Ghaltai stirred as a quarter of Torguud riders approached. The men recognized both the Darkhat and Chucai, and they let the pair pass without issue. Ghaltai yawned and rolled his shoulders as their horses picked up their pace, sensing the end of the journey. When the two men reached the edge of the camp, Ghaltai reined his horse to a stop. “I will go join my men,” he said.
Chucai nodded. Chucai had had a number of questions for the Darkhat commander after they had emerged from the subterranean temple, but Ghaltai had refused to provide any answers. I have shown you, was all that he had offered. I will not speak of what we have seen. It is not for me to offer any explanation.
On one hand, Chucai suspected Ghaltai’s words were motivated by petty revenge for Chucai having pulled him away from the feast, but Chucai suspected Ghaltai’s reticence also stemmed from a long-standing superstitious apprehension.
Not that he could blame the Darkhat chieftain. The banner unnerved him too.
He was tired. Everything seemed too obtuse for him to figure out. A good rest would reinvigorate his brain; he would see things much more clearly after a few hours of sleep.
His servants were all still sleeping, and he didn’t bother waking them. He could manage his own preparations. He would just sneak into his ger, lie down for a few hours, and—
There was someone in his ger, lying on the floor beneath a pair of fur skins. A brazier sat nearby, its coals cold and gray. Chucai kicked the supine figure—none too gently—startling him awake. The man sat up.
“Master Chucai,” Gansukh said sleepily. “I have been waiting—” The young man yawned mightily, his words getting lost in the open depths of his mouth.
“Whatever it is,” Chucai snapped, “It could have waited until midday, at least.”
Gansukh adjusted the skins around his shoulders. “I doubt that,” he said. “I would not count patience among Munokhoi’s qualities.”
“What does Munokhoi have to do with you sleeping in my ger?”
“I couldn’t very well go back to mine, could I?”
“Why?” Chucai sat down in his chair. “What are you talking about?”
“You missed the fights last night, didn’t you?” A sleepy smile crawled across Gansukh’s face. “Well, let me tell you a story then...”
It seemed like only moments after he had gotten rid of Gansukh and laid down, intending to get a few hours of sleep, that Chucai started awake. Where there had been darkness in his tent, there was now light.
Seated in the center of his ger was the Khagan’s shaman. Beside the old man, the brazier—which had previously been filled with cold ash—glowed with an orange light. The bits of metal attached to the shaman’s clothing gleamed as if they were tiny chips of fire clinging to the oily cloth.
“What do you want, old man?” Chucai growled. Part of him thought this was nothing more than a dream, and he resented the phantasmal intrusion.
The shaman chose this moment to fall into a paroxysm of coughing that made every shard of bone and bit of metal attached to his headdress and robe jangle frantically. With a final wheezing cough, he got something unstuck. He worked it around in his mouth for a moment and then spat in the brazier. A finger of flame reached up and grabbed whatever noisome thing that had come from the shaman’s throat. “Nothing is more visible than what is hidden directly in front of you,” the old man intoned.
Chucai slumped back on his bedding, turning his face toward the ceiling of his ger. “I am tired, old man,” he said. “I do not have time for your games.”
“The empire does not sleep,” the shaman said.
Chucai shook his head. Hadn’t he said something similar to ?gedei once? Years ago, when the Khagan had first started drinking heavily.
“Does a tree ever stop growing?” the shaman asked.
Chucai sat up in a rush. “You told me about the spirit that never dies,” he heard himself saying as he recalled his previous conversation with the old shaman. “Is that what the tree is? Is that what the banner is? A living spirit?”
“All life comes from Tengri,” the shaman whispered. “All life returns. Nothing is lost.”
“What is the banner?” Chucai demanded.
“The banner is a piece of wood,” the shaman said.
He said that before, Chucai remembered, fighting a swell of frustration. “And what of pieces that might be cut from it?” he asked.
The shaman smiled, and an involuntary shiver raced up Chucai’s spine. The light from the brazier highlighted the lines on the shaman’s face, a pattern that resembled the twisted branches of the tree carved on the wall of the temple.
“Not what,” the shaman said, shaking his head. “Ask yourself why.” He clapped his hands, and a cloud of smoke erupted from the brazier.
The smoke filled the ger and Chucai tried to wave it away, succumbing to a coughing fit nearly as physically wracking as the one he had seen the shaman suffer. His eyes watered, and he squeezed them shut, wiping at the tears.
When he opened his eyes, the shaman was gone. As was the smoke and the fire in the brazier. The coals were cold and gray, much like they had been when he had first found Gansukh in his ger.
There was no sign the shaman had been anything other than a dream.