This was no accident, she decided. The Magus had to be the prince of her long-ago memory.
Ulrika took it as a good sign—confirmation that she was on the right road and going where she was meant to go.
Because it was imperative she find the Crystal Pools of Shalamandar.
Although Miriam's suggestion that she fast before meditating had helped Ulrika to command visions at will, she still could not hold a vision long enough to interpret its meaning—the beautiful young woman who had haunted an unaware ship's captain, the shining light that accompanied the monks who did not see it, the woman with a baby, following the wedding party.
What was she supposed to do with such visions?
She looked up at the late-summer moon, full and effulgent, sailing against the black night. Was Sebastianus at that moment looking at the same moon? Had he reached China even? He had estimated it would take him three years to arrive at the capital city of the East. If so, would he, in a year's time, be starting back on his return trip to Rome?
I will be in Babylon to meet you, she thought in excitement.
Ulrika shivered as she peered into the darkness in the direction of Koozog's pig farm. Drawing her cloak more snugly about herself, she did not hear the sudden footfall approach from behind, did not see the large hand come up before her face to clamp down over her nose and mouth. A strong arm went around her waist, pinning her arms. Ulrika tried to cry out but could not. When her feet left the ground she kicked and struggled.
She could not breathe. Her lungs fought for air but the hand was clasped too tightly over her nose and mouth.
In horror Ulrika saw darkness roll toward her until it swallowed her up and dropped her into oblivion.
22
W
HY WAS THE RIDE so rough? Could the driver not have found a smoother road? And when would they reach Babylon? The trip was becoming more and more uncomfortable. Her wrists hurt. Why would her wrists hurt?
Ulrika opened her eyes. She blinked. It was night and she didn't seem to be in a wagon at all but looking down at the ground. And it was passing beneath her.
When she realized that her hands were tied behind her back and that she was being carried on someone's shoulder, like a sack of grain, she tried to cry out, only to discover that a cloth had been tied over her mouth.
She struggled against her abductor's hold. His grip tightened. She tried to kick. He pinned her legs down. She writhed against her bonds. Another arm went over her thighs, holding her fast. But Ulrika fought, twisting this way and that, jerking her body so that her kidnapper lost his footing.
"Enough!" she heard a voice snap in Farsi. "Be still!" he then hissed in Greek.
It only made her struggle all the more until her kidnapper came to a halt and dumped her unceremoniously to the ground. Realizing that her feet were not bound, Ulrika scrambled backward over the leaf-strew forest floor, her eyes on a tall, forbidding mountain man garbed in furs. He seemed disinterested in her attempt to escape, but merely turned his back as he lowered travel packs, and Ulrika's medicine box, to the ground.
She did not get far. Her feet became entangled in her long cloak. And when her head and shoulders came against something hard, Ulrika looked up and saw in the moonlight a massive pine tree towering over her. She looked frantically to her left and right, but all was dense woodland.
As she wriggled against her bonds, she kept an eye on her abductor. He was using a long stick to dig a hole.
Her grave!
Fresh fear and determination empowered Ulrika so that she was able to push the gag from her mouth, the cloth slipping down to her chin. "Who are you?" she cried. "Why have you kidnapped me?"
In an instant he was at her side, knife unsheathed, the blade pressed to her throat. "I told you to be still," he growled. "Do you understand me?" he said in Greek.
She nodded mutely.
"Not another word," he said, "or I will silence you myself."
She watched in terror as he returned to his task, digging a hole that was wide and deep enough to hold a body, and then he sat down and proceeded to sharpen tree branches into lethal points.
Trembling beneath her cloak, Ulrika tried to twist her hands free of their bonds. She kept her eyes on the stranger, taking the measure of him in the moonlight that filtered through the canopy of leafy treetops. From his voice she judged he was young. His hair looked black. He was tall and slender, and deceptively strong. He wore a fur tunic and leather leggings. His arms were bare, despite the night coldness in the mountains, so that Ulrika saw sculpted muscles and pale skin smudged with dirt.
In as calm a tone as she could manage, she said, "What is your name?"
He didn't look up from his labor. "You do not want to know my name, and I do not want to know yours. For the last time, be silent."
She bit her lip and, watching him as he sharpened sticks, kept silent.
He sat cross-legged on the ground facing her, his head bent over his task, to look up every now and then to listen to the forest, which was alive with nocturnal sounds. He never looked at Ulrika, never spoke until finally he stood up and climbed into the freshly dug hole where, as far as Ulrika could discern in the light from the moon, he planted the sharp stakes into the ground. When he was finished and all stakes were in place, he climbed out and covered the pit with loose grass and shrubbery.
Ulrika realized he had set a trap.
As he came up to her and reached for her mouth gag, Ulrika shook her head. He studied her for a moment—in the moonlight Ulrika saw black eyes framed by black lashes and brows—then he murmured, "As long as you keep quiet."
He lifted her to her feet. He did not remove her wrist bonds but gestured that she was to walk with him. Then he picked up the travel packs and medicine box and, without another word, resumed his trek through the night.
WHEN DAWN BROKE THROUGH THE TREES, and Ulrika thought she would drop from exhaustion, the stranger came to a halt. Gesturing to her to sit, he vanished through the trees and returned with a goatskin filled with fresh, crisp water. Holding it to her lips, he let Ulrika drink her fill, then he slaked his own thirst.
"Please," Ulrika whispered. "My arms hurt ..."
He paused, looked down at her. As sunlight crept across the forest floor, illuminating mossy trees and gnarled trunks, Ulrika got a better look at her captor.
He was slender and wiry, with lanky arms and legs—a young man in his twenties, she realized. His hair was ink-black and fell to his shoulders in curls. His eyes were dark, his nose long and thin, but his lips were voluptuous, almost feminine, and his jaw was smooth and beardless. He looked, in fact, surprisingly well groomed for a wild mountain man. Stranger still was his unusually pale skin. Ulrika would have thought that a man so otherwise dark would be olive-complexioned, but he seemed to be in fact whiter than Ulrika herself, and she wondered from what strange race he had sprung.
Unsheathing his dagger, he reached behind her and cut the bonds. As Ulrika felt sensation, and then pain, return to her hands, she watched him cross to their travel packs and open one of his own. He returned and held out a small cloth bag. Ulrika saw that it contained nuts and dried berries and she discovered that she was ravenous.
"I cannot build a fire," he murmured apologetically as he walked away, and Ulrika had the odd sense that he was not addressing her.
And then he did a curious thing. While Ulrika watched, and the woodland came alive with birdsong and the whisper of a morning breeze, the mountain man gathered twigs and leaves and created kindling for a good campfire. He even brought out a flint and held it over the small mound, but did not strike a spark. He chanted as he did so, a prayer in a dialect Ulrika could not identify. And when he was done, he reached for the corded belt at his waist and removed an object that hung there.
As he placed the object next to the unlit fire, Ulrika saw that it was cornet-shaped and the color of old ivory, perhaps half a cubit long, and straight. An animal horn of some kind, she thought, with a gold seal at the wider e
nd, as if something were contained within.
"Please tell me where you are taking me."
He ignored her as he busied himself with a long rope, which he threw over a tree branch, anchoring one end to the trunk and laying the other on the ground in a knotted coil. Ulrika realized he was creating another trap, and while he worked, once again kept lifting his head to listen, his body tense and alert.
"You would travel much faster without me," Ulrika said, guessing that he was evading someone who was in pursuit.
He said nothing as he covered the coiled rope with leaves and grass, and slowly bent the tree branch, tying it down with a string, creating a trigger that, Ulrika guessed, when touched, would spring the rope into the air.
"Leave me here," Ulrika said. "I am no use to you—"
Snap!
He spun around.
Snap!
Ulrika shot to her feet.
They listened. Heard footfall. Someone was coming.
"We must go!" he said, sheathing his dagger and scooping up their travel packs. "Quickly!"
Ulrika gathered up the bag of nuts, and then she retrieved the water-skin. As she reached for her medicine box, which the stranger had dropped near the mound of kindling, Ulrika picked up the ivory horn he had laid there and—
Her mind exploded with a vision of such brilliance and passion that she staggered back. A massive bonfire. Sparks rising to the night sky. People dancing in a frenzy, shouting, beating drums. It filled her head. It made the earth spin beneath her. Fear, anger, hope, desire. Tears drenched her. Laughter lifted her up. She was swept up into the sky, and dropped to the earth.
Ulrika felt a tug on her hand. The vision vanished. She blinked. The stranger was glaring at her. "You do not touch this!" he growled. She saw that he had snatched the horn from her.
"I'm sorry. I meant no disrespect."
He hastily reattached the ivory horn to his belt. "This is sacred. Not for unbelievers. We must go now."
He sprinted ahead of her, and Ulrika kept up with him as they heard heavy footfall behind.
They had gone only a short distance into the forest when they heard a sudden cry. Ulrika and her abductor paused briefly to look back and to listen to angry shouts and sounds of frantic chopping.
The trap had worked.
"WAIT," ULRIKA GASPED AS she stumbled over the ground. "I cannot go any farther. I must rest."
The stranger turned and grabbed her wrist, to pull her along as she staggered and protested. The sun was high now, they had stayed on the move all morning. It had been hours since they had heard their pursuers.
"Please," Ulrika said, when suddenly he came to a halt and Ulrika ran into him, nearly causing them both to fall.
"We are here," he said, and dashed ahead.
Ulrika looked around and saw only oaks and pines forming a dense forest, and dappled sunlight. She watched in amazement as her abductor disappeared into a thicket, to reappear a moment later, gesturing impatiently for her to join him.
As she neared the brush that looked too tangled for anyone to cut through, Ulrika saw an opening. She entered and found herself inside a small hut, cleverly hidden and disguised in the middle of the woods. To Ulrika's surprise, the hut had a comfortable feel to it, despite being a temporary shelter, with rugs on the floor and brass lamps suspended from the grass ceiling, little golden flames flickering to create an intimate atmosphere.
In the center of the floor, lying on a bed of animal skins, a young girl lay feverish and sleeping.
All thoughts of fatigue and hunger left Ulrika as she ran to the girl's side, dropped to her knees and immediately felt the burning forehead.
"How is she?" the mountain man asked as he knelt at Ulrika's side. "I left her a day and a half ago. I had no choice."
Ulrika lifted eyelids to look at dilated pupils. She detected a rapid pulse. The girl's breathing was shallow. "She is very sick."
"I did not want to leave her," he said. Lifting the blanket made of soft deer skin, he exposed a nasty wound. "She fell and injured herself. I tried my best to fix it, but infection set in. I knew that the only way to save her was to find help." He looked at Ulrika. "I saw you in the village. I saw how you treated a man's injury. And I recognize these symbols." He pointed to her medicine box with the Egyptian hieroglyphics and Babylonian cuneiform painted on the sides.
"Do not let her die, do you understand? You cannot let her die."
Ulrika was momentarily arrested by black eyes that seemed deeper than night, and filled with unspoken emotion. It struck her that her young kidnapper was desperate, on the run, frightened, and angry, and perhaps not as dangerous as she had initially thought.
He was also, she realized, quite handsome, and it crossed her mind that, should he ever smile, his sensuous lips would be most attractive.
Ulrika reached for her medicine kit. "I will administer Hecate's cure. It is made from willow bark, which is inhabited by a very powerful spirit."
"Are you a physician?"
"No. My mother is a healer. She taught me."
"You do not live here in Persia. This is not your home."
She kept her eyes on her own hands as she busily dispensed powder into a cup, and mixed water into it. Her abductor sat uncomfortably close. She could smell his sweat, and the wild scent of animal skins, pine, and loamy earth. "I have come to find someone," she said.
She did not look at him, but sensed his question.
"I am seeking answers to a personal question," Ulrika said as she stirred the powder until it dissolved. "And I believe there is a man, called the Magus, who can help me."
When he said nothing, Ulrika asked, "Is this girl your sister or perhaps your niece?" The girl's coloring was the same as his—an unusually white complexion framed by raven-black hair. But they were not father and daughter. The girl would be around thirteen and the young man appeared to be just a little older than Ulrika herself.
"She is from another tribe," he said, and Ulrika thought: But sharing the same Persian-Greek ancestry I would wager.
He suddenly turned toward the opening of the thicket-hut. "I will stand watch," he murmured. Removing the ivory horn from his belt, he laid it on the girl's chest and said, "The god of my people is Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord of the sky, and this is sacred ash from his first Fire Temple. It is white and clean, and protects from evil." He stood, his midnight hair brushing the tangled weeds that made the ceiling. "Her name is Veeda," he said, and then he was gone.
BY THE TIME THE STRANGER RETURNED, Ulrika had been able to encourage the girl to take a few sips of Hecate's Cure. The medicine was famous for reducing fever, taking away pain, and conquering the evil spirits of infection. Then she had tended the wound on the girl's leg, cleaning it, washing away the dead flesh to apply fresh salves and bandages. Ulrika did not fully understand how healing worked—the greatest Greek physicians in the world could not entirely explain how a cure worked—but Ulrika had used a method so ancient and proven that, once she was done, she felt confident the girl would soon begin to recover.
"How is she?" the stranger asked, coming to Veeda's side.
"You brought me to her in time."
He nodded. "I have been praying."
Ulrika had left the ivory horn in place on the girl's chest, wondering about the ash he had said it contained. She thought of the mound of kindling he had built but had not lit, and how he had apologized for not making a fire. "I cannot light a fire," he said softly now, and once again the words did not seem directed at Ulrika. She wondered who he was speaking to. "It would draw our pursuers to us. I have to keep moving. I must survive in order for this girl to survive." He kept his eyes on Veeda's face as he said this, and once again Ulrika wondered about their relationship.
Veeda was from another tribe, he had said. Was she his bride?
"I will find food," he said abruptly. "You must rest now. There," he added, pointing to folded rugs against the grassy wall. "You can make a bed. I will let you sleep. Do not fear. I have set trap
s, and I will be on the lookout."
As he once again left the hut, and Ulrika suddenly found the prospect of sleep very inviting, it occurred to her that her abductor had not himself slept in a long time.
He had sacrificed his own comfort and well-being to save this girl, she thought. He had risked getting caught by men who pursued him—and for whom he set deadly traps—in order to find medical help. Who was Veeda to him, and why was her survival so important?
23
U
LRIKA DREAMED OF SEBASTIANUS.
He stood on a vast, windswept landscape with a boiling ocean on one side, violent crags and tors on the other. He appeared to be building an altar of shells and fire. He wore only a loincloth, his tight muscles gleaming in the sun. Ulrika tried to call to him, but as she drew near, Sebastianus began to climb the altar, which had become a golden tower rising in tiers shot with blinding sunlight. He was trying to reach the stars, she knew, for he was seeking answers that could be found only in the celestial bodies of the cosmos.
But Ulrika saw that the top of the tower was a raging bonfire—a dreadful conflagration that she knew would devour him once he reached it. She called out, frantic, desperate to stop him.
You cannot save him, a voice whispered all around her, on the wind, in the clouds. A woman's voice. Gaia ...
Ulrika snapped her eyes open. Her heart galloped, and a fine sweat covered her body. In the dim light of the camouflaged hut, she saw that the girl continued to sleep beneath soft deerskin blankets. Ulrika tuned her ears to the forest outside and heard heavy footsteps going to and fro. Her kidnapper, pacing.
She thought of the dream she had just had. During her lonely days of journeying into Persia, Ulrika had continued her nightly ritual of speaking to Sebastianus. Every night before falling asleep, she would tenderly take the scallop shell between her hands, holding it safe and loved, and whisper words of hope and devotion to Sebastianus, closing her eyes to mentally send her message across the miles and days in the hope that they would reach him. She did so now, sending out a prayer that her beloved was alive and well and reaching his goal.
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