by Donald Tyson
“It would have been easier just to climb over the wall,” Altrus said.
“Easier, but not nearly so satisfying,” I said.
Some kind of siren began to sound from the valley on the other side of the ravine.
“The noise must have alerted them,” Martala said.
We wasted no time, but hurried through the black sphere into the courtyard and made our way along the street toward the front gate. The sight that met our eyes was gratifying in the extreme. Both sides of the gate had been torn from their hinges and shattered into splinters. Pieces lay scattered all down the street. Several of the walking corpses had been caught by the flying debris and lay twitching and broken on the cobblestones with great splinters of wood through their bodies.
“They are going to try to stop us,” Altrus shouted.
We began to run toward the gate as the shambling corpses assembled before us with their tools raised in their hands like weapons. What saved us was speed. Before enough of the dead managed to assemble in front of the gateway, we cut down those that blocked our progress, and ran across their headless and mutilated bodies. We were on the far side of the causeway before I dared to look back. The walking dead had not yet left the citadel.
“What now, Alhazred?”
I grinned at the mercenary without mirth. “We leave this island. If we stay here, we will surely be hunted down and killed.”
When we reached the beach, we selected a single large piece of the hull from our wrecked ship to use as a support, stripped off our boots and piled them along with our weapons on top of it, and pushed it into the waves. Extending our bodies on the warm water with our hands grasping the edge of the wreckage, we began a lazy kicking rhythm with our feet. We could see the mainland on the horizon, and I judged it would take us ten or twelve hours to reach it.
“If we had done this at once, we would have saved ourselves much trouble,” Altrus said.
“True enough,” I agreed. “But what man can know what the future holds? We roll the dice of fate and live or die by how they fall.”
“Do you think the monsters will send their island after us?” Martala asked, casting a fearful glance behind her.
I remembered the sensation of the black tube sliding into my gullet.
“It is they who should be afraid. I know of their existence now, and they have wronged me. Sooner or later I’ll find a way to destroy them.”
¼
Dance of Durga
1.
The sandstorm hit us unprepared. I should have been ready for it, but my mind was distracted by philosophical matters. Our camels fled before we could hobble them. I managed to snatch one waterskin from the back of mine as it bolted into the blowing sand. Apart from this water, my two companions and I had only the clothes we wore and our weapons. Our loose trousers, cotton shirts, and felt vests were designed for sea travel and ill-suited to the desert. We had nothing to cover our heads but bits of rag.
Three days ago we had shipwrecked off the coast of Arabia in a storm while returning to Damascus from Yemen. Fortunately, I was able to buy camels and water from a tribe of nomads on the coast. None of us wanted to return to the Red Sea, so I decided our best course was to join a caravan traveling north. Before I could locate the caravan road, the sandstorm overtook us.
The young Egyptian girl, Martala, had grown up in a land where water was always plentiful, and Altrus, although he was a battle-hardened mercenary, had spent most of his life in the cities and on roads in large companies of men. I alone knew the degree of danger we faced, and how much our lives hung on the turning of fortune’s wheel. We were one waterskin away from death, and in the desert a waterskin does not go far when shared three ways.
I showed them how to protect their faces from the sand with scraps of cloth torn from the hems of their shirts, and pressed them onward, searching for some shelter where we could huddle and wait out the storm, but I found nothing. When the sand blows, there is no horizon, no sky, not even ground. We may have walked in circles, for I soon lost all sense of our direction.
At last I accepted that we would not find shelter in time to do any good, and I huddled with my companions on the open sand. We sat with our backs bent and our faces turned inward to shield them. Even though our foreheads touched, we could not talk above the howl of the wind. The sand slowly covered our feet, our legs, our hips, our backs, our shoulders, but before it rose above our necks the wind stopped blowing and it returned to the earth where it belonged. The storm had lasted almost two full days.
We stood on stiffened legs, helping each other up, and shook the sand from our bodies like dogs. It was early morning and the heat of the sun had not yet reached its peak, but already the air I drew into my lungs felt hot. It dried my mouth when I opened it to spit out sand.
All around us dunes mounted upon dunes to the horizon. There was not a blade of grass, not a bush, not a patch of shade. High above, two vultures wheeled in slow circles.
“Which way?” Altrus asked.
It was a measure of his awareness of our danger that he did not complain or speak sardonically, as was his usual custom.
I pointed toward the sun rising in the east. “The caravan road runs north and south in this region, although it winds to the east and west to reach various deep wells. If we walk east we are certain to cross it, sooner or later.”
“Let’s hope it is sooner,” Martala said. She shook the sand from her long hair and replaced her makeshift head scarf.
I did not like the trousers I wore. The drawstrings at their cuffs made them confining and hot. I longed for my usual loose desert thawb. I had made the mistake of buying new travel clothes for our sea voyage home after the successful completion of my diplomatic mission to Yemen, and all of my garments had been lost in the wreck, apart from what hung on my limbs. At least my boots were sturdy.
We walked east at a moderate pace as the sun rose on our right shoulders. I taught the others how to step without fighting the sand. A man who does not know how to walk on sand can exhaust himself in a few hours. All my half-forgotten desert skills were returning to me. I had paid a heavy price to learn them, surviving alone in the Empty Space, which is the mother of all deserts.
Each time we stopped to rest, I let them drink from what remained in the waterskin. It was never enough for them, never what their bodies demanded, but it was enough to keep them alive and on their feet, for a while at least. I did not drink.
There was a time, I reflected, when Altrus would have cut my throat, killed the girl, and taken the water all for himself. Since coming to live at my house in Damascus, he had developed what might almost be called an affection for me. Even so, I did not hazard my life on his tender feelings, but relied on his awareness of my desert skills. Altrus knew that he had a better chance of surviving in this desolation with me than he had alone, regardless of how much water the skin contained. As for Martala, I felt confident that she could not move fast enough in the loose sand to kill me before I could defend myself.
Have I mentioned that I am not by nature a trusting man? Trust is for fools, and for the dead.
The skin was empty before we found the traces of the caravan road. I did not throw it away, for I hoped there might come an opportunity to refill it. A road meant wells, and while they were few and far apart in this place, they must exist, or the caravans could never survive their journeys north.
As it chanced, before we came upon a well, we saw the walls of a city shimmering in the rising waves of heat on the horizon. It took us four or five hours to reach it, which we did shortly before sunset. As we drew close, I made the gestures and spoke the arcane words that masked my disfigured face beneath a spell of glamour. I always do this when I approach strangers. My face tends to give them nightmares when I neglect the spell.
It was not a large city, but its brick walls had an ancient look about them that only centuries of weathering can produce. Part of the wall straddled a small oasis formed by the upwelling waters of a subterranean sp
ring. There was no open water, but the date palms grew tall.
Before we reached the gates we heard the sounding of brass trumpets. The gates opened, and a column of armed men came forth with a splendidly robed nobleman in their van carried aloft in a sedan chair on the shoulders of four slaves. Other slaves bore three empty chairs behind the soldiers.
“Welcome, weary travelers,” the nobleman said in heavily accented Arabic from his high seat, his soft white rolls of fat moving under his chin as he talked. “Welcome to the fair city of Xandakar. I am the Satrap of the city, Amjad El-Amin, and I offer you our hospitality.”
I glanced at Altrus and saw his eyes already fixed on me. He raised a cynical eyebrow. It was not common practice for city rulers to greet vagrants from the open desert with the ceremony usually accorded only to visiting dignitaries.
“The hospitality of Xandakar is famed near and far,” I said, stepping forward with a polite bow. “We accept it with gratitude.”
In truth, I had never heard of the city of Xandakar, but when dying of thirst it is prudent to be polite.
The slaves, who appeared to be Nubian, to judge by the darkness of their skins, all with shaved heads and naked torsos, set down their empty chairs, and we sat in them. They lifted us and carried us through the open gates of the city to the welcoming cheers and applause of the gathered throng that lined both sides of the street.
2.
“This is like a dream. Am I awake, Alhazred?”
“If I am awake, you are awake,” I said dryly, watching Martala.
She had just stepped out of a warm and scented copper bathtub, and now was clothing her slender, naked body in the silk garments Amjad El-Amin had ordered the mistress of his household to provide for her. They were brightly colored in blue and red and of a fashionable Persian cut. The soft slippers she put on her feet were of a similar style.
“Those clothes are completely unsuited to the desert,” I told her.
“We are not in the desert.”
It was a statement I could not very well deny. Even so, I was unconvinced.
Thus far, while the sun set over the western wall of the city and the stars blazed forth, we had been bathed, treated to a feast, given new clothing, and assigned rooms in the Satrap’s own palace. Amjad El-Amin had informed me that a caravan traveling north was due to stop at the city in a week or so, and that he would place us upon it at his own expense. In the meanwhile, we were to enjoy ourselves as his personal guests. Anything we wanted, we had only to ask for and it would be provided.
“Your generosity to lost travelers overwhelms me,” I admitted to him when he said this.
“It is an ancient custom of our city. We are far from other habitations, and those who come to us from the desert are always in dire need. It was decided centuries ago that a watch must always be kept from the wall for such wanderers, and that any who found their way to our gates should be treated with kindness, regardless of their poverty or their social standing.”
As I remembered this conversation, I watched the silent departure of the two serving maids who had attended Martala while she bathed and dressed. When the door closed behind them, I turned to the girl. “Something is amiss. I do not trust this unnatural charity. Even for Christians it would be excessive.”
“You never trust anything,” she said, which was true enough.
“Where is Altrus?”
“He got bored and decided to find a tavern where he could throw dice.”
“Did you notice how the people of the city lined up inside the gates to applaud our arrival?”
“It was thoughtful of them.”
“Did you notice the expressions on their faces?”
She looked at me with mild disfavor. “No. What should I have noticed?”
“Their eyes were wide and bright, and their smiles fixed. They had the look of fanatics. I’ve seen religious sects with that look.”
She turned away with a dismissive toss of her damp hair. “I think you worry for nothing. We’re only going to be here a week. What can happen in a week?”
“It only takes an instant to die.”
“Listen to yourself, Alhazred. You’ve been sour and suspicious for so long, you can’t recognize charity when it is given. I don’t want you to insult our host.”
I gave up the effort to talk to her. She was not listening. The clothes and perfumes and wine had turned her head. I touched the polished white skull that hung from my belt. It was the skull of Gor, leader of the Black Spring Clan of ghouls, and my friend before his death. A merchant in a passing caravan had poisoned him and his entire clan. My clan. I was a ghoul, and no ghoul would trust a man of the city. I might wear the body of a man, but my heart and soul were those of a ghoul.
You are right to be wary, my love, said a female voice inside my head.
Sashi? What do you know?
The beautiful face of my familiar spirit, a djinn of the desert that had chosen to share my flesh, arose before my sight. It was not her true appearance, but the one she used when she chose to show herself inwardly to me as a woman.
The Satrap of the city was not honest with you.
“Are you talking to Sashi?” Martala asked.
The girl was familiar with the one-sided conversations I held with the djinn. I was irritated by what she had said and ignored her.
Did the Satrap lie to me?
He did not tell you the entire truth. His heartbeat and breathing betrayed him.
I knew it. Something is not right about this place.
With a sudden resolve, I left the girl’s room and crossed the hallway to my own accommodation. My sea-going clothes had been washed and mended, and my boots oiled. I took off the Persian silks I wore and put back on the rough garments, transferring my belt with my sword, dagger and Gor’s skull. At once I felt better.
Martala followed me across the hall. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing insulting to our host,” I assured her. “I want to learn more about the history of this city. I noticed that this palace has a good library.”
“Excellent,” she said, turning on her heel. “Spend the night in reading and stay out of trouble.”
For the next few hours I rummaged through the library while most of the palace slept. The custom of hospitality to strangers on the desert was indeed an ancient one, almost as old as the city itself, and the beginnings of Xandakar were lost in folklore. None of the chroniclers pretended to know the date the city was founded.
It retained pagan customs that the rule of the Prophet had not yet succeeded in suppressing, but that was true of many cities in Arabia. Chief among them appeared to be a ritual of expiation that took place on nights of the blood moon, when the full moon turns the color of blood. As every astrologer knows, this happens at irregular intervals during the year, but the cause of the redness on the moon’s face is a matter of debate. It is said that at these times the gods are angry and lust for slaughter. Some astrologers claim to be able to predict when the blood moon will come.
I learned little about this occasional lunar festival from the scant references in the chronicles, other than its name. It was called the Dance of Durga. I gathered that Durga was the name of a pagan god or demon local to the city. The name meant nothing to me. Rites of propitiation were common in the more ancient cities of the empire. Before the coming of the Prophet, every city possessed its own gods with their wooden or stone images and sacred places. Even the Ka’aba at Mecca had been such a shrine until Mohammad had cast out all its idols. The law of the Prophet was a late-comer to the desert, and the old gods were not yet gone long enough to be forgotten.
I closed the book on the table before me with frustration and blinked my eyes to relieve their redness. Reading by oil lamp was always fatiguing. I had learned nothing to confirm my suspicions. Perhaps the girl was right, I thought. Maybe I had forgotten how to accept an act of kindness with good grace. But the little worm of doubt that gnawed at the back of my brain remained hungry.
I was leaving the library when Martala came hurrying down the hall. “Alhazred, you have to come at once.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” I said, my hand going instinctively to the hilt of my sword.
“Altrus got into a tavern brawl and killed a man. He’s been arrested and put into confinement.”
3.
“I’m sure it’s only a misunderstanding,” the Satrap said the following morning when I went to his audience chamber to speak to him.
He sat eating with obvious enjoyment, the grease dripping down his chins and glistening in the light from the windows. He had offered me food, but I had no appetite.
“I can probably get your friend released in a day or two. Until then, I’m afraid the formalities of city law must be observed.”
“May I at least speak to Altrus to ask him what happened?”
Amjad El-Amin wiped his short, thick fingers on a napkin.“ Of course, Alhazred. We are not barbarians. I will personally see to it that your friend … what is his name…?”
“Altrus.”
“I will personally see that Altrus is given every consideration, even though I cannot in good conscience order him released.”
Martala was waiting outside the door to the city jail when I arrived with the Satrap’s written order that I be allowed to speak with the prisoner. She had changed back into her traveler’s clothes and once again wore her boots instead of those ridiculous Persian slippers. Lines of worry creased her young face.
“What did he say? Is he going to release Altrus?”
I shook my head and showed her the paper. “The most I could get from the fat fool is permission to talk to him.”
The warder of the jail took the Satrap’s seal and admitted us without comment. We were led down to the basement level where the cells were. Only a few of them were occupied. The doors of the rest stood open, as though waiting. Through the barred window on the door of Altrus’s cell I saw the mercenary pacing back and forth. The guard unlocked the door and ushered us into the cell, then locked it behind us. I listened to his footsteps recede before speaking.