In Xanadu did Solomon Khan
The Temple of the Lord decree. . . .
—Samuel Mendel Cohen
The Temple of the Lord God was rising in Chengdu, on the long plain beneath the loom of mountains, under the endless sky. Its walls rose to the height of ten tall men. The breadth of it was as great as a city, and its nine courts advanced to the innermost shrine, the Holy of Holies, where the new Ark of the Covenant would come to rest when the Temple was complete.
The roof was on the fifth court, all but the last of it, a tracery of stone above the eastern edge. Abraham Han Li the architect stood beneath the soaring arches, frowning upward. "Perhaps after all," he said, "we should have built a dome. Nine domes in ascending order, sheathed in silver and gold, floating above the plain, would be a vision of divine sublimity."
"Surely, master," said Moishe his assistant, "that would be beautiful indeed, but these vaulted arches uplift the spirit in a way that even the most airy dome cannot quite manage."
The Great Khan's chief architect was in no way convinced, but whatever argument he might have begun was lost in sudden commotion. Moishe had felt the slight shift of the paving underfoot, as if the earth had shrugged in its sleep. An instant later, shouts and cries brought them all out of the court and running toward the western wall.
It was still standing, but long cracks ran through it. The earth had subsided visibly. Workmen milled about, babbling in a confusion of languages.
Abraham Han Li maintained a remarkable degree of calm. "You said," he said to the Great Khan's chief engineer, who stood gaping as foolishly as any of the rest of them, "that the caverns did not extend beneath that portion of the plain."
Moishe met the glance of the chief engineer's assistant. Buri was too circumspect to roll his eyes, but he could not quite control his expression. Whatever the chief engineer might have told the chief architect, the rest of the workmen and their overseers knew perfectly well how far the caverns extended. A river ran under the earth, cutting beneath the western corner of the Temple. The great ones refused to know it because their plans called for the Temple to be just such a shape and just such a size, oriented in just such a way, and that required the raising of a wall above the hidden river.
"Can it be salvaged?" the chief architect demanded. "Can the earth be shored up?"
"It can," said the chief engineer. "Certainly it can. It will be a great undertaking, but if we commandeer men, requisition supplies . . ."
"The Khan has said it," the chief architect said. "Whatever is needed, it shall be supplied. Give us walls that will stand. This is for the glory of the Lord God."
The chief engineer bowed to that Name. His assistant sighed just audibly.
So too did Moishe. Khans and princes demanded the impossible. Assistants then had to do it—and pay the price if they should fail.
Moishe stood in a cavern of immeasurable size. Even lit by lamps and torches beyond count, it stretched far away into gloom. Pillars and columns rose into vaults overhead, touched with rose and cream and gold. The river ran black and silent through them.
The Great Khan's engineers and miners stood in a hush of deep reverence, and not only because the river had been holy for time out of mind. Sound could break; sound could shatter. Sound could bring down the roof that groaned already under the weight of the Temple wall.
"We'll need timbers," Buri said in a barely audible whisper, "and stone. And years—but we'll be given months. Days, if I know our masters. This is no mine, to be shored up as we go. This is a temple as wide as the one above, and infinitely more fragile."
"It's a pity we can't worship here," murmured one of the lesser engineers. He was still a pagan, Moishe suspected, although those who had not accepted the Covenant were wise not to confess it too loudly. "Open a gate, raise up a few pillars, and here's a temple to make any god proud."
"The God of Hosts is a god of the open sky," said Buri. "But more to the point, the Khan has commanded that the Temple be built on the plain of Chengdu. Therefore it shall be built there. And we will make certain that the earth will hold it up."
The engineer shrugged. It made no difference to him, his manner said, if the great ones chose to be fools.
Moishe could not be as censorious as he should have been. The priests insisted that the Khan's vision had been true; that the Lord of Hosts had commanded the Temple to be built in this place, to glorify Him in this age of the world.
And yet in this temple to the gods below, he wondered if there was war in heaven. Not every god yielded peacefully to the rule of the One God. The gods of this country were very old and had been strong before the Khan's father cast them down. They might not in fact have yielded to the conquest. They might simply have been biding their time.
It was difficult to think such thoughts in this cavern, in the silence and the sense of age-old peace. The Khan's engineers would break that peace. They would desecrate the temple below for the sake of the Temple above.
Or maybe the Lord had something else in mind. Time would tell, as it inevitably did.
"When Temujin was a boy," the rabbi said, "even younger than you, he was reckoned the last and least of his brothers. But the Lord sent him a sign and a guide, a slave taken from far away, a woman of a people whose ways were utterly strange."
"The Honored Deborah!" cried one of his pupils.
The rabbi was young and his pupils were princes. He did not rebuke the child for speaking out of turn. "The Honored Deborah, yes," he said. "She taught him a way and a faith such as he had never dreamed of before. She showed him a path that made him strong. She made him a warrior of God. She helped him to see his destiny: not just to rule the world, but to take the name of the Lord of Hosts wherever he should go, and bring the nations of the world to the Covenant."
"Amen," said the circle of pupils in the colonnade of the Temple. Here on the eastward side, the wall was complete, and the courts to the fourth of them, where the school was. The chants of Torah and Talmud had paused, a brief moment of silence, in which these youngest scholars had time to reflect on their lesson.
Just as the chanting resumed farther down along the colonnade, the rabbi went on, "So Temujin became Judah, the lion of God. First his brothers, then his cousins, then his clan, were moved in their hearts to accept the One God and to follow His servant. The Lord God made them strong and gave them victory in battle, until Temujin rose to be the Great Khan, Genghis Khan, lord of the Golden Horde. The world lay down beneath his foot.
"After the Lord God had taken His servant to Himself, by the side of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joshua, Moses, and the rest of the fathers of the Covenant, the Great Khan's son woke from a dream to the knowledge of what he must do. The world was his to rule by the Lord's decree. It well pleased the Lord that his father, and now he, had spread the Covenant so far, but one more thing the Lord required of him.
"'My Temple in the west of the world is fallen,' He said. 'The people of My first Covenant are scattered to the winds of heaven. That is My will, and so I have ordained. Now are you My chosen, My beloved. Build Me a Temple. Build it high and make it beautiful. Consecrate it to the glory of My name.'
"And the Khan, whose mother had named him Khubilai but whose father called him Solomon, bowed low before the Lord and consented to do His will. The Lord gave him the knowledge of the place in which the Temple was to be built, and the fashion of it, how broad and how tall, and what manner of beauty would adorn it. Two Temples there had been in Jerusalem, and both were long gone; but this would be greater than either, more holy and more beautiful. And so the Lord would be worshipped according to His will."
"This is it," said the prince who had spoken before. "This is the Temple that the Lord told Father to build. The Lord told him to build it in two times seven years, no more and no less—and now it's half done, and it's been ten years, and do you think the Lord is getting impatient?"
"The Lord has faith in His servant," the rabbi said. "It will be done because He wills it, and because your father is His loyal servant."
"Father can do anything," the prince said.
"Anything that the Lord wills," said the rabbi.
Moishe liked to listen to the lessons in the colonnade if he could. Sometimes he was called on to teach one, because he had somewhat of a reputation as a scholar. But today he should not have lingered as long as he had. Prince Subotai had spoken the very truth: that it was ten years of the fourteen ordained, and the Temple was not in fact half done, but less than that. The beginning was always the hardest; the end would be quicker. But would it be quick enough?
The western wall could not stand unless the cavern was secured. That would take as long as it took, which please God would not be too long. In the meantime there was more than enough to occupy a harried assistant to the chief architect. The goldsmiths needed gold to sheathe the pillars of the three innermost courts, and the masons needed stone of numerous kinds to build those pillars, and the caravan that should have brought these things had been expected for a month and more.
But more than this, or the thousand other troubles greater and lesser that vexed the building of the Temple, Moishe had to face the messages that waited in the ordered clutter of his workroom. There were half a dozen of them, written in various hands but sealed with the same seal. They had come in some days before, brought by an imperial courier. The first was years old, the last dated just after Passover of this year. They had come by a long road. One had dark stains that might have been blood, another was charred about the edges.
They all said much the same thing. The people of the first Covenant, the Jews of the west, had heard of the great work in the east. Their Temple was gone, their holy city occupied by followers of an upstart prophet. They were scattered to the winds of heaven. Yet they were still God's chosen people. They had in mind to see this new Temple, to look on its wonders and speak with its builders. Therefore a deputation had been sent from the Jews of the Diaspora, an embassy of scholars and descendants of the old priests. It was to arrive, said the latest and least battered message, sometime within the year—and if Moishe's calculations were right, in this very season, and probably within the month.
If the first message had come within a year of its sending, there would have been ample time to prepare. As it was, there was barely enough time to find accommodations for an unknown number of guests, with unknown needs or desires, for an unknown length of time. And what, thought Moishe, would they be thinking? Had they come to marvel or inspect—to worship or condemn?
He would know the answer to that soon enough. An escort had gone out under the banner of the Khan and the Temple, to find the westerners on the road and escort them in safety to Chengdu. That was Moishe's official action, in the name of the chief architect and the high priest of the Temple. He had also, on his own and in a moment of either wisdom or weakness, sent a particular friend to canvass for rumors that might be attached to the westerners. One never knew, after all, what people were saying, and anything he heard might tell him how to prepare for these guests.
He was not at all surprised, looking up from his hundredth rereading of the letters from the west, to find that same, very useful friend sitting peacefully in the corner that he had always favored. Chen was one of the invisible—a man of no distinction whatsoever, who could go where he pleased and do as he pleased, and no one took notice.
He grinned at Moishe, who was much too dignified to grin back, but he permitted himself a discreet smile. "You rode quickly," Moishe said.
"Mongol ponies," said Chen. "They may not run like the wind, but once they get going, they don't stop. If there's nothing else that you've brought to the Middle Kingdom, that one will gain you a nod or two from the gods."
"The gods who, of course, do not exist," Moishe said.
"Of course," Chen said blandly.
He was not going to say what he had come to say, not unless Moishe observed the rule of their discourse: no haste, no urgency, but Moishe had to ask before Chen would tell. The game should play on for a while longer; Moishe gambled and said, "It must be powerful news, if you came back so soon."
Chen's narrow eyes narrowed further, but he was too full of news to hold it for much longer. He shrugged, dallied, and in the end he said, "There are rumors spreading westward from here, stories that track to a hundred sources, but if you follow them closely, they come from a single place. Have you wondered why there has not been a bandit raid anywhere within reach of here, since at least the year before last?"
"I know why that is," said Moishe. "The Khan's armies—"
"The Khan's armies are halfway across the world," Chen said. "His grip on the Middle Kingdom is strong enough, I grant you that, but he's not here to see that every band of robbers is strung up along the road. And yet someone is doing it, or a succession of someones, advancing from the west and aiming toward Chengdu."
"A warlord?" Moishe asked. "A claimant to the throne? Or—"
"Or," said Chen, "an army of strangers. They're not challenging the Khan's men—they're traveling in secret, or pretending to be ordinary travelers. They scour out the nests of robbers as they come, and leave them for the ravens. It's a tribute of sorts, a gift to the Khan."
"That is very strange," Moishe said.
"Isn't it?" said Chen. "Here's what's even odder. The raiders are westerners. They have long noses and long beards, and eyes as round as coins. They rock when they pray."
Moishe's mouth was hanging open. He shut it with a snap. "They're— How many?"
"Rumor says thousands," Chen said. "Maybe there are hundreds. They're coming here, or somewhere within reach of here."
"An army from the west," said Moishe, "sweeping the lands clean as they come, but doing nothing to trouble the people who live in those lands. Are there scholars, too? Or only soldiers?"
"I wouldn't know a scholar if I saw one," Chen said, "but those are all fighting men. Middling good ones, at that. There is another company traveling here—a caravan. Maybe those are scholars. They're older, mostly, and softer, and they pray more often. They argue a great deal by the fire at night."
Moishe let go a long sigh. "Those are scholars. Are they connected with the others at all?"
"Not obviously," said Chen, "but sometimes a soldier comes to their caravan, stays for an hour or a night, then rides away."
A messenger, thought Moishe. He could see the shape of it, as odd as it manifestly was. An army was coming in fragments, meant to be joined together when it reached Chengdu. Its heart was the caravan, the seemingly harmless riding of merchants and scholars.
It was very clever. Had it been design after all that delayed the messages from the embassy until it was almost too late? Were they actually planning to invade the Temple?
Moishe sent Chen to a well-deserved bed. For himself, that night, there was no rest.
He did not have the authority to do the things that, if Chen was right, should be done. He was the chief architect's assistant and, when his duties allowed, a teacher and scholar in the rabbinical school. For this he needed a military commission, or a commander who both believed him and had the power to act on it.
His stomach had drawn into a tight and aching knot. When he went into the Temple, he had been running toward a calling—and away from altogether too much. He had prayed then that whatever the Lord chose for him, it would keep him far away from either acts or men of war.
The Lord had a way of humbling those who prayed too selfishly. Moishe bowed to the divine will. "And I do hope," he said with a touch of temper, "that You knew what You were doing when You chose me for this."
Naturally the Lord did not reply. He was never One to belabor the obvious.
* * *
The commander of the Khan's garrison in Chengdu looked Moishe up and down. Moishe resisted the urge to stand at attention, and the equally powerful urge to hide behind the nearest and burliest guardsman. He was not a child any longer, under the eye of a stern father. He was a man of some consequence, attached to the Khan's personal service.
With that to stiffen his resolve, he lifted his chin and regarded the commander with what he hoped was a sufficient degree of dignity.
"So," said Lord Ogadai. "You're the disgrace to the Red Wolf clan. How is old Batu these days? Still having babies for breakfast?"
Moishe gritted his teeth. He had been living in civilized places too long. He had mercifully forgotten what an old-fashioned Mongol was like. "As far as I know," he said as politely as he could manage, "he even enjoys the occasional toddler."
Ogadai bared his teeth in a grin. They were excellent—honed on saddle leather and nourished with mare's milk. "You look like him. He's uglier, but a sword blade across the face will do that to a man." He beckoned to one of the guards. The man brought a chair, a spindly confection in the Chinese style, quite unlike the sturdy object on which Ogadai was seated. "Here, sit. Sit! Don't stand about like a new recruit. Kumiss?"
Moishe had to take the chair, and could not in courtesy refuse the cup of fermented mare's milk. It was strong enough to make his eyes water, and rich with the memory of home: smoke, horses, stink of unwashed bodies, and the reek of kumiss fermenting in the skins or drying on the coats of his father's warriors after a drinking bout.
He had never been homesick for the camp of the Red Wolf clan. The Temple was home, with all its troubles and its half-finished glory. He took three sips of the kumiss, to be polite, then set the cup aside. A guard was there to take it, as he had expected. He folded his hands and looked the commander in the face and said, "I won't waste your time. There's something I need, and I'm hoping you can give it to me."
That caught Ogadai off balance. Moishe did not see why it should. He was clean and he was dressed in Chinese silk, but Ogadai himself had recalled Moishe's origins. "You— Your master in the Temple?"
"He doesn't know I'm here," Moishe said. He had gambled on directness, and that meant the truth, whatever it did to his cause. "I will tell him, of course, but he's a busy man. He prefers not to be bothered with possibilities—only results."
"I know the chief architect," Ogadai said. God forbid a Mongol should confess to respect one of the decadent Chinese, but he did not spit in contempt, which was accolade enough. "What possibilities are you not bothering him with?"
Moishe could not pause to think. That would look weak. He had to say it all at once, straight and clear. "You know there's a deputation coming from the Jews of the Diaspora. It's a tour of inspection, I'm wagering—they can't be happy that we're building a Temple in our country instead of theirs. That's to be expected, and we're prepared for an onslaught of rabbis and scholars. But there's something else." And he told Ogadai what Chen had told him, word for word, exactly as he remembered it.
Ogadai heard him in silence. It sounded ridiculous when he said it in order: a threadbare fabric of rumor and speculation, delineating a plan that even a madman would laugh at. To bring a fragmented army all the way from the west into the heart of the Middle Kingdom, unseen and unremarked through the many divisions of the Horde, was outrageous—impossible. It would take a madman or a Sikandar to contemplate such a thing, still less to succeed in it.
He said so in Ogadai's continued silence, but he also said, "A small and determined force can infiltrate a stronghold and hold it against an army. Give that force hostages that matter, and make that fort so vital to the country or its rulers that its destruction would be an even worse disaster than its conquest, and you have the makings of an interesting situation. The invaders might actually manage to keep the stronghold, and to persuade the rulers of the country to accept it."
At least Ogadai broke his silence. "Supposing that this dream or fancy of yours can be true. What do they want, do you think? To destroy the place or take control of it?"
"I don't know," Moishe said. "I suspect even they don't. They'll know when they get here. We should be prepared for whatever they decide to do."
"If you are afraid," said Ogadai, "you could simply dispose of them before they set foot in Chengdu."
"No," said Moishe. "These are priests and scholars. Whatever their intentions, their destruction would offend the Lord."
"Even if you had someone else do it? Pagans?"
"Anyone at all," Moishe said firmly. "Will you help? Can you find the truth of the rumors? If they are true, the armies you can destroy—they come to threaten the Temple."
"If they exist," said Ogadai.
"Something is out there. The bandits—"
"Local defenses," Ogadai said. "Maybe a rogue raider or two, but I doubt it's more. I've heard your rumors, too, priest. I've done my own hunting. There's nothing there. People get restless when the Khan is so far away. Not all the conquered are honestly suppressed. We've put down uprisings and the threat of uprisings—there are always a few of those. That's all your rumors are. They've nothing to do with a caravan of barbarians."
Moishe should not give in to despair. Ogadai was an intelligent man. His rough edges had smoothed remarkably as he listened to Moishe. Of course he had heard the rumors; of course he had investigated them. His resources were considerably broader than Moishe's. If he said that Moishe was shying at shadows, then it was probably true.
But Moishe was stubborn—it was a trait he shared with his father, and it had brought him to the Temple instead of the khanate of the Red Wolf. He trusted Chen and he trusted his own instincts. However unlikely the prospect, he did believe, after all, that there was truth in the rumors.
"Tell me at least," he said, "that you'll put your forces on alert and increase the guard on the Temple. If you have scouts or spies, can they—"
"It has all been done," Ogadai said. He softened infinitesimally. "There, boy. You worry—that's not a bad thing. Pray; that's even better. But leave the rest to us. We'll keep your Temple safe."
Moishe had no choice but to accept that. He would have to pray as Ogadai suggested, that it would be enough.
One thing Moishe could do, and did. He prevailed on his master to speed the repairs of the western wall. By the tenth day after Moishe spoke with Ogadai, as the westerners rode toward Chengdu across the westward plain, Moishe looked out from the gate along the wall; it showed no outward sign of the troubles in the earth below. It had taken masons working day and night, and no little arguing with the chief engineer, to get it done, but done it was, thanks to Buri the able assistant. To those who came riding in their caravan, the wall was whole.
Abraham Han Li stood with the chief engineer and the chief of the priests and the master of the school and a large company of lesser lights of Temple and city. It was a great occasion to welcome the deputation from the Diaspora, and they were determined to do it proper justice. They were an impressive company, dressed in their best clothes and escorted by Temple guards. The gleam of silk and the flash of jewels must have dazzled the embassy from far down the road.
The caravan came on slowly. It was not a particularly large undertaking by the standard of the Middle Kingdom, but it was not particularly small. It was well guarded, in keeping with its size, but Moishe would not have called its guards an army. The parts of that would not come in, if they existed at all, until the caravan was firmly established in the Temple.
Moishe effaced himself among the clerks and servants who escorted the chief architect. His gown was plain, his marks of rank unobtrusive: a silver button on his hat, a silken prayer shawl under his gown. He stood in Abraham Han Li's resplendent shadow and watched as the caravan approached.
His eyes were not on the nobly bearded men who rode on handsomely caparisoned mules, or even on the armed guards who flanked them, but on those who, like him, chose not to put themselves forward. They were in the second rank, even the third and fourth, and their coats were worn and their faces showed the ravages of care and cleverness. He was careful not to meet their eyes.
The chief of the embassy had the noblest beard of all, a cascade of white down his breast. His voice matched it: rich, rolling, made to carry through the sanctuary of a temple. He spoke Hebrew in an accent so pure that Moishe sighed in spite of himself.
Abraham Han Li appeared untainted by either envy or admiration. He answered the elegant phrases of greeting with phrases equally elegant if not nearly so perfectly accented. He presented each of his fellow notables by name and rank and position, at leisure and at length. That obligated the western rabbi to do the same, though the mules were fretting and the camels braying and the men looking strained about the eyes.
His name was Ephraim of a place with a barbarous name, like the grunt of a pig: York, which Moishe understood to be beyond the edge of the world. He had brought a good number of his cousins and relations from a number of places nearly as distant and nearly as outlandish. Moishe had heard of Salamanca and of Prague, but the rest were strange.
While Ephraim spoke, Moishe's eye found one whom he named all but last and apparently least: Barak, likewise of York. He was a big man, and young, and although he carried no weapon, he stood as if he were accustomed to a sword at the hip. His eyes were never still. They scanned the faces in front of him, pausing, measuring, flicking onward.
This was a mind that could conceive a wild and improbable plan. Moishe could see it in those quick eyes, that light and wary stance. If the man was a scholar, he was a remarkably martial and suspicious one. Moishe did his utmost to seem harmless and inconsequential, and not to draw Barak's attention.
Maybe he succeeded. If not, he would learn soon enough. By the time the introductions had wound to their interminable end, he had set a trusted clerk in his place and escaped to signal the guards and servants that the guests were coming in. The cooks were waiting, the feast of welcome prepared according to the strictest prescriptions of the Law. Not one compromise, not one variation—that was the order. Moishe made sure that they had been scrupulous in carrying it out.
Once the caravan was in and settled and placed under discreet watch, a sort of quiet descended. The guests were not obtrusive. They asked to see the Temple, but they said little, and nothing that was not complimentary. Several of the scholars expressed a desire to visit the school; they observed in silence, neither smiling nor frowning, and for the most part even the students forgot they were there.
The first crack in the calm came on the Sabbath, which fell on the fifth day after the westerners' arrival. Workmen had come in that morning to lay the paving for the sixth court. The tiles for it had arrived the day before, and the men were eager to begin.
Moishe was just finishing his inspection of the workmen, briefly but happily delayed by a messenger with news that the caravan he had been awaiting most eagerly, the great one that the Khan had sent with gold and treasures, would come within sight of Chengdu by evening. He was in an excellent humor, therefore, and when he saw the cluster of men in western clothes standing on the rim of the court, he nodded and smiled.
They did not return the smile. There were half a dozen of them; all the westerners looked alike, but Moishe thought these might be the same scholars who had been attending classes in the school.
The oldest of them, whose beard was shot with gray, glowered at Moishe under his heavy brows. Nonetheless it was not he who spoke but the man beside him, whom Moishe recognized as the man from the gate: Barak, the big man who looked more like a soldier than a scholar. Moishe had thought then that he was more than he chose to seem. The thought came back to him now as Barak asked, "You allow your men to labor on the Sabbath?"
Moishe's heart contracted. He did not know why it should do that. The man's voice was mild and he was unarmed. But there was an undertone, like a low growl. "It is for the glory of the Lord God," Moishe said.
"The Lord bade us remember the Sabbath, that He has made holy," Barak said.
"Indeed," said Moishe, "and what is more holy than the Temple that He has asked us to build?"
"Not on His Sabbath," said Barak.
The man had no humor, and no flexibility, either. Moishe mustered a smile, bowed as if in submission, and said humbly, "That may be. I am only a simple servant. Shall I present your complaint to the Khan's chief architect?"
"It is not a complaint," said the eldest of the westerners. "It is a statement of truth. You desecrate this Temple with the breaking of the Sabbath."
"Such strong words," Moishe said. "I shall speak to my master. Now come. Come and pray."
"How can we pray while men labor in the very Temple?" Barak demanded.
"Pray for us, then," said Moishe a little too sweetly.
"That, we can do," Barak said with no more humor than he had ever shown.
That was the first sign of trouble. The second followed all too quickly. Moishe had managed to divert the westerners from the horror of Sabbath-breaking, then after prayer they were invited to dine with the high priest. That should be a quiet and decorous gathering, and suitably scrupulous in its observance of the Law.
He had reckoned without a pack of young would-be scholars, a day of idleness, and rather more boredom than was good for any of them. Almost he had yielded to temptation and taken his supper in his room, but that indulgence must wait for a more peaceful time. He was hungry, he discovered, even under the cold eye of the westerner who sat nearest—not one of those who had been exploring the temple, but by now they had all heard of his offense in the face of the Lord.
He had just finished a quite delectable dish of cold roast fowl and reached for his bowl of noodles when something small and fast burst through the door to the kitchens. Several larger figures ran in hot pursuit. The quarry was silent except for an occasional grunt, but the pursuers were squealing as if they and not the pursued were the pigs.
Prince Subotai led the pack. The piglet led them a wild chase, darting under tables, veering around legs, then in a feat truly remarkable for a pig, hurdled a portly westerner, caromed off the elder beside him, and skidded down the table in a spray of food, drink, and shattered crockery. It came to an abrupt halt in the lap of the chief of the embassy, and crouched there, gaping up as he gaped down. Their expressions were perfectly matched.
Moishe did not want to laugh. Nor, he was sure, did any of the other easterners who were in the hall. He succeeded—somewhat—in restraining himself, but others were not so fortunate. The hall erupted in a roar of mirth.
"Even if it had been a calf," Moishe said, "or a foal, or even a dog, there might have been some way to repair the insult. But a pig—Lord of Hosts, could anything have been worse?"
"A pig on a platter," said Chen, "with an orange in its mouth." He licked his lips. "Gods! That makes me hungry. I don't suppose . . ."
"The pig's sentence is exile, not death." Moishe sighed deeply and knotted his fingers before they went back to tearing out his hair. "No, I won't let you eat him! He's unclean. Which is why—"
"He's as clean as a pig gets," Chen said. "The boys' servant has been looking after him. He bathes more often than the boys do, and eats better, too. What do you call that? Kosher—he's a kosher pig."
Moishe aimed a cuff at him, which he eluded with laughing ease. "He's a pig, pagan. That's all our honored guests can see. He defiled the Sabbath table—not to mention the Sabbath itself, and the Temple in which he was kept."
"How rigid," said Chen.
"Wars have begun for less."
"So they have," Chen said. "There's been no sign of the army we've been hearing of. No more bandits strung up by the road. Even the rumors have vanished into the earth."
Moishe shook himself. He rubbed his cheeks, then slapped them, in some small hope of bringing his mind back to order. This was what he had wanted to hear. Surely it was. His fears had been imaginary. The only threat he need face was the threat of disapproval from the Jews of the Diaspora, and God knew, that had already come to pass.
Chen watched him with a distinct edge of mockery. Moishe stared back hard and said, "If a signal has gone out, no one here has observed it."
"Certainly no one has," Chen said.
"Including you."
"Including me." For once, and abruptly, Chen was almost grim. "I can find anything anywhere. But these hundreds or thousands of men . . . I can't find them at all."
"So Ogadai is right," said Moishe. "They don't exist."
"They exist," Chen said. "Believe that. There isn't a bandit alive or raiding within nine days' journey of Chengdu. That's their doing. Now they've gone to ground."
"I don't think—" Moishe began.
"Do think," said Chen. "Forget pigs. There's an army out there. I'll wager it's coming here."
"I don't know if I can take your side of that wager," Moishe said in odd mixture of reluctance and relief. "Every sign points to this being an innocent caravan of priests and scholars. Some of them are more martial than one might expect, but that makes sense for a journey so long through so many wild countries. They'd want strong men to protect their scholars."
"The old Khan used to say," said Chen, "that no fort ever lost a war by overdoing its defenses."
"No small number of servants have lost their positions—and sometimes their heads—by crying danger when none exists."
"There is danger," Chen said stubbornly. "I trust my sources. You used to trust me."
"I still do," Moishe said. "But—"
"Don't give me 'but.' There's trouble brewing. I have as fine a nose for that as any spy in the Khan's service. That trouble is connected with your guests, and it's coming soon."
"They are looking for a fight," Moishe granted him. "We're managing rather handily to give them one."
"Why not?" said Chen. "Maybe a good fight is what we all need. It will clear the air."
Moishe glowered but did not try to cuff him again. Chen's impudence had a method in it, and Moishe had done well before to forget the annoyance and focus on the kernel of good sense. Chen was wise in his way. He could see, sometimes, what no one else could. And he had never yet, to Moishe's knowledge, seen what absolutely was not there.
"When your ancestors were worshipping stones in the desert," said the Rabbi of Huashan, "ours were a noble and cultured people."
"We are the chosen of God," said the Rebbe of Prague. "You are converts—and however old your country, your dedication to the truth is only as old as the barbarian who conquered you."
If these had been fighting men, they would have settled matters with swords. Since they were scholars, they slashed at each other with words. It had begun as a debate regarding certain finer points of the Talmud, until the Chinese rabbi had offered the possibility that his own ancient language might be better suited to such rarefied matters. The rebbe would hear no such thing.
"The Lord God set forth His Covenant in Hebrew," he said, "and in Hebrew it shall remain."
The rabbi sniffed in aristocratic disdain. "He matched His words, with some difficulty, to the limited tongue of a provincial people. It speaks well of His kindness and His supernal mercy."
"And where was Ch'in," the rebbe demanded, "when the Lord was forming His Covenant? Why did it come so late to His Word—and then at the hands of a barbarian invader?"
"He planted us like a seed in the rich earth of the Middle Kingdom," said the rabbi, "and when we were ready to bear fruit, He gave us His Word."
"A twisted and distorted Word in an outlandish tongue."
"That might be said," said the rabbi silkily, "of the Word as it was given to us."
Even his disciples gasped at that. The rebbe's followers surged to their feet. There might be no weapons in the hall of disputation, but fists and feet would do well enough—as many a tavern keeper could testify.
A battlefield bellow froze them all where they stood. Moishe, running toward the sound of battle brewing, recognized the voice when it spoke more softly, although it still echoed down the corridor. Moishe halted in the doorway and looked across the makings of a brawl to the men who stood above it. Barak had mounted one of the benches that ringed the room; with his height and bulk, that was enough. He raked his glare across the lot of them. "Sirs! Honored masters. This is a place of peace. Will you make it a house of war?"
Some of them most certainly would, but the sight of him cowed them into silence. "I think," he said with terrible gentleness, "that this discussion is over. We'll rest now, yes? And ponder the uses of restraint."
He had the gift of command. The brawl broke into a few dozen sullen men, going their separate ways under his stern eye. There would be no fighting today, though what might happen later, only God knew.
Moishe was drawn to approach him, though what he would say, or what would be safe to say, he hardly knew. But when he reached the place where Barak had been, the man was gone. Moishe found him after a long moment, wrapped in relative anonymity again, slipping out a side door.
It was too late to follow, and Moishe's wits had caught up with his impulses. He slipped away as Barak had, but in the opposite direction. It truly was best if only one of them knew what the other was.
The molds were made, the gold brought to the proper temperature and poured in a molten stream. Now the smiths were ready to unmold the newest and most splendid of the Temple's ornaments: golden lotus blossoms that would crown the gold-sheathed pillars of the sixth court.
In his preoccupation with the westerners both all too real and as yet all too imaginary, Moishe had barely noticed the passage of time. The fifth court, to his surprise, was nearly done. The sixth was rising with gratifying speed. The masters of the Diaspora were increasingly less pleased with the Temple and its builders, but the Lord, it seemed, did not share their opinion.
Work under the western wall was not going so well, but it was progressing. None of those involved had seen fit to inform the guests of that particular portion of the Temple's building. It was a tactical decision, made before Moishe could offer his own suspicions. An enemy who knew of the caverns and of the weakness that they represented could bring down the Temple.
Such summer heat as Chengdu knew had descended, and with it an influx of idlers and pilgrims from the lower plains. To them this heat was blissfully cool. They filled the city and crowded the Temple, gaping at its wonders.
The city's market had in past years shown a tendency to spill over into the first court of the Temple. The priests allowed it because the merchants paid a portion of their profits into the Temple's coffers. It was a useful arrangement, permitted by the Khan, whose treasury took its share of the profits as well.
In that crowd of gawkers and pilgrims, it was a great deal more difficult than it had been to keep watch over the westerners. The guards were in more difficulty than the watchers and spies—they were more obvious and therefore easier to elude.
The westerners, of course, were not even slightly amused by the sight of commerce in the Temple—and never mind that both the First and Second Temples had been markets in their day. This was a more righteous age, said the Rebbe of Prague. When by the Lord's will there was a Third Temple in Jerusalem—for he would not grant that this was the Third Temple itself—its courts would never suffer such an outrage.
He said this to Abraham Han Li, who so far had managed to leave these troublesome guests in Moishe's care. But there was no escaping the occasional press of duty. He had refused the Rebbe's invitation to dinner seven times already—Moishe had kept count.
"Accept once," Moishe said, "and the duty is done. I'll make sure you won't be asked again."
"Swear to that by the honor of your ancestral clan," said Abraham Han Li, "and I may—may—consider it."
"Agree to it, master," Moishe said, "and you won't have to look at them again until we celebrate the eve of their departure."
"May that be soon," growled the chief architect. "Very well. I'll waste an evening that could better be spent building the Temple, and you will waste it with me."
Moishe suppressed a sigh. Duty was duty, as he had reminded his master. Abraham Han Li would suffer duly for it: he would have to hear from his host that his entire great work and devotion to the Lord was a false construction, the child of a delusion.
He maintained a remarkable degree of calm in the circumstances. Moishe was proud of him.
"Tisha B'Av," said Barak.
Moishe had been seated beside him, an arrangement to which he would have objected strenuously if he had been on his guard. A place well down the table, among the least of the rabbinical students, would have suited him much better. But this was the westerners' banquet. They had seated him near the head of the table, between Barak and the assistant to the Rebbe of Prague.
It was a banquet in the western style. Its dishes were heavy and strange, its spices familiar but oddly combined. Guests were expected to bring a knife and a spoon to the table. There were no chopsticks; nothing so civilized. Moishe overheard one of the younger Chinese rabbis murmur to another, "Knives at the table—barbaric! I wonder how many banquets end in bloodshed?"
Thank the Lord, none of the westerners seemed to understand the dialect of southern Hunan. In any case they had their own obsession, and it had nothing to do with food or the eating of it.
"Tisha B'Av," Barak said. "It's nearly upon us. Do you observe the rite?"
His expression was bland, his tone courteous. Moishe was careful to respond in kind. "Certainly we mourn the sorrows of the people, and the downfall of the First and Second Temples, each on the same day of the same month, half a thousand years apart. Is there any Jew in the world who does not?"
"I had wondered," Barak said, apparently unoffended to be lectured like a child. "So much else is . . . different."
"It's the same God," Moishe said, "and the same Books of the Law. Interpretations will vary even within the schools of the west—is that not what the Talmud is? Sacred argument that goes on for years, centuries—voices out of time, offering opinions and counteropinions. Ours is a lively faith, honored sir, and very much alive. And living things grow. They change."
"Not all change is desirable," said Barak. "Some in the west would say that the Christians are a radical sect of our own faith. We disagree. The Messiah has not come—though wars have been fought in his name, and nations have risen to oppress us because we refuse to accept their falsehood."
"Christians are harmless eccentrics in our part of the world," Moishe said. "We had one here not long ago, calling us heretics and condemning us for building a temple to an outmoded God. Our rabbis demolished his arguments. He ended the day a convert. You may have seen him in the newest court. He has a divine gift for working stone."
"Ours are seldom so easily persuaded," Barak said with little pleasure. "The sad truth of the matter is, they rule the world."
"Not our world," Moishe said. "And not yours, either—not for long. Our Khan has taken his Horde westward, and where the Horde goes, so does the Covenant. Your Christians will fall. You'll take back Jerusalem then, if you want it; the Khan has said so."
Barak's lips tightened. "We spoke with him," he said, "east of Poland. He was gracious." And that was not easy for him to admit. "He told us what he meant to do. Some of us were deeply gratified."
"But not you."
"Outside of the Lord's Word," Barak said, "I believe only what I see."
"Ah," said Moishe, and only that. He knew what Barak had been seeing in Chengdu, and had a fair sense of what he thought of it. He took care to shift the conversation to less dangerous topics: the quality of the bread, the flavor of the western wine.
It was, all in all, not the most pleasant banquet that Moishe had attended, but it was useful. Somewhat to his surprise, Abraham Han Li concurred. The chief architect was singularly dedicated to his art, but if he was forced to participate in mere human diversions, he could be surprisingly and piercingly astute.
"Tisha B'Av," he said. "They were making particular reference to that. Almost as if we were being taunted—or warned."
"The day on which both Temples fell—twice," Moishe said. A chill walked down his spine. "You don't think—"
"It's not my duty to think," Abraham Han Li said, "of anything but raising this Temple within the time allotted by God and the Khan."
That was manifestly true. Moishe bowed to it, and the man. "Master, Tisha B'Av is only half a month away. They're visibly hostile. What if they're plotting something? What if—"
"There is no army descending on us," said Abraham Han Li. He met Moishe's start of shock with a sardonic arch of the brow. "What, you thought I didn't know about that? I had a visit from the commander of the city garrison. He wanted me to know that he meant no disrespect to the son of the Red Wolf khan, and certainly none to my second in command, but what did I think of this obsession of yours? That forced me to depart from duty for a not particularly pleasant hour."
"And you concluded that I've far overstepped my bounds, that I've troubled a lord commander for nothing, and that—"
"Yes," said Abraham Han Li. "But I also reflected that you were never a man to start at shadows. If you see something, there must be a cause for it. Our guests are certainly not friendly. There are a hundred of them, most young, strong, and rather obviously of fighting age. They're inside the Temple, and by now have prowled over every part of it that we've let them into. I don't doubt they've found a portion or two that we would prefer they not see. If I were anything but an architect, and if I were a suspicious man, I might wonder if they were up to something."
Moishe regarded him in newfound respect. "I should have spoken to you first. Master, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
"You didn't want to trouble me," the chief architect said. "Nor did you. The lord commander and the westerners disrupt my work to no end. I can't give you troops, they're not mine to give, but if you're inclined to keep our guests thoroughly out of my way, you may do that."
"Imprison them?" said Moishe. "That's tempting—dear God, yes. But we can't do that. They're guests. We have honor, whatever they may be lacking."
"Certainly we do," said the chief architect. "Keep them out of my way. Deal with any of them who tries to start a war. That's simple enough, and within your authority."
Moishe bowed. Abraham Han Li had already forgotten him: he was deep the roll of plans that had been in front of him when Moishe answered his summons.
Moishe had thinking to do. He left his master to his work, and went to do it.
It was not easy to be given what he had thought he wanted. He could act now. But how? What could he do that any number of people in the Temple had not already done? He could send the westerners away—but that would not solve anything.
In the end he made a choice, the most difficult he could have made. He chose to let be. To wait and watch. To do nothing.
The westerners seemed also to have decided that quiet was preferable to a brawl. They curbed their disapproval and refrained from provoking arguments. They also, and this Moishe made sure of, did not explore the Temple outside of those halls and courts which were both finished and safe.
Three days before Tisha B'Av, Chen was waiting in Moishe's cupboard of a room when he came late to sleep. That was unusual. Chen visited Moishe in his workroom or found him in the Temple in daylight; he never came in the middle of the night.
His impudence was untarnished. His greeting came out of the dark, startling Moishe almost into dropping the lamp he carried. "I see someone is suspicious," Chen said. "There's a guard on every rathole."
"My master noticed that too many of our guests are of fighting age and fighting fit," Moishe said as his heart slowed its hammering. He set the lamp in its niche. In the soft steady light, he saw Chen sitting on the end of his bed. He sat on the other end, yawned and stretched and said, "I hope I'll be able to sleep tonight."
"Tonight, yes," Chen said. "Maybe tomorrow. The night after . . . probably not."
"You found them?"
The answer was in Chen's eyes before he said the word. "Yes. They've been in the mountains. They're coming down, traveling by night. They're devilishly good at hiding—they've ridden right under the noses of the Khan's patrols."
"How many?"
"There's only one of me, and they're spread across a lot of country. I think maybe . . . half a thousand."
"Half a thousand? That many? How in God's name—"
"There may be more. We've seen caravans considerably bigger." Chen paused. "How sure are you that they don't know about the caverns?"
"Not sure at all," Moishe said grimly.
"I think you should let slip that they exist," Chen said.
Moishe opened his mouth to object, but for once his mind was working almost as fast as Chen's. "My master will howl."
"Which would you rather do? Lose the Temple or save the greater part of it?"
"I can't do this alone," Moishe said. "Neither can you. We need help. How well do you know the Lord Ogadai?"
"Well enough to cheer him in a procession," Chen said. "Should we be as close as brothers?"
"Find him now," Moishe said. "Bring him to my master's workroom. Make sure no one sees you."
Chen grinned. "You don't want me to have an easy night, do you?"
"When I have one, so shall you," said Moishe.
Chen was already gone. Moishe sagged where he sat. He was truly, deeply tired. He had been up since before dawn, doing things that had nothing to do with the westerners.
If he was not to sleep tonight, then so be it. He pulled himself to his feet and drew a deep breath, and went to lure the dragon out of his lair.
Abraham Han Li was awake, dressed, and scowling at the plan of the ninth court. He greeted Moishe completely without surprise. "We've done pillars of gold and pillars of marble and pillars of porphyry. We've studded them with jewels and inlaid them with fired glass and precious enamels. For the Holy of Holies, we need something else, but God help me, I can't imagine what it could be."
"Simplicity," Moishe said without stopping to think.
"Simplicity," said Abraham Han Li. His scowl deepened. "Simple—simple stone—something very pure, very clean: alabaster, or a veinless marble—everything as white as the clouds of heaven . . . yes . . . ah! Yes!" He bent over the plans, sketching feverishly.
"Master," Moishe said. Then louder. "Master!"
He had done it soon enough. Abraham Han Li looked up, more puzzled than, as yet, annoyed. "Master," Moishe said quickly, before he could fall back into the trance of creation again, "can it wait? Lord Ogadai's coming to your workroom. The rumor even I had stopped believing—it's true. There is an army of westerners. They're coming here and they're coming by night."
The chief architect sighed gustily. "You think they'll try to slip in unnoticed. You need me to tell you where."
"We need you to tell us how we can lure them to a particular place."
"Ah," said Abraham Han Li. He reached toward the rack of scrolls beside his bed and drew out one, then after a moment's hesitation, a second. He tucked them under his arm. "Lead," he said.
They did not wait long before they heard the soft scraping at the door. Moishe opened it carefully. Chen slipped through it, then the larger, bulkier shape of the lord commander. Ogadai, like the chief architect, was awake, alert, and looked as if he had not been asleep when Chen found him. Somewhat surprising, but most welcome, was the one who came in last: Buri the engineer, brightest-eyed of any, and visibly curious.
Chen looked like a cat in cream. Moishe would praise him for his initiative—later, when there was time for such amenities.
Abraham Han Li looked up from the plans that he had been examining, blinking at the newcomers. "This is where you want to go," he said, pointing with a long-nailed finger, "and this is where you should begin."
Ogadai leaned over his shoulder, with Buri close behind. Moishe had already seen; he had no arguments, though he had no few doubts. He had been living with them for too long; he could not believe that he was right after all.
Ogadai looked long at the course that Abraham Han Li showed him. Then he grunted. "We can't match their numbers—too much chance of giving the game away. It will have to be an ambush."
"Then you need to go here," said Buri, glancing at Abraham Han Li for permission. A glance granted it. Buri pointed to a slightly different place than the architect had.
"But," Moishe said, "that's—"
His master's cold eye quelled the rest of it. "Yes, it is. It makes a great deal of sense—though it tears my liver to say so." He turned to Ogadai. "You'll need to get your troops in place soon, and as secretly as you can."
"They'll be in by morning," said Ogadai, "if you'll give us a guide who knows the ways."
Moishe did not wait for them to turn to him. He said, "I'll go. I can still shoot—I hunt when I can. Can you spare me a bow and a quiver?"
Ogadai bent his head. "We'll get you a mail-coat, too. Best you come with me. I may need you to make this clear to the men."
"I'll go with you when you do it," Buri said: "I built some of those ways. But I need to run another errand first. Swear you'll wait for me."
"We'll wait," Ogadai said before Moishe could take it on himself.
"Go," Abraham Han Li said. "All of you. What I have to do here, I can do myself."
For once Moishe did as he was told. No one knew better how little time there was to waste.
The caverns were the same by night as by day—perpetual darkness, and no light but what men brought into it. The shifts of workers were gone; they had finished shoring this weakest part and gone on to another, more distant and less vulnerable. Part of Buri's errand had been to see to it that none of them came back to explore or investigate. They were well and safely out of the way.
Moishe shifted in his coat of borrowed mail. It had been too long since he wore such a thing; it was heavy, dragging at his shoulders. On either side of him, Ogadai's picked men waited with soldiers' patience. Every second man was asleep, watched over by the man on his right hand. When this watch was over, the sleepers would wake and the watchers sleep. And if the enemy came—if it was not a delusion—they would all be up, wide awake, and ready to fight.
Ogadai was on Moishe's left hand, a breathing warmth in the gloom. There were lamps in the cavern, spaced far apart, to guide workmen in and out. They were not enough to read by and they cast deep shadows, but they struck random parts of the cave into sharp relief. From where Moishe sat, he could see the liquid flow of a column and the rough wood of the brace beside it, holding up that portion of the roof. Beyond it was the dark gleam of the underground river.
Ogadai's men were invisible in the shadows, spread with care around the inner edge of the cavern. Moishe had a sudden craving for open air—to be with Chen and another, smaller company, luring the invaders toward this place, or even to be with Buri and a certain very important company at the other end of the great cavern. But he had to be here; he was the soldiers' guide.
Chen would bring them. If, as Ogadai suspected, they were relying on someone from inside the Temple for guidance, Chen would discover who it was. He would make sure that they came here rather than through one of a number of more obvious but less useful entrances.
It was difficult to wait. The gloom was oppressive. One of the men nearest Moishe seemed to have been overindulging in either onions or garlic or both. Moishe was light-headed from trying not to breathe the stink.
Without sun or stars, there was no way to tell the passage of time. Counting breaths grew tedious. Ogadai's lieutenant had an hourglass, which he guarded jealously. By it they reckoned the turn of the watches.
Ogadai had waked twice and Moishe pretended to sleep twice. Shortly after Moishe's second waking, something set his hackles to bristling. He had felt it before he heard it: the softest possible scrape and a muted, barely perceptible thud.
Ogadai had not moved, but his eyes were open, glittering in the faint lamplight.
Very, very softly, he rose. Others followed suit, perceptible as shifts in the air. Moishe had his bow in his hand and strung, with no memory of having done it.
Barak led them—of course. He had shed his pretense of scholarly mildness and showed himself here for what he was: a soldier and commander, keen and deadly strong. Chen at first was nowhere to be seen—then Moishe saw the small bound figure stumbling between two tall westerners. He was alive and moving; that had to be enough, for the moment.
It had been a long while since Moishe went to battle. It was almost alarming to realize how well he remembered everything: the piercing alertness, the narrow border between terror and exaltation, the slowing of time to an endless, leisurely moment.
The invaders kept close ranks as they entered the cavern. They had scouts somewhat ahead, and a rearguard somewhat behind. The bulk of them moved as one, silent and sharply alert. But they had not marked the men now behind them in the darkness, nor seemed aware of any ahead.
All of the invaders were in the cavern before Ogadai gave the signal: a click of the tongue that sounded as loud as a shout in the silence. Well before the echoes died, Moishe had nocked arrow to string and loosed, just as the rest of the archers did the same. Hard on the hail of arrow-fire came a rank of men shrilling war-cries, swarming down from the niches and galleries upon the enemy.
A hand tugged at Moishe's sleeve. He loosed one last arrow into the gloom, slung the bow and scrambled behind the rest of the archers. He could not look back for fear he would fall, but he knew the plan as well as anyone could. The spearmen and swordsmen were driving the enemy into the center of the cavern, covering for the archers' retreat and the other, much more deadly activity near the entrance.
Moishe stopped short. There was no one behind him, to crash into him—and that was fortunate. He slipped and slid and scrambled down to the cave's floor, in among the fighting, with nothing but a bow, an empty quiver, and a knife meant originally to cut meat and leather on the march.
He was not thinking at all. He knew where Chen was—not too far from the front, and still surrounded by guards. They were big even for westerners. He darted in among them. They were slow and clumsy in his state of heightened awareness; he eluded them with effortless ease. He caught hold of the rope that bound Chen.
Someone moved in among the guards, as big as they but as quick as Moishe. He looked into Barak's eyes. They were calmly alert, and they knew him for exactly what he was.
Chen was on his feet and conscious, but Moishe was past caring. He heaved his friend onto his shoulder, groaning as his knees buckled with the weight.
Barak was closing in. Moishe had no words in him for prayer. He set his teeth and lurched into a run. Bodies caromed off him. He fell to one knee, poised for an interminable moment with the awareness of the man descending on him with drawn sword, and heaved himself up again. Almost—almost there. Almost—
Something large and heavy collided with him, wrenching Chen out of his arms. An instant later, he whirled through the air, coming to a bruising halt on top of something that cursed in gutter Chinese.
He stopped battering at his captor and lay as quietly as he could. It was one of Ogadai's men—and another had Chen. The motionless dark thing on the cave floor might be Barak, or might not; the glisten of wetness under its head might be water from the river that flowed perilously close, or might be blood. It was one of the things he might never know, not on this side of death.
His thoughts spun away in a whirl of speed. His rescuer had leaped into a flat run, bolting toward the far end of the cave.
The world shattered in a blast of terrible sound. Trumpets at Jericho. Thunderbolts in Gomorrah. Sea falling on Pharaoh's chariots, a roaring that went on and on, drowning out the shrieks and cries of the dying.
The silence was immense. There was light: daylight slanting down a steep passage. Slowly Moishe's rattled wits scraped themselves together.
Ogadai's man set him down with a grunt of relief. It sounded faint and tinny through the ringing in Moishe's ears. He reeled about, peering back the way he had come.
There was nothing to see but dust and rubble. The paving still rocked underfoot, gently, as the earth settled.
The cavern was gone. So were five hundred western fighting men who had come all the way from unpronounceable places to take the Temple of the Lord by stealth, and Barak of York, who had led them unwittingly into the trap.
With an effort Moishe steadied his legs under him and made himself focus on the men about him. They all seemed to be there, which was a miracle. God willing, those on the other side, the sappers and miners with their barrels of blasting powder, and especially Buri who had been in command of them, had come out intact as well.
He nodded to Ogadai, who nodded back, and to Chen, who regaled him with a broken-toothed grin. Arm in arm, holding one another up, they ascended to the Temple.
Ephraim of York was not exactly a broken man, but he was considerably less arrogant than he had been before. He stood with Abraham Han Li and Moishe, Chen and Buri and Ogadai, on the edge of what remained of the western wall, and looked down into the pit that was his kinsmen's grave. His cheeks were wet with tears. "The Lord has made His will known," he said heavily, "and my people have paid the price for it."
"They were good men," Ogadai said. "They fought well."
"They were the best we had," Ephraim said.
Indeed, thought Moishe. There would not be another like Barak again, not in this generation.
Chen's mind ran along much the same path. "Your men fought well, no doubt of that," he said, "but for what? How long did you think you could hold this place against the massed power of the Horde?"
"We had thought," said Ephraim, "that the Lord would provide, and that you would come to see the error of your doctrine. Then we would have the Temple, and you as hostages, and your Khan would be forced to accept us as his priests. Some of us indeed hoped that he would be persuaded to give up this labor here and take Jerusalem. Then there would be a Third Temple in living truth, and our faith would rule the world."
"That could still happen," Moishe said.
"But not for any of our doing." Ephraim shook his head, swaying a little as if in prayer. "Strange are the ways of the Lord, and incalculable His will. We will leave as soon as we may, and warn our kinsmen to attempt nothing of this sort again. Whether we can ever agree on doctrine—"
"Please," said Moishe. It was not what he had planned to say, and certainly it was not his place, but he had to say it. "Please stay for at least a while. We don't have to be enemies—and you don't have to be defeated. Surely we can find some common ground, and be allies if not friends. We worship the same God. We pray, for the most part, for the same things. Will you at least consider a compromise?
Ephraim seemed surprised, but he did not rebuke Moishe for speaking out of turn. Nor, and that was more to the point, did Abraham Han Li. The western rabbi said, "I don't think we have a choice. Do we? We're your prisoners. We have to do whatever you ask of us."
"You are not prisoners," Moishe said. "You can go if you insist. But I wish that you would stay. Are you so eager to go back to subjection under the followers of upstart prophets?"
"It is home," said Ephraim. "But . . . we will stay. For a while. This is the Lord's house, as unwilling as we may be to admit it. We will mourn our dead and make amends as we can. The rest is in the Lord's hands."
No one seemed inclined to take this out of Moishe's hands. His master and the Khan's general and his friends the engineer and the spy, and even the priests who had come to see what they were doing, all stood watching. None of them protested that he was getting above himself.
He bowed therefore and said, "Be welcome here, and be comforted. If you will, you can help us rebuild this wall yet again, for the honor of the men who died below."
Abraham Han Li nodded approval. Buri shrugged—he knew who would do the actual work, after all. Ogadai grunted. It was Chen, perched on a broken corbel, who said what they were all thinking. "Now that will take a miracle."
"Another one?" said Moishe. He thrust up his sleeves. "Well then, we'd better begin. We've a Temple to finish, and precious little time to do it in. Are you with me?"
"I am," Ephraim said, somewhat surprisingly even yet. But he did seem to mean it: his eyes were steady, his voice firm.
That would do, Moishe thought. Some might even count it among the day's miracles. When he went down to see what could be done about the damage, they were all with him, even Ephraim. They would find ways to work together, one way and another. In the end, who knew? They might even agree to worship their God together.