Sindbad, The Thirteenth Voyage

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Why are you the one who is fearful, craven brother?” Mamun taunted. “It is plainly I who am bleeding to death. But you will fear me more when I am dead than you fear me alive. Learn to fear me both ways, craven! Strike, strike, strike! But it will not avail you. I know something which you do not know.”

  Al-Amin struck and struck and struck again. And Mamun the Great fell and then rolled some way down the flowing stairs. A Physician came and pronounced him dead. “The duel should be over,” said the Physician.

  “But the duel is not over,” one of Mamun's seconds insisted. “If a man rises from the dead within a reasonable period of time, he is allowed to continue the duel. That was always the case in the old days when they had duels that were duels.”

  This Second of Mamun did not have the full human appearance. Likely he belonged to one of the powers-of-darkness species. He leaned over Mamun. He did queer things to him with his hands. The blood disappeared from Mamun and from his garments. The death-pallor went away from him. The color of health returned to Mamun the Great. He rose to his feet.

  “Craven brother of mine,” the risen Mamun taunted, “I said that I knew a thing which you didn't know. I know several such things. You are looking at the sun with a little apprehension, craven brother of mine. Yes, the shadow of the moon is already beginning to cover it. You may kill me once more. You may kill me twice more. And then will come the dark, and people will say of me ‘This is his time, and the Hour of Darkness’. When we are in the dark of the full eclipse, then I will kill you. Do you have Seconds who can raise you from the dead, Al-Amin? Even Scheherazade can do it only in a fiction form. Why did you not have the foresight to arrange such things as I have arranged for myself. You knew I was coming. You suffered the beat of my horses’ hooves in your head. Why are you not repaired?”

  They fought again, and Al-Amin had much the better of the fight. He drove Mamun up the stairway again, and Mamun showed less style and even a touch of fear. He wounded Mamun quicker and deeper and more often than he had done on the first encounter. The rapier is not really a hacker, but Al-Amin used it as such, or as a flexible cutting whip. He hacked off both the hands of Mamun the Great at the wrists. He nearly hacked his head off, but I Essindibad the Second at the duel stopped him.

  “Holy, Caliph Al-Amin,” I interposed. “I, one of your Seconds, stop you now. One may not hack a man after he is dead. That is against the whole spirit of the thing.”

  “I'm sorry, and I regret it,” the Caliph Al-Amin said, and he stepped back. “But with Mamun, how can one be sure that he's dead?”

  “He is dead,” the Physician said, “and the duel should be over. But the rule from the old days seems to prevail, that if a man rises from the dead within a reasonable period of time he may continue the duel.”

  A different Second of Mamun now bent over him. this creature, masked and cloaked as he was, was still plainly other than human, and more of the dark brotherhood even than the previous Second had been. He did things to Mamun with his hands. He attached Mamun's hands back to his wrists, put Mamun's head back on more securely, for it had been almost severed. He fixed Mamun's broken neck and much else about him. He put blood into Mamun with an instrument. He gave a dripping and unsavory (so it seemed to me) morsel to Mamun who swallowed it, but with great difficulty. And he waited. The surgeon came.

  “This man is still dead,” the surgeon said, “but he is not as dead as he was a short time ago. How much time is a reasonable time for a man to rise from the dead and continue the duel?”

  “A little bit longer, only a little bit longer,” the Second of Mamun croaked like the croaking of a Stygian frog. This Second then did other things to Mamun the Great. The blood did not disappear either from his person or from his garments as it had done the first time. But the pallor of death did disappear from him, and the flush of life returned. Mamun the Great rose to his feet.

  “I will acknowledge, craven brother, that the second death which you have just dealt to me did not leave me scatheless,” Mamun spoke with a difficult voice. “Every time a man dies, even if most briefly, it takes a little something out of him. But I see the first star in the sky. It is my luck star, craven brother, and not yours. It is always lucky to see the first star in the noon sky before your opponent sees it. I cry ‘haz’ luck, and I cry ‘nagm’ star, and I cry ‘waqt’ time. Do you not recall the childrens's game when we could call on our luck and our star to gain critical time in our battles? It was the lucky star respite to be used when one was hard pressed. I often used it against you, but you were never alert enough to use it against me. I will take a little ‘lucky star respite’ now, a reasonable time before we resume the fight.”

  “No, no,” the Caliph Al-Amin protested. “The noon-light begins to fail. Let us fight when we have clear light to fight by. The darkness will confuse the fight and let other factors enter in.”

  “Bless those other factors,” Mamun the Great spoke with a bit more strength in his voice. “In the ‘Land of Other Factors’ I am Caliph and you are not. Thirteen stars I am able to count in-the sky now, and thirteen is my lucky number. But I see the black cloud coming! You will not have even star-light to see by, craven brother who's afraid of the dark! The eclipse comes apace, and so do the clouds. We have fought twice in the daylight you trust. In a while we will fight my kind of fight in the dark.”

  “Fight now, coward, fight now!” Al-Amin cried, and he approached his brother thrusting with his weapon. “Fight now!”

  “Almost now, frightened brother, almost now. Notice how much more nimble I am in the quarter light? Notice how I am faster of hand and foot than you are in the one-eighth light! Ah, you stumble, Al-Amin. You stumble in both foot and brain. And the one-sixteenth light shows panic in your face. Savor the acrid taste of this last quarter minute of your life, Al-Amin. And now that there is nobody here able to raise you from the dead, except only God, and he does not ordinarily interfere in duels.”

  The darkness became total. And the rapiers began to scrape with silvery and uncertain sound on each other.

  ‘Death has very poor eyesight when he comes by daylight, and especially when the sun is bright. He will grope with his blinded hands, and often he will not be able to find his victim at all. He more easily finds his victim on cloudy days than on sunny days, and in the early morning or late evening than in the bright noontime. He more easily finds his victims on the shady than the sunny side of the street. But when he comes after dusk, and especially when he comes in full darkness at whatever the hour, he will find his victim and will not go away empty.’

   — Legends of the Persian Gulf. Moisha El-Gazma.

  Oh Green His Shoes And Wig And Death

  There had been a scream out of the total darkness, and it had been in the ragged voice of Mamun the Great. There had been a second such scream from him, and then a more vigorous clatter of the blades.

  And then there had been a low but carrying moan in a timbre that wasn't Mamun's. Then a fall. We all knew that we had all heard the death-moan of Al-Amin.

  There was silence over the entire city of Baghdad then, for thirteen seconds, in which time one lone cricket chirped thirteen times. And then came the tired and ragged and bloody (one knew that it was bloody) voice of the Pretender Caliph (now the real Caliph) Mamun the Great:

  “Be quiet, cricket. I will chirp my own chirps. I also am Caliph of crickets. Open your eyes, God. I knew that there was no cloud passing over the sun. I knew that it was only yourself closing your eyes to make the eclipse of your sun more complete. Open your eyes now! What was done was done in the dark. And it were better so. None, not even yourself, will ever know whether it was honest execution or whether it was black murder. I see the stars now, so you have opened your eyes again. Now, in just a moment, the sun will dawn at noon, its second dawn today. And when it dawns will it reveal that you have given me a token so that no one finding me shall kill me?

  “I hadn't originally intended to kill my brother. I wasn't riding to B
aghdad with murder in my heart. I was riding with very mixed emotions in my heart. And I rode alone, until early this morning, after my brother had sent seven different patrols to kill me. One does not ride alone against a hundred thousand men in garrison if he has murder in his heart. My brother Al-Amin had made a straw monster out of me to justify certain whims of his own. But after I had cut my way out of seven different encirclements of his horsemen, I began to feel less kindly to him. It wasn't that I hated my brother. It was just that there was room for only one of us in the Caliphate. You can understand this, surely, since there is room for only one of you in the Universe. You may know that there are shady stories about yourself on this very subject.

  “It is written in one of the books, though not in one presently reckoned as holy, that you God had a twin and that you slew him before time began. That business ‘before time began’ is as convenient as yourself closing your eyes to pull darkness over an inconvenient happening.

  “No, I cannot prove the fratricide charge against you, God, but can you prove it against me? When it is light enough for you to see again, you will notice the way that my brother has fallen and that he has been killed by his own thin Frankish blade in falling. Do not look too close at the haft of that blade, for we used a matched set of weapons. One of them had the letter A (Alif) on the haft of it for Al-Amin. And the other one had the letter M (Mim) on it for Mamun the Great. I say that my brother was killed by his own blade; and if you do not look too closely at the letter on the blade, I will not look too closely at some of your own doings.”

  A slice of fire was in the sky now as the eclipse slipped off the sun. By the light of that second dawn of the day there was seen Mamun the Great striding on the elegant sweep of the steps like one drunken. And the body of his brother Al-Amin was seen lying a few steps above him, on its belly, and with a rapier protruding from his back. As to which letter was on the haft of that rapier, it would never be known. The haft itself was buried very deep in the belly of the dead Al-Amin, and only the pommel could be seen beneath him. As to the other rapier that Mamun the Great still held in his hand, well he would be holding it in his hand for the rest of his life. And no one would ever see what letter was on its haft. For Mamun held the weapon in an odd manner with his thumb covering that part of the haft where the subscript is commonly written.

  The blood-covered Mamun spoke again in his blood-slippery and ragged voice: “I do not hold my thumb over it for fear of what men should see (What have I to fear from men?) but for fear of what God should see. So far, God can only guess what happened in the dark. He cannot know that it is my blade that is driven into my brother's belly, and that this is my brother's fallen blade that I hold in my hand. He suspects this, but he cannot know it for true. My Seconds, I am in pain. See what you can do for my bloody eye and my bloody throat, though I suspect that you can do nothing for either.”

  The unhuman Seconds came and put their hands on the wound high on Mamun's throat. They cleared away the blood, but they did not clear away the red from that wound. The Mark was there, starkly and garishly.

  “It is the Mark of Cain,” several people cried.

  “No, it is the Mark of Mamun the Great,” Mamun contradicted them, “and yet it is the same mark. I never knew why it was believed that the Mark of Cain was on the brow. It was on the throat. Cain went always wrapped with a heavy scarf about his throat, but it was a scarf that hid nothing. The Mark of Cain came through on every scarf that he ever wore, as starkly and garishly as it was on his throat itself. There are nine of these ‘Cain Scarves’ in museums around the world (one of them here in Holy Baghdad), nine of them existing to this very day. But only the Illuminati know what they are. So I will also go always with a scarf wrapped around my own throat, and the mark will come through every swathing that I wear. Give me that scarf that you carry, rich person! Is it not finely done with the threads of real gold! See, see, the Token, the Mark of Mamun, comes through from my throat to the scarf. And yet no person will ever see my bare throat again.

  “Now, my eye, my eye! See to it, Seconds and Unhuman Healers! See what can be done about my eye!”

  The unhuman Seconds and Doctors did things with their hands in the region where Mamun's left eye had been. But the eye was gone forever, and only an empty horror was in its place. There was no healing possible there.

  “So I will wear black for my dead brother every day of my life,” Mamun said. “Bring me a black eye-patch. Ah yes, does it not give me a rakish appearance! Now bring a dog-cart and the two giant mastiff dogs from Anglia. Now I am a pirate and the father of pirates.”

  “I want to ride on the dog-cart with the body of my eldest and least worthy son,” Harun al-Rashid chimed in. “I think I can use the body in some practical jokes tonight. There are any number of things that one may do with a dead body, and all of them are funny. Let me ride in the cart with the body, Mamun. We'll give it to the dogs to eat tomorrow, but tonight I want to have fun with it.”

  “You'll ride on the dog-cart in your clown suit, with your green wig and your green, turned-up shoes. You'll ride with Al-Amin's body on the dog-cart, my unrespected father, but you shall not play any tricks with it. You will ride in the Ovation-Parade with my brother's body in the dog-cart until the parade is over with. You'll ride in your green motley till you come to your own green death.

  “But I will take over the Ovation-Parade now. There is no reason to waste a good Triumph-Accolade-Ovation-Parade. And when it is over with, the dogs will let you know by their bristling against you that it is time for you to leave the cart. This strain of mastiff dogs was introduced here from the foggy Island of Anglia in the time of my grandfather. They are not quite the most giant breed of dogs in the world, though they are sufficiently giant-like. They have a stronger sense of ritual than have any other dogs.

  “My brother Al-Amin shall still be a Caliph. Now he shall be a Caliph of Dogs. The dogs of the several breeds, but led by the Mastiffs, have had human Caliphs for more than thirty years now. Dead-Man Caliphs, but they can walk and talk, or shuffle and stammer. The dogs are satisfied to be ruled by a human man even if he is a dead man. I think they prefer it to be this weird way. But they'll not eat the body. They'll keep it, and it will walk for them thrice a month. And not even God will be able to get a look at the initial that is on the haft of the rapier that transfixes my brother. The dogs would not let even God come close enough to see it.

  “Trumpet-blowers, bugle-blowers, ram's-horn-blowers, unicorn-horn-blowers, blow now a rousing blast for me and my Ovation! Ah yes, ‘The One-Eyed Man is King Today’, I love that tune. It is a comic tune, but it will serve for my ovation.

  “Sindbad, walk beside me. I’ve decided not to have you killed, but I have a bit of scorn to pour upon your head.

  “Scheherazade, you'll be my wife tonight. I don't know what arrangement you had with my father or with my brother, but I will have you by my own arrangement. What tales you scribble now will be for my high praise.”

  “I have a husband already, in an unconsummated way,” she said. “I am not convinced that he's entirely dead. I am not convinced that he's entirely dead. If he will walk for the Mastiffs thrice a month, then I will walk with them also. Considering my clammy experience as one of the thousand-and-one wives of the Father Harun al-Rashid, being married to a living-dead zombie-man will be almost prosaic.”

  “Follow the dogs and the body then, Damzel. And come to me when you have finished your traffic with my dead brother. I believe that you will not follow him long. What is the real reason for your whimsy? Nobody could ever be taken with a passion for my brother in the less than a day he had been Caliph. Is this one of your fictions, girl? What hooked you?”

  I had the clear impression that Mamun the Great was a larger and taller man than his dead brother Al-Amin had been. And yet I had stood beside both of them, and Al-Amin had surely been taller by a head. And I had the impression that the bloody murderer Mamun was a kind man.

  “I am not sure where
my fictions leave off and my facts begin, Caliph,” Scheherazade said, “but what hooked me was the dog-cart. It could only have been drawn by Dore, and it couldn't have been made at all. In the world of Dore there were no round wheels. And then I am convinced that these dogs are inhabited by the souls of ghuls, and this fascinates me.”

  “Sindbad, you are in a bad case,” Mamun the Great spoke to me. “I heard myself plainly tell the people that I would put you to death. And I heard your third Spy-Bird tell you to escape to some other place while the duel and the eclipse were both going on. Why didn't you?”

  “Like Scheherazade, I cannot turn down a good story or a promising adventure. Maybe I wanted to see how I'm going to get out of this one. There's a story in you somewhere, Mamun.”

  “And I have a question for you, Mamun,” Scheherazade chirped. “Why did you kill your brother? Why did you ride here so murderously so that he would have no choice but to kill or be killed? You aren't a devil.”

  “I'm not. Al-Amin may have been. He was the son of the boy-devil Harun al-Rashid. I'm not, though it is commonly believed that I am. As to Al-Amin and myself being brothers, we were brothers who had both different mothers and different fathers. The seed of Harun could be a disaster. I believe that I will stop right here, on the top of this hillock, and make a speech to the people:

  “People of Baghdad, I have been maligned in rumor and reputation as a bad and bloody man,” Mamun the Great orated in his rough voice. “I look like a bloody man now, but it is my own blood on me. I am really a kind and compassionate person, humble, the servant of the servants, full of quiet dedication and devotion. I am the very opposite of what is usually said of me. What, what, what? Why are you laughing and jeering, people? Have a care. If you kindle my wrath with your jeering, I'll give you a new demonstration of the meaning of the word ‘fearful’. Oh, I see what it is! It does give an ironic twist to my words, I'll admit.”