The magus was gaunt and bald with a pointed beard. Raseed’s sheathed sword lay at Zoud’s feet, and beside the magus stood an oaf whose size made his purpose obvious—bodyguard. There was no way Adoulla could reach the dervish before those two did.
Zoud, disturbingly unsurprised at Adoulla’s entrance, stopped whistling and gestured toward Raseed. “He is in great pain.”
Adoulla frowned. “Why stage this gruesome show for me?”
Zoud smiled. “Simple. I’m no fool—I know your sort. I don’t want you as an enemy. Hounding me across the Crescent Moon Kingdoms on some revenge-quest. No. All I ask is your oath before God that you’ll leave me in peace. I’d hoped to take the boy with me—the Order has enemies who’d pay well for a live dervish. But if you’ll be reasonable you may walk off this ship, and we’ll put the boy off as well. That’s fair, isn’t it? You’ve taken much from me already. My new wife. Even my first wife.”
Ushra’s not here? And Hafi’s wife is free? How? Adoulla could find out later. What mattered now was that his options had just increased. In the corner behind the magus and his henchman, Adoulla saw a small flicker of blue movement. Impossible!
He smothered a smile and silently thanked God.
“So,” Zoud said. “Do I have your oath, Doctor?”
Adoulla cleared his throat. “My Oath? In the Name of God I swear that you, with your tacky big-room spells, are but a half-dinar magus with a broken face coming to him!”
Everything happened at once.
He heard a snapping noise and the boy was free. It was impossible to snap firevine. But Adoulla adapted quickly to impossibilities. As Raseed leapt to his feet Zoud darted behind his bodyguard and screamed “Babouk! Kill!” The magus clapped twice.
Oh no.
The flash of red light dazzled Adoulla for a moment. But his eyes knew and adjusted to the glamour-glimmer of a dispelled illusion well enough. Adoulla had to give this fool Zoud his due. The big bodyguard was gone. In his place was an eight-foot-tall cyclop.
This is not good.
A blue streak darted at the one-eyed, crimson-scaled creature. Raseed! The dimwitted monster grunted as the dervish barreled into it and knocked the mighty thing off its clawed feet.
Adoulla stood there for a stunned half-moment. Half the monster’s size, yet he topples it! Dervish and furnace-chested cyclop wrestled on the ground until the monster wrapped its massive arms around the boy. Adoulla took a step toward the pair and shouted “Its eye! One sword-stroke through its eye!”
Then he whirled at the familiar sound of blade leaving sheath. Zoud stood before him with a hunted look on his face and a silver-hilted knife in his hand. All out of tricks, huh? And now you think to buy your freedom with a knife? Adoulla cracked his knuckles and took a step toward the magus.
Raseed wriggled free of the cyclop’s crushing hug. The monster pressed him again, closing its clawed hands around Raseed’s fists. His wounds from the firevine burned, but he pushed the pain away.
As part of his training, Raseed had once wrestled a northern bear. This creature was stronger. Still, Raseed thought, as impermissible pride crept in, he would slay it. Then he’d know that he had fought a cyclop and won. He twisted his powerful arms, trying to get the leverage to free himself. But the cyclop held him fast. And the pain in Raseed’s wrists and ankles grew worse.
Then he heard a small sound and his left hand blazed with pain. His little finger was broken. Another sound. His index finger. The rest would follow if he did not get free. But how?
The cyclop decided for him. Shifting, it hoisted Raseed aloft like a doll. The monster tried to dash Raseed’s brains out on the floorboards.
Raseed twisted as he fell, somersaulting across the room. His sword hand was unharmed. He thanked God and forced away the pain of his wounds. He scooped up the blue scabbard, rolled to his feet, drew.
The cyclop grunted. It blinked its teacup-sized eye as Raseed rushed forward. With eagle-speed Raseed leapt, sword extended. He thrust upward.
With an earsplitting howl, the cyclop fell, blood seeping from its single eye. Watching the monster die, Raseed felt more relief than pride.
Adoulla charged Zoud, making sure that his robed shoulder was his opponent’s most prominent target. A sneer flashed on Zoud’s face. The fool thought Adoulla was blundering into his dagger-path.
The silver-handled blade came down.
And glanced off the blessed kaftan, as surely as if Adoulla were wearing mail. Zoud got in one more useless stab before Adoulla let loose the right hook that had once made him the best street fighter on Dead Donkey Lane. With a girlish cry, the magus crumpled into a heap. Somewhere behind Adoulla, the cyclop howled its death-howl.
His tricks gone and his nose broken, Zoud lay bleeding at Adoulla’s feet. The magus whimpered to himself like a child yanked from a good dream. Before Adoulla knew what was happening, Raseed was at his side.
“Magus!” the dervish said. “You have stolen and slain women. You dared demand an oath before God to cover your foulness. For you, there can be no forgiveness!” Raseed sent his blade diving for Zoud’s heart. In a breathspace, the forked sword found it. The magus’s eyes went wide as he gurgled and died.
Adoulla felt ill.
“What is wrong with you, boy? We had the man at our -” He fell silent, seeing the boy’s firevine wounds.
Raseed narrowed his tilted eyes. “With apologies, Doctor, I expected Adoulla Makhslood to be a man who struck swiftly and righteously.”
“And instead you’ve found some pastry-stuffed old fart who isn’t fond of killing. Poor child! God must weep at your cruel fate.”
“Doctor! To take God’s name in mock is imper—”
“Enough, boy! Do you hear me? Fight monsters for forty years as I have—cross the seas and sands of the Crescent Moon Kingdoms serving God—then you can tell me what is ‘impermissible.’ By then, Almighty God willing, I’ll be dead and gone, my ears untroubled by the peeps of holy men’s mouths!” The tirade silenced the dervish, who stood looking down at the magus’s bleeding corpse.
The problem was, Adoulla feared that the boy’s way might be right. Adoulla thought of the girl, Ushra. And of Raseed’s pain as the firevine had tortured him. And of Zoud’s dead “wives.” He sighed.
“Oh, God damn it all. Fine, boy. You’re right. Just as you were about the blower-on-knots.” Adoulla sat down with a grunt, right there on the bloody floorboards. He had fought a dozen battles more difficult than this over the decades, but he did not think he’d ever felt so weary.
Raseed spoke slowly. “No, Doctor. You were right. About Ushra, at least. She did what she did from weakness and fear of a wicked man. Yet I would’ve killed her.” The dervish was quiet for a long moment. “It was her, Doctor. Ushra. She poisoned the firevine. She freed Hafi’s wife. I’m ashamed to say it, but I must speak true—I wouldn’t have escaped if not for her.”
Adoulla was too tired to respond with words. He grunted again and clambered to his feet.
Yehyeh’s teahouse buzzed with chattering customers. Raseed tried to ignore the lewd music and banter. Hafi and his tall, raven-haired wife sat with her grateful parents on a pile of cushions in the far corner. At a table near the entrance, Raseed sat with the Doctor, who was nursing what he had called a “God damned gruesome tracking spell headache”. Lifting his head from his hands slowly, the Doctor fixed a droopy eye on Raseed.
“How many men have you killed, boy?”
Raseed was confused—why did that matter now? “Two. No…the highwaymen…five? After this villain last night, six.”
“So many?” the Doctor said.
Raseed did not know what to say, so he said nothing.
Adoulla sighed. “You’re a fine warrior, Raseed bas Raseed. If you’re to study with me, though, you must know your number and never forget it. You took a man’s life yesterday. Weigh that fact! Make it harder than it is for you now. Remember that a man, even a foul man, is not a ghul.”
Again, Raseed was c
onfused. “’Harder,’ Doctor? I’ve trained all my life to kill swiftly.”
“And now you will train to kill reluctantly. If you still wish an apprenticeship.”
“I do still wish it, Doctor! High Shaykh Aalli spoke of you as -”
“People speak of me, boy, but now you’ve met me. You’ve fought beside me. I eat messily. I ogle girls one-third my age. And I don’t like killing. If you’re going to hunt monsters with me, you must see things as they are.”
Raseed, his broken fingers still stinging, his wrists and ankles still raw, nodded and recalled the High Shaykh’s words about where virtue lives. Strange places indeed.
A quiet settled over the table and Adoulla devoured another of the almond-and-anise rolls that Yehyeh had been gratefully plying him with. As he ate he thought about the boy sitting across from him.
He did not relish the thought of a preachy little dervish in his home. He could only hope the boy was young enough to stretch beyond the smallness that had been beaten into him at the Lodge. Regardless, only a fool would refuse having a decades-younger warrior beside him as he went about his last years of ghul hunting.
Besides, the dervish, with his meticulous grooming, would make a great house-keeper!
He could hear Miri’s jokes about boy-love already.
Miri. God help me.
Raseed lifted his bowl of plain limewater and sipped daintily. Adoulla said nothing to break the silence, but he slurped his sweet cardamom tea. Then he set his tea bowl down, belched loudly, and relished the horrified grimace of his virtuous new apprentice.
Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela
As soon as I arrive in the village of Beit Zujaaj I begin to hear the mutters about Abdel Jameela, a strange old man supposedly unconnected to any of the local families. Two days into my stay the villagers fall over one another to share with me the rumors that Abdel Jameela is in fact distantly related to the esteemed Assad clan. By my third day in Beit Zujaaj, several of the Assads, omniscient as “important” families always are in these piles of cottages, have accosted me to deny the malicious whispers. No doubt they are worried about the bad impression such an association might make on me, favorite physicker of the Caliph’s own son.
The latest denial comes from Hajjar al-Assad himself, the middle-aged head of the clan and the sort of half-literate lout that passes for a Shaykh in these parts. Desperate for the approval of the young courtier whom he no doubt privately condemns as an overschooled sodomite, bristle-bearded Shaykh Hajjar has cornered me in the village’s only café—if the sitting room of a qat-chewing old woman can be called a café by anyone other than bumpkins.
I should not be so hard on Beit Zujaaj and its bumpkins. But when I look at the gray rock-heap houses, the withered gray vegetable-yards, and the stuporous gray lives that fill this village, I want to weep for the lost color of Baghdad.
Instead I sit and listen to the Shaykh.
“Abdel Jameela is not of Assad blood, O learned Professor. My grandfather took mercy, as God tells us we must, on the old man’s mother. Seventy-and-some years ago she showed up in Beit Zujaaj, half-dead from traveling and big with child, telling tales—God alone knows if they were true—of her Assad-clan husband, supposedly slain by highwaymen. Abdel Jameela was birthed and raised here, but he has never been of this village.” Shaykh Hajjar scowls. “For decades now—since I was a boy—he has lived up on the hilltop rather than among us. More of a hermit than a villager. And not of Assad blood,” he says again.
I stand up. I can take no more of the man’s unctuous voice and, praise God, I don’t have to.
“Of course, O Shaykh, of course. I understand. Now, if you will excuse me?”
Shaykh Hajjar blinks. He wishes to say more but doesn’t dare. For I have come from the Caliph’s court.
“Yes, Professor. Peace be upon you.” His voice is like a snuffed candle.
“And upon you, peace.” I head for the door as I speak.
The villagers would be less deferential if they knew of my current position at court—or rather, lack of one. The Caliph has sent me to Beit Zujaaj as an insult. I am here as a reminder that the well-read young physicker with the clever wit and impressive skill, whose company the Commander of the Faithful’s own bookish son enjoys, is worth less than the droppings of the Caliph’s favorite falcon. At least when gold and a Persian noble’s beautiful daughter are involved.
For God’s viceroy the Caliph has seen fit to promise my Shireen to another, despite her love for me. Her husband-to-be is older than her father—too ill, the last I heard, to even sign the marriage contract. But as soon as his palsied, liver-spotted hand is hale enough to raise a pen…
Things would have gone differently were I a wealthy man. Shireen’s father would have heard my proposal happily enough if I’d been able to provide the grand dowry he sought. The Caliph’s son, fond of his brilliant physicker, even asked that Shireen be wedded to me. But the boy’s fondness could only get me so far. The Commander of the Faithful saw no reason to impose a raggedy scholar of a son-in-law on the Persian when a rich old vulture would please the man more. I am, in the Caliph’s eyes, an amusing companion to his son, but one whom the boy will lose like a doll once he grows to love killing and gold-getting more than learning. Certainly I am nothing worth upsetting Shireen’s coin-crazed courtier father over.
For a man is not merely who he is, but what he has. Had I land or caravans I would be a different man—the sort who could compete for Shireen’s hand. But I have only books and instruments and a tiny inheritance, and thus that is all that I am. A man made of books and pittances would be a fool to protest when the Commander of the Faithful told him that his love would soon wed another.
I am a fool.
My outburst in court did not quite cost me my head, but I was sent to Beit Zujaaj “for a time, only, to minister to the villagers as a representative of Our beneficent concern for Our subjects.” And my fiery, tree-climbing Shireen was locked away to await her half-dead suitor’s recovery.
“O Professor! Looks like you might get a chance to see Abdel Jameela for yourself!” Just outside the café, the gravelly voice of Umm Hikma the café-keeper pierces the cool morning air and pulls me out of my reverie. I like old Umm Hikma, with her qat-chewer’s irascibility and her blacksmithish arms. Beside her is a broad-shouldered man I don’t know. He scuffs the dusty ground with his sandal and speaks to me in a worried stutter.
“P-peace be upon you, O learned Professor. We haven’t yet met. I’m Yousef, the porter.”
“And upon you, peace, O Yousef. A pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s mine, O Professor. But I am here on behalf of another. To bring you a message. From Abdel Jameela.”
For the first time since arriving in Beit Zujaaj, I am surprised. “A message? For me?”
“Yes, Professor. I am just returned from the old hermit’s hovel, a half-day’s walk from here, on the hilltop. Five, six times a year I bring things to Abdel Jameela, you see. In exchange he gives a few coins, praise God.”
“And where does he get these coins, up there on the hill?” Shaykh Hajjar’s voice spits out the words from the café doorway behind me. I glare and he falls silent.
I turn back to the porter. “What message do you bear, O Yousef? And how does this graybeard know of me?”
Broad-shouldered Yousef looks terrified. The power of the court. “Forgive me, O learned Professor! Abdel Jameela asked what news from the village and I…I told him that a court physicker was in Beit Zujaaj. He grew excited and told me beg upon his behalf for your aid. He said his wife was horribly ill. He fears she will lose her legs, and perhaps her life.”
“His wife?” I’ve never heard of a married hermit.
Umm Hikma raises her charcoaled eyebrows, chews her qat, and says nothing.
Shaykh Hajjar is more vocal. “No one save God knows where she came from, or how many years she’s been up there. The people have had glimpses only. She doesn’t wear the head scarf t
hat our women wear. She is wrapped all in black cloth from head to toe and mesh-masked like a foreigner. She has spoken to no one. Do you know, O Professor, what the old rascal said to me years ago when I asked why his wife never comes down to the village? He said, ‘She is very religious’! The old dog! Where is it written that a woman can’t speak to other women? Other women who are good Muslims? The old son of a whore! What should his wife fear here? The truth of the matter is-”
“The truth, O Shaykh, is that in this village only your poor wife need live in fear!” Umm Hikma lets out a rockslide chuckle and gives me a conspiratorial wink. Before the Shaykh can sputter out his offended reply, I turn to Yousef again.
“On this visit, did you see Abdel Jameela’s wife?” If he can describe the sick woman, I may be able to make some guesses about her condition. But the porter frowns.
“He does not ask me into his home, O Professor. No one has been asked into his home for thirty years.”
Except for the gifted young physicker from the Caliph’s court. Well, it may prove more interesting than what I’ve seen of Beit Zujaaj thus far. I do have a fondness for hermits. Or, rather, for the idea of hermits. I can’t say that I have ever met one. But as a student I always fantasized that I would one day be a hermit, alone with God and my many books in the barren hills.
That was before I met Shireen.
“There is one thing more,” Yousef says, his broad face looking even more nervous. “He asked that you come alone.”
My heartbeat quickens, though there is no good reason for fear. Surely this is just an old hater-of-men’s surly whim. A physicker deals with such temperamental oddities as often as maladies of the liver or lungs. Still… “Why does he ask this?”
“He says that his wife is very modest and that in her state the frightening presence of men might worsen her illness.”
Shaykh Hajjar erupts at this. “Bah! Illness! More likely they’ve done something shameful they don’t want the village to know of. Almighty God forbid, maybe they—”
Whatever malicious thing the Shaykh is going to say, I silence it with another glare borrowed from the Commander of the Faithful. “If the woman is ill, it is my duty as a Muslim and a physicker to help her, whatever her husband’s oddities.”
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