The Towers of Samarcand

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TABRIZ, SUMMER 1399

The Varangians, Shulen, Yakub and Ibn Khaldun left Tabriz in a fine calvacade of plumes and pennants and high-stepping Mamluk stallions. Qara Yusuf, accompanying them as far as the city gate, had the grace to apologise. He bowed to them from the saddle, placed his hand above his heart and wished on them the blessing of Allah. Then they took the road west into gazi lands.

The next morning, after a night in a caravanserai, Ibn Khaldun and Yakub departed as the first rays of sun caught the breastplates of their Egyptian bodyguard. Ibn Khaldun would return to his master in Cairo with an alliance he didn’t entirely believe. Yakub would return to Bayezid in Edirne with one he didn’t believe in at all.

An hour later, the Varangians and Shulen set out along the same road but soon left it and followed a lesser route back towards Astara on the shores of the Khazar Sea, some four hundred miles to the north-east. For a week, their horses carried them through desert and mountain, forest and river, night and day. They rode under merciless sun and merciful moon, bathing in the sweat of their bodies by day and cool streams at night. They talked little and slept less. And not once did any fall behind.

Late one afternoon, they stopped to look over a sea with villages scattered along its edge and tiny boats strewn across its surface.

‘Tonight we eat fish,’ said Luke and he turned to smile at Shulen who’d ridden up to his side.

‘And then?’

Luke had produced the map drawn for him by Ibn Khaldun and was studying it. ‘Then we follow the seashore until we see the Alburz Mountains rise up on our right. There we go to Sultaniya.’

‘Where we become Shi’ite,’ she said, smiling.

Luke smiled. ‘Yes, where we become gloomy Isma’ilis and you disappear behind a veil. Where we meet Miran Shah.’

‘Who is mad and dangerous.’ This was Nikolas. ‘Luke, can you just tell us why we want to meet a dangerous madman? Nothing too long, a summary will do.’

‘Nikki, he’s Tamerlane’s son. They’re all mad and dangerous. Anyway, it’s in the future so let’s not think about it. For now, let’s have some fun.’ He turned in his saddle. ‘We’ve spent the week clinging to mountain paths. What say we race to that village?’

Eskalon snorted and Matthew laughed. He leant over to the horse. ‘Are you too fat now from eating the kadi’s food, Eskalon?’ Then he lifted his heels and was gone. By the time they’d entered the village, their horses were panting like Jezebels and Matthew was triumphant. ‘Too fat. Or perhaps it’s the rider. They fed you too well in Kutahya, both of you.’

Shulen arrived just ahead of the other two Varangians.

‘Hey!’ said Arcadius, riding up to her, his brow thick with dust. ‘We carry armour. You have nothing but your bedding.’

‘And the Venetian glass, don’t forget that,’ said Shulen, leaning back on her saddle. Her face was pink and her long hair had knotted into waves across her back. Luke smiled.

You’re changing.

The village they had entered was a desperate place and seemed empty of people. It was built at the point where the track they’d come down met one that followed the shore of the lake. On either side of it were dismal hovels of mud and grass and beyond them, banked in the black sand, lay broken fishing boats. Smoke drifted skyward from the roofs and the smell of cooking fish rose with it.

‘Do we stay here?’ asked Nikolas. ‘It seems we might get fed.’

A door squeaked open and a child appeared, filthy and almost naked. Luke dismounted and reached into his saddlebag for bread. He held it out, speaking over the child. ‘We mean no harm. We just want fish to fill our bread. We’ll pay for it.’

A man came out holding a piece of wood. He was dressed in rags and as filthy as the child. He stood staring at Eskalon. Then he nodded.

Luke turned to the others. ‘We eat fish tonight.’

So they did. Sitting around a fire made of driftwood and seaweed that bubbled and hissed as it burned, they gave bread to the villagers and got fish in return. Later, they lay beneath the stars in blankets heavy with salt and listened to the rasp of the waves on the sand and the anxious murmurings of the people who’d sheltered them. And the next morning they left before any were awake.

It took them another week to reach the Alburz Mountains. It was a week in which they galloped over sands or picked their way along cliff-top paths, trees blasted horizontal beneath them, the nests of seabirds between their roots. Always by their side was the grey expanse of the sea, rhythmic as the womb, its surface featureless except when pierced by the moon or fishing boats and the frenzied fight of their wakes.

The people of this land were strange, subdued creatures, hybrids of earth and water. They were refugees, thrown across the world by invasion to seek invisibility among the lagoons and caves of this sea. They were Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and people of other races who wanted solitude and peace and asked no questions of five travellers making their way east.

It was a week of hard riding and at night they slept deeply among barrels and nets and crabs that darted between them. They awoke stiffened by salt and cold, with the cry of birds carried loud and faint on the currents above them. Once they slept at some salt pans; they warmed themselves next to the chimneyed furnaces that made the salt, which was stacked around them in boxes: crystals winking up at the stars.

The next day they saw mermaids on the shore and swam with them for a while in the waves, stripping to their cotton shorts. But the mermaids were afraid and came to sit with Shulen on the rocks and throw shells at their suitors. And Shulen laughed and reached into her saddlebag to show them her strange Venetian glass.

At last, the Alburz Mountains rose up to the south and they turned towards them, finding a path through meadows grazed by herds of wild horses that raced beside them as they rode. Further on, the path rose gently, then steeply, into foothills covered in pine and chestnut until, above the trees, they could see mountains stretched out before them, their western slopes tinged with crimson.

Luke looked at his map. ‘Tomorrow night we should reach the castle of Alamut, which is out there somewhere, about fifty miles away. There are wild tribes in those mountains and Ibn Khaldun recommended we sleep in the castle’s shadow. The people don’t go near it. They think it’s still full of assassins.’

‘So what about tonight?’ asked Arcadius.

‘Tonight, we find a cave.’

‘Fire?’

‘No fire, no cooking,’ Luke said. ‘From now on we must remain unseen. We will reach Sultaniya from the east, which will not be the direction anyone still looking for us will expect us to come. But it will take us another week.’

That night, lying in the darkness, Luke told them what he’d learnt from Ibn Khaldun of the man they were to meet in Sultaniya.

‘He is Temur’s second son. His older brother, Jahangir, died of some sickness when only twenty. Jahangir was his father’s favourite: brave, good, and everything that Miran Shah isn’t. And he had a beautiful wife, Khan-zada.’

Shulen said: ‘Some say that it is Khan-zada who has driven Miran Shah mad. She was forced to marry him when Jahangir died and Miran Shah knows she’ll never love him as she did his brother. His jealousy has driven him insane.’

Nikolas asked: ‘Will we meet her?’

‘I hope so,’ replied Luke. ‘Yakub says that she has influence over Temur.’

‘Why would she have influence?’ asked Matthew.

Shulen said: ‘Because she was Jahangir’s wife and because she is mother to Temur’s favourite grandsons, Mohammed Sultan and Pir Mohammed, both of whom seem to have inherited their father’s virtues. Mohammed Sultan is Temur’s heir.’

Luke yawned. ‘And there’s another reason she has influence,’ he said. ‘You will remember how Ibn Khaldun said that Temur is obsessed with Genghis Khan? About how he minds not being of his line? Well, Khan-zada is of royal blood. She is the granddaughter of Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde in the north.’

‘Which means he’ll listen to her?’ asked Matthew.

There was no answer because Luke had fallen asleep.

That night they slept well and awoke glad not to have salt in their hair and the smell of fish in their nostrils. They found a waterfall and washed as best they could and filled their flasks. They ate cold mutton and biscuits before setting out into the Alburz Mountains.

The riding was hard and slow and the horses slipped on shale or stumbled through rock falls, their ears flat against their heads and their nostrils quivering with alarm. The sounds of their hooves echoed up from ravines too deep to fathom or rolled down the slopes above, and no one thought of speaking. It was a high, barren land of jagged ridges and sudden shadow and they felt no part of it.

In the afternoon, they began to descend, sparse scrub giving way to single trees, then woods which were thick and shut out the sun. The sudden gloom made the horses start and blow and they kept their reins short. Then they came out into a wide valley, terraced on either side and startlingly green. There had been people here once, many people, and their deserted villages were still scattered along its sides. Wasted fields stretched all around them. They rode in silence beside a river that twisted its way through gulleys and cataracts and opened out into deep pools where people once must have swum and washed their clothes.

‘What happened here?’ Arcadius was riding next to Shulen.

‘The Mongols,’ said Shulen. ‘These were the lands of the assassins and Alamut was their stronghold. The Mongols destroyed them a century ago.’

‘The assassins?’

‘Later, Arcadius. Look up there.’ She was pointing to a crag at the end of the valley that had come into view. ‘That’s it. The Eagle’s Nest: Alamut.’

At first he saw only the steep sides of a mountain that rose higher than its neighbours. Then he saw that the sides became walls and the walls battlements, all brushed with the same orange of the late-evening sun. It was impossible to believe that anything could have been built on such a peak. He whistled softly.

‘Impregnable.’ Arcadius had reined in his horse to stare.

‘Not to the Mongols,’ said Luke, who had come up beside him. ‘We need to get to it before dark.’

They broke into a trot and an hour later arrived at the bottom of the mountain. An old track, barely visible, rose around its side and they took it.

‘We’ll stop here,’ said Luke. They’d found a wide-mouthed cave above the track that, with some disguise, would be invisible from either direction. It was big enough to accommodate both them and the horses. ‘If we cover the entrance, we can light a fire,’ he said, dismounting. ‘But no cooking.’

The others climbed down from their horses and undid the saddlebags strapped to the animals’ sides. They took down their bedrolls, removed the saddles and bridles and poured water into vessels for the horses. When the animals were tethered, they set off to find wood for camouflage and fuel. By the time they’d returned, it was almost dark and a half-moon was high in the sky.

When the mouth of the cave had been stopped with foliage, the fire lit and a meal eaten, they set their bedrolls against their breastplates and laid down to talk. The horses were tied at the front of the cave and would provide warning of any approach.

Arcadius said: ‘Shulen, you were going to tell us of these assassins.’

She picked up a stick, turning it in her hand, before replying. ‘They were an elite band of warriors, especially trained to assassinate their enemies.’ She paused and smiled. ‘Rather like you Varangians.’

Nikolas, who was lying next to her, his head almost touching hers, said: ‘I should hope better. We were forced to leave Monemvasia, were on the losing side at Nicopolis and nearly got executed by a madman in Tabriz. The only people we might have assassinated are ourselves.’

Shulen smiled. ‘Your time will come.’

Luke looked at the fine, dark beauty of this woman, no older than himself. She felt his eyes on her and turned her head to him. For a while no one spoke. Matthew looked from one to the other of them. ‘The assassins?’ he prompted.

‘The assassins, yes.’ She turned back to the fire. ‘Well, they were a cult. They were Shi’ite Muslims, which means they believed that the true line of the Prophet runs from his son-in-law Ali. Most of the Shi’ites live here in Persia.’

She looked around at the faces, tired from their long ride but alert and listening. ‘The assassins were founded by a man called Hasan-i Sabbah. He was born two centuries ago not far from here. He was a brilliant man: a mathematician, philosopher and alchemist. He converted to the Ismai’ili belief and gathered many disciples around him. He soon found himself on the run from the Sunni Seljuk Turks, who ruled at that time, and he came here to the Alburz Mountains where the people were Shi’ite and had long resisted the reach of the Seljuks. He saw Alamut and decided that it would be his base.’

‘He laid siege to it?’ asked Arcadius.

‘No, he infiltrated it with his followers and they took it from within. It took him two years. Then he started the assassins.’

‘What were they, these assassins?’ asked Nikolas. ‘What did they do?’

Shulen prodded the fire. ‘They were young men recruited for their strength and intelligence. They were indoctrinated with the Ismai’ili beliefs such that they were ready to sacrifice their own lives to murder anyone they were told to. Invariably they died in the attempt.’

‘Who did they kill?’

‘Usually Sunnis of power and prominence. The Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk was the first. They carried out their killings in public places to make their point.’

Luke pondered this. What would persuade a man to sacrifice his own life to kill another? Was that what he would do for his empire?

‘It is said’, she went on, ‘that Hasan-i Sabbah would drug the young fida’iyin with hashish and that, when they’d fallen asleep, would have them taken to a beautiful garden within the castle. There they would awake to find ravishing women and all that they could want. Then Sabbah would tell them that they were in paradise and that if they wished to return to it they would have to carry out the deed assigned to them.’

Matthew spoke. ‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What of them now?’

Shulen returned her gaze to the fire. ‘Now, only their ghosts remain.’ She rolled on to her back and looked up at the roof of the cave where their shadows danced. ‘They were destroyed in these mountains by the Mongols. Their castles were taken, one by one, and their people massacred. That’s why the valley is as it is. But there were assassins west of here by then, in Syria. They were recruited by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars to carry out killings on his behalf. It is said that the sultans in Cairo still use them, but it is only rumour.’

Shulen had moved because the smoke from the fire had begun to make her eyes sting. Now she rose. ‘I am going outside. I want some air.’

The Varangians exchanged glances. Luke nodded to Matthew. He picked up his sword and said: ‘I’ll come with you. It’s safer.’

They walked to the mouth of the cave and Luke patted Eskalon’s neck while Shulen lifted aside the branches. The horse turned to him and nuzzled his shoulder.

Then they were outside among the smells of juniper and pine. They lifted their faces and saw a moon straddled by passing clouds granting light and shade to the landscape around. They walked slowly down the slope, not talking, until they came to a mound of stones, levelled at the top.

‘An altar,’ said Shulen, reaching out to touch its uneven sides. ‘Perhaps a fire altar of Zoroaster. It’s ancient.’

Luke turned back to the mountain behind them. The moon had emerged to reveal the castle above, stark against the night sky and perched beyond the reach of man. He shivered.

Shulen had turned too. ‘Alamut,’ she murmured.

Luke was silent, thinking of a darkness enveloping the world, of the moon’s face hidden forever. He turned away from the castle and sat down, his back to the altar. An owl screeched and something wild grumbled from the woods deep in the ravine. Shulen sat next to him and took his hand.

‘Are you frightened?’ she asked softly.

He looked at her and all he saw were two eyes. ‘Aren’t you?’

The moon came back and he could see she was smiling.

‘Of course. Tamerlane is a monster who kills every man, woman and child that stands in his way, yet he spares artists to create beauty.’ She paused. ‘I want to meet him. It’s the waiting that’s hardest.’

Luke nodded. He knew what she meant. ‘You talked of Omar in the cave. How did he teach you?’

‘He’d come to the camp, pretending to visit the shaman. That would allow us to spend hours alone together. He taught me to read and write and be curious about the world. He left me books and I learnt more.’

‘And the shaman?’

‘He played along, as did his wife. They were kind but pretended otherwise when we left the tent. She taught me the power of plants and herbs to heal and I came to love her in a way. She died when I was nine.’

The moonlight disappeared and Luke shivered again.

Far above them sat an empty, ruined castle from whose shadows men, masked and dressed in the black of the night, had once emerged with one ambition: to kill another man.

*

Silent as cats, the four assassins came down the mountain on ropes, pushing out with their feet from rock to rock as they fell. They were invisible against the slope, swathed in black robes that left only their eyes uncovered, everything hidden but the swords strapped to their backs. Their descent was fluid and effortless and had the grace of night creatures whose survival depended on their stealth.

They dropped to the ground behind Shulen and Luke without making a sound and stayed crouched and perfectly still until the landscape had taken them in. Even their breathing was controlled.

But Luke felt them. ‘We are not alone,’ he said softly.

Shulen looked around. ‘We are alone,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the ghosts. Ibn Khaldun said we’d feel them. Tell me about Monemvasia.’

Luke rose and looked hard at the towering rock above. He could see nothing. He sat again. ‘Monemvasia? Well, it’s friendlier than this place. What would you like to know?’

‘How you met Anna there. She was the child of the Protostrator, you of a Varangian Guard. How did you meet?’

Luke smiled. ‘So, it’s not Monemvasia that you want to know about.’ He paused. ‘Shulen, have you never loved?’

She was holding her shins with her forearms, chin on her knees. She was rocking slowly backwards and forwards. ‘Gomil,’ she said. ‘But I was young and impressed by silly things. He was the chief’s son. He tried to have me and shunned me when I rejected him. He hated me after that. Then you came and helped me and he hated you instead.’ She turned to Luke. ‘I’m in your debt.’

Luke was shaking his head. ‘There’s no debt,’ he said quietly. ‘But you can tell me the truth. Why did Yakub send you to the tribe?’

He felt her shrug beside him. ‘Shame? Convenience? Who knows? Perhaps I was an embarrassment.’

The assassins remained motionless while the couple beneath them talked. Then they began to move forward at the crouch, an inch at a time, no part of their bodies making any sound. They moved when there was conversation and when the moon was hidden by cloud. When they were close enough to see that the couple’s hands were joined, two of them took pads of cotton from their sleeves. The other two, with infinite care, moved their swords to their laps.

Luke stopped what he was saying and lifted his head. ‘What’s that smell?’

Too late. The assassins were upon them.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ALAMUT, SUMMER 1399

Luke awoke from the sweeping contours of sleep to the precision of shapes.

He was in the uppermost room of a tower whose circular walls rose into a dome, painted black and dotted with the white stars of a celestial map, in places joined to form zodiacal signs. Into it was cut a narrow channel, open to the sky and displaying the vivid curve of morning blue. The channel’s sides were scored with minute calibrations etched in gold.

Below the dome, the walls were covered with bookcases and, between them, silk screens on which were written astronomical tables and the symbols of alchemy. There were empty sconces above the screens and congealed wax ran down their surfaces.

The floor was wooden and carpeted and supported a central round table on which stood instruments used for distillation. Against the walls were two beds, side by side, with a small table between. On one bed was Luke and on the other Shulen, both of them washed, brushed and dressed in fresh linen clothes. Luke’s sword and bow were propped up against the foot of his bed. Both of them bore the scent of anointed oils.

Luke had dreamt of the Goulas of Monemvasia, of eagles rising from nests that clung to its walls and of the narrow jumble of streets below. He’d dreamt of his mother and of kermes laid out on the balcony to dry. He awoke strangely calm and happy and beset with a raging thirst. He looked at the table to his side and saw water and cups; he drank. Beyond the table, he saw Shulen.

She was awake and watching him through waves of hair. It shone with a deep lustre that he’d not seen before and, for a moment, Luke couldn’t connect it to her face and neck. She was smiling.

‘Did you dream?’ she whispered.

‘Yes. Of strange things. And you?’

She nodded. ‘We were drugged. They must have put something on those cloths they held to our mouths. Hashish, I should think.’

Hashish. Assassins.

‘Were they assassins?’ he asked. ‘Did you see them?’

Shulen drank some water. She was lying on her side facing Luke and had her head propped up on her hand. ‘No, I didn’t see them. But if they were assassins, they were poor ones. We’re still alive and you smell better than you have for weeks.’

It was then that they saw that they were not alone. There was a sound from the other side of the room where a woman stood by a window with her back to them. She had straightened up but did not look round. Now she spoke.

‘Yes, they were assassins. And if they’d wanted to kill you, you would now be dead.’

The voice belonged to someone who had always been obeyed. There was no cadence of doubt or suggestion in it; there was just fact.

‘Where are our friends?’ asked Luke.

The woman did not turn. Beyond her spread the flawless sky and the tops of distant mountains. There was grass growing from the lintel outside and it moved slowly in the wind above her head. They were high up in a ruin.

‘Your friends are safe. They are below.’

Luke imagined Matthew and the others anointed with healing oils and smiled. He looked up from the woman’s back to the channel running through the apex of the dome, flanked by measurements like the tiny legs of a caterpillar.

‘It is a quadrant. For measuring the hour of sunrise or the moment of noon.’ She had turned and was looking straight at Luke and he knew immediately who she was.

‘Khan-zada,’ he whispered.

She gave the minutest of bows from a neck embraced by a high collar of intricate design. It was part of a simple white tunic that fell to her thighs, beneath which were black trousers of a tougher material. The tunic was frogged at its front and the trousers had leather patches on their inner sides for riding. She was wearing boots that came up to her knees.

‘Where are we?’ Shulen asked.

Khan-zada turned her face to the other bed and Luke was able to study it in half-profile. It was a small head which was set back on its long neck so that her nose and chin were tilted upwards. She had a wide, unlined forehead and eyebrows arched by paint above eyes that saw beyond frontiers. Her black hair was gathered in plaits upon her head and held there with enamel birds whose jewelled beaks and tails joined to encircle it in colour.

‘Aluh amu’t, the Eagle’s lair. In the observatory of Hasan-i Sabbah,’ she said and smiled with something near to warmth. ‘You know of him?’

Shulen nodded. She was staring at the woman with fascination.

‘Well, this was where he would come to measure the seasons or the distance between celestial bodies or the time of the next eclipse. The garden is still here but overgrown. And without its houris.’

Every movement this woman made was performed with care and grace and Luke saw that her head remained perfectly still when the rest of her body moved.

‘And when he wasn’t doing that,’ she continued, ‘he would be searching for the philosopher’s stone or the secret of aqua vitae. But he was less interested in the alchemy of base metals than the alchemy of souls: in the transmutation of the mortal into the immortal.’ Now she turned slowly back to Shulen and there was a question in her eyes. ‘That is more interesting, don’t you think?’

Shulen was transfixed. Her mouth slightly open, she was breathing quickly and there was colour in her cheeks. She said nothing.

Khan-zada had moved to the wall. ‘Here are the seven planetary metals and here the four elements.’ She was pointing at symbols. ‘The language of alchemy.’

‘And the books? Are these his books?’ asked Shulen.

Khan-zada walked over to one of the cases. She pulled down a leather-bound volume, scarred with age. ‘Some. And some are mine.’ She was stroking the book’s cover. ‘I come here to read. Ptolemy, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Ibn Sina … many of these books came from Baghdad and Bokhara, looted by men of my race who couldn’t read.’ She looked up slowly from the book. ‘I used to come here to dispute with scholars. Even Plethon and Omar have visited. Now I come to escape.’

‘Was it you who anointed us with the oils?’ asked Shulen.

‘Ayurvedic oils prepared by myself,’ replied Khan-zada. ‘But you too are a healer. In your baggage there are many compounds that I’ve not seen before.’

Shulen began to say something but then changed her mind. Instead she asked: ‘And the oils you gave us?’

‘They helped you to rest and now they will help you to ride.’

Ride?

Luke had sat up in the bed. He saw riding clothes laid out at its end. ‘To Sultaniya?’

‘No, not to Sultaniya. Away from Sultaniya. We ride to Samarcand.’ The uplifted head had moved its penetrating eyes on to Luke.

‘Why not to Sultaniya? We came to meet your husband.’

‘Then you are madder than he is,’ she said. ‘Your plans have changed.’

There was a knock on the door and two men entered. They were dressed in the loose black clothing of their kidnappers and they bowed low. They spoke from behind masked mouths in a language that Luke did not understand. Khan-zada listened to them, walked back to the window and looked out.

‘They are coming,’ she said quietly. ‘They are perhaps four hours away. The assassins will try to delay them and one will dress himself in my clothes to be seen from the battlements, but it will only give us a few hours. We cannot wait any longer.’

Luke wanted to know more but saw that Shulen was already preparing to leave.

‘Wait!’ he said, louder than he’d meant. ‘We were on our way to meet Prince Miran Shah in his capital and now you say we must not. I want to know why.’

Khan-zada turned slowly to look at him, mild irritation in the pellucid eyes. ‘My husband is not your best means of meeting the lord Temur,’ she said quietly. ‘I am.’ She paused. ‘My husband spends his time ingesting hashish and wine and fornicating with children of both sexes. And when he is not destroying them, he is destroying any building of beauty around him. He is eaten up with jealousy and with hatred for his own mediocrity. He is mad.’

She took a deep breath and looked from Luke to Shulen. ‘All of this I could put up with. For the sake of my children, I could bear it. But I learnt that he was plotting against Temur himself. Then I knew he was mad.’

‘But who is coming?’ asked Luke.

The Princess raised her arched eyebrows further. ‘Still the questions? His creatures are coming. They are coming because my absence has been noticed and they will know that I have come here. They will spare me but they will kill you. So we must leave. Now.’

*

Khan-zada, Shulen and the four Varangians came down the mountain as the assassins had done, with ropes coiled around their midriffs fed out from above. They jumped their way past caves, ledges and birds until they reached the shallower slope in front of the cave where they’d been taken. There, looking up at them in the fresh morning air, were Eskalon and the other horses, all saddled, provisioned and ready to ride.

A single assassin stood with the horses, holding them by their reins and wearing a brown deel with a green stripe at its edge. Around his neck hung a rectangular piece of iron with three circles engraved on its face.

‘He will come with us,’ said the Princess, untying her rope and gesturing to the man. ‘He has a courier’s paizi around his neck and is dressed as one. He will take us to the first staging post where he will subdue the guard and then stop the courier sent by Miran Shah.’

Matthew had mounted and was adjusting his stirrups. ‘Why do we need to stop a courier?’ he asked.

‘Because’, she explained, ‘he will be carrying a message from Miran Shah to all staging posts telling them not to give us fresh horses on pain of death. We will need those horses if we are to escape the men who follow us.’

The assassin’s head was uncovered and Luke found himself looking at a man little older than himself. He was slight of build and delicate of feature. He did not look like a killer.

‘So which way do we go?’

The assassin answered in Greek. ‘We go due south through the mountains until we meet the royal road. Then you go east and I stay. It is four hundred miles to Mashhad and it will take you four days. Afterwards you will cross the Kara Kum desert and reach Bokhara. After that is Samarcand.’

‘Four days?’ Nikolas looked up from examining his crossbow. ‘How are we getting there, on eagles?’

The young man was unmoved. ‘With the paizi you can change horses at every fifty-mile staging post, or yam as we call them. It is what it’s for.’

‘And sleep?’ asked Arcadius. ‘Or even food? What chance of those?’

‘You will eat and sleep in the saddle. Those following you will be doing the same.’ The man had mounted and begun to move down the path. It was steep and the horses could only walk it and Luke found himself at the back behind Khan-zada. There was much he still wanted to know.

‘Highness,’ he ventured, ‘why did you go to all the trouble of kidnapping us? Why not simply ask us to take you to Tamerlane?’

The woman did not look round immediately and he wondered if she’d heard him. Then she reined in her horse so that there was distance between her and the rider in front. ‘I needed to see you.’ She had not turned and her head was held as high as always. Her voice was low. ‘I needed to see you to know if I could trust you. And I needed to see the girl.’

‘And you couldn’t do that by meeting us on the road?’

‘How?’ She put the question to the sky. ‘How would I have met you? How would you have reacted to being stopped by a group of assassins?’

Luke saw the truth of this. But it raised another question. ‘How did you know we were on our way to Miran Shah?’

She did not answer this and was silent for a long time. Luke watched her back as it moved in time with the sway of the horse. Even mounted, she had the grace of a queen. Then she asked a question of her own. ‘Do you love her as much as she does you?’

Luke was still muddled by the drug and wondered how she could possibly know about Anna. Then she spoke again.

‘I was watching her while you were asleep,’ she said, now turning so that the piercing eyes were on his. One hand was holding her reins, the other resting on the rump of her horse. ‘She didn’t know I was there. I saw her look at you for an hour before you awoke.’ She paused. ‘You are fortunate to be so loved.’

Luke felt the familiar pang of guilt. He took his eyes from hers and began to busy himself with his bow.

‘So, it is unrequited,’ she said quietly and looked back to her front. ‘A pity.’ She kicked her horse to catch up with the others and Luke was left feeling only shame.

They had reached the bottom of the mountain now and a green valley stretched out before them, steep-sided and with a broad path at its base. Immediately they broke into a canter and Luke had to pull Eskalon back to prevent him from overtaking the others. He looked behind him. There was no sign of pursuit and he wondered how much time the assassins’ deceit had bought them. At least the seven of them would be fast. The Varangians rode well and Shulen had been raised in the saddle. Khan-zada, meanwhile, looked as if she had the same control of her horse as she did over everything else.

We might just do it.

The valley led into another and the mountains on either side were falling to foothills when they saw the royal road beneath them. It was evening and the slope to their right was straddled with the long shadows of rocks scattered across its surface like embers. The horses were tired from hours without rest and their manes hung limp against their necks. They could not go much further.

The assassin, still leading, reined in his horse. ‘The yam is a mile beyond the place we will join the road. I will go on alone from here. Wait until dark and then ride to join me.’

Khan-zada nodded and the man rode on down the slope.

Luke watched him go and then looked left and right along the road. It was empty. He looked at the desert beyond and saw only birds circling, black specks against a red sky. The late sun had turned the flat land into a sheet of bronze that waited, pulsing, for the cool of night. Then he saw a black shape by the side of the road. ‘What is that?’ he asked, pointing.

Khan-zada looked up from studying the map. ‘It’s a horse,’ she replied. ‘A dead horse.’

She went back to her map, then decided that more explanation might be required. ‘It’s a courier’s horse. Anyone carrying a paizi is permitted to take any horse from any person along the road if he is on Temur’s business. Even members of the royal family must give up their horses. So the couriers leave their horses to die by the side of the road. It is quite usual.’

Nikolas whistled softly, looking at Luke and then Eskalon. ‘We certainly needed that paizi.’

‘Temur is obsessed with many things but most of all fresh news,’ she continued. ‘So our postal service, our shuudan, is the fastest in the world. It helps him rule.’

They dismounted and sat on the ground and stayed there watching the sun fall behind the hills, each occupied by their own tired thoughts. They’d given what water they had to the horses, which drank noisily and scraped their noses along the sand looking for grass. When it was nearly dark, they rose and remounted and walked down to the road and along it until the dark outline of the yam came into sight. It was a small, squat building of stone with a low chimney and beside it was a longer one that would be the stable. As they approached, they could see a light shining from within.

‘Wait here,’ said Luke, pulling up his horse. He’d unstrapped his bow from the saddle. ‘Matthew, if it’s a trap, take everyone back to the hills and find another way east.’

Shulen spoke. ‘I will come with you.’

Luke looked at her and remembered Khan-zada’s words. He spoke gently. ‘No you won’t. You will stay with Khan-zada and the others. They need you.’

Shulen began to answer but the Princess had ridden up and taken her bridle. ‘Stay with us,’ she said softly. ‘He will be safe.’

Luke rode forward to the building and dismounted. There was no sound from within the walls. He walked up to the door with his bow, arrow pointed to the front. Slowly, using the tip of the arrow, he pushed the door open.

The assassin was seated by the fire with an old man at his feet. There was a pool of blood around the man’s head and his throat was open.

‘He’s dead,’ he said. He was turning the blade of a long knife in the firelight.

‘You had to kill him?’

The man turned. His face was empty of emotion. ‘It is what I do,’ he said simply.

Luke stood awhile looking into the coldest eyes he’d ever seen. Then he nodded slowly and turned back to the door.

‘You are the strongest of them,’ said the man to his back. ‘You will have to do such things if you are to survive. We are not so different, you and I. Here, take the paizi.’

*

Ten minutes later, they were riding different horses away from the staging post. All except Luke who was still on Eskalon and now had the paizi hanging from his neck. The assassin stood by the door to watch them go and Luke was glad to leave him behind.

As he rode, he lifted the paizi in his hand to examine it. On one side were engraved the three circles of Temur’s kingdoms on earth and on the other, the outline of a fish. He pondered this. Was it, perhaps, the boast that Tamerlane laid claim to the oceans as well?

Night had fallen and for once they were thankful that the moon was only half full. It was cold and they had put on extra clothes, the Princess wearing a fur-lined hood which all but concealed her face. It was too dark to travel fast on the road and they ate a meal of bread and cheese as they bumped their way east, their horses’ ears alert to the sounds of the night.

By dawn, half of them were asleep in their saddles, slumped over their horses’ necks like sacks of grain; Arcadius was snoring loudly. Only Luke, Khan-zada and Shulen were awake and riding together at the front. They had not spoken for hours and Luke had slept a short while and dreamt of three Magi going west.

Now he broke the silence. ‘Highness, does Temur know nothing of what his son is doing in Sultaniya?’

Khan-zada lowered the hood from her head. The sun had yet to rise before them but the night’s cold was in retreat and the glow on the horizon gave the promise of warmth to come. She had removed the birds from her hair and it tumbled out like a rich carpet.

‘He knows some of it,’ she replied. ‘But Sultaniya is a long way from Samarcand and anyone who might speak against Miran Shah is either dead or too frightened to do so. Besides, Temur is unpredictable and could easily turn on the person who told him.’ She paused and smiled at him. ‘We shall see.’

There was a grunt from behind them and Luke turned to see Arcadius, still snoring, slipping slowly from his horse. Luke wheeled round and pulled him up into his saddle by the collar. He looked at his friend’s face, still asleep. In the half-light of the moon, he looked haggard with deep lines under his eyes. He hadn’t spoken at all since leaving the yam and Luke wondered if he was sickening again. He rode back to join Khan-zada.

‘Did he hurt you?’ Shulen was asking the Princess as he rejoined them.

Khan-zada shook her head. ‘No. But he might have soon. There was a feast. It lasted a week. He had a dish served that was first a huge horse, roasted with chestnuts and herbs. Then it was cut open and there was an antelope inside. Then the antelope was opened to reveal a calf, and inside that was a hare. He was drunk and began talking about serving up a woman slave in this way, with her foetus still within. I was disgusted and left the tent. Afterwards he was angry and I thought he might hurt me.’

Luke and Shulen looked at one another in horror.

‘So you see, he is truly mad. And someone has to tell Temur.’

There was a flash of colour over the hills ahead, a thin line of cadmium that hooped quickly into a crescent and flung rays into the sky, transforming it instantly to indigo. They stopped.

‘Now that is alchemy,’ murmured Khan-zada, her face aglow. She turned to Shulen. ‘Is it not?’

Shulen was looking at her with something unreadable in her eyes. ‘“The alchemy of souls … the transmutation of the mortal into the immortal.” That’s what you said, highness. Is it possible?’

‘Immortality?’ she smiled. ‘Perhaps. Hasan-i Sabbah thought so.’

*

The road they followed was wide enough to fit half a dozen horses abreast. It followed the contour of the foothills of the Alburz Mountains so that on their left a steep slope of stone and shale rose above them and on their right the vast desert of Kavir stretched out to infinity. The cold of the night fled the instant that the sun rose and soon they were removing clothes as they rode, folding them flat to put between them and their saddles. No one spoke except Luke who, as was his custom, spoke quietly to Eskalon.

Soon the sun was high in the sky and the ground under their horses hooves seemed to beat beneath its heat. The desert beside them was a lifeless thing, its only movement the spirals of sand and scree that would rise and turn and fall back to earth. Its cracked surface spread out to a horizon blurred by distance and mirage and desert.

Luke bade farewell to Eskalon at the next staging post. The stallion was exhausted and could barely stand, but he looked at his replacement with deep suspicion.

‘Hide him,’ Luke said. ‘If you give him to anyone, I will come back and kill you.’

For three days they rode. For three days they felt the morning sun warm their foreheads and the evening sun their backs. For three days they ate, drank and slept in the saddle, as they’d been told they would, and only paused to shit or change horses, their paiza working every time. They sped through villages and towns called Rey and Damghan. As they went further east, the people they met were fewer and poorer and numbered hardly a man among them.

They arrived in Nishapur, a walled city of cracks and empty houses. There was scaffolding everywhere but no sound of building. The water that ran in open drains by the side of the road was foul and the air stank. They wove their way through empty streets with cloths pressed to their mouths. Luke turned to Khan-zada. ‘Where are all the men?’

The Princess, veiled and erect, was staring ahead as if the answer might be written somewhere above the houses. ‘Taken east,’ she said quietly. ‘Taken in chains to build the mosques and palaces of Samarcand and Kesh. Enslaved.’

‘Don’t they have men there?’

‘Not enough to put Temur’s dreams into stone. He is making buildings bigger than anything the world has yet seen.’

She paused to pat the neck of her horse that had been startled by a flea-bitten dog. ‘He wants them finished before he dies.’

Luke thought of a man with unimaginable power who still feared the neglect of future generations. He thought of a man born in a tent who knew that immortality lay in stone.

‘I have seen his Summer Palace in Kesh,’ she continued. ‘The Ak Serai. It is magnificent and larger than anything you could ever imagine. Numberless rooms and a garden for every hour of the day. Do you know what is written above its gate?’

Luke was silent.

‘“Let he who doubts my power, look upon my buildings.”’ She laughed then, a joyless sound, muffled by silk. ‘And do you want to know the irony?’ she whispered. ‘They have no foundations!’

‘No foundations?’

Khan-zada shook her head. ‘No foundations. The man tasked with their completion is my cousin. He told me that the architects are working to an impossible timetable. They are so terrified they will not finish in time that they have built without foundations. The buildings will fall down in ten years. They had better hope that either he or they will be dead by then.’

They had reached a square where a pitiful fountain dribbled water from its spout. There were people here setting up market stalls but the produce displayed on them was thin.

‘You could say’, she went on, looking around her, ‘that these are the lucky ones. Temur killed millions when he led his hordes this way. Ten years ago, these cities were emptied. Now they’ve been filled with widows and orphans from the devastated lands around.’

They left the city as fast as they could. It was a day’s ride to Mashhad and Luke wanted to reach it before dark. It would be their last staging post before the Kara Kum desert and they would need to change their horses for camels to cross it.

So far, they’d seen nothing of their pursuers. They had no way of knowing how much time had been bought for them by the assassins, but it was unlikely that they’d been able to travel faster than the Varangians. Luke supposed they must be fewer by now, limited by the horses left for them at the various staging posts. He prayed none were on Eskalon.

The camels would present a problem. They couldn’t cross the desert without them but anyone chasing them on horseback would catch up with them in hours. And, of course, their pursuers didn’t need to cross the desert. It was time to confront these creatures of Miran Shah.

They left Mashhad at dawn in possession of a long wagon. After the horses, the camels’ rolling gait seemed slow.

‘Don’t they go any faster?’ asked Nikolas, his hand between his bottom and the cushion on which he sat.

Matthew said: ‘I had no idea you were so keen to get to Tamerlane.’

The four Varangians were silent after that, each thinking of what was to come. Their task was to persuade the most dangerous man on earth to do what he didn’t want to do: to come west. It seemed impossible that they’d survive such a task. Luke rode behind his three friends, watching them sway like drunks at a wedding. At least he’d come near to being a man of the steppe, while they were still fair-haired giants from the west, as alien to Tamerlane as mercy.

They came down through the mountains late in the afternoon, the black sands of the Kara Kum spread before them like a burnt offering. By evening, they’d arrived at a narrow defile with high hills on either side. They pushed the wagon on to its side and blocked the road.

‘It won’t fool them, but they should be riding fast enough for it to confuse,’ said Luke, wiping his brow. ‘And that may be all we need.’

‘How far behind are they, do you think?’ asked Matthew.

Luke shrugged. ‘Who knows? But the camels have slowed us down a lot.’

‘We’d better get into the hills then,’ Matthew said. ‘We know what to do.’

They led their camels back the way they’d come and tethered them. Luke unstrapped his sword and bow and pointed them to their positions.

They were just in time. As he was arranging his arrows beside him, Luke saw a cloud of dust rise from the foothills. Half an hour later, he heard the drumming of hooves and, soon afterwards, the jingle of harness. Then they came into view. The riders were pushing their horses hard, desperate to reach their quarry before the sands of the desert engulfed them.

There were five of them. Five men only, riding without armour or anything that would slow their pursuit, five men with swords strapped to their backs and bows by their sides. They had come so close to catching them up.

Now they saw the wagon and their horses reared up as they reined them in. Luke closed his eyes for a second’s relief. None of them was Eskalon. ‘All right. Let’s bring them down.’

Luke aimed Torguk’s bow as Nikolas and Shulen did the same. Three arrows were loosed and three horses fell, bringing their riders with them. But the men were good. They jumped from their horses as they fell and took cover behind their twisting bodies. Meanwhile the two remaining riders galloped back to find cover. The three in front let fly their arrows, forcing the Varagians to duck below their rocks. The two behind dismounted and began climbing the hillside to outflank them.

But it was all too late. The men sent by Miran Shah had expected a woman and her servants. Instead they had Varangians. The men on the hillside were halfway up when Arcadius and Matthew emerged from behind their boulders and fired into them at point-blank range. The men were dead when they fell.

Meanwhile, the three in front lay with their backs exposed, not knowing the fate of their comrades. Matthew and Arcadius had time to reload and move to positions from which they could not miss.

In a minute, it was all over. Their pursuers were no longer pursuing them and the Varangians had two new horses. Already, birds were circling above the corpses and flies humming around the arrows that protruded from their bodies. There was blood on the ground and the air smelt of death. Only the desert now lay between them and Bokhara. And beyond Bokhara lay Samarcand.

But the desert ahead was three hundred miles of scalding desolation, with few staging posts and fewer oases. Travelling as fast as they were able with camels, it would take at least two weeks to cross. Luke knew that it would be their greatest challenge yet. He looked over at Arcadius, who had sat down on the ground, staring at it. His friend was sickening.

‘We stop and rest here. And tonight we cook.’