Caravan To Xanadu

CHAPTER 7

THE TEMPLE OF SWASTI

I was a great braggart, Miranda had told me, but until now I had made good a fair share of my words. Now there came a time when I seemed to go slack as a ship’s sail in dead calm.

Not only did my schemes boggle in a morass of indecision and self-doubt, I committed few bold acts. So far Miranda would not consent to secret meetings—Sheba’s office in the matter availed nothing, nor did my own mutterings whenever she was within earshot. To invade her tent again would be dangerous and, unless all signs failed, profitless. I daydreamed of seducing her, and in the gray, almost silent secret world of sleep the passage became so rapturous that my flesh was satisfied and I could imagine her knowing and sharing the experience in her own dreams. Through all our long parting, she had never been my partner in these flights; at least she had not identified herself as such. My only reading of that mystery was that I refused her the place, my soul unwilling to enjoy the mirage of a reality I had put away. This was a feat of will, an exercise of abstract justice, but inhuman and therefore wicked. The fact that lately I went seeking her on these gray paths, found her, and loved her physically was a momentous fact, although I did not penetrate its meaning.

These passing days brought us through the ordeal of the Takla Makan to the town of Shakow, where the religion and language of Tibet prevailed among a mixed populace of Turks, Tatars, Tibetans, and Tukuhuns. Countless images of Buddha stood or crouched or lay in the rocky caves about, and on the mountainside reared a vast abbey, where a thousand yellow-robed monks performed heathen ceremonies, including devil dances and blowing on a horn as long as an Indian python. As the oasis unfolded before us, two hundred square miles of well-watered, crop-bearing land, we stood smiling like little children and touched one another’s hands. But the place had a special and secret meaning for me. I had better lay my plans and gird my loins for the greatest venture of my journey. Shakow indeed was the last inhabited spot on the road to Suchow, ten leafless days’ march over the Gobi Desert. And at Suchow dwelt the magicians who walked unharmed through fire.

The enterprise of obtaining salamander skins had taken new shape in my mind since my tyro days. Unlike my mother’s uncle, Friar Johannes Carpini, we travelers would not be forced to pass between the fires at the Tatar viceregal courts; the Khan’s golden tablet protected us from all such trials. On the other hand, the tales of the Tibetan magicians’ supernatural powers almost always began with their immunity to flame, and the most knowing and learned travelers whom we encountered had offered no explanation. The wizards derived a rich revenue not only from the duped tribesmen; it was said that the Khan himself also granted them favors and fiefs. In this report, I perceived a thrilling promise. If such a great and sapient king knew the secret, surely he would make practical use of it. The gift of fireproof garments, along with the pertinent facts of their fabrication, might be counted greater than any jewel animate or inanimate.

It seemed that in contemplating the coup de main, I found relief from the aching problem of regaining Miranda.

A circumstance that raised my hopes lay in my growing companionship with the newcomer, Zurficar. He was once gatekeeper of a market in Kamul famous for its beautiful female slaves, and when I nicknamed him Pietro, on the ground that he had held the keys to Heaven, he was greatly taken with the lame and impious joke. Far from a nobody, indeed a man of some parts, he was shrewd, affable, bold, unscrupulous, and intensely ambitious to get ahead. I used him first in perfecting my speech. The Turki-Persian dialect employed by the people west of the Pamir had gradually changed to Turki-Tatar, still rich in Arabic words, but a more unified argot; and we Polos had picked it up as we went along. But Pietro knew Jagatai, which was the literary form, named for a son of Genghis Khan, and the tongue of the courts. Turki-Tatar and its blood brother Jagatai were mutually understandable, so merchants very rarely bothered with the latter. I did so, and in fact never missed a chance to practice it, with the hope of shining in the greatest of all courts.^[22]

“Do you believe that the magicians of Suchow really have magical powers?” I asked him as we rode side by side out of Shakow.

The question caught his interest. “If it’s trickery, it’s of an impressive sort,” he answered.

“Have you ever seen it with your own eyes—walking through fire, and so on?”

“They don’t call that magic. It’s in the way of proof of big magic made before. Let me explain that the magicians’ chief job is killing dragons by secret rites. The people believe that dragons cause sickness and murrain and loss of crops, and although they propitiate live dragons, they’ll pay the most to be rid of them. The magicians explain that to lay eyes on a dead dragon would turn a common man to stone, and to prove their killings they exhibit what they say are the horns, claws, and scales of a dragon, and the skin from the dragon’s belly, which has no scales. How do the people know it isn’t some common leather? Because if the wizards make garments out of it, they can walk through fire. Since everybody knows that dragons live in great halls of fire, that settles it. I’ve seen them do it several times. It’s usually done at night as a climax to various other feats, and it’s extremely impressive.”

“Have you ever seen the garments at close range?”

“Not very close. The magicians won’t let any layman examine them or touch them, saying they’re deadly poison. One piece is a kind of hood, with eyeholes of some sort of crystal. This is loose-fitting and tucks into the collar of a robe. It’s put on the last thing. The sleeves of the robe are tucked into big mittens, and the divided skirts into big boots. The leather is almost snow-white.”

“Couldn’t it be ordinary leather fireproofed in some way?”

“In what way? I’ve seen one of the walkers stand a good half-minute in raging fire.”

“If it’s trickery, it’s strange that the Khan permits it.”

“He permits it, and rewards it too, in every city where it’s practiced. But Suchow seems to be the center of the dragon-killing cult.”

Suchow was also on the caravan road from the High Altai, where Carpini believed the fiber mine to be located. Indeed it was the only notable oasis on this crossing of the Gobi.

Not daring to press the matter in my present excitement, I waited until some easy riding suggested casual talking.

“I’ve been thinking over what you told me about the dragon skin,” I began.

“So?”

“I think it’s the same as certain alchemists in Frankistan call salamander skin. Anyway, I’d give a great deal to get a suit of it.”

“That would be extremely difficult and dangerous, if not impossible.”

“Why?”

“In the first place, it may be poison, as the priests say. But certainly if they caught you trying to penetrate their secret, they’d kill you.”

“Still, it might be done. Do you know any of the magicians?”

“I know one of the priests—if he’s still alive and in Suchow. He’s a graybeard, and the last I saw of him, he was trying to save enough money to return to his birthplace in the High Altai.”

Coming from there, he might know the location of the mine and the process by which the fiber is woven into cloth. If he were old, he had probably grown tired of the frumpery, sick of his fellow fakirs, and long since enured to all sorts of compromise; and if he needed money, he would likely sell out to get it.

“When we come to Suchow, find him and bring him to me in stealth. If I obtain the garments, I’ll reward you with a hundred dinars. If I prosper from them as I hope, I’ll make you my bailiff and bring you to good fortune. But if you break faith, you’ll be killed by a sword blessed by an archbishop, whereby you will be dispatched to the Christian Hell, where no salamander skin can save you from the flame.”

Ere we came to Suchow and the fate awaiting me there, I noticed a change in Nicolo.

The first sign was a definite rise of his spirits. I had never seen them violable—under hardship or danger, he became grim but undiscouraged, and in victory he held them in tight rein—but I could not mistake the ring in his voice, the swing of his stride, and the look of a king in his face. When I sought for the reason, at first I found only his increased confidence in the road ahead and a greater ease in conquering its difficulties. It was an unwritten rule that I must keep out of earshot of his and Maffeo’s talk, but careful observation gave an easy answer to the puzzle thus far.

Obviously the two brothers had regained familiar ground. Their earlier journey had taken them through Bukhara, Samarkand, and north of the Tien Shan, but from Kamul they had turned sharply southward to strike our present road at Shakow. I had no doubt that they knew every major landmark between here and Peking.

Although we were still in the Oceans of Sands, about a thousand miles from our destination, Nicolo took his own and Maffeo’s safe arrival as a near-foregone conclusion. The sobering fact remained that in this happy augury, I was left out. He did not tell me the one or the other, I surmised it from his manner. My youthful strength and abilities had been useful to him in the long, long road behind us, but he could dispense with them now. If any account with me called for settlements, he need not let the exigencies of time and place stand in his way.

He stopped summoning me to his tent for conferences with him and Maffeo. If he spoke to me at all, it was as to a servant. I was no longer posted to the van nor was I given the least authority. Of course the cameleers and baggage wallahs noticed the change fully as soon as I, whereupon I lost face with sickening rapidity. So when I gave an order even to one of my own crew, he must answer sullenly or obey insolently, lest he too lose face before his fellows.

Perhaps it was in some weak attempt at retaliation that on a bitter night under an icy moon three marches past Shakow, I again invaded Miranda’s tent. I came on the excuse of ordering Sheba to repair a ripped surcoat beside her mistress’s charcoal brazier; she, coached in advance, pretended to go to my tent in search of other needed mending. But except for a darkling pleasure of defying my wiser self, I was sorry I had come.

Miranda was wrapped in a woolen barracan, causing me to remember a warmer clime and lovelier nights. Her hair glimmered wanly in the green glowings of the burning charcoal and her face was more beautiful than I had ever seen it. Partly this was a final clearing of my own eyes, for I had defied and scattered their last cloud. Mostly it was a flowering after long growth. She was more beautiful than I had ever dreamed—strange dreams of long ago, which I had not believed; and for not believing them, for doubting them with crass and vulgar doubt, I could not have her now they were proven true.

“You’re no longer so skinny, Linda,” I said in the Venetian tongue.

“No, I’m not. My master bade me put on flesh, now that the hardships of the journey are almost over, so that the Khan would be more pleased with me, in case I’m given to him.”

“And if you’re not?”

“So my master will be more pleased with me when he takes me to his couch.”

“Which would you choose?”

“As befalls at last all dutiful slaves, my choice is my master’s will.’ ’

“Then you must choose that I go at once.”

“I don’t know his will in the matter. Perhaps he’d like to have you stay awhile, to look upon my face and to imagine what’s beneath my robe. He knows I’ll do nothing that would displease him. Also, he might take satisfaction in your trespassing as that much more rope to hang yourself with.”

“You know him well. I would almost believe that he knows you already.”

“Why not believe it? If I say differently, it might be because he’s ordered me to lie. In twenty nights on the Takla Makan, nearly thirty more at Shakow, and now the third on the road to Suchow—do you mislead yourself that he’s a laggard or a reed? If he’s neglected me, it’s because he may wish to give me to the King of Kings.”

“He’ll expect favors in return, so is giving you away greatly different than selling you?”

“Giving me to Kublai Khan? Selling me on the street? It’s the difference between a prince and a peddler.”

“Your tongue is sharper than it used to be.”

“So are my wits.”

“You say it may be Nicolo’s wish to have me stay awhile. Except for his will being yours, what is your wish? I leave myself open to your retort.”

“I want you to go at once.”

“You take no satisfaction in my fall?”

“In the little way you have fallen, I do take satisfaction. But I fear you’re fated for a great fall.”

“Then you’ve noticed something——”

“I’ve noticed that we’re in Mongolia, only a few months from Peking. My master would not mind my warning you—he’s warned you himself, by various means, several times.” Her tone became deeply earnest, indescribably beautiful. “As once my owner—as once my halfway lover—you put a bond on me, the shadow of which remains. I don’t want my fears to come true.”

“Perhaps you had better fear for your master.”

“You are always the braggart.”

“At least put by your forebodings for a fortnight or so, and see if my fortunes fall or mend.”

“I’ll remind you of a foreboding that came to me on the day of our parting. It was that you’d lost your chance of happiness and must wander over the world in search of it as long as you live. Now I have an amendment to it.”

“What is it?”

“You may not live very long, perhaps not even the fortnight or so that you bade me put by my fears.”

“Is there any special reason——?”

“Only what I feel in my bones. What price is death out here? Ask the lion, the falcon, and the snake.”

But now that I was glad that I had come—loving her face in the dim light and her voice that breathed remembrance of all we had shared—I must suddenly go. The tent flap jerked; without stood Sheba, the whites of her eyes glimmering in the wintry light.

“He’s awake, and is lighting a lamp,” Sheba whispered.

I walked silently and swiftly away.

It seemed likely that Nicolo had been wakened by a spy. The unpleasant conjecture wove through my dreams that night and begloomed my thoughts throughout the morning’s march, and as the midday sun began to dissolve it, suddenly it had the solid shape of fact. Nicolo left his place at the head of the caravan, hung by the roadside, then fell in beside me.

“I’ve something to show you, Marco, in a few minutes,” he said.

“I’ll look at it with interest.”

“I think you will. Whether you take any good from it, I have no knowledge or concern. However, I felt it my duty to call it to your attention.”

I inclined my head in acknowledgment.

“Actually it is only a signpost pointing to a new world. That is, brand-new to you, and barely glimpsed before by Maffeo and me. It’s a world that no Venetian could believe until he sees it. It is at once glorious beyond imagination and perilous past description.”

“You mean, of course, the Court of Kublai Khan.”

“The Court is only a symbol of his kingdom, citadel of his empire, an iota of which you’ve seen. Until now his hand seemed far away, his power and glory as remote, almost as legendary, as Prester John’s. It will be different soon.”

“May I ask, signor, why you condescend to warn me?”

“Because you’ve done your best for the caravan throughout many trials, and you served my brother and me well when you found Baram’s caravan on the desert. While your wealth has increased threefold, and you have received a rich jewel besides, my obligation remains. But I’ll discharge it in a few minutes. Thereafter you’ll set your own course.”

The big man rode free in the saddle, and his hands rarely tightened the rein or raised a whip. Yet the great gray stallion, high-mettled as a Kurd, paced along under perfect mastery.

“For instance,” he went on after a brief silence, “I won’t speak to you again about entering the pavilion of my slave girl Linda.”

“It is also the pavilion of my slave girl Sheba.”

“When you want Sheba, call her outside the tent. Of course I’m aware that you did no more than talk to Linda, or my present recourse would not be to words. A word, indeed, to the wise, as Solomon put it.”

“I’ve heard it, signor.”

“When you realize a little more what’s ahead of us, you’ll understand better a thing far behind us now—my telling you I didn’t want you in our company. I gave you my reasons—both personal and practical. On the rough road, you’ve proved an asset rather than the liability that I expected, but soon the scene will change. Then if you want my protection, you may have it at a certain price. If you won’t pay that price, you can pay the Devil.”

“What is the price?”

“To resign as a partner in the enterprise, and accept subordinacy under me.”

I was watching dust clouds swirl through the upper sky behind an errant wind. Down here the cold air scarcely stirred. I waited till the breath clouds disappeared from about Nicolo’s lips.

“In plain words, you would not present me at Court.”

“Perhaps not. But you would retain your gains and have an opportunity to increase them by trade.”

“I bid you remember that in the beginning I offered to come in a subordinate position. You answered I must become one of the company, furnishing my own capital, or stay at home.”

“I made a mistake. But you needn’t make one now.”

“Signor, I’ll not resign my position in the company.”

“What will you resign, I wonder? But before you speak further, see what we have here.”

A monument had been erected beside the road, consisting of a block of alabaster at least six feet square on a pedestal of brick. Characters carved in the snowy stone indicated a writing of solemn import. I recognized the language as Jagatai, the literary form of Turki-Tatar, which I could speak tolerably well and was learning to write. Nicolo beckoned to Pietro. To my amazement, the hard-bitten fellow fell prone and touched his head four times to the dusty ground.

Then he rose with a solemn face and read, his voice trembling with emotion:

BY THIS SPOT

PASSED THE FUNERAL CORTEGE OF

MANGU KHAN

GRANDSON OF GENGHIS KHAN

On its way to his burial ground in the High Altai,

And with him passed one hundred snow-white steeds,

To be slain without bloodshed and buried with him,

To ride in the Hereafter.

And with him passed three hundred maidens of perfect beauty,

To be wrapped in carpets and thrown back and forth until they die,

Whereof their flesh will remain unmarred,

For Mangu Khan to enjoy in the Hereafter.

And with him passed twenty thousand men and women of varied sort,

Chosen from the cities and villages along the road,

To be strangled and buried with him and become his servants in the Hereafter.

For he was Lord of All Earth

King of All Kings.

And this stone was raised by his brother

KUBLAI KHAN

FOR WHOM THE WORLD WAS MADE

2

“Does this reveal the matter I broached to you in a different light?” Nicolo asked.

“No, signor.”

Nicolo rode ahead. I waited a moment, listening to the soft sound of camel pads in the sand, then resumed my place. In the following days I had cause to meditate Nicolo’s words, because this reach of our journey was truly the beginning of its end. We remained in the fastnesses of the Gobi. There was no permanent dwelling house from the beginning of the march to its end, but the Tatars—and now their name had changed to Mongols, but their nature remained unchanged—passed here at certain seasons with their flocks and herds in search of upland pasture. Caravans became more frequent and many of the rest grounds boasted huts for the Khan’s messengers and envoys. Where great folk had died, their companions had more often stopped to bury them and to raise cairns.

To gain Suchow, we passed through the Gate of Jade in what is the single largest handiwork of man since the world began. This was the Wall, made of brick or stone facings packed with earth to the height of twenty feet, with strong, square towers erected every hundred or so paces of its fourteen-hundred-mile length. It ran along hills, valleys, mountains, gorges, deserts, and oases, and had been raised by the great Emperor Shih Huang Ti two hundred years before Jesus Christ. Since “great” means something more than large, I wondered if the same adjective could be applied to the immense barricade. Certainly it had helped to fend off the wild Mongols for more than ten centuries; but if one-tenth of its cost had been spent in taming and civilizing the horde, perhaps it would have never broken out of its grazing grounds to rape all Asia. Shih Huang Ti, when your spirit beholds a Mongol Khan on the throne of Cathay, do you turn over in your grave? But only the gods can look down the road you might have taken, only they can count and measure your mistakes.

Suchow was the capital of a rich oasis, and its thronged caravanserai made us remember Baghdad, Mosul, Kerman, and Meshed on the other side of the world. On the third night there, Pietro reported that he had found his old friend, the priest of the Swasti, still in need of money to retire to the mountains of his native Dzungaria. I was to know his name no more than he knew mine—I could call him Jadugar and he was to address me by the common Mohammedan title malik. Pietro arranged for us to meet beside an abandoned well in a little-used courtyard of the caravanserai. He would serve as interpreter as far as needed; neither of us was to see the other’s face.

In her second quarter, the moon hung almost straight overhead as Pietro and I made our way to the rendezvous. We paused by the well; in a few seconds I made out a dim figure with long hair and what I soon surmised was a red gown. That he was a Swastika, meaning a worshiper of the mystic cross Swasti each limb of which turned at an angle from right to left, I had no doubt.^[23] The cult was an ancient one, mainly devil and nature-goddess worship euphemized with Buddhist terms and forms. Five hundred or more of the order dwelt in a huge castlelike abbey overlooking the city; of this number, at least fifty openly practiced magic. Certainly I need have not the slightest scruple about bribing him to betray his fellows and what Christians might call his faith. The most respectable lamas I had seen spent their time begging, toying with rosaries, and sillily turning prayer wheels while they intoned a million times “The Jewel is in the Lotus.” At best they professed a debased Buddhism, while the Swastika were the most ragged and dirty, lousy and low, of the whole Tibetan priesthood. I regretted only that I must pay the scoundrel good gold or silver for the stuff required, instead of kicks and cuffs.

Pietro had warned me that I must even be polite to the foul-smelling shaman.

“For how many pieces of gold will you deliver to me here a full suit of the fire-fighting dragon skin—hood, cloak, boots, and mittens?” I asked.

“Not for all the gold of the caravans, malik, would I do so,” Jadugar answered in self-righteous tones. “Until you’ve gone through certain ceremonies to protect you from its deadly poison, the merest touch——”

Jadugar intended the preliminaries to occupy a good hour. He would present as many difficulties as I would pay to have removed; by then he would know how much he dared charge for the garments themselves. I spat on the ground in contempt, then Pietro handed him a piece of the fabric I had brought from Venice.

“Shakija Thubba!” he burst out. The term meant the mighty Shakya, and referred to Shakya Buddha. But I would have felt more secure if I could have shaken out of him the name of one of his own depraved gods or goddesses of the Swasti, such as Dreuma. Ordinarily these shamans invoked Buddha only for effect.

“You may see how weakened and wasted I am from the deadly poison,” I said.

“Malik, you’ve been to the High Altai.”

“No, but one of my kinsmen has been there.” Friar Carpini had touched Karakorum, which is near enough.

“If you obtain the garments, will you tell all who see them that they are from the white bellies of fire dragons, slain by the magicians of the Swastika?”

“What else could I tell?”

“You might say something that would cost my order a good part of its revenue. Then if my brothers of the abbey found me out, they would boil me alive, cook the meat off my bones, and devour it. Malik, you’ve been to the High Altai.”

“I’ve been nigh there, and I can keep a secret.”

“Still I can’t bring you dragon skins. I’m not one of the devil dancers and have no access to the Room of Wonders where the skins are kept. The most I’ll do is to tell you how to find your way there, and for this you must pay me one hundred gold pieces in hand.”

“I’ll pay you only when I’ve got the garments and brought them to my lodgings with no alarm raised. Pietro will witness both our pledges.”

“Then heed me well. You’ve seen the reliquary on the lowest terrace of the abbey grounds?”

“Yes.” This was a tower in the shape of a big-bellied bottle.

“Just opposite is the Bride’s Gate, whereby bringers of delight may visit my brethren’s cells. But very few of them pass through in the first three hours after sundown, for these are the hours we Swastika sit in order in our pagoda and humble ourselves before our gods. Even so, take every precaution against being seen. At the head of the second flight of stairs, there’s a long hall, completely deserted at this time. Its right-hand corridor leads to a balcony, and on this you’ll find a door fastened with a wooden lock. A small, sharp saw of steel, such as are sold in Hind, could sever the lock in a few minutes with little sound; if this is unobtainable, use a sharp knife with a heavy blade. It’s the door to the magic Room of Wonders—where the magicians keep certain gear. The suits of dragon skins hang on the wall.”

“Why do your brethren trust to a wooden lock?” I asked.

“They have never needed even that. The folk hereabouts, and even the bringers of delight, would not open that door for a full chest of gold.”

“What shall I do for light?”

“There are dim lamps along the corridor and on the balcony. You must make your own light in the Room of Wonders.”

“What will happen when the theft is discovered?”

“Unless you’ve blundered badly, it will be blamed on our enemies, the Bonpo, stealing upon us from their abbey across the valley.”

“If the Bonpo came raiding, would they wear their black robes with blue borders?”

“It would be a great sin, as well as evil fortune, to put them off.”

“Don’t you and the Bonpo worship the same gods?”

“Both sects bow down to Dreuma, the snake goddess, and to the great magician Tamba-Shi-Rob, and the Giant Dwarf Tampa-mi-ber, god of fire with his crown of skulls. But their god Kye-p’ang is made of wood instead of plastered earth, and the four arms of their Swasti bend from left to right instead of from right to left as Tamba decreed.”

“Such heretics should be burned alive!” I remarked.

“Malik has spoken truth.”

“I’ll speak now,” Pietro broke in. “Jadugar, do you know what vengeance will be visited on you if you’ve lied to us, or if you cause an ambush to be laid for us?”

“Fear not——”

“You’d better tremble with fear. Your liver will be torn out and fed to the pariah dogs before your eyes.”

“Why should I betray the son of my old friend and a great merchant from the setting sun? With the hundred gold pieces added to my hoard I can return to my own homeland, there to buy cattle and mares and three young wives to milk them, and do such magic as is pleasant and profitable, with no long-nosed abbot to complain!”

Warmed by this common humanity half-hidden under his foul rags and matted hair, I felt new confidence in the enterprise. Thinking over what he had told me, I saw no serious obstacle to its success. The risk was considerable, but the fact that cautious, hardheaded Pietro, native to the land, would cheerfully run it beside me showed it was not large. Truly Fate had been generous in setting the conditions. Had they been much harsher, still I might have attempted to meet them. It lay as near to inevitability as any act of my life.

In my cold cell in the caravanserai, I dreamed wildly, warmly at times, dismally for a space, but at last triumphantly. My mother was near me in several of the scenes, although I could not see her face. Rosa stood mute with tears in her eyes. The Black Woman of Martyrs’ Walk had me look at a candle flame, then held me in her arms. The jongleur whom I had renamed Antonello to plague Nicolo became merged with Jadugar of the Swastika, and deep in my dream I realized for the first time, with that strange lack of surprise that marks the dreamer, that “jongleur” and “jadugar” were the same word. When it seemed I had climbed countless stairways and stolen through endless passages only to lose my way in defeat and despair, I reached into a disused water pipe and brought forth not the two torn fabrics, but a pearl-studded crown. I wakened, got up, and read by candlelight the almost faded writing on the fabric.

Sleep was hardly out of my eyes in the cold morning before those eyes were welcoming the sun. Every man looks for certain signs of good or evil fortune, and all of mine were fair. I was a Venetian, while my adversaries were louse-bitten, devil-ridden barbarians. Beyond that, it was my great stroke against Nicolo in the war that began before I was born. No doubt Kublai Khan would be pleased with the gift of a blonde slave girl of surpassing beauty, but would he count the gift as great as a suit of fireproof fabric, no mere curiosity, but a natural wonder that he could put to practical use for his whole empire’s gain?

Miranda, go from my visions till I find the answer! Do not let me see your hair combed smoothly back and braided into hempen ropes on each side of your slender neck and hanging in front of your steep, snow-white shoulders, or I cannot judge fairly. I must not behold your mouth, which in my heart means lovely smiles, and kisses, and song. Your eyes make me perceive the limitation of the brilliance and beauty of jewels.

You do not go because I won’t let you go. Is that to tell me that no matter how I triumph over Nicolo in the Khan’s Court, I must still have you for my greatest and final prize?

3

With Pietro’s help, I took many a stitch in time. Long before dark, he had obtained two red robes for us to wear during the actual thieving, and two blue ones with black borders for use on our flight. We chose suitable ground for posting our horses in the care of my slave girl Sheba; she was to have the sheet in which she carried washing and be able to make her way on foot in darkness from our place of rendezvous to the woman’s ghat. Most likely I would need no weapon for killing at a distance—this was my only consolation for its enforced lack—but my dagger hung handy in my left armpit. In my heart was a growing exultation.

As soon as the dark thickened, Pietro and I met in the courtyard and made our quiet way to the posting ground. Here we were glad to put on our disguises, for the month was bitter February, the thin dry hair of these highlands would hold no heat, and the fangs of the frost bit through our numbed flesh to our aching bones. Next to our own garments we donned the black robes with blue borders. If we were seen during our flight, we would presumably be taken for raiders from the Bonpo, and if this did not cause the smoldering feud between the two sects to blaze into bloody war, my pleasant fancies gulled me. Over this Bonpo raiment we wore the red robes of the Swastika. If we were met in the dim halls by a bringer of delight, arriving early to warm the bed of some favorite wizard, we could avert our dirt-smeared faces and peacefully go our way. We intended to shuck the red robes at the Bride’s Gate. Our black ones could be stuffed with the bulky garments of the fire-walkers into Sheba’s sheet, having every appearance of innocent laundry on its way to the woman’s ghat. Thence she should be able to transfer them safely to my saddle-bags.

She was waiting at the rendezvous, knowing her part well. Although she did not mean to let me know it, I discovered her deep-biting fear in her wide eyes and shaking voice, and this I did my best to hide from Pietro, lest his spirit quail. Before we parted she wished me the favor of Ahriman, the Zoroastrian devil of whom we had been hearing ever since we penetrated Persia, and who was of great potency throughout many sects of Central Asia.

“Why not seek me a blessing from Ormuzd instead?” Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazda, representing Good, shared with Ahriman, Evil, the rule of the universe.

“Because the work you do tonight is evil work.”

“To steal from a temple of devil dancers?”

“In what cause? Do you serve good or evil? It is great evil to hate your sire, no matter the ill he has done you. He was God’s instrument in causing you to be born.” She was speaking in bastard Arabic that Pietro could not follow.

“Your theology is too deep for me, Sheba. But here is a thing that stands to my common sense. The devil dancers themselves worship Ahriman in some form or other. Won’t he then withhold from me the favor you’ve asked, and give me his curse?”

“No, because he’s not true to his own. By whatever name you call him, he’s still the great traitor. That is why I sorrow to see you, my master, join his caravan.”

“I?”

“You’ve done so, I believe, to get at Nicolo. I fear that you crave my Linda more for his pain at her loss than for your joy in her gaining. It might be better for her if you die tonight. Then only your shadow could visit her in dreams.”

“Yet you asked a blessing that I might live!”

“What else? I am only a black woman of Nubia, alive for the hour.”

Regardless of which caravan Sheba or I had joined, the magicians of the Swasti belonged to the Devil.

All men know that certain of God’s elite can perform miracles. The power is given them to use for others and for the Kingdom, never for their selfish gain. In repayment for the services of his own priests, the Devil gives some of them a power resembling this, actually its hollow mockery, the power of magic. By its exercise, the magicians can break the laws of nature, presumably the Law of God, but only temporarily and in trivial ways. They can hang suspended in the empty air. They can cause a mango tree to grow before your eyes, or at least cause you to believe this; or to dismember a man and make him whole again; or to throw a rope end up into the sky, climb the rope, and disappear; or to cause sudden rains or gales or thunderstorms. From these feats they derive a stingy revenue, but their treacherous master has no intention of letting them become vastly rich or powerful. His viceroys on earth are emperors, kings, barons, and the like, who can hire magicians by the drove. When all is said and done, they are his mangy coxcombs.

We came to the great abbey crowning the hill. What looked like angry eyes here and there about its walls were luridly lighted windows; others showed a flickering glimmer; most were dark holes. There seemed only silence until we listened with pricked-up ears, then we could detect a ghostly echo deep within the pile, not any sound of nature, it seemed, nor yet of man. Guided by gleamings of the moon, we made our way between stone outbuildings to the foot of the reliquary. On our previous survey, from two cable lengths’ distance, it had showed as a white jug, tall as a house. Now it loomed above us like a monstrous bottle of polished alabaster, big enough to hold the whole body of the fisherman’s genie, and wiping out half the lights of heaven. But in the cold dark we found the Bride’s Gate, opened it, and found our way to a steep flight of stone steps.

The whisper in our ears became a rising and falling murmur. It could be caused by hundreds of priests chanting orisons to their gods behind thick stone walls; but sometimes it was broken by what might be the faraway clang of gongs and horn-blowing and bursts of laughter and shrill cries. “They’re saying Mass to the Giant Dwarf,” my stout Tatar whispered in a tone of contemptuous mirth. Then I saw him shiver in the gloom.

We gained the top of a second flight of stairs and started down a crooked corridor, dark everywhere except for pallid islands where stone lamps had been set in niches in the wall. It was supposed to come out on a balcony, in due course, but it ran on and on like a gray road in a nightmare. Around black bends or in the murk where the dying beams of the far-spaced lamps could not meet, I must run my fingers along the walls in order to find my way. Suddenly I cursed myself for venturing into what might prove a cul-de-sac.

I would not have gone so readily, perhaps not at all, except for Pietro’s willingness to go with me. But in my passion for the prize I had not scrutinized this; I had taken it for proof that my plan was sound and the danger slight. Partly to busy my mind against the horror of imagination, I marveled over it now, only to find that I had been self-betrayed. Any plan I had proposed would have suited Pietro. He had let me decide how great a risk to run, as I might have known had I remembered that he was a Tatar. Slaves of his tribe had brought the highest price of any male slaves in Venice, simply because of their wholehearted service and their unshakable loyalty. They did what their masters told them with the thoughtless directness of a dog.

Still I did not turn back. I could not, my will to go on being thoughtless and direct. For all I knew we were a dog leading a dog to a dog’s death.

Where the last lamp dimmed out we found the exit to the balcony and then the door of the Room of Wonders. From an Indian merchant in the caravanserai I had obtained a small saw of extreme hardness that ivory workers used, and after hundreds of thrusts and withdrawals, it scratched through the ancient wooden padlock. With a quick stroke of a plunger in an ivory cylinder I ignited tinder and brought it to a lamp with only one bright face no bigger than my hand.

Its beam moved slowly about the room. First it revealed the ugly faces of an idol with ten hands and three superimposed heads, perhaps a great god of yore now discredited and shamed and stuffed away, but more likely a deity of awful potence, revealed in the temples only at foretold and eerie hours. In spite of my aching haste, I could not stop the round ray from exposing every one of a long row of devil masks fastened to the wall, and looking at them, I could not hold it steady. These were fashioned of wood, leather, hair, and the like; their teeth might be stones and their glaring eyes no more than light-reflecting glass. Yet it seemed that I knew every one. Each was a flawless image of a face beheld in nightmares or delirium or in madness and perhaps in intimations of Hell—sights that in our sunlit hours we deny that we have seen, but which our souls remember all too well.

In a corner leaned a thin, long chalkwhite trumpet that my gaze would not skip. Its slightly crooked shaft was of human thighbones hollowed out and set end to end; its mouth was a cleverly carved human skull. Gongs for calling friendly spirits and driving away inimical ones hung from the rafters; baskets and boxes used in human decapitation and dismemberment tricks stood about, and their dusty, shabby genuineness appalled my spirit. There were wooden and copper idols representing the male and female principles in nature; drums hooped with human rib bones for rainmaking and thundermaking; a girdle of infant skulls; and dried human hands and feet that were caused to move and walk by diabolical arts.

Then the lamp jumped in my hand, for among multicolored robes and frumpery of various sorts hung some suits of salamander skin, snow-white from being newly washed in fire.

When we had rolled one of them into as compact a space as possible, there began the long agony of our retreat. Perhaps I walked in the Devil’s care tonight, as Sheba had entreated, because I led my companion safely off the balcony, passed the wan lamps of the stone corridor, and down the upper stairs. I found myself half believing in the auspice, my scalp tingling and my cold skin thrilling—then it seemed that the Devil had played with me only to let me fall.

From the dim flight below rose a sudden murmur of voices. They were obviously male, and an instant later the lamp in the wall niche revealed the shapes of two of the red-robed Swastika priests climbing the steps. Their heads were bent to find good foothold but they had only to look up to discover us. And we could not retreat to certain exposure in the lamp-studded hall.

The plan of defense taking instantaneous shape in my mind was violent attack from above. I visioned both of us pouncing down atop the bent-headed pair and stabbing them to death before they could resist or even cry an alarm. Swifter than thought, my terrors were being transmuted into that animal fury which alone, storming the brain, can empower such a violent act, when quick-witted, keen-eyed Pietro snatched me by the arm. He had seen a dark recess in the wall beside the landing. In an instant we were both pressed against the wall. Unless the two lamas looked fully and sharply to one side they would surely pass by us. But Pietro saw me draw my dagger and with what I thought was a beaming smile on the dim blur of his face, he bared his own. If at any instant we should be discovered, I had no doubt of our concerted attack in the very next.

Then there came an instant in which Pietro’s good tactics came close to failure from a strange cause. As the foremost lama was about to finish crossing the open space and his fellow was just emerging into our sight, the impulse to kill now gripped me with great force. It seemed composed of an unreasoning terror that had usually spared me in the climax of great trials—certainly I saw no sign or likely prospect of our being discovered. Still, I resisted it with a sense of darkening hope. Perhaps I could not have done so except for Pietro’s shoulders having edged in front of mine as he took a warlike stand. The trifling obstacle weighed on the side of my inertia. I accepted it as a provision of Fate.

The two monks passed out of sight. The shuffle of their bare feet on the stone quickly died away. Pietro and I resumed our flight; and now Good Fortune kept company with us, and I could be glad I had not risked battle, and Fear became a little cold snake in his den deep in my brain. We found Sheba at the meeting place and I laughed at her popping eyes. She stuffed our loot in her washing sheet and took off by a picked route to the woman’s ghat. Pietro and I rode furtively until we passed a famous bagnio, then went to the caravanserai by separate paths. I stood watching a caravan unloading in the courtyard when Sheba came into the firelight with a white bundle on her head. When I saw its wet glimmer and a trickle of water down her face, I blessed the head that was as long as her heart was loyal.

We appeared not to notice each other as she made for my quarters, but I caught the sharp glance she threw. That it was deeply troubled I could not doubt. After a few seconds’ wait, I followed her and found her shivering in the dark passage. She led me through the door and closed it softly.

“Two men followed me to the gate,” she whispered.

“When did you first notice them?”

“On the way back from the ghat. But I think they may have been behind me all the way.”

“Perhaps they wanted only——”

“No, they took too much care not to show themselves. I think they were following you when you came to the meeting place. Are you sure no one saw you?”

I remembered the two monks who walked by the alcove looking straight ahead.

“No, I can’t be sure.”

“Is there an empty room with an unlocked door where I can hide this?” she asked quickly.

“It would take a long search. You’d better put it on your head again and go out the main gate of the caravanserai. I’ll see if the coast is clear.”

I walked quickly ahead of her as far as the courtyard, then what I saw caused me to turn back.

“Put it in my room and lock the door and bring me the key,” I told her.

She went about obeying the order as swiftly as she dared. Yet by the time she had finished the shape of coming events became far more clear. Of the fifty long-haired, foul-faced priests of the Swasti whom I saw entering the gate, all but one had squatted in two long rows before the dung fire. One, who wore a larger rosary and carried a longer staff, stood in front of the rest, beating his breast and yelling in a high-pitched gobble.

“Sacrilege! Sacrilege! Revenge! Revenge!”