Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “Perhaps you were in paradise, and you have forgotten.”

  I smiled at the notion of a necromancer finding his way into the paradise described by the Prophet. Hell seemed a great deal more likely.

  “Either way, I remember nothing.”

  To banish the disappointment that settled on her face, I asked her to show me around my house. She brightened and led me up the stairs to a door that was not locked. On the other side was a clean and spacious kitchen, filled with the light of early morning that poured through two windows in the exterior wall. I glanced through the screen of one and saw a small enclosed garden, its flowers and trees well tended.

  “Do you live here alone?”

  She jumped to sit on the long table before the cooking fireplace and swung her legs like a little girl.

  “A woman of the city comes in each morning to clean and cook. Her husband tends the garden and runs whatever errands I give him. At night I sleep alone.”

  I repressed the urge to smile at the double meaning of her last words. That she had been faithful to my memory, I had no reason to doubt. My very existence gave proof of it.

  “Show me the rest.”

  In addition to the kitchen, the street level held a dining hall and a reception chamber for guests, as well as a store room. On the upper level were three bedrooms and a room that contained a reading table and two cases of books. I was surprised by the number of volumes. A scroll lay open on the table beside a brass oil lamp that had burned itself dry. It was the necromantic scroll from under the Sphinx.

  “You worked all night, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “You must be exhausted. You should sleep.”

  “Soon. I must introduce you to Hatero and his wife when they come. They will arrive soon, and would be alarmed to find only a strange man in the house.”

  “I understand.”

  Picking up a book that lay open beside the scroll, I saw that it was a book of magic written in Greek. When I went to one of the bookcases, I found that most of its volumes were on the necromantic arts. They were dangerous books.

  “Hatero and his wife cannot read,” she said, perceiving the direction of my thoughts.

  “Even so, the diagrams.”

  “Yes. I don’t let them into this room. I lock the door while they are in the house. I lock the door to the cellar as well.”

  In wonder I gazed at the other case of books that stood against the outer wall on the opposite side of the small window. There must have been over a hundred books in each case.

  “How did you acquire so many forbidden texts?”

  She clapped her hands together in delight.

  “You will love it here, Alhazred. The booksellers of this place have everything. If they don’t have it, they can get it within a few weeks. I found all that I needed for my studies, and much more.”

  I smiled to see her enthusiasm.

  “You are at least as much a necromancer as I am. Indeed, more so, for you have raised the dead and I have not.”

  “I was so frightened that I would make a mistake,” she said, wringing her hands together.

  For the first time I noticed the dark shadows under her eyes, and the gauntness of her face, and wondered how many hours she slept each night. A strange impulse made me draw her to me and kiss her forehead. The warm morning sunlight through the window screen dappled our faces. She did not pull away, but stood staring up at me with joy. Tears gleamed in the corners of her eyes.

  “Thank you for giving me back my life.”

  “What is a good servant for?”

  Into the sweetness of the moment came a pang of regret, and I wondered what caused it. There was something missing, an emptiness where there should have been fullness. When at last I realized, all the joy left my heart.

  “Sashi. She is gone.”

  It surprised me that the absence of the djinn would be a source of such sadness, but I reflected, over time a man can become accustomed to anything. She was gone. Death had driven her from me. She wandered the desert, somewhere above the Second Cataract, alone, as she had been before our union. Yet why did Martala smile so strangely?

  The girl leaned up on her toes and kissed me on the lips before I could draw away in surprise. I felt a rushing sensation as though breath were being forced between my lips, yet it was not a substantial force but more subtle. It spread from my mouth down my body until it pervaded my limbs with a familiar presence. Ending the kiss, I closed my eyes, and the lovely face of the djinn, the face she always chose to present to me, formed itself on the darkness.

  I knew you would return to me, my love.

  Did Martala carry you all this while? I asked in my mind.

  Yes. We were good companions, but I am glad to be home.

  And I am happy that you were not lost to me.

  She smiled, and I felt her embrace my body and kiss me. The thought came to me that she was taller than Martala and her lips were more rounded.

  Rapping sounded from below.

  “Hatero and his wife,” Martala said. “I must lock this room and the door to the cellar before I let them in. Come down with me to meet them.”

  I spread my arms. She giggled.

  “Your clothes are in my bedroom. I had them laundered and mended. Get dressed while I lock the library door, and I will show the servants their new master.”

  “Will they be surprised to see me here?”

  “I told them last week that I expected you to arrive in port any day. You come from the Lebanon.”

  She led me down the short hall to the open door of one of the bedrooms and pointed to a tall cabinet. Within I found my undergarments, blue Muslim coat, and weapons, hanging on pegs. I patted the coat and felt the rag containing the dried white spiders in its usual place. There, too, my purse lay on a shelf, somewhat lighter than I remembered, and my empty water skin. Leaving them where they rested, I caressed the smooth surface of Gor’s skull with delight. From the hallway, a key rattled in a lock.

  “Another thing,” she said from the hall as I hooked the thong of the skull through my belt beside the scabbard of my sword. “We are married. And you are a Christian.”

  “Naturally. We mustn’t shock our neighbors.”

  Her head poked momentarily around the edge of the doorjamb as the rapping sounded again at the front door. She wore a head scarf of bright purple silk that hung over her hair and shoulders. I marveled at the change in her appearance. Seven months of toil and care had transformed her from a girl into a woman.

  “Don’t forget to put on your face.”

  I performed the spell of glamour while listening to her open the door below, and the sounds of footsteps across the slate floor. Had she not reminded me, I would have forgotten.

  The servants were not overly surprised to see me descend the stairs. Hatero was a short and somewhat fat Egyptian who wore his hair like a Roman, in little curls across his forehead. His wet brown eyes glided up and down my body as I stepped off the last tread to stand with my arm around Martala’s shoulders. No doubt he thought it strange that a Christian would wear the habitual garb of a Muslim, but it seemed unlikely he would be familiar with the customary dress of Lebanon, rendering an explanation unnecessary. He and his wife both bowed deeply, and after a few words of greeting, I sent them off to perform their daily functions.

  “You should sleep,” I reminded Martala when we stood alone in the entrance hall.

  “Not yet. I have to see a man about a book. Now that you are alive, you can come with me. If you feel strong enough.”

  I laughed, causing her to smile.

  “After seven months on my back, I’m ready to dance in the marketplace.”

  When we stepped from the front door into the street, the sunlight made me realize how alive I felt. There
was no trace of fatigue in my new body. It tingled with reserves of energy. Part of this was due to the presence of Sashi, I guessed, but it went deeper than that. My body had not merely been restored, it had been remade. The vitality I felt was that of a newborn child, unhampered by the weakness and pain an infant suffers after birth.

  By some sympathy, the world around me looked and sounded as new as my body felt. Even the sour smells of the city did not rob the scene of its wonder. There was beauty in the shadows cast by the houses on the cobblestones, beauty in the children who ran between the slow moving donkey carts and horses, even beauty in the house matron across the way who cast the golden contents of her chamber pot into the street through a slanting beam of sunlight.

  “What makes this book so special?” I asked her, as we worked our way together down the slope of the street toward the harbor, walking to the left of the central gutter along which trickled a thin stream of slops.

  “It is a scroll written entirely in the language of the Old Ones. But that is not what makes it so special. I have read a rumor that it contains information about the restoration of lost limbs.”

  I touched the right side of my head, where my ear should have been.

  “If it can restore a limb, then perhaps it can bring back a nose and an ear as well.”

  “That was my thinking,” she agreed.

  We continued north along the prosperous and crowded residential street until the blue of the Mediterranean appeared on the horizon between the houses, and the scent of salt filled the air. I saw the masts of ships, and knew we must be close to the docks. Overhead, the cries of wheeling sea birds penetrated the babble of voices and the rumble of cart wheels. On the untended open green before a decayed temple of Hermes that was set back from an intersection of the streets, we paused to let a herder and his young son drive his goats along the cobbles toward the ships.

  The green was dominated by a square pillar surmounted by a bearded bust of the god, so eroded by the salt air that his features were almost worn away. We sat on the crumbling edge of the stone block that formed its base.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Martala. It was necessary to raise my voice above the general din.

  She pointed at a board on the opposite side of the street that hung from chains above the heads of those who passed. Weathered by age and the salt air, it showed the image of a bird with a great fan of a tail, painted in green against a rust-colored background. The imposing three-level building attached to the sign dominated the corner where the streets met. A narrow alley on its opposite side gave it an air of free-standing pride that had begun to sag with the weight of years. Its front was sheathed in a layer of white clay that had flaked away in places to reveal the raw brick beneath. Its narrow windows, framed in dressed marble, stood uncommonly tall to let in the light. A gull in search of beetles pecked into a tuft of browning grass that sprouted in its lead roof gutter.

  “The proprietor of that inn promised to contact a man who knows the Jew who keeps the scroll. I’m confident the man is the Jew’s servant.”

  When the goats had passed, leaving a scattered reminder of their presence, we picked our way across the street to the inn of the Green Peacock. Its common room held a handful of seamen and laborers. They glanced at us with mild curiosity as we entered, but I saw nothing sinister in their eyes. The same could not be said of a lean man who sat alone behind the door, beneath a window, his shoulders hunched over his table, a cup of wine almost invisible between the interlaced fingers of his large hands. We were seated at our table before I noticed him. His gray eyes, like chips of charcoal, lingered on me from beneath the rim of his fur-trimmed cap as I looked at him, but he dropped his gaze with a deliberate show of disinterest.

  I leaned across the table toward Martala.

  “Have you seen any of Farri’s men in Alexandria?”

  She glanced at the man by the door.

  “Not one of them since I came here. At first I was sure Farri would try to kill me, so I hired a bodyguard to walk with me whenever I left the house, but after three or four months, I dismissed him. I was paying him for nothing.”

  “Maybe Farri has forgotten about us. It has been a long time.”

  “Yes. Except . . .”

  I waited for her to finish.

  “It isn’t like Farri to forget a grudge.”

  The proprietor of the inn passed a wooden tray of filled tin cups to a serving girl and came around the counter that divided his wine casks from the tables. He was a short Greek with gray hair spilling out from the faded blue turban on his head, and a full gray beard. His sun-creased face and the missing little finger from his left hand suggested that he had once been a seaman. Small scars covered his knuckles. I watched him wipe them dry on his apron as he stood beside our table, leering at Martala’s unveiled face. She chose to ignore him.

  He glanced at me keenly, dislike evident in his sour expression.

  “You said you would come alone.”

  “This is my husband, Alhazred, who recently arrived from the Lebanon. I was acting as his agent, but now you must deal with him.”

  The Greek stared at her, then at me.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?” I inquired mildly in his own language.

  “The money. Have you got the money?”

  “I have it,” Martala said.

  Glancing around the inn to see if anyone watched our table, she drew her purse from the ornamental girdle around her waist and hefted it so that the coins inside clinked. She loosened its drawstring and tipped its contents onto her palm, and I saw by their golden gleam that the coins were dinars. With quick motions she returned them to the purse, cinched it tight, and replaced it in her girdle.

  “It better all be there,” he said. “These people don’t like to be cheated. Make one mistake, and you are both dead.”

  I laid a hand on his hairy forearm.

  “When do I see the owner of the scroll?”

  His snort of amusement was not pleasant.

  “Never. No one ever sees him. Nobody knows who he is, not even the men who work for him.”

  “Then how will we—” Martala began.

  He was not listening. He looked with a meaningful expression at the lean figure behind the door and nodded, then stepped back until my hand fell from his arm. As though he had already forgotten our existence, he barked a few harsh words in Coptic to the serving girl and returned to his wine casks.

  The lean man stood and crossed the straw-strewn floor to our table, then sat on the long bench beside Martala without being asked. She drew away from him as far as the bench would allow. He exuded an aura of menace. His cap, and the coarse linen weave of his brown tunic that was so travel stained around its hem, set him apart from the seamen, nor did he have the look of a common dock worker. I saw at the neck of his tunic that he wore over his white shirt a vest of fine chain mail. His narrow face was seared on the right cheek, and the fire had left an ugly red patch almost the color of blood. He had tried to cover it with a close-trimmed beard, but the curly hairs did not grow high enough on his cheek to hide all of it. Strands of gray in the beard contrasted with the glossy dark curls hanging beneath the trim of brown fur around his cap.

  “Don’t talk, just listen,” he whispered, voice like the scrape of a knife. “I’m here to give you instructions. If you want a chance to copy the scroll, you’ll do as you’re told.”

  “Copy?” Martala interrupted. “No, we want to buy the scroll, not copy it.”

  He turned slowly toward her. In spite of herself, she flinched away, then gathered her courage and faced him with a defiant expression.

  “The scroll is not for sale. Didn’t that fool tell you anything? You buy the time to make a copy of it.”

  “I have no supplies to do the work of a scribe,” I told him.

 
“You need nothing, except money. How much are you prepared to pay?”

  “One hundred dinars,” Martala said quickly.

  “Show me.”

  Again, she removed the purse and held it on her palm. He snatched it almost savagely and hefted it to feel its weight, then dropped it onto the table.

  “Is this all you can pay?”

  “This is our life savings,” she lied. “We had to sell our lands in the Lebanon to raise so much gold.”

  He stared at her, then turned to me. I kept my expression neutral.

  “Very well. It may be enough, but I make no promise. You, husband, stay at the inn and wait. The owner will give you a room. Take it and remain here alone. We deal with one person, not two.”

  “How long am I to remain here?”

  “Until I come for you.”

  He stood from the bench, and I realized he was about to leave.

  “What about the gold?”

  “Keep it safe. If we come for you, and there is no gold, we will take our payment in blood. Understand?”

  “Very clearly.”

  He left the inn with a curious sliding gait that made no sound on the scattered straw. I glanced at Martala, then drew her purse across the table and hooked the knobs of its drawstring through my belt.

  “He’s an assassin,” she said.

  “Or a mercenary. Probably both.”

  “He knew we lied.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He expected us to lie.”

  “I don’t like leaving you, Alhazred. You have so recently returned from the dead.”

  “Even so, I feel strong in health. Do not be afraid for me. I am curious to see this fabulous scroll of the Old Ones.”

  “I have prepared for this event, but you have not. I had a plan to ensure my safe departure with the scroll.”

  “Describe it to me, and I will fulfill it in your place.”

  She frowned in consideration. My mild smile reassured her, as I intended that it should. Leaning across the table, she spoke quietly for several minutes. As the innkeeper approached our table, she drew from inside her girdle a glass vial no larger than my little finger and passed it to me, using her body to conceal the action. I hid it in my left hand.