Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  The boatman set about rigging a blue and white striped awning in the bow to shield us from the sun. He slung it across four upright poles that he forced into gaps in the bundled reeds at the sides of the boat. When he finished, we slid under its welcome shadow. The awning had so many tiny holes, sunlight shining through it made small circles on the girl’s shoulder.

  “How long before we reach Memphis?” I asked her.

  “Two days. We will have to stop tonight and sleep in a hut on the bank of the river.”

  As the green papyrus reeds at the edge of the broad tributary slid past, I was once again astonished by the sheer abundance of life in this land. Cultivated fields and villages were numerous, and between them the land flourished with birds and beasts of every description. The water birds, some as large as a dog, paid the boat no notice, but went about on their impossibly long legs, hunting fish in the shallows. They stood amid the reeds watching the mirror surface of the water with keen eyes, plumed heads cocked as though listening, then darted their long and slender beaks downward to pluck up a thrashing silver fish. One bird was especially beautiful. It had plumage of pure white and pure black, and a curved beak. I noticed that a long feather of similar black and white coloring hung from a cord in the bow of the boat.

  “The feather of the ibis,” Martala said, watching my eyes and divining my thoughts. “The ibis is the bird of the god Thoth, and foe to the crocodile, the beast of the god Set, who Thoth hates. No crocodile can harm the bearer of an ibis feather, or so it is said.”

  The reason for displaying the feather in the bow was soon apparent. Once we left the settlements at the outskirts of Bubastis, the river became wilder, and the crocodiles began to appear, sunning themselves on the muddy banks or floating like logs in the shallows. I had expected to see crocodiles on the Nile, from my reading, but had not anticipated how large they would be. Some were longer than the boat in which we sailed. When they opened their huge jaws, as though yawning, and allowed small birds to hop in and out of their mouths, I saw that they were capable of biting a man in half. The little birds pecked at their white teeth, searching for scraps of food. Why the crocodiles did not snap them up and swallow them, I could not imagine, unless they were too poor a prey to be worth the effort.

  Martala leaned over the side of the boat for a better look as we passed no more than a dozen paces from a group of the creatures that lay on a mud flat. The boat dipped alarmingly. The boatman spoke a few sharp words to the girl in Coptic, and she reluctantly sat back.

  In the afternoon, he fed us on flat bread and dried dates that lay protected from flies in a covered reed basket in the bottom of the craft. It was apparently a part of the service I had hired, since he did not ask for payment. We continued on until the sun was near the western horizon. As it began to set, the boat glided into a small cove that had several wooden posts standing up from the water. Dropping the sail, the boatman tied his craft to the post nearest the shore. He stripped to his loincloth and slid into the water, which rose to his breast, then with cheerful words spoke to Martala. She leaned over the side and hitched up her black dress to kneel upon his shoulders, balancing precariously by holding his turban. He did not seem inconvenienced, but carried her with sure steps through the water and onto the bank, where she slid to her feet. He came back into the water and made a gesture with his hands that he wished to carry me to shore.

  I shook my head and drew off my thawb and boots. Bundling them in my arms with my other possessions and lifting them over my head, I sat on the side of the boat and let myself slip into the water. The mud felt soft and warm between my toes. The boatman laughed, showing his gums, and slapped me on the bare back as we waded ashore together, where I dressed. Martala had already gone along the path that led from the river over the crest of a low hill. I followed, and saw on the other side a small hut of reeds with a thatched roof. It was a poor accommodation, but it had a door that closed, offering some protection against animals during the night. The boatman did not follow me. I guessed that he intended to spend the night on his boat, perhaps because he thought I might wish privacy with the girl. In this he was correct, though not for the reason he supposed.

  The hut had two beds, neither boasting a mattress. They were scarcely more than wood frames with a woven cover of reeds. When I reached the hut, I found the girl with her head wrap thrown back and her shoes off, stretched across the bed nearest the door, so I wordlessly accepted the other and pulled off my boots. We had eaten on the boat, but I chewed several of the dried dates I had kept from the meal in one of my rags. The girl sat up and licked her lips. I broke off a sticky date from the rest and threw it across to her. She caught it and popped it into her mouth with a smile.

  “Why do you wear that skull at your waist?” she asked, chewing audibly.

  “In memory of a friend.”

  When I said nothing more, she pursed her lips and looked down at her hand, then sucked her fingers.

  “What do you hope to find in Memphis, Alhazred?”

  “I am a traveling scholar. I seek wisdom.”

  “Wisdom?” She did not seem impressed. “Is that all you seek?”

  “I am a necromancer. I go to Memphis to learn how to summon spirits.”

  “Then you go to the right place. Many sorcerers dwell near Memphis.”

  “How would you know?” I asked in irritation.

  “I was born in Memphis. My family has lived there for a hundred generations. I came to Bubastis two years ago.”

  “Why did you leave your family?”

  She shrugged and lay back on the bed with her fingers laced under her head, staring up at the ceiling.

  “My father raped me. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t, so I killed him and left.”

  I lay back on the bed. The sun had set, and the shadows thickened rapidly in the hut as the twilight outside the unshuttered window deepened.

  “Was Bubastis better than Memphis?”

  She yawned, and I heard her scratch herself.

  “No, but it was different.”

  Chapter 17

  I woke in the night, listening. A creak from the leather door hinge made me turn my face. For a moment, the canopy of stars outlined the head and shoulders of the girl as she slid quietly out the door and closed it after her. Moving carefully to prevent any noise from the wickerwork of the bed, I got to my feet. I did not bother to put on my boots, but stepped to the door and eased it open by slow degrees, then slipped through the gap.

  My first thought was that the girl was in collusion with the boatman, and that they intended to return and murder me in my sleep. I looked along the path that led over the crest of the hill to the river, but did not see her against the heavens. The crack of a twig drew my attention to tall grass behind the hut. I followed the sound, walking on my toes in the cool moss, the long stalks brushing my thighs through the fabric of my thawb. Fortunately, there was a light breeze that made the grass rustle, and this covered the sound of my progress.

  As I approached the shadow of a date palm tree, I heard a faint grunt. The scent of shit filled the air, and I realized the girl had left the hut to relieve herself. I bent and felt the ground at my feet, digging my fingers into the moss until I located a stone the size of my fist, then approached the tree with care and peered around its trunk. She squatted with her dress and chemise drawn up over her head, her back to me. Stepping forward silently, I hit her on the skull with the stone through the cloth of her garments. It made a dry thud, and she fell on her side without a murmur.

  I debated with myself how to dispose of her corpse. It was my intention to indicate by gestures to the boatman that she had run off in the night, after refusing to share my bed. He was likely to accept such a story, but only if he did not stumble across the girl’s remains. Her body must be hidden in the undergrowth some distance from the hut, or it might be discovered. Grasping her chest
to mine so that our faces almost touched, I pulled her limply to her feet, then before her legs collapsed, bent and caught her across my shoulder. Her dress fell back around her ankles. She weighed little. I carried her into the trees, directly away from the river, and hoped to myself that I was not unlucky enough to startle a leopard or other large hunting beast.

  The rising moon offered a welcome light. I walked through the clumps of trees and dense stands of tall grass until certain I had gone further than the boatman would ever search for the girl. This part of the river seemed uninhabited. The only sound was the ceaseless chirping of insects on the night air. Carrying the corpse through a dense cover of low trees, I saw that I had entered a natural gully and judged it a good place of concealment. I let the burden slide from my shoulder onto the grass in a patch of silver moonlight, intending to drag it into the center of a thick growth of brush, where it would remain undiscovered for as long as no scavenger pulled it out.

  A groan from the girl drew a curse from my own lips. She still lived. Her dress and undergarment around her head as she squatted had cushioned the blow from the rock. I drew my knife and knelt on one knee beside her, then laced my fingers in her long hair and pulled her head sideways to expose her throat. Her pale gray eyes met mine in the moonlight, but she did not struggle.

  “I know a secret of value,” she said.

  Ignoring her words, I set the edge of my blade against her neck.

  “If you kill me you will never find the tomb of Nectanebus.”

  The name made me pause. It had a familiar sound. I searched my memory, and remembered reading a tale about a wizard of that name who was also a king of Egypt.

  “Why would I wish to find his tomb?”

  “Many have sought it. The bodies of wizards contain power, and Nectanebus was the greatest wizard of them all.”

  I laughed at my own credulity for even listening.

  “You would say anything to save your life.”

  “My family at Memphis were tomb robbers. They found the resting place of the wizard but feared to plunder it.”

  “They told this great secret to a child?”

  “They told me nothing. I followed them and saw the entrance with my own eyes.”

  I stared into her unblinking eyes and considered her words. If there was any chance they were true, it was indeed a valuable secret. The bodies of wizards absorb their powers after death, and by consuming a portion of the corpse, these abilities may be transferred to the living. Wizards took great care that their tombs should never be discovered. They were known only to their disciples, into whom the wizards sought to transfer their spiritual essence after death, so that the wizard lived again in the body of the younger man by displacing his soul. Sometimes it happened that the disciple of a wizard feared this ritual of transference, and instead of attending on the tomb of his master after death, fled and left it unguarded.

  With my left hand, I caught her thin wrist and squeezed it tightly.

  “If I let you live, will you guide me to this place?”

  “I will.”

  “Swear to me that you will not betray me or make any attempt on my life.”

  “I swear it, by Bast.”

  “If you break this oath, you will regret it. I am not the man you believe me to be.”

  “I know who you are.”

  The certainty in her tone angered me.

  “I am a monster. If you ever looked upon my true face you would run screaming.”

  “I see your true face now. I have always seen it.”

  I frowned at her. Was this only a lie spoken to distract and confuse me, or could she see beyond the veil of glamour that hid my disfigurement from others? I had renewed it at dusk before entering the sleeping hut. That she was a seer, I did not doubt, after witnessing her power in the market square at Bubastis.

  “If you can see my face, tell me what I look like.”

  Her pale eyes darted over my features.

  “You have no ears, no nose, and your cheeks are deeply scarred. There are other scars, perhaps made by fire.”

  “What else have you seen?”

  “That you are a eunuch.”

  I shook my head in amazement. She had known me all the time, yet had still come to my room at the inn to warn me. It made no sense.

  “Why did you not run screaming the first time you saw me?”

  She shrugged.

  “I told you my family are grave robbers. I have seen worse.”

  Standing, I drew her to her feet by her wrist. She swayed and I was forced to hold her by the shoulder until she recovered well enough to keep her balance. Without speaking, I led her back toward the hut. She paused beside the tree where she had defecated and picked a handful of leaves to wipe herself clean. I did not wait but went into the hut and lay down to sleep on my cot. I heard her enter after me and lie down on the other bed.

  “I would not have betrayed you, Alhazred,” she spoke into the darkness.

  Her words hung on the air and faded to nothingness as my mind entered sleep.

  When the scrawny boatman carried the girl into the boat on his shoulders the next morning, he cast me a toothless leer. I smiled politely. Let the man believe anything he wished. As he poled us into the current and raised the sail, I knelt in the bottom of the rocking vessel and pulled on my thawb over my damp body. There was river mud between my toes, so I left them bare to dry in the sun. The girl sat beneath the awning, her head between her hands, her eyes closed. If her scalp had bled, it did not show beneath her head wrap. She felt me watching and met my gaze without changing her expression. I could not guess her thoughts, which troubled me.

  The tributary we followed would itself have been a mighty river in most lands, but when it opened into the broad course of the Nile, I drew a breath of wonder that so much fresh water could be gathered in a single place. There was water enough to turn the Empty Space into a garden of paradise, were it possible to transport it into the depths of the desert, yet here it was allowed to make its way into the sea, where every precious drop was wasted on fishes. Why was it that the great rivers of the world always found their way to the ocean, which had enough water already, and avoided the deserts, where water was needed? Such is the inequity of all things under the sun.

  The river stretched to the horizon both south and north, and on its breast sailed too many vessels to count. A few were large galleys, but most were smaller boats of wood or reeds with triangular sails, an innovation carried to this country by the armies of Mohammed, or so I had been told by a tutor. Before the conquest, all boats on the Nile had used the square sails still relied on by the galleys. These little craft were adept at sailing against the wind, and were able to follow a course that would force a ship with a square sail to shift its crew to the oars. Our boatman stayed close to the eastern bank as he steered us up river on a favorable breeze. The band of green that slid past our port side cut the blue of the sky and the blue of the water like a great sword. Everything was dwarfed by the Nile. The bare rock cliffs beyond the trees resembled the sand hills made by a child, and the crocodiles that sunned themselves on the mud seemed no larger than lizards that might be held in the palm of the hand.

  I fell into a kind of waking dream, lulled by the rocking of the boat and the soft touch of the breeze against my cheeks. At noon we ate what remained in the basket without speaking. None of us felt the need for conversation, which was just as well. The girl remained in the shadow of the awning, preoccupied with the pain in her head, and since I knew no Coptic and the boatman understood no Greek, we could not communicate without her intervention. In late afternoon the splash of a jumping fish roused me from my reverie, and I noticed that we had drifted away from the shore and were making a slanting course across the center of the great waterway. The boatman displayed his gums and said a few words in his own language, pointin
g over my shoulder. Turning, I saw that we approached the docks of a city that stretched for some distance along the river.

  “Memphis,” the boatman said in answer to my look of inquiry.

  I touched the knee of the girl. She had been dozing and jerked awake. A look of pain distorted her face, and she pressed her head between her hands.

  “We’ve reached Memphis,” I told her.

  She glanced over her shoulder and shrugged.

  “I’ve seen it before,” she said, lowering her head between her knees.

  “How bad is the pain?”

  She looked at me with resentment.

  “Why should you care?”

  I shifted in the bottom of the boat until I sat facing her, our knees almost touching. Pulling her hands away from her head, I felt with my fingertips until I found the ridges in her skull that I sought and pressed upon them with an even force.

  “While I lived at Sana’a, I learned a trick for curing headaches,” I told her. “Look at my eyes.”

  She met my gaze with her large ice-gray eyes, and for a moment I felt discomforted, as though she gazed into my soul. Annoyed with myself, I cast the feeling away. It was a quality of her unusual eyes, nothing more, I told myself. I matched the slow rhythm of her breaths with my own breathing, and began to talk to her in a low and monotonous voice.

  “Listen to my words. Think of nothing else, and keep your eyes upon my eyes. As I talk, you will feel yourself becoming light, as though you were filled with air, as though you were about to drift away, but have no fear, my hands will hold you safely in place. Concentrate on my words. Look into my eyes. Believe that what I tell you is true, for it is true. The pain in your head is going away. As I speak, it becomes less and less. You feel yourself becoming lighter, and the lightness has no pain. You float up and leave the heavy pain behind you. You drift apart from it where it cannot touch you. Less and less, it grows less and less with each word I utter.”