Also, a few days earlier, ravens had found the “star man” and the barbarian youth, though not the barbarian wizard. Now a courier had arrived from the troop he’d sent to capture them. They’d captured the star man basically uninjured, and were bringing him to Miyun. The barbarian youth had escaped, but he was of little importance.
It seemed to Tenzin that the emperor was as pleased by this as by the major news from Korea. “Wonderful,
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Your Magnificence,” he said. “The star man should prove a wellspring of information.”
“Indeed. The emperor raised a knowing eyebrow. “Meanwhile you are worried, and come to tell me of some calamity you’ve created. It can’t be as bad as you think, dear geshe.”
The comment brought the situation to the surface of the geshe’s mind. Songtsan raised both eyebrows, then laughed. “Tenzin, Tenzin! You are a remarkable wizard, but—” He shook his head. “Evict your demon from the fabric of the Tao? Nonsense, Tenzin! You’ve done wonderfully; far better than you realize. What you must now learn to do is rule it, not evict it!”
Songtsan Gampo habitually thought behind a screen when other telepaths were with him, though he denied them the privilege. An emperor had his prerogatives. Thus Tenzin Geshe didn’t know what his emperor failed to say: That Songtsan Gampo intended to bond the demon to himself, once Tenzin and the Circle had established control of it. He would bond the demon to himself, and tell it he was its god.
THIRTY-THREE
Baver regained a groggy consciousness while being tied across the back of a horse, and tried to raise his head. A soldier cursed—at least it sounded like a curse—and cuffed him. Whereupon the commander rode up to the soldier, and bending struck him hard on the head with the flat of his sword. The man fell to the ground, partly from the blow and partly in self defense, while an angry string of words rattled from the commander’s mouth.
The language was one Baver felt sure he’d never heard before. Chinese? he wondered. He’d heard Chinese several times on a cube, ancient Chinese, on New Home. Alex Malaluan had been hypno-learning it. It had sounded more tonal than this. But then, languages change, some more, some less.
With quick fingers, a different soldier untied him. Two others helped him off the horse, onto his feet, where his hands were retied in front of him, leaving twenty centimeters of twisted thong between them to give him some freedom of hand movement. This done, he was boosted into the saddle.
He was aware that virtually all the soldiers were staring
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at him. He supposed they’d never seen anything like a jumpsuit before, with its pockets at chest, hips, and thighs.
It occurred to him then that Hans wasn’t there. Perhaps he’d gotten away. Or was dead. There was no way to ask. But these people didn’t seem to be in a killing mood. Did they have orders to bring in prisoners alive and well?
And what had there been about himself and Hans that inspired the chase? Perhaps it was simply that Hans had bolted. Or no, Hans hadn’t bolted till after the soldiers had lacked their own horses to a gallop. And there had been Han’s dream!—prophetic in a way. Perhaps accurately prophetic if they’d stayed where they’d camped.
He wondered what they’d do with him. And why the commander had struck the trooper for actually rather modest abuse. Baver had seen and heard enough, on this primitive world, to know that here, merely cuffing a prisoner was benign behavior.
There was more to this, he decided, than appeared on the surface.
During two long days of riding with his hands tied, Baver was treated with consistent brusque decency, and learned a few words of the soldiers’ language, notably chu and kyöra sagiyö: water or drink, and eat or food.
The third morning brought them to the ruins of a large city. An old city, some of it dating to well before the days of knock-down-and-replace buildings. Probably a major capital, because some of the individual buildings were so large, or had been. A lot of them were more or less intact, implying that they predated the technological era