I shuddered. “It doesn’t pay to be known as a sorcerer.”

“Are you…?”

“No, I’m not. Can’t you see that? I’m a man, like any other.”

“I have never seen a man like you,” Agla said, her voice very low.

“Perhaps so,” I admitted. “But what I do is not magic or supernatural. I merely have more strength than other men.”

She seemed to brighten, happy to convince herself that I was not something monstrous or evil.

“Once I saw how rapidly you were healing, I told lord Subotai that your wounds were not as deep as I had at first thought them to be.”

“You don’t want to take credit for healing me?”

“They call me a witch, but they don’t really mean it seriously. They endure me as a healer because they have need of me. But if they thought that I had used arcane powers to heal you, then I would be a sorceress, and I would face the fire or the molten silver.”

We were both silent for a moment, two aliens in the camp of barbarian warriors. She was Aretha, but she didn’t know it. How could I bring back her memory of that other life?

I thought of Ahriman, and of the reason why I had been brought to this time and place. Perhaps a recollection of him would stir her dormant knowledge.

“There is another man, a dark and dangerous man,” I began, then went on to describe Ahriman as closely as I could.

Agla shook her head, the motion making her bone and shell necklaces clatter softly. “I have never seen such a man.”

He had to be here, somewhere. Why else would Ormazd have sent me here? Then a new thought struck me: Was it actually Ormazd who had sent me to this time and place? Might Ahriman have exiled me to this wilderness, centuries distant from where I was needed?

But I had no time to worry about such a question. The entry flap was pushed open again, and the Mongol general called Subotai stepped into the yurt.

Subotai entered the felt yurt alone, without guards or announcement, and without fear. Dressed in well-worn leathers, he bore only one weapon, the curved dagger at his belt. He was as lean and wiry as any warrior; only the gray of his braided hair betrayed his age. And although his round, flat face looked impassive and inscrutable, his dark eyes glittered with the eagerness and restlessness of a boy. Agla bowed to him. “Welcome to my humble yurt, lord Subotai.”

“You are the healer,” he said. “They tell me you are a witch.”

“Only because I can heal illnesses and wounds that would slay a warrior who has not my aid,” Agla replied. She was slightly taller than the general when she stood straight.

“I have Chinese healers who perform miracles.”

“They are not miracles, lord Subotai. They are merely the result of knowledge. Your warriors are brave and have great skill in warfare. We healers have skills in other arts.”

“Including magic?” he asked. “Divination?”

Agla smiled at him. “No, my lord general. Not magic and not prophecy. Merely knowledge of herbs and potions that can heal the body.”

He gave the same kind of huffing grunt I had heard the night I had been attacked. It seemed to indicate that he was satisfied that everything that could be was being done.

Turning to me, Subotai said, “You seem to be healing with great speed. Soon you will be on your feet again.”

“My wounds were not as deep as they seemed at first,” I lied.

“So it appears.”

I propped myself up on my elbows and Agla hurried to stuff a pair of cushions under me. “Did anyone catch the men who attacked me?”

Subotai sat himself down cross-legged on the carpeted floor beside my pallet. But he said merely, “No. They escaped in the darkness.”

“Then they are still in the camp somewhere, waiting to attack me again.”

“I doubt it. You are under my protection.”

I bowed my head slightly. “I thank you, lord Subotai.” I was about to ask him why he had decided to place me under his wing, but he spoke before I could.

“There are times when a man in a high place — say, the leader of a warrior clan such as Hulagu — must deal with a thorny problem. Some of those times, such a leader might express the hope that the problem will go away. Other men, loyal to such a leader, might interpret the leader’s words incorrectly and cause injury to the stranger who causes the problem. Do you understand?”

I could feel my forehead knit into a frown. “But what problem am I causing Hulagu?”

“Did I say I was speaking of Hulagu? Or of you?”

“No,” I replied quickly. “You did not.”

Subotai nodded, satisfied that I understood the delicacies of the situation. “But you yourself are a good example of what I mean. You appear out of nowhere; you are obviously an alien, and yet you speak our tongue. You say you are an emissary from a distant land, and yet you have the strength of ten warriors. You insist that you must see the High Khan in Karakorum. Yet Hulagu fears that you are not an emissary at all, but an assassin sent to murder his uncle.”

“Assassin?” I felt shocked. “But why…”

The wiry little general waved me down. “Is it true that you come from a land far to the west of here?”

“Yes.” I knew that of all crimes, the Mongols hated lying the most. Like most nomadic, desert-honed peoples, their very existence depended on hospitality and honesty among one another.

He hunched forward, leaning his forearms on his bent knees. “Years ago I led my men west of the larger of two great inland seas into a land where the earth was as black as pitch and so fertile that the people there grew crops of grain that stood taller than a man.”

“The Ukraine,” I said, half to myself.

“The men there had pink skin, such as you do.”

I glanced at Agla, who sat silent and still on her heels at the foot of my pallet.

“It is true,” I said. “Men of my coloring live there, and throughout those lands, westward to the great sea.”

“Farther to the west there are kingdoms that no Mongol has ever seen,” Subotai said, eagerness beginning to crack his impassive facade. “Kingdoms of great wealth and power.”

“There are kingdoms to the west,” I admitted. “The Russians and Poles, and farther westward still, the Hungarians, the Germans, and the Franks. And even beyond those lands, on an island as large as theGobiitself, are the Britons.”

“You are from that kingdom?” Subotai asked.

I shook my head. “From farther westward yet. From across a sea as wide as the march from here to Karakorum.”

Subotai leaned back a little, pondering that, trying to imagine such a vast stretch of water. I estimated, from the scraps of information I had heard so far and from the inner conviction that we were camped somewhere inPersia, that we were more than a thousand miles from the Mongol capital,Karakorum, on the northern edge of the Gobi Desert.

“I have placed you under my protection,” Subotai said at last, “because I believe that you are speaking the truth. I want to know everything you know about these western kingdoms — their cities, their armies, the strength and valor of their warriors.”

Agla gave me a barely perceptible nod, telling me that to refuse Subotai’s request, or even debate it, would be a fatal mistake.

The general gave no thought to my resisting his command. He went on, “But first you must satisfy me that Hulagu’s fears are groundless. Why do you wish to see the High Khan? You have no gifts with you, no tokens of obeisance. You told Hulagu that you have not been sent to offer the submission of your kingdom. What message have you for Ogotai?”

I hesitated. There was no message, of course. I had merely blurted out that I was an emissary to avoid being killed outright.

Subotai sat up straighter, and his voice became iron-hard. “I have spent my life serving the High Khans, Ogotai and his father, the Perfect Warrior whose name all Mongols revere. They have trusted me and I have never failed them.”