The Tiger Queens
Praise for the Novels of Stephanie Thornton
The Tiger Queens
“A gripping epic of sacrifice, revenge, and conquest during the time of Genghis Khan as four very different women struggle to keep his empire from shattering. The Tiger Queens kept me riveted from beginning to end!”
—Michelle Moran, bestselling author of The Second Empress
“A vivid depiction of warrior women [as] tough as the harsh, windswept steppes [that] nurtured them and who, as the warring Mongol clans battle for supremacy, survive . . . to ensure their men emerge the victors. Gripping stuff!”
—Alex Rutherford, author of the Empire of the Moghul series
“From under the felted ger tents of Genghis Khan emerge four powerful women. It is a testament to Thornton’s writing prowess that she can so intricately whittle heroines that are both compassionate and ruthless from the bones of our ancestors . . . a stunning achievement!”
—Barbara Wood, New York Times bestselling author of The Serpent and the Staff and Rainbows on the Moon
“A sprawling historical saga centering on the wives and daughters of Genghis Khan. These bold, courageous women make tremendous sacrifices in the face of danger, revenge, and high-stakes survival, all in the name of family love and loyalty. Be prepared to be swept away by Thornton’s richly drawn epic of an empire and its generational shifts of power.”
—Renée Rosen, author of Dollface and What the Lady Wants
“They were the Golden Family of Genghis Khan. Yet their lives were anything but golden as they struggled to hold together the very center of the largest empire the world has ever known. An empire that was built in one lifetime, and would have been destroyed in the next had it not been for the wives and daughters of the Great Khan. This is historical fiction at its finest.”
—Gary Corby, author of The Marathon Conspiracy
“Three generations of strong women live, love, suffer, and triumph in a fresh and gritty setting—Genghis Khan’s forging of an empire in thirteenth- century Mongolia. Marginalized in most histories, these Mongol mothers and daughters, empresses and slaves, claim their voices again in Stephanie Thornton’s The Tiger Queens. Unusual and imaginative!”
—Elizabeth Loupas, author of The Second Duchess and The Red Lily Crown
“Stunning. The Tiger Queens sweeps the reader into the ruthless world of Genghis Khan’s wives and daughters with a gritty realism as intense as the eternal blue sky and blood-soaked steppes. Vivid characterization and top-notch writing. This story of strong women, their enduring friendships and passions, gives a rare glimpse into a shadowy period of history. A worthy successor to Taylor Caldwell’s The Earth is the Lord’s.”
—Judith E. French, author of The Conqueror, The Barbarian, and The Warrior
Daughter of the Gods
“Stephanie Thornton’s heroines are bold, brave, and powerful.”
—Kate Quinn, author of Lady of the Eternal City
This is the kind of book that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. A remarkable story, remarkably told.”
—Kate Furnivall, author of The Russian Concubine and Shadows on the Nile
“An epic saga that brings ancient Egypt to life with vivid imagery and lovely prose. Stephanie Thornton is a rising star!”
—Stephanie Dray, author of Lily of the Nile and Daughters of the Nile
“Hatshepsut crackles with fascinating complexity.”
—Vicky Alvear Shecter, author of Cleopatra’s Moon and Curses and Smoke: A Novel of Pompeii
The Secret History
“What a heroine! Stephanie Thornton’s Theodora is tough and intelligent, spitting defiance against the cruel world.”
—Kate Quinn, author of Lady of the Eternal City
“Loss, ambition, and lust keep this rich story moving at top speed . . . a remarkable first novel that brings a little-known woman to full, vibrant life again.”
—Jeane Westin, author of The Spymaster’s Daughter
“A fascinating and vivid account. . . . The life of the Empress Theodora leaps from the page.”
—Michelle Diener, author of The Emperor’s Conspiracy
“Thornton’s well-conceived and engrossing tale exalts a historical figure of ‘true grit.’”
—Library Journal
“If there is one book you choose to read on ancient times, let it be The Secret History. Theodora is a true Byzantine icon, and her story is a timeless inspiration that needs to be heard.”
—Historical Novel Society
“You’ll feel for Theodora. You’ll want to scream, to save her, and to cheer for her bravery all at the same time. . . . Theodora’s dramatic tale is exquisitely crafted in this can’t-miss summer read. I couldn’t put it down for a moment.”
—San Francisco Book Review
ALSO BY STEPHANIE THORNTON
The Secret History
Daughter of the Gods
New American Library
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
First published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC
Copyright © Stephanie Thornton, 2014
Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC 2014
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Thornton, Stephanie, 1980–
The tiger queens: the women of Genghis Khan / Stephanie Thornton.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-101-60768-8
1. Genghis Khan, 1162–1227—Fiction. 2. Mongols—Kings and rulers—Fiction. 3. Mongols—History—To 1500—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.H7847T54 2014
813'.6—dc23 2014019843
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To Isabella, for inspiring me to write about the love between mothers and daughters
Contents
Praise
Also by STEPHANIE THORNTON
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Part I: The Seer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part II: The Khan’s Daughter
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part III: The Rose of Nishapur
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Part IV: The Princess of the Hearth
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Cast of Characters
Author’s Note
Further Reading on the Empire of Genghis Khan
About the Author
Readers Guide
Excerpt from The Conqueror’s Wife
Prologue
Our names have long been lost to time, scattered like ashes into the wind. No one remembers our ability to read the secrets of the oracle bones or the wars fought in our names. The words we wrote have faded from their parchments; the sacrifices we made are no longer recounted in the glittering courts of those we conquered. The deeds of our husbands, our brothers, and our sons have eclipsed our own as surely as when the moon ate the sun during the first battle of Nishapur.
Yet without us, there would have been no empire for our men to claim, no clan of the Thirteen Hordes left to lead, and no tales of victory to sing to the Eternal Blue Sky.
It was our destiny to love these men, to suffer their burdens and shoulder their sorrows, to bring them into this world, red-faced and squalling, and tuck their bones into the earth when they abandoned us for the sacred mountains, leaving us behind to fight their wars and protect their Spirit Banners.
We gathered our strength from the water of the northern lakes, the fire of the south’s Great Dry Sea, the brown earth of the western mountains, and the wild air of the eastern steppes. Born of the four directions, we cleaved together like the seasons for our very survival. In a world lit by fire and ruled by the sword, we depended upon one another for the very breath we drew.
Even as the steppes ran with blood and storm clouds roiled overhead, we loved our husbands, our brothers, and our sons. And we loved one another, the fierce love of mothers and sisters and daughters, born from our shared laughter and tears as our souls were woven together, stronger than the thickest felts.
And yet nothing lasts forever. One by one, our souls were gathered into the Eternal Blue Sky, our tents dismantled, and our herds scattered across the steppes. That is a tale yet to come.
It matters not how we died. Only one thing matters: that we lived.
Part I
The Seer
Chapter 1
1171 CE
YEAR OF THE IRON HARE
He came in the autumn of my tenth year, when the crisp air entices horses to race and the white cranes fly toward the southern hills.
A single man led a line of horses between the two great mountains that straddled our camp. Startled, I set down my milking pail and wiped my hands on my scratchy felt deel—the long caftan worn by men, women, and children alike—as my father joined me, grunting and shielding his eyes from the last rays of golden sunlight. Visitors and merchants often found their way to sit against the western wall of our domed ger, silently filling their bellies with salted sheep fat until our fermented mare’s milk loosened their tongues. I loved to hear their tales of distant steppes and mountain forests, of clans with foreign names and fearsome khans. My father was the leader of our Unigirad clan, but life outside our camp seemed terribly exotic to a girl who had never traveled past the river border of our summer grazing lands.
I finished milking the goats and untied them from the line, watching the shadows grow, eager for the trader’s stories that would carry me to sleep that night.
“Borte Ujin.” My mother, the famed seer Chotan, called from the carved door of our ger, her gray hair tied back and a chipped wooden cooking spoon in her hand. I hated that spoon—my backside had met it more times than I could count on my fingers and toes.
I was a twilight child, planted in my mother’s belly like an errant seed long after her monthly bloods had ceased. After being childless for so long, my parents welcomed even a mere girl-child, someone to help my mother churn butter and corral the herds with my father. And so I grew up their only daughter, indulged by my elderly father while my mother harangued me to sit straighter and pay more attention to the calls of geese and the other messages from all the spirits.
My mother was by far the shortest woman in our village, but the look she gave me now would have scattered a pack of starving wolves. “Pull your head from the clouds, Borte,” she said. “The marmot won’t roast itself.”
I lugged the skin bucket of milk inside, ducking into the heavy scents of animal hides, earth, and burning dung. The thick haze of smoke made my throat and eyes burn. The felt ceiling was stained black from years of soot, and the smoke hole was open to the Eternal Blue Sky, the traditional rope that represented the umbilical cord of the universe dangling from the cloud-filled circle. A dead marmot lay by the fire, the size of a small dog, with prickly fur like tiny porcupine quills. Our meat usually came from one of the Five Snouts—horses, goats, sheep, camels, and cattle—but my father’s eyes sparkled when he could indulge my mother’s taste for wild marmot. The oily meat was a pleasant change.
“There’s a visitor on the path.” I hacked off the marmot’s head with a dull blade and yanked out the purple entrails. My father’s mottled dog pushed at my hip with her muzzle, but I swatted her away, daring to toss her the gizzards only when my mother wasn’t looking.
Mother sighed and rubbed her temples, squinting as if staring through the felt walls at something far away. “I knew about the visitor before he stepped over the horizon,” she said, the beads that dangled from her sleeves chattering with her every movement. Each was a reminder of a successful prophecy breathed to life by her lips, bits of bone and clay gathered from the spine of the Earth Mother to adorn her blue seer’s robes.
I glanced at the fire. Two singed sheep scapulae lay on the hearth, cracked with visions of the future. My mother’s father had been a holy man amongst our people, but he had passed to the sacred mountains the night I fell from her womb. There were whispers that my grandfather’s untethered powers might have found a new home in my soul, and his Spirit Banner still fluttered in the breeze outside our ger, strands of black hair from his favorite stallion tied to his old spear, so that his soul might continue to guide us.
My mother stuffed the marmot’s empty stomach cavity with steaming rocks. “These strangers will bring great fortune and great tragedy.” She spoke as if commenting about the quality of our mares’ dung, then pushed a strand of graying hair back from her face and glanced at my palms, slick with blood. “You’d best not greet your fate with foul hands.”
My skin prickled with dread. My mother was an udgan, a rare female shaman, and had cast my bones only once and then forbade me from speaking of the dark omens to anyone, including my father. Lighter prophecies than mine had driven other parents to fill their children’s pockets with stones and drown them. And so I had swallowed the words and promised never to speak of them.
The Eternal Blue Sky was bruised black when I stepped outside, and the scent of roasting horsemeat from a nearby ger made my stomach rumble. The water in the horses’ trough clung to the warmth of the day and I scrubbed until the flesh of my hands was raw. As on any other night, voices floated from the other far-flung tents. My cheeks grew warm at the grunts of lovemaking from the newly stitched ger of a couple freshly wed, the young man and woman who my mother claimed mounted each other like rabbits. The moans were muffled by a new mother crooning to her fussy infant and an old woman berating her grandsons for tracking mud into her tent.
And my father’s voice.
I started toward him but retreated into the shadows as a wiry stranger stepped into view. About the same age as my father, the man wore two black braids threaded with gray hanging down his back, topped with
a wide-ruffed hat of rabbit fur. Five dun-colored horses grazed in the paddock, laden with packs, their dark manes cropped close. I strained to hear the conversation, but my father only complimented the man on the quality of his animals. The stranger patted the flank of a pretty mare, releasing a puff of dancing dust into the air. Early moonlight gleamed on the curved sword at his hip, an unusual sight amongst my peace-loving clan, but then the light hit his face. I stumbled back, nearly landing on my backside.
His right eye glittered like a black star, but the left socket was empty, a dark slit nestled between folds of wrinkled skin and at the exact center of a long white scar, likely an old battle wound.
“And I thought they called you Dei the Wise.” The man grinned at my father, revealing two lines of crooked brown teeth. “You didn’t think I’d come without something to trade this time, did you, Dei?”
This time. So my father knew this traveler.
I thought to stay and listen, but the stranger shifted on his feet and his gaze fell on me. I expected a one-eyed scowl, but instead the man’s bushy eyebrows lifted in surprise.
I shrank further into the shadows, pulling the darkness around my shoulders. My mother would have my skin if she knew I’d been eavesdropping. Learning more about this stranger would have to wait until he’d filled his belly with our marmot.
I scuttled back to our ger, feeding the fire with dried mare dung until it crackled and my cheeks flushed with heat. My mother bustled about, mumbling to herself as she set out five mismatched wooden cups.
“There’s only one visitor, Mother.”
She ignored me and poured fresh goat milk into two cups, then filled the other three with airag. I knew better than to argue what I’d seen with my own eyes.
My mother pulled the rocks from the marmot’s belly as the wooden door opened, ushering in a gust of cool air along with my father and his guest. Behind the man skulked a scrawny boy scarcely my height, dressed in the same ragged squirrel pelts as his father and fingering the necklace at his throat, a menacing wolf tooth hung from a leather thong. His black hair was cropped close to his head and his eyes gleamed the same gray as a wolf’s pelt. My father’s dog gave a happy bark and jumped up, paws on the boy’s shoulders as if embracing a lost friend. The boy’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, a smaller version of his father’s, and for a moment I thought he might stab the dumb beast. I dragged her away by the scruff of her neck and forced her to sit at my feet, prompting a raised eyebrow from the boy.