Weird Tales - Summer 1990

by Vol. 51 No. 4

  When I got back inside, Mujahid had a fresh strip of cloth tied around his head; he was sitting where I had left him, now wearing a dry thaub they had given him. Nur and Latifa were setting out food on the rug in front of him. No sign of Mabruka. A heady smell rose from the dish of well-spiced stew; there was a bowl of curdled milk, dates, dried apricots, a stack of flat circles of bread. It would have been a feast in any shaykh's tent or house at Hasa oasis. To a bedouin just in from a weeks-long journey on a minimum of bread and dates and stale water the sight and smell were dizzying.

  From a store of household furnish­ings stacked almost ceiling-high against the inside wall Latifa brought us a cou­ple of cushions each and grinned and told us to be comfortable and eat well and then left.

  I sat down and we started to eat when there was movement in the doorway and Mabruka came in.

  She had changed out of the clinging wet dress into a fuller, black one with red embroidery in a band around the collar, and over this wore a light black mantle. In the candlelight, silver and turquoise glinted from her fingers. Around her neck were strings of red and black beads hung with silver or­naments and tiny silver bells and a string of thick oval honey-colored stones that must have come from beyond the farthest mountains. I twisted my neck to gape at her. Her lips parted and the wide bold dark eyes warmed in my di­rection and my heart pounded like rac­ing hoofbeats as she crossed the floor to join us.

  I had to move to offer her a place to sit between me and Mujahid, then scrambled to offer her the cushions La-tifa had given me. A servant's auto­matic response. She thanked me sweetly, settling down to them in a single fluid movement with a faint tinkling of her jewelry and gave one cushion back, say­ing I was the guest, a far traveler, it was her duty to see to my comfort. I felt drugged with delight. Also uncompre­hending. Therefore suddenly cautious.

  Neither woman ate. Urged on by them, however, Mujahid and I ate hear­tily to show appreciation but not so much as to seem desperate for food. Mujahid seemed pretty much re­covered.

  I took a healthy pull at the curdled milk.

  "Talal," Nur said crisply. "Talal son of whom?"

  I set the bowl down, wiped my lips with my fingers.

  "Ibn abuh," Mujahid said. Son-of-his-father. "But nobody knows who he was."

  "We'd call him son of his mother."

  "She's unknown too. He was caught raiding my father's orchard when he was no bigger than a locust. He couldn't tell us much. He'd been traveling with a northbound caravan, who knows where or with whom, or whether he'd run away or been dumped. My father took pity on him and brought him into his household to raise as a servant. He had four daughters and only one son; ac­cepting the orphan gave him another. No one ever claimed him."

  Mabruka smiled. "Your father is a good man."

  "He was, may the Gods be merciful."

  Both women echoed the wish. I chewed on a dried apricot, found Nur regarding me with a question in her fine eyes.

  "I wasn't formally adopted," I ex­plained. "When our . . . business is done and we return home, they've said they'll adopt me into the family and the tribe. Until then I have no ancestors."

  She nodded. "Among our people," she said, "that would be more of a problem for a woman than a man, since property descends through the female line."

  Mujahid looked blankly astonished. For all I know I did too. Then he looked scandalized, but that may have been pretense. Suddenly he had begun to en­joy himself. I hoped he wouldn't say anything to antagonize these people.

  "Among us," he said, "property goes to sons who can defend it." He sat up straighter, muscles flexing in the pride of manhood; but his smile was guileless. "Do women of your kindred take up arms?"

  Nur smiled. It made her look like Mabruka's not-much-older sister.

  Mabruka said slyly, "We haven't the bodies for it."

  "I've noticed," Mujahid said happily. "But are you governed by a shaykha, not a shaykh? Is the prince of that city of the valley actually a princess?"

  "Oh, Ras al-Wadi isn't ours," Nur said. "It's the tribal capital of the Bani Ghassan, and its prince is a man named Salah bin Mansur."

  "Your kindred isn't part of the Bani Ghassan?"

  "No. We were originally from further north. But there were . . . difficulties, and we separated from our own tribe and migrated with all our tents and livestock. This happened five, six gen­erations ago. The details are in many songs and stories, and we've almost be­come a tribe of our own since then, but in those days our numbers were too few to displace a tribe or take over its range by force. But the Goddess is kind to her devotees, and our ancestors met an ancestor of Shaykh Salah when he was preparing to meet a traditional enemy in battle, and he made an offer: in exchange for help in battle, some land and the use of the Bani Ghassan range for our flocks under his protection. We agreed, the enemy was routed, and this has been our base ever since."

  "Have you had to defend it often?"

  "Not too often. Often enough."

  "But you haven't become part of the Bani Ghassan?"

  "No, we're still under their protec­tion."

  "Do they follow your customs of in­heritance and tracing descent through the mother?"

  "Oh no, I'm sure they're just like you."

  "How about intermarriage?"

  "It happens, of course. My own sister married an outside trader and left the valley. Others of our women have cho­sen to marry Ghassani men and into the Bani Ghassan tribe, which means into its jurisdiction and customs. When they do they forfeit their property to their sisters or other female relatives, and become their husbands' property."

  "Why would they do that?"

  "For some it's all for love, some ex­pect to live more comfortably in the house of a rich foreign husband, some simply want a life of more limited re­sponsibility. And sometimes of course one of our men will marry one of their women. But neither will bring more than personal possessions to the mar­riage, the man because it's all he owns, the woman because only a poor Ghas­sani gives his daughter to another poor man: he just wants someone else to take care of her. Such marriages we dis­courage as much as possible. They tend to expand our unpropertied numbers, and force people to live wedged into a corner between the two societies."

  "And when a Ghassani man marries one of your women, under your laws?"

  "Our marriages are contracted for specific lengths of time, usually five years. He gives her a gift, she gives him a tent and a lance. He takes care of her flocks and fields. She sleeps with him, rides with him, cooks for him, but is not his property. If both want to, the terms of the marriage can be extended for a further period. The children carry her name and are of her family, not his . . ."

  "Then he's no better than a servant!" Mujahid protested, and though he was smiling I thought he was dangerously close to insulting the man or men who had fathered Nur's children. We didn't know these people, or what they might consider a serious offense.

  "Hardly," I said. "Whoever heard of a servant with a property-owner for a wife?"

  "Spoken like someone with no ances­tors," Mujahid said airily. "We've tried to make a bedouin out of you but you're just a peasant at heart, Talal. What of your pride? Your freedom?"

  "You're confusing pride with prop­erty. And what freedom? Freedom to do what?"

  Mujahid grinned broadly, glanced at the two women in turn. They watched him expectantly.

  "I do anything I please," he said sim­ply, turning back to me. "Raid, make love, travel. You won't be a servant for­ever. You can do the same."

  Like the rest of us, most of his trav­eling was in search of pasture for his herds, a search that controlled and con­ditioned every bedouin's life. Not even Hasa oasis could support a whole tribe's livestock. I'd never thought about it, but it seemed to be that a bedouin's wide skies and open horizons gave only an illusion of freedom, that he wasn't really any freer than a village carpen­ter or farmer. And both raiding and making love assumed like-minded partners . . .

  His grin w
idened. "Of course, if you've decided to settle down with a lady of Ahl al-Hilal.. . ."

  I said, with a modest smile, "I never aspire above my station," and to my relief everyone laughed. Mabruka turned those great dark eyes on me for a long appraising look that turned my spine to candle-grease. I forgot to breathe.

  "If you adopt him into your tribe," Nur told Mujahid, "that glib tongue will make him chief councilor in six months and shaykh before he's forty."

  "Does the sorceress confirm that pre­diction?"

  Mabruka hadn't taken her eyes off me. She said without interest, "I'm not a sorceress."

  "You mean you can't even tell whether he's going to be a great leader, or just a farmer?"

  Nur said unexpectedly, "You're look­ing at him closely enough. What do you see, if not the future?"

  "A lean young man with careful eyes and a face that's thin and still, like a good blade, waiting."

  "Anyone can see that," Nur said softly. "What can you see?"

  Mabruka tensed, started to speak, then changed her mind. She sighed, paused, reached for my hand. It felt rough and uncouth between both of hers. My heart thudded. I stared into her eyes and watched the reflection of the candle flame, twin golden splinters in the mysterious black depths of her pupils.

  She shook her head — in surprise. Her eyebrows contracted. She turned her face to look uncertainly over her shoulder toward the wall by the door­way where I had stacked our gear. Her hands slid away from mine.

  "You keep trying to get me to do more than I can," she told her mother; then to me, in a puzzled voice, "You brought something in from outside . . ."

  "Our baggage."

  "Of course!" Mujahid pushed himself to his feet. He moved carefully but seemed steady enough as he crossed to his saddlebag and dug into it.

  He produced a slim bundle wrapped in cloth, which he brought back to the rug's edge. He knelt and unrolled the wrapping, revealing the arrow he had shot into the sky the afternoon Hasan died. He picked it up almost reverently, holding it close to the candle. Dried blood discolored half its length.

  "With this arrow," he said almost wonderingly, "the spirit world ordered me to avenge my father's murder. Is some spirit following the arrow ... to see if I obey?"

  Mabruka shrugged. "I don't think so. I don't know." Her expression was re­sentful.

  He leaned toward her. The golden glow from the candle met a pale sick light flickering deep in his eyes. His look was still wondering, almost child­like, but his voice was relentless; ten­sion made it almost unrecognizable.

  "Last time you tried, the arrow was outside. I have to know if the spirit of my father is following the arrow, the spirit of Hasan bin Nasir an-Numayri .!"

  "She'll tell you what she can," Nur interrupted, straining to keep her voice gentle, "but she's neither sorceress nor seer. You mustn't expect too much of her, even if I sometimes do."

  Mujahid ignored her. For the space of one gasping breath he seemed about to attack Mabruka to force an answer from her. I was appalled. None of this made sense. I thought wildly of jinni curses, of delayed effects from his fall from the camel. I tensed to launch my­self in a preventive attack —just as he paused, startled recollection coming into his eyes.

  After a moment he sat back on his heels. The tension began draining out of him, and a look of deep embarrass­ment settled on his face. He began an unconditional apology for behaving badly while enjoying protected status under the rules of sanctuary and hos­pitality.

  I knew just how fully he had re­covered when, in the middle of the apology, he rediscovered his smile, which he soon turned with growing warmth on Mabruka. It was supposed to melt her bones and turn her brain to but­termilk. I couldn't tell if it was working. Nur smiled faintly. Mabruka overrode the apology with a clucking tongue and a fluttering hand, insisting that he had done no wrong, was distraught from his bereavement and shaken by his fall, which prompted him to tell the story of our search for Kadhim bin Ja'far.

  No bedouin ever forgets a traveler seen along the way. Even in the wastes between the wells, people meet and share news: of migrations, marriages and alliances, raids and warfare, acts of chivalry and treachery, who rode to meet whom for reasons known or ru­mored, even news of lone travelers com­plete with meticulous descriptions of dress, accoutrements, animal or ani­mals and the tribal brand showing on their flanks. Even someone who had not seen Kadhim might remember hearing about him from someone who had. And so we had followed the fugitive almost to the edge of the Great Sands to the south, lost him, doubled back and met a party of Khalidis moving east; they had seen Kadhim two days before, rid­ing west as though harried by demons. We followed. Three days' ride beyond the Dahnaa — the curving belt of red dunes that flares northward like a flame to burn, it is said, into the tribal range of the distant Shammar — the trail turned north until we came to a well with the single tent of a Bani Tha'lab family pitched nearby. They told us that Kadhim had stopped to fill his waterbag two days previously, then ridden west toward Ras al-Wadi, about which we knew only of its rumored guardians and that it was a small city of no importance off the main trade routes.

  Neither Mabruka nor her mother rec­ognized Kadhim by name or description.

  "In the morning we'll look for him in the city," Mujahid said. "If he's already left, someone may know in which di­rection."

  Latifa came in to clear away the re­mains of the meal. From the stack against the inner wall Nur and Ma-bruka produced bedding for us, and on her way out Mabruka threw me a secret smile, the tiny silver bells on her neck­lace making a small sweet clash of sound every time she moved.

  I closed the lightweight palmleaf door. Mujahid spread his borrowed quilt on the rug and wrapped himself in it. He looked stronger and healthier than at any time since the lightning strike.

  He grinned broadly, kept his voice low.

  "Admit it: you thought I was going to say the wrong thing to our hostess. You thought my brain was scrambled."

  I spread the second quilt on the woven grass mat they had given me.

  "Yes! When you got into that busi­ness about your father's spirit. . ."

  I thought his voice acknowledged some embarrassment, though it wouldn't have been obvious to anyone who didn't know him well.

  "All right, that was a weird idea I had. I got carried away, I admit. Let's just say that the crack on the head and the ausaj business mixed me up for a while, all right? But it got us protected status — though what good it does to get the protection of a couple of women I don't know."

  That would depend on the respect that they and their menfolk were held in.

  "Women, one of whom," I reminded him, "you kept calling a sorceress."

  "I was mixed up. What she is, is a beauty just aching to lose her virgin­ity."

  "How do you know she's still got it?"

  I punched out the candle, took off my headcloth and thaub. At least they had had time to absorb warmth from my body. The quilt was as cold as a winter's dawn wind. I wrapped it tightly around me, suddenly impatient for sleep. The packed earth floor felt like solid rock. I wouldn't ever be warm again.

  "You develop an instinct about these things," Mujahid said. "You noticed how she got dressed up in her feast fi­nery, with jewels . . ."

  "Careful. Maybe these people expect their unmarried girls to be chaste."

  'Then I'll steal her in a raid."

  "A fine way to repay their hospital­ity."

  "Hospitality," he said airily, "is an obligation in the desert. No payment is expected. My instinct also tells me her thighs have the texture of rose petals."

  My throat tightened on a sudden urge to yell at him.

  "What about Filwa's thighs?" I whis­pered violently. "Why didn't you claim her while you had the chance?"

  I heard movement from his direction. Perhaps he was coming over to kick me in the head. I wouldn't have blamed him. Obviously he hadn't claimed her because bereavement and the need for vengeance had driven all else from his mind. But he was o
nly adjusting his position. When he spoke it was without rancor, his tone dry, a little amused.

  "I just didn't, that's all. I didn't even stop to figure out whether I wanted to." A pause. I heard voices from the next room, the words indistinguishable. Per­haps he was thinking how much more desirable he found Mabruka. Unex­pectedly he said, “She'll be there wait­ing when we get back."

  "Why should she be? She told me I was crazy to be going with you. She doesn't sound like one of your uncritical admirers."

  "So what? Why should she want to go back to her own people? Her father would only marry her off to another old man."

  "And of course she'd much prefer a vigorous young man like you."

  "Of course!" The smile in his voice shone through the darkness, but under the smug tone I heard a note of wear­iness. "Respectable married women have been known to sigh over me, you know."

  "How do you know?"

  "Their younger sisters have told me. They've also told me you're shy. Or is it unadventurous?"

  "I'm a servant," I reminded him.

  "That wouldn't have bothered some of the young women. Perhaps when we get home I'll give you Filwa."

  "You didn't claim her, she's not yours to give. Why, anyway? To get back at her for not being an uncritical admi­rer?"

  "Don't worry about the motive, just enjoy the gift." As though he had al­ready given it. "Mother of the Gods, shut up and go to sleep, can't you?"

  "Wake in goodness," I grunted, bur­ying my head under the quilt.

  Warmth had begun to gather in my cocoon. My eyelids quickly became heavy.

  His voice said out of the darkness, "I'm sorry you were worried."

  "I was afraid I might have to avenge Hasan myself, is all."

  He grunted. I heard him turn over. I hoped he was through talking. I was more than ready not to have to respond. In a few moments I wouldn't be able to.

  He said cryptically, "Maybe it would be better you than me. I might not be . . . acceptable."

  I sat bolt upright, staring into the darkness.

  Acceptable to whom?

  The usual scurrilous epithets leaped to mind cataloguing alleged vices, im­pugning ancestry. Instead I said, "You shit — are you trying to frighten me?"