It was almost as if Taitaro knew what had been happening between the two of them, Jebu thought.

Chapter Nineteen

The temple of the Ch’in-cha was near the top of a steep, forested hill. They were exhausted when they got there. The journey began before sunrise, continued through a pleasant summer day, and ended with their horses climbing a steep mountain path long after dark with the aid of the seventh full moon of the Year of the Ape.

That night, for a change, there was none of Szechwan’s usual mist. Tall pine trees concealed the temple until they were almost upon it. It was dug into the side of the hill, the only external structure a carved stone entrance with a tiled roof.

Taking a tinder box and an oil-soaked pine-knot torch from his saddlebag, Taitaro made a light for them. Inside the temple entrance was a surprisingly large room, carved out of solid rock. It was five-sided, and in each side there was a triangular opening to chambers beyond. Taitaro led the way to the further opening on the left side of the entrance. They entered a tunnel.

“This temple was here when the ancestors of the first Emperors of China were village overlords,” Taitaro said.

“Is it deserted?” Yukio asked.

“At the moment, yes.”

“What happened, did the Mongols sack it?”

“No,” Taitaro said. “The Mongols respect the holy places of all religions. In this land the Ch’in-cha have long since given up living in communities of their own. The temple is used only when there is a need for it.”

Jebu had to crouch to walk through the tunnel, though the rounded roof was high enough for Yukio and Taitaro. The cool air around him had the pleasantly dank smell of a cave.

The chamber at the end of the tunnel was spacious. The scraping of their footsteps echoed from the dome-shaped ceiling. Looking down, Jebu saw that there was a mosaic design in the floor. Taitaro placed himself in the centre of the design. The intertwining lines were worked out in the six colours of the rainbow, against a background of concentric rings of black and white. So rich were the colours that the entire design seemed to vibrate under Jebu’s torch.

He noticed something on the wall of the room opposite to where he was standing. It was an eye painted on the rock wall of the chamber, the paint fading with age. In the centre of the eye was a red and white version of the yin-yang symbol. A bunch of wilting flowers was set in a small jade vase on a pedestal before the painted eye. Someone had been here a day or two ago.

Jebu looked back at the mosaic on the floor. Now he recognized it. It was the Tree of Life, the intricately knotted maze he had seen in a vision with Taitaro, a version of which was carved on the precious stone he carried concealed in his Zinja robe. This version of the tree seemed to radiate from the centre of the circular room, as if one were looking down upon it from above its many-coloured branches.

Taitaro seated himself on the floor in the centre of the mosaic, dropping down easily and gracefully despite his age. “Do you know how to meditate, Lord Yukio?”

“I spent a good many years in a monastery, sensei. Though I never could see the point of sitting on one’s buttocks and thinking about nothing.”

“I understand,” said Taitaro. “But there is a point tonight. Please seat yourself and try to meditate. Jebu, give me the Jewel of Life and Death.”

Jebu set his torch in a holder beside the entrance and reached inside his robe for the Jewel. He walked slowly to Taitaro, holding it out before him.

“What is that?” whispered Yukio.

“A shintai,” said Jebu.

“Have you been carrying it with you as long as I’ve known you? Why haven’t we had better fortune?”

Taitaro took the stone from Jebu. “It is the belief of our Order that fortune is neither good nor bad, Lord Yukio, and that in any case neither prayers nor spells nor deeds can affect it.” He held the Jewel up between his thumbs and forefingers and gazed into it.

After a moment he said, “Put out the torch.” Jebu stamped out the torch in the tunnel outside the room.

The chamber was not totally dark. Jebu noticed a shaft of soft, white light falling from the ceiling, striking the mosaic floor near Taitaro. It was moonlight, entering through a small circular opening in the centre of the dome. The moments when the moon was in precisely the right position to send its light through the opening must be rare, Jebu thought.

The three sat in silence until Jebu lost track of time. From long habit, he kept his eyes fixed on the Jewel in Taitaro’s lap, feeling that he could see its intricate pattern even though it was across the room. He seemed to be floating in a sea which had no surface, no bottom and no shore in any direction.

Gradually the shaft of light changed position as the moon moved across the sky. It struck Taitaro’s knee, then his forearm. At last the light fell upon the Jewel, which seemed to blaze up instantly like a newly kindled fire. A cool, green radiance filled the room. The eye painted on the wall was fixed on the back of Taitaro’s head. Taitaro’s eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the Jewel.

Jebu expected the Tree of Life to spring up before him in all its glory. But he saw only the burning seed in Taitaro’s palm. At last, as the light moved on with the passage of the moon from east to west, the Jewel ceased to glow.

Taitaro spoke, and his voice was calm and pleasant, but Jebu felt that he was hearing the voice, not of his father, but of the Self.

“You will go into the north, where the Wise One contends with the Keeper of the Hearth. You will join the Wise One, who has gathered men from many lands to serve him. You will fight for the Wise One, then you will return to the Sacred Islands. One of you will be betrayed by his own blood. The other will seem to die but live. The jewels created by Izanami and Izanagi shall be protected by the Hurricane of the Kami. Each of you will be worthy of his father.”

“That means nothing here.”

“You are goading me. I’m a better swordsman than you are.”

“Possibly.” He’s right, Jebu thought. I’m goading him. These last six months have been as trackless as this white mist we’re in. It bothers me as much as it does him. It puts me at the mercy of my feelings. I have no direction, no purpose. I’m lost. There’s nothing to hold to.

Moko suddenly appeared, looking comical in a broad, flat Chinese helmet. “I beg of you, masters, don’t quarrel. The only thing the men have left is their faith in your leadership. And as for me, if either one of you hurt the other, I would kill myself.”

“You’re more liable to be killed by one of us,” said Jebu gruffly, glad to see him, “if you wear that Chinese helmet.”

“Anyone who can get close enough to kill me can get close enough to recognize me,” said Moko. “And I have no right to wear a samurai helmet.” On their long march Moko had become a sort of quartermaster for samurai. He led the baggage train, kept track of stocks of food and trading goods, and saw to the welfare of the women and servants. He negotiated with the peasants whose rice and vegetables they took, giving promissory notes and persuading them that the samurai might actually return one day to pay for what they took. Honest or not, it made it easier for the peasants to give and the samurai to take.

“These troops you’ve just defeated were sent out by the governor of Hochwan,” Moko said. “He doesn’t know whether he’s subject to the Sung Emperor or the Mongols. Like most of Szechwan, he hasn’t had a message from either overlord in six months. But he knows that both sides consider us an enemy, so he thought he’d perform a service to his masters, whomever they turn out to be, by eliminating us from the countryside.”

“How do you know all this, Moko?” Yukio asked.

“Our warriors took some prisoners and they brought them to me for safekeeping. They were quite willing to talk to me.”

“Good, now kill them.”

Jebu’s stomach contracted. “Why not let them go?”

“We are samurai. We do not suffer from confusion about whether we are fighting men or monks. Moko, round up the first six samurai you meet and tell them they are ordered to behead the prisoners.” He turned to Jebu, his rounded eyes blazing. “Don’t argue with me.” Jebu held his tongue and turned away, his shoulders sagging.

Shaking his head slightly, Moko bowed. “One more thing,” he said. “There is an old monk who came along after the battle looking for both of you. He is short, white-haired and wears a grey robe, like a Zinja.”

Jebu felt his heart beat faster.

“Finally,” said Yukio.

“Shall I bring him to you?” said Moko.

“At once,” said Jebu.

The old man emerged out of the mist looking little changed from the night, years ago, when Jebu had left him on the beach below the burning Waterfowl Temple. His beard had grown almost to his waist, hiding the white rope around his neck. Age was thinning his white hair.

He and Jebu looked at each other a long time in silence. Droplets of water dripped from a tree branch to a puddle on the ground. “Why did you not come to me before, sensei?” Jebu whispered.

“I had other things to attend to.”

Jebu turned to Yukio, whose eyes were big with awe. “Lord Muratomo no Yukio, I present my father, Taitaro, former abbot of the Waterfowl Temple.”

Yukio bowed deeply. “Sensei.”

Taitaro bowed in turn. “Lord Yukio, your fame has spread throughout the Sacred Islands and a good part of China. Future generations of Muratomo, when they go into battle, will proudly claim you among their ancestors.”

“You are too generous, sensei,” Yukio said, bowing again to express his reverence for Taitaro’s attainment. “I have been hearing of the great Abbot Taitaro ever since I met your son.”

Jebu and Taitaro embraced. Jebu felt happy and at peace for the first time in many months. Affection surged up within him like a spring bursting out of the ground and spread to Taitaro, to Yukio, to Moko. Moko, who had never met Taitaro before, stood to one side, his bowl-shaped helmet in his hands, tears running down his cheeks.

“Did Governor Liu tell you how to find us, sensei?” Yukio asked.

“The word was passed from him to me through the Order,” said Taitaro. “I must tell you, though—that good, wise and strong man is gone. Both he and the general who was sent to arrest you were executed by Chia Ssu-tao for letting you escape.”

Grief was a great weight in Jebu’s chest. “I warned him not to go back to the capital with that general. I mourn him.”

“He was one of us, Jebu,” said Taitaro. “He is no more to be mourned than the ashes of our dead which we scatter on the wind. He would not want it.”

“Chia Ssu-tao would have let Kweilin be overwhelmed by the Mongols,” said Yukio. “He tried to punish us for defending it. Now he has slain one of the finest officials in the land. He is a poison at the heart of the Sung empire. How can it survive with such as him ruling it?”

“I am more concerned about how you are to survive,” said Taitaro. “I have come to invite you to accompany me to a temple of the Ch’incha, where this little river forks away from the Min. It is a day’s ride from here. There I hope to be granted a vision that will help to guide you.”

“Just you, Jebu and I?” asked Yukio. “This countryside is hostile.”

“It only seems so to you. Now that you have driven off the troops of Hochwan, you need fear no further attacks.”

“Perhaps only Jebu should go,” said Yukio. “He is your son and a member of your Order.”

“But—” Jebu started to say. A motion of Taitaro’s hand silenced him.

“You are the leader of these samurai,” said Taitaro. “It is not fitting that a monk who serves you should have any special knowledge that is not fully known to you as well.”

It was almost as if Taitaro knew what had been happening between the two of them, Jebu thought.

The Great Khan and his tarkhan strode out of the bedchamber, deep in excited conversation. It’s a game to them, Taniko thought. They relish it.

Chapter Eighteen

Jebu stood with his back to a willow tree as four Chinese pikemen closed in on him warily. The cries and clash of battle were loud and near by, but the mist was too heavy for him to see anything. They had been fighting almost blind for hours. He was exhausted and panting heavily.

The burble of a river sounded at his right, through the mist. He feinted with his sword, driving the four Chinese back. He raised both arms over his head, crouched and sprang. He almost didn’t make it.

The rough bark of the willow tree scratched the palm of his left hand. For a moment his left arm was pulling all his weight. Then he managed to hook the right arm, which held the sword, over the tree limb. A willow can’t fail me, he thought.

He hauled himself up, climbing like a monkey. The four pikes thrust through the space he had occupied. He swung into the lower branches of the tree and ran out along a limb towards the river. When the branch would no longer hold his weight he dropped off and landed feet first in the water. The current carried him away from the shouting pikemen.

Even near the shore the river was deep. Encumbered by his armour, Jebu swam with difficulty. This was one of the many channels that irrigated the Red Basin. Jebu heard voices speaking his own language and swam to the riverbank. Clambering over the big boulders that held the river in its man-made bed, he called out to two near-by samurai.

“We’ve won, shiké,” said one of them. “They’re running away.”

“He can’t tell,” said another. “For all we can see in this fog, we may be running away.”

“Where’s Lord Yukio?” Jebu asked.

“Somewhere,” said the second samurai. “I don’t even know where I am.”

Jebu walked along the riverbank calling for Yukio. At last he found him sitting on a boulder, his dragon-crowned helmet in his hands. Jebu looked around. There was a thick white wall of mist in every direction. Near Yukio’s feet three bodies lay.

“Did we drive them off?” Jebu asked. He sheathed his sword and sat next to Yukio.

“Do you think I’d be sitting here with my helmet off if we hadn’t? In a little while I’ll get up and order a roll call, and find out how many we lost this time. I’m sick of this. I still say we should go south to Nan Chao.”

“We’ll find what we’re looking for if we keep going north,” said Jebu.

“For eight months we have wandered in this land of mists and rivers and rice paddies, looking for what? Only you seem to know. I’m tired of you playing the mysterious shiké with supernatural knowledge who keeps insisting we should head north but won’t tell us why.”

Jebu sighed and shook his head. “I’ve told you everything I know. Governor Liu advised me strongly that our best prospects lay in this direction. That’s all. He didn’t tell me any more. I have no mysterious knowledge. If you consider my advice faulty, give the order. We’ll march south and offer our services to the King of Nan Chao against Annam. Or is to the King of Annam against Nan Chao?”

“I have the burden of deciding the future of all of us, and you mock me.”

“You make a burden of it.”

“We’re nothing but bandits. The Chinese have put a price on our heads. Every so often they send an army after us and we kill a few of them and they kill a few of us. Our silk and silver have run out and we have to steal food and fodder from the peasants. Everybody hates us.”

Jebu snorted. “And you can’t stand to be among people who don’t worship you as the people of Kweilin did.”

Yukio stood up. “Are you laughing at me?”

Jebu remained seated. “Yes.”

Yukio’s fingers tapped the hilt of his sword. “I am Muratomo no Yukio, son of Muratomo no Domei, chieftain of the Muratomo, the most illustrious warriors in the Sacred Islands.”

“That means nothing here.”

“You are goading me. I’m a better swordsman than you are.”

“Possibly.” He’s right, Jebu thought. I’m goading him. These last six months have been as trackless as this white mist we’re in. It bothers me as much as it does him. It puts me at the mercy of my feelings. I have no direction, no purpose. I’m lost. There’s nothing to hold to.

“Now the cities are a part of our empire, with the knowledge they hold. When my grandfather’s generation took cities, they were like men who have starved a long time and are suddenly given meat rich with grease. They could not digest it. It made them ill.

“I and my generation are Mongol enough to be able to conquer cities, but civilized enough to know what do with our conquests. To be a nomad is not to be uncivilized, after all. I have read the history of China and its endless wars with my people, and I know what we Mongols are. For as long as men can remember, we have lived on the edge of the civilized world, hounded and harried by its armies, learning from it, sometimes stealing from it, an unrecognized part of it. We did not spring full-grown from the steppes. It was civilized men who first learned to ride horses and camels, to herd cattle and sheep. They developed the law, and it is law that binds our nomad world together like the leather thongs that hold together the frame of a yurt. They invented warfare. Civilized men moved slowly northwards from the fertile plains of China, building their houses, raising their crops and their animals. They came to a land not so fertile, the land where I was born, poor for crops but good for their herds. They cut themselves loose from the land and began to follow their herds with the seasons. They taught the hunters and forest people who already lived in the north, and they intermarried with them. That is how my people came to be.

“When the Emperors of China were strong, they warred on my people. When the Emperors were weak, my people took lands and tribute from them. The herdsman and the farmers are not different kinds of men, they are right hand and left hand. Through their constant warfare, each developed new weapons and new strategies.

“Now, for a time, perhaps for all time, we Mongols, are bringing warfare to an end. We have united the cities, the farmlands and the steppes in peace, prosperity, and order. There is no reason why all men cannot dwell under one government, even as the Ancestor said. Combining the foundation my Ancestor laid in the Yassa with the Imperial wisdom of China, we can create a perfect government, a government based on Mongol strength to guarantee that it will endure for ever. We will use the old Confucian system of examinations to find the most talented administrators. It is the best system of government in the world—appointment of the most fit. Of course, we must never let the Chinese get the upper hand. We will take their ideas, use their skills, but never let them rise to positions of power. I will bring in able men from all the countries of the earth—Turks, Arabs, Franks, and Mongols, of course—to rule over the Chinese and humble them. If we allowed the Chinese power, they would corrupt us, weaken us, make us forget who we are, until there were no Mongols left, only decadent Chinese whose ancestors had once been Mongols. I am often accused of wanting to deliver the Mongol empire into the hands of the Chinese, but I am not so stupid as that. I will devour China, China will not devour me.

“After all of China is ours, we will turn west again. With the wealth and wisdom of China, we will go on to the conquest of the Franks. It will not be difficult. We would have swept through Europe twenty years ago, had my uncle Ogodai not died at the wrong moment. You asked me how far we mean to go. Once we have China and Europe, how much of the world will be left?

“We will be the herdsmen of nations. There are many kinds of riches besides animals, besides precious stones and metals. There is the wealth of beauty, the wealth of wisdom, the wealth of comfort. We will possess and enjoy all of it, all the goods this world has to offer.”

“The kind of wealth you speak of is only accumulated in time of peace,” Taniko said.

Kublai eyed her with amusement. “Those islands of yours have never been invaded. There must be a great deal piled up there.”

“You would be surprised at our poverty. Having seen China, I realize that our people have no idea what wealth is.” Don’t overdo it, she warned herself.

“You fear me. That is why you keep telling me how poor your country is.” She realized that he had been sitting beside her for quite a while now.

“Your Majesty is the most powerful man in the world. How could I not fear you?”

His dark eyes impaled her. “You know me better now than you did when we met. Why still fear me?”

She saw what was happening to him. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his breathing quicker. A slight flush crept into his cheeks. Like a bull in springtime, she remembered. Amazingly and almost instantly, she felt a warmth between her thighs in response to his stare. She had not known a man in the two years since Kiyosi’s death.

He is such a big man. I could close my eyes and pretend I’m with Jebu. If he lies on me, though, he’ll crush me.

“Your elephant trainers know their elephants, Your Majesty, but still—and wisely—they fear them.”

“Stop calling me Your Majesty. It reminds me of things I would like to forget for a while.”

“What shall I call you?”

His body lay across the bed like a boulder. He smiled up at her. She put her hand on his silk robe and let it rest there, feeling the beating heart of the most powerful man in the world.

“You must think of your own name for me,” he said. “One that we will share with no one else.”

He is so big, so strong. “I shall call you Elephant.”

Kublai laughed and pulled her down so that she lay on his chest. His hands plucked at her clothes. Gown by gown he stripped her. She was surprised when he didn’t stop until she was completely undressed.

“You are exquisite,” he said. “But you are blushing. Does it bother you to be naked? I prefer it this way.” His thick fingers gently explored her body.

“It’s strange to couple with a man in complete nakedness,” she said. “I don’t like or dislike it.” Then she gasped. “I like what you are doing now. Very much.”

She had forgotten her fears of how he might crush her if he lay on top of her. He never did. When she was ready for him he clasped her waist in his huge hands and lifted her into the air with an easy heave of his muscular arms. Lying on his back, he slowly lowered her over his loins.

She was awakened by the sound of voices arguing.

“I don’t care what you think is proper. If you don’t wake him right now, your head will go the way your stones have already gone.”

A softer voice protested.

She opened her eyes and thought for a moment that she was in a Mongol tent. Then she remembered he had drawn down the curtains around the dais before they fell asleep amid the tumbled cushions and quilts. There was a pleasant ache in her groin, where muscles long unused had been overworked last night. Kublai lay beside her, an enormous dark bulk. Even though he was motionless, she could tell from his shallow breathing that he was awake.

The curtains parted and a fierce young Mongol face framed by braided black hair thrust itself in. Taniko shrank back and pulled a quilt around her. Kublai sat up quickly.

The man spoke an urgent sentence in Mongolian, in which Taniko caught the word Karakorum. She recognized him now. It was the tarkhan Bayan. The general didn’t look at Taniko but stared at Kublai, who asked him a question in the same tongue.

Kublai sighed at Bayan’s reply. He stood up on the dais, naked, towering, and the household eunuch who had tried to stop Bayan from waking him brought a him a robe. He looked down at Taniko.

“What I feared and expected has happened. Even while this kuriltai was electing me Great Khan, Arik Buka’s people were claiming the title for him at Karakorum. Now there will be two Great Khans, and it will be war. It will be years before we can proceed with the conquest of the Sung.”

And even more years before you can threaten my homeland, Taniko thought with faint satisfaction.

Lying with a quilt pulled around her to cover her nakedness, she said, “I grieve for your people, Your Majesty. A civil war is a horrible thing.”

“It’s a wasteful thing,” said Kublai. “To avoid it, I’d almost be willing to yield the empire to Arik Buka and his people. But they wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

The Great Khan and his tarkhan strode out of the bedchamber, deep in excited conversation. It’s a game to them, Taniko thought. They relish it.

Taniko wondered if that was how it was for Kublai this night when he was proclaimed Great Khan.

Kublai walked over to the sculptured swan in the centre of the room and beckoned her. He held a goblet under the swan’s beak and struck a bell with a small hammer. After a moment a pale stream of wine spurted from the beak and splashed into the cup. Taniko laughed as he handed the cup to her and tapped the bell for another goblet for himself.

“It’s almost like magic, Your Majesty.”

“No need to have servants running in and out, disturbing us. In his palace at Karakorum my brother Mangu had a tree of silver with four serpents twining up its trunk. From the mouth of each serpent came a different kind of wine, and at the top was a silver angel that blew a trumpet whenever the Great Khan drank.”

Kublai reached out a hand to stroke the silver swan. “Drinking has destroyed many members of my family. Every one of the four sons of Genghis Khan died an early death. My grandfather died at seventy-two, but none of his sons reached the age of fifty. The eldest, Juchi, died before Genghis Khan did, a gout-crippled wreck, in Russia. My father, the youngest of the four, was the next to die, at forty. He was addicted to wine. Chagatai and Ogodai died a year apart. Ogodai was only forty-six. I never saw either of those uncles sober. Once one of Uncle Ogodai’s ministers showed him an iron jug that was corroded because wine had been standing in it. Ogodai promised to drink only half as often as he had been. Then he had a goblet made for himself that was twice as big. My cousin Kuyuk, the third Great Khan, was a drunk. He was already a dying man when the kuriltai elected him. He reigned less than two years.”

Taniko sat on a cushion, looking down at the golden wine in the silver goblet. “But a man getting drunk is nothing to worry about. Men need to get drunk once in a while to relax.”

“That was so among my people before the victories of Genghis Khan. That still seems to be so for my brothers and me. We have escaped the family curse. But in the old days Mongols drank kumiss, fermented mare’s milk, which is not as strong as wine. They drank when they could spare the time, which was not very often. After the wars of Genghis Khan, wine went through our people like a plague. We had nothing else to do. We had servants or slaves to do our work for us. We were forbidden by the Yassa to fight among ourselves. We could not spend all our time with the women. What is left, if you can’t read or write, if you are more ignorant of civilization than the poorest Chinese dung carrier? Water flows downhill, and men prefer to do what is easy. The easiest thing to do is drink. It makes life seem interesting. Now we drink from sleep to sleep. We poison ourselves by the hundreds and thousands, we lords of the earth.”

Again Taniko looked down at the wine. Astonishing, that it should be the death of so many of these hardy Mongols, that they should be, in their way, such vulnerable creatures. Like wild flowers that withered instantly when plucked and brought indoors.

“There are other reasons why many of us drink too much,” Kublai went on. “We’ve seen too much. Often, when we take a city, we kill all its people. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes.”

Taniko looked at him in horror. “I’ve heard that. I always thought it was just one more of the lies your enemies spread about you.”

He looked at her sombrely. “No. It’s true. I myself haven’t done it, and I don’t intend to do it. It’s stupid and wasteful. We did it more often in my grandfather’s day. We saw no use in cities then. When my grandfather sacked Yenking, the capital of northern China, it burned for more than a month. I was born a year after the destruction of Yenking, and one day I will build my own capital there.

“We felt no regret for the thousands of lives we ended, but neither did we enjoy the killing. It was simply work that we did, as one would butcher sheep, because it seemed necessary. Usually victims would be divided up among the warriors. Give each man five people to kill, and an army of twenty thousand can exterminate the population of a city in moments.”

A city just the size of Heian Kyo, Taniko thought.

“We killed conquered people because we didn’t know what else to do with them,” Kublai said. “Then, too, the policy of annihilating whole cities struck such terror in our enemies that they often gave up in despair. Of course, we had to destroy the cities of those who slew our ambassadors. In Khwaresmia, where they murdered our emissaries, my father directed the storming of Mery from a golden throne set up on the plain before the city. When Mery fell, he ordered all the people brought before him. They were divided into three herds, men, women and children. People submit to death more easily when families are broken up. They were told to lie down, and my father’s troops beheaded every one, to make sure that none might survive by feigning death. The heads of men, women and children were stacked in separate pyramids. Even the dogs and cats were killed. Then the city was burned to the ground and stones pulled down. A few thousand people survived by hiding in the cellars. Later my father sent some of his horde back to hunt them down. In the end there was no life left in that place. So it went with many other cities of Khwaresmia and Persia.

“My father did not escape unscathed, however. He used to have nightmares about Mery and other places where he had ordered massacres. Many of the men who took part in the killings suffered from it later.”

Taniko drained her goblet. Her hands were trembling. Did he actually expect her to feel sorry for his father and those like him? The picture of her baby being swept over the waterfall at Daidoji forced its way into her mind.

“Why the children?”

Kublai took the goblet from her cold hand. She made an effort to get up and pour wine for herself, but he waved her down. As he handed her the full goblet, she looked up at him and thought he seemed like an enormous tree.

He said, “If we let the children live they would only have starved to death.”

She laughed shakily. “So you killed them out of your overflowing compassion.”

Kublai looked irritated. “I have already told you that I never ordered such massacres. Besides, in every country it is the law that when one person commits a misdeed, the whole family is punished, including the children. Is that not so, even in your land?”

“Yes.” She recalled the many questions he had asked her about her country on other occasions, and fear took hold of her. “Why do you go on and on? How many lands must your people conquer before you say you have enough?”

“Our ambitions change. My grandfather did not set out to conquer the world. He wanted to take horses and cattle and women from his enemies and force them to submit to him, to protect himself. But each time he won a war, he made new enemies, who feared his increasing strength. So he had no choice but to go on and fight again. By the end of his life, though, we had won so many wars that we began to feel we had a special destiny. The Ancestor often said, ‘There is only one sun in the sky and one Power in Eternal Heaven. Only one Great Khan should be upon the earth.’ He and those who succeeded him sent messages to rulers all over the world demanding that they come to Karakorum with tribute and offer their submission to the Great Khan.

“Grandfather in his day dreamed of reshaping the world so that all of it would be one enormous pasture. Even so, he didn’t talk, as Arik Buka and his councillors do, of preserving the old ways. He never cared whether a way of doing things was old or new. He cared only for what would make the Mongols great and powerful.

“In the end my Ancestor realized that destroying all cities and killing all their people, reducing farms and manors to wastelands, these things would not keep the Mongols powerful. He saw that there is a power that comes from the cities, from knowledge and wealth, that could be greater than the war-making strength and skills of the Mongols.

“Now the cities are a part of our empire, with the knowledge they hold. When my grandfather’s generation took cities, they were like men who have starved a long time and are suddenly given meat rich with grease. They could not digest it. It made them ill.

“I and my generation are Mongol enough to be able to conquer cities, but civilized enough to know what do with our conquests. To be a nomad is not to be uncivilized, after all. I have read the history of China and its endless wars with my people, and I know what we Mongols are. For as long as men can remember, we have lived on the edge of the civilized world, hounded and harried by its armies, learning from it, sometimes stealing from it, an unrecognized part of it. We did not spring full-grown from the steppes. It was civilized men who first learned to ride horses and camels, to herd cattle and sheep. They developed the law, and it is law that binds our nomad world together like the leather thongs that hold together the frame of a yurt. They invented warfare. Civilized men moved slowly northwards from the fertile plains of China, building their houses, raising their crops and their animals. They came to a land not so fertile, the land where I was born, poor for crops but good for their herds. They cut themselves loose from the land and began to follow their herds with the seasons. They taught the hunters and forest people who already lived in the north, and they intermarried with them. That is how my people came to be.