Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “What is the truth, Timonius?”

  “We are pursued by an assassin who followed us from Egypt. We needed the security of these walls.”

  “An assassin in the hire of your evil uncle, I suppose,” he said with derision.

  “There is no uncle. We stole something from a wealthy man, and he wants it back.”

  “Thieves. I might have guessed. Are you planning to rob the monastery?”

  “We would never do such a thing,” she said with passion. “The order has protected us. We owe you our lives.”

  I felt a moment of admiration for the conviction she put into her voice. I almost believed her myself.

  “You told me you loved me,” he said with bitterness, turning toward me. “Is this man even your brother?”

  Martala hesitated, meeting my eyes.

  “No.”

  “They why are you traveling together?” A thought darkened his face.

  “I am a eunuch,” I murmured quickly. “That much of our story was true.”

  He relaxed his shoulders, enough that I knew my words had reached him. Had he believed I was her lover, he would have sounded the alarm at once.

  She took him gently by the arms and turned him to face her, staring up at him.

  “Only you know, Baruch. We can go on as before. Nothing has changed.”

  He laughed and struck her hands aside.

  “What was Idi doing under the library? There’s nothing there except tools and supplies. Nothing except—”

  His eyes widened, and I knew with regret that I would have to kill him.

  “You went into the vault,” he murmured, staring at me. “You talked to that thing in the cage. Why would you do that, unless you are in league with the Old Ones?”

  With every word his voice mounted. It seemed impossible that it could pass unheard by the other monks. I raised my left palm in supplication, keeping my right hand, which held the dagger, at my thigh.

  “It is not as you believe. I was merely curious.”

  “For three days? Or have you been visiting its lair longer than that? You have, I see it in your face. Traitors, both of you, liars and traitors.”

  His voice was much too loud. With a glare of determination, he stepped toward me. I extended the dagger to thrust.

  Martala drew my Damascus sword from its scabbard with a flash of silver in the gray dawn glow and plunged its point into his back. He stopped and reached both arms up and over his shoulders in an attempt to touch the steel, his face convulsed. Blood filled his open mouth and ran down his chin, looking black against the pallor of his complexion. No more than a gurgling hiss escaped his throat. I caught his shoulders as he fell so that his body would not sound against the floorboards, and held him upright pressed to my chest while his knees sagged.

  Martala stood framed in the light from the window, staring at me without expression as the sword drooped in her hand.

  “Keep the blood from the floor,” I hissed, nodding at the sword.

  She came to her senses quickly, lifting the blade level so that blood would not drip from its point. I reached to take the sword from her and gave her the dagger.

  “Get the towel. Cut it in two.”

  One of the pieces of cloth I stuffed into the mouth of the corpse. The other I pressed to the wound in its back. The point of the sword had not projected through the chest, but it must have pierced the heart, for death had been almost instant. The blood no longer flowed. In a few minutes, I knew, it would harden and the cloths would no longer be needed.

  “Alhazred, your robe. It is soaked in blood.”

  I heard the horror in her voice, and saw her struggle to keep from retching. It is not every day that you kill a man you have kissed.

  “What are we to do?” she said, pressing the back of her hand to her lips. “Merciful Goddess, what are we to do?”

  I held up a finger for silence and listened. Nothing stirred in the hall outside the door. It was almost an hour before the time of rising. With good fortune, all the monks near enough to have overheard Baruch’s voice lay asleep. The smell of fresh blood hung thick in the air, but the morning breeze would soon carry it away.

  “It’s too late to try to take the body elsewhere,” I murmured. “Lift the mattress from its ropes.”

  She pulled the sack of the mattress out of its wooden frame. Still supporting the body, I leaned over to examine the space below the knotted ropes. It was deep enough. The sideboards of the bed did not reach to the floor, but were so low that no one would notice a body beneath the bed unless he got down on to his hands and knees and peered under. The monks did their own cleaning. There was little reason to enter the room of another brother during the day, unless invited, and entry was forbidden at night. Eventually the flies would betray us, but I hoped to be long away before that occurred.

  She cleaned the blade of my sword on the robe of the dead monk, then slid the corpse under the bed while I stood at its foot and held it up at an angle. The legs were a bit long. I had to raise the bed a second time while Martala turned the corpse partly onto its side and bent its knees with her hands. When the mattress was in place and the sheets pulled over it, the bed appeared empty.

  “I will get you another robe from the laundry,” Martala murmured. “We should hide your robe under the bed—” She stopped herself before she said “with the body.”

  “It’s too late. They will be awake soon. Do it after the first bell sounds. If anyone asks, tell them your idiot brother soiled himself.”

  She nodded, eyes downcast. Her shoulders trembled, even though she clasped her hands in front of her at her waist and tried to keep them still.

  “It was necessary,” I said, touching her cheek.

  She glanced at me. Tears gleamed in her pale eyes but did not fall.

  “I would have killed him in another moment, if you had not done it. He was about to betray us both. The monks would have executed us, but first they would have tortured us to discover our purposes.”

  “They may still do so,” she murmured, and I smiled to hear some of her usual strength creep back into her voice.

  “Were you in love with him?”

  She shook her head slowly, then held it still, her face turned away from mine.

  “He thought I was a boy. What chance was there for love?”

  Chapter 48

  The ringing of the morning bell woke the dormitory to life. Murmurs of voices and the shuffle of feet sounded in the hallway outside the door. Martala left to get me a clean robe and gather food from the kitchen for our departure, for it was evident that we must flee the Sons of Sirius before the discovery of the corpse. I occupied myself by hiding my bloody robe beneath the mattress and washing all traces of blood from my hands and chest. The water in the basin took on a distinct red tinge. I poured it into the chamber pot, and the piss and shit from the previous evening disguised its color well enough for a casual glance, after I stirred the mixture.

  She returned with the robe in her arms, its folds filled with loaves of bread, a piece of salted pork, and dried dates and apricots.

  “It was the best food I could steal. I could only stay in the kitchen for a few moments, and was never left alone.”

  “It will serve well enough,” I said, putting my arms through the robe and tying its quilted belt. I slid her empty travel wallet and my flat water skin into the front of it through the slit of its neck. The bulge was noticeable, but could be disguised by bending forward and folding my arm across my belly. I regretted the loss of our boots. It would have attracted instant notice to wear anything other than the daily uniform of the order, and in any case, our boots had been taken away shortly after our admittance into the monastery and sold, the money they earned adding to the general coffers.

  As expected, the absence of Baruch was noticed i
n the dining hall, and a young brother dispatched to look for him while the rest of us made a breakfast of fresh bread, boiled eggs, and ham. Toward the end of the meal, the brother returned with an apologetic posture and made his way directly to the head table, where sat Rumius and his fellow elders. I could not hear what question Rumius put to him, but he merely shook his head. Rumius dismissed him with an expression of concern, and bent in council with one of his advisors, who always dined at his elbow. This coming and going was not missed by the monks seated further down the hall. Suddenly Baruch became the focus of conversation at all the tables.

  A general search was undertaken shortly before noon, amid growing alarm. Everyone knew that Baruch must still be within the monastery, which made his absence a mystery that verged on a wonder. He had been seen retiring to his room in the dormitory the evening before, or so the general gossip testified. Since the gate was locked at sunset, guarded all night, and not opened until after the morning meal, he could not be outside the walls, yet he had vanished. The initial assumption was that he had fallen into the cistern and drowned, but this was soon disproved by investigation, and the area of the search widened.

  The search served my purposes better than I would have hoped. It drew most of the scribes out of the scriptorium, and many of the senior monks from their offices. I was exempt from the search due to my weak mind, and was permitted to carry on with my usual morning duty, sweeping the floors of the library. As soon as I could do so without attracting notice, I worked my way down to the western end of the hall on the third level. The scroll was still where the elder monk had placed it, after scanning over its contents. It would have been safest to steal the scroll and read it at my leisure when safely outside the walls of the monastery, but I dared not trust the words of the monster below. Fingers trembling with eagerness, I unrolled it.

  The letters were Hebrew, the language Aramaic, a tongue well-known to Nectanebus, but obscure to most scholars of the present age. It was a work of no great interest that described various holy sites of the world, a kind of traveler’s guide similar to the book of Pausanius the Greek. I let my eyes dance through it with impatience. What I sought was written in another hand at the foot of the main text, a gloss of no great extent. I read it with care, then rolled up the scroll and replaced it.

  During my time in the library, I had taken notice of a number of valuable works on the necromantic arts, fixing their places of keeping in my mind. I went to them and gathered several scrolls that could easily fit into the pockets of the wallet. It was with regret that I passed over others too bulky to conceal on my person. Each was worth far more than its weight in gold to those interested in the arcane secrets of death and life.

  As I descended to the landing on the second level, I saw that the door to the office where the library strongbox was kept had been left open in the confusion of the search. It was one of the few doors in the monastery with a lock. The temptation was too great for me to resist. The lock on the strongbox did not frustrate my efforts to spring it for more than a few minutes. It was of antique design, difficult to break but easy to pick with a penknife left lying on the desk. I reached in and took a generous handful of dinars, then stuffed them into the wallet with the scrolls. They would pay for the loss of my boots, I reflected, and be some compensation for the weeks spent acting the fool.

  “What are you doing here, Idi? Don’t you know this room is forbidden to you?” asked a cultured voice behind my back.

  My blood turned to cold spring water, and I remained motionless with my hand still in the neck of my robe. Replacing the habitually foolish expression on my face, I slowly straightened and turned, cursing myself for not bringing the dagger. The blade of the penknife was no longer than my little finger. Still, it was a weapon of sorts. The bearded monk who faced me from the open doorway was of no great age. I recognized him as the youngest of those who carried out the administration of the monastery from these offices. His name came to me after a few seconds during which my mind remained as dense as a block of wood. Brother Adrian. I lolled my tongue at him and wagged my head as though confused.

  His clear brown eyes strayed to the open strongbox. I wondered how difficult it would be to kill him with the little knife. Where would I hide the body? With the entire monastery engaged in a search of all the buildings, no corner would long remain safe from discovery, even were I able to drag his corpse down the hallway and stairs unobserved. Would his body fit into the strongbox? I cast my eyes in the same direction as his to measure its dimensions.

  “You have been very naughty, Idi.” His voice held a trace of amusement. “What would Brother Baruch think, if he could see you now?”

  The use of the missing monk’s name was so unexpected, I forgot myself for an instant and glanced keenly at him.

  “Talk to me, Idi,” he said. “Your secret is safe. Only I and Baruch know of it, and Baruch won’t be telling anyone, will he?”

  So the love-smitten monk had not kept his discoveries to himself, but had informed his friend. How many others had he told, and if so, why was I still alive? For a few moments I debated in my own thoughts the wisdom of continuing to play the fool, but the expression on the face of the monk was so knowing, I saw that it would be futile. At least I could straighten the curve of my back, and face him like a man.

  “What did Baruch tell you?”

  He laughed in delight at the change of my posture. I took a small step toward him, the penknife concealed in my left hand.

  “He told me nothing. His infatuation with your companion was well-known among the brothers. When I learned of his disappearance, I made the natural assumption that he had discovered your nightly visits beneath the library, and that you had killed him to ensure his silence.”

  There was something uncanny about his face, a kind of blankness. When he smiled, the creases at the corners of his lips were not echoed by lines at the corners of his eyes. His face had the stiffness of a living mask, animated by wires from a distance. As if sensing the trend of my thoughts, he nodded. No, it was the thing moving his body like a puppet that nodded to me. I felt sickness mingled with relief. The situation had changed, and I would not have to kill. I forced bravado into my voice.

  “So this is the monk whose mind you command at a distance?”

  “A very weak mind it is,” the creature said with contempt. “But his mind is of no importance. His eyes and ears serve me, and occasionally, his hands.”

  “Why not compel him to deface the signs on the vault and set you free?”

  “He is not so clever with locks as you, and I cannot control his hands with the required precision. The brothers never visit me alone, but always in groups of three, for their own security. A wise precaution for them, but frustrating, since Adrian is not permitted to be with me in private, not even for a moment.”

  “I have not forgotten our bargain,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” The thing eyed me narrowly. “Why were you stealing gold from the box? What is that beneath the folds of your robe?”

  “The search for Baruch gave me the opportunity to take what I have long intended to steal.”

  “Surely you know the thefts will be discovered? And where is the corpse of the monk hidden? That will be found, also, when it starts to rot.”

  “I will come to you tonight, as soon as the monastery is asleep,” I said quickly, to distract the trend of its thoughts. “I have black paint from the workshop. Your release will be the work of a few minutes.”

  “No, I do not believe you will,” it said slowly. “You mean to flee from the monastery today, before the corpse of Baruch is found. Why are you in such haste?”

  “I swear to you, on the honor of Nyarlathotep, that I will fulfill my pledge to you.”

  It laughed until the tears started from the eyes of the entranced monk and coursed down his cheeks.

  “Nyarlathotep is without honor. W
hy do you think he is so universally despised? You are his true servant, of that I have no doubt.”

  “If you betray me, I will betray you,” I said in warning. “You will lose the use of this vehicle, and will no longer be able to spy upon the doings of the monks.”

  “I could kill you now,” it said, and the fingers of the monk’s hands twitched.

  “What would that gain you? Freedom? Brother Adrian might be discovered, and then you would still lose your vehicle.”

  “What makes you think he is the only one who serves as my eyes?”

  I had made no such assumption, but was merely arguing for my own security.

  “Give me the chance to prove the worth of my word,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster. “Let me come to you tonight and set you free.”

  It pondered for so long a time, I thought it had lost control of the monk, and expected to see awareness return to Adrian’s eyes.

  “Very well, prove the honor of your bond. But know this, I will be watching you. If you try to leave the monastery grounds before you fulfill your vow, I will sound an alarm. You will be taken and tortured, and your little companion as well.”

  He watched while I closed and relocked the strongbox, then stepped aside to let me pass out of the office. I felt his gaze burning on my back as I shuffled down the hallway with my arms across my belly to conceal the scrolls. No one passed me on the stairs. I sat on the corner of the bottom step, as was my custom, to wait for the girl.

  Martala came for me at the usual time, and we made our way to the dining hall. The noon meal was delayed by the general chaos of the ongoing search. Groups of unfed monks sat at the bare tables, talking in low voices. I saw expressions of fear on the faces of several of the younger brothers. The disappearance of Baruch, because it was inexplicable, seemed unnatural. Others speculated that he had fallen and hit his head in some obscure corner, and would be found before the end of the day. It would not be long before the talk turned to the possibility of murder. When that happened, all of the dormitory rooms would be searched with minute care. We must be long gone before the corpse was discovered.