Carpathian Devils

by Alex Oliver

  "Peace be upon you," he said to them both, and was struck by the irony of it. "But perhaps I shouldn't say that, for I've come to tell you that we are at war."

  "No!" The baker he had flour smudges all over his loosely wrapped turban, and smears of bright saffron on the apron tied over his wide white trousers. The saffron went nicely with the bright green of his sash, but drew attention to his odd, ill-omened bluish eyes.

  His life seemed to be spent making up for the evil eyes nature had bestowed on him - here he was, delivering freshly baked flat-bread to his local beggar and pausing for a chat. The beggar leaned back on his wheeled platform, contemplated the stumps of his legs with a grin, and did not trouble to look anything but pleased that war had left him behind a long time ago.

  "I saw it myself, in the harbor. A treacherous attack on the sultan by..." Zayd stopped himself. That wasn't true, was it? Whatever he felt, about the indignity, the humiliation, it was true that what had happened had been an attempt to give honor - an attempt that had gone disastrously wrong. "Actually, perhaps I am premature. The sultan declared war on the British, but perhaps when he has had time to think he will realize the insult done him was by accident. Perhaps with a clearer head he will only demand apologies."

  "You've left half of the story out, and what you've included makes little sense without it," the beggar pointed out. He patted the street beside him with a hand gnarled and calloused as a foot. "Have a seat and tell us the whole story."

  So Zayd did. Half way through, a tea-seller joined them, and they bought sweet refreshing tea poured through stalks of mint. The baker ducked back to his stall to bring out a plate of cheese borek, the smell of which drew his neighbor, the fishmonger, to flip a cover over his own stall and take a moment's rest in the shade to hear the news.

  "We will have the regiments gathering, then," he observed with enthusiasm. "Lots of new mouths to feed. Perhaps even Christian troops from the provinces, all of whom eat fish on Fridays."

  "Christian troops mean a harbor full of drunkards," said the tea-seller with disdain. "Fights in the streets, sailors knocking down anything they think is 'heretical'. Looking at things with those cat-eyes of theirs." He smiled apologetically to the baker, "I mean no offense to you, effendi."

  Despite the caveats, everyone seemed cautiously pleased. Zayd had been too, at first. After a long period when this, the mightiest empire on earth, beloved by Allah, had seemed sunk into soft indolence, it was rallying to hear the war drums, to think of the horse-tail standards streaming out over barbarian lands.

  But when patriotism ebbed, he found he was left with worry. "They have a fine navy, the British, so I've heard. I'm only glad we do not live further out towards the sea. I read that their guns can hit targets a mile away. How do you defend yourself from that?" War, no matter how it stirred the blood, had changed drastically since the days of Osman. War on the sea was their enemy's strength.

  "We have a fine navy too," the baker took back the now empty basket of bread from the beggar's hands, tucked it under his elbow on top of the empty platter of borek. "The world trembles at the thunder of our horses' hooves, and I for one am glad that we are taking the faith to one more lost nation. God is with us, what need do we have for anything else?"

  "God is with us," Zayd agreed, though Allah was just, and how just it would be to go to war because of a mistake?

  The impromptu picnic broke up, and he waved farewell to the beggar. Following the baker back to his shop he bought a dozen bitter almond biscuits.

  "The sort your mother likes."

  "Yes."

  "She's well?"

  Zayd smiled, though he wondered what she would make of this news. "As always. I know she would like a proper house, but she doesn't complain."

  "Too busy finding you a wife, eh?" The baker wrapped the biscuits in a layer of paper, and then in a linen cloth.

  It was a shame to stuff such a pretty parcel into his sash, but Zayd still needed both hands for the bucket. He grimaced. "A house would go a long way to helping with that, too. There are not too many fathers who would happily see their daughter moved into a mausoleum."

  "Pah, you are a holy man. You are a catch for some pious family. Or you will be, once you are old enough to look the part."

  "And too old to enjoy a wife." Zayd fumbled for his coins, but the baker waved the payment off.

  "Your sad tale has moved my heart," he laughed. "Take the only piece of sweetness I can offer you with my blessings, surely you are in more need of it than I."

  After which there was nothing left except the steep climb through higher levels of the city, where the paving gave way to dusty soil, and out once more onto the slopes of the cemetery of Eyup.

  The mosque of the prophet's follower stood up domed and familiar against a sky that had begun to glow with the deeper colors of early evening. Not so grand as the Suleymaniye, or so perfect as the Aya Sophia, which gleamed and twinkled in the distance further out toward the harbor mouth, but holier than both, and modest with it.

  The mosque was not where he was headed. Instead he wound his way through the cypresses and small white walls that shaded the swell of the graveyard. He knew the headstones by heart - the flowing inscriptions, the knobs of carved turbans on top, denoting the dead man's status in life. A particularly lovely mimosa tangled above the slightly larger stone tomb of one Ibn Nesim, who had been a poet in life. He paused there to ease his aching arms and look down over the beauty of the greatest city in the world.

  Evening's humidity was beginning to draw scents from the flowering plants that grew in profusion among the graves, and the cicadas picked up urgency again after being lulled to sleep in the midday sun. He left the poet behind and turned down a paved lane of grander tombs, some nothing more than a single room with the catafalque immediately within, some with one or two antechambers. Most of these had regular living inhabitants - Zayd's neighbours and peers. The poor, as well as those who had retired to a simpler life to think about God, away from the city's bustle.

  Zayd's father had left him something a little better. He reached the end of the quiet street of the dead, and there was the mausoleum of Dede Abdul Khaliq, his home. The saint, in life, had been a friend of the angel Gibril. He had cured illnesses both by touch and by his word, and had set his neighbors' problems before the angel, relayed the supernatural wisdom back.

  Once, he had been only one of the hermits. By the time he died he was so well known, so beloved, that the people he had touched in life built him this splendid complex, the great hall in which his catafalque lay, and five chambers beyond with windows of pierced stonework and colored glass. Enough for an office for Zayd and separate small quarters for his women, decently shuttered and retired from anyone who might come to seek his help.

  With some relief, he pushed open the wrought iron gate that closed the entrance to the tomb and set his jellyfish inside in the cool. He couldn't quite tell if they were still alive or not - they moved, but then the water swayed from his gait, and pond weed would have moved just the same.

  "Peace be upon you, grandfather." Zayd stooped to greet his silent housemate by touching a respectful hand to the stone slab under which the saint lay. The inscription with which it was covered had once been gilded, but other hands than his had worn the gold away, taking it home on a million pious fingertips. What they had not taken was the feather.

  Set into the stone, deep under a massive slab of rock crystal that bent the light as if one was looking into a stream, a feather longer than Zayd's forearm blushed an astonishing rosy pink. If that was one of Gibril's wing feathers, the full spread must be lovely indeed. Zayd often imagined the wings as shading from crimson to gold, like a particularly spectacular sunset.

  He was only a humble guardian of the tomb and the relic; he was neither particularly orthodox nor pious, and did not deserve that the angel who had once appeared to the saint should ever appear to him. But sometimes he wished. It was hard to be thought of as a holy man and to make a livin
g providing magical aid to anyone who asked, and still to have no proof, no conviction, that any of it really existed.

  Setting doubt aside again, he moved the bags that lined the walls to make a space for the bucket. Those who were too poor to have any roof at all over their head brought their few precious possessions to him when they had need of storing them. He kept them safe in a place from which no man would steal on peril of his soul, and labeled them so that he knew which to give back to whom. Sometimes, when they had food to spare, or even coin, they paid him for the privilege. Other times they did not, and that was fine too. Like the baker, he was as generous as he could be with the resources he possessed.

  Knocking first, he ducked in to the harem to deliver the biscuits to his mother and aunt, and then - determined to make good use of the last hour of light - brought his writing equipment and an unfinished magic diagram out of the cupboards of his office into the broader flood of light through the main room's door. This was a charm against malaria: a square of paper filled with numbers and sigils, with the names of angels and an invocation of divine mercy. When it was done it would be rolled up and placed inside a large cylindrical bead that could be worn around the neck, or hung up at the street door of a house to keep the illness away.

  It was, therefore, small and intricate work. Between consulting three different books and his father's notes to be sure he got it right, and struggling with his own involuntary muscle spasms to try and make the shapes as smooth and powerful as he could, he had no attention to spare for anything else.

  He was only aware of his visitors when their shadows fell across the page and almost made him smudge the ink. Then he looked up, with a headache lurking behind his eyes and his feet cramping from the shift of weight, and registered the high white slopes of Janissary headdresses, beneath which the soldiers looked equally knife-bladed, fierce-eyed, and ready to die. Two of them.

  They stepped to one side and allowed the third man to come forward, though 'man' was probably a misnomer. Gorgeously clad in silk the iridescent blue of peacock feathers, the young person was of indeterminate gender, smooth faced and decked in bracelets, ears decorated with pearls, with a softness of fat about the face and figure that lent a feminine sleekness.

  Bright, beautiful eyes took in Zayd's reaction and seemed to find it amusing. "Zayd Ibn Rahman? You are the custodian of this shrine, the student of magic?"

  "I am." Zayd scrambled up and wished he had kept back some of the biscuits to offer. He made a fruitless little gesture towards the stone jar of water that leaned against the further wall. "May I offer you some water? It is a long way up here, I know."

  "I think we'll dispense with the pleasantries." The eunuch's smile was mischievous. He clearly enjoyed terrifying unimportant holy men with unexpected troops. "If you need to bring a coat, go get one now. We are to take you to the palace at once."

  Zayd thought he should be honored, but found he only had room for fear. What had he done that anyone in the palace might have taken note of? Had he overstepped some boundary? Did they... mercy of heaven, did someone tell them he had spoken to the officer on the British ship before it had opened fire? Was he to be blamed for that?

  The eunuch put a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound of his laughter. "I should tell someone about that guilty conscience of yours," he said, "but I won't. I am Daoud, servant to the Grand Mufti. You can question me all you like about what this is about, for my answer will be the same: I have not been told myself."

  He cast an interested eye over Zayd's accommodation, the bundles of other people's clothes, the sad little table from which all the ivory inlay had long disappeared. "But I don't think they would have sent me to arrest a dangerous criminal. I rather think I'm not supposed to represent a threat."

  Slightly reassured, Zayd yelled through the harem screen to tell his women he would be venturing out again, shed jacket and caftan just long enough to add a waistcoat to the ensemble and then rewound his sash over all and tightened his turban. While he did this, the soldiers merely glared at him the way ibises glare at teeming fish, conscious that they were a higher form of life than he. But Daoud inclined his head a little as if to say 'it will do.' "Follow me then, please."

  Back down to the harbor, unburdened this time except by worry, and into a private caique rowed by sixteen burly men in matching clothes with hats whose colors he could not quite tell in the tricky evening light.

  The splendor of the palace, the courtyards filled with running water and trees and all the flowers of paradise, failed to calm him. He told himself that at least he was not being taken to the fortress of seven towers. It didn't help much. That might come yet.

  Inside, they walked through pavilions and gilded gateways, past knots of men waiting for audiences with this official or that. Smaller rooms at first, then larger. Standing queues of petitioners gave way to divans where groups of men sat in glorious clothes and debated in lowered tones.

  The walls, covered with texts from the Koran, exhorted him to honesty and charity, obedience and bravery. He straightened his back in response. Daoud, and the soldier-slaves who followed him, had all given their lives already. The years they had to walk and talk were only on loan from their master. If asked to give them up, they would do so with a dignified smile. Surely Zayd could do the same. He was innocent of wrong, after all. Only paradise awaited him on the other side of the garrote.

  Instead of a prison, they brought him out to a pavilion which opened onto a modest garden brilliant with the blooms of tulips of every color. There, a dozen people before him bowed and drew away, and left him awkwardly standing over Grand Mufti Haji Nabih bin Aaban, prevented from falling to prostrate himself by Daoud's sudden, unexpectedly strong grip on his elbow.

  Daoud had to physically drag him to a cushion and settle him there, while Haji Nabih watched with such a perfection of indifference he might have been asleep, but for his open eyes. Slightly less well dressed eunuchs brought tea, which Zayd clutched at, thankful for something to hold. And then, as if there had been a gesture too slight for Zayd to see it, all of them withdrew at once, ushering other petitioners out before them. Zayd was left completely alone in the Mufti's presence, and the knowledge that this truly was an unprecedented honor robbed him of his breath again.

  Well known by sight throughout the city, Haji Nabih combined an open handed generosity with his fortune – endowing schools and libraries, bath houses and hospitals for all – with small acts of kindness to the common man that had made him one of Istanbul's most beloved officials. Though Zayd dwelt in a holy man's house, it was not so awe-inspiring or terrifying as sitting down to talk with a man the city regarded as a living saint. Dede Abdul made very few demands of his tenants.

  Haji Nabih did not point out that Zayd looked like a frightened gazelle. He simply took a very long deep breath and leaning forward murmured, "You are the magician?"

  "Theoretical magician, holy one," Zayd insisted. "I study the arts of Atlantis and draw up charts to do small things. I am not one who can speak with the djinn and the angels. I am just... just a scholar of these matters."

  "But you would know if someone were under the influence of the evil eye. There are tests for evil influence which you could perform?"

  Zayd knew there were references to such practices in his father's books. "I would have to have access to my research," he said. A brief internal debate as he weighed how much he wanted to look foolish in front of the highest spiritual authority in the land against how much he honestly wanted to be of help, "and possibly my mother's assistance."

  "Your mother?" the Grand Mufti sounded genuinely interested, rather than contemptuous.

  "She has more actual power than I do. With my guidance she can do great things."

  "As Fatima herself did. You are wise not to discount any of those to whom Allah's blessings are given." Haji Nabih flicked his prayer beads one by one through his palm, nudging them along with his thumb, while he watched lanterns kindle in distant windows, filling the ev
ening with golden stars. He sighed, and Zayd wondered with a little curl of dread whose health could possibly be important enough for the Grand Mufti to concern himself directly. "I have spoken to the Imam of your lodge. The Bektashi dervish order is in good standing with me and I have no doubt of its loyalty as a whole. Your own lodge mates vouch for your integrity, but you must understand..."

  He took out a square of cloth and wiped his face and hands as if purifying himself for prayer. "I think I need to threaten you regardless. If you let one word slip of what I am about to show you, your death - and the deaths of your household, your respected mother and her sister - will not be quick. It would be a matter of treason, approaching blasphemy."

  Zayd felt his hands and feet go cold. His tongue seemed to swell in his suddenly dried mouth. "There must be someone other than me you can ask. Someone more important."

  "All the important people are already playing games," said the Grand Mufti with a wintry smile. "Games which mean I cannot rely on them to give me an honest opinion. I am therefore relying on you. Do not let me down."

  "I... I will," Zayd swallowed the last of his tea, which had gone as bitter as his stomach. "I will do all that I can possibly do."

  "And that is all I ask. Come then."

  He led Zayd in person, rising and disappearing into the walls like a mouse into a hole. Zayd gaped in surprise before, coming closer, he saw the concealed entrance of a narrow passage behind the pillar he had thought was mere ornament.

  Squeezing into a claustrophobic space, he followed it through the walls of the palace. They passed many grates and a few doors, going down two steep flights of steps, before pausing behind a pierced work image of a wide-lipped vase full of chrysanthemums, through which an oil-lamp golden glow guttered.

  Each room they half glimpsed through the walls had been richer than the last. This was the most opulent of them all, tables and book stands sheathed in precious gems, carpets as pure in color as the stones scattered on the floor, tapestries and embroideries folded around precious objects or hung on the walls wherever there was a slight break from stained glass and gilded stone stars.