“Thanks,” Matt said to Marudin, his voice shaky.
“My pleasure.” The djinni prodded the nearest Mongol with his toe. “What offal are these, to fall upon innocent travelers so!”
“Bandits, I expect. Odd, when this land is supposed to be peaceful and prosperous.” Matt looked down at the horsemen, then noticed they were all dressed in the same colors. “Your Highness—I think these were soldiers.”
Marudin stared, then gave a judicious nod. “They have that look. But why soldiers without a battle?”
“A patrol,” Matt said, “to bring in anybody who looks like a threat. They must have seen us coming in for a landing.”
Marudin frowned, looking about him. “I see no one who might have witnessed this struggle.” He turned back, waving a hand over the Mongols. Coruscating lights seemed to run over their bodies; their forms glimmered and faded away.
Matt stared. “What did you do with them?”
“Sent them to the nearest battle-line, where a few more dead will not be noticed,” Marudin said. “These barbarians seem always to have some strife going on somewhere—in this case, far to the east.”
“The east? What, are they attacking China, too?”
“It would seem so,” Marudin said grimly. “Is there no end to their greed?”
“I think not,” Matt said slowly, “and if they’re foolish enough to fight a war on two fronts, they deserve what they get.” He pursed his lips, thinking. “As you said, probably nobody saw us—but it won’t pay us to hang around, either. I still want to take a look at that city.”
“I, too,” Marudin said.
“Indeed,” Lakshmi agreed. “Perhaps we will learn why there were Mongol soldiers riding through Prester John’s kingdom!”
They found out even before they entered the city gates, for the soldiers who guarded them were Mongols, watching every traveler with vigilance and suspicion. Matt felt his skin prickle as he went between them, feeling as though they could see the wand beneath his cloak—he’d had the forethought to hide his sword a hundred yards back down the road, as soon as he’d seen the Mongol guards. Lakshmi wore another yellow robe and carried a calico cat—no longer just black and white, but with yellow splotches here and there, especially in a ragged band across her shoulders and back.
As they came through the gate, Matt breathed a sigh of relief. “I think that tells us why there was a Mongol patrol on the road.”
“On the road, and in this city.” Lakshmi nodded her head at a troop of stocky, bandy-legged men riding by on shaggy ponies. “The folk of the town have a different look entirely.”
“Yes, they do.” Matt looked about him thoughtfully, studying the civilians. Their skin tone was tan, almost golden, and there was only a hint of a tilt to their eyes. They had heart-shaped faces where the Mongols’ were round, and their lips were thicker. Both had high cheekbones, but Mongols had black eyes where some of the citizens had brown, sometimes flecked with gold, and larger than those of the soldiers. Some of the local men wore beards, though most were clean shaven. Dark brown hair was the rule, but here and there he saw light brown and even dark red. He knew that if the Mongols had let their hair grow, it would have been black.
There was something about the look of the locals that tickled Matt’s memory. He tried to place the odd feeling of familiarity but had to give it up. He could only note that their physical blending of East, West, and South made them a very attractive people.
So were the buildings they had made. Matt lifted his gaze to the architecture. It was even more wonderful than that of Samarkand. The buildings were taller, with many windows, shutters open now, roofs tiled to channel rain and pitched to shed snow. They were every color of the rainbow, mostly pastels but some in full, rich hues. Most of the color seemed to be worked into the plaster that covered them, but many were tiled in geometric patterns. Some were even decorated with mosaics of tall, peaceful-looking people with halos, magnificent bulls and slender deer, white tigers and black panthers, graceful cranes and fish whose scales fairly glowed in the sunlight. The streets were broad and paved with cobblestones, baked with an ochre glaze that made them appear golden.
If there had been a battle, it left no sign.
He could make out one minaret and the dome of a mosque, and five steeples.
“Why do we linger?” Lakshmi said impatiently. “Either the Mongols have conquered, and your Prester John is dead or fled—or the barbarians are his hirelings, and he awaits us in the palace.”
Matt felt a chill. “How can he be waiting for us? He doesn’t even know we’re coming.”
“I had not meant it in that fashion,” she snapped.
“No, but it’s a point well-taken anyway,” Matt said. “We’re not the only ones who know magic. Let’s go cautiously, friends.”
“Well enough, but let us go indeed!”
“That big building must be the palace.” Matt nodded toward a distant edifice that towered over the tile roofs of lesser buildings. It glowed royal-blue in the afternoon sun with the gloss of tiles, thousands of tiles. At a rough guess, taking distance into account, it was two hundred feet wide and fifty high. Scores of windows reflected light, which meant they were filled with actual glass, not just parchment or horn.
“Wants plenty of room for guests, I suppose,” Matt said. “Let us hope that we shall not be among them,” Lakshmi said darkly.
The street they were on curved, and after thirty yards or so Matt realized that it was—an arc, probably a piece of a circle. He kept going until he found a broad avenue that intersected it at an angle close enough to ninety degrees so that he could look down it and see all the way to the palace itself. Other streets intersected it, and as they walked down the avenue, they could see that the side streets also curved. “I think the city is laid out as a series of rings,” Matt said, “and each avenue is a radius from the center to the rim.”
“But the rim is the wall,” Marudin asked, “and the palace is the center?”
“That’s my guess.”
“We could have known,” Lakshmi huffed, “if we had flown over it.”
“Yeah, but we’re supposed to be incognito,” Matt said. “Can’t surprise them much if we make that kind of an appearance, can we?”
“Why not?” she said archly. “I doubt not that they already know we are here.”
“Hope not.” Matt looked around the pavement. “Anyone seen Balkis?”
“Aye, at the last comer,” Marudin said, “but she was gone at the comer before that. She comes and goes.”
“She explores, as any good cat would,” Lakshmi said, “and there cannot be too much danger here, or she would stay close by us.”
“Yeah, but what’s dangerous for us and what’s dangerous for a cat are two different things.” However, Matt remembered how Balkis had rid herself of the last importunate tom and didn’t worry too much.
Finally they came to the palace—or rather to the immense circular plaza that surrounded it. They stood at the southwest comer, so Matt could see that the building was half as deep as it was long, and set on a small hill, with a broad staircase leading up to it. He hoped he wouldn’t have to climb up there very often—there were a hundred steps at least. As he watched, though, he saw horsemen riding down a ramp from the back, and decided to try the servants’ entrance if he needed to get in.