Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden

Author:Conn Iggulden [Iggulden, Conn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780440243908
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2007-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

♦ ♦ ♦

Temuge walked through pitch darkness to the ger of Kokchu. As he passed the door, he heard the muffled sound of weeping from within, but he did not stop. The moon was absent from the sky and Kokchu had told him that was when he would be strongest and most able to learn. Fires still burned in the gutted shell of Linhe in the distance, but the camp was quiet after the destruction.

Close by the shaman's ger was another, so low and squat that Temuge had to go down on his knees to enter. A single shuttered lamp cast a dim glow and the air was thick with fumes that made Temuge dizzy after just a few breaths. Kokchu sat cross-legged on a floor of wrinkled black silk. All the things inside had come from the hand of Genghis, and Temuge felt envy mingling with his fear of the man.

He had been called and he had come. His place was not to question, and as he sat and crossed his legs to face the shaman, he saw Kokchu's eyes were closed and that his breath was no more than a slight flutter of the chest. Temuge shuddered in the thick silence, imagining dark spirits in the smoke that filled his lungs. It came from incense burning on a pair of brass plates, and he wondered which city had been looted for them. The gers of his people were host to many strange objects in these bloody days, and there were few who could recognize them all.

Temuge coughed as the smoke came too thickly into his lungs. He saw Kokchu's bare chest shudder and the man's eyes opened blindly, looking for him but not seeing. As the focus returned, the shaman smiled at him, his eyes in deep shadow.

“You have not come to me for a full turn of the moon,” Kokchu said, his voice hoarse from the smoke.

Temuge looked away. “I was troubled. Some of the things you told me were . . . disturbing.”

Kokchu chuckled, a dry hacking in his throat. “As children are wary of the dark, so are men wary of power. It tempts them and yet it consumes them. It is never a game to play lightly.” He rested his gaze on Temuge until the younger man looked up and winced visibly. Kokchu's unblinking eyes were strangely bright, the pupils wider and darker than Temuge had ever seen them.

“Why have you come tonight,” Kokchu murmured, “if not to plunge your hands into the darkness once more?”

Temuge took a deep breath. The smoke no longer seemed to irritate his lungs and he felt light-headed, almost confident.

“I heard you found a traitor while I was away in Baotou. My brother the khan spoke of it. He said it was wondrous how you picked the man out of a line of kneeling warriors.”

“Much has changed since then,” Kokchu said with a shrug. “I could smell his guilt, my son. It is something you could learn.” Kokchu summoned his will to keep his thoughts focused.

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