took a deep breath, letting it shudder from his lips.
‘If my strength fails as I begin the chant, I will survive. If I reach the final stage and the spirits take me, then you will see me torn out of my body. It will live for a time, but without the soul it will be empty flesh. This is no small thing, old mother.’
Hoelun watched him, once more suspicious. He seemed so plausible, but his quick eyes were always watching, seeing how his words were received.
‘Fetch two goats, Borte. Let us see what he can do.’
It was dark outside and while Borte brought the animals, Kokchu used the cloth to wipe Temuge’s chest and belly. When he pressed his fingers into Temuge’s mouth, the young man woke again, his eyes bright with terror.
‘Lie still, boy. I will help you if I have the strength,’ Kokchu told him. He did not look round as the bleating goats were brought in and dragged to his side, his attention fully on the young man in his care.
With the slowness of ritual, Kokchu took four brass bowls from his robe and placed them on the ground. He poured grey powder into each one and lit a taper from the stove. Soon, snakes of white-grey smoke made the air chokingly thick in the ger. Kokchu breathed deeply, filling his lungs. Hoelun coughed into her hand and flushed. The fumes were making her dizzy, but she would not leave her son alone with a man she did not trust.
In a whispering voice, Kokchu began to chant in the most ancient tongue of their people, almost forgotten. Hoelun sat back as she heard it, remembering the sounds from the healers and shamans of her youth. It brought back darker memories for Borte, who had heard her husband recite the old words on a night long before, butchering men and forcing slivers of burned heart between her lips. It was a language of blood and cruelty, well suited to the winter plains. There was no word in it for kindness, or for love. As Borte listened, the ribbons of smoke seeped into her, making her skin numb. The tumbling words brought a rush of vicious images and she gagged.
‘Be still, woman,’ Kokchu growled at her, his eyes wild. ‘Be silent while the spirits come.’ His chant resumed with greater force, hypnotic as he repeated phrases over and over, growing in volume and urgency. The first goat bleated in desperation as he held it over Temuge, looking into the young man’s terrified eyes. With his knife, Kokchu slit the goat’s throat and held it while its blood poured and steamed over Hoelun’s son. Temuge cried out at the sudden warmth, but Hoelun touched her hand to his lips and he quietened.
Kokchu let the goat fall, still kicking. His chant grew faster and he closed his eyes, reaching deep into Temuge’s gut. To his surprise, the young man remained silent and Kokchu had to squeeze the lump hard to make him cry out. The blood hid the sharp twist as he undid the strangled piece of gut and shoved it back behind the wall of muscle. His father had shown him the ritual with a real tumour and Kokchu had seen the old man chanting while men and women screamed, sometimes yelling back over their open mouths so that his spittle entered their throats. Kokchu’s father had taken them so far past exhaustion that they were lost and they were mad and they believed. He had seen obscene growths shrink and die after that point of agony and faith. If a man gave himself utterly to the shaman, sometimes the spirits rewarded that trust.
There was no honour in using the craft to fool a young man with a torn stomach, but the rewards would be great. Temuge was brother to the khan and such a man would always be a valuable ally. He thought of his father’s warnings about those who abused the spirits with lies and tricks. The man had never understood power, or how intoxicating it could be. The spirits swarmed around belief like flies on dead meat. It was not wrong to make belief swell in the camp of the khan. His authority could only increase.
Kokchu breathed heavily as he chanted, rolling his eyes up in his head as he pushed his hand deeper into Temuge’s belly. With a cry of triumph, he made a wrenching movement, pulling out a small piece of calf’s liver he had hidden from sight. In his grip, it jerked like something alive and Borte and Hoelun recoiled from it.
Kokchu continued to chant as he yanked the second goat close. It too struggled, but he forced his hand past its yellow teeth, though they gnawed at his knuckles. He pushed the foul meat down the gullet until the animal could do nothing but swallow in jerking spasms. When he saw the throat move, he stroked it hard, forcing the liver into the goat’s stomach before letting it go.
‘Do not let her touch the other animals,’ he said, panting, ‘or it will spread and live again, perhaps even get back into your son.’ Sweat dripped from his nose as he watched them.
‘It would be better to burn the goat to ashes. She must not be eaten as the flesh contains the growth. Be sure with this. I do not have the strength to do it again.’
He let himself slump as if his senses had left him, though he still breathed like a dog in the sun.
‘The pain has gone,’ he heard Temuge say wonderingly. ‘It is sore, but nothing like it was before.’ Kokchu sensed Hoelun lean over her son and heard him gasp as she touched the place where his gut had come through his stomach muscle.
‘The skin is whole,’ Temuge said. Kokchu could hear the awe in his voice and chose that moment to open his eyes and sit up. He was dull-eyed and squinted through the haze of smoke.
His long fingers hunted in the pockets of his deel, pulling out a piece of twisted horsehair stained with old blood.
‘This has been blessed,’ he told them. ‘I will bind it over the wound so that nothing may enter.’
No one spoke as he took a grubby ribbon of cloth from his deel and made Temuge sit up. Kokchu chanted under his breath as he wound it around the young man’s gut, covering the stiff piece of hair with line after line of cloth and heaving each one tight until it was hidden from view. When he had knotted it, Kokchu sat back, satisfied that the gut would not pop out and spoil all his work.
‘Keep the charm in place for a turn of the moon,’ he said wearily. ‘Let it fall and perhaps the growth will find its home once more.’ He closed his eyes, as if exhausted. ‘I must sleep now, for tonight and most of tomorrow. Burn that goat before you leave her to spread the growth. She will be dead in a few hours at the most.’ Given that he had laced the liver with enough poison to kill a full-grown man, he knew he spoke the truth. There would be no suspiciously healthy animal to spoil his achievement.
‘Thank you for what you have done,’ Hoelun said. ‘I do not understand it …’
Kokchu smiled tiredly.
‘It took me twenty years of study to begin my mastery, old mother. Do not think to understand it in a single evening. Your son will heal now, as he would have done if the growth had not begun to writhe in him.’ He thought for a moment. He did not know the woman, but surely she would tell Genghis what had happened. To make certain, he spoke again.
‘I must ask that you do not tell anyone of what you have seen. There are still tribes where they kill those who practise the old magic. It is seen as too dangerous.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is.’ With that, he knew the tale would spread right through the camp before he woke the next day. There were always some who wanted a charm against illness, or a curse on an enemy. They would leave milk and meat at his ger, and with power came respect and fear. He longed for them to be afraid, for when they were, they would give him anything. What did it matter if he had not saved a life this time? The belief would be there when another life hung in his hands. He had dropped a stone in the river and the ripples would go far.
Genghis and his generals were alone in the great ger as the moon rose above the host of his people. The day had been busy for all of
