by Donald Tyson
The sole structure with an air of permanence was the stone hulk of Babylon, looming over the city as though to intimidate the lesser buildings. It was not so ancient as the temples of Memphis, but it was far older than anything else in the city, which had been build around it. The high walls of the fortress bristled with soldiers, and through its open gates streamed a column of spear-carrying Muslims led by an officer on horseback, their ongoing mission to impose the will of the Amir, Alquama al-Azdi, upon the Christians. I watched the sunlight gleam from their spear points. There were more of my own race gathered here than I had seen anywhere else in Egypt.
Dru left the sweating and cursing seamen who unloaded his cargo of oblong boxes and jars from his ship, and crossed the dock to where I stood with Martala. He noticed my gaze upon the fortress.
“It has been here for centuries,” he said in Greek. “It was built to guard the entrance to the canal that links the river directly with the Red Sea. When your people conquered Egypt and drove the Roman Christians out of Alexandria, they chose this old stronghold as the site of their capitol.”
“I thought the only canal was the one I followed to the Delta.”
“No, that canal is much older, and has fallen into disuse.”
“Where does the Amir live?” the girl asked.
Dru glanced at her with irritation. He was not accustomed to questions from servants. She did not drop her gaze, but confronted him with defiance.
“Your servant is impertinent, Alhazred.”
“Answer her, to humor me.”
He shrugged and smiled, pointing at a cluster of imposing walled buildings not far to the south of the fortress.
“Alquama’s palace is there, along with the fine houses of his counselors and advisors.”
He gestured to the north, where the outskirts of the city met the river. Between the naked masts of the ships tied up along the docks, I saw several large buildings on a slight eminence of land, surrounded by shade trees.
“My father’s house is there, in the better part of the Coptic section of the city. I will take you to meet him.”
He whistled and barked an order. Two sedan chairs that sat waiting on the quay were picked up by their well-muscled negro carriers, who were naked to the waist, and brought to where we stood. The carriers set them down side by side without speaking. Each consisted of a box containing a chair that was shaded from the sun by a canopy of cloth. The canopy extended down on either side for privacy, but the sides contained small slits for peering out. I waited for Dru to choose one, then drew aside the flap of the other and stepped into it. My life in the palace at Sana’a had accustomed me to this mode of transportation. The chair rocked as the bearers raised it.
“Where do I sit?” Martala asked.
I laughed, and Dru could not resist joining me.
The mud in the streets made walking difficult. Our bearers stumbled and slid in its slickness, even though they were experienced in dealing with it and tried to avoid the worst ruts. Water was continually carried in open wagons from the docks to various building sites in the city, and as it slopped out of huge urns in the wagons, it drenched the roads, which otherwise would have dried in the hot sun. I heard Martala cursing in her native Coptic as she stumbled and plodded behind my chair.
Once we crossed the bridge that spanned the canal and progressed from the heart of the city, the roads improved. The house of Dru’s father nestled amid groves of fruit trees and flower gardens, overlooking the broad sweep of the Nile. It was situated to catch the breeze from the river and commanded an unobstructed vista.
The bearers set the sedan chairs down inside the walled courtyard of the house. Dru was greeted as he emerged by a noisy old servant, evidently the head of the house staff, who fluttered his wrinkled hands like a woman. Dru listened with patient indulgence for a short while, then murmured a few words into the ear of the talkative house master, who went away and returned leading a more imposing man of some fifty years’ age. Dru embraced him with affection, so I guessed it must be his father, the head of the sect of sages who knew the secret of the Sphinx.
While seeming to admire the architecture of the house, which indeed was impressive, I studied the elder man. This was a dangerous moment. He might decide to have me put to death as an expedient way of ensuring the secret of the entranceway beneath the great statue. In his place, it is what I would have done.
He was a man of strength, both in body and will. One of the few I had seen in Egypt taller than myself, he stood with his back straight as a river reed. He had the economical yet proud walk of a military officer, an impression reinforced by his air of authority. I wondered if he had fought in the war to drive the Roman Christians out of Egypt. He was old enough, and even today would be formidable in battle.
As the two approached, he looked keenly at me but asked no questions of his son. Dru must have sent a runner from the docks to the house with the story of our meeting as soon as his ship moored.
“This is Feisel ibn Malik, my father,” Dru said to me. “Father, this is the man I sent word to you about, Alhazred, a nobleman of Sana’a.”
His eyes were like chips of flint as he studied my features, but they held no condemnation, and I allowed myself to relax.
“We will eat and talk,” he said in a voice accustomed to obedience.
For the first time since my expulsion from Sana’a, I ate a civilized meal. We reclined on thick pillows covered in cloth of gold, before a table so laden with fruits, wine, and delicacies that I had no place to set my silver goblet. Musicians played behind a carved screen upon strings and flutes. The smoke of incense made from rose petals hung sweet upon the air.
I looked over my shoulder at Martala, who stood silently behind me, and tossed her a half-gnawed leg of fowl. She caught it from the air and set her teeth in the flesh while glaring at me. The pose of servant was not to her liking, but she had resigned herself to play the part.
“For a man of wealth, you travel lightly,” Feisel observed.
“Why tempt robbers and cutthroats? Possessions are a burden.”
“The only possession worth having is knowledge,” Dru said, drinking deeply from his wine cup.
“Forgive my impatience, Alhazred, but I am eager to hear the tale of your dream. My son sent a messenger with the story you told him, but I wish to hear it from your own lips.”
In a few words, I described the appearances of the dark man in my dreams, how he had marked my brow with an invisible mark, and how he had told me to seek out his son. It felt contrary to my natural caution to be so candid, but since the god had described these men as his servants, I wished them to know that I also had been marked in his service. That I did not consider myself Nyarlathotep’s servant was something I thought better to conceal. Let them believe I worshiped the strange god who walked the desert. It would cause them to feel greater kinship with me.
Feisel leaned across his cushion and studied my brow, searching for any sign of the mark. The glamour that concealed my disfigurements resisted his scrutiny, though I had the sense that his sharp gray eyes were piercing my very soul.
“I see no mark.”
“Yet how else could Alhazred know of the spell of opening?” Dru said.
“That is true.” His father nodded to himself in decision. “I believe your story, Alhazred. The god of chaos has sent you to us for a purpose. Who are we, his humble servants, to question his actions? Today you will be made one of our order. Tomorrow you will share in our work. The purposes of the god in bringing you to us will unfold themselves at their own pace.”
I bowed in acknowledgement. He glanced at Martala.
“Can your servant be trusted?”
“She owes me her life, and has pledged herself in obedience to me unto death.”
“Still, perhaps it would be wisest to cut out her tongue, so that she
cannot betray our secrets?” Dru languidly observed, spitting out the pit of a date into a wooden bowl on the table.
“She is educated, and knows how to read and write. It would be necessary to cut off her hands, and that would be inconvenient.”
Feisel nodded in agreement.
“We will not deprive you of the usefulness of your solitary servant.”
I heard an almost inaudible sigh escape the lips of the girl behind me, and hid the urge to smile in my wine goblet.
“We must be cautious,” Dru explained in apology. “Of late secret documents have been disappearing.”
“You suspect a thief?”
“Worse,” Feisel said. “We have a spy in our sacred order. I am certain of it, though who sent him and for what purpose, we have been unable to fathom.”
“What is the nature and labor of your fraternity?” I asked.
Feisel smiled without humor.
“Patience, Alhazred. Soon you will learn everything. It will suffice to say that we call ourselves the Order of the Sphinx. We are an ancient brotherhood of sages that existed long before the conquest of our land by the Greeks. When the Nile was a young river, and the nation of Egypt no more than rude huts of mud along its length, our forefathers worshiped the god of chaos beneath that great idol on the plain, and drank deep of his knowledge, which is vaster than the space between the stars. Only we know the true riddle of the Sphinx. It is a secret we have kept for thousands of years.”
“Shall I be taught this secret?”
“You shall,” Dru said, eyes shining with fanatical intensity.
“The god has chosen to make you one of us, for his own purposes. You will be shown all that we know.”
At this admission from Feisel, my heart quickened, for the knowledge of occult secrets has always excited my desires. Regardless of what the dark man intended me to accomplish, I would learn of arcane matters that might later be turned to practical use, and this prospect of gain made me eager.
Later, I was taken to a chamber by Dru, who watched while a pair of attendants stripped me of my coat and undergarments, then robed me in black. Both were young men with serious expressions who fulfilled their task in silence. The long linen robe was the same costume I had seen Dru wear in my dream, an imitation of the garb of the dark man, with a tasseled sash at its waist. They gave me a caul of silk and showed me how to wrap it around my head, so that it would not slide off my face beneath my hood. It was very thin, and quite easy to see through, nor did it impede my breathing. After wearing it for a few minutes, I almost forgot that it existed.
“Now you look like one of us,” Dru said, slapping me on the shoulder.
“When will I meet the others of our order?”
“You won’t. None of us knows the identities of the brothers except my father, who is our leader. We meet only beneath the Sphinx, and always we wear this caul to conceal our faces. That is the source of our strength. Even were we to be captured by the Muslim soldiers and tortured, we could not betray each other.”
“But you know the identity of your father,” I pointed out.
“Each of us knows two others by name. It is necessary for purposes of communication when we go with faces exposed in Fustat. Only Feisel knows all of us.”
“If you knew two before, then I am the third.”
“True, but you are a special case.”
He ordered the impassive attendants to wait outside the chamber, and shut the door behind them.
“Now I must show you something. Pay attention, your very life depends on it.”
Raising his right hand, he formed a sign in the air, then made it again more slowly. I imitated it.
“No, you got it backwards. Here, stand by my shoulder and watch again.”
I stood beside his right shoulder and watched him make the sign, then made it myself. He nodded with approval.
“This is the sign of passage into the chambers of our order. Never reveal it, and never forget it.”
Before escorting me to my room, Dru offered to replace my drab Muslim coat with a new tunic of native Egyptian cut, more elegant in appearance and of finer cloth. I declined with thanks. My camel hair coat, though simple in design, was strong and well adapted to use in the wastelands. I could see at a glance that the Egyptian tunic was less practical. It would not have held together from one moon to the next under hard wear.
He summoned back the attendants, who took off my caul and order robe and showed me how to fold them into a leather travel pack designed to be worn over the shoulders. I dressed, and with pack in hand, followed Dru along the tiled hallways and up a marble stair to my bedroom. Martala was already waiting there as we entered, standing demurely by the side of a huge bed in a robe of flowered yellow silk that tied at the waist, with fingers folded together over her groin and head bowed. She had been washed, and her glossy dark hair bound up with tortoise shell combs. For the first time I realized the grace of her neck. She was quite an attractive young woman, with the dirt scrubbed from her face and hands, and had I possessed anything between my legs I might have found her enticing.
“I will leave you two alone,” Dru said, eyeing the bed and smiling at me. “Don’t stay up too late. We depart the third hour after midnight.”
He closed the door behind him as he left. I tossed my pack to Martala, who caught it by instinct.
“Put this away. Then fetch the chamber pot. My bladder is stretched like a drum.”
As I sat on the bed and pulled off my boots, the pack hit me in the side of the head.
“Put it away yourself! I am sick of being a servant.”
“If you weren’t my servant, you would be dead,” I reminded her.
“I am not your servant,” she said in a voice louder than necessary. “Remember that, Alhazred. This is a pose, nothing more. I am no man’s servant.”
“Why not open the window screens and shout it to the world?”
She frowned at me. With a petulant thrust of her lower lip, she stalked around the bed, reached beside it, and banged the brass chamber pot down between my feet. It rang like a bell. Fortunately, it was empty.
“A good servant anticipates her master’s wishes,” I said as I hiked up my coat and urinated into the pot.
She went to the window and threw open the screens, and for a moment I thought she actually would shout out our deception, but she merely stood there, staring west across the ribbon of the Nile, which shimmered in the rays of the setting sun.
“They branded me,” she said in a small voice.
“What?” I thought I had heard her incorrectly. “They did what?”
Frowning but not looking at me, she slid the loose neck of her robe down her right shoulder, to reveal a small scarlet mark no larger than my thumbnail. With a shrug, she covered herself once again. Having felt the touch of hot iron on my own bare skin, I remained silent, not knowing what to say to cheer her.
“It is a mark of admission,” I murmured at last. “It must be the practice of the order to brand all servants of its members.”
“What are we doing here?” she asked in a normal tone. “It is dangerous.”
“I came to Egypt to learn, and there is great wisdom in this Order of the Sphinx, I can sense it.”
“Little good it will do if they kill us.”
“Haven’t you heard? I am the chosen instrument of the dark man.”
This brought a smile to her lips. She turned to face me, leaning back on her hands against the window sill.
“How do you like being a servant?” she asked.
“As little as you.”
The bed was filled with pillows of down so soft and thick, I almost sank from sight when I stripped naked and lay among them. Martala curled herself in her silk robe on the floor under the window, without being instructed to do so. I al
most spoke to ask her to share the bed, since it was ample in size for two, but I held my tongue. Better not to accustom her to such luxury, as we were unlikely to encounter it often in our travels. I lay wondering to myself how I had come to acquire a traveling companion, and could find in my memory no single moment when I had agreed to such an arrangement.
My dreams were broken, and troubled by bubbling vats of noxious liquids and distant screams from throats that seemed less than human. Robed priests stood in groups around the vats with long wooden paddles, or hurried down dark corridors with obscure objects in their arms. I stood in a dimly lit chamber of stone, before walls lined with row upon row of cylindrical jars of translucent green glass, each bearing a label of papyrus, but what was written on the labels, I could not read in the shadows.
“Invite me in, Alhazred.”
I recognized the dry voice of the dark man, and turned to seek him, but the dim chamber had vanished and I saw only utter darkness and felt a fluttering breeze against my face. Through the void a tapping reached my ears. Walking forward, I puzzled to myself what might create such a curious noise, but before I could reach a conclusion, the rattle of a door woke me.
The old man with the fluttering hands entered carrying an oil lamp followed by two serving maids. He led me to a bath chamber and supervised my bath while the women scrubbed me, then made sure that I was given everything I desired to eat and drink for my breakfast. Martala was scrubbed in the same water after I left it, and was allowed to forage in the kitchen while I ate. No doubt she found something to chew on. In the coolness of the night we left the house with our packs on our shoulders, along with Dru and his father, and descended the hill to the riverside, where a ferry waited at a private dock to carry us to the west bank. It was already laden with boxes and jars. Dru noticed my gaze upon them.
“They will be taken to a secure place not far from the Sphinx, and carried into our halls under cover of darkness.”