His foot dislodged a rock, which clattered noisily as it rolled, and the Binder whirled in his direction. So as to not spook her further, he raised an arm and called out a greeting. He slid down from the rocky sill and strode toward her, making no pretense at having been spying on her. “Ho, Cnan. I see you have been curious about the spire as well.”
Her face was guarded, and she was clearly wrestling with deciding how to reply, if at all.
Raphael beamed, opting to appear as nonthreatening as possible. “Do you know who Herodotus was? He was a Greek scholar, and he wrote this wonderful book called The Histories. He attempted to collate the stories of the known world into a comprehensive narrative-it is very impressive.” He knew he was babbling, but he wanted her to be at ease. “He wrote of a people known as the Arimaspoi. They had one eye in the center of their foreheads. Very warlike.”
“I am not familiar with them,” Cnan said slowly, peering at Raphael with thinly veiled unease.
“Their mortal enemies were gryphons. Do you know what a gryphon is?”
Cnan shook her head.
“It is an enormous bird that has the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. Many cultures regarded it as a sacred creature, a symbol of the divine power of their gods. To adapt the gryphon as your symbol was to harness the magic of the gods, and I imagine the Arimaspoi hunted them, for their feathers among other things.”
“I have seen no feathers,” Cnan said, shifting from one leg to the other.
“Nor have I,” said Raphael sadly “Can I ask what it is you are looking for?”
His question caught Cnan off guard, and she blinked owlishly. She sighed heavily when he said nothing more, waiting for her to offer some explanation. Beckoning him to follow her, she started walking east.
Raphael followed, wisely keeping his mouth shut.
After a few minutes of walking, Cnan spotted something that was indiscernible to Raphael. She led him up to a crack in the rock face that stretched far above their heads, and Raphael was surprised to realize the crack was both wider and deeper than he had first thought. One slab of the rock overlapped the other, hiding the true depth of the crevice from casual examination. Cnan squeezed through the narrow gap, and Raphael stopped, eyeing the tight space with some trepidation. He might fit, but he wasn’t so sure he wanted to find out. Especially if he managed to force himself through and then couldn’t get back.
“I’ll be right back,” Cnan said, and before he could argue otherwise-and what would be the point of telling her to stop, really? — she slid farther into the crack and turned a corner he hadn’t realized was there. He stood beside the crack, somewhat at a loss as to what he should be doing while he waited, and just as he was starting to think he could squeeze through the gap, Cnan returned.
She slipped back out of the crack and showed him a strip of braided horsehair. It had been tied in an intricate series of double and triple knots, and he knew there was some purpose to the order of them, but he couldn’t discern it. “You found something from your kin-sisters,” he said.
“Aye,” Cnan said. “A weather report.” She tucked the horsehair braid into her a pocket of her jacket.
“Is that all?” Raphael asked.
“No,” she said tersely, but after staring at him for a moment, chewing her lower lip, she relented. “Some of us are firmly rooted in the soil of our birth. Others, like myself, travel endlessly. The ones who put down roots know everything there is to know about where they live. The wanderers know less about their destination, but they know how to get from one place to another. Spots like this one are where we leave messages for each other. Some of them”-she patted her pocket-“are as simple as notes about the weather, about local warlords and who is fighting whom in the region, or about the location of caches of food and money. Others are…”
Raphael looked at the crack once more, suddenly desirous to try to squeeze past the lip of stone. Maybe without my armor…
“Come,” Cnan said, grabbing his arm, not altogether gently. “Let us return to the camp.” She tugged him. “Even if you could squeeze through,” she said softly, “you would not be able to read any of the messages.” She pulled the horsehair braid from her pocket and waggled it in front of his face. “‘There is no snow in the gap,’” she quoted. “Can you decipher these knots?”
Raphael shook his head.
“Let it remain a mystery then,” she said. “Like your gryphons.”
After dinner, by the light of a roaring fire, Benjamin laid down a large piece of cowhide and unrolled his map of the trade routes. The company clustered around the worn palimpsest, trying to make sense of the marks and letters that had been written and rewritten over many years.
“This is the Yaik,” Benjamin explained, tracing a thin line that ran along one edge of the map. “This is Saray-Juk, not far from where we had planned to meet, but wisely, you bypassed that caravanserai and came here”-his finger traced to a small triangle-“instead.”
“The middle of nowhere,” Yasper quipped.
Benjamin smiled, and dropped his finger to the closest line on the map. “We are north of the Silk Roads, and as you can see, they tend to run much farther south. There are two, primarily. One runs north along the Tien Shan Mountains, through Urumqui and Turfan, and the other runs much farther south, beyond the Taklamakan Desert. Both take you to the heart of China, which is not where you want to go.” His finger had been moving across the map as he spoke, highlighting each of the places as he mentioned them, and when he finished, he moved his finger up into a large blank spot where, seemingly at random, he spotted and tapped the map. “Karakorum, the imperial palace of Ogedei Khan, Khagan of the Mongol Empire, is here.”
The members of the company examined the map for a few minutes, silently considering the information that Benjamin had given them.
Percival cleared his throat and leaned forward, his finger gliding across the map to a point that almost seemed to summon his finger, an X that was the result of two mountain ranges coming together. “What of this place?” he asked.
Benjamin glanced at Feronantus and Cnan briefly before he answered. “It is a pass called the Zuungar Gap,” he said.
“What do you know of this gap?” Feronantus asked.
“It’s a high pass,” Benjamin said. “A long and narrow course through the mountains. If there is, indeed, not much snow, it will be an easy route.” He traced a finger along the map. “You stay on the western side of the Tien Shan until here, cut over through the gap, and you will find yourself on the edge of a place known as the Gurbantunggut. As deserts go, it is not as bad as some, and travel across it will be fairly easy until you reach the Altai Mountains, which are not as imposing as the Tien Shan-the Celestial Mountains-but they have other dangers.” He paused to draw breath, and he glanced at Cnan, a flicker of a smile touching his lips. “Once you have crossed those mountains, you will be on the Mongolian Plateau. From there, it is only a week or so hard ride to Karakorum.”
“Is that all?” Yasper asked.
“It is a dangerous route,” Benjamin continued, “and one I would not attempt if I was not certain about the weather.”
Feronantus looked carefully at Raphael, Percival, and then Cnan, and then spoke for all of them. “I think we are,” he said.
Percival beamed, and Raphael wanted to run away from the firelight, out in the darkness around the rock, where he could berate God and no one would hear his blasphemy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE