waited.
Then Kurelen rose. He took the Shaman by the arm. He smiled. “Get out,” he whispered.
Again they regarded each other with those fiery eyes. The Shaman sucked in his lips, but did not move. His nostrils flared out.
Kurelen slipped his hands within his garments, and drew out a short Chinese dagger, broad and sparkling, its hilt encrusted with turquoises. He pressed its point delicately against his finger. A drop of red blood sprang out under it. His glittering eyes fixed themselves upon the priest. Nothing could have been gentler than his expression.
The Shaman stood upright. He looked at Houlun, and then looked at her brother. Something in Kurelen’s face and smile terrified him. He bit his lips; rage contorted his gaunt features. He tried to assume a manner of dignity, but his breath, hoarse and hurried, could be heard plainly.
“If this woman dies, then I shall tell Yesukai that it was because of thee, and thy blasphemy, and because thou wouldst not allow me to be with her,” he said, his voice breaking in fury.
Very slowly and smilingly, Kurelen lifted the dagger, and placed its point against the priest’s breast. The Shaman tried not to wince as he felt its needle-point. Terror flared up into his eyes, like the reflection of a fire. He backed away, then, unable to look away from Kurelen, he moved backwards towards the flap of the yurt. He stumbled, fell backwards through the aperture, caught himself by clutching the sides of it. But to the last he looked only at Kurelen. His legs shook as he clambered down from the platform. The serving-women stood there, and they stared at him, and fell back from him. As he stalked away he heard Kurelen’s laughter, and Houlun’s, and he muttered curses upon them in the darkness.
Inside the yurt Kurelen said to his sister: “The filthy priest! What a tribe are they! But it is necessary, I suppose, that we allow them to exist. Otherwise, there would be no kings, and no oppressors of the people, to keep them in subjection.”
But Houlun’s pains had her again. Kurelen took her hand, and spoke seriously: “During my two years in Cathay, I sat in their academies. I listened to the dissertations of their physicians. Wilt thou trust me to deliver thee, Houlun?”
Houlun regarded him for a long moment, deeply, out of her dark pain and exhaustion. Then she answered simply: “Yes, I will trust thee.”
He bent over her, and kissed her on the forehead. Then he went to the door and called in the serving-women, who entered, muttering and apprehensive. He ordered them to give their mistress a large cup of wine. One of the women filled a silver Chinese cup with Yesukai’s hoarded Turkish wine, and Houlun obediently drank. Her eyes fixed themselves upon her brother over the chased rim. Again he ordered the cup filled, though the old serving-woman, Yasai, protested. And again Houlun drank. And yet again, and again.
A dim golden fog enveloped Houlun’s tormented senses. She lay back on her bed, and found her pains not only endurable, but dreamlike, as though another suffered, and not herself. The lime-coated walls of the yurt expanded, became a vast hall peopled with colored faces and bright robes, and music, and smiles and laughter. She relaxed, laughed, spoke loving nonsense to her brother, made fun of the painted Chinese figures which her drunkenness had endowed with febrile and fascinating life. The three serving-women, huddled together at the foot of the bed, muttered to each other, and eyed Kurelen menacingly. They listened to Houlun’s laughter, stared at her brilliant eyes and parted smiling lips.
Then Kurelen lifted a Baghdad lamp, which had been burning on a tabouret, and held it in his hands. He sat on his sister’s bed. He lifted the lamp so it gleamed vividly in his eyes. He began to speak very gently, and in a low monotonous voice:
“Do not look away from my eyes, Houlun. Thou canst not look away. So. Thou hast no pain. Thou art happy, and at peace. Dost thou hear me?”
She looked at his lighted eyes. Everything else fell away into vague and shifting confusion, but his eyes grew more vivid, more flame-filled. There was nothing else in all the world. His form, his face, were lost in shadow, did not exist. But his gaze compelled her, held her in hypnotic power. Somewhere she could hear the passionate beating of a drum, and did not know it was her own heart. The red light of the brazier, refreshed with dried animal droppings, flared up and faded, flared up and filled all the yurt with its bloody reflection. The serving-women were stricken immobile and silent with fear. They could not move, could look only at the deformed black-faced man sitting on the bed, the bright lamp in his hands, and the beautiful woman with her tranced face, her long body covered with the embroidered film of her silken robe. And the great winds outside, as though mysteriously enchanted, fell into silence also.
Houlun spoke in a clear but faint voice, not looking away from her brother’s eyes. “Yes, Kurelen, I hear thee.”
He spoke again, monotonously, gently: “Soon thou wilt sleep, and wilt not awaken until I call thee. Thou wilt dream dreams of our home, and our father. Thou wilt ride again with me, over the snow-covered steppes, on our Turkoman ponies, and we will see the northern lights flashing in the black sky. And when thou dost awake, thou wilt be refreshed and happy, remembering no pain, and having only joy in thy son.”
His illuminated eyes expanded before her dreaming and transfixed gaze, until they filled all the universe. Her soul seemed to stream out of her body like wisps of cloud, rushing towards him with a passion of love, desiring only to be lost in him. His eyes were like suns to her, in boundless and chaotic darkness.
Her arms relaxed, fell to her sides. One hand drooped over the side of the bed; the long fingers brushed the carpet. Her hair and red lips gained an intense life in the gloom.
Very slowly, still murmuring, Kurelen laid aside the lamp. He bent over his sister, took her face between his two hands, and gazed into her half-closed eyes.
“Sleep, Houlun,” he whispered. “Sleep.”
Her lids dropped. They lay on her cheeks, like fringed scimitars. He laid her head on the bed. She breathed gently, as if p
rofoundly asleep. Kurelen sat and watched her. He heeded the serving-women no more than if they had been the painted figures on the walls. Nor did they move more than if they had been those figures, for they were paralyzed with terror at this strange scene.
Then Kurelen inserted his thin dark hands into his sister’s body and seized the head of her child, which had become wedged in the ring of her pelvis. The serving-women, horrified, but still full of terror, sucked in their breath. Very delicately he moved the pulsing head; the bones and flesh relaxed about it. Blood and water gushed forth. Then Kurelen, moving so delicately, so carefully, brought forth the child, inch by inch. It was not half-freed from its mother’s body before it wailed aloud, lustily, and threshed its strong arms. Houlun slept, dreaming, smiling, her lips parted, her teeth glistening in lamp and firelight, her garments stained with blood. The women leaned forward, peering and blinking.
“It is a son,” said Kurelen, aloud.
The child lay on the bed now, kicking and screaming, still tied to his mother by his cord. Kurelen sat and admired the child, playfully moved its head from side to side. “It is a fine fellow,” he remarked. In one of the child’s fists was clenched a lump of congealed blood.
He called to Yasai, without glancing at her. “Wash the child, and cover it. And first, cut the cord.”
Yasai snatched up the infant, and glowered at Kurelen, as though he threatened it. Another woman cut the cord, and ministered to Houlun. But Houlun still slept. Rugs covered her feet; her cheek was pressed to her bed, and she continued to smile, as though absorbed in the sweetest dreams. The child wailed and screamed. And now the winds returned, fiercer and wilder than ever.
Kurelen stood up. All at once he appeared exhausted. He seemed broken, drained of vitality. While the women busied themselves with the child, exclaiming and clucking, and ignoring the man, he stood beside his sister and watched her for a long time. Finally one of the women plucked him impertinently by the sleeve of his long woolen coat.
“Wilt thou not wake her now, and let her see her son?”
Kurelen was silent for so long that the woman believed he had not heard her. His face was strange and dark, full of meditative sadness, and something grim besides. His hands were folded in his sleeves.
“No,” he said at last, “I shall not wake her yet. Let her dream. That is the best of life.”
Chapter 3
Yesukai rode in just after the red and purple desert dawn, accompanied by his wide and savage riders, his captives and his loot.
Kurelen, standing at the door of his sister’s yurt, watched his brother-in-law ride in. He had no particular aversion or liking for Yesukai. Nor did he have disdain, for he thought Yesukai’s kind extremely useful. His was rather the lazy and amused tolerance of the intelligent man for the simple, oxlike man, who provided sustenance whereby the intelligent person might live without undue labor. There was even a kind of indifferent gratitude in him for Yesukai. He professed to take his sister’s husband seriously, thereby assuring himself of continued moderate comforts and peace of mind. Sometimes he baited Yesukai, but with discretion, for, as he said, only a foolish horse quarrels with his oat-bag. A clever man contrived to pass his life with as little exertion as possible and as little pain. Existence was a painful affair; only a fool complicated it with strife and dissension, for the evanescent comfort of occasionally speaking his mind or fighting. If Kurelen spoke his mind at all, publicly, it was in such euphemistic terms that only his sister, and perhaps the Shaman, understood. Yesukai was too elemental, too guileless to comprehend at all; Kurelen had first made sure of this.
Kurelen, who loved beauty, and the rhythm that was beauty itself, commented to himself again, as always, that there was a flow and poetry about the person and movements of this petty noble of the endless steppes. There he rode into his ordu on his fierce stallion, his lithe young body clad in a long wool coat, his pointed hat high on his proud-held head, a Turkish scimitar stuck through his blue leather belt. It was always evident that he thought, in his simplicity, that he was a great khan, and that his tiny confederation of tribes and smoldering clans was a terrible nomadic empire. Kurelen, who knew the mighty civilization of Cathay, suave and beautiful and adult and decadent, smiled at the pride of this baghatur, this childlike adventurer of the plateaus and the desert. The theatres of Cathay often produced deft and corrupt comedies, in which the ridiculous buffoon, decked out in a prodigious number of yak tails, was one of these “corporals,” one of these turbulent and amusing barbarians. Yet Kurelen admitted to himself that all the involved beauty of Chinese paintings, depraved and painted and gilded though they were, was not half so splendid as one of these barbarians. Under Yesukai’s high pointed hat, which was made of felt, was a youthful and handsome face as untamed, yet as simple, as an innocent beast’s. The restless eyes were savage and uncivilized, but there was the clarity of the desert in them. The skin was dark and bronzed, but it was the color of desert hills with the sun fallen behind them. He had a nose like the beak of a bird of prey, but it gave his expression a primitive fierceness that possessed something of grandeur. His back was straight, his waist slender. As he wheeled and cavorted in the dust, Kurelen admired the perfect magnificence of his posture, so unaffected, so artlessly proud.
Yesukai was a reserved man, but this morning it was evident he was excited, for all his efforts at composure. His warriors and hunters whooped and screamed, and brandished whips, lariats, and weapons. Their garments blew back; they waved their hats; their dark bearded lips grinned joyously. Their haul had been excellent. They had encountered a Tatar caravan, which they had discovered was a convoy for Karait and Naiman traders on the way from Cathay to a Karait town. The caravan consisted of horses and camels, laden with tea, spices, silver, silk, carpets, manuscripts and musical instruments, embroidered garments, jewelry, turquoises, and jewel-encrusted weapons, and many other luxurious items, the excreta of civilization. Among the traders were a Buddhist monk and a Nestorian Christian priest, the first as a missionary and teacher, the second the last of a band of missionaries which had been slaughtered coming from India to Hsi-Hsia. He had begged, in Cathay, to be allowed to go along with some caravan to his home near the Sea of Aral, and as he agreed to carry his own food and supplies, the permission had been granted.
The Mongols had dispatched Tatars and traders with great facility, after a ferocious fight. The Tatars and Karaits were brave fighters, but they were outnumbered. Yesukai had spared the priests, for he was even more superstitious than the average Mongol, and besides, the Buddhist asserted, upon questioning, that he was a deft weaver, and the Nestorian that he was an excellent tanner of hides. Many of the traders had brought their wives with them, and Yesukai carefully picked the fairest and youngest, and dispatched the rest with their husbands. He had selected an extraordinarily beautiful Karait girl for himself, his second wife, and he had brought her back to his ordu. along with his other loot, on the back of a camel. The girl wept without ceasing, and wept loudest whenever Yesukai looked at her, which was often. But he was not deceived that she was inconsolable.
All the Mongols who had not taken the flocks to pasture swarmed out to greet the returning lord and his warriors, and exclaim over the loot. The Mongol women fingered the silks and put on the silver bracelets, and snatched, and quarrelled with each other, jealously. The old men cackled sensually over the women, licking their lips and rubbing their bodies, enviously, for they knew that these women were for the warriors, and not for them. One of them was a woman of the Turkomans, and she sat proudly on her camel, unspeaking, her veil fallen thickly over her face. The warriors, their shoulders and backs loaded, began to carry their portions into their yurts, where their women could soon be heard exclaiming gleefully. The children seized on the musical instruments, and soon the ordu resounded with the din of discordant sounds, which mingled with the screams of the camels, the shrilling of the horses, the hoarse and jubilant voices of the men, and the excited barks of the dogs. The frightful heat o
f the desert was already shimmering over the tent village and the red and jagged distant hills; the river glittered, yellow-gray and sluggish, wild birds fluttering over it, and over its narrow strips of grayish fertile borders. Campfires were burning, and the odors of cooking mutton filled the dry air.
Yesukai, momentarily forgetting the Karait girl, came straight to the yurt of his wife. Kurelen met him on the platform. The crippled man smiled into the face of the dust-stained barbarian. “Thou hast a son,” he said. “It is a memorable day, this birth of the son of a great khan, in the year of the Swine, in the Calendar of the Twelve Beasts.” He smiled again, reverently, for Kurelen considered flattery the cheapest yet most efficacious coin with which to buy ease and freedom from labor. Had he not said: “The fool prepares; the wise man eats”?
Yesukai’s broad tight mouth opened in a smile of childlike gratification. He thrust past Kurelen, who was obliged to step aside. He entered the yurt. Houlun still slept, her cheek in her hand. She, too, was smiling, strangely, deeply. A serving-woman squatted on the floor, the swaddled and screaming child in her arms. Yesukai brought force and turbulence into the yurt with him; in the gloom his barbarian’s eyes sparkled fiercely. He looked only at his son; with a shout he raised it high in his arms. He looked about him with a savage smile. He cried out, lifting the child towards the roof of the yurt, as one who presents a treasure to a god, for the god’s amazed delight, thought Kurelen, who was standing in the aperture of the door.
Yesukai exultantly called upon the gods to witness the strength and beauty of his firstborn, descendant of the Bour-chikoun, the Gray-eyed Men, and more ancient descendant of the blue wolf who had conceived the Yakka Mongols. This was the descendant of Kabul Khan, who had laughed in the face of the Emperor of Cathay, and had impudently tweaked him by the beard. This child would be the greatest of them all, for was not his father’s sworn brother the mighty Khan of the Karaits, Toghrul, most formidable of the desert hordes, the one known among the Christians as Prester John? The whole Gobi would tremble at his tread; the red and white hills would melt before him; the rivers would rise and make new pastures for his herds, where only desert smoldered before! The treasures of Cathay, the fairest women of Tibet and India and Samarkand and Baghdad, would all be his. Cities would fall before him! Ah! Yesukai’s eyes grew fiercer and wilder. He replaced the bellowing infant in his nurse’s arms. He must see the Shaman at once, for surely the Chief Shaman, Kokchu, would testify that he spoke truth. No doubt, observed Kurelen wryly to himself. He regarded Yesukai with detached curiosity. The barbarian’s vitality and passion seemed to fill the yurt with a wind, so that Kurelen would not have been surprised had the felt separated itself from the wattled rods and been violently blown to the heavens.