Black tried not to react with too much eagerness. He was afraid there was a catch. “You’re not doing this out of the goodness of your heart,” he said, “nor because you value our companionship. You want something.”
Shveta smiled. “You catch on quick, bub.”
CHAPTER
11
THE VALE OF CASHMERE
There was a road that led north from Jammu, Cashmere’s winter capital, over the Pir Panjal range, to Srinagar, its summer one. The distance was just short of two hundred miles, but once one crossed through the mountains there was a gentle descent into a wide valley fed by the Vyath River. This was Shveta’s initial destination, the place that would put them on the cusp of being out of India and beyond the official boundaries of the Mogul Empire.
The problem was, this was the only road from Jammu to Srinagar. Whether you were a fugitive from secular law or religious custom, it was still dangerous to take the only road out of town.
“Have you never heard of hiding in plain sight?” Shveta asked Black.
In fact, he had. He had explained the idea to Bren long ago when they were considering the safest place to hide the bronze medallion—the paiza—given to Bren by the mysterious dying stranger. Black had settled on a false book with a hidden compartment, shelved right at the front of Black’s store. It would have been a clever idea if it hadn’t been Bren himself who came to steal it.
But in fact, they weren’t being so bold. For one thing, they all rode donkeys. These were the beasts of burden for the lower classes, and the group was dressed accordingly. Shveta had ditched her jewels and colorful silk clothes for rags, and her bodyguards (who, it turned out, were brothers named Aadesh and Aadarsh) and Ani wore sackcloth robes. Of course, for Black and David, no special clothing was necessary. They already looked impoverished. Shveta had even forbidden anyone to bring a weapon, in case they were searched.
“What about bandits?” David had asked.
“You’ve made it this far, despite everything,” Shveta had replied. “You must be able to handle yourself pretty well.” Which was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to David Owen. He practically beamed from the back of his donkey.
Rainy season was two months gone, but when they began to descend into the valley, they saw lakes and wetlands brimming with life. Along one silvery shore, Black noticed hundreds, maybe thousands, of small green-backed birds, skittering along the water’s edge, dabbling their narrow bills in the water before stretching their wings just enough to coast low over the shore to another location, repeating these movements over and over with shrill cries.
“What are those birds?” he asked. “Do you know?”
“Lapwings,” Shveta replied.
“They cause a fuss, don’t they?” said David.
“Do they ever,” said Shveta.
“In the light they look like green sapphires,” said Black, staring at the congregation of small birds.
“You have an eye for stones?”
Black’s narrow throat suddenly dried up. He thought about the black jade stone Bren used to wear, the one his mother had given him. Emily had brought it by his store when she returned from the lake country with it, before she had given it to Bren. She had wanted Black’s opinion on whether Bren would like it, or if a boy his age would be embarrassed to wear jewelry given to him by his mother. It occurred to him in that moment that he had never told David Owen about that.
“No,” he managed to say in answer to Shveta. “They’re just pretty, is all I meant.”
Shveta laughed. “Some people don’t care for them at all.”
Ani and the two bodyguards began laughing as well, and Black and David just looked at each other, wondering if they had been left out of an inside joke.
When they made camp, Black was surprised to see the bodyguards pull out a small, foldable chessboard and two small sacks of black and white pieces. “You play?” Black asked.
They looked at him like it was a stupid question. “Everyone in India plays chess,” said Aadesh. “The game was invented here.”
“May I play the winner?” said Black. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it. Aadarsh stood up and motioned for Black to take his place.
“Be my guest,” he said. “I hate chess. I only play to make my brother happy.”
Black eagerly took his seat. He was playing white, and he made his first move. An hour after the others had gone to bed, they were still playing, until finally Black realized that Aadesh had a winning position. He resigned.
“Good game,” he said, holding out his hand. Aadesh shook it but gave Black a wry grin.
“I was toying with you,” he said. “I wasn’t ready for bed yet.”
Black took that as a challenge, but in the week it took them to travel from Jammu to a few miles outside Srinagar, he and Aadesh played every night, and Black only managed one draw to six losses.
“You stink,” said Aadarsh, watching one of their games. “I don’t even like to play and I give Aadesh better games.”
“I toy with you as well,” said Aadesh, winking at Black.
Other than the challenge of climbing through the Pir Panjal, their journey had been remarkably uneventful. It was on their last day’s ride, when they had brought their donkeys to drink alongside the Vyath River, that something caught their eye. Approaching from the east at a gallop were three mounted horses bearing down on them.
Shveta, Ani, and the two bodyguards didn’t move, but David went right for his donkey. “I told you we should’ve been armed!” he said, laying his hands on the donkey’s back and lifting his left foot for the stirrup. Unfortunately, his donkey had other ideas—perhaps to drink a while longer—and sidled away, causing David to hoist himself against a moving object. He landed hard, facedown, in a thicket of river sedge.
Shveta briefly turned to look at him and then back to the three horsemen. “Did dum-dum really think we weren’t armed?” she said, and Aadesh and Aadarsh promptly pulled a pair of spade-handled daggers from their robes, holding them up like a pair of panthers showing off their retractable claws.
To Black’s surprise, Ani was armed, too, and with more than an eggplant this time. From inside her sleeves she pulled out what looked like small darts and moved one to her left hand while holding the others with her right.
More surprising still, Shveta didn’t draw a weapon at all. Black didn’t believe for a second, however, that she was defenseless. He looked back at the horsemen as their collision of hooves grew louder.
“Actually, I don’t think our supposed attackers are armed,” said Black. “At least, they don’t seem to have drawn any weapons.”
“Too bad for them,” said Shveta, and with a sweep of her arm her bodyguards and Ani fanned out to meet them. Ani took the lead, raising her left arm up and flinging her hand forward, and though Black was unable to follow the dart, he quickly saw the results—the lead horse suddenly reared up, nearly throwing its rider, who managed to hold on while spinning the horse sideways.
“Hold fire! Hold fire!” cried one of the other two riders—in English. He and the other rider had slowed their horses when their leader had been attacked.
“Seems like a poor strategy,” said Shveta, and Ani flung another missile, this time at the smallest of three, who a moment later cried out. It was a voice that seemed eerily familiar to Black, and in that moment his already wobbly legs turned to sauce.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” he yelled as Ani armed herself again and Aadesh and Aadarsh ran forward to stab the wounded riders. Black shoved Ani to the ground and tried to grab one of the dagger-wielding brothers by the arm, but he might as well have thrown a lasso over a charging bull.
Shveta wasn’t pleased. “Kill him, too, if you have to.”
Aadesh stood over Black, one of the daggers raised, seeming unsure whether he really wanted to kill his chess partner. His hesitation cost him. Black heard a violent buzz and then saw the deadly quick strike of a sword just as it knocked the raised dagger from
Aadesh’s hand.
Stunned, he raised his left-side dagger to the swordsman, only to have that one knocked out too by the backswing.
Everything stopped. Aadesh stood face-to-face with the point of the sword, its bearer still sitting cockily astride her horse. Black might’ve recognized her, but he was staring at Bren. He couldn’t believe it was him . . . but it was, it was Bren, kneeling on the ground next to his horse, blood seeping through the clothes around his left shoulder. He held Ani’s bloody missile in his right hand.
“Mr. Black!” he sputtered. “I knew it was you, even from a mile away, even though it didn’t make any sense. . . .” He tried to finish but choked up.
Shveta was in disbelief. “You two know each other?”
On cue, Black ran toward Bren, who never even had to get up. Black dropped to his knees and hugged Bren as hard as his bony arms would let him. They both began to sob with joy.
Lady Barrett moved her sword from Aadesh’s nose and pointed it in Shveta’s direction. “You must be the leader of this group, since you’re not doing anything.”
Shveta’s eyes glittered like one of her jewels. “I am.”
“Then you should know we’re friends, not foes,” said Lady Barrett. “At least, friends to this man, and, I assume, that man over there.”
Black had completely forgotten about David, who had hit the ground harder than anyone realized and was out cold for several minutes. He relaxed his hug and turned to see David staggering forward out of the tall river grass. It was obvious he had seen Bren, but still he moved slowly . . . cautiously. Black felt Bren tense under his arms. And suddenly, he felt . . . awkward . . . this wasn’t right. Fighting every urge to hug Bren tight again, he stood up and moved aside, gently nudging Bren forward as he did so, and finally father and son ran toward each other and embraced, the first time they had hugged each other in years.
Black stood next to Lady Barrett’s horse. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you,” he said.
“Thank heavens you’re as recognizable as a beanstalk in a cornfield,” she said, laughing.
Sean just sat there, his eyes darting from Bren and his father to the huge man still standing in front of him, still with both daggers drawn. Aadarsh finally seemed to grasp what was happening and put his daggers away. Ani went back to Shveta’s side.
Shveta merely folded her arms across her chest in resignation. “Fantastic,” she said. “More hostages.”
PART TWO
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
CHAPTER
12
THE IMITATION MANDALA
“Hostages?” said Lady Barrett. “What do you mean, hostages?”
“Just like it sounds, chakka,” said Shveta.
Lady Barrett narrowed her eyes. “Tell me what that word means right now.”
“I learned your language,” Shveta retorted. “Maybe you should learn mine.”
“Why do so many of your people speak English?” Black interrupted. “I’ve been wondering about that for weeks.”
“You worry about the strangest things, Archibald,” said Lady Barrett. Upon hearing his name, Shveta’s bodyguards started laughing again.
“Prester John’s church was once a pretty big deal in these parts,” said Shveta. “As he was an enemy to Moslems and Mongols, many Hindus and Buddhists learned his tongue.”
“Fascinating,” said Black.
“Shall we continue with our history of the Asian subcontinent or get on with it?” said Shveta.
“Get on with whatever you wish,” said Lady Barrett, sitting up straight on her horse and resting one palm on the pommel of her sword. “Your so-called hostages are coming with us.”
“Draw that sword again and we’ll fight for real this time,” said Shveta. “The vultures will be picking your eyeballs out of your skull while wild dogs feed on your rotting corpse.”
Bren watched this confrontation with awe. Lady Barrett was never one to back down from a fight, whether physical or verbal, but this time she seemed uncertain.
“Who is that?” whispered David Owen to his son.
“Who is that?” Bren whispered back to his father.
Neither had a chance to answer. Black was waving his long arms frantically as if he were trying to signal a distant ship.
“No one’s fighting anyone!” he shouted. “Lady Jean Barrett, Shveta Do-Piyaza. Shveta, Lady Barrett. I think I can clear a few things up.”
“Shveta?” Bren interjected. “Shveta Do-Piyaza?”
“You’ve heard of me?”
“We have a letter for you!” As soon as he said it, he regretted it, and the look on Lady Barrett’s face told him he was right. They could have used the letter as leverage. Also, there was probably a reason Sengge told them Shveta was dangerous.
“Well, I’m waiting,” said Shveta, her palm upturned. Lady Barrett reluctantly handed over the sealed envelope.
“We came through the kingdom of Ladakh,” Lady Barrett explained. “Prince Sengge told us who you were, and we were supposed to leave that in a safe location in Srinagar.”
As Shveta broke the seal and began to read, Lady Barrett kept talking. “Shway-tha,” she said, in a long, drawn-out breath. “That’s lovely. I’ve often found it regrettable that my parents chose to give me such an abrupt, one-syllable name as Jean.”
“Multiple syllables aren’t the end all, be all,” said Black, quickly turning on Aadesh and Aadarsh to say, “Not a peep out of you two!” They smiled.
When Shveta had finished reading, she glanced up at Lady Barrett, as if she immediately suspected that her new nemesis might have read it. But she said nothing.
“Anyway,” said Black, “we aren’t hostages . . . not exactly. I mean, we were, but I think the simplest way to explain it is, we’ve come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
He turned to Shveta as if to ask, Is that a fair explanation? “You’re doing okay, bub,” she said. “Keep going.”
“The upshot is, Shveta is traveling to Persia. That’s where we want to go. She can get us there safely, in a roundabout sort of way.”
“So can I,” said Lady Barrett.
Black sighed. “I’ve no doubt. But . . . let’s just try cooperating for a while, shall we?”
Lady Barrett shrugged, and before they set off, Shveta insisted that Bren let her ride his horse. A donkey was more fit for a boy, wasn’t it? Bren agreed, and Shveta mounted the horse and brought it aside Lady Barrett’s for a brief moment before spurring it on ahead, taking the lead. Lady Barrett was quick to correct that situation, and on it went like that, the two of them yo-yoing back and forth at the front.
All Sean could do was smile. “I’m really going to enjoy this,” he said to Bren.
Srinagar was by far the largest city Bren had yet seen in Asia, and it was as stunning as it was large. A river flowed through it and fed several large lakes, whose shores were dotted with houseboats. Behind them were the snow-covered mountains they had crossed, but here in the valley, which was still warm, everything was green and brightly colored by flowers and hanging gardens. Among the crowded homes were bright-white mosques and stone Hindu temples with their tall, flat-topped towers.
Shveta took them to the servants’ entrance of a large building that could have been either a government building or wealthy home, Bren wasn’t sure. Either way it didn’t seem very inconspicuous, except for the fact that it was unoccupied. All the furniture had been covered and everything put away for the winter.
“You’ll find rooms down here, and a kitchen and pantry,” said Shveta as she, Ani, Aadesh, and Aadarsh headed for a set of stairs going up. “You’ll have to fend for yourself tonight.”
“You’re leaving us alone?” said Lady Barrett.
“Don’t get any ideas,” said Shveta.
Finding food in the pantry was the easy part, and Bren and Sean already knew Lady Barrett could cook just about anything. The problem was when they all sat down around the table to eat. Bren had never had an easy time talki
ng to his father, and being apart for more than a year didn’t make things any easier. Bren had experienced half-a-lifetime’s worth of adventure, but the fact that he had betrayed his father—and Black—to get there made him reluctant to talk about it, even if the fact that his father was here meant that he was likely forgiven.
Black tried to break the tension by catching up with Lady Barrett. “I’d forgotten how skilled you were with a sword,” he said. “The look on Aadesh’s face when you disarmed him was priceless.”
“I was actually trying to lop off his hand, but I missed,” she said with a grin.
“She’s better with her fists,” said Sean, winking at Bren.
Bren and Lady Barrett laughed, and with everyone loosening up, David Owen chimed in, asking Bren, “Did you make any other friends besides Sean?”
The laughter abruptly stopped.
“One,” Bren said finally. “A girl named Mouse. She’s not with us anymore.”
Bren’s father dropped his eyes and pretended to eat. Everyone did, for a minute or two, until Lady Barrett said, “Archibald, why don’t you explain this mutually beneficial arrangement to me. I have a feeling it’s a bit more than having someone to trade conversation with on the way to Persia.”
“What makes you think that?” said Black.
“Because,” said Lady Barrett, “I read that letter Bren handed her.”
“What did it say?” Black asked.
“I have a feeling you know, or at least have an inkling,” Lady Barrett replied. “But I’ll play along. Prince Sengge, future king of Ladakh, is importing more than wood from China. He’s assembling an army of mercenaries. And he thought this information would be helpful to one Shveta Do-Piyaza on her mission to the Church of the East in Persia, to—how shall I put this?—launch a Crusade.”
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