by Nancy Holder
“No matter.” He took her hand. “You may tell me the ingredients.”
As her master slumbered, she unfastened one hook, and all of her robes fell to the ground, revealing her form by the light of brass lanterns.
“Later,” she whispered huskily.
And he had her, this wild tiger of a woman, in whom all the passions of Paradise dervished and simmered. Skilled lover that he was, he made her sigh and cry and hold him, weeping his name, cherishing his presence. The delight he took in her arms was unbelievable. Never, ever in his life, had he been pleasured as with Ceceli.
The stars glittered through the wooden window shades as he lay drained and exhausted beside her in his great bed. His eyes were half-open, and he barely registered her movements as she climbed down from the bed and walked to the window. She opened the shade and peered out across the desert.
“Where I come from, I was a queen,” she said to him, her gaze steady on the stars. “A priestess.”
“How did you come to our lands?” he asked her.
“As a captive. A prisoner of war.” Her voice was low, angry. “I was gotten rid of.”
A political coup, he thought. “It is just as well,” he told her, admiring the length of her warm brown back, her long black hair cascading over her shoulders and swaying over the center of her back. “Women should not be compelled to govern. It’s most unfair to put that kind of burden on them; they are not created for such things.”
He looked at her exquisite form, then cast an eye at the stars. Puzzled, he stared at their configuration; he knew the constellations as he knew his own name.
These stars are not in their right places, he thought fuzzily, as they drifted through the still, warm night. One by one, they took up new positions, until they were almost an angled line descending toward a place on the horizon. There is something quite amiss with the universe.
“The stars . . . ” He was very, very tired. “They’re moving.”
“They always move,” she said brusquely.
“They’re wrong.”
As he dozed off, he heard her laugh deep in her throat. He was certain that he heard her say, “You are a fool.”
But in the morning, when he questioned her, she told him sweetly that she, too, had gazed at the stars, and found nothing out of place with them. She insisted he must have dreamed the entire episode. Also, that she had spoken at all, she must have said, “We must find the Pool.”
In the morning, ibn Rashad checked on his patient, who seemed somewhat improved. He was surprised; he had half-expected the man to be dead. He was more interested than ever in learning what Ceceli had given him.
She shrugged. “Herbs that grow in the palace gardens,” she said simply. “My cook selects them and grinds them into powder.”
She handed him a small glass box filled with what appeared to be common sand. He was bewildered and intrigued. But this interesting oddity would have to wait until his patient had been either restored or lay dead.
“He is well enough to travel,” Ceceli decreed. “We should leave today.”
If no other reason than to remind her that he was the physician, not she, ibn Rashad snapped, “He is not. A journey would kill him. He needs to recuperate from his journey here.”
That night, Ceceli was a wanton, a veritable harlot, and as ibn Rashad lay gasping on his back, she slipped from the bed and crouched beside a beautifully carved wooden box he had not noticed before. He had no idea how it had come to be in his bedroom.
He sat up, watching her. She smiled and took off the lid with great ceremony. Then she reached in, first with one hand, then the other, and held up a one-bladed axe.
It was clearly ceremonial, and not made for actual combat: the handle was exquisitely wrought, showing the head of a demon. Ibn Rashad was taken aback; it resembled his demonic gaming partner Hilmesh to great degree. He looked at Ceceli to see if she was aware of that fact, but her smile remained the same as before.
From the opened windows, starlight hit the axe and sent vivid, glowing rainbows across the whitewashed walls of the bedroom. They swirled and eddied, and he knew magick emanated from the weapon. As he observed the rainbows, one transformed into the image of fire, flickering in space high above his head; a second whirled and dervished—fierce winds; a third showed him rain, a most uncommon sight. Then the fourth gathered up his bed and lifted it from the carpeted floor; it shook the massive bed violently, until ibn Rashad was forced to shout, “Stop it!”
At once, she put the axe away.
She said to him, “There are four of these axes, Your Honor. They came from the Pool.”
Though the bed had stopped shaking, he still trembled. But he would be loathe to let a woman see him behaving in a cowardly way, so he cleared his throat and said, “Let me see the other three.”
She looked very apologetic. “I only have the one.”
“How did you come by it?” he demanded.
“It was a gift.” She looked at him without guile, but something in her expression truly frightened him. “The one who gave it to me, told me of the other three. But he could not locate them. He did not know where they were.”
It was her husband, he thought. After he had done many things for her, proven his love, she killed him.
He had no idea how he knew such a thing, but the images came cleanly and vividly to him. He saw her conjuring, saw her pouring over forbidden texts of the Black Arts; saw her husband in a trance, performing unspeakable acts at her command. Their exquisite home was guarded by men she had killed, then made to rise as mindless slaves. She had made the stars move; she had killed every woman in his harem with a wave of her hand.
Her homeland was an island, and there she had raised the dead and made them walk; her reign had been one of terror and debauchery. They had attacked her encampment as she slept, killing all her followers; and gagged her, and bound her, and thrust her into a tiny boat, sending it far out to sea.
But she had survived. Slavers had seen her boat, taken her aboard. In her weakened condition, she was no match for them, for their lusts, and their cruelties.
Then and there, she had vowed never to submit to any person, man or woman, again. On the entire race of mankind, she would take her revenge.
Now she said to ibn Rashad, in a voice low with menace, “I’m letting you see what I have done, and who I am. The veils are down, my lord, and this is what you’ve let into your life. You will take us to the Pool, or I will kill you.”
“W—why do you need me?” he asked.
She sneered at him. “Now your voice is filled with humility as you address me, a mere woman. You don’t need to know why I need you. You have only to obey, or die.”
* * *
Their caravan left the next morning. She was properly veiled and rode in a closed palanquin. It must have been like an oven inside. Taran the landowner seemed more improved, and when ibn Rashad made mention of it near the palanquin, she chuckled with great humor.
She’s been poisoning him, he guessed, riding glumly along on his camel. She arranged everything in order to come back to me. But why?
When she came veiled to his tent that night, she murmured to him, as she climbed onto the satin pillows and took the hookah from his mouth, “You were so proud and boastful before. Why this unnatural cowardice? Do you not see that you are a wise and mighty magick-user? I saw you conjure the demon, and I was afraid. But after my marriage, my husband confided certain magicks to me. He taught me all he knew.”
Her laugh was evil. “I knew a few other things as well, from my old life, before I was driven away. I told you I was a queen, and I was. The queen of the walking dead.” She stretched languorously on his pillows, smoking his pipe, enjoying his mixture of terror and fascination as he listened to her. “How my enemies feared me.”
“But you took my things, informed on me . . .” he reminded her.
“I took your things in order to investigate your magick use,” she told him. “I myself wished to conjure Hilmesh. But Taran fou
nd everything, and so to save my skin, I pretended that I had planned to tell him of your conjuring.”
“And did you?” he asked.
“Did I . . . ?”
“Conjure Hilmesh?”
She stretched languorously. “Oh, yes. Hilmesh was mine.”
He noted the use of the past tense, and fell silent. He was terrified of her.
Five long days and nights they dragged through the desert. On the sixth night, something changed in the air. Ibn Rashad was certain he heard a sort of humming sound, very like that made by blind, tongueless eunuchs chorusing a lullaby for Great Suleiman’s many baby sons. The night was swollen, the moon round and glowing with promise.
“Look,” Ceceli whispered, taking ibn Rashad’s hand.
Together, without bodyguards or witnesses, they walked a short distance from their encampment, night shrouding them. The moonlight shifted accommodatingly with their footsteps, illuminating the sand.
Palm trees drooped over a black, glassy surface, and Ceceli caught her breath. She gave his hand a squeeze and picked up her pace. He had trouble keeping up with her, but he was afraid to fall behind.
The sand directly in front of them began to shift and move. Ibn Rashad jumped back as something beneath the surface began to wriggle violently, sand running down either side of what looked like long tubes of gray. His mind went back to the violent shaking of his bed as the ground shuddered and shook.
As he moved away, the heads of enormous cobras popped through the surface, one by one by one, gazing at the two of them. Rising from a base of coils, they stood at least as tall as ibn Rashad himself. Their eyes glowed a malevolent crimson, and their tongues flickered menacingly. Their hoods were broad and enormous.
Laughing beneath her breath, Ceceli gave ibn Rashad a little push forward. He stifled a cry in his throat, and she laughed like a brazen whore.
“Don’t you have magick to protect you, great physician?” she asked.
His eyes were riveted on the serpents. There were at least twenty of them. He had treated many patients for cobra bite. Not one of them had survived.
And their deaths were terrible to behold.
Then, as he watched, she uttered words and moved her hands in circles. The glowing eyes of the creatures grew brighter, yet their bobbing slowed. Their tongues stopped flickering. They were not precisely motionless, but they were clearly under her thrall.
“Step forward,” she commanded him.
He remained where he was. She glared at him and pointed her fingers at him. “Step forward,” she said again, her voice dripping with menace.
Sweating with fear, he shuffled one foot toward the serpents. Their eyes shifted and gleamed.
“Good. Another step.”
He ran through the maze of gently swaying monsters; her delighted laughter ran over the cold desert as he stumbled, fell, ran on, zigzagging past all the snakes. He was gasping, panting with fear; and he was so frightened he was afraid his heart would give out.
He didn’t know how he succeeded in reaching the other side of their territory; his run was blind, and his only thought, as he passed each one, was to pass the next.
Now he was standing beside an oasis pool, which was surrounded by what looked to be small round stones, and Ceceli was beside him, imperious and serene.
“You see what it is like to be at someone’s mercy,” she said to him. “Can you imagine how I felt when you tried to violate me?”
“But . . . but I’m a man,” he replied. He was honestly perplexed. “I am created to rule over you.”
Her mouth drew in a small line. She was exotic, foreign, and beautiful. Even now, he could barely keep from approaching her and attempting to take her into his arms.
“And so, you remain unchanged from everything that has happened to you, my lord cobra,” she said. “What a terrible pity.” She shrugged. “No matter. We are here now.”
“I-I have no understanding of why you came to me,” he said. “Why didn’t you simply persuade Taran to caravan to this place?”
She moved her shoulders. “Some of life must remain a mystery, perhaps, so that we never tire of living.” Then she indicated the pool. “This is the place,” she said. “We are here.”
He could sense her excitement, and turned his attention, as she had, to the waters.
The moon shifted above them, casting sickly yellow beams over the smooth stones surrounding the pool. Three or four deep, they circled the pool, which was at least ten times as long as he.
The hair on the back of his head rose and his face prickled. They were not stones. They were skulls—of animals, and birds, and of human beings.
“Sacrifices,” she told him. “There is a tribe nearby—there was a tribe nearby—which worshipped this place. They gave this pool what it wants. Now it hungers for more.”
She looked at him, and he tried to keep his fear from overruling his reason. Had she brought him here to kill him?
She laughed again. “Taran,” she said. “I will give them Taran.”
“B—but his promise upon a cure. His lands,” he blurted.
“I will make it all come to me upon his death. And I will give you everything he had.” She came up to him, rubbing herself against him, inflaming him. “Everything. Only swear your loyalty to me.”
What choice did he have? And so he did; and the next hours were spent in a nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken: at her signal, the cobras slithered to the encampment and sentenced the caravan riders to agonizing, protracted deaths. Only Taran was spared, and Ceceli compelled ibn Rashad to tie him up like an animal for slaughter and drag him toward the pool.
Ibn Rashad stood in a stupor as Ceceli prepared for a ritual. From the tent she had shared with Taran, she brought the box which contained the magickal axe; also, many vials of potions and herbs, and oil lamps. All this she carried as if they weighed very little.
She set them down at the pool’s edge. Ibn Rashad gazed at the water as she knelt and began to perform a long, complicated incantation. As with the stones that were not stones but skulls, eventually he realized that the water was not water, but something very thick, like mud. It reeked, and as the woman’s voice rose and fell, the pool gave off an even more revolting stench. Then the surface moved, very slightly, and ibn Rashad tried to tell her that something was inside it.
But she knows that, he thought. She is praying to it even as I stand here, inert and helpless.
The night wore on. He was forced to stand beside her, though he swayed with fatigue. She held him captive with strong magicks, forced him to watch as the thing in the pool expanded, then contracted, like the side of a great, slumbering beast. The air above it thickened and swirled, becoming after a time, a great, white mist such as he had never seen. It was as though phantoms moved inside it as it churned and roiled.
At one point, he thought he heard a sharp cry, but then the sound faded in his ears. He didn’t know if he was asleep or dreaming.
At the blackest hour of the night she said to him, “It is time.”
He knew exactly what she wanted him to do, and he couldn’t stop himself from doing it. He turned to the rasping landowner, who was more dead than alive, and lifted him in his arms. The man’s eyes rolled and his face was very hot.
He won’t live much longer anyway, he told himself, as he carried him to the edge of the pool.
“Throw him in.” Her voice was hard and eager, and ibn Rashad felt a terrible wave of guilt and despair. Yes, he had conjured; and yes, he had been proud. But he had never been evil. Allah would never forgive his murder of another man.
“Spare him,” he blurted, fighting against his enchantment.
She gaped at him. He could feel his will returning to himself. Somehow, the Lord of All had allowed him to break her hold over him.
“Spare him,” he commanded her.
“We will gain more power than you can imagine,” she said. “I have prepared his body for months for this moment. The fools who sacrificed their o
wn were primitives. Savages. Taran is cultivated. And he carries within himself a wonderful demon, who is my servant in all things. Hilmesh.”
He gaped at her. “The demon is the thing that is killing him.”
“And you thought he had the consuming disease.” Her voice dripped with contempt.
“The creature will absorb Hilmesh, and he will bind its power to me. And then you and I will explore the depths of the unknown.”
Her tone was tantalizing, but he could tell that she was frightened. He felt a sense of triumph as he crossed his arms over his chest and concentrated all his energies on defying her.
“You will obey me,” she insisted. Her voice shook with rage. “You will obey me, or you will die.”
Steadfast, he glared at her. She said words in a strange language, but he refused to be intimidated. The smell and the fog thickened and grew, and began to envelop him. He tried to hold his breath, but the mist came inside him with his breath.
There was a longing; there was a starvation. There was lack of focus; there was promise. Ibn Rashad found himself picturing an angry child who has been denied a favorite toy—the frustration, the sense of entitlement, the rage. The overriding emotion of need.
It wanted him.
It wanted him.
Offered an alternative, the creature in the pit preferred him, ibn Rashad, to a demon encased inside a dying man.
Alerted, he exhaled as hard as he could, trying to cleanse his body of the mist. He staggered left, then right; he was shrouded in the whiteness, and could no longer see which way he was going.
Then she shouted, “You fool!” and he fell.
Into the thickness, into the foul paste; it dragged him in and then it cradled him, and rolled over him. It completely enveloped him, even over his face. The pain was tremendous; it was unspeakable.
It is killing me, he thought.
As he suffered in agony, stars grew brilliant, and close; he saw them as eyes in the dark face of the universe; the sun was an immense heartbeat. The moon glistened, a tear of victory. Islands shook; huge mountains exploded, shooting boiling rocks into the air. The wind blew away every sand in every desert; fires raged throughout all the cities.