The Steel Seraglio

by Mike Carey

  Unobserved now, the tiny pilgrim group plodded on its way, already lost in the shadows. There was no need to stop with darkness: the way to the djinni is not to be found by landmarks. They would walk straight ahead until their legs tired, then next day set off again with the rising sun behind them.

  They did not speak, maybe from a sense of tradition, or fear, or simply from the pressure of the darkness all around them, which seemed to muffle sound. None of them heard the light tread of the one who followed behind.

  On the first day the mountains accompanied them as a dark line to the north. Early on the second day they were still visible as a fading shadow over their shoulders. After that there was nothing but level sand and empty sky. The sun set in their faces, and the after-images flashed before their eyes as darkness gathered around them.

  Late on the third day a shadow appeared ahead of them, growing as they approached it to become a line of slender rocks.

  “Is this the place?” Gursoon said to Rem. The girl stared ahead wordlessly, seeming not to hear.

  “It had better be,” said Imtisar. “We can’t go on for another day.”

  “It’s too soon to tell,” Issi said. “Land as flat as this, it could be leagues away.”

  But the rocks drew steadily closer, resolving themselves into four narrow spars and a single stub.

  “This is the place,” said Zuleika. Beside her, Rem was shivering.

  They had talked about what they would say to the djinni. They had agreed that Zuleika would speak of their plans, and ask for guidance and strategy. Imtisar would ask about the dangers they would face, and test her belief that the venture was doomed to fail. But as they passed the Hill of the Hand and entered the valley, all thoughts fell away.

  The sun hung low and red between spikes of stone on each side, making it impossible to see what lay ahead. Rem stumbled and came to a halt, staring into the sun as if blind. Zuleika took hold of her arm to draw her forward, then started. The girl was silently crying, and her tears were black. Her eyes welled as if with ink. Dark streaks barred her face and dripped onto her clothes and hands. Gursoon, ahead of the group, turned to urge them on, and exclaimed in horror. But there was no time to delay. The old woman turned back and took Rem’s other arm. The girl stood passively for a moment, then seemed to pull away from them.

  “Not this!” she whispered.

  “You could wait here . . .” Gursoon began. But Rem was reaching for the dagger in Zuleika’s belt. Suppliants to the djinni do not go armed.

  Zuleika nodded and loosed the dagger. After a moment’s thought she drew a smaller knife from her shoe, and laid the two blades together on the path. Then they went on together, supporting Rem between them and signalling to the two behind to keep close.

  After a few more steps the spires of rock on each side began to curve down and inwards, the tips pointing towards them. A little farther, and the stones gave way to a wall of rock, at its heart a jagged black hole. The red light was all about them now, but the sun was nowhere.

  In its place were the djinni.

  Gursoon did not know them at first. There were bulges in the stone, outcrops that could perhaps, from a certain angle, be taken for carved figures. Yes: statues of men and women, or rearing beasts, crude and stylised and melting into each other at the edges. Silently and all together, the figures stepped away from the wall, towards her. And opened their eyes, all dark as the smoke of a forge, and with the same heat behind them.

  Gursoon recoiled, and found that she could not move. She turned to Zuleika, but her companion had vanished. Even Rem, who had been leaning on her arm, must have loosed it without her noticing. She was alone with the djinni.

  They waited. She had meant to say nothing, to leave it all to the taciturn Zuleika, who would not be tempted to speak a word off the purpose. But Zuleika was gone, and the figures before her demanded acknowledgement.

  Gursoon’s skin crawled. She spoke the only words she could find, and they hung in front of her like breath in cold air.

  “We want no gifts, no changes. We only ask for your words. If you deny us those, we have no request to make.”

  There was a movement in the figures before her, a ripple. The stone faces had no mouths; they answered in voices she felt rather than heard.

  But you must have gifts, if you are to succeed.

  Gursoon choked down panic. Better to have nothing than too much, she told herself. “We’re not asking you for gifts,” she repeated.

  Her voice wavered in the air before her. The answer came before it faded.

  Then how else are you to get them?

  The djinni appeared as soon as Zuleika reached the rock wall. They were armed and armoured, as she had half-expected: men and women, by their bodies, all helmeted and in ceaseless motion. By their absence of wounds they must be training, not fighting, yet the slashes and blows she saw were as furious as any she had known in battle. They lunged and feinted, turning around and against each other with the grace of dancers. And even as they fought, each helmeted head turned immovably in her direction.

  Zuleika ignored the racing of her heart and spoke loudly the words she had prepared.

  “Great djinni. We are women. We plan to take the city of Bessa for ourselves, by guile and by arms. I want to know if we can succeed, and how best to achieve it.”

  An urge came over her to beg for strength, for wisdom or for weapons that might outweigh Hakkim’s forces. She bit it down and said nothing more.

  The whirling combat did not falter, nor did their attention on her. Zuleika stood and bore it. At length, a cry came from all of them at once, like a battle shout.

  What you need, you must take from each other!

  It was only reasonable, of course, that the djinni should take the form of great caliphs and queens—they emerged in procession out of the dark hole, and the splendour of their jewels, their clothes, lit up the dry and barren place like little fires.

  But something about them was not right. The slender lady with the emeralds: her face was beautiful, but the skin had an odd shimmer, as if clad in scales. The man with the golden beard smiled to reveal a suspicion of tusks, or fangs. And the lord in the velvet robe, so magnificently tall: was that a tail flicking beneath the purple hem?

  They fixed their royal gazes on Imtisar and on her alone. And at once all the fine words she had rehearsed flew out of her head, and she was left barely able to catch a breath. But she had to say something.

  “What do we do?” she stammered. They looked down at her gravely, not answering. And for an instant she saw that flick of a tail again; the horns not quite concealed by a jewelled turban; the queen stroking the edge of her robe with a taloned claw. They were mocking her, she thought, with a flash of anger, and this time the words came without thought.

  “Is that it? Must we follow this lunatic plan? All I want is our safety. For all of us. To live free of fear and poverty. Is that too much to ask?”

  They smiled, then. The faces were more than ever those of boar, lion and snake, but the same smile was on every one. The tall man with the tail spoke for all.

  There is no safety, he told her. You may have freedom, if you choose it. But you must give something, and take something in return.

  Issi could never remember later how the djinni came to him, nor quite what they looked like, nor how they sounded. A gust of sand blew up around him as he entered the valley, stinging his face so that he had to bend his head and squint at the path. Imtisar, just ahead of him, seemed not to notice. But the wind rose. In a moment he was surrounded by a dust storm, cutting out sight and sound.

  Issi had encountered enough desert storms to know what to do; he threw his cloak over his head and stood still, only throwing out an arm to brace himself against the rock wall. But the wall was not there: all his groping failed to discover it; and at the same moment the noise of the storm vanished.
He was blind and deaf, with no point of contact to the world.

  In a sudden panic he threw off the cloak. The storm still whirled all around, but no stinging grains hit him. The noise had receded to a distant buzzing. There was nothing else to hear; nothing to see. But as he peered through the dust cloud for any sign of his companions, he could make out shapes. They might have been angels: winged giants, so far off he could barely see them through the storm. In another moment they seemed as small as insects, buzzing almost around his head. They are the djinni, he thought.

  There seemed no way he could make them hear him, but he had to know the answer. He cupped his hand and shouted through the churning motes. His voice came back to him as less than a whisper.

  “My wife and sons: are they well? Will I see them again?”

  And miraculously, an answer came, buzzing in his ears with the storm:

  They are alive, and remember you.

  “Please,” Issi begged the insect voices. “How can I get back to them?”

  This time his own voice sounded so faint he thought the djinni would not hear. But their reply came stronger than before.

  Make exchange with the boy behind you.

  The storm stopped as suddenly as if it had never been. Crouched behind him, wide-eyed and trembling, was Jamal.

  It had not been a whim, to follow them. When it became clear that he was not to be included in the party, he had already filled the largest water-skin he could find and hidden it with a blanket under rocks at the western edge of the camp. He had taken a bag for food, too, but had not been able to fill it: just the morning’s bread, and a double handful of dried fruit hurriedly snatched from the stores, for which he risked humiliating punishment if caught. There was no time to get more. He watched them leave just before sunset and waited for his opportunity. When everyone around him was busy with Farhat’s chores, it was easy enough to slip into the darkness.

  For almost as long as he could remember Jamal had longed to be older, had fretted about his small size and lack of strength, so that they all ignored him and treated him as a child. But now, moving unseen behind the chosen five, matching their footsteps with his own, keeping just within earshot, he revelled in his own lightness and speed. When they finally stopped to sleep he moved a little further away and dug himself a hollow in the warm sand, feeling, as he wrapped himself in his blanket, that he could have gone on for much longer.

  He woke chilled and stiff in the darkness to the sound of their voices, and scrambled to his feet: they were moving on already. He trudged after them as the sun rose at their backs. When the sun reached its height he regretted that he had not brought a scarf for his head, or any kind of tent. The adults, his quarry, made a shelter of three of Issi’s light wood poles and a thin cloth to hide from the worst hour of the heat. Jamal had to huddle beneath his heavy blanket, holding it away from his face with his knees and trying not to move.

  Many times during the next two days he thought about calling out; running to Zuleika and the others and announcing that he was joining them. They had come too far already to turn back, and too far to send him back alone. But something always prevented him: pride, perhaps. At other times he wondered why no one had simply turned around and seen him. But not one of the five looked back, or if they did it was in blindness. All their attention was fixed on what lay ahead; Jamal’s too.

  By noon on the third day his water was gone. It came to him that he might die now if he did not call to the five ahead, but he kept on in silence, and they did not turn. As the day wore on he realised he had no more voice to call.

  Towards evening he passed a rock that he thought must be the Hill of the Hand. In some of the tales, pilgrims had found water there, and he thought he could hear it trickling. But he had fallen too far behind and the sun was nearly down: there was no time to waste in searching. Afterwards, he thought, and went on into the ravine.

  He saw his father there, fighting with Hakkim Mehdad. Just past the stone spikes at the entrance they stood, locked together and swaying, their hands around each other’s throats. The sultan was dressed as Jamal had last seen him, in his silk chamber-robe: his bald head gleamed beneath the setting sun. Hakkim Mehdad was all in black, his head swathed in a black scarf. Jamal had never seen the man’s face; all that was visible of him now was his eyes, which glowed like those of a wolf at night.

  His father turned his head and nodded to Jamal, then went back to throttling his enemy. With a cry that caught in his throat, Jamal ran to help him.

  His way was blocked. Where his father had been there was now an army: countless stern-faced men, their spears all pointing at his heart. They did not attack, but stood waiting for him to speak. So this was the moment; but Jamal had no voice. Nevertheless, he made his demands, shaped with his lips and hurled towards them with all the breath he had, though his throat made no sound but a hoarse gasp.

  “I want my kingdom back. And I want to avenge my mother and my father. Help me take back my rightful place!”

  They heard him. At least, they seemed to answer. A voice came to him; he could not tell if it was one or many.

  Some of your desires you will gain, it told him. But you must offer something. Now.

  The last word was like a thunderclap. It wiped out the army, the spears and banners, like mist in the sun. Jamal was kneeling on bare sand, looking at bare rock. And beside him, gazing down with horror and amazement, was Issi.

  NOW, the djinni said, heavy as a great book closing, and vanished. The six gazed at each other in the empty ravine, in the last light.

  “Jamal!” Gursoon exclaimed. How . . . ?”

  “Not now,” Zuleika cut in. “What did you hear? What did they tell you?”

  “That we need gifts . . .” Gursoon’s voice was doubtful.

  “They told me I must give something,” Imtisar said. “And take something.”

  “Make exchange . . .” Issi said. “But what does it mean?

  “It means the gifts come from us.”

  It was Rem who spoke. She had been sitting hunched, pressing herself against the rock wall furthest from the cave, and her voice was muffled. “I think . . . we have to give gifts to each other. Now, before the sun sets.”

  “What gifts?” Zuleika seemed almost indignant. “We have nothing here!”

  “Maybe when we get back . . .” Gursoon began.

  “No!” Rem was suddenly on her feet, and shouting with desperate urgency. They turned to her in amazement. Her face was paper-white, the black tears marking it like bars.

  “No. It has to be now. That’s how they work . . . Whatever you have, whatever you have with you, give it to someone. I don’t know why. But we must do it, before it gets dark.” She felt inside her tunic, pulled out a reed pen and pressed it into Zuleika’s hands. “Like this. Here. This is for you.”

  Gursoon nodded, and pulled a ring from her finger, holding it out to Imtisar. The other woman, after some hesitation, reached up to take a comb from her hair. But as she took Gursoon’s ring she started and tried to give it back.

  “I can’t take this! This is Bokhari’s ruby. It’s worth a fortune! Give me something less . . . that little silver ring you have . . .”

  “This is what I’m giving you,” Gursoon said firmly. Take it, Imtisar, with my blessing.” She turned away. Imtisar gazed at the ring with appalled delight.

  Issi had been patting down his clothes, finding nothing detachable. At length, with visible reluctance, he took something on a string from around his neck.

  “It’s the key to the sultan’s stable yard,” he said to Jamal. “Just don’t lose it.” Jamal had nothing to hand him in return but an empty water-skin, which Issi took a little sourly.

  Rem turned to Zuleika, who had not moved since she had accepted the little pen. It still lay in her hand, narrower than her smallest finger. She looked down at it as if unce
rtain what to do with it.

  “I have nothing to give you,” she said. “There were only my knives, and I left them on the ground, back there. Shall I go now and get them?”

  “No!” Rem was adamant. “It must be here and now.”

  They held each other’s gaze for several heartbeats Then Rem looked down at the pen in the other woman’s hand.

  “The lessons I gave you,” she said. “Do you remember them?

  Zuleika made a movement of irritation, suppressed it, nodded.

  “Then give me a word.”

  Rem blinked fiercely, and the black tears welled again. She reached to take the pen from Zuleika’s hand, dabbed the point into the black stream beneath one eye, and returned it. She held out her right arm, turning it to expose the white skin below the elbow.

  “Just here. Write a token for me.”

  It seemed to take them a long time. Zuleika, so sure and graceful with all the tools and motions of her chosen trade, was clumsy with the little slip of wood, handling it as if she were afraid of causing damage. She wrote her name in large, spiky script, separating each letter. The last one ended in a round blot. They stood together, Zuleika still holding Rem’s arm, and watched the word dry.

  “Is it enough?” Zuleika asked at length.

  Rem nodded, still gazing down at her arm with its new mark.

  “So what do we do now?” Zuleika said.

  Rem looked up. Her face was still white, but the black tears no longer welled from her eyes. For the first time in days, she smiled.

  “It’s done,” she said. “Now we can go home.”