In the northern steppes, September had turned the autumn grass to yellow. In the distance, snow mountains disappeared beneath heavy clouds, rendering the land vast and desolate.
The Oirat riders herded the captured cattle and sheep, their horses’ hooves pounding over snow and dry leaves as they thundered across the plains.
After a light snowfall, the sky was heavy with clouds. Aletan reined in his horse and turned his gaze southward, thoughtful.
“Aletan, what are you looking at?” asked Wodan curiously.
The fifteen-year-old boy was the son of Aletan’s former bodyguard, Shalidan. Out of regard for his father and for the boy’s quick wit and courage in battle, Aletan had taken him in as a personal retainer.
“…Beyond that,” Aletan said, nodding toward the misted horizon, “past the Hetao Desert, lies the Ming Kingdom.”
His sharp, handsome face was shadowed by thick silver-white lashes over eyes like molten gold, not a dazzling beauty, but a fierce and wild one, the look of a predator poised to strike. That single southward glance carried the raw instinct and aggression of a hunting beast.
Wodan grinned, revealing uneven, sharp little tiger teeth. “Are we going to change course and attack them?”
Aletan shook his head. “No. The time hasn’t come. Our true enemy now is the Tatars. Until we deal with that threat, whatever we do, we’ll always have to guard against a knife in the back.”
Wodan thought for a moment, then said matter-of-factly, “Then kill the Tatar Grand Preceptor Tuo Huotai, wipe out the little khan Wang Mudai’s clan, and take the eastern grasslands under your banner, wouldn’t that solve it?”
Aletan laughed. “I’m not even Khan of the Oirat yet, what right have I to speak of conquering the Tatars?”
The nearby Oirat riders, hearing their exchange, gathered around. One leader said, “After Borhan Khan’s passing, the great prince should rightfully inherit the throne.”
Others echoed: “Yes, the great prince was the khan’s chosen heir!”
“The great prince pacified Hastah City, slew countless enemies, and never lost a battle, he’s the true hawk of the Sacred Tree. We’ll follow no one else.”
“With the Sacred Tree’s blessing, the great prince will bring our tribe strength and glory!”
“The new Khan of the Oirat, son of Borhan Khan, Bogda Khan!”
“Bogda Khan! Bogda Khan!”
The shouts spread farther and farther, rising until they seemed to shake the sky itself; even the frostbitten plains trembled with the sound.
In the northern tongue, Borhan meant “divine,” so Borhan Khan had been the name of the former khan, Hu Kuoli, “the Divine Khan.” Bogda meant “holy,” and Bogda Khan, “the Holy Khan.”
When a new khan took the throne, the tribe’s shaman would traditionally divine his sacred name. But Aletan, not yet enthroned, had already been named by the will of his people, something rarely seen.
When the riders’ excitement finally subsided, Aletan spoke: “The rites of inheritance cannot be neglected, nor the will of our ancestors taken lightly. Once we return to the royal court, the great shaman will divine the name, only then will it be decided.”
The great shaman? the riders thought. Could the prince mean Heiduo?
Discontent flickered across their faces; many of them looked openly scornful.
Because Heiduo’s two most recent divinations had both ended in failure,
The first was before the alliance with the Tatars. Heiduo had declared that the expedition followed Heaven’s will and would surely conclude perfectly. Yet in the end, Khan Hu Kuoli was slain by the Tatars.
The second was after the rebellion at Hastah City. When Aletan decided to lead his troops in a surprise attack on the Tatar royal court, Heiduo performed a spirit dance at his request and proclaimed that the gods did not favor this battle, that Aletan should withdraw. But Aletan won, and though he failed to capture the royal court, the Tatars suffered heavy losses, and their herds and supplies were plundered in vast quantities.
From then on, it seemed Heiduo’s power to commune with the spirits was no longer effective. Among the Oirat horsemen, murmurs spread, saying that Heiduo had already fallen to the edge of being forsaken by gods and ancestors alike.
Yet the great prince still honored his late father’s memory, declaring, “Heiduo was once the high shaman my father trusted. I cannot cast him aside lightly.”
The words “once” and “lightly” were chosen with care. Many of the nobles and officers supporting Aletan sensed their deeper meaning, and soon rumors raged through the ranks: “Heiduo has lost his gift of spirit communion; his so-called divine messages are lies.”
Before the assault on the Tatar royal court, Aletan had publicly announced, “The three other shamans who accompanied my father bear personal grudges against Heiduo. To avoid unnecessary conflict, the great shaman shall stay by my side, I will protect him.”
The Oirat soldiers admired Aletan’s magnanimity, believing that if he could show such tolerance toward Heiduo despite his repeated failures, he would surely treat all his people with equal kindness. The army’s morale became stronger than ever.
But in the thick of battle, while Aletan fought bravely at the front lines, a sudden rattling of spirit-bells rose from the rear.
The piercing, high-pitched sound stabbed into the ear, shaking the soul. Aletan’s breath faltered; an enemy arrow nearly struck him.
He shot the archer dead with a backhanded arrow, but at that very instant, another blast of bell and mirror echoed like a hammer blow to his chest. Blood burst from his mouth, and a blade grazed his arm.
In that perilous moment, Aletan slid sideways beneath his horse’s belly, and with a sweeping upward slash, split both rider and horse before him open from chest to gut.
Blood spattered over his face and hair. Turning, Aletan roared like a lion: “The shaman attacked me! There is a traitor in our ranks!”
He tore open the cross-folds of his battle robe, binding the sleeves around his waist. His broad chest and the tattoo of the sacred tree blazed into view as he shouted, “I am one chosen by the gods! Who can kill me?”
Then he charged back into the enemy ranks, blade and bow flashing. None could stop him. Wherever he went, blood and flesh flew; the entire Tatar cavalry broke before his unstoppable fury.
After the victory, Aletan sat astride his horse and whistled sharply. His cry rang like an eagle’s screech, and a hawk circled above him in the sky.
“It’s the eagle from the sacred tree!”
“It’s the power of the Great Shaman!”
“With the great prince leading us, we are invincible!”
Whispers turned into waves. The Oirat horsemen all dismounted and knelt on one knee, striking their chests in the gesture of submission.
Then someone shouted angrily, “Who attacked the great prince? Step forward!”
“It was a shaman, someone used the bell’s spell!”
“There are four shamans in the army. Which one?”
“Could it be Heiduo? His divinations failed twice, perhaps he struck in shame and anger.”
“I think so.”
“I do too.”
“Come to think of it, Heiduo never wanted us to fight the Tatars. He was the one who urged the alliance, and the one who predicted defeat. Is he even still one of us?”
“Heiduo… Heiduo…”
At the rear of the battlefield, the four shamans had each, according to custom, chosen a place to commune with spirits, ringing bells, beating drums, and chanting to pray for victory.
Heiduo, taking pride in his rank, had occupied the highest point alone, while the other three stayed together nearby.
When they heard Aletan’s furious cry, the shamans halted their rituals in confusion.
“Who used the bell’s magic to attack the prince?”
“Not us, there are three of us here together.”
They turned suspicious eyes toward the heights where Heiduo stood, but the hill and trees blocked the view.
Oirat riders galloped up and shouted, “The great prince orders you to come for questioning, there’s a traitor among you!”
The three shamans said nothing, mounted their horses, and followed.
Only Heiduo remained on the slope, his black shaman’s robes fluttering in the wind, the hood shadowing his face. The bell rod was in his hand, the spirit mirror at his chest, but he had not infused them with power, had not attacked Aletan.
A harsh, rasping laugh escaped his lips. He knew he had fallen into the trap Aletan had laid. He could not clear his name and had lost the people’s trust.
Within that wild, forceful body was a mind as cunning as a fox. He had underestimated Aletan; this defeat was deserved.
He knew the danger he was in, but he could not flee. To flee would expose his true identity and undo all his careful planning and effort. The punishment for failure would be unbearable.
So Heiduo chose to take a desperate gamble.
He returned to the camp and, like the others, proclaimed his innocence.
The other shamans could testify for each other, but Heiduo was alone. With no witness to prove his innocence, yet none to accuse him either, the case stood at a deadlock.
He knew Aletan had staged the attack as a ruse, but given the situation, he could not expose it. Instead, he countered by accusing the other three shamans of conspiring together and shielding one another.
That only deepened the conflict, with both sides denying the other.
At last Aletan made the final decision: the case would be set aside. Since none of the four could clear themselves, they would all remain confined in the tent under guard. Once they returned to the tribe, he himself would don the sacred robe, dance the spirit dance, and summon the ancestors, then truth and treachery would be revealed.
The soldiers and the three shamans all agreed. Heiduo had no choice but to do the same.
He knew Aletan meant to kill him, but still clung to hope. Once they returned to the tribe, he believed he could seize back control and force Aletan to bow instead.
More importantly, he still had one final card to play.
Those black pills, those secret medicines.
If he could find a way to make Aletan take them, then within days, he would have another khan-puppet as formidable as Hu Kuoli.
So, on the entire journey home, he stayed as silent as a ghost.
After twenty days of marching, Aletan led four thousand elite cavalry, with plundered livestock and goods, and his father Khan Hu Kuoli’s remains, back to the Oirat royal court.
The tribe held the highest honors of a wild burial for the former khan; the ceremony lasted three full days.
Three days later, they would hold the trial ritual, Aletan’s first appearance as the Great Shaman, who would, through spirit communion, judge loyalty and treachery.
Time was running out for Heiduo. Confined to his own yurt, unable to move freely, he ordered one of his men hidden among the royal servants to melt the pills and mix them into Aletan’s food.
The servant found a chance and did so secretly, then reported back that he had seen Aletan eat the meal with his own eyes.
Heiduo carefully calculated each dosage, waiting for the third day when Aletan’s craving would erupt, disgracing him in public, unable to finish the trial, forcing him to come begging for the medicine.
But the next night, Aletan entered Heiduo’s tent alone, demanding the secret pills once given to Khan Hu Kuoli.
Heiduo thought he had overdosed him and that the addiction had set in early. With malicious delight, he said, “The pills that lift one’s soul into the divine realm? I don’t know what Your Highness means. What I gave your father was merely medicine for his illness.”
Aletan pulled from his robe half a crushed black pill. “I found this under my father’s bedding. Is it this one?”
Heiduo let out a rasping, ugly laugh. “So you searched through all Khan Hu Kuoli’s belongings and only found half of one? Then why not eat it right now? Why keep suffering?”
Aletan smiled faintly and tossed the half pill into the brazier. Flames licked upward, devouring the mysterious medicine, whether born of the gods or of demons, until it was nothing but ash.
Heiduo’s face, hidden beneath his hood, changed color. “Impossible! You can’t, no one can resist its power. No one!”
“The premise is that I must first take it. Unfortunately for you, I didn’t,” Aletan said, stepping closer. The firelight gilded his white hair like a lion’s mane. “You’re so skilled at using poison, why not test your own handiwork?”
Heiduo drew his staff-bell.
But Aletan was faster. His curved blade shot forward; the hilt struck Heiduo’s elbow, numbing his grip so badly the bell nearly fell. A flash of steel, then the back of the blade slammed into Heiduo’s knee.
A faint cracking sound rang out. Heiduo staggered back, clutching his knee, gritting his teeth against the pain of shattered bone.
Aletan’s skill was sharper and fiercer than before his return. Was it the blessing of the Sacred Tree, or the teaching of the old shaman who guarded it? Heiduo endured the agony, his heart twisting with envy and hate.
“Hand over all your pills and the formula. Do that, and I’ll grant you a swift death after tomorrow’s trial,” said Aletan.
Heiduo sneered. “You want them too? Of course, you’re no different. Who could resist their allure…”
No, thought Aletan. He had promised someone that he would destroy these demonic drugs, and avenge the one whose legs had been severed because of them.
“Will you give them or not?” he pressed. “Refuse, and I’ll break your bones one by one, starting from your feet.”
Heiduo gave a ghastly laugh. Only after Aletan methodically shattered the shin of his injured leg did he finally reveal the hiding place.
Aletan recovered all the stored pills, but the number was far fewer than expected.
“This isn’t all of them. Hand over every last one,” he ordered. “Don’t forget, you still have one leg left.”
Heiduo trembled and gasped under the waves of pain, sweat pouring down his face. “You know… how powerful these pills are… So why shouldn’t I use them… to make a deal?”
Aletan immediately realized the implication. He stomped on Heiduo’s chest. “You gave them to someone else? Who?”
Heiduo’s head hit the ground; his hood fell away, revealing a face disfigured by burn scars, features twisted in agony. “What, do you mean to snatch them back from him? Or… do you want to trade with him too?”
“Who is it?” Aletan demanded again.
“…In the Central Plains,” Heiduo rasped, “a man who calls himself the Player, his subordinates contacted me…”
“What deal did you make?”
“I gave him the pills. For our shared interests, we would sow conflict between Great Ming and the northern tribes… And in return, he would help me reclaim the throne rightfully belonging to the Talhusi line, unite the northern desert under my rule…”
“You are… the descendant of Chengzhu Talhusi!” Aletan suddenly understood.
Decades ago, under the dominion of the warlord Talhusi, the northern desert had formed the Cheng Kingdom, called “Northern Cheng” by the Ming. The Oirat, the Tatars, and a dozen other tribes had all been subdued under Talhusi’s rule. Though internal strife remained, all feared his power.
Talhusi’s ambition was boundless, he sought to march south and conquer the Central Plains.
At the time, the Ming Emperor was the father of today’s Emperor Jinglong, Emperor Xianzu. Leading half a million troops, he personally campaigned to the north, and in the battle at Ba’e Lake, crippled Northern Cheng’s strength.
Talhusi fled in defeat, passing through Oirat lands. There, Aletan’s grandfather, then Oirat chieftain, betrayed him, killed him, and seized the imperial title. He later passed the title of “Chengzhu” to Aletan’s father, Khan Hu Kuoli.
Talhusi’s regime collapsed overnight, and the northern desert fell once again into division.
The Tatars claimed themselves the rightful heirs of the Cheng throne, refusing to yield to the Oirat. To reclaim the imperial name, they fought the other tribes for decades without rest.
Both the Oirat and the Tatars regarded themselves as the legitimate line; both bled and suffered in endless stalemate.
Amid this strife-torn land, Khan Hu Kuoli struggled to find a path forward for the Oirat. It was then that Emperor Jinglong of Great Ming secretly sent envoys to Oirat, offering a hand of alliance.
The Great Ming was willing to open mutual trade and bestow upon Khan Hu Kuoli the title of Pingning Wang*, in support of Oirat’s unification of the grasslands.
*Prince of Peace and Tranquility
In return, Oirat agreed to renounce the imperial title of “Emperor of Northern Cheng,” adopt instead the name “Khan,” and pledge eternal friendship with the Great Ming.
This was in April of last year, one month after a newly appointed Ming official named Su Yan submitted a proposal to Emperor Jinglong.
Aletan knew that his father and Emperor Jinglong had once entertained the idea of an alliance, but he did not know that the mastermind behind it was the same young imperial censor he had encountered at Qingshui Camp in Lingzhou.
Of course, due to the side effects of the Sacred Tree’s fruit, he no longer remembered the name Su Yan at all.
Only at times, in dreams or in moments when his fingers brushed the silken ribbon, would a faint vision surface, a tall, slender figure in a Central Plains scholar’s robe.
Who was that person?
The owner of the ribbon eternally wound around his arm?
The one who, as the old shaman said, used his own blood to dye red the tattoo of the Sacred Tree on Aletan’s skin, awakening the medicine in the ink and pulling him back from the brink of death?
The one who, because of that act, had poisoned him with blood corruption, his destined partner, who must join with him beneath the Sacred Tree’s witness to dispel it?
Aletan drifted for a moment, then pressed all these questions deep down again.
For now, there were far more urgent matters, purging the traitors within his tribe, securing succession to the Oirat throne, defeating and absorbing the Tatars.
He would unify the northern desert and end the years of war and strife upon this land.
As for the blood poison… there were still two years before it erupted. He could deal with it then.
Lowering his gaze upon the curled, trembling Heiduo, Aletan mocked, “Talhusi is long dead, and his descendants are nothing but stray dogs. Still dreaming of restoring his fallen glory? Tell me, how did you contact that so-called ‘Player’s’ men in the Central Plains?”
The next evening, in the snowy wilderness, Heiduo awoke.
He was not dead, but he might as well have been. Both legs had been severed at the thigh, the wounds cauterized with boiling oil to keep him from bleeding out.
Beside him lay a scrap of sheepskin. With trembling fingers, Heiduo dragged it closer and saw a few words written upon it, a saying from the Central Plains:
“To treat a man as he treated others.”
Heiduo suddenly remembered his master, the old shaman whose formula he had stolen, whose legs he had cut off, and whom he had abandoned in the wilderness.
Now he faced the same fate, but without the luck his master once had of being rescued.
In the dry weeds around him, pinpoints of green light began to gleam, the eyes of hungry wolves on the steppe.
—
Great Ming Capital, The Forbidden City
Not long after Su Yan, disguised as an inner servant, departed, Emperor Jinglong received an urgent report delivered from six hundred li away.
The intelligence came from “Ye Bu Shou” within the northern desert. It read,
“Oirat’s eldest prince Kunle, known in the north as Aletan, has succeeded the late Khan Hu Kuoli as khan. The Oirat tribes all submit to him and call him ‘Bogda Khan.’ He is brave, fierce, and shrewd, harboring the ambition to unite the northern tribes under his rule.”
Emperor Jinglong read those words several times.
Ambition? Which leader among the northern tribes lacked ambition? So many schemed, yet so few succeeded.
Still, this Kunle, this Aletan, his methods warranted caution.
Setting the report aside, the emperor spread a small map across the table and leaned over it,
Great Ming, Oirat, Tatar.
The three powers stood now in a delicate balance. If one faltered, the equilibrium would collapse.
At present, Ming’s diplomatic strategy was to use Oirat to restrain the Tatars, and the Tatars to restrain Oirat.
If this Aletan could not be contained, and his ambition and ability grew beyond the limit, then perhaps Ming should choose another to support among the northern tribes.
No rush, the emperor thought. Watch first.
If Oirat truly gained the strength to sweep across the north, then Ming would act from the shadows.
“When necessary,” he murmured, recalling a teasing voice from before, “one can always replace the concubine and make another the principal wife.”
The sly smile from that moment flickered in his mind, yet the person was gone now, departed from the imperial study, from the palace itself, soon to begin the journey south to Nanjing.
His fingertips still seemed to retain the faint warmth of that smooth skin; the air still held a trace of that fragrance.
Emperor Jinglong drew a deep breath and thought silently:
Qinghe, one day you will understand.
And when that day comes, do not resent, do not hate. For in truth, I…
I…
The emperor sank back into his chair, closed his eyes, and leaned his head against the carved, gilded backrest.
