by Tom Holland
‘Fire,’ I shouted, ‘bring me fire!’ A burning torch was passed into my hand, and I leapt from the wall on to the sands beyond, where the line of wood had been carefully stacked, dry and ready to be consumed by our flames. And so indeed, praise be to Allah, it came to pass; and the ghools shrank back, appalled by the light, and I called out to the villagers to pursue them from the wall. Upon our assault the ghools turned and fled, and I observed, as the flames began to coil into the sky, how some of them were greasy with the corpses of our foe, and how the moon itself seemed stained a burning red. Dimly through the smoke I saw the lines of the udar hesitate, then part. All across the battle scene, across the fields and the river, and the ruins of the temple, a silence fell, so that even the heavens seemed appalled by the moment.
I stood upon the wall. I pointed my sword towards the blood-red moon. ‘Allahu akbar!’ I cried. ‘Allah is most great!’
Nothing answered me.
But suddenly, as though the sands before me were living flesh, to crawl with dread, I sensed something stirring in the heavy air; and then Isis, beside me, threw her head back and howled.
I glanced round. My men, who moments before had been cheering with joy, now stood frozen and appalled, their arms dropped low; and then one, then two, and then the whole ragged line began suddenly to flee. I longed to join them; and indeed my own sword, in my own hand, had also dropped low. But I remained where I had been, upon the summit of the wall, and I turned again to gaze out beyond me.
The lines of the ghools still stood frozen and parted; but something was emerging from the gap they had formed. It was a figure, I realised, on a deathly white horse - and yet the horse was not so pale as its rider. His robes too were white, and rich with gleaming gold, and upon his head was a double crown - one white, the other red - such as I had seen, I realised, carved within the tombs of the Kings and upon the walls of the temple which stretched behind my back. Yet if ever he had been a Pharaoh of Egypt, he looked nothing like a mortal man any longer, for he seemed more hideous than the ugliest and most ghastly of the udar, and more ancient than the very dust and sand on which he rode. What nature of thing he might be - whether Afrit or Jinn, Phantom or Ghool -- I could not imagine; but I knew he held a power far beyond my mortal scope. Even from where I was standing, I could see the ice within his stare; and I imagined, as I met it, that my soul was burning up.
The figure reined in his horse. He turned, and pulled upon something, and I saw that he had been holding a rope in his hands. A form stumbled forward and I recognised one of the villagers, captured no doubt upon the western bank. The poor wretch was still just alive, and as the King reached down to seize him by the throat, the man began to writhe, and kick, and scream out prayers.
The strength of the King, though, was something out of Hell. His grip tightened around his victim’s throat, until at last there was a cracking and the poor man fell still. Peace and blessings be upon him.
Still holding the corpse in one hand, the King began with his other to rip it apart.
‘No,’ I cried out, ‘no!’; but there was nothing I could do. I watched as the dead man’s body was ripped to shreds, then smeared by the demon on the horse across his own, so that his limbs and chest were beslobbered with blood. Then at last the corpse was dropped back upon the sands, and the King leaned back and screamed out to the sky - a scream, Allah willing, such as I shall never hear again. Even the moon, I imagined, as though curdled by the sound, seemed to thicken and grow a more cruel and violent red.
But then I watched the moon no more. The King was riding forward. I jumped from the wall and fled.
But at this point, Haroun saw the approach of morning and broke off from his tale. ‘O Prince of the Faithful,’ he said, ‘if you would care to return here tomorrow evening, then I shall relate to you what occurred within the temple of the sands.’
And so the Caliph did as Haroun suggested; and the following evening he returned to the mosque. And Haroun said:
I feared, O Prince, as I stumbled through the stone-littered sands of the temple, that my time had surely come, for our line had broken, our wall had been breached and there was nothing now to hold back the army of the ghools. Dimly, through the crackling of the flames, I could hear a tumult of cries, terrible and inhuman, and the thunder of a million footsteps; but chiefly it was the hoofbeats of the King upon his horse I most dreaded to hear. Yet even as I listened for them, I realised the tumult was starting to fade, and I felt a sudden strange sickness, as I had done before when I had heard the crying of the jackal, and imagined that the stone of the temple was smoke. I glanced behind me. ‘May Allah have mercy!’ I cried, for again all the stone seemed nothing but smoke. The magical talismans which had been carved into the pillars by the ancient pagans, and the figures of the kings and beast-headed jinn, appeared suddenly lined with deep-burning fire, and as I walked on through the temple so the fire blazed all the more. But everything else was silent now, and the light of the moon was silver once again. ‘What mystery is this?’ I thought, for in all the vast wreck I seemed utterly alone, save only for Isis, who still walked by my side. Together we continued through the courtyards and halls, across the rubble and the heaped dunes of shadow-dyed sands, until at last ahead of me I saw where the pillars fell away, the same place where I had thought that the ancient shrine must once have been, if it had followed the pattern of the temple of Lilatt-ah. And immediately I stood frozen with wonder and doubt; for it was there also, I remembered, that the merchant had found my wife.
Very slowly, at last, I began to walk forward. Still there was silence, not a single sound, not the stirring of a palm tree nor the murmur of a breeze. But then again I felt the sickness, so that I staggered and closed my eyes, and when I opened them it was to discover that the light of the moon was blotted out. Instead it now appeared there was a roof above my head, very black and low, and ahead of me a brazier ablaze with soft incense. I could not see what might lie beyond the clouds of purple smoke, but I saw Isis grow tense as she gazed ahead, and then suddenly she growled.
I stroked her and sought to comfort her, as I whispered to her to be silent; but as I spoke her name, so I heard the sound of laughter rising from the smoke-obscured darkness ahead. For a moment I stood frozen again, for I knew, O Prince, whose laughter it had been, and I scarcely knew what I should next expect to see or hear. But then I continued forward, seeking to dispel the smoke with my arms; and as I walked down the hall, through the clouds, I saw Leila, my wife, upon a golden throne. Her skull had been shaven, and she wore a high blue crown, with a cobra made of gold rising up above her brow. Her robes were long and white, her necklaces broad and fashioned from rich jewels. Her face was very pale, her lips bright red, and her eyes thickly lined with the blackest kohl. She seemed more lovely than ever, but somehow very strange, so that I felt as though I had never truly seen her before. I could not, in those first few moments, explain such a feeling -- yet it was sufficient to make me certain that she was a jinni as ancient as the temple all around us - as ancient, indeed, as the very sands themselves.
As I stood before her, she rose to her feet. She took my hands and laughed once again. ‘Isis!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have named your bitch - Isis! O my love’ -- she paused to kiss me - ‘you cannot know what a sacrilege that is.’
‘There is much, it would seem, which I cannot know.’
‘Cannot?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Yet you are here, are you not?’
I stared at her in silence a long while. ‘What will you tell me, then?’ I asked her at length. ‘What do you wish to know?’
‘The Secret Name of Allah. For otherwise, O my Beloved, our daughter will be slain.’
Leila sat back on her throne, her smile impassive. ‘What would you be willing, O my Love, to pay for such a secret?’
‘Whatever I must.’
Again she raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed?’ She laughed. ‘Indeed?’
‘Provided that such a secret can indeed be revealed, there is no pri
ce I would not pay.’
‘There is a secret, most certainly. Once, long ago, it was sheltered in this very place, where it was known as the Secret of the Name of Amen. What its power could be, you have already seen for yourself, in the valleys and the temples of this ancient place. How can you doubt, then, that there is a power abroad greater than man can understand? If you would become the master and the lord of mortal things, if you would venture into the Land of Darkness and learn of the magic of the ancient jinn, if you would gain youth, and wisdom, and immortality, then, yes, O my Husband - there is indeed a secret, and a great one, to be learned.’
Silence, close and heavy, filled the perfume-scented hall.
‘And the price?’ I asked at length.
‘Is something you may easily pay’
‘Tell me what it is.’
But Leila shook her head.
‘How can I agree, then, to what I do not know?’
‘But my Beloved, my Beloved -- you have already agreed.’
I bowed my head in consternation and doubt. ‘We all belong to Allah,’ I thought, ‘and must all return to Him at last.’ And then I considered my daughter, how she was the sun and the moon and the stars of my life, and how there was nothing in all the world I would not dare to save her life. And then I considered further the wondrous magic of my wife, the manifold proofs which I had been granted of her powers, and the knowledge which she possessed of far-off worlds and distant times. And then in the end I considered my own desires, and how I had always longed to master the wisdom of the Ancients, and fought, in Allah’s name, against the lure of that temptation. All this I considered as I gazed upon the beauty of my wife, and as I did so I felt my thoughts begin to melt and swim and fly and I knew that I could fight against my own desires no more.
‘O most powerful Jinni,’ I said, ‘for such I can no longer doubt that you are, tell me your secret and what I must do.’
But Leila shook her head. ‘First,’ she answered, ‘I would tell you a tale.’ And so saying, she indicated a throne of gold beside her own, and gestured to me that I should take my place upon it.
‘What tale would you tell me?’ I asked her as I sat down on the throne.
‘The Tale of Pharaoh and the Temple of Amen.’
‘I would be most eager to hear it, for it appears to promise many great wonders and surprises.’
Leila smiled. ‘Nor are you wrong, O my Beloved. For until you have heard it, you will understand neither the secret of the powers I wish to grant you nor the price I shall demand in return - for you must learn, O my love, how all that is has already been, and, it may be, in time to come will exist once again.’
‘Tell me, then, and let me learn everything.’
‘As you wish it, so let it be.’ And Leila smiled a moment more; and then she said:
Interpolation, inserted within the sheets of the manuscript given to Lord Carnarvon
The Turf Club,
20th Nov, 1922
My dear Lord Carnarvon,
I cannot, as I glance through this manuscript again, forbear to recall my initial excitement, so overpowering that it almost caused me pain, upon realising the implications of this seemingly fantastical tale. I will confess that I had at first been dismayed by its ludicrous implausibilities, and considered myself the victim of a monstrous hoax -- yet still, through all the fantasy, I had begun to glimpse a faint residue of truth, as when, sifting through the wastes of rubble, one catches the outline of some artefact long buried in the dirt. A tomb had been found in the early Muslim period -- that much was clear - and it had been found undisturbed, with all its treasures intact. What wonder, then, in that primitive and superstitious age, if the discovery of a Pharaoh in his full regalia of death should have come to breed legends of a curse, so that it came to be imagined that the King had not indeed been dead? One need not believe in the literal truth of Haroun al-Vakhels tale, of course - that the Pharaoh had been seen risen upon his horse, riding with an army of demons against Karnak -- to recognise the hints of a truth extraordinary enough.
For it was evident to me that the tomb described within the folk tale, point for point, was the same as that which Davis had found, and which he had persisted in ascribing to Queen Tyi. But I knew that Davis had been mistaken in his judgement - the pathologist had proved the skeleton to be that of a young man, a fact which the manuscript now appeared to corroborate. Who was it, then, who had been found in the tomb? Might not the tale I was reading give me some clue? And might not it offer me, in however garbled a form, clues as to mysteries more remarkable still -- and even, perhaps, the existence of a still intact tomb?
All these questions seemed to pound upon the beating of my heart - as also, no doubt, they are presently pounding upon yours. I shall keep you no longer, then, from the tale the Jinni told - for when she promised a wondrous secret, she told nothing but the truth.
H.C.
THE TALE TOLD BY THE JINNI OF THE TEMPLE OF THE SANDS
You must know, O Haroun, how in the depths of the ages and the antiquity of time, there was much which was known and now lies hidden, and many great wonders long forgotten, for the past is a desert filled with infinite buried things. Do not think that because you have never heard of a tale before, therefore it did not happen, for even in the lives of the Prophets there were deeds and events which were never recorded, and have long since been lost to the memory of this world.
By example, I might ask you what you truly know of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers into Egypt as a slave. You have read how he was purchased by a great man of the Court, and then falsely accused by the wife of his new master. You have read how he was flung into jail and then summoned by King Thoth-mes, Pharaoh of Egypt, to interpret the dreams which had been haunting his sleep. And you have read how Joseph explained the fat and the lean cattle, which King Thoth-mes had seen emerging from the waters of the Nile, as a warning sent by the will of the All-High -that the world would first enjoy the fruits of plenty, and then be reduced to bare bone by grim famine.
Everything happened just as Joseph had foretold, but since he had ordered granaries to be built, and filled them high with grain, the people of Egypt were able to be fed. And never had King Thoth-mes loved a man so much as Joseph, so that he raised him to be the Wazir over all his lands and gave him the title of ’the double of Pharaoh’, which no foreigner had ever been granted before. Joseph ruled with great wisdom and care, so that all the people too -- just like Pharaoh - came to love him, not only for having saved the land from famine but also for the kindness and generosity of his spirit. The priests alone hated him, seeing how he kept aloof from the worship of their idols - for in his heart Joseph never forgot that there was but a single God, self-created, eternal, omnipresent, whom he addressed in his own language by the sacred name of Yahweh. When the Egyptians learned of this, they named Joseph, as was their practice, after the name of his god, for they were pagans and had many strange customs and beliefs. Yahweh, in their own tongue, they pronounced as Yuya -- and so Joseph too they addressed by the name of Yuya.
Now it happened that King Thoth-mes, although young, began to sicken, for his flesh appeared to wither and thin upon his bones. When this was reported, the High Priest came to see him, and for a night and a day the two were closeted together in the innermost sanctuary of the great temple of Amen. Who this god ‘Amen’ truly was, or what his appearance might be, was kept hidden from all but the highest of the priests, and yet he was said to possess a terrible magic too great to be inquired after, too powerful to be learned. ‘Secret of transformations’, he was named, and ‘sparkling of appearances’; and yet in truth there was no one who had seen the god’s true form, and people would fall down all at once for fear lest his true name be revealed. So terrible was it whispered to be that even Pharaoh would hesitate to cross the High Priest, who claimed alone amongst mortals to have learned it, and the understanding of the universe and its mysteries which it brought.
When their Pharaoh fell sick, then,
the people had prayed that such knowledge might restore him -- and to be sure, when he did emerge at last from the temple into daylight, the power of Amen’s magic appeared immediately apparent, for King Thoth-mes seemed again in fullest health and even in his limbs looked whole and strong. Even so, for many days afterwards his mood appeared much troubled, and those of his courtiers who dared to meet his stare would sometimes catch the glimpse there of a wild and brooding terror, such as seemed to have chilled his innermost soul. At length King Thoth-mes sent for Joseph, and would not be parted from him, but asked him many questions about the god which he worshipped, whom Joseph had claimed was far greater than Amen. When the High Priest learned of this, he came to King Thoth-mes and sought to persuade him to banish Joseph from his presence; but King Thoth-mes refused and indeed, from that time on, he took Joseph ever more closely to his heart.
It was about this same time that the sister of King Thoth-mes, who shared both his bed and his throne as Great Queen, gave birth to a son. No one was happier for his master than Joseph; yet he fell to thinking, as he gazed upon the infant Prince, how he had neither son nor daughter whom he could call his own. He turned to the nurse, and asked her what the name of the young Prince was to be. She answered him, ‘Amen-hetep’ -- which meant, in the language of the pagans, ‘Amen-is-content’. Hearing the name of this mysterious god, the High Priest of whom was his deadliest enemy, Joseph fell into even deeper thought and he felt a great heaviness descend upon his heart. ‘For I am a stranger in a foreign land,’ he said to himself, ‘and unless I have a family, there will be no one to whom I can pass on my name and teach the worship of the One and Only God.’ And then he turned and left the Palace, and he rode his chariot across the sands until he came to a valley set amongst the hills, where the bodies of the Pharaohs were laid to rest in hidden tombs; and while he was there, he lay down in the shade and fell asleep.