Lords of the Bow Read Online Free PDF Page A

piece of gut and shoved it back behind the wall of muscle. His father had shown him the ritual with a real tumor 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 honor 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