“It seems so. They came here to consult with Balthazaar, but he had seen it too, the thing in the stars. They say that Gaspar presses him to come with us. But Melchior …”
Pacorus glanced toward the door and leaned in to me. “I have heard he sent someone to Balthazaar’s quarters when Balthazaar was not there. To spy or to steal.”
I looked quickly down at my sash. To spy …
“What is it they seek?” I wondered aloud. “What do they see in the stars?”
“Some say an auspicious event. A coronation or a birth.”
I had heard rumors of this. Magi, it was said, had attended the birth of Darius the Great. And my father once told me that a band of traveling Magi came to my grandfather the night before the defeat of Rome at Carrhae.
“Others speak of the dawning of the age of Pisces or the coming of the Saoshyant. But,” Pacorus continued darkly, “I have also heard tales of impending cataclysm. They say that Magi prophesied the birth of Alexander and the last Darius’s defeat. There is talk of a great clash of armies, of the world’s end.”
The Saoshyant? The world’s end?
Babak stirred, bringing me back to the present, back to what I must now do. I could feel his breathing against me, slow and deep. Shirak yawned, stretched, and made for the door. When Pacorus turned to watch him, I quickly tucked the cloth beneath Babak’s tunic.
Sin. It still felt like sin.
I looked out toward the stars, now thick upon the heavens. It had begun so small, this dreaming of Babak’s. Dreams of betrothals, of journeys, of the outcomes of small trades. But now it was a skyful of wheeling stars, and all they portended. The births and deaths of kings. The dawning of a new age. Cataclysm: the clash of armies, the end of the world.
How could these mighty dreams flow through such a fragile instrument, without cracking the instrument itself?
CHAPTER 34
STAR-TAKER
Later, after Babak had fallen asleep, Pacorus and I stayed up talking. We leaned against the cushions, side by side. Up close, his eyes were uncommonly fine—deep and clear and flecked with gold, framed with long black lashes. Why had I not noticed that before? Something felt different, now we were alone. Some new kind of agitation. Each time his arm brushed against mine, the place where he had touched tingled strangely.
What was wrong with me? I wondered. I never used to feel this way.
Until Koosha.
With him I had felt … what? A stillness. A sense of recognition. But also this new, disturbing restlessness.
Now, intent upon his point, Pacorus took hold of my arm and leaned in to me. The musky scent of him filled my nose; I had to hold my breath to keep from trembling, or flinching or yanking my arm away.
Stop it, I admonished myself. What’s amiss with you?
Forbidden. In Susa it would have been forbidden for a girl of my age to be alone with a young man not her kin. Perhaps this was why.
Meanwhile, Pacorus spoke of chaste and goodly things: of the Wise God, and of the Holy Immortals, and of purity of thought, word, and deed. Matters of which my grandmother had spoken to me all my life, though I had only half listened. But Pacorus seemed enthralled.
Once, Babak flailed his arms and moaned in his sleep. His face worked as if he were in pain.
“They say,” Pacorus murmured, “that your brother … dreams.”
“Of course he dreams. Everyone dreams.” Except for me.
“Prophetic dreams, they say. Dreams that lead men to want to make use of him.”
I kept my gaze fixed upon Babak. “Who is saying this, about the dreams?”
“Everyone,” Pacorus replied.
I studied Babak’s face in the lamplight—the troubled look of his brow, the dark circles beneath his eyes.
“It is also said—and this is only whispered—that Melchior hopes for the currency of dreams to buy his way back into his old position of power.”
I looked up sharply.
“He seeks out the company of men of great renown, especially kings and princes.”
“Phraates?”
“No. Too late for that, they say. But he had great power when he was Phraates’ chief priest, and he wants it back—as priest and counselor to some other great ruler. And Babak’s dreams …”
I sat silent, hoping he would not pry, hoping he would not himself use my friendship as currency, to buy his way into favor. An owl hooted somewhere nearby, and in the distance I heard the bark of a jackal.
Pacorus shifted, cleared his throat. “Well. They say that Melchior is a great man, that he is well known all throughout the provinces, that he hobnobs with nobility and high councilors. They say that Gaspar is a wise man, more learned in the secrets of the stars and the true nature of the heavens than any man now living. He has calculated the positions of the stars back nearly to the beginning of time, and out nearly to the end of all time to come. And Balthazaar …”
Pacorus broke off, gazed through the doorway into the night.
“Well? What do they say of Balthazaar?”
“They say he is a holy man.”
And then it was the stars, and what might be foretold in them. It was the coming of a new astral age, and the Three Times of history laid out by the prophet Zoroaster.
The day had been long and hard. I began to let go of Pacorus’s words, allowing them to flow over me without penetrating my understanding. My gaze strayed to the smooth planes of his cheeks in the golden lamplight, to the fine, straight line of his nose, to the ink-stained tips of his slender fingers. I felt warm, full bellied, and heavy. My eyelids were leaden; they wanted to close.
In time, sleep overtook me.
“Sister?”
I swam up out of a deep slumber to see Babak awake. Squatting. Peering down at me. I looked around for Pacorus, hoping he hadn’t heard Babak call me Sister, but by the dim lamplight I saw we were alone.
“Sister, I can’t sleep.”
I sat up, took Babak in my arms. I rubbed his back, his bony back.
“Did you dream, little one?”
“No,” he said, then, “Yes.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“No.”
“Very well.” Later we would have to tell Melchior. For now, I didn’t give a straw for all his star signs and kings.
Babak scrubbed at his eyes and looked about him. “I don’t want to sleep,” he said.
Who could blame him? “What do you want to do?”
“Can we go see Gorizpa? And Ziba?”
I imagined the Eyes and Ears skulking round the palace grounds, searching for us. But no. There are seven walls round the city, I told myself, and many guards at every gate. And it would be good to see Gorizpa and Ziba again.
“We will try,” I said.
We did not leave through the main door of the palace, for I knew the palace guards would not let us pass. But at the far end of our gallery was a narrow stairway and, at the head of it, a slumpedover guard with eyes shut and mouth agape. I crept close enough to hear his snores, then motioned Babak to come. We tiptoed past him, down the dark steps to the courtyard. I surmised that it was well past midnight; he would likely not wake soon for prayers.
By the light of the stars we made our way among slumbering camels, the remains of smoldering fires, and shadowy humps on the ground that might be carpets or bundles of cargo or sleeping men wrapped up in their cloaks. A chicken clucked sleepily. Two men snored in a sonorous duet; one deep and booming, the other a high whistle.
The stables were dark and smelled of hay and dust and animal dung. I did not see how we were going to find Gorizpa and Ziba, but Babak would not give up, feeling his way among the animals—patches of deeper black against the gloom of the stables. I longed for light, and wished we had brought one of the lamps from our room. In time our animals found us—at least, Gorizpa did, giving out an indignant bray as we approached and pushing her great forehead against me. I scratched inside her ear; she let out a moan. I heard a wet, cud-chewing crunch, and then something
nipped at my hair. “Ouch!” I said.
It was Ziba. I installed Babak upon an upside-down basket to continue with the ear scratching as I explored with my fingers along Ziba’s neck and flanks, following the trail of hairless, puckered, crusty skin, trying to recollect how it had been before and to discover whether the mange had spread. Ziba grumbled deep in her throat, in a way that managed to convey both welcome and reproach. Though it was impossible to know for certain in the dark, it seemed that the mange was not much worse and possibly had healed a bit. My foot struck something hard; I reached down and picked up a wide, shallow pot containing a sticky liquid. I sniffed. Butter. So Pacorus was as good as his word. I scooped up a handful and rubbed it into Ziba’s skin. Groaning, she brought her head down near mine and nuzzled my hair.
When the butter was gone, Babak and I made our way out of the stable and back across the courtyard. We had nearly reached the narrow stairway leading to our gallery when Babak pointed up. “Look,” he said. “Pacorus!”
And indeed it was. I knew the lanky shape of him, and the way he walked, with a sinewy grace that somehow conveyed pent-up energy. He was moving along a roof terrace not far from our room.
“Shh,” I said. “Don’t call to him. You’ll wake half the courtyard.”
“Let’s go with him. Can we, Sister?”
Somehow I doubted Pacorus would want our help.
“But you’ve hardly slept—”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
His eyes looked bleary, with that darkened flesh beneath them. To fear sleep itself … What had I done to him?
We crept up the stairs, past the still-slumbering guard, and up again, to a higher roof terrace. Babak nearly tripped, then caught himself. “Careful! Pay attention!” I whispered. We tiptoed past a room—Melchior’s?—that rumbled with voices and glowed yellow with lamplight behind the fretted screens.
We’d seen Pacorus near another, higher terrace. A small ladder leaned against the wall, connecting this terrace to one above. Babak began to scale it; I took hold of the back of his tunic to stop him. I had begun to feel uneasy. What was Pacorus doing? I have heard … To spy or to steal, he had said.
“Pacorus might not welcome us here,” I whispered to Babak.
“He will.” Babak twisted away from me and scrambled up. Sighing, I followed.
We came out into a small private courtyard. Very bare, with only an unglazed water vessel standing in a corner. A thick oaken door stood ajar, and through the narrow slit I saw a flickering of light.
“Babak, stop!” I hissed.
Too late. He slipped through the doorway.
A clatter within. A whispered oath. I burst in to see Pacorus stooped over something flat and round on the floor. He swung round, frowned at me. “You shouldn’t creep up that way!” he snapped. Babak pressed back against me. Pacorus picked up the thing on the floor, and I saw that it was a metal disc. A star-taker.
He’d dropped one of these before, on the day I first met him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Do you have permission? Do you—”
“I had to see one up close,” Pacorus said. “I want to know … I want to know everything. Look! Look at these markings—”
“What if you’re caught? Whose room is this?”
It was a plain room, with a tattered straw mat rolled up beside a rude wooden chest, now open. A fire burned atop a small altar and, high up in the rafters, the shadows of cobwebs moved with the wavering of the flame. A faint whiff of incense hung in the air. On the floor I saw a spread-out scroll.
“It’s Balthazaar’s. But he is with the others in Melchior’s rooms. Look,” he said, holding out the instrument again. “I think these markings are for measuring angles, to see how the stars move and how they—”
“You are right,” came a voice that was a bit raspy, yet somehow musical. I spun round and saw a tall, thin, white-bearded man in the open doorway, silhouetted against the stars. “That’s exactly what they are for.”
CHAPTER 35
BALTHAZAAR
He was a Magus. I knew it by the clothes he wore—the white wool tunic, mantle, and trousers, the hoodlike felt hat with long flaps that could be tied to cover mouth and chin. His beard, as white as his robes, was not bushy like Melchior’s, but silky, long, and thin. Though I could not well see his face, I had an impression of ancientness, of solidity, like weathered stone.
Pacorus gazed at him fearfully. “I see you have my star-taker,” the Magus said.
Pacorus held it out to him, but the Magus did not take it. “I … I wasn’t stealing it,” Pacorus said. “I know what I did was wrong, coming here to look. But I wanted to see it, see the markings on it, see if I could learn what it does, what secrets it reveals. There is so much that I …”
Stop, I thought. Don’t compound the crime of breaking into the Magus’s quarters with the sin of prying into sacred secrets. Just stop.
But he didn’t. The words kept rolling out.
“… that I want to know, so much I don’t understand and crave to understand. I want to know about the twelve houses of the sun, and precession, and Great Years and what they have to do with the Three Times, and about paradise and the time to come, and …”
He glanced at Babak and me and was off suddenly on another course. “Don’t blame them, Lord Balthazaar, they have nothing to do with this. They were sound asleep, and I thought I might, just for a moment—”
Balthazaar held up a long, thin hand to silence Pacorus, but even so, he did not seem angry. He turned, moving into the firelight, and looked at me and then at Babak. I could see the edges of his eyes crinkle, as if he were amused. But there was a look in them of something else, something sad and yet kind. “You needn’t fear for them,” he said, “nor for yourself. But I have a question. There is a thing missing from this room. Perhaps I have misplaced it, yet … Do you know aught of it?”
Missing. The sash? I tried to hold my face still so as not to betray my thoughts. Babak, seeming to sense my unease, reached up to put his hand in mine.
“No, my lord,” Pacorus was saying. “I would never … I would never steal from you. I only—”
“Hush, boy. I believe you. Would you like me to show you how to use the instrument?”
Pacorus gaped, silenced at last, and then managed to croak out, “Yes,” and as an afterthought, “If you please.”
Now the Magus held out his hand for the star-taker. “Bring the lamp,” Balthazaar said, and strode to a low wall at the far end of the terrace. Balthazaar held the metal disc carefully, reverently, laying it flat in the palm of one long-fingered hand. Everything about him was long: long, aquiline nose; long face; long arms; and a lean, tall, loose-limbed body that gave the impression, when walking, of an ancient crane or heron.
“We can derive the positions of all the stars in the sky and where they will be in times to come. And thereby … Well. See here.” He held the ring attached to the disc so that it hung suspended below. Pacorus moved forward to attend him, but there were so many strange markings on the instrument, and I was too weary to attempt to follow. I put my arms round Babak’s shoulders and looked up at the lovely, dark sky, bejeweled with countless familiar stars and constellations. Pacorus bent his head low over the instrument as Balthazaar murmured an incantation of unfamiliar words: Projections. Latitudes. Azimuth. Zenith.
“The stars have grammar and meaning,” I heard him say. “They are an alphabet writ large upon the sky, in which we may read the smallest things—the pulses of the heart, the motions of the will.”
All at once, Babak piped up. “I had a dream for you,” he said.
The Magus stood perfectly still, and yet his face changed, seemed in some fashion to open up to an inner surprise. I looked down at Babak, tried to catch his eye, tried to signal no in a way that no one else would see. He was not supposed to tell about his dreaming. And heaven only knew what he had dreamed!
The Magus turned slowly. “A dream for me.” His puzzled gaze c
ame to settle on me.
I swallowed. Said nothing.
The Magus knelt beside Babak. “Was it a good dream?” he asked.
Babak seemed to consider. “It was a fearsome dream.”
Balthazaar regarded Babak gravely. Then, before I knew what was happening, before I could stop it, Babak slipped out from between my arms. He reached up and laid his palms upon the Magus’s face. Balthazaar carefully set down the star-taker and covered Babak’s small hands with his long and thin ones. He released one hand and traced his fingers across Babak’s eyebrows, forehead, temples, and cheeks. I started toward Babak, but Pacorus took my arm and stopped me.
“He is the soul of goodness,” Pacorus whispered. “Can’t you see that?”
“Just sleep tonight, little one,” the Magus said.
“Do you want to know my dream?” Babak asked.
“No. Not tonight.”
“Everyone wants to know my dreams.”
“I want,” Balthazaar said, “for you to sleep. Deep and peaceful sleep.” He stood and turned to me. “See that he gets his rest. And you, son …” He held out his hand, seemed about to clasp my shoulder, but stopped abruptly. He was still again, except for the listening in his face.
He lowered his hand. “Ah. Well. Take care of him,” he said. “He grows weary.”
Early the next morning I awoke to a commotion in the courtyard. Camels trumpeting, horses whinnying, donkeys braying. Clankings and bangings and shouts. Giv was gone, as ever; I was not certain he had ever been here. In fact, though we had occupied his rooms since joining the caravan, I had never seen him sleep. Had he known all along that I was a girl?
Babak lay peacefully; he had not wakened me with cries or thrashing all night. I opened the door to the gallery and looked out.
They were preparing to leave. Musicians and jugglers, courtiers and cooks. Melchior’s people! A cluster of women stood on a far terrace—shouting, throwing bundles into the darkness of the courtyard, not yet warmed by the spreading light of dawn. Porters bustled past, toting caged birds, bolts of silks, rolls of carpets, chests and caskets, pots and pans and braziers, baskets of foodstuffs, jars of oil. They piled them in heaps on the cobblestones; other men loaded them onto horses and camels.
Susan Fletcher - Alphabet of Dreams Page 16