Bones of the Hills (62 page)

Ogedai saw green-handed dyers flatten themselves against the walls, their red turbans dipping in respect. His guards cleared the way ahead, so the son of Genghis could ride almost in a dream. He had
made
this place from the camp of gers his father had known. He had made it real, in stone.

It still amazed him. He had not paid for women to travel with his workers, but they had come with their husbands and fathers. He had wondered for a time how he would establish the businesses every city needed to thrive, but traders had approached his chancellor, offering horses or more silver to lease new properties. The city was far more than a simple collection of houses. Already it had a vitality of its own, far beyond his control.

Yet not completely. A quirk in the plans had created an area of small alleyways to the south of his city. Criminal gangs had begun to flourish there until Ogedai heard. He had ordered eight hundred buildings torn down, the whole area redesigned and rebuilt. His own guard had supervised the hangings.

The street fell quiet as he passed, the laborers and their masters bowing their heads as they saw the man who held the power of life and death and gold over all of them. Ogedai took a deep breath of the dusty air, enjoying the taste of it on his tongue and the thought that he was literally breathing in his creation. Ahead, he could see the towers of his palace, crowned in a dome of gold beaten thinner than the paper of his scribes. It raised his spirits to see it, like sunlight trapped and held in his city.

The street widened as it grew before him, its stone gutters polished. That section had been finished months before and the bustling crowds of laborers fell behind. As Ogedai trotted on, he could not help glance at the boundary walls that had so confused his Chin architects and laborers. Even from the low vantage point of a saddle, there were moments when he could see over them to the green plains beyond.

The walls of Yenking had not saved that city from fire or siege, he knew.
His
walls were the warriors of the khan, the tribes who had brought a Chin emperor to his knees and razed a Shah’s cities.

Already, Ogedai loved his creation, from the vast expanse of the central training ground, to the red-tiled roofs, the paved gutters, the temples and churches and mosques and markets and homes by the thousand, most still empty and waiting for life. Scraps of blue cloth fluttered in the plains wind on every corner, a tribute to the Sky Father above them all. In the south, green foothills and mountains stretched far away and the air was warm with dust as Ogedai rejoiced in Karakorum.

The twilight was deepening into a soft gloom as Ogedai handed his reins to a servant and strode up the steps to his palace. Before he entered, he looked back once more at the city straining to be born. He could smell fresh-turned earth, and over it the fried food of the workmen on the evening air. He had not planned the herds of livestock in corrals beyond the walls, or the squawking chickens sold on every corner. He thought of the wool market that had sprung up by the western gate. He should not have expected trade to halt simply because the city was unfinished. He had chosen a spot on an ancient trader’s road to give it life—and life had begun pouring in while whole streets, whole districts, were still piles of lumber, tile, and stone.

As he looked into the setting sun, he smiled at the cooking fires springing up in the distance. His people waited there, for him. His armies would be fed on rich mutton, dripping fat from the summer grass. It reminded him of his own hunger and he moistened his lips as he passed through a stone gate the equal of anything in a Chin city.

In the courtyard beyond, he paused for a moment at his most extravagant gesture. A tree of solid silver stretched gracefully up to the arched ceiling, the center point open to the sky like the ger of any herdsman. It had taken the silversmiths of Samarkand almost a year to cast and polish, but it served his purpose. Whoever entered his palace would see it and be staggered at the wealth it represented. Some would see an emblem for the silver people, the Mongol tribes who had become a nation. Those with more wisdom would see that the Mongols cared so little for silver that they used it as a casting metal.

Ogedai let his hand slide down the bole of the tree, feeling the metal chill his fingers. The spreading branches reached out in a parody of life, gleaming like a white birch in moonlight. Ogedai nodded to himself. He stretched his back as lamps were lit by slaves and servants all around him, throwing black shadows and making the evening seem suddenly darker outside.

He heard hurrying footsteps come closer along a cloister and saw his manservant, Baras’aghur, come to him. Ogedai winced at the man’s keen expression and the bundle of papers under his arm.

“After I have eaten, Baras. It has been a long day.”

“Very well, my lord, but you have a visitor, your uncle. Shall I tell him to wait on your pleasure?”

Ogedai paused in the act of unbuckling his sword belt. All three of his uncles had come to the plains around Karakorum at his order, gathering their tumans for many miles around. He had forbidden them all from entering the city and he wondered who would have disobeyed him. He suspected it would be Khasar, who regarded orders and laws as tools for other men rather than himself.

“Who is it, Baras?” Ogedai asked quietly.

“Lord Temuge, master. I have sent servants to tend him, but he has been waiting now for a long time.” Baras’aghur made a gesture to indicate a sweep of the sun in the sky and Ogedai pursed his lips in irritation. His father’s brother would be well aware of the nuances of hospitality. Simply by arriving when Ogedai was not there to greet him, he had created an obligation. Ogedai assumed it was deliberate. A man like Temuge was too subtle not to grasp the slightest advantage as he found it. Yet the order had gone out for the generals and princes to remain on the plains.

Ogedai sighed. For two years, he had readied Karakorum to be the jewel in an empire. It had been a splendid isolation and he had maneuvered to keep it so, his enemies and friends always off balance. He had known it could not last forever. He steeled himself as he walked after Baras’aghur to the first and most sumptuous of his audience rooms.

“Have wine brought to me immediately, Baras. And food—something simple, such as the warriors are eating on the plain.”

“Your will, my lord,” his servant said without listening, his thoughts on the meeting to come.

The footsteps of the two men were loud in the silent halls, clicking and echoing back to them. Ogedai did not glance at the painted scenes that usually gave him so much pleasure. He and Baras’aghur walked under the best work of Islamic artists and it was only toward the end that Ogedai looked up at a blaze of color, smiling to himself at the image of Genghis leading a charge at the pass of the Badger’s Mouth. The artist had asked a fortune for a year’s work, but Ogedai had doubled his price when he saw it. His father still lived on those walls, as well as in his memory. There was no art of painting in the tribes he knew and such things could still make him gasp and stand in awe. With Temuge waiting, however, Ogedai barely nodded to his father’s image before he was sweeping into the room, Baras behind him.

The years had not been kind to his father’s brother. Temuge had once been as fat as a feasting calf, then lost the weight rapidly, so that his throat sagged into flaps of skin and he looked far older than his years. Ogedai looked at him coldly as his uncle rose from a silk-covered chair to greet him. It was an effort to be courteous to a man who represented the end of his time apart. He had no illusions. The nation waited impatiently for him, and Temuge was just the first to breach his defenses.

“You are looking well, Ogedai,” Temuge said. He came forward as if he might embrace his nephew, and Ogedai struggled with a spasm of irritation. He turned away to Baras, letting his uncle drop his rising arms unseen.

“Wine and food, Baras. Will you stand there, staring like a sheep?”

“My lord,” Baras’aghur replied, bowing immediately. “I will have a scribe sent to you to record the meeting.” He left at a run and both men could hear the slave’s sandals clattering into the distance. Temuge frowned delicately.

“This is not a formal visit, Ogedai, for scribes and records.”

“You are here as my uncle then? Not because the tribes have selected you to approach me? Not because my scholar uncle is one man whom all the factions trust enough to speak to me?”

Temuge flushed at the tone and the accuracy of the remarks. He had to assume Ogedai had as many spies in the great camps as he had himself. That was one thing the nation had learned from the Chin. He tried to judge his nephew’s mood, but it was no easy task. Ogedai had not even offered him salt tea. Temuge swallowed dryly as he tried to interpret the level of censure and irritation in the younger man.

“You know the armies talk of nothing else, Ogedai.” Temuge took a deep breath to steady his nerves. Under Ogedai’s pale yellow eyes, he could not shake the idea that he was reporting to some echo of Genghis. His nephew was softer in body than the great khan, but there was a coldness in him that unnerved Temuge. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

“For two years, you have ignored your father’s empire,” Temuge began.

“Do you think that is what I have done?” Ogedai interrupted. Temuge stared at him.

“What else am I to think? You left the families and tumans in the field, then built a city while they herded sheep. For two years, Ogedai!” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “There are some who say your mind has broken with grief for your father.”

Ogedai smiled bitterly to himself. Even the mention of his father was like tearing the scab off a wound. He knew every one of the rumors. He had started some of them himself, to keep his enemies jumping at shadows. Yet he was the chosen heir of Genghis, the first khan of the nation. The warriors had almost deified his father and Ogedai was certain he had nothing to fear from mere gossip in the camps. His relatives were a different matter.

The door to the rooms swung open to reveal Baras’aghur and a dozen Chin servants. In moments, they had surrounded the two men, placing bronze cups and food on crisp white cloth before them. Ogedai gestured for his uncle to sit cross-legged on the tiled floor, watching with interest as the older man’s knees creaked and made him wince. Baras’aghur sent the servants away and then served tea to Temuge, who accepted the bowl in relief with his right hand, sipping as formally as he would have in any ger of the plains. Ogedai watched eagerly as red wine gurgled into his own cup. He emptied it quickly and held it out before Baras’aghur could move away.

Ogedai saw his uncle’s gaze flicker over the scribe Baras’aghur had summoned, standing in a respectful attitude against the wall. He knew Temuge understood the power of the written word as well as anyone. It had been he who had collected the stories of Genghis and the founding of a nation. Ogedai owned one of the first volumes, copied carefully and bound in hard-wearing goatskin. It was among his most prized possessions. Yet there were times when a man preferred not to be recorded.

“Give us privacy, Baras,” Ogedai said. “Leave the jug, but take your scribe with you.”

His manservant was too well-trained to hesitate and it was but moments until the two men were alone once again. Ogedai drained his cup and belched.

“Why have you come to me tonight, uncle? In a month, you can enter Karakorum freely with thousands of our people, for a feast and a festival they will talk of for years.”

Temuge studied the younger man before him as he spoke. The unlined face looked weary and stern. Ogedai had chosen a strange burden for himself, with this city. Temuge knew there were perhaps a handful of men in the camps who cared more than a bronze coin for Karakorum. To the Mongol generals who had known Genghis, it was a colossal conceit of white marble and Chin design. Temuge wished he could tell the young man how much he loved the creation without it seeming like greasy flattery. Yet he did love it. It was the city he had once dreamed of building, a place of wide streets and courtyards and even a library, with thousands of clean oak shelves lying empty for the treasures they would one day hold. He struggled to understand the young man who would be khan.

“You are not a fool, Ogedai,” Temuge said. “It was not by chance that your father chose you over older brothers.” Ogedai looked up sharply and Temuge nodded to him. “At times I wonder if you are a strategist like general Tsubodai. For two years, the nation has been without a leader, without a path, yet there has been no civil war, no struggle between princes.”

“Perhaps they saw my personal tuman riding among them, my scribes and spies,” Ogedai replied softly. “There were always men in red and black watching them for treachery.”

Temuge snorted. “It was not fear, but confusion that held them. They could not see your plan, so they did nothing. You are your father’s heir, but you did not call them to take the oath. No one understands it, so they wait and watch. They
still
wait to see what you will do next.”