by Judith Tarr
“It is Ramadan,” said the sultan with exquisite and royal logic. “Night is coming. You are a mage, and holy. Make this child live again.”
The green-turbaned head shook slowly. “Allah has written her death. I am not a black mage, to undo what God has ordained.”
“Indeed,” said the sultan. “Then they lied who told me of you. They said that you had done just that, to restore to a widow her only son.”
“This is his only daughter,” said Ali Mousa. Even al-Zaman stared, astonished.
“Would you have me call her back from Paradise?” the Hajji demanded of them.
Khamsin pawed the ground, snorting. Paradise, nothing. Will of Allah, nothing. Allah would allow what it pleased Him to allow; and He had given this player of games the power to conquer death. But he did not want to. Why should he trouble himself? She had never been aught to him.
“No,” the magus said, rough with pain. “Oh, no. I loved her.”
Then bring her back! Khamsin cried with all his soul.
The Hajji drew himself erect. His deep eyes burned upon them all. “You ask that I work the mightiest of all the arts of magic. That I chance failure, if she will not come, or if Allah does not wish to let her go. And the price of my failure is my death.”
“Ah,” said the sultan. “You fear what you must conquer.”
“Certainly I fear that dread angel. He is strong and he is terrible, and his sword is pain. She knew, the young warrior. Now she knows the savor of his gift; and that is peace.”
“Wizard’s games,” said al-Zaman. “You can do this. End your babble; do it.”
“So I would,” the Hajji said, “if my babble were to no purpose. I tell you what you ask of her: return to flesh and pain and mortal frailty. Of me you ask all my skill and power, and perhaps even my life. What, my lords, do you ask of yourselves? What price will you pay for this miracle?”
“All that I have,” said Ali Mousa. “Even my own life, if so it must be. She died for me.”
“I am her father,” said al-Zaman, swift and fierce, furious that his enemy should have offered before he could speak. “Whatever you ask of me, that I will pay.”
“I was her friend,” said the sultan. “Today, in full truth, I am a king. You may have this kingdom that I have won, if you will rule it well, and wage the Holy War as I had intended.”
Khamsin had nothing to match what they had: no wealth, no kinship, no kingdom. His body had been the Hajji’s since he committed his great sin. All he had left was his life.
He shrank down, head low, trembling. He was not his father, to offer so freely all that was his. Ali Mousa was old; he would die soon enough. It was easier for him. Khamsin was young. His life had barely begun. How could anyone ask him to end it?
He had paid enough. He wore a beast’s body. He was mute as a beast is mute. He had been soul’s slave to a woman. A small, headstrong, forward-tongued snippet of a woman. She was not even pretty. She strode about like a boy. She had got herself killed doing what no woman should ever presume to do.
He did not love her. His soul was stunted. It could not stretch itself to anything so wide or so high.
Let these great lords pay. They were rich enough.
And they had duties; responsibilities. People who needed them. Lordships, kingdoms. Women. Kinsfolk; children.
Why was the Frank silent? Had she nothing to offer?
She had offered while he crouched and cowered. Everything. Freely. With all her heart.
The Hajji had choices enough. Perhaps he would take them all. He would bring Zamaniyah back. Then Khamsin would have her, and she him; and they would live out their lives in blessedness.
The Hajji sighed. His head shook more slowly even than before. “You all love her. And the price is love; but it must be perfect.”
“I am her father!” al-Zaman cried in naked pain.
“So you are,” said the Hajji. “But do you love her for her simple self, or for what your need has made her? Did you ever consider her wishes when you imposed your decrees upon her? You set her free; you gave her more than women in the House of Islam are ever given. Yet you never gave it for her sake. Only for your own.”
Khamsin would have savored the sight of al-Zaman smitten senseless by the truth. But someone else had come in all unasked and all unlooked for. Had stared dumbfounded at the one who lay in the midst of them. Had heard what they said; had wept and cried. “I love her truly. I love her with all that is in me.”
Khamsin’s teeth ached to sink into that scented neck. But the Hajji was there and his presence was stillness. “Would you die for her?”
Abd al-Rahim never hesitated, not even for the fraction of an instant. “Yes,” he said. “Yes!”
Khamsin closed his eyes. This puppy’s life for hers. How perfect. He could not have ordained it better himself.
And his heart had twisted, and his mind had whispered, No. He knew to the last stab of furious jealousy, how al-Zaman had felt when Ali Mousa offered his life for his enemy’s child. So had this young idiot done; and done it with never a moment’s pause.
Never a moment’s worth of brain, either. He hung over Zamaniyah and sobbed, and spouted broken bits of poetry.
That, Khamsin’s heart knew, was hardly fair. The boy was young; he was passionate; he was in love, and that was honest, and clear-sighted enough for all its extravagance. In among the poetry were bits of sense. He knew what he was grieving for.
She had not returned that passion. There had been no time. But something had been waking in her; something that could have been splendid, or could have died in its due and proper time. Not as now, cut off all untimely.
Her hand lay abandoned by her side. Its warmth was cooling. Her scent was fading, sinking into the dankness of death. He laid his nose in the stiffening palm.
A terrible ache closed jaws in his throat. He flung up his head, gulping air. His gullet spasmed. It was full of stones, and every one jagged, many-edged, grinding flesh to agony.
His heart thudded. Not stones. Words.
But he was mute.
Once. Once only might he speak. That was his geas.
The mage took no notice of him. They were all caught up in the young emir, in his great show of love and loss.
A magus did not need eyes to see or voice to speak. Clear in Khamsin’s soul was the truth. He could do this. Or he could not. He had paid in full the price of his transgression. This was free choice.
The words were there, edged in anguish. This body was never made to contort itself in human speech. But it could speak. It could say anything it chose to say.
Reveal his name, his sin, his expiation. Cast himself upon his father’s mercy.
Choose one of them for the sacrifice.
Say, “I am not a man. I do not know what love is. But I will die for her.”
It was not a human voice. It was the voice which one might expect of a stallion, hoarse and shrill at once, deep in the chest and high in the nose, and thin with the pain of it. Yet it was clear, and it rang in the silence.
His geas had said nothing of laughter, or he would have laughed at the circle of fallen jaws. They had all thought they knew what magic was. Until they saw it plain; and then it was plainly impossible. A horse speaking. In Arabic. With the accent of a Cairene prince.
The Hajji, who knew magic, spoke softly in the midst of it. “Do you know what you offer?”
Khamsin swallowed. The word-stones rolled, tearing. “I know.”
The Hajji’s eyes probed deep, searching. Khamsin met them as best he could. He did not try to pretend that he was unafraid, or that he was glad, or that he wanted to die for dying’s sake. It was the only thing he could do. She would grieve when she knew, if she woke to know, but she would heal. And no guilt would sear her, ever, that a man had died to give her life. A beast…that was fitting. Were not beasts made to serve mankind?
The Hajji sighed. Khamsin’s mind roiled. Grief; relief; rage. He could not refuse. He must not.
Mirth flickered, small and mad. All of them felt exactly the same. They all saw the perfection of Khamsin’s logic. The mingling of scents made him sneeze.
The thin old hand cupped his muzzle, stroking lightly, tenderly. “O my lord,” said the Hajji. “O valiant. You are no less an idiot than you ever were.”
“A better grade of idiot,” said Khamsin. “Perhaps. O my lord.”
“Perhaps,” said the Hajji. He smoothed the mane on Khamsin’s neck. “I accept your sacrifice.”
The words were all gone, every one. He was all lost. Trapped, tricked, cozened; and too much a fool to be sorry that he had done it.
And he could not even tell the man to hasten.
oOo
The Hajji dragged it out interminably. First they all had to say the sunset prayer. Then they had to fetch the tools of the Hajji’s magic. The sultan left, all unwilling, to be sultan. The lesser lords eyed one another and growled in their throats. They wanted to tie Khamsin. The Hajji, most cruelly kind, prevented them. If he had been tied, he would have had no choice. He would not have had to battle with every ounce of will and strength, the urge to turn and bolt.
None of them lingered near him. He was marked. With uncanniness; with sacrifice.
The magus made his preparations. They were odd, even for magic. He closed the makeshift tent within the circle arcane. He circled that circle with men puzzled and doubtful and frankly hostile: holy men all, skilled chanters of the Koran. They were, when bidden, to perform their office, turn and turn about, continuously, from the magic’s beginning through dawn and day and dusk to dawn again.
Then the magus told the emirs what they must help him to do. Bolster the spell with prayer. See him blood the sacrifice. Aid him in flaying it; in burning the body on a pyre of rare and enchanted woods; in wrapping Zamaniyah in the hide, and raising over her a true tent with walls and sealed door, and leaving her there alone in the circle and chanting, while the magus wielded his power.
“This is mummery!” al-Zaman burst out in anger. “Give me my daughter’s body. Let me bury it in dignity. Not in this mockery of magic.”
“Very well,” said the Hajji with perfect calm. “Take her.”
Al-Zaman stared at him, all his rage shrinking, failing, crumbling into shock. “But—”
“It was not I who demanded this. She is at peace. I am content to leave her in it.”
“But you promised—”
“I yielded to compulsion.”
The emir seized him with bruising force. “Bring her back. Bring her back!”
“I think not,” said the Hajji.
“The horse is not enough,” said Ali Mousa heavily. “After all. What will you have, sir? My life? His? Both?”
“I am not a merchant,” the Hajji said.
Abd al-Rahim looked from one to another of them. His eyes were wide, incredulous. “With all due respect, venerable sage, this is absurd.”
“Indeed?” asked the Hajji. “To what do you refer? My spell? These gentlemen’s assessment of it? The world itself?”
Abd al-Rahim glared terribly at his feet. His jaw clenched and unclenched, as if he did battle against words even more unwise.
The enemies looked at one another. For the first time since the world began, one thought dawned in both their minds. It shocked them. It repelled them. They fought it with all their great and seasoned strength. Yet it was stronger than they.
The sharif said it. “We regret that we have offended you. In recompense, we offer the one thing that is dearest to our hearts. We give you peace. We forswear our enmity for all the time that is left to us. Only deign, we beseech you, to restore this child to life.”
The Hajji flicked not an eyelash at that vow, though it rocked the earth on which they stood. “I cannot restore her save as I have prescribed. You must accept it. And,” he said, “you must hold by what you have sworn.”
Al-Zaman’s lip curled. “We’d better take it, old enemy,” he said. “Before the price goes up again.”
Ali Mousa did not find it easy to speak to him as if he were a man like any other; but it was not too badly feigned, for a beginning. “Indeed, old enemy,” he said: “before he bids us couple truce with amity.”
“That may come,” said the Hajji, appalling them both. He drew the dagger that hung at his belt, turned to Khamsin.
oOo
Now at last it had come. Khamsin has been hoping, desperately, that the end would be easy. Or if not that, at least endurable. He had not lived well, when all was said. He wanted to die in something remotely like dignity.
As the blade approached him, his eyes rolled. He trembled and sweated. He shamed himself beyond shame. He voided in the circle.
“But,” said the Hajji, “you do not run.”
He could not. His knees, like his bowels, had turned to water.
The Hajji’s hand settled once more between his eyes. He gasped, swayed. “Peace,” said the magus. “Peace be upon you.”
He closed his eyes. The air stank of his own terror. It was sweet, sweet. It was life.
It was his gift; his sacrifice.
His head came up. His fear swelled huge: too huge by far to hold. Its heart was quiet. Acceptance. Even, at the end of it all, peace.
The chanting had begun.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,
The Beneficent, the Merciful
Owner of the Day of Judgment
Thee alone we worship;
Thee alone we ask for help.
Yes, thought Khamsin. Yes, and yes, and yes.
There is no god but God;
and Muhammad is the Prophet of God.
Hands of power raised his head. The moon was full. Its light filled him; its beauty smote him to the heart. He drank it in joy. He poured out his soul.
There was no knife, no fear, no pain. Only light.
25
It had been a very long dream, and very strange. Some of it was terrible. Some was beautiful beyond enduring. Some was simply incomprehensible.
Zamaniyah burrowed into her blankets. People were chanting rather too close for comfort, intoning the Koran.
The Beneficent
Hath made known the Koran.
He hath created man.
He hath taught him utterance.
The sun and the moon are made punctual.
The stars and the trees adore.
And the sky He hath uplifted…
“God is great,” she murmured automatically, groping back toward sleep.
She sat bolt upright. She was sleeping through the prayer. “Ya Allah!” she said, appalled. Her eyes were full of sleep. She blinked hard. “Jaffar! Jaffar, how could you let me—”
Her voice died. This was not her tent. It was too large. It was too empty. There was nothing in it but herself and the heap of blankets and carpets on which she lay, and the lamp that flickered on its stand, and—
And.
She was pressed to the central pole, shaking, goggling like an idiot.
And a man. A very solid, very unconscious, very naked man.
Her memory floundered desperately. Battle. A battle. Jaffar—Jaffar dead.
Then—
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Jaffar could not be dead. She must have dreamed it. As surely she dreamed this.
A Frank. Surely. His skin was nigh as fair as Wiborada’s. His hair was the color of cedarwood. There was a great deal of it. It tumbled over his shoulders, down his back, across the blankets. His beard was long, curling to his breast; it bore an oddity: a finger’s width of white, just right of its center. He was not filthy as Franks were supposed to be, but wherever he bathed, it was not in a Muslim bath. He was entirely, and fascinatingly, as God had made him.
Her body had a will of its own. It knelt beside him. He was not dead as for a moment she had feared: he breathed slowly, but deeply. Under lids as fine as veined marble, his eyes flickered in dream. His lashes were thick and long.
A man grown who shaved his
beard marred the perfection of his beauty. But surely there were limits. Was his face so uncomely that he must mask it in uncut thickets?
Or so comely?
She straightened with a snap. Her hand had almost touched him.
He was beautiful. Everywhere, beautiful. No Frankish face, that, for all its pallor: its bones were eagle’s bones, the fine strong bones of Arabia. He had not the Frankish bulk. He would not be tall, standing: just at the middle height, perhaps, or a little more. He was made like a good horse, slender-limbed, lean-flanked, but deep of chest and shoulder, well and smoothly muscled under silken skin.
She snatched back her errant hand. Was she mad? Or had she died and gone to Paradise?
Her soul stilled. She had meant mockery. She had raised a scent of truth.
Battle. Ali Mousa unhorsed. A mace falling. She had flown. Or leaped. Then…
She looked at herself. She was in white, fine linen, long and loose. Her hair was free. Her feet were bare.
She peered under her gown. Her body was her own, with scars in all the proper places. And some that were new to her eyes but old in healing, pale: her shoulder, her arm, her side. She was still far short of storied beauty. She was too thin and hard. Her hips were barely wider than a boy’s. Her rump was a scant handful. Her breasts were a little better, but they failed of their valor: they had too much to make up for.
She sighed a little. They were, at least, her own.
Her eyes wandered back to the carpets. The Prophet, God bless his name, had only mentioned the women of Paradise, though he had granted equality to every human soul. So, then: women too were given fair companions. Very fair. Very—very—
His eyes were large and dark. No, no Frank, this one. Eyes of Arabia, soft now with sleep; but there was fire in them. It kindled as they met hers.