CHAPTER 18

I could not sleep that night, although to say "night" is misleading. The sky was already pearl-gray with the coming dawn when I returned to my house from Ogotai's tent.

Agla was wide awake, waiting for me. We talked as the sky brightened into true morning. Finally she could keep her eyes open no longer and drifted into slumber, her head resting on my shoulder. I can get along with little sleep. I lay beside her, wondering what I should do next.

I had not been placed here by mistake or misdirection. Ahriman was here, working his plan for the destruction of the human race. He saw Ogotai nightly and gave him some sort of drink to help the High Khan sleep. Medicine? Liquor? Slow poison?

Why did Ogotai need help to sleep? Did his conscience bother him? He said he was tired of wars and slaughter, but yet he ruled an empire which had to keep expanding, or it would collapse into tribal wars. That was what Ye Liu Chutsai had told me.

I shook my head. It made little sense to me. Ogotai lived off the wealth of all Asia, longing for peace, while his brothers and nephews spread fire and havoc in the Middle East, Europe, and China. How can this be a nexus in the space-time continuum? What did Ahriman plan to do here? How could I stop him if I did not know what he was trying to accomplish?

There was one way, of course. Simply kill Ahriman. Lie in wait for him at his stone church and slit his throat. Kill him the way he killed Aretha, without mercy or hesitation.

But a countering idea struck me. Perhaps that is what Ahriman wants! He has made no secret of his presence here. He has not tried to harm me or Agla. He has not tried to prevent my learning that he visits Ogotai's tent each night. Perhaps his murder would trigger a sequence of events that would accomplish his goal here, whatever that goal might be.

I felt suspended in midair, hanging on nothingness while two powerful forces pulled me in opposite directions. I was being torn apart, but there was nothing I could do about it. I could not move, could not take action, until I learned more about Ahriman's plans.

My deliberations, and Agla's sleep, were rudely shattered by an insistent pounding on our front door.

"What is it?" Agla wondered, instantly awake.

The pounding sounded like whoever it was would break the door down.

I pulled my robe around me as I got to my feet. Agla burrowed deeper under the bedclothes, looking frightened.

Opening the door—there were no locks in Karakorum—I saw a stumpy, wizened old man with skin that looked as tough as tree bark and fists almost the size of his shaved head. He wore shabby, stained clothes and had a huge leather satchel slung over one shoulder.

"So you're awake!" he snapped at me.

I glared down at him. "I am now."

He gave a disgusted snort. "I know how long those drinking bouts go on in the ordu. And while the High Khan is in his cups people get him to promise them things."

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"The bootmaker, who else?" He pushed past me and entered the house. "A messenger from the High Khan ordered me to come to you and make you a pair of boots. As if I don't have enough to do! But do they care? Not them! Make this stranger from the western lands a pair of boots! The High Khan himself has ordered it! Do it quickly or we'll all lose our heads! So here I am, whether you like it or not. I may have spoiled your sleep, but by all the gods you'll have a pair of boots that will please the High Khan, and you'll have them before the drinking starts again this evening."

He sat flat on the floor of the front room and began unpacking his satchel. I had my boots by that evening, all right, and fine and comfortable they were. But I never met a worse tyrant among all the Mongols than that bootmaker.

Ogotai had taken a liking to me, and he invited me to his pavilion frequently. One day he took me riding, out beyond the bedlam of the crowded, dirty, noisy lanes of the growing city, past the vast horse corrals and cattle barns, out into the endless, rolling grasslands.

"This is the true home of the Mongol," he told me, turning in his saddle to survey the vast, empty, treeless grassland. He took a deep breath of air unpolluted by crowded buildings and people.

I told him, "Far to the west, in a land called Greece, when the natives there first saw men riding on horses—long ages ago—they thought that the man and horse were one creature. They called them Centaurs."

Ogotai smiled in the sunlight. "Truly, a Mongol without a horse is not much of a man."

We rode frequently together. At first Ogotai brought a guard of warriors with him, but soon enough he rode with me alone. He enjoyed my company and he trusted me. I told him about the lands and people of Europe, of the great kings that were yet to be and of the glories of the ancient empires. He was especially interested in Rome, and disappointed when I spoke of the corruption and decay of its empire.

"We would not have High Khans such as Tiberius or Caligula—they can only exist when the Orkhons are spineless. That is not the way Mongols are."

Agla did not trust the High Khan's friendship. "You are playing with fire. Sooner or later the Dark One will put a spell on Ogotai, or he will get drunk and pick a quarrel with you."

"He's not that kind of man," I said.

She fixed me with those luminous gray eyes of hers, as endlessly deep as an infinite ocean. "He is the High Khan, a man who has the power to slaughter whole cities and nations. Your life or mine does not matter to such a man."

I started to tell her that she was wrong, but heard myself say, rather weakly, "I don't think so.

Agla remained unconvinced.

The summer wore on with me still stranded on dead center, not knowing what to do or what Ahriman was planning. Messengers galloped in from the west, breathless with the news of Subotai's victory over Bela on the plain of Mohi. Weeks later, long caravans of camels and mules arrived, heaped high with armor and weapons and jewelry, Subotai's spoils from Hungary and Poland.

I never saw Ahriman. It was as if we operated in two different time-frames, two separate dimensions. He was there in Karakorum,. I knew. He knew I was there as well. We both saw Ogotai almost daily—or nightly. Yet, either by the High Khan's adroit planning or Ahriman's, we never met face to face in all those many weeks.

The wind sweeping down from the north began to have an edge to it. The grass was still green, but soon the storms of autumn would begin, and then the winter snows. In the old days the Mongols would move their camp southward and collide with other tribes who claimed the same pasture lands along the edge of the Gobi. Now, with Karakorum becoming more of a fixed city every day, the High Khan prepared to stay the winter and defy the winds and storms that were to come.

The Mongols organized a hunt each autumn, and Ye Liu Chutsai summoned me to his tent to tell me that the High Khan requested my company on the hunt.

The mandarin's tent was a tiny slice of China transported to the Mongolian steppes. Solid, heavy furniture of teak and ebony, chests inlaid with ivory and gold, an air of quiet and harmony—unlike the boisterous, almost boyish energy of the Mongols. It was the tent in which I had asked him for my first meeting with Ogotai. I had not realized then that Liu lived in it. Now I could sense the philosopher's stoicism all about me: Ye Liu Chutsai slept here, probably on that cherrywood bench covered with silks, but this tent was really a home for the books and parchment scrolls and stargazing instruments of the mandarin—more precious and rare than the body of an aging Chinese administrator.

"The High Khan has shown a great fondness for you," Liu said, after sitting me down at his cluttered desk and offering me tea.

"I have a great fondness for him," I admitted. "He is a strangely gentle man to be the emperor of the world."

Liu sipped from his miniature teacup before replying, "He rules wisely—by allowing his generals to expand the empire while he maintains the law of the Yassa within it."

"With your help," I said.

"Behind every great ruler stand wise administrators. The way to determine if a ruler is great or not is to observe whom he has selected to serve him."

Cardinal Richelieu came to my mind.

"Yet, despite your friendship," Liu went on, speaking slowly, carefully, "the one called Ahriman is also close to the High Khan."

"The High Khan has many friends."

The mandarin placed his cup delicately on the lacquered tray next to the still-steaming teapot. "I would not say that Ahriman is his friend. Rather, the man seems to have become something of a physician to the High Khan."

That startled me. "Physician? Is the High Khan ill?"

"Only in his heart," said Liu. "He wearies of his life of idleness and luxury. Yet the alternative is to lead an army into the field and conquer new lands."

"He won't do that," I said, remembering how Ogotai had told me he was sick of bloodshed.

"I agree. He cannot. Hulagu, Subotai, Kubilai—they lead the armies. Ogotai's task is to remain in Karakorum and be the High Khan. If he began to gather an army together, what would the Orkhons think? There are no lands for him to conquer except those already being put to the sword by the Orkhons."

I began to understand. Ogotai literally had no worlds left to conquer. Europe, China, the Middle East were all being attacked already. He would start a civil war among the Mongols if he went marching in any direction.

But then I thought of India.

"What about the land to the south of the great mountains, the Roof of the World?"

"Hindustan?" Ye Liu Chutsai came as close to scoffing as his cool self-restraint would allow. "It is a land teeming with diseased beggars and incredibly rich maharajahs. The heat there kills men and horses. The Mongols will not go there."

Liu was wrong. I seemed to remember that the Mongols eventually did conquer India, or at least a part of it. They were called Moghuls by the natives, a name that became so associated with power and splendor that in the twentieth century it was cynically pinned on Hollywood executives.

The mandarin brought me out of my reverie by saying, "Fortunately, it is the season for the hunt. Perhaps that will cure the ache in the High Khan's soul, and he will have no need of Ahriman's sleeping draughts for a while."