Samarkand the Omnibus: Books 1-2

by Graham Diamond

  The beggar put folded hands to his forehead, hung his chin on his chest. “I am here to serve you, my lord. Ask of me anything.”

  “For the moment I want only to know your name.”

  The smile was toothless. “I am called Hezekiah.”

  Chapter Nine

  Yellow crawled the dawn sky, horizons tinted with shades of brightening violet. At first it sounded like the rumble of faraway thunder, distant and remote, a storm across the mountains perhaps, yet another hamsin. As the thunder increased, the darkening of sky and crack of lightning were expected. None came, for it was no tempest of nature that rollicked across the grassy plain and prairies, but rather a human invasion. First came the horsemen, thousands of them, a never-ending number amid the din of trumpets heralding the arrival home of the Western Armies, the taste of victory sweet in their mouths.

  Gamal had returned!

  Signal lamps were lit from valley to valley, reaching at last the grim towers of the city, where soldiers manning the parapets cheered and spread the word. Kabul, mustered from a stuporous sleep, threw the whore off the bed and bounded up the narrow steps to the observatory atop the golden spire. There, sweeping below in a vast, panoramic vista they came, black ants racing, cresting the hills, pouring out from among the trees onto the flat, open plain that lay before the walls. It was a sight to behold, and the aging Khan allowed a pleased smile to part his features. Indeed, as his secret agents had informed, contrary to the weeks-old legion reports carried in by messenger-pigeon, Gamal had come back from his wars against the barbarian Turks in full display, a public spectacle and proclamation of Hun power unleashed.

  Riders fanned forward a hundred abreast, shrieking the names of their generals and gods. On and on they came, square-faced, dark-skinned men, many with slightly-slanted eyes that spoke of Mongol and Chinese blood flowing in their veins. Some were shirtless and bronzed in sweat, others were clad in linked-mail vests and barbarian furs, still more wore armor breastplates and leather helmets with metal triangular wedges protruding from the top.

  The ground shook like an earthquake from the tremendous clatter of hooves; before the sun had properly risen and purple shadows still lay over the length of the yellow fields, thousands of Kabul’s followers jammed the walls, poured through the seven gates, massed together over balcony and roof to catch a glimpse of the magnificent sight.

  Whooping and screaming, waving scimitars and hide-covered wooden shields above their heads, the Armies of the West reached the city. Behind the horsemen, five thousand slaves came marching in chains, the clamor of the legions attesting to the total success of Gamal’s campaign. Not since the return of Alexander to his native Macedonia had such a welcome been given a hero. At this moment the Huns would have gladly crowned the victorious conqueror as heir to Kabul, named him a god as well, if he chose. And it was with these very thoughts in mind that the treacherous Gamal returned, riding stiffly upon his spotted white charger, lifting high the dark banner of his father in one hand, sword tightly in the other while he kept a loose grasp on the reins.

  From another observatory, well across from the high spire at which the pleased Kabul stood watching, the greeting for Gamal was quiet and contemplative. Seven grim men stared from the crenelated wall, seven brothers temporarily casting aside their petty rivalries and looking on poisonously.

  “The seer was right,” muttered a tight-lipped Temugin.

  At his side Mufiqua’s eyes stared, still hazy and blurred from the effects of last night’s narcotic trance. Pure opium, Amar had told him, pressing the packet clandestinely into the palm of his hand. Mufiqua had taken it thankfully and asked no further questions. That his habit was becoming more than a vice, in fact an obsession, had not yet filtered inside his fevered brain. But now, in the chill hour of early dawn, he too snapped back to reality, watching carefully when Gamal, flanked by aides and flunkies, came blustering through the arched Central Gate to the applause of the throng.

  “He would have done well to have remained among the Turks,” Mufiqua bitingly remarked.

  Swaggering Khalkali, still smarting over his recent brush with the Khan, sneered. Behind him, the ox-shouldered, brooding chancellor of the dungeons, Krishna, held a coiled whip in his hand, flexing it and beating it gently against his massive thigh. Every bit as ambitious as Khalkali and Temugin, Krishna saw Gamal as the number one threat to his own succession. He despised the swagger in them all, thinking them, in their own manner, all fools. Each and all lacked torturer’s skills — the very skills they would need to remove him from the grasp of power. Krishna had not asked for such grisly work in the dungeons, but his appointment had taught him much about men and about the narrow thread between sanity and insanity, life and death itself. To his brothers Krishna was regarded as no more than a dutiful executioner; certainly not a warrior. Only a mindless, glorified turnkey who lived in the shadows beneath, in the bowels of the palace. Krishna, of course, had other ideas, carefully nurtured over the years.

  Tupol’s head helplessly twitched as he peered from near the end of the long wall, keeping his silence while his brothers ranted.

  Niko observed them all in a casual manner, shuffling a deck of playing cards restlessly in his hands as he leaned with his back against the rough stones of the tower wall. Jamuga, as always the most secretive of the lot, stayed alone, holding his own counsel, aloof from the rest and seemingly uncaring. Son of an Afghani tribeswoman who was forced into the Khan’s harem and then thrown away for a field whore when Kabul wearied of her, slit-eyed Jamuga had gained his place among his half-brothers by wits alone. The hard desert look remained etched in his features to carry on his mother’s legacy, a discomforting reminder both to Kabul and his siblings that only he of them all flowed with blood related to the indigenous peoples of Samarkand. Only Jamuga might somehow be able to rally these superstitious, religious tribes and band them together in his own cause. For this reason he had always stayed apart, realizing how precarious his position among them really was. Few questions would be asked should one morning his lifeless corpse be found with a blade stuck between his ribs. Thus, Jamuga, although also despising the folk of these conquered lands, was the obvious one to claim their support when the time came. Secretly he hoped for the outlaw Kazirs to unwittingly do some of the painful work for him.

  Seven brothers, each more hateful and loathsome than the next. Seven brothers. All now turned with jealous eyes upon the eighth.

  Chapter Ten

  The dark, winding corridor, twenty meters beneath the floor of the Great Mosque, was bathed in a strange blue-white phosphorescence. Sandals hushed against brittle stone, Sharon, garbed in loose-fitting mullah’s robes, hurried alone through the snaking labyrinth, aware of the damp chill that bit harshly into her flesh, the foul reek of some unseen cesspool with its constant drip drip drip flowing down the limestone walls.

  These were strange cellars, she knew, built countless centuries before while Samarkand was yet a young city. Some claimed the edifice of the mosque was older than the palace itself. Constructed with secret access to and from the city in mind, its architects had created a maze of passages to confuse unwelcome intruders. Sharon, though, knew exactly what to expect. She’d been here before, while yet a child, a princess of the palace, brought by Zadek and taught well the one correct route through the grim puzzle of complicated passages that eventually converged at an almost-forgotten chamber beneath the stately walls of the temple’s holy sanctum. And to Sharon’s knowledge, apart from the sly, mad mullah and herself only one other in all of Samarkand knew of its existence — the very person she had stolen inside the city to meet with now.

  Shadows shifted as a flicker of light soon became apparent. A flinty odor swam to her nostrils, telling of burnt charcoal alight in a brazier within the forbidden Oracular Hall. Her sense of the past came rushing in at her, an uneasy déjà vu of other times and places. There had been much joy in those lost days as well as the grief; a girl’s time for games, for picking flowers, for
strolling through the resplendent gardens of the palace, now moribund and weed-infested. She subdued with difficulty these flooding memories, on this her first sojourn back within the confines of Samarkand, and thought instead of the necessity for this concealed visit. No one need remind her of the penalty should the sequestered rendezvous be found out — nor of the torment to be suffered if caught.

  The chamber greeted her with a welcome flush of brightness. It was oblong and windowless save for tiny, clogged vents that clung to the corners of the ceiling. Supplicants and priests used to gather together in these disquieting rooms long ago, where now there were only ghosts left to wander the grim, lightless corridors, weeping with the windsong of a hamsin for living brethren yet suffering nearby inside the fouled dungeons of Kabul’s palace.

  More out of habit than fear, Sharon tucked her right hand within her sleeve and gripped the hidden dagger. She stepped through the oval threshold cautiously. Silhouetted beside the crumbling Doric pillar stood a shell of a man, crooked and misshapen, his long, arthritic fingers bent inward, his facial pallor as gray as death itself. A pitiful figure he seemed, broken and scarred matted white hair falling over face and shoulders. A face that would have sent decent women fleeing down the street at first sight. Sharon, though, didn’t flinch. For a long moment she paused in her steps across the cracked multicolored tiles, and slowly allowed a smile to work its way over her face.

  As if by sorcery the bent man before her straightened, stood fully erect. The twisted fingers unbent, the pained expression vanished, and from beneath soot and grime and filth his eyes shone brightly. He would have bowed humbly had not a wave of her hand commanded he forgo such obligations.

  Sharon’s eyes scanned the once-opulent hall, seeking signs of perfidy. Then, assured they were truly alone, she came to her companion, placed both hands upon his broad shoulders and grinned. “Well done!” she congratulated. “The disguise is perfect; I’d never have recognized you.”

  Hezekiah smiled himself. For weeks he had studied the beggars of the markets, the crippled and misshapen, emulating their speech and posture to such a degree that now he actually lived and breathed the role he played. However, the scars along his jowls, back, and chest were real enough; painful reminders of the many months of misery spent inside the Khan’s dungeons, daily tortured until his fortuitous escape. To have reached the safety of the steppes and the Kazirs had been a rebirth for the former minister of Samarkand, the Hebrew who’d been until the city’s downfall more than right hand to the emir and Sharon’s murdered father. Like the Panther, he, too, had vowed to return, promising that those responsible for so much pain and bloodshed would be repaid.

  Gloomy phantasms cascaded across the convex ceiling as Sharon moved away from the pillar and toward the sheltered recess and tomblike antechamber. Voice lowered, she said, “You were not severely questioned?”

  Shadows crossed the soothsayer’s hawkish features; he shook his head, regained his former twisted posture so effectively that to Sharon it seemed he was undergoing a metamorphosis. “Our scouts did their work well. Came the dawn of the third morning and, like an apparition, Gamal’s armies appeared. Temugin became white. I saw him flee his chambers, join his brothers along the tower battlements.”

  “Then he’s convinced of your accuracy?”

  “Without question. He has shielded me from his siblings, directed that I read the stars exclusively for him.”

  Sharon’s eyes flashed questioningly. “You will be safe?”

  “As safe as any man in this dreaded palace. I am under his personal protection, you see. Temugin values me; I must be sure not to lose his trust...”

  With Mufiqua effectively but unknowingly under Zadek’s hypnotic control, there were now two brothers of the eight whose minds could be bent. Carolyn now supervised the whores, and with it easy access to the Khan. Given these footholds beneath Kabul’s very nose, it seemed the plan was progressing perfectly. There were nine twisted minds in all to deal with, to further poison and sow the seeds of ambition and hatred. Sharon felt her heartbeat quicken; poison was a two-edged sword, she knew, lethal to whoever tasted it. She must never let her own personal hatred interfere with what must be slowly and painstakingly done.

  Give me strength to fulfill the prophecy! she prayed. Then do with me what You will. Punish me for my hatred and thirst for revenge — but give me time to do what I must!

  “Sharon are you ill?” The gentle voice and soft touch of Hezekiah’s hand upon her shoulder snapped her back from her netherworld.

  “I’ll be all right,” she told him, shrugging off her malady, pretending both to him and herself that the nightmares left no lasting mark. “Are all our preparations set? Has the hour been chosen?”

  “The saya has worked out the details perfectly. In honor of Gamal’s victories the Khan has scheduled a feast. Ambassadors from every nation shall be in attendance, watching from the stands while his armies display. Games, Kabul calls them. Games — intended to throw fear into every heart. Kings will cringe when their emissaries speak of what they have seen. There will be no tribute any of them shall not pay. The Khan considers them pawns in his grander schemes, and this event shall more than anything before impress upon them the futility of warring against the Huns. Even Persia will be represented.”

  At the mention of Samarkand’s neighbor and former ally, Sharon’s face paled. Persian blood mingled with her own, it was no secret, and the very thought of this mighty empire being forced to grovel at Kabul’s feet like an obedient dog sent cold shivers crawling down her neck. “Who,” she asked, pulling together her composure, “has been deemed to represent the sanshah?”

  Hezekiah’s eyes clouded and he sighed a heavy sigh. The name was one that Sharon would readily recognize. “Lucienus,” he said simply.

  The Panther of the Steppes recoiled. Lucienus! “My father’s uncle?”

  The Hebrew nodded darkly. “I am sorry, Sharon, to be the one to inform you, but, alas, Persia seeks not the same fate that befell us.”

  “But Lucienus is a friend!” she protested, her voice rising with hostility. “He loved my father, loved Samarkand! Surely he is not being brought here to grovel before the Khan!”

  “Your uncle is a clever politician, child. I know not his motives, nor those of the shah he serves. But that he will be the one to represent Persia there is little doubt. His entourage should be arriving before the week’s end.”

  Sharon took this news personally. Memories of her jovial uncle flashed through her mind, of summers at her father’s estate, of Lucienus’ frequent but brief stays. Of the dolls and shells he would bring her, laughing as he teased her and bounced her on his knee. “The world changes, Hezekiah,” she remarked bitterly.

  His nod was somber. “Or so it is said.”

  “Very well, then.” She turned from her friend so as to wipe the welling tear in the corner of her eye without his seeing. “We shall have to make certain my uncle has more to report when he goes home than he might have thought.”

  “The banquet commences on the last day of Ramadan”

  “And the games?”

  “The morning after. Kabul wants these emissaries to witness his strength with bloated bellies and fogged eyes.”

  Sharon laughed, the echo reverberating across the stone walls of the chamber. “Then we must do our best to be good hosts as well. Send them scurrying home with more gossip than they bargained for.”

  Part Two – Sowing the Harvest

  Chapter Eleven

  Kabul screamed. Sudden, unexpected pain stabbed through his eye and brain like a thunderbolt, sending him reeling from wall to wall, caroming over the divan, knocking braziers and marble statues, pottery, and plates from the ornate table. The girl on the bed leaped up startled and screeched in horror. Naked she bounded up, running barefoot over the tiles to escape the frothing madman before her.

  The great Khan of the Huns pulled at his hair; he ripped off his eyepatch, exposing the hideous sore, and staggered bef
ore he fell to his knees. Hairy fists pounded upon the floor, spittle flew from his lips, blood stained his knuckles where he struck them against the floor.

  Two spear-holding guards burst into the room, pale and aghast at the sight. “The fits!” cried one, frozen to his place. “The fits are upon him!”

  The whore bolted past them both, flailing her arms wailing as she scampered down the dimly-lit corridor, not caring how many gathering courtesans gaped at her.

  “Fetch the physician!” barked the senior of the guards. The second man snapped out of his stupor and went charging in the same direction as the girl in search of the Chinese acupuncturist.

  Kabul, meanwhile, had risen to his feet, stumbled across his splendid chamber, grabbing at anything in sight. He yanked a richly-woven Indian tapestry from the wall, tore at it with his hands until the fabric began to shred. Gnashing his teeth, raging like a lunatic while tears streamed out of his good eye and down his face, he heaved himself back and forth, back and forth, ranting, raving, pleading, begging for the terrible pain of his affliction to cease.

  From across the verandah Khalkali hurried into the room and watched his father with dismay. The Khan had gripped his hands around his own throat and had started to choke himself.

  Khalkali stood motionless while the soldier put his weapon down, went to assist the yowling Kabul, although in truth he had never witnessed such a spasm before and did not know what to do.

  “Leave him!” commanded Khalkali.

  The guard looked up at the son with fearful eyes. “But, my lord! We must do something!”

  “I said to leave him!” hissed Khalkali. The guard rose and bowed, stepped away.