I knew Dabir was interested, for his speech grew terse. “How, demands?”
“It left a warning writ in blood upon the wall of my dining room! It promised dire things if I did not leave the amulet upon a step in one of my courtyards.”
“Might I read the warning?”
“Nay, my slaves washed it away.”
“Did you write it down?” Dabir asked. His voice had risen a modicum, because, I am certain, he found the man’s lack of preparation irritating.
“No, I did not.” The merchant frowned sadly. “God forgive me, I thought at first that my nephew played a trick, for I knew he coveted the amulet. He has often asked after it, wondering where it was kept. Then my servants began to report seeing a thing skulking in the gardens and in the halls at night.” Mukhtar’s eyes grew large. “A thing with a great, shaggy head, and gaping mouth, and clawed hands and feet. The next morning a warning was found, again in blood, outside my very chambers! My wives were frightened, but still I would not give over the amulet, and then two nights ago my monkey, a clever little fellow from Hind, disappeared.” Mukhtar wagged his finger at Dabir. “You may think it strange, but I liked that little fellow. He was better and more cheerful company than my wives most days, and, after my third daughter, my most prized possession. When he disappeared, I was sorely vexed. I hired guards, but when the efreet appeared last night they ran screaming from my home.”
“And there was a message?” Dabir prompted.
“There was. If I did not leave the amulet on the courtyard steps at sunset tonight, my third daughter, the light of my home, should be carried off as a bride of Iblis!” He wrung his hands. “If only he would carry off my first wife…”
“It was wise of you to come,” Dabir said after a moment. “I wish you had done so sooner.”
“Then you will aid me?”
“I find your troubles very interesting,” Dabir confessed. “You kept no record of any of the efreet’s messages?”
Mukhtar shook his head. “I did not.”
“Does anyone else know the amulet’s hiding place?”
“No. No one.”
“Asim and I will come to your home this evening, before the sun sets. You will tell no one of our coming.”
“As you wish.” Mukhtar looked long at me. “Does your man…does he have the stomach to fight with efreets?”
“Efreets, sorcerers, rug merchants, it matters not,” I said. “Where need be, I strike.”
The fellow blinked at me, but misunderstood my humor, I think.
“I will need to see the amulet,” Dabir continued, “but it is crucial that no one else learn of its whereabouts. That is all that has kept the efreet from moving against you in more sinister ways.”
Mukhtar stared raptly. “It shall be as you say.”
“Good.”
Mukhtar licked his lips and bowed his head. “Naturally I am grateful, Honored One, and you must forgive me if I sound improper—”
“I am not interested in your money,” Dabir said dismissively. “Only your problem.”
The rug merchant bowed his head in gratitude. “Praise be to you, then, for your generosity.”
II
Mukhtar lived in a rambling old home near the river. From its balconies one could look out onto three fountained courtyards, and from one tower it was possible to look over the city wall and onto the dark shimmering length of the Tigris, on which boats plied their long way to Baghdad. Bright was the sinking sun and brighter still was the bronze pillar of its reflection in the water. The high bluffs across the river, rich with lines of brown and crimson rock, threw long shadows onto the quays.
Muhktar toured us through his home with pride. The household servants and his wives were curious, but Muhktar sent all away save his favored daughter.
“It pleases me to introduce you to my eldest unmarried daughter, Durrah.”
Durrah wore a veil, but I saw her smile beneath it. Hers were the eyes of an houri, wide and dark, and her skin was fine and clear. She had no curves upon her though, and I might have encompassed her in one arm. She was probably fifteen years of age.
“She is fit for marrying, noble one,” Mukhtar told Dabir, “but I have not dared to part with the only one of wit in the whole of my household.”
“I am honored that you would introduce me,” Dabir said to Mukhtar, then inclined his head toward the girl. “Your father speaks highly of your mind—he did not also say that you were fair.”
Durrah blushed, but looked at my friend through her lashes in an ungirlish way as Dabir turned again to Mukhtar.
Dabir and Mukhtar resumed walking through the home, my friend asking various questions, and I followed, the girl at my side.
“Are you going to fight the efreet?” Durrah asked me.
“Probably.”
“Aren’t you frightened?”
“I will know when I see it.”
“Other warriors saw it, and they ran.”
“I do not run from my enemies,” I responded, thinking that this was usually the case, if not always true. Only a madman stood against the whole of an army.
“You have not seen the efreet.”
“You have?”
She nodded swiftly as we turned up a stair. “It has the head of a lion, with two great horns.” Her shoulders shivered.
“Do not fear, girl. Dabir and I have faced nether creatures. Yet we live, and they do not.”
“Can you really stop it?”
Suddenly I realized the girl’s true aim, and I cursed myself for a fool. She was frightened of the message the thing had left. “Fear not, child. I shall let no servant of Iblis carry you away. This I swear.”
Her cheeks reddened and she looked down, but she was silent only for a moment. “Is your master as clever as they say?”
I thought of telling her that Dabir was not my master, but in truth I tired sometimes of the constant misperception and did not always deem to correct it. I answered instead in a way I thought would have pleased Dabir: “How clever do they say he is?”
“They say that he is so wise that the caliph’s hakims are jealous. They say some imams whisper that he is a sorcerer, or a djinn, for no man could be so wise.”
“He is no sorcerer,” I said. “Nor is he a djinn. But he is the wisest man in Mosul, or the caliphate.”
“Wiser even than the caliph?”
I hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”
“Wiser than you?” The girl’s eyes sparkled.
I grunted. “My wisdom is here.” I patted my sword arm.
“In your sleeve? Is there a monkey hidden inside?”
I chuckled. “If wit were a kingdom, you might rule it, girl.”
At last we passed through an archway and down three wide steps and so came to the courtyard where the efreet had directed Mukhtar to place the amulet. Dabir spent long moments peering at the walls and poking about in the bushes, which were overgrown. He also walked about the circular pool where the water fell. It was some four paces wide from its edge to its center, which itself was three paces in circumference. From the pool’s middle rose a cylindrical pillar where delicate geometric patterns were carved, worn down by the water that sprayed from the pillar’s height.
Dabir was walking back to us when the call of muezzins echoed through the city for evening prayers, and thus we washed and prayed with Mukhtar and his male servants. It was then we finally met his paunchy nephew, a fellow of brooding mien with but a wisp of a beard. He mouthed a few sullen words of greeting.
After prayers, Dabir pulled Mukhtar aside and told him that he would look now at the amulet. The rug merchant sent off his nephew, directed his servants to their quarters and his daughter to the harem, then bade us wait outside his offices.
We heard him shuffling around inside, and likewise the sounds of doors and cabinets opening.
Dabir was little more than a silhouette in the dark corridor, but I knew by the sound of his voice that he smiled. “Mukhtar walks first this way, then th
at, opening something here, then there, so that we might not guess the item’s hiding place.”
“He is not altogether a fool,” I agreed.
At last Mukhtar’s voice bade us enter, and so we did. Four candles burned on a wooden table, upon which rested a gleaming disc set on red silk. Dabir approached it slowly, and I walked at his side, mindful of the hawklike scrutiny of the merchant.
I judged the amulet valuable, though I had seen richer things. A cat with pointed ears was etched into the gold face of the amulet, its ruby eyes winking at us. Tiny, blocky shapes and pictures were written to the right and left of its whiskers.
“May I lift it?” Dabir asked.
“Certainly, Honored One.”
Dabir turned the precious thing in his hand. Its back side was inscribed with even more picture writing.
My friend studied it, blinking little, then turned it again to its front side.
“Can you read it?” Mukhtar prompted.
Dabir’s answer was distracted. “Yes.” He did not look up. Once more he reversed the coin to study its back. Finally he returned it to the silk. The tiny eyes flashed and for a moment seemed to search our own. I swiftly made the sign against the evil eye.
“What does it say?” Mukhtar asked.
“It promises protection to the person to whom it is given,” Dabir said. “Now. Here is what you must do. May I have this silk?”
A short time later Mukhtar made his way to the courtyard and placed a silk-wrapped bundle on the top stair. He retired to his chambers. Dabir and I waited until the stars gleamed, then slid out into the darkened courtyard. As I have said before, Dabir was stealthy, and together we made almost no sound before we reached the shrubbery along one wall and sat down amidst the gloom. Music from some distant tavern reached us, and occasional laughter, but the fountain’s spray drove out most other noise.
Some time passed. Dabir sat cross-legged beside the bush, content enough. My eyes, though, roved constantly. Dabir took note of my shifting and touched my arm.
“Watch the fountain, Asim,” he said simply.
I did as he bade, but soon regretted it. The constant, soothing trickle of water lulled me almost into a stupor and the star patterns of the Swan and the Dragon flew higher and higher in the dark sky. The wind was cool, bearing hints of winter, but it was not chilling. I began to reflect that it would be very comfortable to stretch out across the ground and let sleep overtake me.
Of a sudden I saw lantern light at the height of the tower to which we had earlier climbed. My eyesight was keen, and I knew he who carried it after a moment’s scrutiny. “The nephew,” I said.
“Hmm,” said Dabir, almost as though he had expected this.
The nephew crouched low, and then, after a very short time, rose and blew out the lantern. I thought I perceived him descending the stairs once more.
“We shall soon see this efreet, I think. Be ready, Asim.”
I loosed my sword in its scabbard but did not yet draw it. Long moments passed, and then the water ceased its fall. There came faint soft clanging of metal, as though some invisible being were lightly banging a weapon against a sheath. The hairs on my arms rose, and I stood, hand to hilt, but Dabir touched my sleeve and I crouched.
The back section of the fountain swung open and a horror stepped out. The efreet was much as the girl had described. It was man-shaped and covered with shaggy fur. Two ram horns projected from atop its lionlike head.
It paused on the threshold, listening, I thought, or perhaps sniffing the air. Finally it stepped out onto a stone set in the fountain’s water, balancing precariously for a long moment before it lumbered to the lip of the pool and stepped out. Its feet were huge, its stride ungainly.
The creature turned its back and walked for the stairs.
“Now,” Dabir whispered fiercely.
I sprinted across the courtyard, my sword a dark sliver of moonlight. The efreet had reached the bottom stair when I struck. My blade sank deep into its head, and into bone. There was little blood and no outcry.
The efreet toppled and its head rolled away to the side.
I stepped back in wonder, for where its head had been, another was revealed, a man’s head. I stood watching to counter whatever trick it planned, but the thing did not move. I saw that the man’s head was sliced deep and leaking brains.
“Interesting,” Dabir said. He bent down by the efreet’s head and lifted it up. He examined it for a moment, turning it this way and that, and then dropped it over his own. Instantly he was transformed into a creature of evil, but I knew then that the head was only a mask. He removed it.
“It is merely a man in a costume,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Did you already know that?”
“I knew that it was not an efreet,” Dabir said. “Efreet are notoriously difficult to control. An efreet would not patiently leave messages, or steal monkeys. At best it would have dismembered half the household as a warning.”
Dabir rolled the costumed man over and we stared down at a pockmarked face with a shabby black and gray beard.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“A lackey, I think. Sometimes I wish you were less lethal, Asim.”
“You might have mentioned you wanted him alive,” I said.
“I thought you would know.”
“I thought it was an efreet,” I pointed out.
He stared down at the body a moment longer. “The mastermind behind this scheme still awaits this one’s return. I do not plan to disappoint him.”
III
The metal ladder inside the pillar was old. My boots clanged against the rusting metal as I descended, and I knew then what had caused the noise that had so unnerved me. A lantern sat on the old stone at its foot, near a coil of rope and some rotted timber.
I picked up the lantern and shined it into the gloom while Dabir descended, still clutching the efreet head. Moisture saturated the air. We stood in a small stone chamber, and worn stairs stretched farther down, out under the wall and toward the Tigris. From somewhere in the darkness ahead came the steady plunk of dripping water.
Dabir put his hand on a rusted iron wheel set in the wall beside the ladder. “This must turn the fountain on and off.”
“How did you know,” I whispered, “that the efreet would come from the fountain?”
“I saw the pattern of the door in its side,” Dabir said, as though it were obvious.
I did not wish to be distracted by another of his “looking but not seeing” discussions, so said nothing.
We descended some twenty broad steps and found ourselves in a square tunnel, supported by sagging, rotting timbers. Moisture beaded on the walls, and here and there water dripped from the ceiling into pools on the pitted stone floor.
“We are beneath the river,” Dabir said quietly. Even so, his voice echoed. We said not another word as we walked along what must have been an escape tunnel crafted by the Persians who’d originally built Mukhtar’s ancient home.
At long last the lantern light showed ascending stairs, and Dabir bid me hand him my sword—which I did only reluctantly, because the man I impersonated did not carry one—and put the mask over my face. Like the efreet costume I’d donned, it reeked of sweat and dead skins. It had been designed so that one could see by looking out two slits cut into the lion’s forehead, but my peripheral vision was middling. I had cut the feet from the costume, for I did not want my movements hindered.
Lantern in one hand, the silk-wrapped medallion in another, I trudged up the stairs. These climbed higher than those on the other side of the river, and curved gradually south. After some fifty steps I saw light ahead, and heard the chattering of a monkey. As I turned the bend I beheld a small cavern beyond an archway at the top of the stairs. A figure backlit by another lantern paced within it, and he stopped to stare at me as I neared.
“Do you have it?” he asked. His voice was crisp, commanding.
I lifted the medallion in my palm, snugly wrapped
in silk, and the man’s eyes lit greedily.
He was clearly a Persian—he had light skin, and his handsome face was adorned only with a short beard. His head was bare, but the rest of his clothing was finely wrought. The scent of his perfumes reached me even before I closed on him.
“Excellent,” he said. “Was there trouble from the new guards?”
I stepped into the room and shook my shaggy head. I dropped the medallion into his outstretched palm.
A fine gold rug hid the cavern floor, and hangings concealed much of the walls. There were green and gold cushions, and even a small brazier in one corner. A small monkey hung in a cage on the chamber’s far side, near the mouth of another tunnel or cave. Likely it led to the outside, where this one or his servant had no doubt been posted to watch for the nephew’s signal lantern.
The man quickly unwrapped the amulet, stepping near the lantern on the table, then stopped. His dark eyes glittered dangerously as he looked up at me.
“You fool! This is not the right amulet!”
“Indeed,” Dabir said, stepping from behind me. “It is mine.”
The man scowled. I lifted the efreet’s head from my own and took my sword from Dabir.
The man straightened, but his hands did not drift. He looked again at the amulet. “You are well favored, scholar,” he said, sounding irritated. “I had heard that Dabir ibn Khalil was wise, but I had anticipated the usual hyperbole. I see now that I was wrong. You too must desire the amulet.”
“I am at a loss,” Dabir said. “You know my name, but I do not know yours.”
“I am Amaharaziad, descendant of great Darius. Like you, my blood is Persian. And like you, I am governed by my wits.”
“Indeed,” said Dabir, “your ruse was very clever.”
“How did you see through it?”
“Your scheme was too subtle. An efreet is not an instrument of subtlety. Furthermore, an efreet could not come within ten paces of a charm that is essentially a blessing.”
The Waters of Eternity Page 8