“Is that all?” Raphael asked.
“No,” she said tersely, but after staring at him for a moment, chewing her lower lip, she relented. “Some of us are firmly rooted in the soil of our birth. Others, like myself, travel endlessly. The ones who put down roots know everything there is to know about where they live. The wanderers know less about their destination, but they know how to get from one place to another. Spots like this one are where we leave messages for each other. Some of them”—she patted her pocket—“are as simple as notes about the weather, about local warlords and who is fighting whom in the region, or about the location of caches of food and money. Others are...”
Raphael looked at the crack once more, suddenly desirous to try to squeeze past the lip of stone. Maybe without my armor...
“Come,” Cnán said, grabbing his arm, not altogether gently. “Let us return to the camp.” She tugged him. “Even if you could squeeze through,” she said softly, “you would not be able to read any of the messages.” She pulled the horsehair braid from her pocket and waggled it in front of his face. “‘There is no snow in the gap,’” she quoted. “Can you decipher these knots?”
Raphael shook his head.
“Let it remain a mystery then,” she said. “Like your gryphons.”
After dinner, by the light of a roaring fire, Benjamin laid down a large piece of cowhide and unrolled his map of the trade routes. The company clustered around the worn palimpsest, trying to make sense of the marks and letters that had been written and rewritten over many years.
“This is the Yaik,” Benjamin explained, tracing a thin line that ran along one edge of the map. “This is Saray-Jük, not far from where we had planned to meet, but wisely, you bypassed that caravanserai and came here”—his finger traced to a small triangle—“instead.”
“The middle of nowhere,” Yasper quipped.
Benjamin smiled, and dropped his finger to the closest line on the map. “We are north of the Silk Roads, and as you can see, they tend to run much farther south. There are two, primarily. One runs north along the Tien Shan Mountains, through Urumqui and Turfan, and the other runs much farther south, beyond the Taklamakan Desert. Both take you to the heart of China, which is not where you want to go.” His finger had been moving across the map as he spoke, highlighting each of the places as he mentioned them, and when he finished, he moved his finger up into a large blank spot where, seemingly at random, he spotted and tapped the map. “Karakorum, the imperial palace of ?gedei Khan, Khagan of the Mongol Empire, is here.”
The members of the company examined the map for a few minutes, silently considering the information that Benjamin had given them.
Percival cleared his throat and leaned forward, his finger gliding across the map to a point that almost seemed to summon his finger, an X that was the result of two mountain ranges coming together. “What of this place?” he asked.
Benjamin glanced at Feronantus and Cnán briefly before he answered. “It is a pass called the Zuungar Gap,” he said.
“What do you know of this gap?” Feronantus asked.
“It’s a high pass,” Benjamin said. “A long and narrow course through the mountains. If there is, indeed, not much snow, it will be an easy route.” He traced a finger along the map. “You stay on the western side of the Tien Shan until here, cut over through the gap, and you will find yourself on the edge of a place known as the Gurbantünggüt. As deserts go, it is not as bad as some, and travel across it will be fairly easy until you reach the Altai Mountains, which are not as imposing as the Tien Shan—the Celestial Mountains—but they have other dangers.” He paused to draw breath, and he glanced at Cnán, a flicker of a smile touching his lips. “Once you have crossed those mountains, you will be on the Mongolian Plateau. From there, it is only a week or so hard ride to Karakorum.”
“Is that all?” Yasper asked.
“It is a dangerous route,” Benjamin continued, “and one I would not attempt if I was not certain about the weather.”
Feronantus looked carefully at Raphael, Percival, and then Cnán, and then spoke for all of them. “I think we are,” he said.
Percival beamed, and Raphael wanted to run away from the firelight, out in the darkness around the rock, where he could berate God and no one would hear his blasphemy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tenebras in Lucem