long ago I expressed my fears, which become truer with every passing day. The Zhazhir dynasty, from which your close relative Taishuyt came, has proclaimed him Gur Khan. GENGHIS KHAN: I don’t need such predictions. The Mongols have a proverb: ‘Women do not speak gossip, but simply hear things differently.’ BORTE: Don’t worry – I know the Kazakhs also have such a proverb. All I did was tell the bitter truth. GENGHIS KHAN: You stubbornly want to drive a wedge between me and Jamukha. He is the Commander-in-Chief of all my troops. BORTE: From now on, he is not your Commander-in-Chief. GENGHIS KHAN: Enough! I’m tired of your chatter. Leave the horde. Genghis Khan rings a bell. The Khan’s assistant enters. Take this woman away. Take her away and put her in a separate yurt. From now on, keep her out of my horde. The guard takes Borte away. Proudly raising her head and straightening up, treading with dignity and without haste, Borte takes her leave. Genghis Khan looks at her and cannot immediately look away as he shakes his head regretfully. A small headquarters for the Khansha, Borte, placed on the mountainside. Although Genghis Khan moved her away from the palace, ordinary people still show her respect, for she is the wife of the great Khan. She also has her own workers and servants. Borte and the old woman, Keikuat are in the house. The old woman is busy with fortune telling on the forty-one round stone bones. KEIKUAT: Tomorrow will be a sultry day, and the moon is approaching an eclipse. The top five bones have fallen out. This means the child in the cradle will be happy. On the one hand, they are even, on the other, odd. Genghis Khan will have luck on one hand, and failure on the other. There is both confidence and anxiety in him. There is one bone in the centre. Something has torn his heart to pieces. In the last row, in three places, four bones have been laid down. This is a tough turn-out, the evenly unkind type. BORTE: What is the evenly unkind type? KEIKUAT: It represents death. BORTE: Who does it fall on? KEIKUAT: I do not know. BORTE: (Fearfully) Is there something holding you back from saying? KEIKUAT: As they say, ‘a mysterious lie, and not a mysterious lie’. I will try to read it through again.
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