I waited until almost the last of the great folk having a rightful place in the hall were about to pass by. Catching my signal, Sheba removed the covering from Iskander’s horns and lifted them on her shoulder; I shed my barracan and headcloth. Then I fell in behind a Mongol lord and his gift-bearing slaves, and myself took stately strides. Sheba, long-legged as her kind and with a swinging gait inimitable this side of Africa, walked in my footsteps. She was raised to carry a jar of water weighing eighty pounds on her high-held head, so she made light of her burden, holding it with one hand.
Whatever admiration we succeeded in winning from the crowd, certainly we aroused more curiosity than the wildest bearded sheik from Kurdistan.
An usher met me at the door. I spoke in the Jagatai Mongol; and my voice was steadier than I had ever hoped.
“I am Marco-po, bringing a gift to the Khan. I wish to stand nigh to Nico-lo-po and Maffeo-lo-po, ambassadors from Frankistan.”
The usher bowed low and led the way into the vast hall. The horns towered high under even this lofty roof, but not one of the immense, silent, motionless throng turned his head an inch. On a carpet so deep and soft that I did not have to tread lightly to make no sound, I walked up an aisle through the throng for at least a hundred paces and was posted within ten paces of the base of a many-storied dais. On the lower floors sat the Khan’s brothers and sons and kinsmen on chairs of silver and enamel; on the next to the highest a woman of fifty or more, fat and no longer comely, occupied a silver-and-ivory chair amid a blaze of jewels. At the very top, at least twenty feet above the throng, an empty chair awaited an occupant. It was not so large as to dwarf a man of ordinary size, but it was of gold, inlaid with ivory, pearl, and jade, and studded with an uncountable number of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds in fabulous design.
The merest roll of my eyes disclosed Nicolo and Maffeo on my right hand. They too stood like statues, but they had not failed to see me and identify me. Maffeo appeared bewildered. Nicolo had turned white with fury. I was glad of its intensity, because no man can think straight and act with discretion when torn by such passion. I could not look at Miranda without turning my head, but I was deeply aware of a golden haze that was her hair.
Ghosts gathering in the Halls of Death, awaiting the entrance of their terrible king, could not have stood more motionless and mute. The silence held for a period difficult to estimate—I thought it was fifteen minutes but perhaps it was not even five—and was at once thrilling and agonizing. Then the notes of a hidden flute floated into it and lightly breached the silence as a waking bird’s first call breaks the profound hush of dawn.
Other flutes began to sound in harmony with the first, and then massed zithers, harps, dulcimers, and violins from behind a long fretwork in alabaster. It must be that our hearts swelled with the swelling music, for every face I saw was strangely lighted; and as the trumpets came in with their mounting peal of exultation, louder and louder blaring of triumph beyond measure, the hair lifted on my head and my flesh turned to ice and fire.
Then, underneath the wild and savage symphony, we heard the low beat of kettledrums. Slowly they gave more voice to their cruel pride; they were the stirrers of men’s blood, the inciters to kill. Soldiers marched and horses charged to their reverberant beat; they were a mighty echo to the pulse of fury throbbing in warriors’ veins; they boomed forth the final glory, the glory of battle.
It is by battle that I conquered and my sires conquered before me. It is by battle that all these softer glories light on my head and shine forth unto you. I am Kublai, the grandson of Genghis, the brother of Mangu, and I hold by the sword.
For me the world was made.
The paean was rising to a terrible crescendo when a door behind the throne opened, and onto the dais came a being too effulgent to be a mortal man. While no one breathed, he seated himself in his golden, bejeweled chair, placed his scepter on a stand at his knees, and laid his hands, one on top of the other, on his breast.
He had only one follower—a Siberian tiger, with rich fur and heavy ruff, big as an ox. He yawned, showed his big fangs and red gullet to the crowd, then dropped down at his master’s feet.
The paean ended with a crashing chord. Then there came a voice as though from Heaven, filling the vast room.
“Bow and adore!”
All subjects and sojourners to the Khan’s Court—the queen and the princes and every human being in the room except slaves that were counted as chattels and whose very lives were prostrate—dropped to their knees and smote their heads four times upon the floor.
2
Head down with the rest, so reduced from man’s heights and so lost among the swarm of suppliants that I was hidden from enemy eyes and need not fear making any mistake or attracting the least dangerous attention, I took some bearings as though I had an astrolabe in my hand. I could see no immovable stars, but I thought of Mustapha . . . Miranda . . . Simon ben Reuben . . . Sheba. I remembered a throne of stone where I had sat last night that would outlast the wonderwork of gold and jewels before which we bowed down. When I rose again, I felt in my right mind.
Still I must not look to the right or the left, but it was not against the Khan’s law to look at the Khan. The glitter and gleam and godlike luster that played about him was the effect of a long coat of gold with collar, cuffs, frontpiece, and hand-breadth belt of square-cut, close-set jewels, diamond buttons, low-brimmed hat covered and ablaze with rubies, pearls, and diamonds, set off by the painted wall behind him and the throne of massive gold with its fabulous adornment. It must be that the blue Chinese lamps were so placed that they set fire to all the jewels—each burning with its separate flame to make a multicolored conflagration dazzling the eyes and putting the mind in shadow, because the big tiger crouching at his feet looked gaudy beyond nature. Under all this was a man. He was a man as surely as I was one, and as Sheba was a woman and as red Roxana that I had ridden had been a mare. He was a man of medium height, over sixty years old, rather stout, with a big, rather coarse nose, heavy jowls, and slanted, narrow, magnetic eyes. Genghis Khan and most of his sons had had blue eyes and fair skins and fairly heavy beards. Kublai was brown-skinned and wore only a wisp of beard.
Presently he spoke in Jagatai Mongol in a clear, warm, quite pleasant voice. I had heard that sounding boards had been built into the room and did not doubt that it carried to the inner galleries.
“I am returned to my beloved Xanadu Keibung, and I greet you all.”
No voice bade us prostrate ourselves, so we all stood still.
“There is one here who is about to undertake a long journey in my name—even unto the city of Budapest, which my cousin Batu razed to the ground thirty years ago, and whose king pays tribute to Toghon Khan, my viceroy and kinsman, lord of the Krim Tatars. Although there are many here of greater office, he has served me well, and since he will be gone from me for many a moon, it is fitting that I greet him before all the rest. Caidu of Wanchuan, you are welcome here.”
I heard his greeting to the grizzled Tatar in only the shell of my ear. I need take no hints as to the procedure of acknowledgment and gift-giving, as I heard it discussed all the way from Koko-Khotan. An inkling of what would come next made the blood rush to my head. . . . Now the royal stewards were taking Caidu’s offerings from the hands of his slaves and he was prostrating himself with tears rolling down his cheeks. . . . Now the Khan was speaking again.
“This day of departure of my ambassador to my Western kingdoms is the day of return of my ambassadors from beyond my Western kingdoms—even from the Court of the Christian Pope, Lord of Frankistan. They have been gone for nigh ten years. They have crossed and recrossed the whole habitable world. It comes to me they have served me faithfully, whether or not their mission was crowned with success. Although there are many here of greater name and place, it is fitting that I greet them only next to my departing servant Caidu. Maffeo and Nicolo, the older and younger brothers Polo, I make you welcome.”