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Demon-Maamo peered uphill. In darkness his eyesight was more penetrating than
a human s, though in daylight its resolution was no better, if as good. The
hint of dawn in the sky had scarcely influenced visibility, but he could see
the gomba plainly enough, up the moderate slope across night-shadowed gardens.
The broad graveled path he walked curved, and would come little nearer to it
than it was then.
He spoke, and the other ogres stopped the two horses. Demon-Maamo stepped to
one of them. With his great ogre hands, he grasped the blind man and lifted
him from the saddle, then hoisted him across one shoulder and left the gravel
path, uphill toward the temple.
He was more tired than he d realized, and the blind man was heavy. It might
have been better after all, he thought, to have stayed with the horses and
approached from above. The older human was soon puffing, and Demon-Maamo
growled an order. With a slight grunt, one of the
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other ogres picked Jampa up and carried him too. Three times they encountered
low stone walls, built for aesthetics, not defense. They lifted their long
legs over them without setting down their burdens.
At the gomba, the yeti guards on the encircling porch watched them come. When
Demon-Maamo was thirty meters away, their sergeant called firmly to him to
halt. Demon-Maamo looked at the half-drawn bows, then at the sword in the
sergeant s fist. Then, especially, he looked the sergeant in the eye. But he
did not stop till he was two strides from the steps.
 The emperor is threatened by the monks! he said quietly.  I have come to
save him from them.
 The emperor says you are not allowed to enter this place, the sergeant
countered. His voice was not as firm now. The warrior he faced, he d grown up
with, and even as a cub had recognized him as the pack leader, so to speak.
Not long since, there d been a change in Maamo;
his dominance then had grown beyond challenge. Now it seemed he d changed
again; his dominance intensified, grown threatening.
Demon-Maamo swung the blind man off his shoulder and flopped him roughly to
the ground, then drew his sword. The ogre carrying Jampa put the older master
down on his feet. Then both of
Demon-Maamo s ogres drew their swords; though less decisively than Maamo had.
All of this felt uncanny to them, this uncertainty of duty and counter-duty,
this threatening other yeti guards with weapons.
 Would you prevent me from saving our emperor? Demon-Maamo demanded, then
started up the steps.
The sergeant gave way. The contradictions troubled him, but he was reluctant
to disbelieve Maamo; Yunnan ogres do not easily lie.
Also, his orders had been to avoid fighting
Maamo, to delay him only. The emperor s strategy, unstated, was to keep the
demon in the body and occupied until the Circle of Power had closed to him the
fabric of the Tao.
Then he d want him killed.
In two strides, Demon-Maamo was on the porch.
Behind him came the other two, one pushing the blind man ahead of him. The
other brought Jampa Lodro. Demon-Maamo thrust open the door to the hallway,
and entered. Six ogres of the night watch followed, and his own two with the
humans. Others, he sensed, were in the Sanctuary with the Circle and the
emperor. Oil lamps lit the hall. He strode down it to the far end and pushed
the door open.
Two ogres stood just inside. They made no move to stop him. The emperor stood
beside the Circle, between it and the door, with four more yeti guards arrayed
beside him. The demon sensed more than the emperor s lack of fear; he sensed
his readiness, his confidence. And while he, as Maamo, was physically
stronger, the emperor, he thought, had the Circle to help him. He, on the
other hand, was not in the place of power given him by the Great God. And to
go to it would lose him the great ogre, the physical tool he needed to destroy
the Circle.
Tenzin and the Circle sat as if alone, as if none of this was taking place.
For them there was no gomba, no sanctuary, no danger. There was only the
Field. They hadn t yet gotten it closed to the demon, nor could the work be [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]