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blurred. He stumbled, stopped, uncomprehending. For a long minute the feeling persisted, intensifying, as if the world was dying, shuddering and twitching beneath his feet.
Then his vision cleared, the ground steadied, and the awfulness faded, leaving an ugly aftertaste. The chirping had stopped; there would be no bird chorus this dawn. Jik looked at the barbarian. The giant’s expression was reassuring—neither frightened nor worried, only intent. Then he said something in some strange language that might or might not have been Mongol, and they trotted on down the cart road into the woods.
On the plain that had once been a residential area of Beijing, the general sat upright on his bed. His bed-girl of the night had begun to scream, but that wasn’t what had wakened him. It seemed to him there was an earthquake, not massive, more a sort of trembling and twitching. Also something was wrong with his eyes, and he felt fear more powerful than he’d ever imagined.
The girl had stopped screaming and was crying loudly. He slapped her, and her wails softened to sobbing. Through his open window he heard shouts of fear, even terror.
With a curse he swung his legs from the bed, stood up and yelled for his valet. He’d have to go out there and enforce some discipline.
He still felt fear, ugly and black, but he wasn’t paying much attention to it just now. He had things to do.
A two-storied longhouse stood in a small forest clearing. Its roof beam curved up at the ends, and it was shingled with gray-weathered, hand-split wooden shakes. The walls were sawn planks of Korean pine, dressed smooth and stained dark. Around it were flowerbeds, shrubs and fruit trees, inobtrusive outbuildings, and great shading spruces dark in the dawnlight. A brook flowed past, splashing over stone dams small and mossy, built for aesthetics of sound and vision.
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In a small room, a man sat upright on a thick meditation mat, his bare legs folded beneath him in a lotus posture. He was on the far side of middle age, his hair dark stubble, his thin beard mostly white. In other rooms, other men also sat meditating. In one long room, more than a dozen novices sat in the lotus posture on a broad bench, facing a wall. Two adepts stood by with supple staffs to waken any who dozed.
All of them felt the malaise when it began. It was the old master, Jampa Lodro, who saw into it most deeply. This was no earthquake; it was something in the realm between the Tao and Maya. Something malevolent lay there, something of power and evil intent. Something interesting. He contemplated it.
Baver awoke in his cell, not remembering for the moment where he was or how he’d gotten there. His first thought was earthquake, and he feared the building would be shaken down on him. But it wasn’t that strong; not at all. What was strong, what was truly powerful, was the fear, then the despair. At the moment he had no doubt that he would never leave this place alive, quake or not.
THIRTY-EIGHT
From the moment of his abrupt wakening, Songtsan Gampo had known what the cause was. Tenzin had said the demon was inside the fabric of the Tao, a position of great potential power. Clearly it was learning to function sooner than they’d expected, and he had not yet established himself as its god.
He waited till the phenomenon had passed. Then, without closing his eyes, he focused his mind on Tenzin Geshe and began to question him. After a minute he brought his attention back to his bedroom. The geshe’s mind had been tired and shaken. Not a good sign. Not a favorable condition, considering what they had to do now.
Nonetheless— Stepping to a gong, the emperor struck it firmly. Time, it seemed, was one luxury he didn’t have.
The demon in the Sigma Field hadn’t known what to expect. It hadn’t even known, really, what it was doing. It had expected power when, as a man, it stood beside the makeshift altar in the village and wielded the sacramental knife. Now, it seemed, it had that power. So it