“But the longer they resist, the more men dead on both sides, and the land itself made poorer and less worth the taking.”
“Again, true enough. Unfortunately.”
“If they were disabused of their delusion of invincibility, Sire, might not the conquest be easier? With fewer dead and less ravagement of the province?”
“Yes. Do you know some way to dissolve that delusion?”
“I am not sure, Sire. Let me put it this way. Do you suppose the Yi are bolstered in their resistance by knowing that they have a friend here at court?”
The Khakhan’s gaze became that of a hunting chita. But he did not roar like a chita, he said as softly as a dove, “Marco Polo, let us not dance around the subject, like two Han in the market. Tell me who it is.”
“I have information, Sire, apparently reliable, that the Minister of Lesser Races, Pao Nei-ho, though posing as a Han, is really a Yi of Yun-nan.”
Kubilai sat pensive, though the blaze in his eyes did not abate, and after a while he growled to himself, “Vakh! Who can tell the damnable slant-eyes apart? And they are all equally perfidious.”
I thought I had better say, “That is the only information I have, Sire, and I accuse the Minister Pao of nothing. I have no evidence that he has spied for the Yi, or even been in communication with them in any way.”
“Sufficient is it that he misrepresented himself. You have done well, Marco Polo. I will call Pao in for questioning, and I may later have reason to speak to you again.”
When I left the Khakhan’s suite, I found a palace steward waiting for me in the corridor, with a message that the Chief Minister Achmad would have me call upon him that moment. I went to his chambers, not gleefully, thinking: How could he have heard already?
The Arab received me in a room decorated with a single massive piece of—I suppose it would be called a sculpture made by nature. It was a great rock, twice as tall as a man and four times as big around, a tremendous piece of solidified lava that looked like petrified flames, all gray twists and convolutions and holes and little tunnels. Somewhere in the base of it a bowl of incense smoldered, and the perfumed blue smoke rose and coiled through the sculpture’s sinuosities and seeped out from some apertures and in through others, so that the whole thing seemed to writhe in a slow, ceaseless torment.
“You disobeyed and defied me,” Achmad said immediately, with no greeting or other preliminary. “You kept listening until you heard something damaging to a high minister of this court.”
I said, “It was a piece of news that came to me before I could withdraw the ear.” I offered no further apology or extenuation, but boldly added, “I thought it had come
“What is spoken on the road is heard in the grass,” he said indifferently. “An old Han proverb.”
Still boldly, I said, “It requires a listener in the grass. All this time, I had assumed that my maidservants were reporting my doings to the Khan Kubilai or the Prince Chingkim, and I accepted that as reasonable. But all this time they have been
I do not know whether he would have bothered to lie and deny it, or would even have bothered to confirm the fact, for at that moment came a slight interruption. From an adjoining room, a woman started in through the curtained doorway, and then, perceiving that Achmad had company, abruptly swished back through them again. All I saw of her was that she was a strikingly large woman, and elegantly garbed. From her behavior, it was evident that she did not wish to be seen by me, so I supposed that she was somebody else’s wife or concubine engaging in an illicit adventure. But I could not recall ever having seen such a tall and robust woman anywhere about the palace. I reflected that the painter, Master Chao, in speaking of the Arab’s depraved tastes, had not said anything about the
“The steward found you at the Khakhan’s chambers, so I take it that you have already imparted to him your information.”
“Yes, Wali, I have. Kubilai is summoning the Minister Pao to interrogate him.”
“A fruitless summons,” said the Arab. “It seems that the Minister has made a hasty departure, destination unknown. Lest you be so brash as to accuse me of having connived in his flight, let me suggest that Fao probably recognized the same visitors from the southland who recognized him, and whose indiscreet gossip your ear overheard.”
I said, and truthfully, “I am not brash to the extreme of being suicidal, Wali Achmad. I would accuse you of nothing. I will only mention that the Khakhan seemed gratified to have the information I brought him. So, if you deem that a disobedience to you, and punish me for it, I imagine Kubilai will wonder why.”
“Impertinent piglet of a sow mother! Are you daring me to punish you, with a threat of the Khakhan’s displeasure?”
I made no reply to that. His black agate eyes got even stonier, and he went on:
“Get this clear in your mind, Folo. My fortunes are dependent on the Khanate of which I am Chief Minister and Vice-Regent. I would be not only traitorous—I would be imbecilic—if I did anything to undermine the Khanate. I am as eager as Kubilai that we take Yun-nan, and then the Sung Empire, and then all the rest of the world as well, if we can do so and if Allah wills it so. I do not berate you for having discovered, before I did, that the Khanate’s interests may have been imperiled by that Yi impostor. But get this also clear in your mind.
I started angrily to say, “I am no more an outsider here than—” but he imperiously raised his hand.
“I will not utterly demolish you for this instance of disobedience, since it was not to my disservice. But I promise that you will regret it, Folo, sufficiently that you will not be inclined to repeat it. Earlier, I only told you what Hell is. It seems you require a demonstration.” Then, perhaps reflecting that his lady visitor might be within hearing, he lowered his voice. “In my own good time, I will provide that demonstration. Go now. And go well away from me.”
I went, but not too far, in case I should be wanted again by the Khakhan. I went outdoors and through the palace gardens and up the Kara Hill to the Echo Pavilion, to let the clear breezes of the heights blow through my cluttered mind. I strolled around the promenade within the mosaic wall, mentally sorting among all the numerous things I had recently been given or had taken upon myself to worry about: Yun-nan and the Yi, Nostril and his lady lost and found, the twins Buyantu and Biliktu, now revealed as more than sisters to each other and less than faithful to me … .
Then, as if I had not enough to concern me, I was suddenly given a new thing. A voice whispered in my ear, in the Mongol tongue, “Do not turn. Do not move. Do not look.”
I froze where I was, expecting next to feel a stabbing point or a slashing blade. But there came only the voice again:
“Tremble, Ferenghi. Dread the coming of what you have deserved. But not now, for the waiting and the dread and the not knowing are part of it.”
By then, I had realized that the voice was not really at my ear. I turned and looked all about me, and I saw no one, and I said sharply, “What have I deserved? What do you want of me?”
“Only expect me,” whispered the voice.
“Who? And when?”
The voice whispered just seven more words—seven short and simple words, but words freighted with a menace more chilling than the most fearsome threat—and it never spoke again afterward. It said only and flatly and finally:
“Expect me when you least expect me.”
13
I waited for more, and, when I heard no more, I asked another question or two, and got no answer. So I ran around the terrace to my right, and got to the Moon Gate in the wall without having seen anyone, so I continued to run all the way around the Echo Pavilion, back to the Moon Gate again, and still had seen no one. There was only that one entranceway in the wall, so I stood in it and looked down the Kara Hill. There were several lords and ladies also taking the air that day, strolling about in ones and twos on lower levels of the hill. Any one of them could have been the person who had invisibly accosted me—could have run that far, then slowed to a walk. Or the whisperer
