I did not hesitate an instant. I knew what had happened as certainly as if I had witnessed it with my own eyes. Dashing out of the house, I ran through the dark, narrow, twisting pathways of the city toward the stonetempleofAhriman. Thunder rumbled overhead and streaks of lightning flicked across the dark sky. People were rushing to get indoors before the rain started. I pushed past them, seeing in my mind’s eye the filthy way he had murdered Aretha. My right hand tightened on the hilt of my dagger as I ran.

Even in the darkness I found Ahriman’s stone temple, as if an invisible beacon guided me to it. The night air smelled damp and crackled with electricity as I raced toward its low, dark entrance. A bolt of lightning cracked the sky in half, silhouetting the stone building for an eye-flash of a moment. Then thunder growled and rumbled across the heavens, ominously.

I burst inside, into the deeper darkness of Ahriman’s lair. He stood at the stone altar, his hands raised as if in prayer, his back to me. Without an instant’s hesitation, without even a thought, I launched myself at him.

He swung around, as fast as I drove at him, and batted me away as easily as a man swats at an annoying gnat. The blow sent me reeling across the stone floor. I thudded against the wall painfully and the dagger clattered out of my grasp.

“You are a fool,” Ahriman hissed at me, his eyes glowering in the shadows.

“Where is she? What have you done to her?”

He drew in a deep breath and eyed me calmly. “She is out on the grassland somewhere, searching for you. Someone told her that you had not come back with Ogotai and the others.”

“That’s a lie!”

“But she believed it. She is out there now, in the dark, trying to find you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged his powerful shoulders. “She is alone. Her brave escort of Mongol warriors are terrified of thunderstorms and have left her. They fear lightning, you know. Sitting atop a pony in a wide treeless plain while wearing a steel helmet — it makes them natural lightning rods.”

I had heard tales of warriors throwing themselves into rivers or lakes during lightning storms. And drowning.

“I have not harmed her, Orion,” said Ahriman, his back to the altar and the symbols carved into the stone wall above it. “I have no need to.”

I got slowly to my feet. “No, you’ve merely sent her out into the storm alone.”

“Then why don’t you take a pony and go out and find her? She will be overjoyed to see you once again.”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to leave the city, so that you can go to Ogotai and finish your work.”

He did not answer.

“You’re poisoning him,” I accused. “And you want me out of the way so that you can kill him.”

For a long moment Ahriman made no reaction whatever. Then he lifted his face toward the ceiling and began to laugh — a harsh, labored, wheezing sound that was utterly without joy. It sounded as if he were in pain; it grated on my ears and made me wince.

“I was more right than I knew,” he said at last, gasping for breath. “You are a bigger fool than I thought. Kill Ogotai? Kill him?” He laughed again, and the sound was like fingernails rasping across rough stone.

Finally he grew serious and pointed to the door. “Go, find your woman. She is unharmed — by me. What may happen to her in this storm is another matter.”

I had no choice. I could not fight him; he was too powerful for me. And even though I did not trust his words, the thought of Agla alone out on the steppe in the storm drove me out of his temple and toward the horse corral at the city’s edge.

It began to spatter rain as I commandeered a horse from the old man tending the nearest corral. My clothing told him I was of high rank, and even in the lightning-punctuated darkness he could see that my size and strange skin color marked me as the strange emissary from the West. Theft was virtually unknown among the Mongols. If I failed to bring back the pony in a reasonable time, warriors would be sent after me. There was no place in the known world where I could hide from their relentless justice.

“But this is no time to ride out into the open land,” the old man insisted as I saddled the pony. “The storm can kill a man…”

I ignored him and swung up into the saddle. The rain was coming down strong now; we were both already soaked. Lightning forked down like fingers searching for prey. The thunder was shattering the night now, as the storm marched toward us.

“You’ll kill the pony!” the old man shouted at me. True Mongol that he was, he saved his strongest argument for last.

But he was too late. I kicked at the mount’s flanks and we galloped into the wild night.

It was utterly foolish, I knew. Riding out into that storm to find Agla was like searching for a particular flower in a jungle the size of Africa — blindfolded. Yet I had to do it. I had to find her before one of those probing fingers of lightning blasted the life out of her. Strangely, I was not afraid at all of my being hit by lightning. I should have been, but I was not.

My pony was skittish, frightened, and almost bolted when a flash of lightning flicked across the sky. The thunder did not seem to bother it, though; probably it had been trained to bear up under the noise of battle. The rain became torrential, and I could barely see beyond the pony’s mane. Squinting into the darkness, hunched against the icy, wet wind, I urged the animal onward, farther into the night and the storm.

But the back of my mind was churning, digesting information, sifting data. Overriding all else was my mission to prevent Ahriman from achieving his goal. But how could I stop him if I didn’t know what he was trying to accomplish?

Over and over again, as I rode through the blinding rain, I tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Ahriman had seemed genuinely surprised when I had accused him of attempting to murder Ogotai. Yet I knew he was giving the High Khan a potion of some kind, almost every night that Ogotai was in his ordu. If it was not slow poison, what could it be?

The pony’s pace slowed to a trot, and then to a slow walk, as we pushed on against the wind and rain. Not even the bravest Mongol warrior would try to ride through this storm, I knew. But I had to. I had to.

What was Ahriman trying to achieve? If he wanted to kill me, he could have done it right there in his temple. Why send me out into this maelstrom? So that I could be killed by a lightning bolt, rather than slain by his own hand? That seemed far-fetched.

To keep me away from the city? Yes, that made some sense. Keep me away from Ogotai. But why, if Ahriman had no desire to murder the High Khan? Why would he want to keep me away?

I closed my eyes, not so much against the driving rain, but to focus my memory on the bits and scraps I had read in the twentieth century about the Mongol empire. With the clarity of perfect recall I saw page after page of history. I could read the words just as clearly as if the books were in my hands. Yet I could not remember what I had never read! How much history had I studied in my earlier life? I knew that the Mongols had never conquered Europe ; Subotai had crushed the armies raised by Bela, true enough, but he had never gone further into Europe. Why?

The answer flashed before my eyes like a bolt of the lightning that was shredding the darkness of the night. I saw the line from a book I had read in the twentieth century:

“No victory in battle saved western Europe from inevitable disaster. Its armies, led by reigning monarchs as incapable as Bela or Saint Louis of France, were utterly incapable of standing against the rapidly maneuvering Mongols led by Subotai. But the war never came to a final issue. A courier from Karakorum caused Subotai to halt his victorious sweep westward and turn back toward the Gobi. The courier brought the tidings of Ogotai’s death.”