Page:Harold Lamb--Marching Sands.djvu/301

 her. It was for this that the Kha Rakcha was sent. She will return to a king who is greater than the Manchu emperor once was."

The Gur-Khan shook his head shrewdly.

"What power is greater than the Dragon Empire? What other people are there than the Mongols, the Kirghiz and the Buddhists priests?"

"Beyond the desert is a sea, and beyond the sea are those whose blood was once yours. We will take our message to them and they will know of the Wusun."

Timur limped forward to the Gur-Khan's side.

"A thought has come to me, O Khan of the Wusun," he said slowly. "It is a high thought and an omen. It is that this man and woman will return whence they have come, with speech of what they saw in Sungan. It is written in the book of fate that this shall be. Why else did the white man overcome Gela?"

He turned to Gray, with a moody smile on his lined face.

"Your people, O Man-from-the-Outside, will not find the Wusun, if they send again. That is my thought. The sun passes from the heavens and it is night; the camel leaves his bones to dry in the sands. So will the Wusun pass from Mongolia.The priests of Buddha are powerful. Soon the sands will climb over the walls of Sungan."