Samarkand the Omnibus: Books 1-2

by Graham Diamond

This night had been a quiet one for Castus. Kept minimally occupied by a few easy-to-handle requests, he’d spent most of the evening sequestered within the small rooms of his apartment, well fed on his favorite dishes, the cuisine supplied by the best palace cooks. Sucking on his water pipe, dreamily watching the smoke rise in tiny circles to the ceiling, he sipped his favorite mellowed fruit of the grape.

  While reclining and belching, he called the single word “enter” after a low rap fell across his door. Annoyed at the interruption, he sat back up, tube of the pipe held in one hand, a brass goblet half-drained in the other.

  The woman who stepped lithely inside was small, insecure as she briefly scanned the personal quarters she had visited only once before. Meekly she came closer, head lowered, hands clasped behind. Then she waited.

  Castus blew air from his puffy cheeks, irritated. “Speak, girl,” he demanded.

  A small, rounded, elfin face lifted and met his fogged eyes. Draped in a green robe of quality fabric, her dark hair braided and pinned in circles atop her head, she seemed more child than woman. Her skin was fair, unblemished, except for a tiny mole tucked into the curve of her neck. She wore a set of gilden earrings, inlaid with sapphires that gaily reflected the flame of his lamp. “Your tub, my lord,” she mumbled. “Have you forgotten?”

  Castus looked at her with favor, remembering he’d always taken a liking to this one. She seemed so lost among the others, so fragile, so out of place for a whore. A hard look, though, had begun to replace the girlish features, a sad acceptance had crept into her eyes. She was resigned to her fate.

  Castus blew his nose into a silk handkerchief, pulled a distasteful face. He rose from his cushions. “Yes, yes,” he grumbled sleepily.

  Modesty caused the whore to turn away as he disrobed, flinging his toga across the back of a well-worn settee that once had belonged to a high palace official. Then, naked save for his sandals, he brushed past the girl, buttocks quivering like mounds of gelatin.

  The prostitute quickly picked up the robe, following behind. Castus turned left at the end of the short, dimly lit corridor, walked toward the baths. From beyond the latticed screens and walls he could hear idle chatter and muffled laughter coming from the harem pool.

  Ah, but if I were yet a full man, he wheezed wistfully, picturing all that supple flesh swimming carelessly in the pool, lounging with bare breasts in the luxuriant halls set aside for them. A single night of pleasure was all he would have asked. Of course, at its conclusion the Khan would have demanded his head; still, the price, to a man bereft of testicles, would have been worth it.

  His personal tub, sunken beneath a floor of marble, had been scented and heated to the exact temperature he enjoyed. He dipped one fat-laden foot in first, glanced behind to make certain the girl was there waiting with robe and towel in hand. She was. Castus slipped into the aquamarine-tinted liquid, put his hands behind his head, and floated like the bloated balloon he was. From the side another woman came, soap in hand. She knelt next to the oversized tub, worked the soap into lather along her scrubbrush.

  The overseer tilted his head, looked at her. “I don’t know you,” he said.

  She nodded, faced him squarely. Her hair was sandy, clipped short in the manner of local hill tribes. “I arrived only yesterday, my lord,” she told him. “Brought here by Amar. Surely you recall —?”

  Castus thought a moment, agreed. She was vaguely familiar; but so many new women were brought to the palace these days for selection, it was most difficult to keep track of them all.

  She’d been garbed in the simple robe of a novice, a pretty face, but a trifle too slender. Experience told him out of hand that she would be rejected by both the Khan and his sons, brought within a couple of days to the officers’ harem and the pleasure of Kabul’s highest ranking and most seasoned veterans.

  As the woman worked, Castus let his gaze pour over her. She was slightly older than most of the others. Perhaps she’d already been a whore, and well-versed in the games of the bedroom. Or maybe she was famous for other qualities, such as dancing, bringing her partners to new heights of excitement before satisfying them. Whatever, it was not for him to question Amar’s judgment. Only the unusual necklace she wore caused him further reason to ponder. Really a worthless, if intriguing trinket. Braided leather, knotted, with a small, shiny bone at the end. A horn, perhaps.

  “Is this good, my lord?” she asked, working her fingers into the flab of his back. Suds trickled down from neck to buttocks; he sat cross-legged in the tub and sighed with contentment. Without question the newcomer was expert with her hands, and again he cursed his fate for his condition.

  He turned to the girl still holding his robe and grinned. “Watch this one well and learn, Lina,” he said merrily. “By Kabul’s gods, I’m a fool to question Amar’s eye for women!”

  Castus sank lower into the tub, urged by the gentle but firm prodding of the other woman’s hands. “Mmmmm,” he cooed, immersed in the warm water, toying with the bubbles. His muscles relaxed; the newcomer worked his entire body, knowledgeably, surely, as if she had done this very thing for him countless times before. Suddenly she pushed his face further into the liquid until its level reached his nostrils. He coughed loudly. The woman, pushed harder, submerging almost half his face.

  He bobbed to the surface. “No, no,” he choked, “I can’t breathe.”

  His fat form struggled to rise; her hands pressed him back, the pressure too strong for him to pull away from. He flailed arms and legs, splashed gallons at a time over the side, but still his head was below the waterline.

  The hefty overseer tried to roll over; he clawed wildly to grab her arms, opened his mouth to scream for help. Soapy water gushed into his lungs, and he exhaled it with glistening soap bubbles that formed circles at the surface. As his face turned colors, from ruddy to scarlet to purple, he twitched and bobbed, his enormous belly rising from the water like a huge, bald, quivering mountain. His gurgles were muffled by her hands now over his mouth; her knee pressed hard into his shoulders, pushed him down. Castus squirmed like an eel, then he squirmed no more.

  Carolyn held on a while longer, then abruptly released, drew back, and climbed from the tub. She stared down with hands on hips, robe drenched and soaking, forming pools at her feet. The corpse rose slowly to the surface, the face contorted, mouth limply hanging wide. The saya did nothing to conceal her smile as she said to Lina, “You’d better inform the guards. Our overseer is dead. Drowned, I should think, by his own weight.”

  Chapter Seven

  The ever-shifting ocher and golden sands of the desert, now tinted scarlet by the waning sun’s shadows, were a beautiful sight to behold. The two riders paused at the crest of a dune, shared a mutually understood smile, then gently kicked the horses’ flanks and led them down. The white Arabian stallions cantered easily over hot, burning sands, heads lifted proudly, long manes flowing in a peaceful breeze. The very smell of desert greeted their nostrils and they whinnied, luxuriating in the feel of slackened reins and loosened bridles. And for the wearied riders came the scent of freedom. The two men knew that at last they were home; home where they could gallop the endless plains of the approaching steppes, home where they were released from the distasteful world of the city and civilization.

  Over wadis parched and dry, as ancient as the huge looming hills and mountains of rock still hazy to the north, the steeds raced, picking up speed, wild and free once more, urged on by the taste of the familiar soil. Open lands that had no ends and no beginnings, stretching for as far as the eye could see; Kazir land, unravished by humanity, unspoiled and pure, the way God had designed it.

  Tariq’s heart beat faster inside his chest. While the stallion pranced beneath him, his head swam with a thousand memories, memories of childhood, of times when old Shoaib the Goatherd brought him here to experience the sensation that only a child of the desert can understand and love. This was his desert, he knew. Ancestoral birthplace of his people and all their heritage. Nothing
was ever going to take it away.

  His companion whooped; drawing sword from the saddle sheath, he lifted the curved blade and swung it in wheels above his head. Tariq looked at the scalp-locked, faithful warrior and grinned. Roskovitch was a barbarian from the cold, northern lands of Rus. An exile, cast out of his motherland long ago, he now eagerly lived and lusted for the Kazir way of life. Tariq had been but a small boy when the barbarian had been found half dead from thirst and sunstroke by agents of Shoaib. Taken to the Stronghold, nursed and brought back to health, the sinewy Russian had repaid his gratitude a hundredfold as loyal warrior and aide to the ailing elder. But to Tariq he was even more; the youth had looked to Roskovitch as a brother, learning from him the skills of battle, the uncanny horsemanship that only the barbarian tribes of Central Asia had mastered so completely. Now that Tariq was a man, a chieftain of the Clans in his own right, who but Roskovitch was more worthy to ride at his side? They had shared much together these past years; in both victory and defeat, joy and tears, the Russian and he spent their lives.

  It was well past dusk when they completed the trek from the dunes, crossed into the flatlands and savannas of tall yellow grasses that swayed incessantly in a cool desert wind, and approached the distant wind-scarred high walls of solid granite. To a traveler crossing this way, those walls seemed grim and foreboding indeed. An out-of-place, spiraling slab of rock, fortress-like, set by nature crookedly some leagues before the range of smoky mountains that divided the deserts. Yet to those who knew better, this looming, monstrous mass, as untamed as the steppes themselves, posed a clever disguise. For here, within the granite itself, sheltered from the outside world so totally that an entire legion of Kabul’s army might pass it and never give more than a cursory glance, stood the very soul of the Kazir freedom. The fortress Stronghold, unapproachable as it was awesome, awesome as it was spectacular.

  The riders appeared insect-like from the great heights above, but unseen eyes, trained well in desert night sight, watched them closely, tracking their every move as they reached dangerous territory.

  Tariq and Roskovitch stopped and dismounted some hundred paces before the jagged, blue-hued edifice, which by daylight reflected all the colors of the spectrum. Off to the side two trees grew, one an oak sapling, dwarfed by the other, a gigantic red-trunked ogre of a tree. A trunk as thick as three large men standing shoulder to shoulder, unbent, shot straight up into the sky perhaps fifty meters high, nearly as high as the stone barrier itself. For fully a third of this immense height no branches spread, but where they did, they were bare. Tariq handed the reins of his horse to his friend, cupped both hands around his mouth, and sang out a long note in the cry of a loon. Less than a second later the call was answered, the same shrill bird’s call, emitted from up amid the branches of the tree’s tallest reaches.

  The Arabian stallions neighed and dug nervous hooves into the ground. All around came the growing noise of a low rumble, sounding at first like far thunder but steadily increasing in volume until the earth started to shake. In front of Tariq a section of the granite wall started to move, two smooth slabs pulling apart with a groan. Then suddenly there was a black gap before them, a widening fissure leading deep into the rock, a canyon that would have terrified any who had not seen it before.

  Roskovitch tightened his hold of the uneasy horses, and then both men rode through the abyss, unfrightened, glad to be home at last.

  *

  Inside, Sharon sat restlessly in her tent, hands nervously playing with the slim copper bracelets adorning her wrists. The tent flaps rustled, the wind outside was starting to rise. Her desert sense assured her that a storm was brewing not far away. A khamsin sweeping down from the mountains, whipping in furious gusts as it broke out onto the monotonous plains and steppes, picking up impetus as it swirled and fed upon itself.

  From outside came the noises of men and women gathering their animals, rushing them to shelter across the tent and mudbrick Kazir city. Guards posted along the chinked crenelations in the high walls would seek havens of their own among the fissured rocks, shielding themselves from the wind’s onslaught while ever-vigilantly guarding the approaches to the Stronghold. In former years this place had been home to but a single Clan, the saya’s, while the many other tribes lived peacefully along the length and breadth of the steppes and desert, even at the fringes of the forbidden Grim Forest. Kabul’s unflinching vow to wipe all Kazirs from the face of the earth had changed all that, though. More and more the Clans had retrenched, leaving fields unplowed, flocks untended, drawing an ever-tighter perimeter into the desert, flooding the Stronghold until the city teemed with life, the last impenetrable citadel outside of his grasp.

  The candle flickered and almost died when the tent flap pushed aside. Sharon’s almond eyes widened, her breath quickening. Tariq! At last he’s come!

  Alone together, the secret lovers embraced, Sharon burying herself in the strength of his arms, momentarily forgetting everything else. Their lips met in a hungry kiss, holding onto each other as though this might be the last time. But as their mouths parted, Sharon turned her face from another kiss, pulled from another embrace, ever fearful that someone might see. For although the Panther was leader in the struggle against the Huns, and as such had been chosen the One to guide their fate, she was still an outsider. Her blood was not Kazir blood, and thus she was forbidden to the youthful chieftain Tariq. It was the Law, the ancient, strict code that had bonded these hill tribes for so many years. For Tariq to openly declare his love, which he would have readily done many times had Sharon not stopped him, would mean a break between the Clans. There were those, even among the unified Kazirs, who still harbored doubts about her; those who knew that, even though against her will, the evil Khan had spilled his seed into her belly. The witches had cleansed her of the venom long ago; yet to many such, shame could never be truly cleansed. Though these very warriors would ride beside her into battle, give their own lives and the lives of their sons willingly under her cause and banner, still they regarded her as an outsider. Worthy of any king or man in the world — except a Kazir chieftain. Perhaps this belief born of tradition and necessity would change, but now was not the time. Total, undivided unity was needed if there was to be any hope of fulfilling the prophecy and wresting Samarkand back from its heathen conquerors.

  “I have worried about you these past days,” said Tariq, his face drawn and haggard from his long journey.

  “And I about you,” panted Sharon. “It was not necessary for you to risk entering the city. Roskovitch could have done the job for us.”

  He regarded her disapprovingly. “It was as necessary as your own secret journey into the forest. A foolish thing to have done, traveling alone like that in winter. At every hour you risked capture by a Hun patrol...”

  She hushed him by brushing her fingers against his lips, led him to sit near the cold stones of the hearth. He unwrapped his desert burnoose, shook his curly hair free of accumulated dust. Gratefully he sipped at the chalice she handed him, realizing now how drained he was, under how much pressure he had been to accomplish his dangerous mission as quickly as possible and return to the Stronghold.

  Sharon sat opposite, in the glare of the light, girlish features highlighted when the hanging oil lamp swayed. “Rest, Tariq,” she soothed, hands in her lap.

  He shook his head and stared into the chalice.

  “Is everything well?” Sharon asked.

  He peered up lovingly at her, thinking her desert-tanned face to be the most beautiful he’d ever known. To watch her now, bathed in the lamp’s soft glow, the candle’s glare, she seemed so much less the tough and resilient Panther of the Steppes, so much more the young and frightened woman who had first come here so long ago. In many ways he wished he might magically return to that lost moment, capture her in his arms, and whisk her away, riding far across the desert to lands remote and unscathed by the conflict. Some place where they might have peacefully shared each other’s lives, raising children ins
tead of armies. Watching their family grow instead of counting casualties and praying for the dead.

  “Everything is well,” Tariq said, cutting off the memories. “Nearly all the pieces have been set into place.”

  Sharon breathed deeply. All the years of planning were coming to a close; soon the vise would begin to shut, irrevocably set into motion, feeding upon itself like a surging tidal wave with nothing able to prevent the chain of coming events from transpiring. Everything had to be perfect, though; there was no room for miscalculation.

  For the hundredth time in recent days she reached for the parchment scroll concealed beneath the cushions atop her sleeping mat, opened it before her, and scanned the names scrawled onto the carefully compiled list. Nine names in all: those of the Khan’s eight sons, his wall of protection until now impenetrable, and lastly Kabul’s own name, the final victory.

  Mufiqua, the narcotic addict for whom she had danced, now under Zadek’s spell, ready to be called upon when needed.

  Khalkali, the brazen and swaggering would-be heir, as hateful of his father as he was of Samarkand.

  Gamal, worthy warrior — in command of the western legions marching upon the Turks of Constantinople. A venomous, treacherous soldier who let nothing stand in the way of his glories.

  As if reading Sharon’s thought, Tariq said, “There is talk in the city of Gamal’s imminent return. He fancies himself already to be crown prince. Kabul will be forced to meet him on equal terms — as conquering hero.”

  “Butcher is a more appropriate word,” Sharon corrected.

  Then there was Tupol, the misshapen, shrewdly cunning youngest son. He would have to be dealt with more carefully. This one would be Zadek’s charge; she only hoped the mad mullah had made his plans as precisely as he believed.

  Five more names remained on the list. Krishna, the brooding, brutish and sadistic chancellor of the dungeons, a man whose very name brought shudders among the fearful folk of Samarkand. Temugin, as surly as he was arrogant. A troublemaker intent on gaining the throne over as many of his brothers’ corpses as necessary. Then Jamuga. A strange man, a loner with few if any friends. The only one of the brothers about whom Sharon knew little or nothing. Jamuga had long before been relegated to Carolyn. Niko, a lover, a liver of high life, worldly gambler and reckless swordsman who’d slain many a husband of wives he’d lusted.