Susan Fletcher - Alphabet of Dreams

by Susan Fletcher

  I’ve a sleeping potion for your guard.

  He waits for you.

  Tonight … Be ready.

  I tried to think clearly, decide what to do. But my mind would not still; it hopped like a flea over the past weeks of my life, alighting on faces and incidents and fragments of things said.

  Ecbatana, summer residence of the king.

  Does everyone know about the precession of equinoxes?

  Stars, all ablur, circling as in many nights, many months, many years, many thousands of years.

  That sleepwalking dream, so much vaster in scope than the others, had seemed to sap the life from Babak.

  How many such dreams could Babak endure?

  To touch the dreams of such a man … It could burn you.

  I leaped to my feet, prowled up and down the length of the tent space—quietly, so as not to wake the guard, whose rumbling snores now overwhelmed the other night sounds. Sleeping!

  It’s my guess … Suren’s been captured.

  Maybe this was a trap. Maybe Pirouz was one of the Eyes and Ears, despite all appearances. Maybe he would take us straight back to where Suren was held prisoner, if he took us to him at all. Maybe he would take us to the king.

  But the Eyes and Ears, once they located their quarry, would have no more need of disguise—they would reveal themselves and seize whatever it was they wanted.

  Or maybe he was a spy for them. But if so, he was not a good spy, for he had aroused Giv’s suspicion right away. And if he were a spy, wouldn’t he, having found us, ride back to tell the Eyes and Ears and let them seize us? On the other hand, if he was loyal to Suren—or at least expected a reward from one of our allies—he would likely have to fetch us himself.

  I’ve done you a favor and you don’t even know it.

  Favor! Ha! I kicked a basket, tipping it over and sending a cache of dried chickpeas spilling out across the carpet. That old crone! We didn’t need any favors from her. And we wouldn’t remain chattel. Wouldn’t. We were noble born—kin to kings! Should I spurn this chance—even if uncertain—to seize back the life we deserved?

  Shirak, staggering out of Giv’s massive, cupped hand.

  Pacorus, hastening to search for Babak.

  I shoved them out of my mind.

  He waits for you.

  Grandmother, beside me on her divan in our old home in Susa—drawing me close, setting her powder-soft cheek against my hair:

  Granddaughter! Remember who you are!

  CHAPTER 26

  ACROSS the PLATEAU

  When Pirouz came, I was ready.

  I roused Babak. He moaned softly and put his arms about my neck as I lifted him. Then I picked up the saddlebags I’d packed with blankets and a little food. Carefully I stepped over Shirak—curled up, sound asleep—and followed Pirouz out past the snoring guard. Though one of the larger tents glowed with lamplight and hummed with voices, nothing else stirred. We made our way down onto the dry bank of the stream and into the shadowy gloom of a dusty stand of trees, where we could not be seen.

  The stable hand awaited us, along with two horses. Babak stirred, stiffened, let out a small sound of surprise.

  “Hush,” I said. “They’re taking us to Suren.”

  “Suren!” Babak jerked fully awake, his eyes wild with hope.

  “Shh. Come.” Pirouz mounted one of the horses, held out his arms to take Babak.

  He shrank from Pirouz, but I whispered assurances in Babak’s ear and handed him up. I straddled the second horse, behind the stable hand. We set off.

  We rode through all of that night. It was a rough, hard-pressed journey, traversing the high plateau at a tooth-jarring pace, shunning roads, clambering up and down the steep banks of wadis, stumbling on patches of loose rock and shifting sand. The wind stirred up. It swept away our tracks, for which I was glad. Giv, I knew, had some skill at tracking; now he could not follow. But this helpful wind also bit at my ears and spit sand into my eyes. The night grew piercingly cold.

  And yet with every step we grew nearer to Suren.

  At least, I hoped we did.

  The knife-thin rim of moon was behind us as it set; after that, judging from what little I knew of stars and from the darker darkness of mountains against the sky, it seemed that we traveled mostly east. But sometimes there were mountains on two or three sides, and other times it seemed that we veered north or south.

  If Suren had sent Pirouz to find us, why were we not headed south, to Susa? Or west, in the direction of Palmyra?

  I pushed my qualms aside. Babak was no longer anyone’s chattel. Soon, the gods willing, we would be reunited with our brother.

  When the red morning sun shimmered up over the horizon, we were picking our way along the bottom of a barren wadi. We did not stop for devotions. When we came to a pool of brackish water, Pirouz pulled up beside us and told the stable hand to dismount and make camp.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “How long until we reach Suren?”

  Pirouz didn’t even glance at me, just turned his horse away.

  “Where is Suren?” I asked louder.

  “Put a muzzle on that one,” he flung over his shoulder.

  Before I could comprehend what was happening, the servant jammed a filthy rag into my mouth and tied it behind my head. When I lashed out at him, he clouted me hard across the face, sending me tumbling to the ground.

  “Suren,” Pirouz scoffed. He turned to the other man. “Suren,” he repeated, as if they shared a secret joke. The man laughed, head hunched between his massive shoulders.

  I closed my eyes and cradled my head in my hands, letting the rage sweep through me, waiting for the bright, hot center of the pain to cool.

  *

  “When will we come to Suren?” Babak asked.

  I looked at him. Didn’t he understand?

  Pirouz was lounging in the morning shade, idly tossing a ball and catching it, tossing it and catching it. The other man—Arman was his name—had hobbled and fed the horses, then unpacked from the saddlebags a waterskin and a small sack of dates. He had removed my gag but bound my ankles together and my wrists behind me, tight enough to chafe yet not so tight as to stop my blood. He’d bound Babak’s wrists only, reasoning, no doubt, that my brother wouldn’t try to run away without me, but that he might try to untie my bindings. Arman did think to settle us in the shade, which led me to believe we were worth something to them alive.

  “When will we come to Suren?”

  He must know that we would not. I opened my mouth to reassure him some way but found no words. A spreading darkness had come to pool about my heart.

  “Where is Suren?” Babak said, his voice rising.

  “Come here,” I said. “Lean against me.”

  But he did not. “I want Suren.”

  “I want him too,” I whispered.

  Babak stared at me. Then, quietly, he began to weep.

  This doesn’t mean he’s dead, I told myself. Just because Pirouz deceived us, it doesn’t mean Suren was captured, or that he couldn’t escape if he were. Pirouz might have met him on the road, and Suren might have told him too much. Suren was always too trusting.

  That Suren! He had likely gone to ground somewhere and was crouching there, afraid to take a risk, afraid to go forward or backward without me to urge him on.

  This doesn’t mean I sent him to his death.

  This means nothing. Nothing at all.

  In a while Arman untied Babak and made to free my hands so that we could eat.

  “Let his brother feed him,” Pirouz said.

  Arman swept the barren landscape with his gaze, as if to say, Where would they go?

  “Just do what I say.”

  Arman shrugged.

  Babak roused himself to administer a few squirts from the waterskin and pop several dates into our mouths. His eyes were red from crying, and he wouldn’t look at me. I motioned with my head for him to sit by my side. This time he relented. I felt him sigh, a sigh that seemed to release h
is anger at me into the desert air.

  Or maybe it was hope he let go of.

  The wind had died down, and a great stillness had come over the parched landscape, a stillness unbroken save for the buzzing of flies, the far-off cry of a hawk and, from time to time, a slide of pebbles down the side of the wadi as some small animal passed above. Inside an open lean-to Pirouz and Arman spoke softly, but I managed to catch most of what they said.

  It was as bad as I had feared. We were headed for a caravansary Pirouz knew, where he could buy the innkeeper’s silence. This caravansary lay on a different, more northerly road. We would join the next westbound caravan, skirt Ecbatana, and make for Ctesiphon, where Phraates and his men had gone for the winter.

  Babak, listening, grew tense beside me. “Never fear,” I whispered. “We’ll find a way to escape. These men are lowborn and stupid. We’ll easily outsmart them.” I tried to make myself believe the last part. If I didn’t, Babak would feed on my fear. If I didn’t, I would curl myself into a ball and wait for death to overtake me.

  Soon I heard Arman ask for more dates, but Pirouz yanked away the sack, lounged back, and rested his head upon it.

  “Watch ’em,” he said.

  “How could they get away? I can’t go night and day on a couple of dates, I need—”

  “If you want to give the orders, go find your own noble brood to ransom. Though you won’t find any to fetch what these’ll bring—of that you can be sure.”

  Arman, grumbling to himself, hunkered down to keep watch.

  I lay with my chin against Babak’s shoulder as the sun rose in the sky, shrinking our patch of shadow. I whispered words of comfort, words of escape. Gradually the tautness in his body eased. When at last his breath settled into the rhythms of sleep, the aches and pains in my own body rose up and cried for attention: sore legs and back, chafing wrists, shoulders cramped and twitchy. I strove to clear my mind and trace back through all I knew of Pirouz.

  I could not recall seeing him in the original caravan when Melchior came into Rhagae. The first time I noticed him had been later. Babak had bumped into him once, when we were fleeing Giv.

  Had I called Babak by name? It was true that Pirouz might have met with Suren on the road. Or—

  The king’s Eyes and Ears. What had Zoya said of them? They had come looking for a young boy named Babak and an older sister or brother. They had asked for Babak by name.

  It was possible they’d just now—after all these years—come round to finding us. But more likely …

  Suren.

  More likely, they’d found Suren first.

  Against my will the pieces of the mosaic seemed to click into place, forming a complete picture at last. Maybe Pirouz had spoken with the Eyes and Ears, in Rhagae or before. In the caravan he had recognized Babak from his name and description. When I showed up—an older sister or brother—I had confirmed his suspicions.

  What a fool I had been! Babak had trusted me, and I had ruined us both.

  And Suren. What had I done to him?

  CHAPTER 27

  A PLAN

  A while later a movement jerked me out of sleep. Babak was rising to walk! I hissed out his name, but he did not respond. His eyes seemed tranced, as they had that night in the fortress. I threw myself against his feet to stop him. He tripped and fell, then looked round, startled. At Arman, snoring, a little way off. At Pirouz, reclining in the lean-to.

  Babak began to cry.

  I itched to search beneath his tunic to find out if there was an alien piece of cloth there to cause this dream, but my hands and feet were bound.

  “There, Babak.” I tucked my chin atop his head and spoke into his hair. “Hush, little one.” The sobs began to abate. Babak hiccoughed, rubbed his drippy face upon my tunic.

  “What did you dream?” I asked. “Whose dream was it?”

  “It was the shaggy beasties,” he said. “The dream I had before.”

  How could that be? That dream had been for the Scythian’s wife, and her dream cloth was long gone.

  “What’s amiss with him?” Pirouz approached with that swaybacked swagger of his; we must have awakened him. Suddenly a plan leaped into my mind.

  “Don’t say anything,” I whispered to Babak. “No matter what I say, just nod. Do you hear me?”

  Babak, sniffling, nodded.

  I turned to Pirouz. “It’s nothing,” I said. “He’s just had one of his dreams.”

  Pirouz grunted and turned back.

  “I wouldn’t trouble myself if I were you,” I said, though clearly he was not troubled. “Babak’s dreams don’t always come true,” I said.

  Pirouz stopped. Slowly he turned round. Came back. Squatted before us. “What was the dream?”

  I shook my head. “No need to bother yourself about it.”

  He seized a wad of my tunic and pulled me so close that the reek of his breath nearly brought tears to my eyes. “What was the dream?”

  “Shh.” I set my finger upon my lips, looked pointedly in Arman’s direction.

  Still snoring.

  “Babak dreamed …” I hesitated. Was this wise? People had been known to kill the bearers of ill tidings.

  Pirouz shook me. “What?”

  “Someone stabbed you in the back with a dagger.”

  I felt Babak stiffen in surprise.

  “Who?” Pirouz demanded.

  I jerked my head toward Arman. Quiet, I willed to Babak.

  Pirouz narrowed his eyes. “You said ‘don’t always come true.’ So, sometimes they do.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Often?”

  I shrugged. “Often enough. He dreamed of a wedding for a Scythian and of winning a toss of dice. Those came true. And …” Here came another lie, but I needed to drive the point home. “And the death of an uncle by poison.”

  “Poison? Not just death, or death at another’s hands?”

  “It was poison.” I turned to look pointedly at Babak. Obediently he nodded.

  Pirouz let go of me. He gazed long and hard at his sleeping servant, then went off to brood alone.

  Arman shook us awake as the sun slid behind the mountains and flooded the lowering clouds with crimson. He passed around the waterskin and doled out a few more dates, then untied us so we could ride.

  Again we rode all night. Daylight found us moving across the plain toward a line of roundish mounds of dirt, like a string of giant anthills. Each mound, I knew, marked the well shaft to an underground irrigation canal, a qanat. Arman pointed to a spindly hoisting device, a well wheel, beside one of the openings. We rode toward it and stopped nearby.

  Right away Pirouz and Arman set to quarreling. Pirouz favored moving down the canal to another well, as the well wheel indicated that people at a village nearby must have been cleaning the qanat recently, and they would doubtless soon return. But Arman said that the device was worth the risk, and that if we moved, Pirouz could haul his own water. Pirouz, muttering, dismounted and went to work erecting a shelter for himself, while Arman unpacked the horses. Neither had yet made a move to bind us. No doubt they would later, when they settled down to sleep. Arman had just set off to fetch water for the animals when Pirouz, sprawled out in his lean-to, clapped his hands imperiously and called to Arman to fill his waterskin first. Grumbling, Arman filled the skin, then ducked into the shelter. In a moment I heard Arman shout, “It’s a lie!” Then all at once he jumped backward, knocking down a pole, collapsing the lean-to. Pirouz pursued him, dagger drawn; Arman unsheathed his knife. They began to circle, each one keeping eyes fixed upon the other.

  I had hoped for this, for the poison to work in Pirouz’s mind, but I hadn’t expected it so soon.

  “Follow me,” I whispered to Babak. Slowly, we crept toward the horses. If we could take them both, the men would never catch us.

  The first hobble was loose; I managed to untie it in no time. I helped Babak to mount and was fumbling with the knot of the second hobble, wedging my fingers into tight crevices of leat
her, when I heard Pirouz shout.

  He had seen us. They were coming.

  If I didn’t loose both horses, we would never get away. “Wait for me,” I told Babak, picking desperately at the knot with fingers now beginning to bleed.

  Too late. Pirouz was almost upon us, and the knot had not begun to yield, but I couldn’t let go of it, couldn’t let go of hope.

  Pirouz lunged for Babak, but Babak slipped off the far side of the horse. It whinnied and plunged. Pirouz fell backward, went sprawling. “It stepped on me!” he cried, holding his foot. I rose to go to Babak, but Arman flung himself upon me, pinning me to the ground—so heavy I thought my ribs would crack. I strained to lift my head. Babak was running. I squeaked out a call to him, for it was over now, he had no place to go. And when I realized where he was headed, I called again. Screamed.

  “Babak! Don’t!”

  But he did. He scrambled up the side of the circle of heaped dirt and disappeared into the qanat.

  CHAPTER 28

  QANAT

  There was a moment of stillness, an indrawn breath of a moment in which I thought I heard a clattering of stones. Then I sank my teeth in Arman’s hand, sank them deep. He roared, shook free of me, rolled off me to cradle his wound. I was running then, running past Pirouz—who lunged at me and missed—running across the hard, scrubby plain and up the loose dirt berm to the qanat. Deep. Deep and black. I could not see the bottom. I could not see Babak. But the rope from the hoisting device had come unwound from the wheel and hung down into the shaft. Had Babak climbed down the rope—not just flung himself into the well?

  A shout. Arman was coming for me, Pirouz close behind. I crouched, grabbed on to the rope, and lowered myself down, setting off an avalanche of loose stones and dirt that rattled down the sides of the shaft and hit the water with a volley of ploinks. Down, down into the dark. My back scraped against the sides of the shaft. Feet slipping, knees slipping, rope burning through my hands, and now all of me sliding, all of me falling. A splash. A shock of cold. My boots knocked against the leather bucket, slapped down on solid, slippery rock.