The Pirates of Moonlit Bay
Page 15
“As the creature became more hysterical, my brothers and their men became more drunk. Finally, the shadhavar was screaming so loud they could no longer ignore it. But they were so drunk they could barely walk. My youngest brother had the most bravado and was the least drunk, and he had the men hold the beast’s tiedowns until he could reach it to mount.”
“The shadhavar did not like being mounted by a loud, drunken šabāb and became frantic. It reached around, pierced him in the side with its horn, and hooked a rib. Then flung him about thirty feet away. My youngest brother now walks with a pronounced limp and has a foot-long scar to show as a testament to his foolishness. And the shadhavar tore its braces and fled into the night, never to be seen again.”
She grimaced.
“The third and fourth visits I made to the market were not nearly as noteworthy as the first and second times, but we brought back news those times, rather than material goods. Scrolls with tales and legends. Lore that the court wizards were researching. That is what has actually dominated this area for at least a decade. The study of the history of folklore, and the truths behind fables.”
My eyebrows rose at Khepri’s words. I could not wait to see this marketplace.
Caroline spoke then. “Khepri, what kind of fables is your uncle studying?”
Khepri leaned back on her horse, blowing air out her mouth in a low whistle. “Every kind he can find. Many people do not realize that there is much truth in the old stories our great-grandparents told us. Most myths have a basis in fact. This particular area of northern Alkebulan has become especially enamored of the legends of a cavern said to hide a djinn. If the djinn is enslaved, it can be used to acquire unimaginable fortune and immortality.”
“I’ve never heard of a real-life djinn, I thought they only existed in books,” I said, hesitantly.
“I think they are much like the giants that are said to reside in the northlands,” Caroline said.
I nodded.
“Giants?” Christianne asked.
“Children’s tales told of giants that lived in the inland mountains of Swerighe, I said. “It is said that to escape a giant you must throw a blackthorn sprig between yourself and the giant chasing you. The sprig will take root where it lands, and become a full thick forest wood of spikey blackthorn trees that will thwart the giant from reaching you.” I smiled fondly. “It’s a tale told to children on how to survive should they find themselves alone and in danger.”
“Okay, but,” Khepri said, “imagine that the initial reason parents told this tale to their children was so they could actually escape a pursuing giant? Because giants were real?”
“But we know giants aren’t real,” Caroline said.
Khepri raised her finger. “Ah, but how do you know that?”
“Because no one has ever seen a giant: There is not proof they exist,” I said.
“What if they still do exist?” Khepri said. “What if they had once been sighted, in ages past, but since retreating to the mountains a millennium ago, no one has seen them, and their existence faded in people’s minds? Perhaps they are simply hiding and do not want to be seen. What if that is why no one has seen them? That does not mean they are not still there.”
“We have in our party a creature only thought to exist in legend, after all,” Tupu said, patting Kym’s arm. Kym grinned broadly. “There might be others.”
I thought for a minute, swaying back and forth as my horse walked.
“So, the djinn might be real?” I said.
“That is what the sheikhs of the area are hoping for. What with all the exploration that’s happened in the past three decades, they’ve begun to question the old legends, and ask if there might be a basis in fact for them. The court wizards have been very busy, acquiring scrolls, researching the tales, gathering information from far and wide. It’s become almost a folklore obsession.” Khepri sat back in her saddle, satisfied.
This was a lot to think about.
“Well,” I said as we topped a rise and stopped, looking down on the Tambibo market, “I can’t wait to explore this place.”
I nudged my horse, and we all descended the slope and made our way into the throng.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tambibo
The Tambibo market was massive. It stretched for twenty miles along the northern Alkebulan coast, and was at least two miles wide. The stalls were brilliantly colored, with ribbons of vivid pink, orange and yellow fluttering above the fruit and vegetable tables. Bright peacock blue and brilliant green ribbons marked the clothing stalls, merchants calling out to shoppers while waving arms laden with colorful thawbs and keffiyehs that fluttered in the air.
Off to the eastern edge, banners and wider ribbons of greys and blacks fluttered, their colors mingling with metallic golds and silvers. These marked the many stalls selling weapons and armor, as well as the guilds where you could hire all manner of warriors. Next to these were the white-ribboned thieves guilds, where adventurers of the more sordid kind could be hired, as well as the assassins guild.
We walked down the middle aisle, surveying all the sights, but even our wide-eyed faces, moving back and forth, trying to take everything in, could not see all there was to see.
Kym’s eyes watched, amazed and unblinking. After a minute, they started to water.
“Kym, sweetheart. Blink your eyes, or you’re going to go blind,” Khepri whispered to her. She laughed, and I hugged her.
“There’s too much to see!” she exclaimed.
“Try to focus on one thing at a time,” Tupu suggested.
Christianne and Caroline walked, holding hands so as not to get separated, and I grabbed Tupu’s hand, too. We all joined hands, then, and walked together through the market, seeing all the sights.
And what sights there were to behold!
There was a juggler flipping a dozen eggs in a dizzying spinning arc above her head, all the while balancing on stilts. Her pantaloons were brightly striped with metallic greens, blues, oranges, and purples, and her face was painted in yellow and red circles.
There was a stall with a tall platform, and on this platform crouched a massive lion. A circus trainer stood next to the great maned lion and held up a large hoop, and the lion jumped through the hoop to another platform, roaring loudly and making us gasp.
Kym tried to approach the lion, exclaiming “friend, friend!” and stretching her hands out, trying to reach it, until Khepri tugged her back, explaining that this was not the time or place to make friends with a large lion.
We saw a pyramid of acrobats, all dressed in lilac, standing atop one another, and at the apex of their human tower, there was a small, bright green gnome-like creature, balancing on his head. It chattered down at the crowd and giggled madly as if it were insane.
Around the next corner there was an illusionist who held a long stick with a slick black ribbon on the end. The stick was maybe ten feet long, and the ribbon was three times that length. He twirled the stick so that the ribbon fluttered in a circle, then he threw a handful of gold glitter into the circle. The air inside the ribbon immediately began to darken, then swirl in a smoky clockwise pattern. As the smoke began to clear, the circle of ribbon became a window onto the desert as it was at night, even as the sun shone all around us. I was mesmerized as I saw a great battle played out on the nighttime desert within that ribboned circle. It was as if the ribbons had generated a portal through which we could witness a scene from a war playing out.
I was tugged from looking into the ribbon circle by Kym, who wanted me to see the other side of the pathway. She drew my attention to a stall on the left, where a charmer had a huge basket full of snakes, and was playing a hypnotizing melody with a long, wooden flute. The snakes were rising out of the basket and swaying back and forth, watching the flute intently. Kym tugged at my tunic, and I bent down so she could whisper in my ear.
“They remind me of Lissy when he was just hatched,” she giggled merrily.
We saw a virtuoso, dres
sed in a fabulous thawb of iridescent purple. Gold threads were woven in a corkscrew pattern, accenting her deep ebony arms and face. Her voice rang out in a tune that had us gasping with its beauty. She handed out small flowers to any who would place a coin in the basket at her feet.
There was a wizard in a brilliant midnight blue thawb, wearing a tall pointed hat, halfmoon glasses perched on the end of his nose. His long, flowing white beard was tied with trinkets that dripped of stars and moons and glittering tendrils of a plant I could not recognize. His pale white face marked him as a foreigner to these lands, and I looked at my own pale hands, remembering that I, too, was a visitor from a faraway country. I stared into his eyes, and he met mine with a secret wink, then continued to peruse the wares on the table where he was shopping.
We saw a table run by an enchanter, who boasted he could bespell any object, and then proceeded to make a lizard obey his command and run up his sleeve and perch atop his head. Then he took a small cup, balanced it on the palm of his hand, and said some mystical words over it. He blew, and the cup transformed into a giant moth, with a five-inch wingspan. He raised his palm, and the moth took flight and fluttered its wings, rising higher and higher until it disappeared above our heads.
We saw a necromancer in a stall completely shrouded in dark greys and browns. His booth had all manner of crystal balls and divination tools displayed. He wore a dark brown thawb with runes appliqued all over it, and he held an urn, and whispered over it. A mist rose out of the urn and took shape in the form of a face, which the necromancer proceeded to ask questions of the ghostly face’s former life, which the mist dutifully answered.
A few paces farther on, we encountered a grey-haired witch in a booth entirely covered in leaves, where she had dozens of potion bottles displayed, all with different colored liquids within. She called out to us, beckoning us to come and try her wares, then picked up a vial, seemingly at random, and drank the contents, and her hair changed from long grey and white, to a short cut in a brilliant leaf green color. She blinked her eyes and laughed at us, and we saw her eyes had also changed, from dull blue to piercing and endless black pools that looked like huge pearls.
Next to the witch’s stand was a large booth that enclosed a deep pool of water in the ground, it looked a dozen feet deep, and was surrounded by seaweed and smooth stones gathered from the sea. Inside the pool was a large boulder, and sitting on this boulder was a siren. Her hair was wet and the color of the seaweed, greenish-black. Her skin was tinted green, and her eyes looked at us piercingly as she sat there. They seemed to focus on Kym in particular, staring for so long that Kym hid behind me after a while. The man calling out to us from the side of the pool implored us to throw coins in the water to free the siren, so she could return to her people. At one point, she opened her mouth to sing a few notes, and a shiver ran down my spine at the sound.
Then, there was a witch doctor with shrunken heads on a table, and his hair was gathered in a topknot, and a bone pierced his septum. His dark brown skin was tattooed with dots and spiral patterns everywhere. He smiled as we passed, and we could see his teeth had been filed to points. He beckoned us to come closer, and I saw the shrunken heads he was selling all had a third eye in the middle of their foreheads, to foretell the future.
We saw an astrologer whose stall was covered in depictions of the stars and constellations, who promised us she knew of a massive rock that would plummet through the sky and blast through to the ground, wreaking massive destruction to all the people. She assured us she had been sent by the sheikh’s top magician to the Tambibo marketplace to warn the people, who were urged to take cover before the next full moon.
Dozens of market stalls sold every type of antique and collectible. Dealers held out objects and called out to shoppers, trying to entice them to approach. One booth displayed taxidermied pigs, deer, cows, and goats, and even a huge taxidermied giant manta ray, who, I was assured, had died of old age before the sailors had fished him out of the bay.
We saw a grand bazaar, covered with silks and protected from the sun’s rays, and where thousands of shopkeepers haggled with visitors, trying to sell their various wares. There were multiple döner kebab shops, where we all tried the delicious, smoky meat with different sauces.
A full covered lane with stalls was devoted to the sale of musical instruments. Each stall had several sellers playing instruments. They played in unison, and the result was highly pleasing to the ear. Harps played alongside lyres, and flutes played alongside small drums, and they all serenaded us with music.
When we found ourselves walking down a lane of apothecary stalls, Khepri paid more attention. She seemed to be looking for several types of herbs and balms to resupply her healer’s stores. But as I watched, I was fascinated by how she went about it.
“Welcome, my friend. How are you?” said the man behind a table heavily laden with plants and tinctures. He smiled broadly, seeing he had Khepri’s attention.
Khepri looked sideways at the medicines for sale and wrinkled her nose, then drifted off to the side and picked up a small wooden box, brought it to her nose and inhaled.
“That is the finest aloe balm in all of the northern peninsula, it will cure any ailment of the skin, I guarantee it,” the merchant promised.
Khepri made a skeptical sound and put the box down, reaching for a sprig of herbs tied with a red thread.
“Ah, my friend, I see you know your herbs. Those are valerian leaves. The root is here.” He lifted a small brownish grey piece of dried stem. Khepri made a small sniff, dropped the valerian, and moved her eyes to another plant.
It went on this way for some time. In the end, Khepri held three plants, a box of pungent tincture, and a potion bottle with a pearly grey liquid swirling around inside. Then the bargaining began.
“What will you give me for these?” asked the merchant. Khepri, smiling, did not reply.
She held up the items she wanted and raised her eyebrows. Finally, the shopkeeper spoke.
“Thirty?” he asked.
Khepri made a surprised sound, put down the items and turned away. She shook her head and took a step toward the next booth, which sold similar items.
“Wait,” the shopkeeper said.
Khepri stopped.
“Twenty,” he said.
Khepri’s face formed a deep frown and she half turned to the man.
“Five,” she stated, not looking at him. Her face began to turn toward the next booth.
“Eighteen,” the merchant countered.
This continued for several minutes, Khepri haggling and the shopkeeper alternately begging and gesticulating as he lauded the obvious wonderful quality of his medicines. Khepri seemed bored and disinterested, finally shrugged and sighed, and handed over the agreed-upon coins.
As we emerged from the apothecary tent and began walking down the lane again, I felt amazed at the marketplace.
Tupu led us to a small inn where we rented a large room for the night. We took turns bathing and washing our hair, and it felt wonderful to be clean again, if only for a day. I brushed out my hair, reveling in the feel of the comb drawing through the strands, now free of sand. I think I’d washed sand out of everything I’d owned. It took me a long time to rinse all of it out.
“I thought I’d never be free of sand,” I murmured to Kym as I worked at her hair with a pick.
“I know, me too. It was seriously stressing me out,” she smiled.
I rubbed lotion through her hair next.
“How well did Khepri do with that merchant? I couldn’t understand half of what was happening,” Caroline said next to us.
“Oh, she did very well,” Tupu said, smoothing ointment across her long arms. “She left with all she wanted, and had him down to three gold and nine silver. He grudgingly accepted her coins but I could tell he was not making out in the deal.” She smiled. “Khepri knows what she’s doing.”
I laughed. “I could tell she was making out.”
Kym giggled.
Stars were already visible in the east, while the market lights glowed faintly as the sun set. Within half an hour, the warm glow of the setting sun had disappeared, and the inky black sky was filled with what looked like a million stars.
“Such a clear night,” Christianne said beside me. “Such a beautiful night.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly in contentment. We could hear the faint sound coming from the marketplace below. Tupu was leaning over the wall and calling down to someone below.
“Oh, he’s going to come up here,” she said happily.
A few minutes later, a firespinner from the market below walked out on the roof, and bowed in front of Tupu.
“Spin us a spell?” she asked, handing him a silver coin. He nodded and began to prepare.
He hopped up to the wall and began to twirl four lengths of cord. At the end of each was a ball of burning resin-coated cloth. Each was a different color. Red, yellow, bright blue, and a dark indigo purple, he spun them faster and faster, and then began to make patterns in the air by spinning them in different directions. It was amazing and beautiful.
I felt my mind slowly relax, the stress of the last month melting out of it. Kym jumped up and down, clapping her hands in delight at the firespinner.
He was tall and thin, and his brown skin had been oiled to a beautiful bronze. He has tied his long hair in a ponytail, and his dark eyes flashed with concentration as he worked.
“Your parents would love this,” Caroline came to sit next to me.