Motherheart Dragon Priest

Chapter 6f

Our entry into Zaitun was as magnificent as that into Lin’an with the Soong officials in the fore followed by Princess Tamurlai and her escorts and then by Master Marco and myself and our contingent. The next few days were a blur of ceremonial processions and banquets, meetings and introductions for it appeared that every personage of wealth wished to press us for some advantage in the coming venture to Katithandra.

Amid all of this festivity we learnt that we would stay one month in Zaitun for our ships, and there were twenty of them, had not finished their loading of provisions and stores for our journey. Also the captains of the vessels were perplexed for the currents required to bear us on our journey had not yet made their appearance for this season.

Apparently this did not bode well for such non-appearance presaged storms of such magnitude that whole cities had been destroyed in the past. My hope was that we were well along before such calamities arose.

Word of this delay was common knowledge and our party was thus besieged by requests for meetings and discussions with seemingly every official and merchant who deemed it to his or her advantage to confer with myself or with Master Marco, be it in relationship to our venture or not. Just the act of having audience with us appeared sufficient to raise their status amongst their peers.

One special joy for me was the chance to meet with the local Christian community–the Nestorians or the Manicheans or Lydianites, they are all branches of our tree and as a Jaqubian it was my duty to minister to all of the Tree of God. I was asked to hold mass for many on each Sabbath morning and to minister to any other when I found myself able to meet with their congregation. To my delight I also met with the Sheikh of the Sufi community, the Mufti of the Islamists and the Rabbi of the Qabbalists–all of whose communities I had shared bread with before in most holy Jerusalem.

Such was my standing that I was given more respect than one could imagine from these believers in another form of the One. There were numerous Buddhist monks and Zoroastrian satraps as well as pagan Gaels, Norse and Hanseans, and of course the Aegyptians and Hindus. Most of these were more distant but showed me respect at the formal banquet on the first evening and at other meetings where I was in attendance.

It appeared to me that every ambassador from every nation that had had any contact whatsoever with Jerusalem wanted an audience with me. I was kept so busy that I had no time whatsoever to peruse the city and learn of its history. During our last week I was able to hold deep discussions with the only member of my order to have made himself known to me, Brother Arasmus. I stayed with him and his family and oft he took me to the great Zaitun library at which he secured a position due to his great literary knowledge.

There lay a most magnificent collection of texts I had no knowledge of but that he assured me was the most extant in the Soong Empire. The collection did not seem so grand as that of the imperial library of Lin’an, but then each librarian is full of praise for their own collection. Arasmus said that they ordered any text carried on any ship be donated to the library where it was copied if possible and the copy returned to its owner if time permitted. I smiled at this implementation of the Great Alexander’s own methodology for the library of Alexandria.

I was introduced to many of the librarians and I was shown around each of the collections by its respective administrator. Brother Arasmus mentioned that there were a number of the Order here in Zaitun but I was not introduced to these others for fear of attracting too much attention. The Soong had become very suspicious since their recent treaty with Qublai for his agents were everywhere and those exposed had revealed the deepest of bribery and betrayal.

Arasmus had determined that with such potential turmoil, the Order must remain secret even though its members be prominent Christian clerics, for our Order had always placed itself to be the power behind the throne and had been so since Emperor Barbarossa.