When the others had left, all of them but Kaidu’s two bodyguards, the chief sat again and spoke to Nils. “You said that someone else in this room was a wizard. I must know who this person is.”
“It is the emperor’s ambassador, Fong Jung Hing.”
Kaidu’s lips pursed, and he nodded thoughtfully. “I believe you in this. I had wondered.” He looked up at his bodyguards, who were also his cousins. “You will say nothing of this to anyone,” he told them, stressing what was already his policy for private meetings. Then he looked at Nils again. “Now you must tell me how you know.”
As he had done before, at critical times, Nils reached to his face, removed his eyes, and held them out in his
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hand to Kaidu, who stared in shock, first at the empty sockets, then at the pieces of colored glass in the callused palm. An oath breathed from his lips, and he turned to Achikh.
“Brother,” he husked, “did you know of this?”
Achikh nodded. “He is a very great wizard. Also a man who speaks carefully and keeps his word.”
“May I advise the great chief?” Nils asked quietly.
Kaidu nodded, his nerves taut with the shock of what he’d seen.
“Do not judge Teb-Tengri by his secret,” Nils said. “That lies in the past, before he was a grown man, and what he did then, he wishes he had not. Judge him by his character now, the good and the bad, and his shaman skills. Also, can he be trusted? How far? And with what?
“As for those skills— He distrusted me. With eyes like mine, it’s not surprising that someone might take me for demon-possessed. But one who has great shaman powers should see more deeply than that. Teb-Tengri is clever, but his wizard powers are minor.”
While Nils spoke, Kaidu relaxed considerably. Quietly the Mongol chief put one of the glass eyes on the cushion to his left, where Teb-Tengri had sat, and covered it with a kerchief. The other he put in an empty drinking bowl on a stool to his right.
“Part of Teb-Tengri’s usefulness to you,” Nils was saying, “is that your people believe in him. Also he is a Buriat. Beyond his own self-interest, which may or may not rule him in a given instance, he has in mind the interest of his people and his tribe. That is not true of foreigners, however able, however powerful. Fong is a much more powerful wizard, but his loyalties are to his emperor.”
‘And your loyalties?”
“My loyalty is to the Tao.”
“Hmm. I have heard of the Tao, but do not know what it is. It is a very old belief that is lost to us. Do the people of the west have it?”
“A few do. I learned of it from my first teacher, Raad-
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giver, counselor to chiefs. It had been passed down to him through many generations. At the time I accepted it as an idea. Since then it has become more and more real to me.”
Kaidu had watched Nils carefully while they’d talked. Now he contemplated the Northman at some length, his eyes fixed on the sunken sockets, the collapsed and wrinkled lids. Finally he said, “Tell me, Northman, can you see without your eyes?”
“Easily.” Nils put Svartvinge aside, stood up and stepped forward, taking the one eye from beneath the kerchief, the other from the drinking bowl.
When he’d returned them to his face, he changed the subject. “Your brother has had marvelous experiences and adventures in the west,” he said. “I believe you would find them interesting and enlightening.”
TWENTY ONE
Achikh told Kaidu some of his experiences and observations in the West, including Nils’s fights in the arena, first with the lion, then with the Orc. When he was done, it was evening, and soon time for supper.
Kaidu had already arranged to have the council as his dinner guests, and Achikh begged to be excused. He wished to see his mother before he slept. Kaidu agreed. He knew too well the ugly relationship between Acnikh’s mother, Khada’an, and his own mother, Dokuz. And he preferred that it not color his friendship with his younger brother, whom he saw as potentially a powerful supporter.