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"How can I convince you...?"
With a shake of his head, Ye Liu Chutsai said, "In a problem such as this, the Mongols would act with
wonderful simplicity. They would simply kill both you and Ahriman and possibly you, too, my dear
lady and have done with it. I, with my civilized conscience, will endeavor to determine which of you is
the assassin and which is the innocent party."
"Then I have nothing to fear," I said, wishing that I actually felt that way.
"Not from me. Not yet." The mandarin hesitated, then added, "But Ogotai is not a patient man. He may
apply the Mongol solution and be rid of the problem once and for all."
CHAPTER 15
Agla and I were not exactly prisoners, but wherever we went inKarakorum, the same two Mongol
warriors followed us. Ye Liu Chutsai said they were guards, for our protection, but they made me feel
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uneasy. Day and night they were never more than a few swift strides away. I learned that Mongol
discipline was relentless: these men would guard us until they were ordered to stop. If we escaped their
sight, they would be killed. If one of them died while guarding us, his son would take his place in such
duty, if he had a son old enough to be a warrior. If not, his closest male relative would step in.
We had the freedom of the city, except for the one place I wanted to go the pavilion of the High Khan,
the ordu of silk-draped tents that I could see from the door of our quarters each morning. Ye Liu Chutsai
would not permit me to see the Khan or to come any closer to Ogotai than the edge of the wide cleared
space that marked the ordu. The mandarin still worried that I might be an assassin, or even the leader of
the entire cult of assassins. So I was kept from seeing the High Khan while Chinese court intrigues began
to weave their way through the ordu of the Mongols.
But there was nothing to prevent me from seeking out Ahriman. For days Agla and I wandered through
the crowded, noisy lanes that meandered between yurts and buildings of stone and adobe, seeking the
Dark One.Karakorumwas a metropolis built by accident, without plan, without facilities. The Mongols
saw it as merely another encampment, larger than any previous collection of yurts and carts that they had
known. But they could not understand the differences that a change of scale makes. A nomad's
encampment of a thousand families with their tents and ponies and livestock could live beside a river for
weeks on end before it had to move on. But a city of ten thousand families, or a hundred thousand, which
remained fixed in one place, was beyond the ability of the Mongols.
Sanitation was nonexistent. To these nomadic warriors and herdsmen, who rubbed animal fat on their
bodies to protect themselves from winter's cold, bathing was almost unheard of. Garbage and human
wastes were simply dumped on the ground, usually behind one's tent. Water was carried to the city on
the backs of slaves, taken from the same river into which the runoff from the waste dumps ran. That
system worked for a temporary camp, but for a permanent city it meant disease, inevitably. I began to
wonder how long it would take forKarakorumto be swept away by an epidemic of typhus. Perhaps that
was what eventually ended the Mongol empire.
The noise of those twisting narrow streets rivaled twentieth-centuryManhattan. Nobody spoke in tones
lower than a shout. Ox-drawn carts creaked and groaned under heavy loads. Horsemen clattered by,
scattering merchants, women, children and anyone else who happened to be in their way. It seldom
rained, but when it did, thunder bursts poured torrents on the city. Almost every storm knocked down
one flimsy adobe building or another, although the round felt yurts and the big tents of the ordu seemed to
make it through the wind and rain better than the "permanent" buildings did. After each thunderstorm
there were puddles everywhere, in which king-sized mosquitoes bred.
No one I spoke to admitted to knowing of the Dark One. Ye Liu Chutsai had met Ahriman, and told me
that he had even spoken with Ogotai before I had arrived inKarakorum. But the mandarin would give me
no hint as to where to find Ahriman.
So, day after day, Agla and I, trailed by our two faithful warrior guards, made our way through the
bustling, noisy capital of the Mongols, shouldering and elbowing through the thick crowds, seeking one
man in a city that must have numbered close to a million.
I tried every church we could find, from the foul-smelling hut of some Christian hermits to the golden
magnificence of a Buddhist temple.
After nearly a week of searching, I finally saw what I had been looking for a small, windowless, squat
building made of gray stone, far off on the outskirts of the city, out near the corrals and barns where the
stench of the animals and the droning buzz of the flies that lived off them were overpowering.
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Agla's face showed her disgust at the surroundings. "There's nothing here but filth and smell," she said.
"And Ahriman." I pointed to the gray stone building.
"There?"
"I'm sure of it." Turning to our guards, I asked, "What building is that?"
They glanced at each other before shrugging their shoulders and pretending not to know. Perhaps they
were under orders to keep me away from Ahriman. Perhaps they were afraid of entering the Dark One's
domain. No matter. I headed straight for the low, wide door the only opening in the building that I
could see.
"That is not a good place to enter," said one of our guards. It was the longest string of words I had ever
heard him utter.
"You can wait outside," I said, without breaking stride.
"Wait," he said, hurrying to get in front of me.
"I'm going in. Don't try to stop me."
He was clearly unhappy with the idea, but equally unwilling to challenge me. He had been told what I
had done to the two assassins. He sent his partner around to check on the building's other entrances.
There were none. Satisfied that he could watch the solitary door, he stepped aside.
"You must call me if there is danger," he said.
Agla replied, "I will call, never fear." But the warrior paid no attention to a woman.
I had to duck to get through the low doorway. Inside, the chamber was dark, gloomy. Agla pressed
against me.
"I can't see a thing," she whispered.
But I could. My eyesight adjusted to the darkness immediately, and even though the chamber remained
shrouded in murky shadows, I could make out a stone altar on a slightly raised platform, with strange
symbols carved on stone above it.
"I've been expecting you," Ahriman's harsh, rasping voice rumbled. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]