The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar

by Graham Diamond

  Sinbad looked about in trepidation and prayed. By Allah, let me find him. Let him not be lost to me now …

  “Sinbad, come quick!”

  He spun around to find Elisa calling to him frantically from the crumbled wall that Javier the mason had built only yesterday. Running, his face broken out in beads of sweat and his heart wildly beating, he kneeled down beside the girl and gasped. There was Don Giovanni, motionless amid the rubble. On the side of his head was a small gash.

  Sinbad picked him up carefully and held him in the palms of his hands. “Giovanni! Giovanni, speak to me!”

  But the frog didn’t move. Methelese ran over and put a finger to the bullfrog’s heart. There was a faint beat. “He’s still alive,” he said sourly, “but that was a bad knock in the head that he took. Any other frog would be dead.”

  Sinbad began to cry loudly. “Oh, please, my tiny friend. Don’t desert me now, not after all we’ve been through. Not when we can go home at last … ”

  And just then, Don Giovanni stirred; he opened one bulging eye, stared up at the mariner, and croaked.

  Sinbad jumped for joy. “You’re alive! Praise be to Allah! You’re alive!”

  Don Giovanni croaked again.

  Wiping away his tears, Sinbad grinned. “Come on, Giovanni. Speak to me. It’s only your friends here now. You can talk.”

  Another croak.

  “It’s all right,” implored Sinbad. “Speak! Don’t pretend!” But the frog only croaked. Sinbad looked to Methelese and the wise Greek sadly shook his head. “I don’t think he can talk to us anymore,” he said gently, putting a hand on Sinbad’s shoulder. “That knock on the head he received must have really jarred him. Now he’s just a frog again. No different than any other.”

  “Impossible!” cried Sinbad. He held the frog tightly. “Come on, Giovanni. Show him that he’s wrong. Speak to me! Speak to me, please!”

  No words came. The bullfrog gazed up at the human faces around him and watched them with apparent puzzlement.

  “Let him go, Sinbad,” advised Milo. “Let him return to a pond where he can be happy.”

  “Milo’s right,” added Methelese. “It’s no use trying to make him back into what he was … ”

  Sinbad nodded slowly; somehow he knew that his little friend would never return to him, at least not in the way he had known him before. It was strange, though; Don Giovanni, through an accidental blow, had gone back to what he had been — which was all he really wanted anyway.

  “All right,” said Sinbad at last. “We’ll take him to a pond. But not here. I’ll bring him home to Baghdad, to the pond where we first met. I think he’ll like that. There he can be happy again, seeing his friends and his family.”

  “But we’d better hurry,” said Milo, an eye to the road. Sinbad looked to see the procession of knights almost upon them. Father Augusto ran from the church and hurriedly escorted them to the last skiff waiting at the quay. Sinbad and the others jumped in barely in time, for no sooner had the oars been lifted and dropped into water than El Cid himself, upon a magnificent white charger, came sweeping into Pansa.

  “Good-bye, Sinbad,” called Maria Victoria from the bell tower. And Sinbad stood up and waved, fondly recalling the youngest of the de Leon sisters, who had found him that day on the beach.

  “Good-bye, Victoria,” he called. Beside her came Vanessa, also waving. Then Elisa, crying and laughing, waving a silk scarf. “Good-bye to you all; I shall always think of you.” With Father Augusto standing alone on the quay, a tear in his own eyes, Sinbad’s boat reached the waiting rope ladder of the Scheherazade.

  Into the sunset sailed the four ships. Once out of the harbor, King Harald’s long ships turned south and headed for the Pillars of Hercules and the Atlantic Ocean. With Felicia in his arms, the Lion of Roskilde bid a fond farewell to the bold mariner from Baghdad, hoping that soon Sinbad would take him up on his invitation to visit with him and Felicia in Denmark.

  Sinbad stood at the bridge, his hands holding the rail, his black hair tossing in the wind. The Sherry set an easterly course that would take them to Jaffa. Dormo’s escort ship was right beside him, and he gazed fondly at the new caliph,, knowing that Baghdad had at last found a truly wise and noble leader. He could hardly wait to gain his new position at court, and was understandably even more eager to see Sherry. His mind swam with the memory of her, and right now her embrace was all he could dream of.

  It was peculiar, though, that these adventures had all been in search of the mythical flower. He laughed and shook his head at his own foolishness, his intense hope of finding the magic to make all things right again.

  Yet somehow, all things were right again. Pansa was saved; he was on his way home to his beloved; even Don Giovanni had what he wanted. The voyage could not have been more successful.

  Feeling the cool breeze against his skin, Sinbad sighed. Twenty-four hours ago, as he stood upon the tower of the church while the battle raged below, all indeed seemed lost. Since then everything had changed — a total reversal. But how? When did it all happen?

  A sudden chill crawled down his spine as he remembered. There had been a flower in his pocket, a red dahlia …

  He had taken it, crushed it and closed his eyes, making his tearful wishes. Pansa … Sherry … Giovanni … They had all come true!

  “The flower!” he gasped. “The flower has magic after all But it couldn’t! It can’t! It’s only a flower!

  He stared out at the sandy shores of Barcelona, his mind whirling at the mystery. Was it really possible? Might the dahlia have … ? He shrugged and sighed, putting the matter aside and thinking of home again.

  Sinbad of Baghdad was a sailor and an adventurer, a poet and a philosopher, a wise man and a fool. He knew that sometimes a mystery is better left unsolved.

  Cinnabar

  © Graham Diamond 1985

  Graham Diamond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1985 by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. New York

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Venture, an imprint of Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two:

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter One

  “Ohhh,” he said. “Ohhh, I have such a terrible pain in my head.” Christóbal groped dizzily to his knees and stared out into the darkness. He was a Herculean fellow, with enormous arms, ox-like shoulders, a thick sinewy neck, and a massive trunk. His face was little-boy round, but his jaw, beneath a raggedly clipped beard, was firmly square and jutting. He had a weather-beaten face, tanned from sea and desert, crows’-feet beneath his black eyes, with thick arching brows above, which joined conspicuously at the bridge of his bulbous, blue-veined nose. Wearing his stocking cap — his trademark — and tight-fitting leather pantaloons, he appeared almost a comic theatrical figure. But there was immense power in his overdeveloped bulk despite the great fleshy buttocks, and his barrel-like chest, cover
ed by a forest of prickly black hair, was extremely solid. You could hit Christóbal with a spade or club and he would hardly feel it.

  He had lived a full and varied life in the past thirty years, ever since he ran away from his humble home near Valencia when he was nine. Young Christóbal, even then, had been a strapping figure. When his equally enormous father caught him fondling his soon-to-be-wed sixteen-year-old cousin in the Church after mass one Sunday he gave the lad a blow in the back of his head Christóbal would never forget. And that very night, after putting a compress on the painful swelling, the boy departed to make a life of his own. Since that time he had been many things: cabin boy, deck-swabber and cook on a ship, dockside labourer carrying on his back loads which normally took two and three men to lift, woodsman, lumberjack, renegade and yes, for a time even a prize-fighter. Not to mention his reputation as a lover, who had sampled female delights all over the world from Portugal to Cathay. Christóbal could honestly claim to have been almost everywhere, seen and done everything there was to see and do at least once. Adventures in Iberia had led to soldiering in Algiers, then into the most remote jungles and back across the brutal desert first to Egypt and then to Arabia. One time he had sailed aboard a Spanish galleon, another time a merchant ship on a voyage that lasted three full years. Until these past five years, though, when he had met and joined his traveling companion, he had never known the true meaning of adventure. His life had been difficult and harrowing, true, but each day had brought new and exciting enterprises, and he would not have traded a moment of it for all the wealth of Basra’s sultan.

  The figure beside him in the darkness also began to stir. He was younger and smaller than Christóbal, though by no means diminutive. A shock of unruly hair fell mop-like over his forehead; normally clean-shaven, his tanned face was dotted with thick stubble, a few of the black hairs turned grey. Like the bigger man he too was an adventurer, although in his case it had been more often by circumstance than by his own choice. Every time he had made up his mind to settle down and lead a tranquil existence it seemed that something came up unexpectedly and rattled — if not shattered — his carefully laid, plans. Aladdin had been both rich and poor in his thirty-five years, the two conditions alternating as frequently as the seasons. Good luck followed bad, bad too often following the good. Fortunes made and fortunes lost. And now he found himself no richer or poorer than he had been at the age of eighteen when the fabled encounter with the magic lamp and genie within had set the course of his future. Ah, but life had been interesting during those years between then and now. Like this very moment, waking up in a strange place with one huge sledgehammer pounding away inside his brain, riot knowing where he was or how he got here, counting himself fortunate in at least being able to recall his name.

  “Ah, capitán, you are awake,” said Christóbal. He always called his partner in danger capitán although the title of rank meant nothing.

  Aladdin lifted himself to his elbows and dumbly looked around. He was greeted by one of Christóbal’s silly grins, ear to ear, with his sturdy yellow teeth flashing in the dark.

  Dizzy, Aladdin groaned as a wave of nausea washed over him. Sitting up, he clutched his arms around his stomach and shivered. It was damp and cold. His thoughts were foggy and jumbled and with great effort he struggled to regain his memory. They had been on a ship, the voyage from Basra. Then what? Vaguely he could recall the long days and longer nights of boredom, sailing across a placid sea with a crew of strange sailors and a pilot-captain of most peculiar character. Aladdin had not desired to make this trip; if anything, he had done everything in his power not to come. That much was vivid. Then why? Suddenly his heart sank and his belly churned. He did remember after all — to his regret.

  The prism? Where was the crystal prism?

  His hands groped wildly; when he felt the cold cube resting on the floor beside him he sighed with relief. The quartz throbbed with dull colour. Aladdin clutched it close and tucked it safely inside his shirt. At least the prism was safe...

  But where were they now? How had they come to this place? He searched his mind for a clue. The strongest image in his mind was of the last supper in the pilot-captain’s small cabin. Christóbal had been with him of course. Who else? Oh yes. Shaman. Shaman, the gravely ill stranger whose tricks of wizardry had altered his life. They had drunk and eaten well that evening. Their destination was close at last, he and the Spaniard had been told, and they had taken the news with a mixture of relief and apprehension. The eerie pilot-captain had toasted the event, cracked open a bottle of what he referred to as Neptune’s Elixir, a drink claimed to be worthy of the gods. And indeed it had proved a magnificent brew, a wine unlike any he had ever tasted. A sweet and colourless concoction from the vineyards of... of where?

  Then what had happened? Aladdin massaged his temples with his fingertips and tried to stir the memory. The ship had begun to spin wildly. The calm sea of past weeks had become turbulent and violent. There had been a vortex. A sudden whirlpool drew the ship in and sucked it down into the ocean’s bowels. Christóbal had been mortified. Aladdin had sheltered the prism and looked on in horror. They were being pulled into the maelstrom faster with every passing second. And the pilot-captain had done nothing to try to alter their course...

  That was the sum of Aladdin’s recollections. His next moment of consciousness had been this very minute.

  He shuddered with the realisation. Had he and Christóbal been drugged? Poisoned and forced to spend these last hours — or was it days? — in dreamless slumber? Aladdin had so many questions floating inside his brain. So many questions without a single answer.

  “You can’t remember, either, eh, capitán?”

  Aladdin sighed and placed a weak hand on his companion’s shoulder. “It seems, my friend, we find ourselves in a dilemma.”

  The burly Spaniard growled and spat, his large eyes slit like a jungle cat’s as he peered into the darkness. He clenched his massive fists tightly, cursing softly in his native Castilian, a torrent of abuse heaped upon those responsible for this plight. “They will pay a dear price for this game, capitán,” he vowed. “By the blessed Madonna, I swear it.”

  “Stay calm, Christóbal. No use getting worked up. We’d better conserve our energy and have a look around.”

  “I already have,” replied the Spaniard. He lifted himself slowly. With his legs planted apart like tree trunks not to be uprooted and his massive hands on his hips, his awesome frame seemed more the fancy of some storyteller’s imagination than of a living, breathing man.

  “It looks to me like we are in some kind of a cave, capitán.” He gestured around with a quick flourish.

  Aladdin scratched his head in confusion. “A cave? How can that be?”

  “See for yourself.” Christóbal pointed toward a dim brightness in the distance. The mouth of the cave. Aladdin stood on rubber legs and went to have a look. Outside a cold grey world confronted him. Empty hills and ravines without colour, lifeless beneath a grim dark sky. It was a vista that both frightened and transfixed him.

  He swallowed, ran a dry tongue over drier lips. His joints ached from the severe dampness, as though a terrible rain were about to begin. The strange world before him rolled with quiet malevolence as far as he could see.

  “The Passage,” he mouthed soundlessly. “We’ve crossed, my friend. I don’t know how it happened but Shaman didn’t lie after all. The Passage is complete.”

  Chapter Two:

  Three Months Earlier...

  Fatima, the youngest and loveliest daughter of a most proud and exalted Basra family, never looked more beautiful than she did that evening. Serenely majestic in her brocaded gown which barely concealed her ample bosom, she greeted the multitude of arriving guests with laughing eyes and quick smiles. Her auburn hair was braided with pearls that glimmered as they caught the spilling radiance of the sunset. Fatima was going to be married.

  She was clearly the envy of every woman in Basra on this night, for only she among a
ll the city’s stunning young women had been able to entrance the sultan, bringing him down on his royal knees to plead for her hand. And now, after a brief dizzying courtship, Fatima was betrothed.

  Oh, how much this young girl was envied! What marvellous fortune to fulfil this dream, to wed the most sought after male in all the Arabian world. To become a princess and to share his blissful bed, and — Allah providing — give her husband a son who one day would be sultan himself.

  The news of the sultan’s choice for a bride took the fabled port city by storm. The talk was on everyone’s lips, from the merchants of the bazaars and markets to the palace itself and the highest chambers of government. The matrons of the court could only fume and wring their hands because their own favourite granddaughter or niece had not been the one selected. Nor could you blame them for their disappointment: the widowed sultan had been a prize well worthy of intrigue and speculation. A man of the highest quality and esteem, he would make any blushing girl the finest of catches. Such a shame there were no others like him to be found.

  Still, there was no doubt but that the sultan, after long and careful consideration, had chosen his bride wisely and well. It was generally conceded that Fatima, all of seventeen, would make a perfect match. She was an outgoing and vivacious thing, well-mannered, cultured, tutored by the finest minds, as sharp and intelligent as she was lovely. A true daughter of her aristocratic parents, a family whose lineage boasted famous generals and ambassadors throughout Araby.

  Outside the palace the city itself rang with jubilation; from the bay and deep water port to the tree-lined plazas and winding streets, across the famed bazaars and markets; from the sandstone balconies of every humble abode to the most regal estates. In and out of every neighbourhood both rich and poor, to the tallest spires and steeples, the mood of elation could be found. All of Basra was aglow with happiness. Bells rang, muezzins sang from the mosque terraces, holy men prayed, while throngs of citizens cheered and danced. A holiday had been declared for the event.