Throne of the Crescent Moon

by Saladin Ahmed

  His friend was right about one thing: Adoulla was, praise God, alive and back home—back in the Jewel of Abassen, the city with the best tea in the world. Alone again at the long stone table, he sat and sipped and watched early morning Dhamsawaat come to life and roll by. A thick necked cobbler walked past, two long poles strung with shoes over his shoulder. A woman from Rughal-ba strode by, a bouquet in her hands, and the long trail of her veil flapping behind. A lanky young man with a large book in his arms and patches in his kaftan moved idly eastward.

  As he stared out onto the street, Adoulla’s nightmare suddenly reasserted itself with such force that he could not move or speak. He was walking—wading—through Dhamsawaat’s streets, waist high in a river of blood. His kaftan was soiled with gore and filth. Everything was tinted red—the color of the Traitorous Angel. An unseen voice, like a jackal howling human words, clawed at his mind. And all about him the people of Dhamsawaat lay dead and disemboweled.

  Name of God!

  He forced himself to breathe. He watched the men and women on the Mainway, very much alive and going about their business. There were no rivers of blood. No jackal howls. His kaftan was clean.

  Adoulla took another deep breath. Just a dream. The world of sleep invading my days, he told himself. I need a nap.

  He took a second-to-last slurp of tea, savoring all of the subtle spices that Yehyeh layered beneath the cardamom. He shook off his grim thoughts as best he could and stretched his legs for the long walk home.

  He was still stretching when he saw his assistant, Raseed, emerge from the alley on the teahouse’s left. Raseed strode toward him, dressed as always in the impeccable blue silk habit of the Order of Dervishes. The holy warrior pulled a large parcel behind him, something wrapped in gray rags.

  No, not something. Someone. A long-haired little boy of perhaps eight years. With blood on his clothes. O please, no. Adoulla’s stomach clenched up. Merciful God help me, what now? Adoulla reached deep and somehow found the strength to set down his teabowl and rise to his feet.

  Chapter 2

  ADOULLA WATCHED RASEED weave between the teahouse tables, pulling the child gently along. They came to a halt before him, their backs to the Mainway’s throng of people. Raseed bowed his blue-turbaned head. Looking more closely, Adoulla did not think the frightened-looking, long-haired child was wounded. The blood on his clothing seemed to be someone else’s.

  “God’s peace, Doctor,” said Raseed. “This is Faisal. He needs our help.” The dervish’s hand rested on the hilt of the curved, fork-tipped sword at his hip. He stood five lithe feet, not much bigger than the child beside him. His fine-boned yellow features were delicate and highlighted by tilted eyes. But Adoulla knew better than anyone that Raseed’s slender frame and clean-shaven face hid a zealous killer’s skill.

  “God’s peace, boy. And to you, Faisal. What is the problem?” he asked the dervish.

  Raseed’s expression was grim. “The boy’s parents have been murdered.” He darted his dark eyes at Faisal but made no attempt to soften his tone. “With apologies, Doctor, my knowledge is insufficient. But from Faisal’s description, I believe ghuls attacked the boy’s family. Also—”

  Two porters passed, each shouting at the other to go screw a pickle barrel, and the soft-spoken dervish’s words were drowned out. “What was that?” Adoulla asked.

  “I said that I was sent here by…Faisal is…” He hesitated.

  “What? What is it?” Adoulla asked.

  “Faisal’s aunt is known to you, Doctor. It was she who brought him to your townhouse.” Adoulla looked down at Faisal, but the child said nothing.

  “Stop this mysterious monkeyshit, you stuttering dervish! Who is the child’s aunt?”

  Raseed’s birdlike mouth tightened in distaste. “Mistress Miri Almoussa is the boy’s aunt.”

  God damn me.

  “Her courier brought the boy and this note, Doctor.” He drew a rolled piece of rough paper from his blue silk tunic and handed it over.

  Doullie

  You know how things stand between us. I wouldn’t have bothered you if the need weren’t great. But my niece is dead, Doullie! Murdered! Her and her fool marshman husband. To hear Faisal speak, it was neither a man nor an animal that killed them. That means you will know more than anyone in this city about what to do. I need your help. Faisal here will tell you all that happened. Send him back to my house when you have learned what you must from him.

  God’s peace be with you,

  Miri

  “‘God’s peace be with you’?” Adoulla read the words aloud, a bit incredulous. Such a passionless, formulaic closing from his old heart’s-flame! Mistress Miri Almoussa, Seller of Silks and Sweets. Known to a select few as Miri of the Hundred Ears. Adoulla pictured her, middle-aged and still able to fill him with more lust than a girl of half her years, sitting in her brothel office among a hundred scraps of paper and a half dozen letter pigeons.

  It was true that their last meeting had not been a happy one. But was she really so fed up with him that, even in such a dire situation, she had sent a note instead of coming herself? The rosewater-scented memory of her threatened to overwhelm him, but he shoved it to the side. He needed analysis now, not heartsick nostalgia.

  The dried blood on Faisal’s rough spun shirt must have been from one of his parents. Miri had not even wasted time changing the child’s clothes before sending him over. “So you are Miri’s grand-nephew? I remember her speaking of a niece who lived out near the marshdocks.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” The boy’s tone was hard and flat—the voice of one who has refused to let his mind absorb what his eyes have seen.

  “And why, Faisal, have you come all the way to the city for help? There’s a large watchmen’s barracks at the marshdocks—the Khalif has treasure-houses there, after all. Did you not tell the watchmen what happened?”

  The child’s features twisted with bitterness that belied his, perhaps, ten years. “I tried. But the watchmen don’t listen to marsh boys. They don’t care what happens outside the treasure house walls, long as the Khalif’s gold and gemthread are safe. My mama told me that my Auntie Miri in the city had a friend who was a real ghul hunter, like in the stories. So I come to Dhamsawaat.”

  Adoulla smiled sadly. “Very little in life is like the stories, Faisal.”

  “But my mama…and my Da…” Faisal’s tough marsh boy mask slipped and tears fell.

  Adoulla was not at his ease with children. He stroked the boy’s long black hair, hoping this was the right thing to do. “I know, little one, I know. But I need you to be strong right now, Faisal. I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”

  Adoulla sat back down, seating the child opposite him. Raseed remained standing, hand on hilt, his tilted eyes watching the crowds that walked past the teahouse.

  Faisal told his story. Adoulla sorted through babbling, sobs, and the exaggerations of fear, trying to isolate useful information. There was little to isolate. Faisal lived with his parents in the marshes a day’s ride from the city. While out spearfishing with another family they had been set upon by hissing, gray-skinned monsters, man-shaped but not human. Bone ghuls, unless Adoulla missed his guess—strong as half a dozen men and as hard to kill, with gruesome claws besides. Faisal had fled, but not before he’d seen the ghuls start to eat the heart muscle of his still living parents.

  The blood on his shirt was his father’s. Faisal was the only one who’d escaped. Adoulla had seen grisly things in his work, but sometimes it was worse seeing the effect such things had on others.

  “I ran away and left them…. Mama said ‘run’ and I did! It’s my fault they’re dead!” He began bawling again. “My fault!”

  Adoulla wrapped an arm awkwardly around the boy. He felt like a great ape coddling a new hatched chick. “It is not your fault, Faisal. A man made those ghuls. Almighty God willing, we will find this man and keep his creatures from hurting others. Now I need you to tell me just once more what happened—everythi
ng, every detail you can remember.”

  Adoulla extracted another telling of the incident. He didn’t like doing it—making the child relive this horror twice and thrice over. But he had to, if he was going to do his job. Frightened people often remembered things falsely, even when they meant to be honest. He listened for new details and inconsistencies, not because he distrusted the boy, but because people never remembered things exactly the same way twice.

  Still, Adoulla found Faisal a better source of information than most grown men who’d laid eyes on a ghul. He was a marshman after all, and they were tough and observant folk. No people—not even the Badawi of the desert—lived closer to starvation. Adoulla could remember Miri’s disgust a dozen years ago when she’d learned that her niece was marrying a marshman. “What is there for her out there?” she’d asked Adoulla over a game of bakgam. He had been unable to answer; he was as thoroughly a city creature as she was. But there was no denying that where life itself depended on spearing quick fish and raising fragile golden rice, attentiveness flourished.

  Faisal’s retellings informed Adoulla that three creatures had attacked, and that no man had been visible at the time. Adoulla turned to Raseed. “Three of the things! Commanded outside of the line of sight. This is not the usual half-dinar magus, heady with the power of his first ghul-raising. Troubling.”

  The Heavenly Chapters decreed that ghul-makers were damned to the Lake of Flame. The Chapters spoke of an ancient, corrupted age when wicked men commanded whole legions of the things from miles away. But those times were past. In all his years of ghul hunting, Adoulla had never seen a man make more than two of the monsters at a time—and this always from a few hundred yards away at most. “Troubling,” he said again.

  He instructed Raseed to cut a small scrap from the boy’s scarlet-stained shirt. Other than the name of its maker, the blood of a ghul’s victim was the best component for a tracking spell. The creatures themselves would likely prove easy enough to find. But he would need to head closer to the scene of the slaying, and get away from the city’s teeming, confusing life-energies, to cast an effective tracking spell.

  Adoulla only prayed that he would be able to find the creatures before they fed again. As the silent prayer echoed in his mind, he felt a weary determination rising in his heart. There was more bloody work to be done. O God, why must it be me every time? Adoulla had paid his “fare for the festival of this world,” as the poets say, many times over. It was some younger man’s turn to do this.

  But there was no younger man that could do it without him, Adoulla knew. He had fought beside many men, but had never had the wherewithal to train another in the ways of his near-dead order—had never been able to bring himself to set another on his own thankless road. Two years ago he’d reluctantly agreed to take Raseed as an assistant. But while the boy’s martial powers were unmatched, he had no talent for invocations. He was an excellent apprentice in the ends of ghul hunting, but his means to those ends were his own, and they were different than Adoulla’s.

  In ages past, the makers and the hunters of ghuls alike were more plentiful. Old Doctor Boujali, Aduolla’s own mentor, had explained it early in Adoulla’s apprenticeship. It’s an almost dead art I’m teaching you here, young one, he had said. Once the ghul-makers ran rampant over God’s great earth, and more of our order were needed. These days…well, few men use ghuls to prey on one another. The Khalif has his soldiers and his court magi to keep what he calls order. And if a few fiendish men still follow the Traitorous Angel’s ways and gain their power through the death and dismembering of poor people, well, that’s of little concern to those who rule from the Palace of the Crescent Moon. Even in other lands the ghul hunters are not what we once were. The Soo Pashas have their mercenaries and their Glorious Guardians. The High Sultaan of Rughal-ba controls those few who still know our ways. They are part of his Heavenly Army, whether they wish it or not. Our work is not like the heroism of the old stories. No vast armies of abominations stand before us. These days we save a fishmonger here, a porter’s wife there. But it is still God’s work. Never forget that.

  But in the many years since Doctor Boujali had first said these words to Adoulla it sometimes seemed that the scale arm was swinging back in the old direction. Adoulla and his friends had dispatched enough fiendish creatures over the decades to make him suspect that the old threats were starting to regain a foothold on God’s great earth. Yet He had not deigned to raise scores of new ghul hunters. Instead, for reasons known only to He Who Holds All Answers, God had seen fit to pile trouble after trouble onto the stooped shoulders of a few old folks. One day—one day very soon—Adoulla feared his spine would snap under the strain.

  Why was Adoulla made to bear so big a burden alone? When would others learn to defend themselves from the servants of the Traitorous Angel? What would happen after he was gone? Adoulla had asked Almighty God these questions ten thousand times in his life, but He Who Holds All Answers had never deigned to respond. It seemed that Adoulla’s gifts were always just enough to keep the creatures he faced in check, but he wondered again why God had made his life in this world such a tiring, lonely chore.

  Still, as tired of life as he sometimes felt, and as foolish as he found most men to be, he could never quite manage to leave people to their cruelest fate. He drew in a resigned breath, let it out again, and stood. His teabowl was empty. Digging into the seemingly endless folds of his moonlight white kaftan, Adoulla drew forth a copper fals and slapped it onto the table.

  As if he’d been summoned by the sound, Yehyeh appeared. He exchanged God’s peaces with Raseed, then cast a cross-eyed frown at Faisal’s bloody clothes. But all he said as he and Adoulla embraced and kissed on both cheeks in the familiar parting gesture was, “Stay safe, Buzzard Beak.”

  “I will try, Six Teeth,” Adoulla replied. He turned to Raseed and Faisal. “Come on, you two.”

  Raseed stepped silently out from where he leaned against the teahouse wall. It was like watching a shadow come to life and peel itself from the sandstone. They joined the flow of the Mainway, Adoulla and the dervish keeping the child between them.

  At the corner Adoulla waved over Camelback, a porter he’d known for years. Camelback was nearly a foot shorter than Adoulla but had shoulders enough for two men.

  The men exchanged God’s peaces and cheek kisses. Adoulla pressed a coin into the porter’s palm. “Take Faisal here to Mistress Miri Almoussa’s place in the Singers’ Quarter.” He had to speak loudly to be heard over a braying donkey half a block ahead.

  The child panicked all over again. “But…but…don’t you need me to come with you, Doctor? To show you the way?”

  “No, child,” Adoulla said, leaning down. “I will use my magic to track the ghuls. You would slow us down. And, besides, I will not put you in danger.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  Looking into his eyes, Adoulla believed him. If Faisal came across the ghuls again, he would not run a second time. And that could only mean a little boy’s death. Adoulla had seen such before. He had no desire to bear witness to it again.

  “I promise you, Faisal, we will avenge your family. But your mother gave everything so that you could live. Do not throw that away so quickly. You will make her happiest by being a good boy and living a long life.” Adoulla paused, letting the words sink in.

  The child nodded, though he was clearly unconvinced. He went with Camelback, and they were soon swallowed by the crowd. Adoulla turned to Raseed only to find the dervish glaring at him.

  “What? Why are you scowling so, boy?” Somewhere behind them on the street someone dropped something that broke loudly and gave off a vinegared scent.

  Raseed glanced back, glanced at Adoulla, and sniffed. “You just sent a child barely ten back to a house of ill repute.” He pursed his thin lips in disapproval.

  The little holy man could be so thick sometimes. “I sent him to his Auntie’s house. To one of the few places in the city where a penniless little orphan woul
d be well-treated even were he not related to the proprietress. Miri and her girls always have need of an errand boy or two.”

  “‘O believer! If a man asks you to chose between virtue and your brother, choose virtue!’” Raseed quoted from the Heavenly Chapters. “There are charitable orders where the boy would be better served. To grow up among such degenerate women is…”

  Adoulla felt his fire rise at the boy’s words. The last time he’d seen her—almost two years ago now—Miri Almoussa had made it clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him. Nonetheless, he’d be damned if he’d stand for her being insulted. He made his voice dangerous. “About whom exactly are you speaking, boy?”

  The dervish clearly thought better of elaborating. His blue turban bobbed in a bow. “My apologies, Doctor. I meant only that a virtuous upbringing in one of the city’s orphan halls, where the boy could learn a trade, would—”

  “Would doom the boy to six nights a week of under-the-sheets upbringing by some drunken ‘Godly servant of children.’ They’d leave him alone on Prayersday. Hmph. He’d learn a trade all right.”

  “Doctor! I can’t believe—” Raseed’s words were cut off when a big bull of a woman shouldered her way between the pair, cursing them for standing idle in the street. Adoulla started walking again, and the dervish followed.

  “Please, boy,” Adoulla said, “spare me your solemn protestations regarding that which you know nothing of. He’d be more likely to become a whore in one of those terror houses than he would if he’d been living at Miri’s from the day of his birth. In my orphan days, I dodged such places for the dungeons they were. Nothing’s changed. Now!” Adoulla half-shouted, clapping his hands together in an effort to disperse the argument. “I need to go home to gather some spell supplies. Then we head out of the city. Let’s get moving. If we linger too long, I’ll end up thinking better of this.”

  They quickened their pace as much as the press of people would allow. The sun shone clearly as they stepped out of the street and its building-shadows and crossed the open space of Angels’ Square. Adoulla did not stop and marvel yet again at the almost-living expressions on the ancient statuary faces of the Ministering Angels. He did, however, push brusquely through a knot of oddly dressed, gawking city-visitors who stood staring crane-necked at the lifelike marble work. Bumpkins! Adoulla griped to himself, but he didn’t really blame them.