LITMIR.BIZ

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messenger bowed low before leaving the ger, taking a relieved breath as soon as he was out of the smoky atmosphere. Once more, he wondered if his khan understood what he had promised with his words. The Uighur ruled themselves no longer.

      Looking around at the vast encampment, the messenger saw twinkling lights for miles. At a word from the man he had met, they could be sent in any direction. Perhaps the khan of the Uighurs had not had a choice.

      Hoelun dipped her cloth into a bucket and laid it on her son’s brow. Temuge had always been weaker than his brothers and it seemed an added burden that he fell sick more than Khasar or Kachiun, or Temujin himself. She smiled wryly at the thought that she must now call her son ‘Genghis’. It meant the ocean and was a beautiful word twisted beyond its usual meaning by his ambition. He who had never seen the sea in his twenty-six years of life. Not that she had herself, of course.

      Temuge stirred in his sleep, wincing as she probed his stomach with her fingers.

      ‘He is quiet now. Perhaps I will leave for a time,’ Borte said.

      Hoelun glanced coldly at the woman Temujin had taken as a wife. Borte had given him four perfect sons and for a time Hoelun had thought they would be as sisters, or at least friends. The younger woman had once been full of life and excitement, but events had twisted her somewhere deep, where it could not be seen. Hoelun knew the way Temujin looked at the eldest boy. He did not play with little Jochi and all but ignored him. Borte had fought against the mistrust, but it had grown between them like an iron wedge into strong wood. It did not help that his three other boys had all inherited the yellow eyes of his line. Jochi’s were a dark brown, as black as his hair in dim light. While Temujin doted on the others, it was Jochi who ran to his mother, unable to understand the coldness in his father’s face when he looked at him. Hoelun saw the young woman glance at the door to the ger, no doubt thinking of her sons.

      ‘You have servants to put them to bed,’ Hoelun chided. ‘If Temuge wakes, I will need you here.’

      As she spoke, her fingers drifted over a dark knot under the skin of her son’s belly, just a few fingerbreadths above the dark hair of his groin. She had seen such an injury before, when men lifted weights too heavy for them. The pain was crippling, but most of them recovered. Temuge did not have that kind of luck, and never had. He looked less like a warrior than ever as he had grown to manhood. When he slept, he had the face of a poet and she loved him for that. Perhaps because his father would have rejoiced to see the men the others had become, she had always found a special tenderness for Temuge. He had not grown ruthless, though he had endured as much as they. She sighed to herself and felt Borte’s eyes on her in the gloom.

      ‘Perhaps he will recover,’ Borte said. Hoelun winced. Her son blistered under the sun and rarely carried a blade bigger than an eating knife. She had not minded as he began to learn the histories of the tribes, taking them in with such speed that the older men were amazed at his recall. Not everyone could be skilled with weapons and horses, she told herself. She knew he hated the sneers and jibes that followed him in his work, though there were few who dared risk Genghis hearing of them. Temuge refused to mention the insults and that was a form of courage all its own. None of her sons lacked spirit.

      Both women looked up as the small door of the ger opened. Hoelun frowned as she saw Kokchu enter and bow his head to them. His fierce eyes darted over the supine figure of her son and she fought not to show her dislike, not even understanding her own reaction. There was something about the shaman that set her teeth on edge and she had ignored the messengers he had sent. For a moment, she drew herself up, struggling between indignation and weariness.

      ‘I did not ask for you,’ she said coldly.

      Kokchu seemed oblivious to the tone.

      ‘I sent a slave to beg a moment with you, mother to khans. Perhaps he has not yet arrived. The whole camp is talking of your son’s illness.’

      Hoelun felt the shaman’s gaze fasten on her, waiting to be formally welcomed, as she looked at Temuge once more. Always he was watching, as if, inside, someone else looked out. She had seen how he pushed himself into the inner circles around Genghis and she could not like him. The warriors might reek of sheep turds, mutton fat and sweat, but those were the smells of healthy men. Kokchu carried an odour of rotting meat, though whether it was from his clothes or his flesh, she could not tell.

      Faced with her silence, he should have left the ger, or risked her calling for guards. Instead, he spoke brazenly, somehow certain that she would not send him away.

      ‘I have some healing skill, if you will let me examine him.’

      Hoelun tried to swallow her distaste. The shaman of the Olkhun’ut had only chanted over Temuge, without result.

      ‘You are welcome in my home, Kokchu,’ she said at last. She saw him relax subtly and could not shake the feeling of being too close to something unpleasant.

      ‘My son is asleep. The pain is very great when he is awake and I want him to rest.’

      Kokchu crossed the small ger and crouched down beside the two women. Both edged unconsciously away from him.

      ‘He needs healing more than rest, I think.’ Kokchu peered down at Temuge, leaning close to smell his breath. Hoelun winced in sympathy as he reached out to Temuge’s bare stomach and probed the area of the lump, but she did not stop him. Temuge groaned in his sleep and Hoelun held her breath.

      After a time, Kokchu nodded to himself.

      ‘You should prepare yourself, old mother. This one will die.’

      Hoelun jerked out a hand and caught the shaman by his thin wrist. Her strength surprised him.

      ‘He has wrenched his gut, shaman. I have seen it many times before. Even on ponies and goats have I seen it and they always live.’

      Kokchu undid her shaking clasp with his other hand. It pleased him to see fear in her eyes. With fear, he could own her, body and soul. If she had been a young Naiman mother, he might have sought sexual favours in return for healing her son, but in this new camp, he needed to impress the great khan. He kept his face still as he replied.

      ‘You see the darkness of the lump? It is a growth that cannot be cut out. Perhaps if it were on the skin, I would burn it off, but it will have run claws into his stomach and lungs. It eats him mindlessly and it will not be satisfied until he is dead.’

      ‘You are wrong,’ Hoelun snapped, but there were tears in her eyes.

      Kokchu lowered his gaze so that she would not see his triumph glitter there.

      ‘I wish I was, old mother. I have seen these things before and they have nothing but appetite. It will continue to savage him until they perish together.’ To make his point, he reached down and squeezed the swelling. Temuge jerked and came awake with a sharp breath.

      ‘Who are you?’ Temuge said to Kokchu, gasping. He struggled to sit up, but the pain made him cry out and he fell back onto the narrow bed. His hands tugged at a blanket to cover his nakedness and his cheeks flushed hotly under Kokchu’s scrutiny.

      ‘He is a shaman, Temuge. He is going to make you well,’ Hoelun said. Temuge broke into fresh sweat and she dabbed the cloth to his skin as he settled back. After a time, his breathing slowed and he drifted into exhausted sleep once more. Hoelun lost a little of her tension, if not the terror Kokchu had brought into her home.

      ‘If it is hopeless, shaman, why are you still here?’ she said. ‘There are other men and women who need your healing skill.’ She could not keep the bitterness from her voice and did not guess that Kokchu rejoiced in it.

      ‘I have fought what eats him twice before in my life. It is a dark rite and dangerous for the man who practises it as well as for your son. I tell you this so you do not despair, but it would be foolish to hope. Consider him to have died and if I win him back, you will know joy.’

      Hoelun felt a chill as she looked into the shaman’s eyes. He smelled of blood, she realised, though no trace of it showed on his skin. The thought of him touching her perfect son

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