Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “My family in Yemen wished me to see the world. They would have sent me by caravan, but I loath the desert. Water travel is so much more civilized.”

  He nodded indulgently, and wiped his face on the corner of a white silk kerchief that hung around his neck. The glistening sweat on his brow made a dark patch on the cloth.

  “I hate travel by river or road, but there is no help for it. The Amir of Persia has offered me the position of physician to his court at Baghdad, and I must get there some way.”

  “A royal appointment?” I tried to make my expression suitably impressed. “You must be a man of substantial reputation.”

  This pleased him. He smiled and shrugged his rounded shoulders beneath his red coat.

  “I was fourth personal physician to the Caliph at Damascus, but the Amir offered such generous terms I could not deny him.”

  Reading between his words, I guessed that he had been expelled from the court at Damascus, and had taken this journey in the hope of finding a place of wealth and ease in Baghdad.

  “You have no family?”

  “Sadly, no,” he said, pursing his lips and gazing down into his opened palms. “My wife died last year. Such a pretty young thing she was, always laughing and dancing, but no stamina. The slightest chastisement with a whip or rod upon her back sent her to her bed.”

  He blew a gust of air between his lips at the memory and shook his head. I imitated the motion, wondering without great curiosity what this fat monster had done to his young bride that had so shortened her life. Whatever it may have been, it was no affair of mine.

  I can be such a fool in my optimism. During the next ten days Bassarius, who I learned was the product of a Greek father and an Arab mother of high family, regaled me with the intimate details of his family history, his marital life, his work as a healer of the sick, his service to the Caliph, the daily life in the court at Damascus, the personal habits of the Amir at Baghdad, the breeding of horses for racing, the purgative nature of sulphur, the care of fine leather boots, the price of silks in Alexandria compared with their price in Constantinople, the difficulties in training a competent cook, and a host of other matters about which I had no interest of any kind. Once the man overcame his brief and uncharacteristic initial reticence, there was no way to stem the flow of his words. They poured forth like the Euphrates itself, and were equally unending.

  On the tenth day at the fall of twilight, after the boat had been tied up to a tree growing at the very edge of the water, and the horses had been led off hobbled to browse the soft green grasses, I turned to Martala.

  “If that fat fool doesn’t stop talking, I will cut his throat tomorrow morning. I can bear no more of it.”

  I heard the faint note of desperation in my own voice, but she only laughed. My suffering had been a constant source of quiet mirth to her. I suspected it was also a joke shared between Yarku and his son when they were out of my hearing, since the two cast amused glances at me when they thought I was occupied with other matters.

  “The man is inhuman. Indeed, I do not believe him to be a man at all but some kind of hellish djinn. All men stop talking from time to time. The human voice is not constituted to speak without interruption from dawn until dusk, day after day.”

  She paid me no heed, but laughing softly to herself, set about unlashing our sleeping rugs. There was no hut to shield us from the stars that began to wink on like candle flames in the deepening purple of the sky. Fortunately, the camp place was elevated above the riverside, and removed far enough from its edge to avoid the flies that dwelled amid the reeds.

  Bassarius returned from the grove of trees, tugging at the backside of his tunic through his open coat with his left hand as he waddled like a goose toward our sleeping rugs. The boatmen were preparing a fire in a circle of blackened stones some distance up the side of the little hill and paid us no attention. I suppose we were merely cargo to them, little different from the horses, except that our purses held gold.

  “It is a strange thing, friend Alhazred, the way the bowel behaves at various hours of the day. An elderly physician of Damascus wrote a treatise on the subject, in which he describes the constitution of the dung of a man at each hour of the day and night, relating its softness, hardness, color, odor, and other qualities to the seven wandering bodies, which as you know are allotted to the hours of the day and night . . .”

  My fingers unconsciously tightened around the ivory hilt of my dagger, and I heard a grating noise from my teeth. What might have happened next, I cannot judge, for my mind was inflamed with hatred, but any action I felt germinating in my heart lacked time to flower.

  A shadow covered the physician. He took no notice and continued toward me. Puzzled, I looked up in time to see a dark shape of indeterminate outline descend like a stooping hawk upon its prey. The droning voice ceased with a squawk. There was a soft sound of flapping, like the wings of a bat that flies past the ear, and Bassarius was gone.

  Chapter 38

  As I gazed in wonder at the bare hillside where the fat man had stood, the bent grass crushed beneath his boots slowly straightened in the last dim glow from the dying light of the sky. Only then did I think to raise my eyes and look around. A black shape raced low along the horizon on the opposite bank of the river. Before I saw it clearly it was gone over the crests of distant hills.

  I turned to Martala. She stared at me with an expression of puzzlement on her pale face, gray in the gathering darkness. Only the western horizon glowed. The rest of the sky was shot with stars.

  Approaching footsteps drew my attention to Yarku.

  “The fire is burning. We’ll have something boiling in the pot in a few minutes. Where is the physician?”

  He looked from my face to the girl, then back to me. An expression of horror stole across his features and he spun wildly, trying to peer on all sides and upward through his cat-tail eyebrows at the same moment. It might have been comical were his terror not so genuine.

  “The Beast took him,” he whispered. He made a gesture with his right hand that I recognized as the Elder Sign. My interest quickened.

  “What do you know of this Beast?”

  He ignored me. Stumbling back up the hill to the fire, he began to babble and gesticulate at his son, who made soothing sounds and tried to calm the old man with his hands by stroking his shoulders and arms. The expression of fear on Yuga’s bearded face made a mock of his words. He was as terrified as his father. I approached with Martala beside me. The uneasy tingling between my shoulders almost forced me to look around but I resisted the impulse.

  “What is this Beast?” I asked Yuga.

  “No one knows what it is,” he said, glancing at the darkening sky. “It comes at dusk or in the early hours of the night, and takes a man away with it. Sometimes it takes a child or a woman, but never a horse or donkey.”

  “It is an evil from the abyss,” his father added. “They say it lives in the depths of the ruins of Babylon, and ventures forth for its prey.”

  “Does it take more than one a night?” Martala asked.

  They looked at each other. Yarku exhaled and relaxed his tense shoulders. He made an effort to master his emotions. A portion of his dignity returned.

  “I have never heard that it takes more than one.”

  “Then we are safe,” I said by way of emphasis.

  “I think so, yes.”

  They could tell us nothing useful about the Beast. No boatman had ever seen it. The creature descended silently from the sky and was gone in moments. Sometimes those it captured and carried away had time to cry out, but usually they made no sound. I remembered once as a boy seeing an owl swoop down on quiet wings to seize a mouse. The mouse let out a single squeak of surprise before the talons of the owl crushed it. None of us expect danger to fall from the empty sky. That is what makes it so terrifying. The gods cast
down their wrath upon the heads of men. The heavens are a place for birds and gods, not for us.

  We shared a solemn meal, each avoiding the gaze of the others. After so many days of endless chatter from Bassarius, the silence felt strange on my ears. The bowl intended for his use sat beside the hearthstones on the stiff grass where Yarku had placed it. When we were done, he collected it with the rest and packed it away. I felt no anxiety of heart as I unrolled my sleeping rug and positioned it where the warmth from the dying embers reached my side. The hardships of the desert had made me philosophical. If Yarku was correct, the monster would not return and we were safe; if he was wrong, still there were four of us and it could only carry one. Comforted by this reflection, I slept deep and awoke refreshed.

  The dark circles under Martala’s eyes testified to her wakeful night. The two boatmen began the day as blear-eyed and short of temper as the girl, but were soon mollified to discover that Bassarius had hidden a money belt of gold dinars at the bottom of his travel trunk. It is an evil wind indeed that blows no good. Yarku did not offer to share the gold with us, and since I saw no reason why he should do so, I said nothing. We sailed swiftly south on a favorable wind, passing several boats laden with cargo for the villages along the river. I sat in the elevated bow, gazing across the dry plains at the horizon, for the margin of green plants that lined both sides of the river was narrow and quickly gave way to dust and rock.

  Dotting the distant expanse, mounds of crumbled stones interrupted the flat monotony. Yarku thought they were ancient temples to gods of fire, but apart from the stories of djinn that inhabited the ruins and killed unwary travelers who ventured near, he could tell me little that was useful. Before the Prophet brought his teaching to this land, his people had worshipped fire as a living force. Many tribes still followed the ancient ways, and there were sects of degenerate priests who made the mounds their temples, and burned fire under the stars. When I asked him to what purpose they lit their fires, he shrugged. He was not a man of religion, and the ways of the gods held scant interest for him.

  That night, he tied up his boat on the western bank well before sunset, and made our camp in the hollow of a rock ledge that overhung our sleeping place, affording some protection against whatever evil might choose to descend upon us. The place was removed from the riverside and elevated, to escape the biting flies that otherwise would have made sleep impossible. I sat long, gazing across the river toward the east while the others slept. They were exhausted from their previous sleepless night. The fire died to embers that dimmed until its red glow was only visible when I looked upon it from the corner of my eye. In the distant eastern plain a flickering red spark danced atop one of the mounds. Someone had lit flames to the gods of the sky.

  Wake me if danger approaches, Sashi, I said inwardly.

  I will watch over you. Sleep deeply, my beloved.

  In spite of Sashi’s comforting words, I was not deceived. A monster that came from nowhere and fell like a thunderbolt could not be watched for, since the moment of its arrival was the moment of death. Curling on my side upon my sleeping mat, I let my mind drift into oblivion with the reflection that danger was ever present in the world.

  All through the following day, the anxiety of Yarku and his son increased. Even if I had not known that we approached the ruins of Babylon, I could have guessed it from the fearful glances they cast at the eastern bank of the river, which they avoided as far as the shallows would allow, hugging the west bank with their boat the way an infant clings to the skirts of its mother. In the afternoon, Yarku muttered a prayer in his own strange tongue and resolutely turned the steering oar of the boat so that the little vessel cut across the stream of the river to the eastern side, where there was a landing area of sorts.

  Yuga jumped from his place in the bow with a line to tie up the boat to a large boulder. The lazy current carried the stern around until the boat pointed in the opposite direction, up river. As he knotted the rope, he looked over his shoulder through the thin band of willows that divided the river from the plain. I followed his gaze but saw only dusty leaves rustle in the breeze. Yarku set about getting the horses off almost before his son was finished making the boat fast, such was his haste. He made no attempt at conversation.

  “Where are the ruins?” I asked, unloading our saddle packs from the bow.

  He pointed to the east without looking at me.

  “How are we to find them?”

  “You will find them,” he snapped. Fear had drawn his lips into a thin line. “Ride east. They are near.”

  “Too near,” Yuga murmured in his own tongue, which I pretended not to understand.

  We stood beside our horses and watched the men pole away from the bank and catch the breeze in their sail. The boat moved slowly north against the current of the river, close to the western bank, but at last passed from sight around the bend. I slapped my neck with my hand and cursed. The sleepy air beneath the trees made my skin prickle with sweat inside my cloak, and the familiar reek of the river muck sickened me. I had seen enough of this river, and its vermin, and felt relief at leaving it behind for the wholesomeness of the barren plain. Where there is life there is always corruption.

  “They were both terrified,” Martala said with a slight shake of her head.

  I swung into the saddle of my gelding and waited for her to mount her mare. What was there to say? For a moment I found myself wishing that I sat in the boat with the two men, sailing up the river and away from this accursed place. Annoyed at my weakness, I shook this fantasy from my thoughts. The north held nothing for me, no hiding place to escape the horror of my mutilated body or my enslavement to the dark man. I must go onward, fear or no fear.

  We rode out of the willows and across the plain. It was not perfectly flat, but undulated to the horizon in low hills from which heat danced and made the distant air shimmer like beaten silver. A small mountain loomed no great distance away. Following the terse directions of the boatman, I headed east toward the foot of the mountain, wondering how the ruins of the greatest city of the ancients would look after the passage of so many centuries. I anticipated impressive pillars and statues like to those I had seen in Memphis and Thebes, but when we reached the outskirts of the ruins, I gazed upon them with disappointment.

  Here and there lay scattered the remnants of foundation walls. The bases of a few pillars of stone stood like solitary watchmen, but many more lay on their sides. They were not of the impressive dimensions of the pillars at Thebes, but smaller and ugly in shape. Not a single roof survived. The flat paving stones of streets showed where the wind stripped the dust from them. Low outlines of buildings extended to the horizon. Only the sheer number of the ruins testified that here had once stood a great city. Little wonder travelers avoided the place. The wind sighing among the fallen stones sang of despair and desolation.

  We picked our way through the puzzle of carven blocks and crumbling bricks, eyes alert for vipers, but saw nothing living apart from large beetles with backs like polished jet that made their lumbering way through the dust, leaving characteristic tracks behind them that resembled some obscure written script. These tracks were everywhere, so that the entire city seemed the book of a madman, scribbled with mute folly in words that could no longer be read. My heart sank in despair. We made a slow circuit of the ruins and returned to our starting place.

  As the sun fell low on the western horizon, the light slowly changed and the shadows of the stones grew long. I chanced to look across to the north at the nearby mountain, and stopped my horse to brood. It had a familiar aspect.

  “A fool’s errand,” Martala said in disgust.

  “So it would appear.”

  “I see no head of any kind.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Who are we to ask about the Well of the Seraph?”

  I bit my tongue. Cursing the girl would not bring me the information I
sought. With impatience, I dug my heels into the flanks of my horse and sent it trotting back toward the margin of the river. Martala followed me more slowly. When she reached the willows, I had the saddle and bags off the back of the animal, and its forelegs hobbled with a length of woven leather cord.

  “We will let the horses browse on the grasses and drink from the river.”

  Silently, she dismounted and removed her packs and saddle, laying them beside mine, then set about hobbling her mare. The tails of the horses flicked across their flanks as the flies gathered in a swarm, attracted by the smell of our sweat. A dozen moving black dots spotted the tan rump of the mare.

  “After we finish our meal, we’ll come back and lead them away from the river before this infernal vermin makes its meal of them.”

  She nodded and bent with me to pick up the packs that held our sleeping rugs and utensils. I pulled forth a small copper pot before slinging my pack over my shoulder, and filled the pot half full with water at the edge of the river. This I carried with care to avoid slopping with the intention of making a stew with salted strips of goat’s meat. Seeing my purpose, the girl began to gather an armful of the scattered sun-bleached wood that had washed up from the river in time of flood.

  As we turned with our burdens to leave the willows and their flies behind, a cry sounded on the stillness of twilight. It was like the distant scream of a hawk when the falconer casts it upward to begin the hunt. I resisted the impulse to throw the pot aside and cower under a bush. Instead, I looked between the leafy tops of the willows, and realized that the sun had set on the western horizon. Already the brightest stars were emerging from behind the veil of the dying day. We stood almost touching and listened with our breath stilled in our throats. Other than the uneasy whinny of my gelding, and the faint rustle of the leaves in the treetops, there was no sound.

  “It might be wise to remain under the trees,” Martala murmured.