I saw her tramping that endless road under the sun and the moon. But a brand had been put on me that I could neither walk, work, nor pray away. I did not know what it was, and I could get rid of it only by conquering Nicolo, winning Miranda of England.
“I must go in one more minute. When can I come back?”
“Never.”
I laughed at her. She laughed too and wiped her eyes.
“Still, it’s no use, Marco,” she murmured earnestly. “I’m not going back in love with you, and I’m going to do nothing to interfere with my being a queen in the Court of Kublai Khan. And in that I have support so great that you’ll know I’ll stick to it.”
“The support of Nicolo?”
“Your mind runs on him. No, my saints.”
“Did your saints object to what we did before?”
“No, because I was your slave. But I’m not your slave now—I belong to Nicolo. You think we can still make love as we did before until you can get me back or make some other deal, but we can’t. Even if I wanted to, I’m still safe—I can still abstain. And that’s because of a contract I made with my saints.”
“What contract?”
“I told you once. When I tell you again, go. On that night, I wasn’t at all sure I could go into slavery. I had been burned and thought it would happen again and again until I told my secret, and so would be ransomed. So I promised that if I won, I would be a dutiful slave—a loyal slave.”
Miranda was speaking very quietly and her face was still, but I felt a force within her that I knew by no name but steadfastness. What else could I expect of one who had gone, not been led, three-fourths of the way from Venice to the Court of Kublai Khan?
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” I asked.
“Partly.”
“I’ve got to take you from Nicolo before he takes you himself or presents you to the Khan. And he won’t sell you.”
“I don’t think you can, when he has so much more power. But you have another course—to let me alone.”
“If he should die, I could make full claim as his heir. There’d be a will disinheriting me, but Maffeo would be glad to divide with me out here on the desert.”
“You told me once that if you kill him, you will fail in your venture and go to Hell.”
“I think he may meet his death trying to kill me. If I pick the time and place and provocation, it would be almost sure.” And that was the idea that had struck and lightly stunned my brain early in the visit.
“Your minute’s up and I want you to go.”
“I must go, but I’ll come back.”
“I don’t want you to and you have no right to.”
“What are your wishes to me? What is right out here on the desert? Ask the lion and the falcon and the snake.”
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.”