It took the best part of the morning for us to talk our way past the dour-faced guards and soft-spoken Chinese administrators of the ordu. We found ourselves at last in a small tent that stood to one side of Ogotai’s main pavilion. Inside, the tent was richly carpeted, and furnished with chests and cabinets decorated with intricate scrollwork and inlaid ivory and gold. Their motifs of dragons and pagodas showed them to be fromCathay.

Liu appeared from behind a seven-foot-high ebony screen, moving as smoothly and mysteriously as ever in his floor-length robes to a cushioned chair set off to one side of a long table covered with scrolls and maps. He nodded to us and smiled; taking one hand from his wide sleeves, he gestured us to the smaller chairs near his own.

After a few polite exchanges of greetings, the mandarin asked me why I sought his ear.

“To beg you for an audience with the High Khan,” I said. “It is urgent that I meet Ogotai.”

He toyed with his wispy white beard for a few silent moments. I focused every atom of my being, every flickering synapse along the myriad neurons of my brain, at the old man’s mind. He seemed to feel it; his body stiffened slightly, and he looked up, directly into my eyes. I saw confusion in his dark brown eyes, then a widening understanding of my purpose.

“I have been protecting you from possible danger,” he said, almost apologetically. “If you meet Ogotai and he decides that you truly are the menace Ahriman prophesies you to be, he will have you killed.”

“There is a greater danger in waiting,” I answered. “I must see him now.”

“Yes,” Liu said, nodding his understanding. “I shall arrange an audience for you. Wait here.”

He rose from his chair like a sleepwalker and glided behind the elaborate ebony screen once more. I turned to Agla and smiled at her.

She was regarding me with a strange expression on her face. “You forced him to do your will,” she said.

“I convinced him that it must be done.”

She reached up to brush a stray hair back from her eyes and a snap of static electricity stung her fingers. “You are a wizard also.” Her voice was a whisper of awe. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m not a wizard.”

“Yes, you are. Like Ahriman. A man of great powers. I should have known it when you healed your wounds so quickly…”

“My powers are for good, not evil,” I said. “But I am not a wizard.”

“You have no idea of how powerful you truly are,” Agla insisted. “What you did to my lord Chutsai… I could feel it!”

I tried to downplay my little instinctive trick of hypnosis, but Agla knew better than I what was involved. “You must not let Ogotai or the guards around him see your powers. They are superstitious men, and they would kill you out of fear.”

“But they allow Ahriman to live,” I said.

“Yes, because he prophesies victories in battle for them. I have listened to what the women say of Ahriman. He is feared for his dark powers, but the warriors are more afraid of displeasing him and having him prophesy defeat for the Mongols. These foolish men believe that Ahriman’s prophecies create victory or defeat.”

“Doesn’t that put him in much danger? Wouldn’t they be likely to slit his throat one night and be rid of him?”

She shook her head, tossing that stray lock of hair back over her eyes. Again she pushed it back, this time without a shock.

“Ahriman has been very clever. He came to Karakorum, from what I hear, as a priest of a new religion. A warrior’s religion. The Mongols do not harm priests; they tolerate all religions. So, even though there is great fear of Ahriman’s powers, the High Khan will not allow him to be harmed — so long as his prophecies of victory continue to be true.”

He was clever, I thought. More clever than I, to understand these people so thoroughly.

“Besides,” Agla went on, a bit more lightly, “the Mongols do not shed the blood of important personages.”

“Oh? Then what…”

“They strangle them, or smother them beneath carpets. The Yassa forbids bloodletting among the Mongols, but it does not overlook the need for killing.”

I sat in the stiff wooden chair, digesting all that Agla had told me. I could not help seeing Ahriman’s face, and his ghastly smile, as I considered the fact that not even Genghis Khan’s code of laws could prevent human beings from murdering one another.

Ye Liu Chutsai returned at last, looking somewhat puzzled, as if he could not quite remember why he was doing what he was doing.

“It is arranged,” he said to me. “You will be received by the High Khan tonight, before the evening meal. You will come alone.”

I glanced at Agla.

“The High Khan,” explained Liu, “would not respect a man who was accompanied by a woman. It is the way of the Mongols, and no insult to you, lady.”

“I am not insulted,” Agla said. “Merely afraid that Orion might not understand everything that happens in Ogotai’s court.”

“I will be there to guide him,” Liu said. “He is in enough peril, with Ahriman’s prophecy already working against him, to have him appear before the High Khan with a woman at his side, and a woman whom many in Karakorum know to be a healer — and perhaps something of a witch…” He let the thought dangle.

“I understand,” I told him. But, remembering what had happened to Aretha, I added, “I would like to have the guards protect Agla while I am away from her. Ahriman, or others, might try to strike at me through her.”

The mandarin bowed his head slightly. “It will be done. You are both under my protection, for whatever good that does. And you, Orion, still have Subotai’s recommendation to protect you.”

I smiled at him. “I value Subotai’s generosity, and I treasure your own, my lord Chutsai.”

That pleased him. But he warned, “A shield is only as strong as the arm on which it is worn. You have a powerful enemy here at Karakorum. Be careful.”

“Thank you, my lord. I will be.”

Late that afternoon, as Agla fussed nervously about our quarters and I tried to concentrate on understanding what I had learned thus far so that I could peer into the future and determine what I must say to Ogotai, a servant brought new clothes for me to wear for my appearance before the High Khan. A gift from Ye Liu Chutsai.

Agla marveled at the outfit of leather and fine cloth. “You look like a prince! A handsome, powerful prince.”

I smiled at her, although it hurt my newly shaven face. Shaving in cold water with a finely honed knife is a true test of courage. Agla beamed at me like a little girl and tried not to show how worried she was. We both knew that visitors to the High Khan’s pavilion sometimes came away with gifts of gold and slaves and even horses. But sometimes they came away with molten silver poured into their ears.

“You must be very careful,” she warned me, staring at me with somber, anxious eyes.

“I will be.”

“Let the mandarin guide you. Do not allow them to see your powers; that will frighten them, just as Hulagu was frightened.”

“Will Ahriman be there, do you think?”

Her gray eyes went even wider with fear. “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

Someone knocked at the door.

“Well, whether he is or not,” I said, “that must be the guards to escort me to the pavilion.”

Agla flung her arms around my neck. “I wish I were going with you!”

“I’ll be all right,” I said. I gave her a swift kiss and then went to the door and opened it. A quartet of warriors stood outside, their gleaming armor and burnished helmets making our two regular guards look scruffy and mangy by comparison.

I glanced over my shoulder at Agla, gave her a final smile, and closed the door. My escort marched me to the pavilion, but not before I looked back to see her standing at the door watching me, while the two guards looked back and forth from me to her.