by John Speed
The door groans shut, closing with a deep thoom that seems to echo for miles, and the world is plunged into shadows. Stepping from the white brilliance of the morning into the inky dark, Ali Khalil can sense but not see the cramped and narrow passageway.
He smells dust and damp stone. Then the small flame of a butter lamp floats in front of him. Slowly his eyes adjust: he sees then the long fingers and narrow hand that holds the lamp; the arm and slender waist and finally the body and face of the man who holds it.
The eunuch who holds it.
One of the eunuch’s dark eyes drifts outward: it’s hard to tell which eye is really looking at him. “Who are you?” Khalil asks.
“Didn’t you want to see the captain of the guard?” The voice is throaty, but commanding. “In secret?”
“Yes … but who are you?”
“I serve the one who answered your note. Is that not enough for you to know?”
“Perhaps,” Khalil says.
“What do you wish with the captain of the guard?”
“That I will say to him alone.”
The eunuch seems about to answer but shakes his head. “You might have saved yourself some trouble if you had spoken first to me, Ali Khalil. But never mind; that is not your fate.” With that he starts off, casting Khalil into shadows as the lamp proceeds into the darkness.
At this point, Khalil is in turmoil. A eunuch! Since when was the captain of the guard attended by a eunuch? “Wait,” he cries. His voice swirls into a mush of echoes. Ali Khalil hurries toward the flame like an unsuspecting moth.
He catches glimpses of the dark stones that line the narrow hall—great stones, roughly cut, jammed in place with lots of mortar and no finesse. The floor is uneven, and he often stumbles as he struggles to keep up with the slender eunuch and his quick, swaying step. Khalil slides his left hand along the stone wall as he walks in the near darkness. Unconsciously he begins to lean against that hand, steadying himself when he starts to trip on the uneven floor. But suddenly the wall disappears from beneath his hand. He cries out and stumbles.
“Are you all right?” the eunuch asks.
In this light, his eyes look like an animal’s, Khalil thinks. “I’m fine,” he answers. “Where’s the captain?”
“Try to keep up. It won’t be long. Do be careful, Ali Khalil. From here on we start to go down.”
Why didn’t he answer me properly? thinks Ali Khalil.
“Stop!” Ali Khalil calls out after what seems like hours of walking. “I will go no further! Let the captain of the guard come here!” He is nearly screaming, he realizes, and his voice echoes and echoes and echoes.
The eunuch comes near, putting out a hand. Ali Khalil flinches. “Calm yourself. You must be calm. If you don’t keep your head these old paths can be treacherous.”
“Treacherous, indeed,” says a voice behind him. Khalil swings around. The flickering light reflects on thick spectacles, the rheumy eyes behind them wet and cloudy, like the eyes of a fish that is starting to rot.
“You surprise me, Ali Khalil,” Hing says to him. “And I’ve grown so tired of surprises. Maybe you should try Alu instead. He likes surprises. He likes so many things.”
The old eunuch looks to the other. “Well, Alu? Would you like Khalil to surprise you? I understand that he’s your type.” Hing starts a chuckle that dissolves into wet coughing. “Alu likes the company of rugged men. You’re rugged, aren’t you Khalil? Alu, do you find him attractive?”
Maybe Alu responds—Khalil pays no attention. His stomach is churning now, his mind reeling. He’s walked into a trap! How long did Hing hide there? “What do you want, khaswajara?” Khalil says. His voice sounds surprisingly confident. Already the first threads of a plan are weaving in his mind.
“I want so little, Khalil.” Khalil sees the spectacles bobbing as Hing walks. “I’d like to eat food again, something with more substance than rice. I’d like a friend. Not the sycophants I’m plagued with; toadies like you. I’d like to have Nur Jahan for empress again. Now there was a real queen.” Hing pauses. “Am I boring you?”
“No,” Khalil lies.
“And I’d like … let’s see … I’d like to have my balls back, please. And my dick. Is that too much to ask? They’ve had them for so long; you’d think they’d be done with them by now.” Now Hing moves closer, and Khalil can see that he steadies himself by placing his hand on the shoulder of a beautiful African boy, a boy as dark as shadows.
Khalil curses Fate. He is right to do so, for it was Fate that brought Hing’s little eunuch to his door, Fate that put Kahlil’s note into his black hands, Fate that he carried the note straight to Hing, his teeth gleaming white against his black lips all the while.
Hing sighs. “But you didn’t truly mean to ask what I want, did you? You wanted to know what’s going to happen to you.” Khalil draws back from the yellow, decaying smell that seems to ooze from his body. “You’re going to die, my boy. You’re dead already, in fact. You’ve been dead for hours. You’re just too stupid to lie down.”
Khalil sees a shadow of movement in the flame of the butter lamp, and sees that the slender eunuch now has a long knife in his hand. Instinctively, he reaches for his belt. But of course, he brought no weapons. He was meeting the captain of the palace guard, after all.
“You see how it is Khalil? Alu likes surprises. Don’t you, Alu?”
Alu’s thumb twitches on the edge of his knife’s narrow blade.
“You should have come with us, Khalil. You have no idea what a world of trouble your absence caused.”
“I tried, but there was no boat!”
“Pity you weren’t there on time. It seems someone else took your boat instead. A nice enough fellow—out of his depth of course. A pity. He drowned. But you knew him! Basant—the eunuch who killed those guards!”
“Basant killed the guards? How? He hadn’t the strength …” Despite his situation, Khalil is intrigued.
“Yes,” Hing says, suddenly congenial. “Little Basant. Harmless Basant. Would you like to see how he did it? We’re not far from where they died.”
“They died here? In these tunnels? Can you show me?” Khalil feigns curiosity, interest, respect. He’ll buy time, he thinks. Khalil bows his head. And it works. With a vague smile, Hing leads the way. Amazing that Hing could be manipulated so easily. All Khalil had to do was show a little interest and Hing was ready to take him on a tour instead of killing him.
He must know these tunnels blindfolded, Khalil thinks.
Khalil shapes a plan. Hing he can kill with his bare hands: that dry old neck will snap like a twig. The boy—he’ll be a nuisance, but Khalil will manage. It is Alu, the young slender eunuch, that is the key. He holds a knife, he’s young; strong enough to fight back. Khalil might surprise him; even overpower him.
But Alu also holds the lamp. What if he were to drop it in a struggle? Then Khalil would be trapped in this maze of darkness. Hing might know his way in the darkness, but not Khalil. Could he leave Hing alive long enough to lead him out through the dark? Wouldn’t Hing realize he’d be the next to die?
It’s like a puzzle where the final piece won’t fit.
What Khalil doesn’t realize, of course, is that there is no escape. He already draws his last breaths. Instead, Khalil’s eyes dart like his thoughts, from Hing to Alu, from Alu to Hing. Which to attack? Which to kill?
All the while, his own death is only a few steps away.
Khalil sees Hing’s shadow hobbling into some kind of passageway ahead, one not yet lit by Alu’s wavering light. Khalil reaches out like a blind man. Here water trickles down the stone walls, water that smells harsh, almost acidic. He pulls his hand back at its touch, then calms himself—it’s only water, after all—and once more feels along the damp wall until he finds the doorway, where the wall disappears into emptiness.
With his hands, with his toes, he probes the utter darkness, for Alu’s lamp doesn’t yet shine into this passage. But Khalil moves forward, he wan
ts to appear confident.
Hing, however, knows Khalil’s true state of mind. He has brought many men to this place, men whole and brave. He knows how the heart quails and the mind begins to squirm, walking through the damp shadows. He knows that by now Khalil has stopped planning, that his mind instead has begun to churn with nightmare images of shadowed fangs and great pale eyes.
With each tentative step Khalil takes into the noiseless black, into shadows so dark they seem to have weight, with each anxious breath of that stale dank air, his senses struggle and his panic rises.
When Hing reaches out, and touches him, touches him softly, just so, Khalil screams, and his own scream frightens him so much, he screams again. But after he screams, Alu appears in the passage carrying the light. Khalil is so grateful that he presses his hands against Alu’s arm. “Here is where it happened,” Hing says quietly. “Here is where they died.”
His voice doesn’t echo, exactly. It seems to drop away, as if the words were heavy, as if they fell spinning from his lips to an unfathomable depth. And as he speaks, Khalil is aware of a strange odor, or a mix of odors: water, definitely—but nasty water, stale, and old and rotten. It brings to Khalil’s mind an image of oozing flesh dripping from wet bones. And it seems to him he hears moaning, and sees in his mind’s eye the faces of dead men with lidless eyes, like severed heads scattered on a battlefield.
“What is this place?” Khalil cries out, now truly frightened. For though his mind has not yet comprehended it, his body knows: he has come to the Door of Hell.
“Why, Ali Khalil, it is the place those guards died—you wanted to come here, remember?” Hing takes his hand; Khalil is too stupid with fear to resist. “Bring the lamp this way,” Hing says.
Khalil now sees that they stand on the edge of a deep, deep well. There’s no protecting wall: just a vast circle of emptiness about fifteen yards across. The lamplight flickers, casting shadows down into its endless depths.
The little African boy tosses something; a coin maybe.
They wait.
Hing turns to Khalil with a quizzical expression on his face. They wait. Khalil wonders if he only imagined the coin being thrown. They listen. They wait, now scarcely breathing.
Plink.
The sound is so soft that Khalil’s first thought is to doubt his ears. No well can be that deep. “Show him,” Hing whispers.
Alu steps to the very edge, the toes of his satin shoes actually reaching out into the emptiness. He balances there like an acrobat, extending the lamp outward. “Look,” says Hing, nudging Khalil forward.
Khalil follows Alu’s example. He tries to appear calm, but his eyes are wide and his lips quiver. He shuffles to the edge, inch by inch, his hand unconsciously tightening on Hing’s as he moves.
He looks down, down into inky, endless black. It takes a long time for his eyes to adjust as the flame flickers into the deep shadows. At last he sees the bottom of the well, the dank circle of water glimmering in the pale light. Then he sees—can it be?—poking out of the black water, human forms. He squints: an arm, a leg, the top of someone’s head perhaps, and a dim, watery oval that might once have been a face. He trembles.
Then he sees one more sight and cries out.
“What’s wrong?” Hing asks quietly, still holding Khalil’s hand.
“There’s something down there!” Khalil cries. His words swirl eerily, echoing against the stones.
“Yes,” says Hing.
“No, something’s moving! Something’s alive!”
Hing sighs. “You know, we wonder about that sometimes. Does the fall kill them? Do they drown? But those guards: they’ve been there for three days now, so in my opinion, they must be dead. Or nearly.” Hing moves closer to Khalil, still holding his hand. “Still—there might something down there. Perhaps a turtle.”
Khalil pulls back from the edge with a sudden violence. “A turtle! There can’t be a turtle in a well that deep!” He shouts, much more vehemently than he should. Some part of him has realized that he has peered into his own future.
Hing shrugs. “A turtle is the most logical explanation. Don’t you agree, Alu?”
“As you say, master.” Alu eyes Khalil strangely. “It is an amusing idea. More pleasant than the alternatives.” He steps back from the edge and inches closer to Khalil. Khalil sees that Alu has thrown his sleeve over his long blade, as one hides the knife from an old bullock whose time has come.
“And so, Ali Khalil, you have seen them, those guards of Basant’s. Now you know the answer to your questions. Now there remains but one question more for you to answer.”
“And what question is that?” Khalil asks. But now everyone is silent: Khalil, Hing, Alu, even Hing’s African boy, his teeth gleaming even in this shallow lamplight, gleaming white against his black lips all the while.
Alu stands with his left hand extended, holding the butter lamp far from Khalil, his right hand low with the knife blade pointing to Khalil’s ribs.
Khalil considers the effect of that long knife thrusting into his heart. Would he feel the tearing and the bursting? Or would he die before he felt the pain?
Or there’s the other way, he thinks. A step and a moment of fright, and then darkness.
He leans slightly out, over the dark pool far, far below him. The well seems to pull his head forward, for just one more look into its depths. He can hardly resist, so fierce his the desire. Even standing unmoving, the image fills his brain; that dark pool, those gray limbs, the ripples in the black water.
Peaceful, he thinks. Even the trip to reach the bottom … not so bad, maybe. And then to join those peaceful, endless depths.
Maybe he wouldn’t die, though.
Maybe he wouldn’t die, but linger in that deep pool, gasping, drowning, a broken mass of dying pain.
Or face that knife. And have Alu’s crooked smile be the final image that he sees.
He’s deciding, thinks Hing. Always they decide. The thought fills Hing with perplexity. Here, with death inevitable, he might easily throw me in the well, or Alu, or both of us. We stand here helpless, inches from death—yet we are forgotten.
That was the secret of this well, Hing’s master had told him years ago. When they peer down it, when they see the very bottom, somehow the well traps their eyes. Their eyes can’t rest until they see its depths again. And then the whispering begins. For the well whispers to its victims, it draws them. It calls to them to see once more its peaceful depths, its cold shadows, its endless night.
Hing’s master had been right. Khalil is listening; he hears its whispers; he thinks its soft enticements are his own wise thoughts. He believes he’s deciding—but all he’s doing is listening to the whisper of the well.
In a moment, just as Hing expects, a gleam appears in Khalil’s eyes. Decision resolves itself upon his face. He looks like a man victorious in battle. He glances to Alu’s face, and then to Hing’s, and snorts with contempt.
It seems for a moment that he will say something, some final word of triumph, some farewell.
Instead he simply steps: over the edge of the well, confidently, as one walks through a doorway; head held high, as though his foot will soon land on something solid instead of dropping through the dead forgotten air.
Poor Khalil begins to tumble as he drops.
He hadn’t counted on that.
Toward the last, he screams.
The echo ends with a wet, hollow smack that rings against the damp stones and fades into silence.
After some time, Alu speaks. “Is it always so, master?”
“Have I not said so? It is the power of the well. Once you see its depths, it calls you.” Hing’s wet eyes search Alu’s. “Do you not feel it calling you, even now?”
Alu snorts—as though he were a child to be frightened by such tales. The old eunuch stands statue still, staring back, saying nothing.
Alu’s mocking smile lasts for a moment, then begins to fade. Soon he is not smiling at all. His eyes grow wide and doubt ap
pears. His face grows grave, as though he hears a strange, unnerving sound, like the drone of a tamboura buzzing its endless chord, and he steps toward Hing with knife raised.
“Yes,” says Hing, “this is why I brought you here, to hear the music of the well. Here we are equals, brother. So, as equals, it’s time we had a talk. You and I must come to an understanding. Otherwise I fear one of us must die.”
Alu looks at Hing with uncertain eyes: his knife raised almost helplessly; his grip now appears so weak that even Hing might break it.
“You’ve made your way quite satisfactorily. Good looks and a good brain. Unusual for a brother to have either, and you, dear one, have both. You will achieve much. If you don’t die young.”
Some part of Alu struggles to regain his will, while some other part of him feels compelled to peer again down into the fathomless inviting darkness of that deep well.
“Here we stand, you and I. You have your knife at my ribs and your foot on the edge of emptiness. So what we say here has the force of death behind it, do you see?”
Alu nods. Hing says: “Be my heir. I have no one left! I’ll confess, for all his stupidity, I liked Basant. It was my weakness. I thought he might grow wise in time. Alas he was far more stupid than I thought. But not you, Alu. I don’t like you very much, but my heart has proven a poor guide. You’re pretty and you’re smart. You’ll do, and do better than most.
“Be my heir. I have no goods to leave you—rings and trinkets and what not? You’ll get enough of those on your own. No, Alu, I mean: be my heir for power. Succeed me—lead the brothers when I die. Do you know who rules Hindustan today? It is I, the khaswajara, no one else. I have only to say the word, and Shah Jahan will do as I tell him. Can Assaf Khan say as much? Or anyone?”
A pale light comes into Alu’s eyes. Hing’s words seem to be entering his brain, driving out the relentless droning of the well. “What must I do, master?”
“Do? Why, whatever you please!” Hing shrugs. “Well, perhaps from time to time I may ask some small favor. A token. Nothing much. Nothing difficult. Besides, you like killing. I can tell.” Hing steps close to the young eunuch, staring into his dark wayward eyes, so close his dank breath swirls in Alu’s nostrils. “Be the next khaswajara. Work with me; follow my footsteps. Don’t just call me master, acknowledge my mastery! Or kill me. Or die.