Ulrika accepted the talisman—a leather thong at the end of which was suspended what looked like a raven's talon. She would place it in her medicine kit with other amulets and charms she had received from grateful patients. "You are very kind," she said. "But I need a place to stay tonight so if you could direct me—"
"Say no more! My house is the humblest in the village, as anyone will tell you, but it is yours, dear woman! I will run ahead now and tell my wife, may the gods bless her womb, that a most esteemed guest will be honoring us tonight! Anyone here will tell you where to find the house of Koozog. Just follow the path and when you come to the pen of spotted pigs, there you will find a welcome fit for a queen!"
Three more patrons approached Ulrika, requesting cures for: a boil, an abscessed tooth, hemorrhoids. The first two she lanced, and for the third she prescribed a concoction made from the hamamelis plant, found in abundance in this region. They paid her with: a copper coin, a hair from the head of the Prophet Zoroaster, and an earnest handshake.
Before others could run home and bring family members with various ailments, Ulrika declared that she was weary and must rest, but that she would return in the morning.
She was thinking about what the pig farmer had just said: a man whom they called Magus, and who lived in the City of Ghosts, which lay along the very route she and her mother had taken years ago! Ulrika planned to be there in a few days. Was it possible the prince of her memory—the man seated on a magnificent throne—was this Magus?
Encouraged by the new information, and feeling more hopeful than she had in weeks, Ulrika pulled her hood over her head and left.
Outside, she felt cold, biting night air. Flickering torches illuminated the small enclosure of tavern, stables, animal yard, and collection of tents where travelers snored through the night.
The Magus, Ulrika thought in rising excitement. Of royal blood and the last of his kind ...
Was this what they called fate? Was this was why she had been diverted along her path earlier that day, when she had set out for a small town named Tirgiz and instead had had to take a steep mountain track due to a fallen tree across the road?
Over a year ago, Ulrika had left Babylon on a cargo ship laden with wool and grain. At the vast gulf where the Euphrates emptied, Ulrika had said good-bye to the kindly captain and had found passage with a caravan heading southeast, carrying dates and figs to be traded for mined metals and gems. The caravan had followed an ancient royal road built hundreds of years before by Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, with the flatland rising gradually from the coast into gently rolling hills, which in turn had lifted the travelers up into the steep slopes of the Zagros Mountains. At a crossroads near a place called Al Haza, Ulrika had left the caravan to wait for another group of travelers to pass by—in this case, monks headed for a monastery high in the snowy mountain peaks. They had taken her with them on the condition that she not speak to them or sit with them at meals. Ulrika had been glad to isolate herself from them, riding a donkey and sleeping under the stars. Village after village, farm after farm went by until she said goodbye to the monks and next joined a large boisterous family on its way to a wedding.
Ulrika had said farewell to them at their destination and had set off on the next leg of her journey, which would take her within miles of where she and her mother had lived eighteen years ago and where Ulrika had been born, only to find the road blocked by a fallen tree. There had been but one way around it, a steep mountain track, with the detour bringing her to this forest settlement, which she had not planned to visit, but where she had learned of a prince who was the last of his line!
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
WHY 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.