The Blessing Stone

by Barbara Wood

  And during the whole time, while she watched and listened, she learned their foreign tongue, as she had once learned Latin and Arabic, for it could mean her survival and the survival of her unborn child.

  Finally, while the Kosh were wintering on a plateau among ancient crumbling walls built by a forgotten race, Katharina’s child was born, a pale-haired daughter that with one mewling cry chipped a fracture in the stone wall around Katharina’s heart. She named the girl Adriana, for her father, and as the days and weeks passed, as she fed the child at her breast and held it and crooned to it, Katharina experienced a melting of her sorrow and the beginning of an unexpected new joy. Adriano’s child, with hair like fleece. But the baby had been born underweight and was struggling to thrive. Katharina’s milk dried up too soon and she had to fight once again for food.

  When the chief and head woman came to inspect, they saw the infant’s golden hair and nodded in satisfaction, and once again Katharina heard them say the word, “Zhandu,” and she knew she and her child were being kept for something special.

  While traversing the Greater Headache Mountains, the Kosh camped in a high pass surrounded by tall snowbound peaks and one night heard a sound like thunder that alarmed Katharina but only excited her captors. At dawn they swarmed ahead on foot, clambering farther up the pass until they came to the place of the recent avalanche. They dug frantically into the snow, a massive undertaking calling upon the work of everyone, captives as well, until their efforts were rewarded. As the slavers gave out yelps of joy, they uncovered the bodies and cargo of the hapless caravan that had gotten caught under the avalanche. Katharina had at first thought they were looking for survivors, but when a victim still living was uncovered, he was clubbed to death, for the Kosh were interested only in booty. As she watched the obscene plunder and heard the muffled cries for help, her captors stripped the dead and the dying of their clothing and jewelry, and carried off much wealth that day, for it had been a caravan from China, bearing gold and silk. When the Kosh caravan resumed its journey it was to take an alternate route for the pass would not be clear until spring, when the snow melted and the bodies of men and beasts were washed away.

  Katharina saw wonderful and terrible sights during her sojourn with the Kosh, and she observed them all as two people: the Katharina who marveled at the world’s diversity, and the Katharina who clasped Adriano’s baby to her bosom and silently wept.

  She tried to escape only once. At a crossroads, they had passed a vast encampment where hundreds of horses, camels, and pack ponies were being watered, and the smoke from a thousand fires rose warmly to the sky. When the red-haired slavers camped farther up the river, perhaps ten miles from the crossroads, Katharina waited until the encampment was silent and sleeping before she stole from the captives’ tent, untethered a horse and, with Adriana strapped securely to her chest, rode off.

  She was caught a few yards beyond the perimeter, dragged back and soundly beaten in front of the gathered company. After that, whenever the caravan came within any distance of other travelers or settlements, someone took Adriana from Katharina and kept the baby until they were on their way again. This ensured that she would try no more escapes.

  They crossed the red-gold shifting dunes of the cursed Takli Makan, where mirages and eerie sounds lured unwary travelers to their deaths. Here the sands drifted so swiftly and unpredictably that the trail was quickly lost, therefore when men passed this way they erected towers made of animal bones to mark the way for others. When the Kosh built these desert towers, they were made of human bones. The caravan wound through misty river gorges and across breezy high pasture lands. In the heat of summer they traveled only at night; in winter they fought snows and glaciers.

  It took another two years for the Kosh to reach their destination high in the mountains in a remote spot far from the Silk Road where sentinels stood watch in strange stone towers. And when they came at last to the terminus of their route, at the base of a mysterious cloud-covered plateau where they said no stranger could go, Katharina had been with the slavers for nearly four years. Her hair had grown long down her back again and she was twenty-three years old. Adriana, her daughter, was three.

  The way to Zhandu was a steep and narrow mountain pass that grew ever steeper and narrower. The climb was single file along this precipice on either side of which rose enormous walls of mountain rock the color of iron. At the end of the perilous trail rose a towering wooden gate, many arm’s-lengths thick, topped with spikes and men with spears. There was no other way onto the plateau than through this gate, and only those with permission from the Heavenly Ruler may pass. In this fashion had Zhandu remained for centuries out of touch with the rest of the world.

  After being admitted through the wooden gates, the Kosh caravan continued on until it crossed the Celestial Bridge, a marble and granite feat of engineering set upon massive pylons through which a river raged, emerald-green and white with foam, swollen by the melting snow in the mountains. Here spread a plateau that gave one the feeling of being on top of the world—a vista filled with green trees and fertile fields. Katharina’s eyes widened in wonder at the acres of fruit and flowers and grasses, for she had seen nothing that came so close to looking like Eden. And in the center of this fabulous plateau rose a city of domes and spires and white walls that seemed to actually undulate in the blaze of the sun.

  The Kosh camped on the plateau in the shadow of Zhandu with its dazzling turquoise domes and crystal towers behind unassailable walls. Not just anyone was allowed entry; thousands camped on the plain and could only look in wonder at a city that was sometimes engulfed in low clouds so that it appeared to be floating.

  When a representative rode out from the city to meet with the Kosh chief, Katharina asked one of the women what the Kosh, and all the other traders camped on the plain, wanted from Zhandu? What made it worth their while to make such a long and dangerous trek to this place at the end of the world? The curt reply was that the Zhandu had more wealth than they knew what to do with. They paid whatever price was asked and never haggled. And then when Katharina saw yaks burdened with piles of wondrous white furs and was told that they were payment for her, she recalled how precious these furs, called ermines, were back in Constantinople and even in Europe, and was astounded that they should be handed over like common loaves of bread. What her captors had said was true. Clearly the Zhandu paid any price asked, no matter how exorbitant, and did not care if it was a fair price or not.

  Katharina was hoisted onto a mule, Adriana in her lap, and tethered to the double-humped camel of the representative, who rode in a curtained litter so that no one could see him. Accompanying them were a hundred guards in perfectly matched uniforms of blue pantaloons and scarlet vests and turbans of canary yellow. As the peculiar procession passed through the massive city gates, Katharina glanced back and saw that already the Kosh were pulling up stakes and preparing to leave, no doubt anxious to get back to civilization and turn a hundredfold profit on their furs.

  She and Adriana were not taken far into the city but almost immediately spirited off the mule by a team of servants dressed in blue and red and wearing peculiar slippers with toes that curled up. They were whisked into a door in a wall where they were turned over to a magnificently robed chamberlain who wordlessly hurried them down a long corridor, up three winding staircases, down more corridors, under arches and through doorways many times taller than a man, until they were unceremoniously and without a word deposited in a garden containing the most remarkable looking birds Katharina had ever seen: enormous bright pink creatures that stood on one leg.

  From out of nowhere a remarkable looking woman came floating in on a sea of silk. She had the round flat face and slanting almond eyes of the Kosh, and her smile was missing a tooth. Her hairdo astonished: the long red tresses were arranged as two enormous wheels, one on either side of her head, threaded with colored ribbons and ornaments of silver, gold, and pearl. The embroidery on her silk gown was impressive beyond belief, e
ven for Katharina who had seen exquisite needlework in the sultan’s palace. The turquoise and gold peacock on the woman’s gown looked as if it were going to suddenly spread its tail feathers and strut right off the fabric.

  She came in with a happy, hopeful expression, Katharina noted, but her smile fell as soon as she saw the captive. The woman frowned over Katharina’s long blond hair, then looked into her eyes. “Bah!” she said, and turned to walk out.

  “Please, Lady,” Katharina said quickly in the tongue of the Kosh.

  The woman turned, a look of surprise on her face. “You speak our language?” she said.

  “I have been with your people for four years,” Katharina said, surmising by the woman’s distinctive looks that she was Kosh. “Please, may my daughter and I go?”

  The woman looked at Katharina as if she were a simpleton, made another impatient gesture, and glided out on her cloud of silk.

  Turning to the chamberlain, a man wearing a long scarlet silk robe and small black silk hat, Katharina said, “I must leave. You cannot keep me here.”

  He gave her the same look the woman had, and said with indifference, “You can go. The Supreme Sister does not want you.” He also spoke Kosh, but a mutated version that took a moment for Katharina to understand.

  She blinked. “I can leave this place? I can leave Zhandu? My daughter and I? We are not prisoners?”

  “You must leave. We do not keep prisoners and we do not like guests.” He wrinkled his nose as if detecting an odor. “The guards will take you back to the gate.”

  “Now? But we have no money, no food.”

  “That is not our concern.”

  “Then why were we brought here?”

  He waved dismissively. “There was a mistake,” he said vaguely. “You will go now.”

  Katharina watched him leave, and tried to protest when men in colorful silk pantaloons and vests nudged her out of the garden. They were not menacing, as the guards and eunuchs of the sultan’s palace had been, but displayed the impatience of men anxious to get to their lunch. She tried to reason with them: “The people who brought me here, the Kosh, they were leaving. I shall never catch up with them. Where are my child and I supposed to go?”

  But they crowded her until she gathered Adriana into her arms and fled down a long corridor that seemed to lead only to more corridors. When she looked back, the guards had vanished.

  She looked around in perplexity. What were they supposed to do now? They couldn’t leave and they couldn’t stay!

  When Adriana said, “Mama,” and rested her head on Katharina’s shoulder, Katharina realized that the ordeal had fatigued her. Poor little Adriana, born underweight and now small for her age, the result of their harsh and deprived life among the Kosh. And as the Kosh hadn’t bothered to feed them that morning, most likely thinking it a waste of food since the pair were going to be sold to the Zhandu, Adriana was weaker still. Katharina decided that she must find a place to hide for the night and figure out what to do in the morning.

  After wandering more endless corridors, she discovered that the palace of Zhandu was like a beehive, with elegantly dressed courtiers coming and going, women as well, a stark contrast to the segregated court of Constantinople. They all had the Asian features and red hair of the Kosh, so that Katharina wondered if the two races had sprung from the same distant ancestors. The men wore outrageous hats the size of cart wheels, the brims edged with fur, the crowns tall and pointy. The women dressed their long hair in impossibly intricate styles, each more outlandish than the next, and everyone seemed to have a purpose as they bustled past with papers and books, musical instruments, and platters of food, none paying the slightest attention to the woman in rags holding a listless child.

  Trying to avoid guards or anyone who would drive them out of the city, Katharina hurried up and down corridors of polished marble until she came to what appeared to be a deserted wing. Here she found a doorway with cobwebs on its lintel and, thinking this an abandoned room and therefore a safe place to hide, she pushed against the door and slipped inside.

  Light poured through tall narrow windows, illuminating a round stone tower that was filled floor to ceiling with all manner of weaponry: swords and spears, axes and javelins, bows and arrows, and many styles of chain mail and armor. She had clearly stumbled into a weapons arsenal, but there was something strange—everything was thick with dust and festooned with cobwebs, as if they hadn’t been used in decades.

  Katharina stepped up to the window and looked out. From the base of the stone wall, a precipitous drop fell thousands of feet to a vast plain below, stretching away to the horizon. On either side, ragged mountains pierced the sky with perennially snowcapped peaks. Remembering what she had been told about the narrow pass being the only way to get to Zhandu, Katharina realized that no enemy could assail this mountaintop kingdom, and probably had not even tried in generations. So the citizens of this fabulous city hadn’t known invaders or warfare possibly in centuries.

  She found woolen cloaks stored in a chest, and antique leather helmets that, wrapped in the wool, could be used as pillows. Leaving Adriana safely in the room, admonishing her not to touch anything, Katharina stole back out and made her way to a corridor where she remembered seeing what appeared to be a shrine to a goddess. The statue in the niche was a willowy, doe-eyed woman with a compassionate smile; food and burning candles had been left at her feet. Noting a resemblance to the Blessed Virgin, Katharina whispered a prayer and took some of the food and one of the candles, knowing that the goddess would understand.

  She and Adriana feasted on figs and cakes and a small flagon of what tasted like tepid fruit juice, and after they had eaten, Katharina performed the nightly ritual she had begun almost the moment Adriana was born: she brought out the painting of St. Amelia, and the ceramic cameo of Badendorf, and told her daughter the story of her life. She talked about Hans Roth and Isabella Bauer and the other people of her town, and then she told Adriana about the family that waited for them wherever the blue crystal was to be found—a grandfather for Adriana, and possibly many cousins, because Isabella had mentioned the nobleman’s sons, who would have since married and had children of their own. “What is your name?” Katharina asked her daughter every night. And every night the child responded, “I am Adriana von Grünewald.”

  When she saw how her baby yawned, Katharina knew it was time for a story, to help the child sleep peacefully through the night because Adriana often woke from nightmares about the Kosh. “Once upon a time…” she began. Katharina had taught Adriana the language of their captors for it might one day mean survival, and so tonight, in Kosh, she told the story of Amelia and the blue crystal. But since Katharina had never heard of St. Amelia before the day her mother died, and did not know the saint’s true story, she made one up. “There was a good and kind lady named Amelia, who lived in the woods near Badendorf. Amelia was very poor, except for one precious treasure she owned: a perfect blue crystal that had been given to her by Jesus when he was walking in the woods one day and was hungry and she gave him bread and sausages to eat. Now, in the castle high up the mountain, there lived an evil king who wanted the blue crystal…”

  Unknown to the fugitives hiding in the abandoned weapons store, an old man in white slippers and long white robe was haunting the palace corridors and, when he heard a voice, drew near out of curiosity. Stopping to listen, he pressed his ear to the door. When, a few minutes later, he heard the words, “And so Amelia and the handsome prince lived happily ever after,” he pushed the door open and clapped his hands.

  Katharina looked up with a start.

  “Tell another story,” he said in the variation of Kosh peculiar to Zhandu, and then crossed his legs to sit on the floor.

  Katharina stared at the intruder. He was very old and his head was perfectly round, like an orange, and bald except for a fringe of white hair. His eyes were slanted like those of the Kosh, with a squinty quality that made him look like he was smiling, even though he was not.
Everything about him seemed round: rounded tummy beneath the white robe, rounded little end on his nose, matching rounded cheeks that lifted when he did smile, which seemed for no reason at all. Is he a simpleton? she wondered.

  “Another story,” he said again, this time a little crossly.

  Katharina looked at Adriana, who was staring at their peculiar guest. During her short life among the Kosh, she had learned to keep quiet around strangers and not draw attention to herself.

  Seeing that the peculiar little man would not leave until he had heard a story, Katharina decided on “Little Red Cap,” which was short, and hoped he would then go.

  But when she was done and the hunstman had killed the wolf, the old man clapped his hands and laughed with toothless gums, urging her to tell another. Katharina protested that her child was sleepy. He became cranky. When she said he was welcome to come back tomorrow, he began to shout and suddenly guards with spears materialized from out of nowhere.

  Katharina shot to her feet, Adriana in her arms, and backed away from the gold-tipped spears. While the old man carried on so incoherently that Katharina could not grasp what he was saying, another person suddenly appeared as if from thin air, making Katharina wonder if they had been searching for the old man.

  It was the woman from the garden, whom the chamberlain had called Supreme Sister, now draped in a silk robe embroidered with such dazzling flowers that Katharina thought they could attract bees. “Why are you still here and why are you distressing my brother?” the woman demanded.

  “We had no where to go—”

  She snapped orders to the guards, who took a step forward.

  “Please, Lady,” Katharina said. “Let us stay for just a little while. My child is not well.”

  “That is not my concern,” the woman barked.