CHAPTER 16

I tried to explain it all to Agla, but she could not seem to grasp the situation in its full implications. For hours I sat in our bare little hut, telling her of Ahriman and the other lives we had both lived, of Ormazd and the titanic struggle that spanned the centuries.

"Ahriman seeks to destroy the continuum of space time itself," I said, my voice rising to drive the point home, as if speaking louder would make everything clear to her.

She listened patiently. She tried to understand. But despite the fact that she had lived in the twentieth century and in other times, Agla comprehended very little of what I told her. In this incarnation she was totally a child of the thirteenth century.

"Ahriman is a dark wizard," she said at last, giving me her explanation of how the world looked to her, "and he has powers that allow him to show you the past and the future."

"But what he showed me happened today," I insisted. "And he didn't merely show it to me; we were there—thousands of miles away."

"You never left my side." She smiled faintly.

"Yes, I did. But I moved in a different time reference. To you, no time elapsed at all. To me, I spent nearly twelve hours at the plain of Mohi."

"So it seems to you. He is a wizard of great powers, that much is certain."

I decided to agree with her on that and let it go. That night we made love fiercely, as if both of us feared we would never have another night together. It was close to dawn when I finally drifted into sleep. I dreamed of Ormazd, arrayed in golden armor and riding a golden palomino horse. I watched him canter along a path through a green, park-like forest. The sun shone brightly and the sky was a cloudless blue. But as I watched, the forest thickened, grew darker, and soon the sun was hidden behind thick, black boughs heavy with foliage. I knew what was going to happen and I cried out to warn Ormazd, but no sound issued from my throat. I was paralyzed, powerless to move or even speak, as tiny, dark reptiles slithered across Ormazd's path and grew into lithe, wiry Mongol warriors who clambered over the palomino and pulled Ormazd down to the blood-soaked ground and stabbed again and again and again, over and over, blood spurting everywhere, arms and legs hacked off, throat ripped open, belly sliced apart so that I could see his living bowels being ripped by the filthy warriors of darkness.

"Orion, help me!" Ormazd screamed, his voice shrieking despite his wounds. "Where are you, Orion? Help me! Help me!"

All the world grew dark and cold and I remained paralyzed, frozen in deepest starless space while the entire planet Earth dwindled and disappeared into blackness.

I awoke, sitting up on the bed. Agla lay beside me, sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the world.

Think, Orion, think! I commanded myself. How can you defeat Ahriman if you don't even understand what he is trying to accomplish?

I closed my eyes again and considered the facts that I knew. Ahriman sought to destroy the fabric of space-time, to disrupt the continuum so completely that the entire universe would shatter. He claimed that we humans had annihilated his race, and he sought total revenge, the annihilation of the human race for all time and space. That meant that he must destroy Ormazd, whom Ahriman called our creator.

There was much that I did not know, much that I could not understand. I shook my head, wondering how I could reach Ormazd and ask him for more information. But obviously he felt that I had all the knowledge I needed. He had sent me here, to this time and place, with all the powers of my mind and body, and even with an understanding of the Mongol language printed into my brain. He had also sent Agla here, as a sort of native guide, a barometer of the attitudes and understandings of the people of this era. That was her role, just as Aretha's role in the twentieth century had been to awaken me to the task of finding Ahriman.

Somehow, Ogotai was the key to everything here. I had blurted out, when the Mongol warriors had first captured me, that I was an emissary to the High Khan. Ormazd had put that into my mind. I did not know why, but I knew with utter conviction that everything depended on my meeting the High Khan face to face.

As the rising sun slanted through the front room's single window, filling the dusty bare chamber with dancing motes, I resolved to make Ye Liu Chutsai grant me an audience with the High Khan.

Agla came with me as I sought out the mandarin. Dressed in her robes and beads, she served me as a sort of radiation meter, sensitive to the nuances of this strange world that I would never pick up for myself. But she was also the woman I loved and I wanted her by my side so that I could protect her from Ahriman and all other dangers.

It took the best part of the morning for us to talk our way past the dour-faced guards and soft-spoken Chinese administrators of the ordu. We found ourselves at last in a small tent that stood to one side of Ogotai's main pavilion. Inside, the tent was richly carpeted, and furnished with chests and cabinets decorated with intricate scrollwork and inlaid ivory and gold. Their motifs of dragons and pagodas showed them to be from Cathay.

Liu appeared from behind a seven-foot-high ebony screen, moving as smoothly and mysteriously as ever in his floor-length robes to a cushioned chair set off to one side of a long table covered with scrolls and maps. He nodded to us and smiled; taking one hand from his wide sleeves, he gestured us to the smaller chairs near his own.

After a few polite exchanges of greetings, the mandarin asked me why I sought his ear.

"To beg you for an audience with the High Khan," I said. "It is urgent that I meet Ogotai."

He toyed with his wispy white beard for a few silent moments. I focused every atom of my being, every flickering synapse along the myriad neurons of my brain, at the old man's mind. He seemed to feel it; his body stiffened slightly, and he looked up, directly into my eyes. I saw confusion in his dark brown eyes, then a widening understanding of my purpose.

"I have been protecting you from possible danger," he said, almost apologetically. "If you meet Ogotai and he decides that you truly are the menace Ahriman prophesies you to be, he will have you killed."

"There is a greater danger in waiting," I answered. "I must see him now."

"Yes," Liu said, nodding his understanding. "I shall arrange an audience for you. Wait here."

He rose from his chair like a sleepwalker and glided behind the elaborate ebony screen once more. I turned to Agla and smiled at her.

She was regarding me with a strange expression on her face. "You forced him to do your will," she said.

"I convinced him that it must be done."

She reached up to brush a stray hair back from her eyes and a snap of static electricity stung her fingers. "You are a wizard also." Her voice was a whisper of awe. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm not a wizard."

"Yes, you are. Like Ahriman. A man of great powers. I should have known it when you healed your wounds so quickly..."

"My powers are for good, not evil," I said. "But I am not a wizard."

"You have no idea of how powerful you truly are," Agla insisted. "What you did to my lord Chutsai... I could feel it!"

I tried to downplay my little instinctive trick of hypnosis, but Agla knew better than I what was involved. "You must not let Ogotai or the guards around him see your powers. They are superstitious men, and they would kill you out of fear."

"But they allow Ahriman to live," I said.

"Yes, because he prophesies victories in battle for them. I have listened to what the women say of Ahriman. He is feared for his dark powers, but the warriors are more afraid of displeasing him and having him prophesy defeat for the Mongols. These foolish men believe that Ahriman's prophecies create victory or defeat."

"Doesn't that put him in much danger? Wouldn't they be likely to slit his throat one night and be rid of him?"

She shook her head, tossing that stray lock of hair back over her eyes. Again she pushed it back, this time without a shock.

"Ahriman has been very clever. He came to Karakorum, from what I hear, as a priest of a new religion. A warrior's religion. The Mongols do not harm priests; they tolerate all religions. So, even though there is great fear of Ahriman's powers, the High Khan will not allow him to be harmed—so long as his prophecies of victory continue to be true."

He was clever, I thought. More clever than I, to understand these people so thoroughly.

"Besides," Agla went on, a bit more lightly, "the Mongols do not shed the blood of important personages."

"Oh? Then what..."

"They strangle them, or smother them beneath carpets. The Yassa forbids bloodletting among the Mongols, but it does not overlook the need for killing."

I sat in the stiff wooden chair, digesting all that Agla had told me. I could not help seeing Ahriman's face, and his ghastly smile, as I considered the fact that not even Genghis Khan's code of laws could prevent human beings from murdering one another.

Ye Liu Chutsai returned at last, looking somewhat puzzled, as if he could not quite remember why he was doing what he was doing.

"It is arranged," he said to me. "You will be received by the High Khan tonight, before the evening meal. You will come alone."

I glanced at Agla.

"The High Khan," explained Liu, "would not respect a man who was accompanied by a woman. It is the way of the Mongols, and no insult to you, lady."

"I am not insulted," Agla said. "Merely afraid that Orion might not understand everything that happens in Ogotai's court."

"I will be there to guide him," Liu said. "He is in enough peril, with Ahriman's prophecy already working against him, to have him appear before the High Khan with a woman at his side, and a woman whom many in Karakorum know to be a healer—and perhaps something of a witch..." He let the thought dangle.

"I understand," I told him. But, remembering what had happened to Aretha, I added, "I would like to have the guards protect Agla while I am away from her. Ahriman, or others, might try to strike at me through her."

The mandarin bowed his head slightly. "It will be done. You are both under my protection, for whatever good that does. And you, Orion, still have Subotai's recommendation to protect you."

I smiled at him. "I value Subotai's generosity, and I treasure your own, my lord Chutsai."

That pleased him. But he warned, "A shield is only as strong as the arm on which it is worn. You have a powerful enemy here at Karakorum. Be careful."

"Thank you, my lord. I will be."

Late that afternoon, as Agla fussed nervously about our quarters and I tried to concentrate on understanding what I had learned thus far so that I could peer into the future and determine what I must say to Ogotai, a servant brought new clothes for me to wear for my appearance before the High Khan. A gift from Ye Liu Chutsai.

Agla marveled at the outfit of leather and fine cloth. "You look like a prince! A handsome, powerful prince."

I smiled at her, although it hurt my newly shaven face. Shaving in cold water with a finely honed knife is a true test of courage. Agla beamed at me like a little girl and tried not to show how worried she was. We both knew that visitors to the High Khan's pavilion sometimes came away with gifts of gold and slaves and even horses. But sometimes they came away with molten silver poured into their ears.

"You must be very careful," she warned me, staring at me with somber, anxious eyes.

"I will be."

"Let the mandarin guide you. Do not allow them to see your powers; that will frighten them, just as Hulagu was frightened."

"Will Ahriman be there, do you think?"

Her gray eyes went even wider with fear. "I don't know. Perhaps."

Someone knocked at the door.

"Well, whether he is or not," I said, "that must be the guards to escort me to the pavilion."

Agla flung her arms around my neck. "I wish I were going with you!"

"I'll be all right," I said. I gave her a swift kiss and then went to the door and opened it. A quartet of warriors stood outside, their gleaming armor and burnished helmets making our two regular guards look scruffy and mangy by comparison.

I glanced over my shoulder at Agla, gave her a final smile, and closed the door. My escort marched me to the pavilion, but not before I looked back to see her standing at the door watching me, while the two guards looked back and forth from me to her.

I walked between the two bonfires and stood patiently while the guard at the entrance to the High Khan's tent searched me for weapons. It was no perfunctory search; I have had medical examinations that were less thorough.

Finally I was allowed to enter the tent, my four escorts walking with me, two ahead and two behind. I was either an important guest or a dangerous captive; I imagined that Ogotai and his aides had not yet decided which.

The tent was much larger than Hulagu's or any other I had seen. Carpets from China and Persia covered the ground. Silks and tapestries hung along the felt walls. To one side stood a long table of what appeared to be solid silver, laden with mare's milk, fruit, meat and salt: a symbol of the nomad's generosity to guests. Warriors stood at either end of the table, and more were posted at the various entrances to the wide, long tent. Up ahead of me, on a one-step-high platform, sat Ogotai, the High Khan, flanked on his left by half a dozen of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, and by twenty or more Mongols who could only be generals and other warriors, on his right. I recognized only Ye Liu Chutsai, standing in a splendid robe of sky blue and gold, to the High Khan's immediate right and slightly behind him.

Ogotai reclined on cushions. He had no throne. He was a solid, chunky man, in his early fifties, I judged, with an open, curious expression on his round face. He was getting fat, but he did not seem to care about that. In one hand he held a wine goblet of gold, encrusted with jewels. Well behind him stood a Chinese boy, holding a gold pitcher—the Khan's wine steward.

As I marched in step with my four escorts toward the Khan's slightly raised dais, I scanned the big tent for a sign of Ahriman. I could not see him. That was all to the good, I thought.

The warriors brought me to a stop three paces in front of the High Khan. I bowed from the waist, then straightened up. I had no intention of falling on my face in obeisance. I was an emissary, not a slave.

"Most High Khan," said Ye Liu Chutsai as I stood before Ogotai, "this is the man Orion, an emissary from the land far to the west, beyond the mountains and plains and even the wide sea."

Ogotai glanced over his shoulder and the wine steward hurried forward to fill his goblet. The High Khan took a deep draft from it, then smacked his lips and gave me a long, careful study. He looked me up and down, then suddenly burst into uproarious laughter.

"Look!" he said, pointing at me. "He has no shoes!"