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.