Weird Tales - Summer 1990

by Vol. 51 No. 4

  Open trading stalls under ragged awnings lined the square's east side, and a high, mud-plastered wall with an impressive double door set into it ran down the west. The doors stood open. A burly man, with a sheathed sword at his side and a dagger in his belt, stood guard but allowed a group of peasants to enter with a word and a nod. They joined other people standing or sitting on the ground inside.

  Beyond the walls a couple of tall date palms reached into the sky, nodding over a considerable building, two deep stories to the crenelated parapet surrounding the flat roof. A wind tower pushed even higher to catch the breeze to cool the interior. Overhead, a scav­enging kite hawk with wingtip feathers like extended fingers wheeled and dipped.

  "That's the palace." Mabruka nodded toward the double doors. "Nur was right about the court, it's the only time they let the crowd in."

  Mujahid's face looked suddenly older, thinner.

  I asked, "What's the plan? You won't get him to revoke his protection."

  "I might keep him from extending it." His sudden smile was thin as a knife edge. "Anyhow Kadhim knows a shaykh's protection won't deflect a well-aimed bowshot."

  "We can't ambush him here without betraying Nur."

  "He doesn't know he can rely on that. He'll worry. Maybe he'll run. Here, I'd better go in there unarmed."

  He unbuckled the belt with the dag­ger on it and took it off and gave it to me. "Put it on. You look silly with that string around your middle."

  "I'd look sillier falling down because I tripped on my robe."

  "Not much," Mujahid said, and started for the double doors while I buckled on his belt and followed with the silent Mabruka.

  The burly guard had a muscular neck and a beard with gray patches and a knife or sword scar that ran from his forehead to his cheek, just missing his left eye. It could have made him look sinister but didn't. When he answered Mujahid's greeting his voice was almost friendly but thin and husky, as though at some time he'd taken a bad wound in the neck.

  "I seek the shaykh's judgment," Mu­jahid said.

  The guard's eyes went from Mujahid to Mabruka and me — and quickly back to Mabruka. Then reluctantly returned to Mujahid.

  "Your witnesses?"

  "I need no witnesses. These are friends."

  "Go in and give them your name and wait your turn," the guard said. "Your friends had better wait outside till some of the disputes are settled and the crowd thins out."

  "I would rather they were with me."

  "Wait outside with them until there's room, then you can all go in together. But then you'll be later in line; who knows when the shaykh'll hear you?"

  Through the double doorway I could see past the crowd in the yard to half of the building Mabruka had called the palace. Two guards with lances stood at either side of a big door with nothing fancy about it. Near the door a faded cloth awning cast a patch of shadow mostly on the wall, but when the sun rose higher it would shade an area of rugs and cushions that would presum­ably be occupied by the shaykh and members of his staff and council. This was the city version of the desert di-wan, the court of justice at which every tribal member could petition the high chief in person. Accusations ran from murder to theft, petty fraud to harass­ment. A shaykh who met his obliga­tions as judge with skill and insight saw his name for wisdom grow and as­sent to his chieftaincy flourish. . . .

  Mujahid looked at the crowd briefly, then turned back to the guard. "No, I'll go in now." He poked a forefinger at my chest. "Look around, see what you can learn. Come back later, or I'll see you at Mabruka's house."

  I agreed. He went through the arch­way and disappeared into the crowd.

  "How long will it be?" I asked the guard.

  He tore his eyes off Mabruka long enough to shrug. "Noon. Before noon. What can I tell you?" He hawked and spat, scratched delicately at the corner of his eye where the scar ran. "Some­times these diwans last all morning, sometimes longer." The husky voice was still affable, probably because the longer he talked the longer he could go on looking at Mabruka. She ignored him. I gave him a thin commiserating smile. He gave it right back.

  With a small nod she drew me away in the direction we had come. When we were beyond the guard's hearing she stopped and faced me. Her forehead was beginning to shine with sweat.

  "What does Mujahid want you to learn?"

  "The ways out of the city, into and out of the palace, where the main streets go, where Kadhim's staying, things like that."

  "Where Kadhim is won't be hard, there are people we can ask," she said impatiently. "The rest I can show you. First I want you to meet someone."

  "Who?"

  "His name's Salman. The healer my mother mentioned last night."

  Why did she want me to see a healer? It wasn't worth asking: her mood had made me cautious. After a moment she went on, "Only a part of his skill has to do with setting bones and knowing what herbs and oils have medicinal qualities: the rest is magic. He's a pow­erful wizard. He has a way of freeing his spirit and sending it out.. . . Maybe you'll see. He was my teacher."

  "All right."

  She started away, changed her mind, glanced back at the palace, then stared at me with baffling antagonism.

  "Is he your lover?"

  "Is who . . . Mujahid? Goddess, no! Mujahid loves only women."

  She kept me impaled on that dis­turbing gaze for a long moment, then shrugged faintly. Did she believe me? Did it matter?

  "Let's go to Salman's," Mabruka said.

  The light was dim in the covered ba­zaar, the air stale. A hard incessant hammering came from the coppersmith's. There were few shoppers. Per­haps the place got busier on established market days.

  Mabruka took a sharp turn past the sandal maker's. I followed her to a crookedly-hung door. She pushed through it. Harsh daylight flooded in. We stepped into a narrow alley between sun-bleached, mud-daubed walls. I closed the door behind me. We were between two rows of back-to-back dwellings strung together like clay beads on a string until an alley opened on the left. Around the bend was a wooden door, the only one in sight.

  Mabruka rapped on it. It rattled in its frame. A light sharp voice said some­thing and the door opened. A wedge of brightness fell through the opening. Beyond it was darkness.

  "Morning of goodness, Salman," Ma­bruka said.

  "Mabruka! Ahlan wa sahlan!"

  The door opened wider, showing someone who seemed thin despite a vo­luminous unbelted thaub. Salman? The name was masculine but the voice had neither virility nor weight and less in­dication of gender than a rustle of dry leaves. Under the gray gutra twisted around the narrow skull the face was thin, bloodless, beardless, almost un-lined except around the eyes and where sharp furrows hooked down from nos­trils to mouth. "Come in, come in out of the sun!"

  Mabruka stepped through the door­way, beckoning to me. I followed her into fragrant shadow. I thought my nose detected cloves and sandalwood and costly cinnamon from India. The room was small and furnished with a couple of heavy chests and a bare wooden bench; there was a worn rug on the floor and one corner had cushions and a roll of bedding. Jars and bottles crowded a shelf that ran along two walls. Strings of clay beads curtained a doorway into a back room.

  "Salman bin Najma," Mabruka introduced. "This is our visitor, Talal."

  "Ahlan, Talal." Salman closed the door, darkening the room. He took Ma-bruka's hand. "And you, child: are you ready to resume studying?"

  "No, Salman. I'm not meant for sor­cery. Perhaps when I'm older, a grand­mother."

  "Develop it young or a gift often dies." He turned to me. For the first time I saw that his eyes were pale: not the milky white of blindness but a color I couldn't quite make out in the dim room; it seemed to combine green and gray and some other color in the be­quest of a foreign ancestor. His look was at once piercing and expressionless. "Talal son of whom?"

  "Son of my father," I said.

  "His parents are unknown," Ma-bruka explained. "He was raised by strangers."

&nb
sp; "Ah." Salman smiled faintly. "Don't let it go to your head, Talal. There are always orphans. It's quite humbling to know how few turn out to be lost princes or the rightful heirs to great wealth."

  My irritation was bitter as bile. What was I doing here?

  "I'm just a bedouin," I said.

  "How modest. It's ostentatious to un­dervalue yourself. It fools no one." To Mabruka: "You want to know his par­entage?"

  "Is it possible?"

  "Probably not. Does it matter?"

  "No, but it would be nice for him to know his real ancestors before he's adopted into a family of Bani Faris."

  "You agree, Talal?"

  To a whim of Mabruka's? I rebelled, but couldn't think of a way to say so politely. So I shrugged.

  "Why not?"

  "Stay still, then."

  I did as I was told. He took a slow breath, released it just as slowly, and I saw the angles and edges of his ab­rasive personality dissolve into the shadowed air. The slatey eyes were as still as a windless dawn, as water in a cup, and I felt myself trapped within his stillness as last night I'd felt myself an insect trapped in honey. The expe­riences were similar but this was a lot more powerful. And yet I breathed. My lungs kept filling, fuller and fuller without discomfort, in a giant leisured inhalation that brought a growing sense of well-being while paradoxically my sense of identity as Talal-bowman-without-ancestors, brother-friend-serv­itor to Mujahid bin Hasan, retreated to the vanishing point. I found this va­guely disturbing; but even though a thread of apprehension began to writhe and loop itself around and pierce my well-being like a living silver wire, it was not enough to jolt me loose from Salman's spell —

  And then abruptly it was over. I think my knees sagged. I heard myself gasp slightly and was instantly embar­rassed. I didn't want to seem weak, or ignorant of how to deal with these things. But of course I was ignorant, and sensitive about it. A lot of settled people think bedouin are little better than savages, and I didn't want these two laughing at me.

  I looked at Mabruka. She looked back with huge dark eyes in a grave, intent face.

  "Better sit down," Salman said crisply. He was back to his old self, all abrupt angles and that thin hard genderless voice.

  "I don't need to sit down."

  "We'll get you some water. Stay here. Mabruka, come with me."

  I started to protest but they ignored me. The strung bead curtain rattled as he led her into the other room while I stood where I was like a little boy un­able to argue with an arbitrary grand­parent. I raged in silence. They took their time. I heard Salman's voice mur­muring rapidly but couldn't make out the words, then the scrape of an ear­thenware jug against a cup's lip, and water being poured. A moment later Mabruka came through the bead cur­tain with Salman right behind her.

  She held out the cup. "Drink some, Talal."

  I started to refuse, but when does a bedouin refuse a drink? He seldom knows where the next one's coming from. So I took the cup. It was rough and grainy against my mouth. Appar­ently Salman didn't go in for luxuries. The water was cool and tasty, as though it had come from a container porous enough to sweat and cool the contents. My body was glad of it.

  I gave the cup back. Mabruka drank what I'd left. Salman gave me a probing stare

  "Feeling all right?"

  "Of course."

  "Most people find the examination disconcerting."

  "How long did it take?"

  Mabruka tilted her head and half smiled.

  "As long as it took you to sigh one deep, peaceful sigh."

  It had seemed longer. I asked Sal­man, "What did you learn?"

  "That you have a sound body, that you're not under a spell or curse or haunted by any kind of spirit. Super­ficial stuff."

  "Nothing about my parents?"

  "No. Your mind is closed like a fist around your present business. I couldn't get past that determination. I would need time to get you properly relaxed, perhaps an infusion of the poppy. . ."

  "I have no time," I said stiffly, and gave formal thanks. "We should leave."

  Mabruka began, "But don't you want to ask him — ?"

  "What is there to ask? My parentage remains a mystery. I never thought it important anyway. As he said, there are always orphans."

  "Yes, but . . ."

  "I've imposed on Salman enough."

  "Most orphans are just orphans," Salman said abruptly. "But you didn't just lose your parents, you lost your whole kindred. How did you manage that?" A sharp, angular gesture; he didn't expect an answer. I shrugged. He went on, "Even if your mother was simple bad-awiyya, a herdsman's daughter, imag­ine the complications if her people were like Ahl al-Hilal, tracing descent through the mother's line, and if one day she were taken in a raid by a man of patrilineal tribe to whom the father's name and lineage were everything."

  This time he waited. Involuntarily, resentfully, since I didn't want to say anything, I heard myself mutter, "Com­plications?"

  His stare was intense. I expected to feel the transporting influence of sor­cery again.

  "What happens to women taken in raids? They become wives or concu­bines. Imagine this happens to your mother. You are born. Your father nat­urally expects her to raise you accord­ing to her traditions, as a member of her kin instead of his, quite likely to grow into his sworn enemy. So he plans to kill you. To save your life she gives you away, probably to a childless woman of another tribe."

  "What I've always imagined," I told him, "is simpler and more likely: my mother sold me or gave me away be­cause she was too poor to raise me her­self. I probably changed hands a few times before I was taken in by a Bani Faris family."

  "Good. The simple answer is usually the right one." A vigorous nod. Then without change in voice or inflection he spun the apparent sign of approval into grounds for criticism. "Habitual diffi­dence often hides an arrogant person­ality. Don't let modesty become just a bad habit."

  There was no answer to that. Irrita­tion erupted in anger I fought to hide.

  "Which hasn't much to do with my ancestry," I said stiffly. "Thank you for your efforts, but I have work to do. With your permission I'll be about it."

  I turned to the door and pulled it open. The blast of sunlight from the dusty alley and the mud-plastered walls made me hesitate with my eyes almost shut. I stepped outside and turned to close the door and bumped into Ma-bruka. I hadn't expected her to follow. I was at once startled and left feeling stupid. My anger slipped its bonds and I had the awful feeling I was going to make a fool of myself and couldn't do a thing about it.

  Salman, who was right behind Ma-bruka, said goodbye and told her to hurry back, then shut the door with a dry clatter.

  She blinked while her eyes adjusted to the light. I turned and strode back to the alley we had taken from the ba­zaar and heard her hurrying after me.

  "What did you bring me here for?" I tried to yell as she caught up with me. My throat was tight and my voice a whispery rasp. "What have I done to deserve this hostility?"

  Her face went slack with surprise. Her left hand wandered to the agate necklace at her throat. Silver shone harshly from her fingers.

  Her mouth had dropped open like a bewildered little girl's. Her head shook vaguely.

  "Well?" I demanded.

  Her voice was disbelieving, no louder than a murmur.

  "Were we wrong about you? Maybe you're not like Mujahid, maybe you don't love women . . ."

  "Mujahid, Mujahid! What's it to you whether I love women or little boys or sheep? You don't wear jewelry and pretty clothes for me" — I hooked a fist into the loop of the agate necklace — "except to remind me that your mother has land and herds and I'm just a serv­ant —"

  "No, no!" Her head shook again, catching the morning glare. "What's Mujahid to me? He's a lost man who wears despair like a cloak . . ." Hur­riedly she fumbled at the back of her neck, under her hair. The necklace came away in my hand. She grabbed it and threw it into the dust. "That wasn't to keep you away, it was su
pposed to ... to attract you. . . ."

  The word was as meaningless as the rattle of pebbles rolling down a hill. Attract. Of course it had a meaning. It meant draw. Lure. Entice. Decoy . . . And what was that nonsense about Mujahid?

  "Is that improper among the Bani Faris?" she went on after a quick breath. "I just meant to remind you of the com­forts I can offer . . . enough good food ... a fine riding camel. . ."

  Half comprehending I yelled, "Am I something in a bazaar you can buy?"

  She stamped her foot in the dust.

  "Who's trying to buy you? I don't want to own you . . ."

  Her eyes glistened. I bent down and snatched up the necklace.

  "This doesn't entice me." I shoved it into her hand. "Try this."

  What I did then I would never had had the nerve for if I hadn't been so furious. It was part attack and part expression of hopeless longing and the first was clearly excessive and the sec­ond as foredoomed to failure as desper­ate inexperience can be.

  I reached for the front of her dress and covered her breasts with my hands and began fondling them.

  An extraordinary thing happened. She made a small sound of surprise and clapped her hands to the sides of my face and kissed me on the mouth, the necklace grinding into my jawbone. I didn't know much about this kind of thing and I don't think she did either but lips and teeth and tongues came together with a life of their own.

  For the longest time I didn't believe any of it. I didn't even enjoy it much. It was too full of desperate hurried clutchings and gropings, too frantic, too clumsy. My heart raced. There was a noise in my ears like a flash flood rush­ing down a wadi. And then a stream of sweat slanted across my temple into my eye and stung sharply. I paused to blink and heard in my head Mujahid's gust-ing laughter, his cheerfully derisive advice, Wait, idiot — it's finally hap­pening; take time to enjoy it! and had the wit to realize that Mujahid was no­where near, the advice quite imaginary but probably sound for all that, and had the further wit to disengage one hand to touch her cheek. Our mouths parted briefly then settled back together again. The last shred of my anger dried up and blew away. I trailed fingertips across her chin and down her neck and back onto her breast, caught the nipple un­der the cloth between two fingers. Her mouth slid away from mine.