“Your brothers and sons…”

“Yes, they still reach out. While there is land for a pony to tread upon, they will battle to possess it.” He took a deep breath, almost a sigh. “All my life I have spent in wars. Why do you think I spared you a test of your strength this night?”

I smiled at him. “Because I had no shoes?”

With a fleeting grin, he replied, “No, Orion. I have seen enough arrows flying through the air. I have seen enough swordplay. I yearn for peace, for an end to pain and battles.”

“Wise men prefer peace to war,” I said.

“Then wise men are more rare than trees on the Gobi.”

“Peace will come, in time. High Khan.”

“Long after I have returned to my ancestors,” he said without a trace of bitterness. It was merely a statement of fact.

“My lord High Khan,” I started, then hesitated.

“You want to speak about your enemy, Ahriman. What is the matter between you? A blood feud? A family quarrel?”

“Yes, you could call it that. He is an evil one, High Khan. He means you no good.”

“He has served me well in the short time he has been at Karakorum. The warriors fear him, but they like his prophecies of victory.”

“High Khan, anyone can predict victory for the Mongols. When have you known defeat?”

Ogotai’s tired face lit up briefly. With a laugh, he said, “That is true enough. But still, even my generals want to hear prophecies of success. It makes them feel better. And Ahriman has helped me to feel better as well. He is on his way here and should arrive shortly.”

“Here? To your tent?”

“I summon him almost every night. He has a potion that helps me to sleep. It’s better than the wine of Shiraz.”

My mind went into a spin, trying to digest this new information.

“It would be best if the two of you did not meet,” Ogotai said. “At the slightest threatening move, my guards would kill you both.”

That was my dismissal. With a bow I took my leave of the High Khan.

I could not sleep that night, although to say “night” is misleading. The sky was already pearl-gray with the coming dawn when I returned to my house from Ogotai’s tent.

Agla was wide awake, waiting for me. We talked as the sky brightened into true morning. Finally she could keep her eyes open no longer and drifted into slumber, her head resting on my shoulder. I can get along with little sleep. I lay beside her, wondering what I should do next.

I had not been placed here by mistake or misdirection. Ahriman was here, working his plan for the destruction of the human race. He saw Ogotai nightly and gave him some sort of drink to help the High Khan sleep. Medicine? Liquor? Slow poison?

Why did Ogotai need help to sleep? Did his conscience bother him? He said he was tired of wars and slaughter, but yet he ruled an empire which had to keep expanding, or it would collapse into tribal wars. That was what Ye Liu Chutsai had told me.

I shook my head. It made little sense to me. Ogotai lived off the wealth of all Asia, longing for peace, while his brothers and nephews spread fire and havoc in the Middle East, Europe, and China. How can this be a nexus in the space-time continuum? What did Ahriman plan to do here? How could I stop him if I did not know what he was trying to accomplish?

There was one way, of course. Simply kill Ahriman. Lie in wait for him at his stone church and slit his throat. Kill him the way he killed Aretha, without mercy or hesitation.

But a countering idea struck me. Perhaps that is what Ahriman wants! He has made no secret of his presence here. He has not tried to harm me or Agla. He has not tried to prevent my learning that he visits Ogotai’s tent each night. Perhaps his murder would trigger a sequence of events that would accomplish his goal here, whatever that goal might be.

I felt suspended in midair, hanging on nothingness while two powerful forces pulled me in opposite directions. I was being torn apart, but there was nothing I could do about it. I could not move, could not take action, until I learned more about Ahriman’s plans.

My deliberations, and Agla’s sleep, were rudely shattered by an insistent pounding on our front door.

“What is it?” Agla wondered, instantly awake.

The pounding sounded like whoever it was would break the door down.

I pulled my robe around me as I got to my feet. Agla burrowed deeper under the bedclothes, looking frightened.

Opening the door — there were no locks in Karakorum — I saw a stumpy, wizened old man with skin that looked as tough as tree bark and fists almost the size of his shaved head. He wore shabby, stained clothes and had a huge leather satchel slung over one shoulder.

“So you’re awake!” he snapped at me.

I glared down at him. “I am now.”

He gave a disgusted snort. “I know how long those drinking bouts go on in the ordu. And while the High Khan is in his cups people get him to promise them things.”

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“The bootmaker, who else?” He pushed past me and entered the house. “A messenger from the High Khan ordered me to come to you and make you a pair of boots. As if I don’t have enough to do! But do they care? Not them! Make this stranger from the western lands a pair of boots! The High Khan himself has ordered it! Do it quickly or we’ll all lose our heads! So here I am, whether you like it or not. I may have spoiled your sleep, but by all the gods you’ll have a pair of boots that will please the High Khan, and you’ll have them before the drinking starts again this evening.”

He sat flat on the floor of the front room and began unpacking his satchel. I had my boots by that evening, all right, and fine and comfortable they were. But I never met a worse tyrant among all the Mongols than that bootmaker.

Ogotai had taken a liking to me, and he invited me to his pavilion frequently. One day he took me riding, out beyond the bedlam of the crowded, dirty, noisy lanes of the growing city, past the vast horse corrals and cattle barns, out into the endless, rolling grasslands.

“This is the true home of the Mongol,” he told me, turning in his saddle to survey the vast, empty, treeless grassland. He took a deep breath of air unpolluted by crowded buildings and people.

I told him, “Far to the west, in a land called Greece, when the natives there first saw men riding on horses — long ages ago — they thought that the man and horse were one creature. They called them Centaurs.”

Ogotai smiled in the sunlight. “Truly, a Mongol without a horse is not much of a man.”

We rode frequently together. At first Ogotai brought a guard of warriors with him, but soon enough he rode with me alone. He enjoyed my company and he trusted me. I told him about the lands and people ofEurope, of the great kings that were yet to be and of the glories of the ancient empires. He was especially interested in Rome, and disappointed when I spoke of the corruption and decay of its empire.

“We would not have High Khans such as Tiberius or Caligula — they can only exist when the Orkhons are spineless. That is not the way Mongols are.”

Agla did not trust the High Khan’s friendship. “You are playing with fire. Sooner or later the Dark One will put a spell on Ogotai, or he will get drunk and pick a quarrel with you.”

“He’s not that kind of man,” I said.

She fixed me with those luminous gray eyes of hers, as endlessly deep as an infinite ocean. “He is the High Khan, a man who has the power to slaughter whole cities and nations. Your life or mine does not matter to such a man.”

I started to tell her that she was wrong, but heard myself say, rather weakly, “I don’t think so.

Agla remained unconvinced.

The summer wore on with me still stranded on dead center, not knowing what to do or what Ahriman was planning. Messengers galloped in from the west, breathless with the news of Subotai’s victory over Bela on the plain of Mohi. Weeks later, long caravans of camels and mules arrived, heaped high with armor and weapons and jewelry, Subotai’s spoils from Hungary and Poland.