by Oden, Scott
Al-Hajj resumed his seat. He selected a square of heavy paper and took up his pen, dipping it into an antique inkpot of Egyptian alabaster. As he began to craft his letter, however, two sounds intruded on his concentration, both sinister in the pervasive silence of the study—the creak of a wooden shutter and the soft hiss of steel on leather. He scowled, his hand going to his knife and finding only an empty sheath. Blessed Allah, I left it by the door! Al-Hajj turned—
—and saw a deadly apparition: a tall figure, lean as whipcord and clad in black from sole to crown. Around him, shadows parted and swirled like an infernal cloak; only his eyes were visible, and they blazed pale and fanatical. With blinding speed the apparition closed on al-Hajj, his movements predatory and graceful, the steel in his fist a blur.
Paralyzed, al-Hajj watched in horror as the blade streaked closer. He kept his shutters latched; he was on the fourth floor … by the Prophet, who would dare? “Who…?”
And then, pain. Searing pain. It blossomed in his chest, ripping the breath from his lungs and robbing him of speech. Bone and wood crunched together. Al-Hajj could not yell; he could not curse; he could not cry out to God for succor. All he could do was writhe against the spike of cold fire that held him fast against his chair.
The apparition’s eyes—Death’s eyes!—transfixed him like lances of pale fire, staring through him with naked contempt. He leaned over, his head mere inches from al-Hajj’s ear, and whispered: “The boy was an unexpected diversion. I should thank him. Quickly, my friend. We know you are not alone in Cairo. Tell us what words will bring your comrades out of hiding.” His accent betrayed a Syrian descent. Syrian …
In agony, al-Hajj glanced down at the long knife protruding from the center of his chest, blackened blade shimmering with blood. Its design was Frankish, with a simple bronze cross guard and a grip of sweat-stained leather. Al-Hajj wanted to reach out and grab it. He wanted to tug it free and hurl it in the bastard’s face, but his arms were leaden, immobile.
“Come, my friend, speak the words,” the intruder whispered, his voice as soft as silk.
Silk. Al-Hajj blinked, tasted blood; he shivered as a chill crept up his body, as the pain in his chest and back ebbed. God willing, I shall repay him in kind. “A-ask…” he managed. His lips peeled back in a scarlet smile. “Ask … old … old man … u-upstairs!”
The intruder straightened, eyes narrowed. His fingers flexed around the hilt of the knife; his other hand lay heavy on al-Hajj’s shoulder. “No matter. We will find them as we found you, my friend. The dead keep no secrets.” Bone grated as the intruder wrenched the blade free of al-Hajj’s spine, twisted it, and sent the tip plunging into his heart.
The man who called himself al-Hajj stiffened, his mouth opening in a silent scream …
2
The caravan road cut across the Sinai like a dusty scar. Leaving the Red Sea port of Aqabah, it followed ancient Bedouin trails from well to well, curling along the gorges of the Wadi al-Arish where scrub and thorn grew in the beds of long-vanished rivers; at al-Suweis, beneath the frowning heights of Jebal Ataga, the road passed a broken obelisk—its surface pocked from centuries of exposure and abuse—marking the eastern frontier of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt.
Assad reined in his horse and waited for Farouk to join him. The Persian’s business interests often brought him to Cairo by the same road; thus, he had contacts seeded all along the route—men who listened to the news of the day and remembered those bits and pieces they knew might interest him. He repaid them in kind, or less often with gifts of precious balms, fine fabrics, or silver coin. They never suspected he was anything other than a man in love with gossip and small talk.
The road out of al-Suweis was choked with travelers, a polyglot of merchants, tradesmen, and pilgrims; three distinct caravans—one from holy Mecca, one from Damascus laden with incense, and one from Mosul bearing carpets and fine bronzework—fused into a shambling mass of men, horses, and camels. Hundreds of feet and hooves kicked up a chalky haze which refused to dissipate. It stiffened men’s hair and beards and masked their faces until the passing host seemed less than human, a cavalcade of raucous spirits bound for Hell.
Assad’s chestnut mare whinnied, favoring its left foreleg. He dismounted and stroked the animal’s neck, murmuring to keep it calm; he knelt and raised its leg to inspect the hoof. Assad gave a sour grunt. Not only had a sliver of rock wedged itself against the mare’s sensitive frog, but the horseshoe itself shifted in his grasp. Carefully, he pried the stone out and tossed it aside. The loose shoe would have to wait.
Assad straightened as Farouk, astride a roan gelding, cantered up. They were a month out of Palmyra and already the Persian looked healthier than Assad had ever seen him; he wore white trousers and a girdled kaftan beneath a cloak of finely woven blue cotton. His turban, too, was blue, with a fold under his chin to protect his nose and mouth from blowing sand. A scimitar hung from his saddle horn. “Trouble?”
“She needs to be shod over again, this time by a farrier who knows his business. By Allah, the man who put this shoe on was a pox-riddled village half-wit.” Assad brushed away a rime of sand and dried sweat crusting his khalat, and then hitched at his sash. He rested a hand on the hilt of his salawar. “What did your man at al-Suweis have to say?”
“Nothing good,” the Persian replied. “He has received no word from Cairo, spoken or written, in well over a month. Passing strange, he says.”
“Perhaps they had nothing to remark upon. What news from other travelers?”
“Aside from prodigies and portents?” Farouk shrugged. “Just the same garbled tales of pestilence and war. The Bedouin claim to have seen winged djinn in the guise of great vultures circling Jebal al-Far’on, the Mountains of Pharaoh. Others have heard the voice of the Father of Terror speaking in riddles from beneath the sands of Gizeh. Bismillah! What is the truth of it? Some say the Sudanese mercenaries have risen against the vizier and now occupy the port of Fustat; others say that Turkish soldiers set fire to that district, and that it burned for threescore and two days before Merciful Allah snuffed the flames in a sandstorm.”
“Likely the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” Assad said. He glanced back the way they had come, squinting through the dust to catch a glimpse of the heat-ravaged landscape through which they toiled. “How far is it to Cairo?”
“Inshallah, three or four days once we break through this rabble.” He indicated the mingled caravans with a toss of his head. “But a week or more if the khamsin arises.”
“The khamsin!” Assad spat. Those winds, born in the wastes of the Sahara, arose every spring to disrupt the cool north breeze and scourge the Nile Valley with sand and heat and madness. “Then let us ride as though Shaitan himself dogged our path and pray our good fortune holds.”
“Pray or not, it makes no difference.” Farouk shrugged again, a gesture of resignation. “God does not listen. If He did, I would be in a shaded garden smoking my pipe, a cool drink at my elbow and a pair of girls to dance for my entertainment. No, my friend, prayer is useless when God turns a deaf ear to you.”
Wood and leather creaked as Assad swung up into the saddle. “With your endless nattering,” he said, shaking his head, “a deaf ear would be as a gift from heaven.”
3
Beyond al-Suweis the Eastern Desert began—an abode of jackals and of vultures and of desperate men. Under a white-hot sky, towering ridges of red and gold sandstone as sharp as knapped flint lorded over shifting dunes and plains of loose scree. Pools of shade existed at the small wells along the road, under dusty palm trees or stunted acacias; though at times brackish and hot, the water in these wells at least was potable.
Assad set a punishing pace. For three days, he woke Farouk in the frigid hours before dawn and kept him in the saddle until well after dark; during the hottest part of the day, however, Assad yielded to the Persian’s experience and they sought whatever shade lay close at hand. Never too long a lull, a few hours at most; then, after
bolting a handful of dried dates and washing it down with a ration of blood-warm water, the pair resumed their course.
And so it was on the afternoon of the fourth day. Riding single file, Assad frowned as Farouk drew rein and stopped. The Persian glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “Look there,” he said, pointing ahead and to the left.
Assad shaded his eyes against the westering sun and studied the horizon. He saw nothing in the shimmering heat but the gleam of sunlight on distant outcroppings of limestone, their formations jutting from a sea of tawny sand. “Are you addled? There’s nothing out there but desert.”
“Look closer.”
Assad, though, looked askance at the Persian.
“Go ahead, look closer, my friend.” Farouk gestured again. “There, to the southwest.”
“We’re wasting time,” Assad replied, but he did as Farouk asked, peering in the direction indicated. He saw the shimmer … the too bright gleam of sunlight … too bright and too regular …
“What the devil is that?”
Farouk’s smile widened. “This time of day, the sun strikes just so from the minaret of the mosque of al-Jamali, at the crest of the Muqattam Hills—”
“Overlooking Cairo,” Assad said, exhaling.
“Overlooking Cairo, indeed. Praise Allah, for He is deserving of praise. Our journey is nearly at an end.”
The Assassin nodded. “Our journey, perhaps, but our task is just beginning. Come, my Persian friend!” He spurred past Farouk, coaxing his mare to a canter. “We’re wasting daylight!”
With each passing mile signs of habitation became more in evidence—from the round black tents of the Bedouin to distant sounds of quarrying in the Muqattam Hills. Each ridge the pair crested revealed more of the Nile Valley. Like every good Egyptian, Assad learned as a child that the Nile was Africa’s jugular; waters rich with nourishing black silt coursed from the country’s heart to its head. In the south, the Nile was a strip of fertility like a long and narrow oasis bounded on either bank by escarpments and harsh desert. In the north, the river fanned out into six tributaries that fed the lakes and marshes of the delta before emptying into the pale surf of the Mediterranean. Cairo sat astride the point of confluence, where north met south.
From a spur of the Muqattam, with the sun a ball of fiery copper just above the western horizon, Assad glimpsed the city of his birth again. Medinat al-Qahira, men called it, the Victorious City; ringed by fields and canals, Cairo seemed smaller than he remembered—a walled enclosure pierced by half a dozen gates, the marble domes of its mosques and palaces ablaze in the fading sunlight, its crooked streets lost in shadow. Outside the walls he noticed signs of the city’s growth: markets and mausoleums, villas and lakeside gardens, all stretching south along the road to Fustat, Cairo’s port, a vile-seeming jumble of mudbrick and old stone that hugged the Nile’s bank like a babe on its mother’s teat. Well beyond the river’s western shore, Assad yet discerned the majestic peaks of the Jebal al-Far’on—the Mountains of Pharaoh: those monumental pyramids consecrated to the infidel kings of old Egypt.
“They say he who has not seen Cairo has not seen the world.” Farouk’s saddle creaked as he shifted his weight. A northerly breeze sprang up, spiced with the scents of orange blossom and Nile mud.
“I’ve seen the world,” Assad replied. He stared up at the fading red-gold sky. “Cairo pales beside it. When I was a boy, I remember the Cairenes had a custom of barring the gates of the city from sunset to sunrise. Is this still so?”
Farouk nodded. “It is, but the city’s wardens have grown lax. A small coin will buy entry after dark, with no questions asked.”
“Their negligence will be to our benefit, then.” The Assassin nudged his mare forward. “Have you a safe house in the city?”
“Not quite…”
4
Stars flared in the firmament as Farouk guided them to their destination, a caravanserai squatting in sight of Cairo’s torch-lit northern gates. Called Bab al-Futuh and Bab al-Nasr—the Gate of Conquests and the Gate of Victory—they were the traditional beginning and ending of any Fatimid general’s campaign. He marched out through the former to do his Caliph’s bidding and returned through the latter, or he returned not at all.
“I remember none of this,” Assad said, a toss of his head encompassing the tall stone buildings—caravanserais and commercial warehouses—with their sculpted lintels and narrow windows that lined the right-hand side of the wide Street of the Caravans, interspersed with lesser houses of brick and painted stucco; some boasted small, manicured gardens. “Twenty-two years ago all of this was a parade field.”
“Time is a most diligent soldier,” Farouk replied. “It marches on without respite and without care. Who can say? In another twenty-two years this might be a parade field yet again. Only Allah in His infinite wisdom knows these things.”
As far as Assad could tell, nightfall brought no appreciable lull to the business along the Street of the Caravans. Torchbearers and armed guards accompanied men in fine robes as they went about arranging the division and distribution of goods, their slaves darting from warehouse to warehouse with messages and bills of lading and contracts for ratification. The Caliph’s market inspectors were never far behind, assuring that weights and measures were accurate and that they paid in full the taxes the Prince of the Faithful levied on imported goods. Lesser merchants met their peers in the shadow of the great mercantile houses, sitting together on cushions to share news along with bowls of date wine and pipes of hashish. Some of these men greeted Farouk by name.
“As-salaam alaikum, brothers!” the Persian said. “Seek me out later in the week, my friends! I have a shipment of incense coming, the finest in all of Arabia! I will give you good prices, no? You, boy!” Farouk called out to a young slave. He fished a small coin from a pouch at his belt and flipped it off his thumb. “If your master allows, run ahead to the inn of Abu Hamza and tell that honorable fellow to expect company this evening! Tell him Farouk of Palmyra sends his compliments!”
The boy caught the coin in midair and sprinted off without waiting for his master’s approval. Farouk dismounted; Assad followed suit, trusting that the Persian had good reason for it. He stood by silently, holding the reins of both their horses as Farouk ambled over to a knot of men who sat near the entrance to one of the more affluent caravanserais, arrayed on carpets and cushions beneath an arched window. Sweet smoke coiled from their water pipes as they watched the evening market unfold, ever curious. Farouk greeted them warmly.
“My friends! Khaled, you’re looking well! How is your son, Umar? What goes, brothers? I heard rumors in Palmyra—tales of riots and ill omens and of flames devouring the city! I hurried ahead of my caravan to see for myself, to salvage what I could. Yet, here I stand, looking upon a pleasant gathering of learned men. Allah smite those who would speak such lies in my ear!” The men jostled and moved aside, making room for Farouk to join their circle. The Persian crouched beside Umar. He was the eldest among them, a gray-bearded man, thin and elegant in his white galabiya and turban-wrapped tarboush.
“ ’Twas not wholly lies, Farouk,” he said. “For a time we thought the End of All Things had indeed come.”
“Aye,” the others echoed. “Hearken, by the blessed Prophet, Umar speaks true.”
“You must tell me this tale, Umar!”
Assad shifted, watching the street as he eavesdropped on their conversation. He assumed the role of Farouk’s bored bodyguard, adjusting his stance and manner so that passersby who noticed him would see precisely that—a freebooter marking time until his master no longer needed him.
Water burbled as old Umar took a draw from his pipe, held it, and then exhaled, the cloud of smoke wreathing his head. “Do you know, Farouk, that among the warlike mamelukes, the White Slaves of the River who guard the Caliph’s person and make his slightest wish a reality, there are two great companies: one whose ranks are filled with Turks, and another whose members are Circassians from the distant Caucasu
s? They are slaves, aye, but they are renowned as much for their loyalty as for their prowess at arms. Still, nigh upon two months ago the unthinkable happened—one of the Caliph’s Circassian mamelukes, a young man full of vigor and pride whose name escapes me, fell from favor and was dismissed from his post at the Caliph’s side. What his original infraction was, I know not, but—”
Khaled, a sallow-faced man with a bristling black beard and suspicious eyes, interrupted. “He was a Circassian! That sort needs no reason to flaunt God and the Prophet.” The other listeners hissed Khaled to silence.
Umar continued. “Whatever his sin he compounded it by going forth into Fustat and carousing with a decidedly seditious element, men who hate peace and good order as Allah hates the Infidel.” Umar leaned closer. “They convinced this malcontent to reenter the palace and sheathe his sword in the Prince of the Faithful’s breast! Can you countenance such a thing? And his fellow mamelukes who were guarding the doors to the Golden Hall that day, they allowed him to pass! My nephew—you remember him, Farouk … he was the one who bought half your last shipment of incense—he was there to petition the Caliph for a lessening of our taxes and saw the whole sorry episode unfold. What with all the courtiers and eunuchs twittering about the throne, he said this godforsaken Circassian got as close to the blessed Caliph as I am to you before someone took note and raised an alarm.”