At the massif’s broad summit there were many small ridges and folds, littered by shattered pebbles, as if many time slices had crisscrossed. But a cairn stood here, a heap of stones that had somehow survived the time shocks. As the army passed each man added a pebble or rock to the cairn. Kolya saw that by the time they had all gone by it would be a mighty mound.

They descended at last to the steppe. The massif receded over the horizon, leaving nothing but flatness, and they walked across a treeless plain where the long grass rippled around the horses like parting water. As the world opened up around him, the immense scale of central Asia at last diminishing even Genghis Khan and his ambitions, Kolya felt a huge relief.

But they encountered no people. In this huge place there could sometimes be seen the circular shadows of yurts, the scars of fires, the ghosts of small villages packed up and moved on to another pasture. The steppe was timeless, people always lived here much the same way, and these scars could have been made by Huns, Mongols or even Soviet-era Communists—and those who left these shadows might have walked across the plain and into another time entirely. Maybe, Kolya thought, when the last shreds of civilization wore away, when the Earth was forgotten and nothing was left but Mir, they would all become nomads, drawn into this great pit of human destiny.

But no people. Sometimes Genghis would send out search parties, but nobody was found.

Then, lost in the middle of the steppe, the scouts unexpectedly came upon a temple.

A party was sent ahead to investigate. Yeh-lü included Kolya and Sable, hoping that their perspective might be of use.

The temple was a small, boxlike building with tall doors, ornately carved and decorated with lion-head knockers. Out front was a porch framed by lacquered pillars, and the beams at the top were decorated by gold skulls. Kolya, Sable and some of the Mongols stepped cautiously inside. On low tables manuscript rolls had been set out amid the debris of a meal. The walls were wooden, the air full of strong incense, and the feeling of enclosure was powerful.

Kolya found himself whispering. “Buddhists, you think?”

Sable had no qualms about raising her voice. “Yes. And at least some of them are still around. No telling when this place is from. Buddhists are as timeless as nomads.”

“Not quite,” Kolya said grimly. “The Soviets tried to purge Mongolia of the temples. This place must predate the twentieth century …”

Two figures came shuffling forward from the shadows at the back of the temple. The Mongol soldiers drew their daggers, to be stopped by a sharp word from Yeh-lü’s advisor.

At first Kolya thought they were two children, they seemed so similar in size and build. But as they came into the light he saw that one of them was indeed a child, but the other an old man. The old one, evidently a lama, wore a red satin robe and slippers, and he carried a string of amber prayer beads. He was astonishingly thin, his wrists protruding from his sleeves like the bones of a bird. The child was a boy, no older than ten, as tall as the old one, and nearly as skinny. He wore some kind of red robe too—but on his feet were sneakers, Kolya noted with a start. The lama had one skinny arm wrapped around the boy, but the lama was so frail his weight could have been no burden even to a child.

The lama grinned, showing an almost toothless mouth, and began to speak in a rustling voice. The Mongols tried to reply, but it was soon obvious there was no point of contact.

Kolya whispered to Sable, “Look at the boy’s shoes. Maybe this place is more recent than we think.”

Sable grunted. “The shoes are recent. Proves nothing. If these two have been left alone here, the kid must have been out foraging …”

“The lama’s so old,” Kolya whispered. So he was: his skin looked paper-thin and, stained by age, hung in gentle folds from his bones, and his eyes were a blue so pale they almost seemed transparent. It was as if he had sublimated with age, his substance just evaporated away.

“Yeah,” said Sable. “Ninety if he’s a day. But— look at the two of them, Kol. Put aside the age gap. Look at their eyes, the bone structure, the chin …”

Kolya stared, wishing the light were brighter. The shape of the boy’s skull was hidden by a mop of black hair, but his face, his pale blue eyes—“They look alike.”

“So they do,” Sable said dryly. “Kolya, when you come to a place like this, it’s for life. You arrive as a cadet at eight or nine, you stay here and chant and pray, and you’re still at it when you’re ninety, if you live that long.”

“Sable—”

“ These two are one: the same man, the youthful cadet, the aged lama, brought together by faults in time. And the boy knows that when he grows old, he will one day see his own younger self come walking across the steppe.” She grinned. “They don’t seem fazed, do they? Maybe Buddhist philosophy doesn’t have to be stretched too far to accommodate what’s happened. It’s just a circle closing, after all …”

The Mongol soldiers searched desultorily for plunder, but there was nothing to be had save for a few scraps of food, and the petty treasures of worship: prayer-wheels, sacred texts. The Mongols made to kill the monks. They prepared for this without emotion, just a matter of routine; killing was what they did. Kolya plucked up his courage and interceded with Yeh-lü’s advisor to stop this.

They left the temple to its paradoxical slumber, and the army moved on.

27. The Fish-Eaters

After three weeks of the journey along the coast of the Gulf, Eumenes let the moderns know that the scouts had found an inhabited village.

Driven by curiosity and a need for a break from the sea, Bisesa, Abdikadir, Josh, Ruddy and a small squad of British soldiers under Corporal Batson joined an advance party at the head of the sprawling train that Alexander’s army had become. All the moderns were discreetly equipped with firearms. As they disembarked, Casey, his leg still weak, watched from the boat with envy.

It was a day’s walk to the village, and it was a tough slog. Though Ruddy was the first to grumble, they were all soon suffering. If they walked too close to the shore there was nothing but salt and stony ground where nothing grew, but if they went inland, they hit sand dunes over which the going would have been tough even without the rain. There was always a danger of flash floods, as water came pouring down overloaded courses. And when the rain stopped falling, the horseflies would rise up like clouds.

Snakes were a constant hazard. None of the moderns was able to recognize the varieties they encountered here—but as they might have been drawn from a line of descent that spanned two million years or more, perhaps that wasn’t surprising.

Bisesa glared at the unmoving Eyes, effortlessly placed over the most difficult country, which watched her petty struggles as she passed.

At the end of the day the party came to the village. With the Macedonian soldiers, Bisesa and the others crept up the crest of a bluff to see. Close to the shore, it was a poor-looking place. Round-shouldered huts sat squat on the stony ground. A few scrawny sheep grazed the scrubby grass behind the village.

The natives weren’t prepossessing. Adults and children alike had long, matted, filthy hair, and the men trailed beards. Their main source of nourishment was fish, which they caught by wading into the water and casting nets made of palm bark. They went about their business dressed crudely in what looked like the treated skin of fish, or maybe even whale.

Ruddy said, “They are clearly human. But they are Stone Age.”

De Morgan said, “But they may have come from a time not much before now—I mean, Alexander’s era. One of the Macedonians has seen people like this before; he calls them Fish-Eaters.”