Our ship now moved very slowly on just one sail, little more than drifting among the moored vessels. The captain steered us carefully past the moorings and then along the tangle of wooden docks that protruded from the city gates. At last we slid smoothly up next to a dock and stopped with only the slightest bump.

The sailors all cheered and busied themselves tying down the sails and the lines. The gang plank went over the railing with a clatter. Already a group of burly men were moving out along the docks toward us, members of the dockhands’ guild I assumed, though the dockhands in the City at home had never worn cobalt blue tunics and shoes with long, curled toes.

We went off first, before the real cargo, leading our horses. The king spoke briefly with the captain about finding a good place to stay. I heard the captain add, “I’ve picked up from a few things your party has said that you’re missing something. Missing objects from all around the Central Sea have a way of ending up in Xantium. You might try the Thieves’ Market.”

Our horses were stiff and restless from the voyage, especially Whirlwind. He sniffed the air as though in disgust and decided to treat every person, every bale on the docks, and every piece of trash blown by the wind as a potential threat, an excuse for whinnying and rearing. Dominic clung grimly to the bridle, using his own weight to hold the stallion down, and stayed close behind Ascelin.

I stopped to stare at a tall pole from which three dead men dangled limp over the water. A dockhand saw my stare and smiled.

“Don’t you hang thieves in the west?” he asked. “The governor allows no one to violate the integrity of Xantium harbor, not the thieves’ guild, not amateurs. Of course, the old governor was rather soft and let things get out of hand, but the new one’s really cracked down the last few years.”

We picked our way along the docks to shore, where we were stopped by black-robed officials before we could enter the gates.

“Governor’s orders,” said one crisply. “Xantium is finally being run efficiently. He’s the last Christian governor as one heads east, so all pilgrims have to sign in here. Then if you’re not back in a few months, we can send word to your relatives in the west. Be sure to remember to sign back in when you return from the Holy Land.”

I remembered that the governor’s office had given Sir Hugo’s wife the news that he and his party had never returned to Xantium. The book we had to sign asked for a relative or friend and then for a second person to notify in case the first could not be reached.

We all put Yurt’s queen in the first column, then I wrote down the wizard’s school, Joachim his bishop, Hugo his mother, Ascelin the duchess, and King Haimeric and Dominic the king of Caelrhon, the kingdom that bordered Yurt. The king wanted to put King Warin, but the rest of us wouldn’t let him.

I wondered briefly if Sir Hugo and his party-or at least Evrard-had put down the royal court of Yurt as the party to be notified if the governor’s office could not reach Sir Hugo’s wife.

We continued through the city gates and into the narrow streets beyond. The buildings leaned so closely over the streets that these were very dim. The ground floors were jammed with shops and businesses, and loud voices greeted us on every side, offering us accommodations, young girls fresh from the country, hot baths, exquisite jewels, spicy dishes, purple silks, fine weapons, and maps of the city. King Haimeric ignored them all, walking with Ascelin beside him, following the directions the captain had scrawled on a piece of paper.

In a few minutes we emerged from the noisiest streets into what appeared to be a residential area. Dark- haired children who had been playing in the gutters raced up to beg for pennies. Halfway down a dead-end street a silver-plated bush protruding from a house-front marked the inn to which the captain had directed us.

“Do you think we dare stay here, Haimeric?” asked Ascelin in a low voice. “If anyone followed us through the eastern kingdoms, it would have been easy enough for them to find out which ship we’d taken, and they’d quickly discover the inn the ship’s captain recommended. And thanks to an officious governor we’ve told anyone in Xantium with enough money to bribe his clerks that a party from Yurt has arrived.”

Ascelin had already been worried about our safety back when we visited Joachim’s brother. Arnulf’s manor house, surrounded by rich green, seemed as alien from Xantium as though it had been on the moon. In retrospect, I thought, it must seem safe and secure to him.

“We’ll only be here a few days,” said King Haimeric. “And I doubt this enemy you imagine is anywhere near as good at tracking as you are.”

“I just hope they aren’t still planning to kill the chaplain,” said Ascelin darkly as we turned through an elaborate doorway into the inn’s flowering courtyard.

But we stayed at the inn for only half an hour. Once we had booked our rooms and stabled our horses, we started out again toward the church of the Wisdom of Solomon.

“It’s Xantium’s most famous sight,” said Joachim, “even if we didn’t need to give thanks to God for our safe sea voyage.”

“Solomon’s the only man, I think,” said Ascelin thoughtfully, “ever to combine the functions of priest, of king, and of magic-worker.”

“According to Arnulf’s books,” put in Hugo, “the last of the caliphs, the one who renounced Solomon’s Pearl, was both a mage and a secular leader, though I guess he wasn’t a priest.”

“This church,” said Joachim, “is dedicated to Solomon’s Holy Wisdom.”

The innkeeper had given us a map over which the chaplain and Ascelin bent their heads to find the best route. Without a map we would have been hopelessly lost in under ten minutes. The maze of streets was jammed with people who all, unlike us, seemed to know exactly where they were going. We spotted a few who also appeared to be pilgrims, but most were very different from anyone ever seen in the west. Dark-skinned men in striped robes and headdresses; women so heavily veiled that only their eyes were visible; men at whom Dominic frowned, whose cheeks were rouged and eyes outlined in black; long-legged warriors, some nearly as tall as Ascelin, wearing turbans and wide, curved swords; half-naked children; black-robed clerks talking seriously to each other; sumptuously dressed dandies who moved in the center of a group of bodyguards; and grumpy-looking women, dressed drably and carrying net bags full of vegetables, all jostled together in the streets.

Once or twice I thought I thought I saw someone following us, but it was impossible to keep track of anyone behind us in such a crowd, even with magic.

“I’d looked forward to seeing the East,” I said to the chaplain, “but it’s even more, well, different from Yurt than I’d expected.”

“That’s why one travels,” he commented. “At home, you’re always looking in a mirror. Everything you see becomes so familiar it is almost an extension of the self. Elsewhere, you see everything except yourself.” He paused, then added thoughtfully, “I think we need them both: the contemplation of our inner souls, and the jostling out of ourselves, the reminder that we are not the entire world and shall meet even God face to face.”

Most of the house fronts along the streets were blank, but whenever we passed one whose gate was open we caught a glimpse of a passage leading to a cool-looking courtyard, bright with flowers and often with a fountain.

It was hot and steamy even if the mid-afternoon sun was blocked before it reached our level. For the two weeks we had coasted along the north edge of the Central Sea, the sea breezes had kept us cool, but it was now indubitably high summer, and a much hotter summer than anything known in Yurt.

We moved with Joachim and the king in the center of a square formed by the rest of us, even if it meant that we sometimes jostled the people we met against the housefronts. Ascelin was as alert as I, and Hugo seemed wound up almost to the breaking point. When the chaplain stopped abruptly, we all stopped.

We had come around a corner, and one side of this street was lined not with buildings but with a fence, and a shadowy courtyard lay beyond. A bell, with the same tone as the chapel’s bell in the royal castle of home, began to sound. Its note was sweet and restful, as though the noises of the street were a thousand miles rather than just a few feet away.

Looking through the fence, we saw a group of men in dark vestments walk through the courtyard in procession, carrying candles and singing. Their expressions were rapt, and anything on our side of the fence might as well have not existed. For a moment I thought they were priests, but the shaved crowns of their heads made them unlike any priests I knew. They disappeared through an archway on the far side of the courtyard, and the bell’s ringing came to an end.

Joachim turned and started walking again. “Monks,” he said to me. “We don’t have them in the west, and I’d never seen them before. They’re somewhat like hermits, except that they live together, under the fatherly direction

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