Usti wiped his sweating forehead.
“My mistress’s father—may Hazrat Akhran bury him to his eyebrows in a hill of fire ants—gave her the idea that if the Hrana had horses it would solve all their problems. Zohra went to Khardan and demanded that he give her people horses to herd sheep.”
Sond gasped.
“Precisely the Califs response,” Usti said gloomily. He lowered his voice, imitating Khardan’s deep baritone. “ ‘Our horses are the children of Hazrat Akhran,’ he told my mistress. ‘They are ridden for His glory—to make war, to participate in the games that celebrate His name. Never have they borne a burden! Never have they worked for their food!’ “ Usti began to shout. “ ‘Never will our noble animals be used to herd sheep! Never!’ “
“Shhh! Hush!” Sond remonstrated, though he carefully suppressed a smile of delight.
Usti’s conversation, like the sheep they were discussing, was being led along Sond’s path. Taking advantage of a lull in the talk occasioned by Usti’s recent passionate outburst’s having temporarily caused a severe constriction of his breathing passages, Sond poured sweet, thick coffee and produced a plate of candied locusts, dates, and other delicacies. Usti’s eyes actually grew moist with pleasure at the sight.
“Truly our horses are sacred to us, as the Calif says,” Sond stated, sipping his coffee and nibbling on a fig. “Even when we move from camp to camp, our beloved animals are never ridden, but walk proudly with the people. However,” the djinn continued solemnly, “it is required of us that we look at the world from the back of another’s camel. I can understand your mistress’s point of view. It is not good in these unsettled times for the tribe to be divided. Speaking of which, camels would, of course, be the ideal solution, but where are they to come from? The prices which that bandit Zeid demands for his mehari are outrageous. My master has long considered beating some humility into him.”
“Ah, I agree. But as the proverb relates, it is difficult to beat the man who owns a large stick.”
“True.” Sond sighed. “The Aran outnumber my people two to one and their mehari are swifter than the wind. Those racing camels of Zeid’s are famous even in Khandar.”
“Why dream of camels? We may as well dream of flying carpets, which, by the way, was one of my mistress’s demands, if you can believe it. I told her that sending carpets into the heavens was perfectly well for legends and lore but absolutely impractical when it came to the real thing.
“ ‘What would you do if you met a storm ‘efreet?’ I asked her. ‘One puff and you’re among the heathens on the opposite end of the world. And there’s no way to control the silly things. They have a decided propensity to flip over. And did you know that if you fly too high, your nose starts to bleed? That’s something they never mention in those fool stories. To say nothing of the sheer energy involved in getting one off the ground and keeping it aloft.’ No, I told her it was impossible.”
“What did she do?”
“She brought the tent down on top of me. And see this mark?” Usti exhibited a bruise on his forehead.
“Yes.”
“An iron skillet. My ears still ring. And now, just because I refused to carpet the sky, my mistress has commanded me to come up with a better solution or she threatens next time to throw my brazier in quicksand. I didn’t sleep a wink, all night! Oh, why was I forced into all this?” Usti gazed beseechingly at the heavens. “Of all djinn, I am the most unfortunate! If that nesnas had not captured my poor master and killed him and made me prisoner, I would not now be beholden to Fedj for having rescued me, and I would not now be in the clutches of this wild woman to whom— all things considered—I think I prefer the nesnas!”
Letting his turbaned head sink into his hands, Usti moaned in misery.
“And yet,” said Sond cautiously, “if there was a—way to make your mistress happy. . .”
Usti ceased wailing and opening one eye, peered out between his fingers. “Yes? You said a way to make my mistress happy? Go on.”
“I’m not certain that I should,” Sond said, upon deep reflection. “You are, after all, the enemy of my master.”
“Enemy!” Usti spread his hands. “Is this the body of an enemy? No! It is the body of one who wants only to get a good night’s sleep! To eat a meal while it is hot! To find his furniture on the floor and not the ceiling!”
“Ah, you tear out my heart!” said Sond, placing his hand on his bosom. “I am truly sorry for your plight and you do look unwell.”
“Unwell,” cried Usti, tears flooding his eyes. “If you only knew the half of it! This is the first solid food I’ve been able to keep down in days! I shall soon be skin and bones!” He put his hands together pleadingly. “If you have an idea that will put an end to my mistress’s tantrums, I would be eternally in your debt! Rest assured, I will give you all the credit! “
“No, no!” said Sond hastily. “This is to be your idea. The credit will all belong to you.” Reaching out, he squeezed Usti’s fat hand. “My reward will be to see a brother djinn grow happy and well once more.”
“You are kind, my friend! Kind!” murmured Usti, his tears losing themselves in the creases of his chins. “Now, what is this idea?”
“Suggest to Zohra that her people steal the horses.” Usti’s eyes opened wide. The tears stopped.
“Steal?”
“It is fitting, after all. My people have stolen from them for years. Now the Hrana have a chance to get back at us. Zohra’s father, Sheykh Jaafar, will be happy. Zohra will be happy. What’s more, she will be grateful to you for suggesting something so brilliant! She will make your life a paradise! Nothing will be too good for you. “
“Forgive my ignorance, my friend,” Usti said cautiously, “I do not know much about your people, not having lived among them long, but it seems to me—and I intend no disrespect—that the Akar are . . . one might say. . . volatile. Isn’t this proposed thievery likely to . . . uh . . .upset them?”
“My master will be angry for a day or two, but—in the end— he will respect the Hrana for showing some spirit. And the sun will freeze to a ball of ice,” Sond added beneath his breath.
“What did you say?” Usti cupped his hand over his ear. “It’s this ringing in my head—the skillet, you know.”
“I said my master will think it all very nice. In fact,” Sond continued, carried away by his enthusiasm, “this event may well solidify the friendship between our two tribes. It will provide the Hrana with the horses they need. They will be content. It will show the Akar that the Hrana are courageous and daring. My people will be content. And all because of you, Usti! Hazrat Akhran will undoubtedly reward you handsomely. “
“My own little dwelling among the clouds,” said Usti, gazing upward at the ceiling of the lamp wistfully. “Just a small one. No more than eighty rooms, ninety at the outside. A lovely garden. Djinniyeh to scratch my back where I cannot reach, rub my temples with rose water when I have the headache, sing to me sweetly. . .”
Absorbed in his dream, Usti did not notice that at this remark about the djinniyeh, his host became exceedingly pale.
“It will be no more than you deserve, my friend,” Sond said, rather more harshly than he intended. He cleared his throat. “Well, will you do it?”
“I will!” Usti said with sudden resolve. “Are you certain, my friend,” he added warily, “that you will not demand—I mean accept—any of the credit?”
“No, no!” Sond said, shaking his head emphatically. “I beg that you leave me out of this. Surely one so wise as yourself would have thought of this idea eventually. “
“Ah, that is true,” said Usti gravely. “In fact, it was on the tip of my tongue even when you spoke.”
“There, you see!” Sond said, slapping his friend on his large back.
“I would have spoken it first,” pursued Usti, “except that I was drinking this delicious coffee and I feared to insult you by putting the cup down.”
“And seeing you thus pleasantly engag
ed, Akhran caused your thought to fly to my mouth, your words to come from my throat. I am honored”—the djinn bowed from the waist—”to have served as your vessel.”
Smiling warmly, Sond propped himself up among his cushions on one elbow and passed the plate of candied fruit to his guest.
“Another fig?”
Chapter 6
“Another fig?” mimicked a disgusted voice outside the lamp, a voice so soft that neither of the two enjoying their repast inside heard it.
A djinn may not enter the dwelling of another djinn unless he receives an invitation, but it is possible for one djinn to listen in on conversations held inside the dwelling unless the master of the dwelling takes precautions to protect himself. Sond, upset and desperate, was so intent on the seduction of Usti that he carelessly forgot to place the magical seal around his lamp.
Pukah stood in Majiid’s tent, his ear over the lamp spout. He had been standing there, invisible, listening to every word spoken by the two for the past hour, and now the young djinn was in a state of turmoil and confusion not to be believed.
Having been ordered by his master to keep a watch on the comings and goings of Zohra, Pukah had instantly noted the sudden disappearance of Usti—a highly unusual occurrence. Usti had not been known to voluntarily leave his dwelling since coming into Zohra’s possession. Fearing mischief of some sort directed against Khardan, Pukah immediately searched the camp, eventually discovering the fat djinn’s whereabouts in the last place he had expected—being entertained in the lamp of his enemy!
Just what was Sond up to? Pukah hadn’t any idea. He knew Sond didn’t care a horse’s droppings for the fat djinn.
“If I hear one more honey-coated ‘Usti, my friend’ come from your lips, I’ll gag,” Pukah told the lamp.
He listened in amazement to Sond’s casual suggestion of the horse-thieving raid. Pukah knew—if the thickheaded Usti didn’t—that the theft of the horses would not bring about everlasting friendship between the two tribes.
“Everlasting bloodshed is more like it,” Pukah said grimly. Why was Sond risking the wrath of Hazrat Akhran by suggesting such a thing?
“Even if Akhran does think it’s Blubber-belly’s idea, he’ll be so mad he’ll throw us all into the Kurdin Sea! And Sond knows it.”
Pukah pondered the matter as he returned to his own dwelling—a woven basket that had once been used by a snake charmer to house his reptile. It was an unusual dwelling place for a djinn. Pukah had been only a very young djinn when he’d come across the snake charmer squatted in the road near Bastine. Fascinated by the snake, who swayed its deadly head hypnotically to the music of its master, Pukah slipped inside the basket to get a better view. He was promptly captured by the snake’s owner and spent the next twenty years traveling the lands of Sardish Jardan, doing all sorts of interesting jobs for the snake charmer, who also happened to be a worshiper of Benario, God of Thieves, on the side.
Other than having to share his dwelling with the snake, who—as it turned out—was an incredibly boring individual, Pukah enjoyed his life on the road. He came to know all manner of people, visit all manner of cities and villages, and was taught a number of ways to enter houses where one hadn’t been invited. He also became acquainted with nearly every immortal being between Bas and Tara-kan.
Then one day his master was caught worshiping Benario not wisely but too well. The wealthy merchant he was attempting to rob chopped the charmer into pieces small enough to have fit inside his own basket. This left Pukah and the snake to their own devices. The snake, in return for its freedom, gave Pukah the basket.
Hoping to escape the notice of Akhran’s elder djinn, who would have assigned him to a mortal, Pukah transported himself and his basket to the souks of Kich, hoping to pick out his own human. Liking the looks of Badia, Khardan’s mother, he planted his basket on the back of her donkey, hiding among the other baskets until she arrived at her tent—an old trick taught him by his master, who often used this to gain access to rich houses.
When Badia opened the basket, Pukah leaped out, threw his arms around her, and swore her eternal service in return for having freed him from his captivity. The young djinn was presented to Khardan on his twelfth birthday, and although Pukah was far older in years than his master, the two might have been said to have grown up together, for djinn must mature just like their mortal counterparts.
Therefore, though one was two hundred and the other but twenty-five, the same lust for action and excitement burned in the heart of the djinn that burned in the heart of his master. Pukah was equally ambitious, determined to rise high in the estimation of his God. He looked down upon Sond and Fedj with scorn. Content with their lives, the two older djinn had—or so he had always supposed—no desire to better their lot.
“I will not wait until I am old and toothless before I have a palace,” Pukah resolved. “And when I get one, it will be located here in this world, not up there. Besides, mortals are incredible fun.”
All Pukah’s bright dreams were dashed when Akhran spoke— actually spoke—to Fedj and Sond, giving them the command that would eventually bring the two warring tribes together at the Tel. Pukah had nearly turned inside out with envy. What he would have given if only the Wandering God had spoken to him! And then he was forced to watch as the great fools Sond and Fedj— (“They must have sand in their heads in place of brains!”)—went about grumbling and complaining instead of taking full advantage of the situation.
But now, here was Sond doing what Pukah would have done all along—he was almost certainly taking this opportunity to become a hero in the eyes of Hazrat Akhran.
“But how oddly he’s going about it!” Pukah said to himself, pacing back and, forth in his basket. “I don’t understand! Usti! Horse stealing! What would I do if I were in Sond’s lamp? Aha!”
The young djinn snapped his fingers. Coming to a halt before a mirror that hung in a prominent location on the wall of his basket, he expounded the matter to himself as was his custom, having had, for long years, no one to talk to other than the snake.
“Well, what is it you would do, Pukah, if you were not Pukah but Sond?”
“Well, Pukah, since you asked, if I were Sond and not Pukah, I would get that triple-chinned ass, Usti, to go to his mistress with this wild scheme of stealing horses. Then I—Sond—would go to Hazrat Akhran and tell the God that I had learned that this disaster was about to take place. I would beg Akhran to intervene. He would do so, peace would be restored, and I—Sond—would be a hero in the eyes of Akhran!”
Pukah, proud of his plan, gazed gleefully in the mirror at Pukah, who gazed gleefully back until it occurred to both of them that they were Pukah, not Sond.
“That,” said Pukah gloomily to Pukah, “is exactly what I would do if I were Sond. The swine!”
The two Pukahs put their heads together, literally, both leaning against the mirror.
“Pukah, my man, aren’t you every bit as smart as Sond?”
“Smarter,” replied Pukah stoutly.
“And aren’t you as clever as Sond?”
“Cleverer!”
“And aren’t you, Pukah”—Pukah raised his head to look himself straight in the eye—”destined to be a hero? Don’t you deserve it more than that great hulking oaf who thinks only of his handsome face and his broad shoulders and whose ambition in life is to find a garden wall he hasn’t scaled, a pair of legs he hasn’t straddled?”
(It must be noted here that Pukah was slight and slender of build, with a face rather too long and narrow to be considered in any way handsome, and whose attempts to endear himself to certain comely djinniyeh had thus far resulted in having his pointed jaw soundly slapped.)
“You deserve it! You do!” returned Pukah warmly.
“Then, Pukah, it is up to you to ruin Sond’s plans to become a hero, or if that is not possible, to come up with a plan of your own to outhero him. Now, how can this be accomplished?”
The Pukah standing in front of the mirror began
pacing back and forth in the basket. The Pukah in the mirror did the same, the two coming together occasionally to inquire, with raised eyebrows, if either had an idea. Neither did, and the Pukah in the mirror—for one—was beginning to grow increasingly glum.
“There’s no use in trying to talk Usti out of presenting this crazy scheme to the wild Zohra. The fat djinn is too enamored of it. He’s even decided it was all his idea. I’d never be able to convince him to drop it. So, let him go ahead and let Zohra plot to steal the horses. I could go to her and tell her it was a trap. . .”
Pukah considered this a second, but the Pukah in the mirror shook his head. “No, you’re right. Zohra hates me almost as much . as she hates my master. She would never believe me.”
“You could be the one to tell Akhran you have uncovered the plot,” suggested the Pukah in the mirror.
Pukah reflected upon this suggestion, and at length he announced that if they couldn’t come up with anything better, it would have to do. “But,” he added desperately, “there must be something I can do that will blow Sond off his camel—”
“Camel. . . .”
Pukah stared at his image, who stared at him right back, both faces taking on a look of foxish cunning.
“That’s it!” they cried together. “Camels! Zeid!”
“Sond and Fedj bring two tribes together in peace. Pooh! What is that? It is nothing! A child could do the same if he put his mind to it. But if three tribes come together in peace! Now that would be something! Such a miracle has never occurred in all the history of the Pagrah desert!”
“Quar would not dare to even think of bothering us!”
“Kaug would leap into the ocean and drown himself in sheer frustration!”
“Akhran will be victorious above. The Akar will be victorious below, and it will all be due to me!”
Dancing in delight, Pukah began to caper about his basket, the Pukah in the mirror prancing about just as merrily.
The Will of the Wanderer Page 16