by Der Nogard
A long-necked bird flew past and landed on the crooked branch of a dead tree. It was a carrion bird and it cawed at Dost, seeming to beckon him to leave this place.
“What sort of village is this?” Dost asked the first person that he met, a man dressed in black and wearing a twisted crown like all the others. “You little resemble the natives of the Banu Yunus.”
“This is the village of Alamgul, traveler,” said the man. “You may find what you seek here.”
Another man appeared and this man said: “Therte is nothing worth having anywhere else.”
“All I seek is water for this horse,” said Dost. “That is all. Whatever else you may have has no worth for me. If you will permit it, I will take what I will and then be on my way.”
“You venture to the town of the sultan,” the first man remarked. “The city will soon be ours, join us.”
Dost wanted to ask the men what they meant, but he felt that they must be drunk on wine or some drug from a desert plant. Their eyes had a craven look and their speech was slow and somehow unlike the speech of mankind. He wanted to ask too why they had joined this strange cult, but he pondered that whatever answer they gave would have little meaning to him.
“Come this way,” said the second man that Dost encountered.
The warrior followed this man and was led to a pond. The pond was circular, not like the long, snakelike ponds that characterized the natural water fissures of the oasis. This pond seemed manmade and Dost hesitated to drink from it. “This lake was fashioned long before we touched this land,” came an extraordinarily deep voice from behind Dost. Dost turned around and saw a towering man will a pallid, gaunt face. His cheek bones were high and his lips were full. His cheeks were sunken like lands without rain. Behind this towering man were the tents where Dost supposed the followers of this strange religion lived. The tents were high and pitched like the tents of the warlord Shaibani that Dost had lived among as the Azag-al-Walaq. But these were no warriors to be found here.
“I am a man at arms and I travel north,” said Dost. “I do not mean to disturb your folk, whoever they are. Indeed, I care to know as little as possible. I shall not be here long. I only wish some water for my mare, though I wonder if this is safe to drink.”
“This lake was here even before the Banu Yunus inhabited this land,” said the tall man. “We found this spot, one which the people here used to graze their cattle and to hunt. No one lived here before us. We required a site for our village so we formed a camp here.”
“It seems you have many villages already,” the warrior wanted to ask, but he remained silent.
The man went on: “You journey onwards, but perhaps you are already where you are meant to be. One as strong as you need not seek strength in anywhere or in anyone but himself.”
Dost’s shirt was tucked into a belt loop and the strength of his form would have been apparent to anyone who spied him. As his hair had been shorn short and he was beardless, the warrior would have had a deeply foreign appearance in this land where the men perfumed their hair in the oils of distant lands. They sported well-cared for beards.
“Who says I seek anything?” ask Dost.
“If you seek death then you shall find it.”
The man left the pond, his voluminous black robes trailing behind him. He repaired to the largest of the tents, which lie near to the lake. Dost watched as his mare began to drink from the pond’s waters. The warrior pet his new travel companion and then he left the horse there and followed the man into the tent.
The impressive man had sat upon a low, twisted couch. Hung all about the tent were tapestries depicting scenes of destruction and abjection, but they were not made in the highly-stylized way of the artisans of Maler and Marchande. These tapestries had an element of the abstract to them. The people depicted were thin and elongated, with faces turned down to the deep chasms of the earth. There limbs were long and inhuman. Their faces had looks of wailings, with their high cheekbones seeming to suggest that they were in a constant state of screaming.
“Life can be fashioned around us or we may shape it about ourselves,” said the man. “We have only to choose how we might live.”
The man’s eyes were of an indeterminate color, seeming to lie somewhere between gray, blue, and green. Dost said nothing, but sat beside him on the couch.
“You will allow your life to lay out a path for you rather than forge it into what you would have it be. You have lived this way since you were a child. You shall one day learn to regret it.”
Dost, suddenly angry, said: “You know nothing about me, wizard. I choose my own path. Revenge is what I seek, what I have always sought! No one set this course for me!”
“Wizard?” the man asked, and his laugh was so terrible that it was like the cry of a dragon.
“If you are not a wizard then I do not know what you are,” and Dost looked away from the man. “I do not know and I do not care.”
“If wizard is what you would call me for your tongue can think of no other way to describe a thing that baffles it then you can call me wizard.”
“Your words are all crooked like the strange people that follow you,” Dost remarked.
“They are only crooked as you do not understand them,” said the man. “If you find that your path is crooked, perhaps it is you that is crooked.”
The man wore a crown like the others, but the twisted branches formed two discrete horns and the wood was so like bone that Dost could not help but to stare.
“It was fate that led you to me, not your mare’s desire for a drink,” said the man. “You must not fight the hand of fate when it directs you. I would have you as my apprentice.”
“You are Alamgul,” the warrior remarked.
“Did you not wonder how you found this horse, that it seemed to come to you just as you needed it? You did not set your mind to seek for a horse, but the cosmos, that life-energy whose universal thought be carried on the wind of worms, the cosmos seemed to know that it was a black mare that was needed just then. No! It was I that sent you that horse.”
“Are you saying that you direct the will of the cosmos?” Dost asked.
“I am what I am,” said the man.
“What is it you desire, wizard?”
“Serve me,” said Alamgul. “Take training under me as my apprentice and you shall never know hunger, fear, nor absence of joy. Joy might be found anywhere,” and the man gave Dost a strange look. “You shall learn to change both future and past. Ah! That is what you want, is it not? To change the future? No, to change the past!”
Dost regarded the man with alarm, searching his face, his eyes, for the truth in his words. It was not possible to change the past, it could not be. He searched the man face for this truth he needed, but the man’s face was like a war-torn land. The only thing he found there was death. Dost rose and said: “You have nothing that I require. I shall go to Maler and I hope that I shall never see the sight of you again.”
Alamgul laughed as Dost left the tent. His laughter might still be heard as Dost left the settlement, nay, even as he approached the high outer wall of the city of Maler.
Ghazan returned to the city by one of its twelve gates. He still wore the strong armor that he had been given by Prince Ulugh. The remains of the holy lance Hulagu were in the satchel that he also had been given by the prince. Ghazan’s heart was heavy, for he knew that he was not welcome in this land. If the dragon Aisin’s words were true, and Ghazan doubted that they were, this land of Maler was not truly his home at all. Indeed, if the dragon were to be believed, Ghazan was not even of the race of the Banu Yunus, but the offspring of a people from a foreign land.
Ghazan immediately repaired to the house of the merchant. He did not think to go to his father with entreaties though it seemed like the logical thing to do. It seemed that Ghazan’s life as prince of this land was a chapter in a book that had suddenly been slammed shut. The prince did not believe that he would ever be able to go back to it again, this old lif
e of his. Even if his father did consent to taking him back into the palace, the thought that he may not be his father’s son would eat away at him until he was finally forced to leave the land again. The rich hangings and furnishings, the Emirs, Wazirs, Chamberlains, and Nabobs that had oppressed him before, these would be unbearable now with the knowledge he currently had. He wondered if his father knew. He wondered if he had always known.
So the prince went to the sea-born lady that he had left to slay Aisin. He was met at the door of the merchant’s house by the merchant himself.
“My lord,” said the merchant with a distant look. “Perhaps you might come to my chamber for a talk.”
The prince followed the merchant to the appointed place. They had a drink before sitting down by a window that overlooked a dragon.
“It is all right, Adeel,” said the prince. “I know already what you mean to say. We shall leave your house within the hour, my woman and I. Please forgive the inconvenience that I have placed you under. I did not understand what it was that I asked of you.”
“It is only that the spies and eunuchs of the lord sultan have been difficulties for me,” said the man. “They hang about the house, they hover around all my business operations, they make sudden inspections of my ships, preventing them from leaving port. They know that I have helped you and I shall never see the end of it. Why does your father despise you so, my prince?”
Ghazan looked at the man, but did not answer. He did not know what to tell him, He could not tell him anything of real import. So the prince told the merchant that he would pack whatever things that remained in his house and leave that very moment. He would take Xenia and they would find refuge somewhere else, perhaps in the great trading city of Damat where Ghazan might take ship for Vani. The queen of that island was always a friend of his family and he hoped that she might take pity on him and help him, even in spite of his presence circumstances.
Ghazan found the lady at the threshold of the zenanah. As soon as the door to the place was thrown open by a slave, the lady stood up from the courtyard pool around which she sat and ran to him. “My lord,” she said, stepping out of the zenanah and falling into his arms.
“Will you not brave life to enter the harem as you did in your father’s house?” the lady asked.
In spite of himself, Ghazan laughed and he did as he was bidden. “I am glad to see that you are well.”
“You must not be surprised,” said Xenia. “I felt a terrible sadness as the dragon died, but I instantly became well.”
“A terrible sadness?” asked Ghazan in disbelief. “I barely made it out alive. The dragon would have had dinner on my marrow if it was up to him. That blasted mare Khurshid-Begum was not much assistance either, though the horse did lead me to wide lands, I must admit. I suppose I shall miss her.”
“Then you found the holy lance Hulagu,” the lady remarked.
“Yes,” said Ghazan, “and I made friends in the lands of Canxir. Perhaps it is there that we should go. There are not too many places that would offer us safe haven.”
“What do you mean?” the lady asked. “You do not mean that we are to leave the town of Maler?”
“We must, Xenia. My father has harried this man that has helped us almost to death. He is not of a mind to aid either of us, besides…”
But Ghazan thought better of telling the lady what he had learned from the dragon.
“Xenia,” said the lady. “I no longer favor this name. I feel that it ill suits me.”
“Then we shall find you another one,” said the prince. “It is simple, Xenia. I mean, whatever it is that you would like me to call you. What did you mean that you felt sadness when the dragon died?”
“We are all connected somehow,” said Xenia. “Even things that you may regard as terrible are a form of life that has meaning in the grand picture. Even the wyms of the sea.”
“Even the wyms!” cried Ghazan. “Now I know you have lost your mind. Go and lay down again, maiden, and I shall return later.”
“Do not jest, my prince,” said the lady. “As you said, we must leave this land of your father or risk bringing harm to those who would help us. I know see the wisdom of your words. Go pack your things and I shall pack mine, and we will leave this place.”
The markets of Maler bristled with the activity of a haven of peace in the desert. Cheery heads peaked out of windows, avaricious merchants sold their goods in the open markets and bazaars, and curious travelers walked down this promenade or that. Dost could not help but reminded of his father as he traversed the streets sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, but he did not wish to be reminded of the man whose memory formed an important part of his thoughts. Resting his hand upon the narwhal ivory hilt of his kujala, Dost returned to the singularity of mind that had led him to be a great warlord of Cerkes lands, second only to Shaibani himself. His title, Azaq-al-Walaq, brokered fear in the hearts of men. It was a name that was known far and wide, across many lands of the Western continent. Dost hoped that this name would not be known here, or at the very least, that the face associated with the man would not be known.
He led his horse right up to the outer gate of the sultan’s palace. He told the guard there: “I am a noble traveler and I would have a word with the sultan.”
“And what man would be so bold as to go right to the sultan’s door and seek a word with him?”
After the guard asked this, he placed a hand on the hilt of his sword.
“I am Quli, spahbad of the Duke of Hristo,” Dost said. “This is a name that will be known to the sultan. Send my message to the Chief Wazir and he shall arrange for the sultan to meet with me.”
These words seemed to have the effect of an incantation for the man led Dost and his horse into the outer court of the palace where they found quarter for the proud black mare. Perhaps Alamgul was right. Perhaps man did have the power to shape the world around him. All Dost had to do was invent some lies to be led straightaway into the innards of the sultan’s palace. And this was where Dost was led. He went first into the inner courtyard and then the palace itself: first into the lower hall, ringed with guards. This hall led to the grand staircase, which then led up to the great throne hall of the sultan.
As Dost was led into the palace, a man offered to take his weapons from him. Dost gave the man his two azags, blessed in the blood of wyms, the great sea worms, but he did not give him the kujala that lie hidden between his shirt and the impressive brigandine that he wore. Indeed, the eunuch who greeted Dost at the threshold of the palace seemed impressed by the warrior’s attire. Dost wondered if he perhaps had been foolish to array himself as grandly as he did, in a brigandine with bearings of gold. It was the uniform of a great lord and not the functionary that he claimed to be. But there was no time to worry over this now.
Dost was led up the stairs to the main story of the palace where the great throne hall lie. As Dost had been here before, he knew that to the north of this stair was the long hall of gilded wood that led to the zenanah. To the east was the hall of tapestries that led to the sultan’s private quarters, and to the south was the great throne hall itself; this overlooked an artificial lake that had been constructed between the sultan’s palace and the wall of the town. A narrow street lay between the sultan’s palace and this lake. Technically within the palace quarter, this street had an alley of merchants who sold their wares directly to the royals, emirs, wazirs, and eunuchs that formed part of the sultan’s establishment.
Dost was led south to the great throne hall. After passing the antechamber, lined with the skin of the sabretooth beast, Dost was led into the throne hall itself. As usual, the hall with its walls of tiles, tapestries and gold, and its ceiling of chandeliers: this hall was filled with the nobles and functionaries that comprised the sultan’s court. Though the life of a sultan must be grand, it seemed this ruler was never allowed a moment to himself. Dost wondered if this reality must twist the mind of a sultan into someone who was always harried and thus become wanton, cruel,
and narcissistic. This was a thought that the warrior, bent on his mission, to assassinate the sultan, quickly ushered from his mind.
Dost thought that he mind find the sultan in the great throne hall, but he scanned all the faces and found no sight of the man. No one sat upon the elephantine throne, and among the well-fed bodies of the coaches and divans of dragonwood, none of these seemed to have the round, mustached face of the sultan, a face both cheerful and sinister.
Dost was surprised to find that the great throne hall teemed with women. Certainly most were slave girls who were brought to entertain the guests of the sultan’s court, but there seemed also to be noble ladies. The warrior soon found, by listening to the speech of the groups that he passed as he traversed the hall, that most were guests of the sultan from foreign lands. As such, they would not be expected to adhere to the customs of the Banu Yunus, that is, to keep the women clustered in the zenanah, away from the eyes of men who might find themselves unable to resist the lure of those veiled eyes. The women of the throne hall were veiled, as even if they were free to roam they must at least adhere to this fundamental custom of the residents of this land.
One such woman, a princess of a foreign land, was heard to say: “It is spoken in town that the prince Ghazan has returned to this city. He has taken his bride and repaired to a valley halfway between Maler and Marchande. Do you think that he plans to seek refuge among the sultan’s enemies?”
“No,” said another woman, “He merely waits long enough for the sultan to change his mind. The man is old and has no other sons. He must eventually come to his senses and take Ghazan back into the palace.”
“I have heard that Ghazan did not marry the girl at all,” said the first woman. “He merely took her to a hunting fete in the private woods outside the city. If this is true, the sultan must soon come to his senses or find himself without an heir, needlessly.”
Already weary of this gossip, Ghazan repaired to the small sitting room behind the throne hall where he was met by a eunuch a few minutes later. This man said that the Chief Wazir wished to see him first, before he met with the lord sultan. Dost was taken into another chamber to meet the Chief Wazir who was glad and impressed that a general of the Duke of Hristo had come to meet with the sultan. The sultan was in need of allies as he was planning a war with his cousin, the sultan of Marchande. Though the Chief Wazir did not indicate this directly, it was implicit in the words. Especially to someone like Dost who was used to dealing with people who did not always say what they mean. For the Chief Wazir, the arrival of a foreign leader was a boon that seemed almost too good to be true.