by Donald Tyson
“We can’t stop it. Nothing can. But maybe—” I turned to the girl and grasped her by her shoulders. “Keep your distance. Whatever happens, don’t come close to it. When you get the chance, run into the Caliph’s bedroom and lead him away. Cover his face and lead him away.”
“What are you going to do?”
There was no time to explain to her. The wraith was nearly at the Caliph’s sitting room door. His bedroom lay just beyond it.
The door burst open and two soldiers came into the corridor. When they saw the flickering, changing mass of shadow with its array of wire-thin tendrils expanding and questing forth on all sides, their faces turned grim and went white. Through the open doorway I glimpsed the Caliph in his sleeping gown, surrounded by the four remaining guards, with Altrus at their front.
Crouching with their swords raised, the two royal guards approached the wraith with caution. It abruptly blinked forward and enveloped them with its shadow body. They dropped like statues, and their swords clattered across the floor.
Taking my chance, I darted past the thing a few paces down the corridor, and as I turned to face it, I spoke the spell of glamour that I use to conceal my disfigured features from other men. This time I made subtle changes in the words, and held in my mind the image of the Caliph. I filled my awareness with the sound of Moawiya’s voice, the remembrance of his habitual posture and gestures, even the memory of his smell.
“Here I am, you mindless piece of filth,” I cried out in Moawiya’s voice.
I had never attempted to simulate the countenance of another man, but saw no reason why it would not work.
To my disappointment, the wraith ignored my attempt to lure it past the doorway, and instead entered the sitting room. I ran after it, holding up my arm to caution Martala not to get too near.
“Cover his face,” I shouted.
Altrus stared at me, then looked at the Caliph. They were all staring at me open-mouthed past the black shadow that approached them with a gliding blur.
“Cover the Caliph’s face, you fool,” I shouted again.
Altrus looked around, saw a cloak on a peg on the wall, and grabbed it as the four remaining guards pulled the Caliph back toward the open door of the bedroom. He threw it over the Caliph’s head and drew him to the side, away from the doorway.
“Keep him still,” I said.
Dancing around the wraith and into the bedroom, I waved my arms to attract its attention. “I’m here, you mindless monster. Come and kill me.”
It noticed me for the first time, and began to flow toward me. In the midst of its dark mass I saw points of brightness, like faint stars in the night sky, and realized they were its eyes. The pentacle must be somewhere nearby, I thought. But where?
“Alhazred, get out of the way!” Martala cried with alarm.
The wraith had backed me into a corner of the bedroom. Its tendrils expanded on either side of its body, cutting off my possible escape. I drew my sword even though I knew it would be useless. At least the Caliph will live for this night, I thought. The wraith would stay in the general vicinity of the pentacle until first light of morning, and then would vanish. It was occultly drawn to the pentacle, but could only identify its intended victim by sight. My altered countenance had confused it long enough for the Caliph to be led beyond the range of its senses. Or so I assumed.
The corner of the room pressed against my shoulders. I made a gesture in front of my face and dropped the false features of the Caliph, letting the thing see my true face. It continued to advance with murderous intentions. Then it hesitated. It hovered in place for several seconds as though testing the air, its black threads rippling. It began to move away from me toward the door.
I followed it cautiously with the girl at my side. It was not behaving as I had anticipated. It seemed to follow an unseen beacon. I did not believe it could recognize the Caliph when he was beyond its range of sight, so what was drawing it?
The fools had stopped to wait at the end of the corridor. I saw that it was the Caliph’s doing. He stood with his head and face bare, and held a sword from one of the guards in his hand. When the thing began to glide down the corridor, the remaining guards dropped their swords and ran, leaving Altrus alone with Moawiya.
“I won’t run like a coward from my own rooms,” Moawiya said. His voice shook as he said it, but he stood his ground.
“Idiot!” I yelled from behind the wraith. “This isn’t about courage, it’s survival. Keep running.”
“No. I’ll face it here and now.”
What had drawn it out of the bedroom? With the Caliph beyond the limit of its senses, the hidden pentacle should have held it in the bedchamber until morning. And then the answer came to me.
“Altrus, the cloak.”
“What about it?” he said.
“The pentacle must be sewn into the lining of the cloak. We need to burn it.”
He pushed the stubborn Caliph back as far as the corridor would allow and snatched up the cloak. With frantic fingers he felt around its hem, his eyes darting from the cloth to the wraith.
“Something’s here, I feel it,” he said.
“Rip it out. Hurry.”
He tried to tear the lining of the cloak, but it resisted. Using his teeth, he made a small hole and was able to rend the lining away from the outer layer of wool. A piece of parchment fluttered to the floor.
“There it is. Quick, burn it.”
He snatched the pentacle almost from under the black skirts of the wraith and conveyed it quickly to the oil lamp that burned in its bracket on the wall. For a second, the parchment refused to ignite. Then it burst into a ball of yellow flame, burned fiercely, and fell to ash. At the same instant, the wraith vanished. It happened silently and without drama. It was there one moment and not there the next.
“Is it gone?” the Caliph asked, voice shaking like that of a small child.
“It’s gone,” I assured him. “But there’s nothing to stop whoever called it forth from drawing up another pentacle.”
“Then I’ll never be safe,” he said with sudden realization.
“Not until the assassin is dead.”
“You were right from the first, Alhazred.” He turned to look directly at me and blinked. “By the Prophet, what’s wrong with your face?”
I turned away as though looking down the corridor behind me and made the gesture of the spell that concealed my true features, uttering the accompanying words silently in my mind as I did so. I have applied this spell so many times that it takes me no more than a moment.
When I turned back, I smiled. “What was that you said?”
He stared at me, then wiped the sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand. “Nothing. It does not matter.”
“What did you mean when you said that I was right from the first?”
He took a deep breath and released it slowly, sadness in his eyes. “I must have all three of them killed. It’s the only way to be certain that the assassin won’t strike again.”
I put my hand on his shoulder to reassure him. “It need not come to that. I know who the assassin is.”
5.
The door to the private chambers of Al-Burni ibn Mowabi was locked. I hammered on it for several minutes with my fist, and was just about to tell Altrus to break it down when the old man unlatched and opened it, blinking bleary-eyed at the light from the lamp in the corridor. He wore a sleeping gown, slippers and a sleeping cap.
“Your Highness, this is an honor,” he said. “What is it you wish of me?”
“We were hoping you could help us determine the identity of the man who is trying to kill me,” Moawiya told him.
He blinked in surprise. “Certainly, if it is within my abilities, I will help you any way I can.”
We entered his outer room and waited while he lit several lamps. The room brightened. In addition to the sitting room that opened on the corridor, there was a bedchamber and a library with a writing desk and shelves of books and manuscripts. Pi
cking up one of the lamps, I led the way into the library and the others followed.
“You are a scholar,” I said, gesturing toward his books.
The old man looked at the Caliph and realized he was expected to answer me.
“I read the sacred texts,” he said. “I ponder what has been written concerning the correct interpretation of the teachings of the Prophet.”
“An admirable study.” I gestured at the writing desk, which contained a stack of parchment sheets, a steel-tipped pen in a holder, an inkwell, and a small silver casket. “You also do a lot of writing?”
“I write letters to others of my kind in different cities of the Caliphate.” He frowned. “May I ask what is the purpose of these questions?”
I took the unfinished pentacle from my shirt pocket and showed it to him. His face betrayed no recognition.
“This was found outside the door of your chambers in the palace at Damascus.”
“What is it?”
“A work of magic. It summons a wraith from the outer spheres.”
“I know nothing of such matters, or how such a thing came to my door. An enemy must have laid it there to incriminate me.”
“So I at first assumed,” I told him. “That you would simply drop it from carelessness seemed so unlikely.”
“I know nothing about such things,” he repeated indignantly, and turned to Moawiya. “Your Highness, am I to be slandered by this lying necromancer?”
I raised the pentacle to my face and smelled it. The sweet scent was still there.
I held it out to the mullah. “Smell it.”
“Are you mad?”
“Do it, old friend,” the Caliph ordered.
Reluctantly, the old man took the parchment and sniffed it. Realization flashed across his face like summer lightning.
He handed the parchment back to me. “I smell nothing.”
“You made a mistake at the palace in Damascus,” I told him. “You didn’t give yourself enough time after poisoning the Caliph’s door guards and laying down the pollen of the black lotus on the floor in front of his door. The search was made too quickly. You had only minutes to dispose of the remainder of the deadly black powder. When the guards burst into your rooms to search them, they found you sitting at your writing desk with a pen in your hand, but there was nothing on your parchment.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed and darted to the writing desk.
“I wonder where you concealed the rest of the black dust?” I picked up the small silver casket, which was chased all over its surface with interlocking arabesques. “What is this?”
“That is my ink,” he said, staring hard at my face.
I opened the casket. In it was a fine black powder.
“You mix a small portion of it with water when you are about to use it, don’t you?”
“Of course. How else would you make ink?”
I raised the casket to my face and smelled its contents. The sweet odor from the unfinished pentacle was strong. I extended it for Moawiya, Altrus and Martala to sniff.
“You had only a minute to dispose of the unused portion of the black pollen. You dumped it into this casket where it mixed with your powdered black ink and went unnoticed. After the search was over, you carefully scooped out the pollen and discarded it. But enough remained that when you later started to draw up this pentacle, a trace of the pollen was mingled with your ink, and left its distinctive and unmistakeable odor.”
The mask fell away from his face, leaving naked hatred. “Yes, I confess it. I tried to kill the Caliph.”
“But why?” Moawiya asked. “I’ve known you all my life. I thought you were my friend, or at least a faithful servant. Why would you betray me?”
The old man glared at him sidelong. “You are going to rewrite the laws of the Prophet,” he said bitterly. “Such arrogance, such impiety, such outrageous wickedness. I could not allow it.”
“What is he talking about?” I asked.
“Next month I plan to introduce three changes to the laws of the Caliphate,” Moawiya said.
“What are they?”
“Yes, tell him,” the old man sneered. “Tell the necromancer the extent of your impiety.”
“It is my intention to make the laws of our empire more humane by enacting three changes. First, I will decree that the rights of all women shall be protected. Second, that no man shall be put to death for any crime. Third, that all must be compelled to give up a portion of their earnings to charity.”
I looked at Martala and Altrus. “That’s all?”
The white-haired mullah pointed at Moawiya and almost danced up and down in his extremity of hatred. “You see? You see? We are ruled by the devil himself. Such impiety must never be allowed. It spits in the very face of the Prophet.”
Without any warning, he snatched a dagger from beneath the folds of his sleeping gown and raised it toward the Caliph. I flipped the contents of the silver casket I still held in my hands into his face. He staggered back, digging at his eyes, his entire face and beard covered with black powder, and in another moment fell down dead. The dagger clattered across the floor from his lax hand.
“I thought there might be enough pollen remaining in the ink to make it fatal,” I murmured, snapping shut the lid of the silver box.
Moawiya stood looking down at the blackened face of the mullah in silence. After a while he turned to me. “Is there any chance that Alyssia or Wanassah are involved in this plot?”
I glanced at Martala. “In this plot? No, they are not involved.”
“Good. I would not have liked to execute them.”
“But you would have done it,” I said.
“Yes, I would have done it. I need to be able to sleep at night.”
“Have the old man’s library searched,” I suggested. “You will find forbidden texts on magic. He was a hypocrite. He condemned you for transgressing the laws of the Prophet, yet he himself was a scholar of the black arts. Only a well-practiced necromancer could have summoned the wraith.”
“Those additions you intend to make to the law,” Altrus said. “They won’t be popular with the people.”
Moawiya met his eyes and nodded solemnly. “I know. A ruler can’t always do what is popular. Sometimes he must do what he knows to be right.”
At these words my heart was saddened, for I realized the Caliphate had at last found a wise and enlightened ruler—and I also understood that his reign would be brief.
¼
Revenge of the Djinn
1.
I was in the alcove off my bedroom, shaving my chin, when I heard Martala yell out for me. Her cry was cut off before she could finish my name, and then I heard a kind of snap, like the crack of a whip, or hands clapped together sharply.
With my soap-covered straight razor in my hand as a weapon, I hurried from the alcove into the room, where the girl had been dressing herself before a large oval mirror of polished brass. Various articles of her clothing lay on the bed, but she was nowhere to be seen. I went to the door and opened it. The corridor was empty. There was no sound. This was hardly surprising, given the early hour. Most of the household still lay asleep. The girl and I have always been early risers. I tried the window, but the carved satinwood screens that covered it were still latched shut.
A faint odor of sulfur hung on the air, and I noticed a wisp of blue smoke. I sniffed it with alarm. It carried the stench of recent magic. The realization came to me that the girl had been abducted by unnatural means. The protective wards placed over my house to prevent just such an attack had failed.
Something approaches, my love.
Where, Sashi? The djinn that lived within my body as my familiar spirit was often able to sense things that were beyond my perceptions.
The window.
One moment the bedchamber was empty, and the next, a man stood before the window with his arms folded across his chest, glaring at me with an expression of malice. I hesitated for a moment, then raised the razor to my thr
oat and continued shaving by touch.
He was an impressive figure, although I gave no indication of that. Taller than the average height, with broad shoulders and a deep chest, he wore his beard close-trimmed to a point, and his hair, which was a black as a raven’s wing, straight to his shoulders. His large eyes were as dark as his hair, but his skin was uncommonly pale, even as my own skin is. I do not tan, no matter how many hours I spend in the sun, nor does my skin redden and burn. It is a peculiarity of my nature. He was dressed for the desert in a black thawb and matching black turban.
“Give me a moment; I’m almost finished,” I murmured.
My eyes sought out my belt where it hung over the back of a chair, my sword and dagger still attached to it. I wondered how quickly Altrus would come if I called out to him. At this time in the morning, the mercenary was usually sleeping off the effects of the wine he had drunk the night before.
This one is not wholly human, my love.
How do you mean, Sashi? I asked silently in my own mind.
He is like you.
“You are indeed as grotesque of face as they say you are.”
It was not the first time I had heard this. When King Huban of Yemen cut off my ears and nose and slashed my cheeks, he made me a monster.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“I am Xhalarhinni.”
“The name means nothing to me.”
“Of course not,” he said. “We have never met.”
“Then why by the Old Ones did you intrude into my house and abduct my servant?”
“Perhaps the name Allesalasallah will mean something to you.”
The sound of her name brought back the memory of her face—not her nice face, her angry face.
“She was a djinn who compelled me to open the brazen vessel of King Solomon and release her brothers and sisters who were held prisoner there.”
“You killed her,” he said in a tone of accusation, his dark eyes smoldering with hatred.
“It was not quite that way. She tried to kill me and I defended myself.”
“Lies,” he said. “You are renowned as a liar and a deceiver.”