With that the emperor got up, and with his yeti bodyguard left the sanctuary. That the barbarian might be two hundred years old felt more real to him than the idea of “star folk,” but best to take them both alive and question them. After all, Fong seemed to credit the stories, and the Chinese had demonstrated repeatedly not only his powers but his acuity.
The emperor’s bodyguard had always been exceptionally large and strong for his age. His short-napped fur was a rich auburn red, and he’d been named Maamo from its color. Then Tenzin and the Circle had installed an ogre elemental in him. Maamo didn’t know what had happened; he only knew he’d changed, suddenly, in strength and dominance, personality and intelligence. He had the same memories as before, but he felt like a different being.
He didn’t wonder about these changes, he simply accepted them. Yunnan ogres are not often introspective.
Meanwhile he followed Songtsan Gampo two paces to the rear. If anyone had tried to attack the emperor, the attacker would have died quickly and violently.
TWENTY-SIX
Tenzin and the Circle waited till morning to gather a raven elemental. When it was done, and they had given it its purpose, through it they called a great raven to them, the largest in the Yan Mountains, and the bird came and was possessed by it, becoming the quintessential raven, dominant over all the rest. Tenzin considered it superior to Svartvinge: It was more closely instructed, and proof against any affinity with the barbarian. When it found him, it would read him from a little distance, and the Circle would know all that the great bird saw and read.
At once it flew forth, and before long, every raven as far north as Gil’ui and Baikal, and as far west as the Altai received its request, relayed through the field of raven beingness. They were to watch for three men. Also from the elemental, each received an image of the three, accessed from the collective raven experience.
Surely the three would be found, for ravens cruise almost constantly by day, looking for anything dead, small or large, and in the process see the living.
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Tenzin Geshe was not concerned when, for several days, he’d heard nothing from them. Miyun was very far from Urga, 1,200 kilometers, most of it open, steppe or desert, while ravens are birds of the forests and mountains. But after ten days he began to be anxious, for he felt sure that the Northman had intended to come to Miyun. And over the centuries since the Great Death, forests had spread westward, especially during the climatic cooling of the last hundred years. Some 400 kilometers west, the Northman would enter a rough land with numerous groves and woods on slopes that faced north and east, a land where ravens hunted. The Northman should have reached there by now, and been reported.
Was my premonition wrong? Tenzin wondered. It had been strong enough. The Northman could have changed his mind later, but then where to? Surely not into the Gobi. To cross it westward would be a journey of death in any season but spring. While if he d turned northward—By now that should have taken him into woodlands too, where the ravens would have discovered him.
Or—if the Northman made it far enough east, he’d reach forest where large areas had few openings. There, conceivably, the ravens might miss him for days, if he kept carefully to cover. But . . .
Could he be traveling by night? Ravens roosted by night! And it was the sort of thins, he might do!
He’d overlooked the possibility! And he had the emperor’s strict injunction!
Abruptly he left his shady balcony and went into the Sanctuary, where he sat aside from the Circle to contemplate the problem.
Tenzin contemplated a problem not by pondering. Rather, he dispelled all other thoughts, defined his problem clearly, then entered a trance to let happen what would.
As a novice, long years earlier, the procedure would have been impossible to him. To sit quietly to meditate
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had meant opening the door to every anxiety, every aggravation and idle thought, every grudge and grief. And if his mind began to quiet, sleep was likely to slip in and claim him. But over the years he’d looked at them all: anxieties, aggravations . . . the roots of all his most intrusive thoughts. Old grudges had died, old griefs had lost their force, and confidence grown from experience quieted what was left. Seldom now did anything disturb the stillness of his meditation, and drowsiness rarely intervened.