The Divining (27 page)

     "All answers lie in Persia. Go in peace, daughter."

H
E STOOD BEHIND THE
cover of trees as he watched the tavern, the patrons coming and going with lanterns glowing against the forest night.

     He had followed her to this place, from the last village, tracking her along the mountain trail as cautiously as he would a deer. She had not known she was being followed—a young woman with fair hair and a confident stride. Her cloak covered her from head to foot, creating a tall, slim figure, with travel packs hung securely over her shoulders and on her back. She appeared to be strong, but as far as he could see, she carried no weapon. And she traveled alone, which was unusual, but which was going to make it easy for him to snatch her.

     As soon as she emerged from the tavern, one swift move and she was his.

     "I
BELIEVE
I
CAN
help you, sir," Ulrika said.

     "No one can help me!" the man cried. "A thousand devils plague my head! They spin the world about me in a fiendish game. I cannot sleep. I am at my sanity's end. I wish only for death!"

     "Good sir," Ulrika said calmly, in a soothing tone as the other patrons in the wooden shack, where travelers and local people gathered against the cold night, looked on in interest. "I have seen this disorder before, and I have skill in treating it. If you would but allow me to touch you."

     The poor man had been complaining loudly when she had entered the small establishment and had taken a stool by the fire. A paunchy Persian with a stringy beard and shadows under his eyes, he had lamented to his companions about the affliction that kept him from working his small farm, that made it almost impossible for him to walk even, until Ulrika had risen from her stool and approached him, offering to help.

     This was how she had journeyed for the past fourteen months—going from settlement to settlement, earning her keep with her healing skills, staying always on the move, never in one place for more than a day or a night, keeping to herself, not even telling people her name, her mind focused on but one goal—to find the prince who needed her help.

     When Miriam the rabbi's wife had told her there was a stranger in Persia whom she was to rescue, Ulrika had believed her. After all, Miriam enjoyed a reputation for being a prophetess. But also, Ulrika had been born in Persia. This journey to aid a prince was meant to be.

     But there was another reason Ulrika had decided to undertake the mission to find the prince. Long ago, when she and her mother had journeyed through this ancient land, when Ulrika was not more than three or four years old, they had encountered a very striking-looking man seated on a magnificent throne and dressed in splendid robes. A tall round hat crowned his head, beneath which thick curls cascaded to his shoulders. His beard was prodigious, covering his chest to his waist, and coiled in tight ringlets. He held a staff in one hand and, curiously, a flower in the other. In front of him, a golden censer burned incense.

     Ulrika could not recall how long she and her mother had visited the nobleman, if they had dined with him, or slept in his house. She did not
remember his name. But his appearance had struck her as so magnificent that she remembered him in detail. Was
he
the prince Miriam had spoken of? It seemed likely that this could be so. And perhaps he lived near the Crystal Pools of Shalamandar. Finding the man, Ulrika had decided, would surely be a simple task: all she needed to do was re-trace the route she and her mother had followed out of Persia eighteen years ago and she would cross his path.

     But the task had turned out to be not so simple after all. She had been following that route for over a year now, she was nearing the end, in fact, and was no closer to knowing the identity of that magnificent man, or where he could be found.

     Ulrika asked the farmer to lie down on a long table, while everyone gathered around and watched, men and women in woolen mountain garb, bearing the distinctive features of a race that had sprung from ancient Parthian blood mingled with that of invading Greeks. A handsome race, Ulrika thought.

     She paused to look at a niche in the far wall, where a solitary lamp flickered. She had seen many such niches since entering this mountain territory called the Place of Silent Pines. They were shrines to local deities called
daevi
, which meant "celestial" or "bright"—holy and beneficent divinities who had been worshipped in this region for thousands of years. Ulrika thought of the statues of gods and goddesses around Rome, and the massive Marduk effigies dominating the streets of Babylon. She thought of the oak trees in Germania, carved in the likeness of Odin, and Rachel's god near the sea of salt, who had no likeness at all. And now here in this remote mountain region, gods who were represented by solitary flames kept burning eternally.

     Deities, Ulrika realized, were as diverse and various as the people who worshipped them.

     Positioning herself at the head of the table, she said to the farmer, "Please look up at the ceiling." She spoke Greek, a language of these people—another legacy of Alexander's conquering ways.

     "It spins," the man moaned.

     "Just a moment more, please. Say a prayer, it will help."

     He did so, muttering his god's name three times in clusters of three, while he traced signs in the air three times each with one hand and clutched what appeared to be a rabbit's foot in the other. Ulrika had learned that although people's religions might vary around the world, and even be at odds, one human trait remained universal: superstition. Whether they were warriors in Germania, citizens in Rome, sailors in Antioch, tent dwellers in Judea, onion sellers in Babylon, or mountain folk in Persia, all believed in good luck and bad luck, and the many ways to invite the first and fend off the latter.

     Everyone in the tavern watched in silence as Ulrika placed her hands on either side of the man's head and then, gently, rolled his head from side to side, bringing his face to look upward again. "Quickly now," she said. "Sit up!"

     He sat bolt upright on the table with eyes wide, jaw slack. The onlookers held their breath in anticipation. And when he cried, "Breasts of Ishtar! The dizziness is gone!" they threw up their arms and cheered.

     Ulrika was secretly relieved, as some forms of dizziness could not be cured by this treatment. But this was a simple therapy for an affliction that sometimes drove men to suicide, and she was glad she could help.

     "Dear lady!" the Persian farmer cried, falling to his knees on the earthen floor. "I am forever in your debt! I had become so desperate I was going to search for the Magus and beg him to put me out of my misery."

     Ulrika helped the man to his feet. "The Magus?"

     The Persian blinked owlishly. "You do not know of the Magus? But everyone in this territory knows of him! He lives in the City of Ghosts, in a high tower, a man of royal blood who is the last of his kind. He is said to work healing miracles, if he can be found. Dear lady, how can I pay you for saving me from certain suicide?"

     Before Ulrika could reply—
a man of royal blood, the last of his kind
—the Persian shouted, "Wait wait!" Reaching around his neck, he pulled a cord over his head and held the offering to Ulrika. "This is a claw from a sacred gryphon, an ancient beast whose spirit will protect you from harm."

     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?