The Casket of Brass
A Short Story
Deborah J. Ross
Book View Café
April 2011
Copyright © 2009 Deborah J. Ross
The Casket of Brass
A breathless spring twilight crept across the palace on the hill. Even the twin rivers that nourished Kharazand, City of a Thousand Gardens, flowed gently, imbued with an eerie, somber calm. The twin domes of the royal palace glimmered in shades of pearl and silver.
Hoofbeats fractured the approaching night. Iron sparked on paving stones. Five riders raced from the city gates toward the palace. The leading horse shone like marble, its tail a river of cloud. Its rider was small and wiry beneath a flowing hooded cloak. Four stouter animals followed. They pounded up the tree-lined avenue beside the long, slender mirrored pools. Guards barred their path, scimitars drawn. At the sight of the lead rider, they bowed and stepped back.
The riders clattered to a halt before the formal entrance to the palace, spiral columns framing marble stairs. The lead rider jumped lightly to the ground. Grooms and servants, a dozen at least, rushed forward. The rider shoved back the hood of the cloak, revealing a woman’s delicate features, tilted eyes beneath sweeping brows set in honey-gold skin. Her blue-black hair had been twisted back into a simple knot, and over her riding trousers, she wore a scholar’s robe of thick undyed cotton. Her sole weapon was a dagger at her belt.
She handed the reins of the gray horse to the head groom. “Give him a little water now, but only a few sips.” Her voice was throaty with the strain of a long, exhausting ride. “Then walk all the horses until they’re dry.”
The young woman rushed up the stairs, her escort at her heels. Her riding boots rang on the smooth stone of the stairs. She burst through the elaborately-carved double doors before the attendants could open them for her. The senior steward rushed forward, trailing a handful of assistants. She remembered him, an honest man of merit and industry. In the years of her absence, his beard had gone white and wispy, and the body beneath the modestly ornamented robe was gaunt with age.
“Lady —”
“My grandmother?” she cut him off, not slacking her pace.
The steward raised his hands in reassurance. “Still alive, by the grace of the Infinite. Her physician tends her even now. Your uncle, the Most Wise Regent, has been apprized of your return and has bidden me to —”
His voice faltered as she glared at him.
“— to bring you to him,” the steward finished uncertainly. “If it is your pleasure.”
“It is my pleasure,” she repeated the phrase, but without any malice, for the steward could not be blamed for the situation or her own temper, “to see my grandmother while I still can.”
The steward’s reply was cut short by the arrival of a second young woman, this one dressed in a sleeveless vest encrusted with pearls and rubies, and loose trousers of crimson silk gathered around her delicate ankles. Strings of tiny silver bells chimed from her wrists and earlobes. Veils fluttered from the elaborate curls on top of her head. She glided along the carpeted hall, and half a dozen ladies, dressed in more subdued colors, followed a pace behind.
“Maridah!” the young woman exclaimed. “You’ve returned! So suddenly! And without sending word so that a proper reception might be prepared for you!”
Maridah forced herself to stand still long enough to greet her cousin. They bowed and kissed each another’s palms, according to custom.
“Hadidjah, I am pleased to see you,” Maridah said, “but I cannot linger. Grandmother —”
Hadidjah’s eyes, a beautiful hazel that contrasted with her golden skin, betrayed no alarm. “She is not well, but her health has never been good since you left us for Samarkhand. You need not have interrupted your studies to rush home so precipitously.”
She touched Maridah’s cheek with one hand, her fingertips scented with rosewater and cloves. “I cannot say I am sorry. How I have missed you! Come now, you must bathe and put on something decent. Then I will take you to my father so that he may set your mind at rest. Tomorrow, we will feast in your honor.”
Maridah wavered on her feet. Her muscles ached and her stomach had long since hardened into a knot of hunger. She saw herself reflected in her cousin’s eyes, unkempt and filthy. Doubtless, she smelled of horse and sweat. She could not possibly appear in court with her hair in such disarray, wearing the same shapeless robe of the lowliest student.
She shook her head to clear her senses. Had her years of study, in a community where ideas meant more than titles or wealth, meant so little that she would throw all away at a word? She would remain as she was, dirty boots and all.
“You may not be concerned about Grandmother’s health,” she said with more harshness than she intended, “but I will not rest until I see her for myself.” Freeing herself from her cousin’s grasp, she pivoted to go.
“But — but my father —” Hadidjah stammered. “He expects to see you without delay!”
A sudden glint of mischief caught Maridah. Unfastening the clasp of her riding cloak, she tossed it to her cousin. “My uncle will have to be satisfied with that.”
She did not stay to see Hadidjah’s reaction.
o0o
As Maridah hurried toward the long wing of royal family apartments, the pearly radiance of the twilight thickened into shadow. An archway brought her to an interior corridor, carpeted in arabesques of intertwined vines. Her escort, who had been her mother’s sworn men before they became her own, followed her like sight-hounds. Palace attendants bowed low as they passed.
Grandmother’s chambers were the oldest in the wing. In entering them, Maridah always had the sense of moving from one world to another, penetrating into the heart of a mystery. The outer room was ordinary enough, with low benches for outdoor shoes. The act of removing her boots, with all the dirt of the trail, and pulling on the slippers of soft leather stitched in designs of phoenixes locked in combat with winged serpents, was part of the process of leaving the outer world behind and entering into an enchanted realm.
The inner wall had been painted as a forest, a profusion of branches and greenery. Birds nested in the leafy clusters beside other creatures, some of them very strange. The artist had rendered the mural so beautifully, the tiny blue djinni were as lifelike as the hunting falcon or the cowering hare.
Beyond the forest wall, through the door of carved ebony, the noises of the rest of the palace fell away. The sitting room resembled a garden, with rows of flowering jasmine and a fountain of pink marble, carved with winged fishes and river peris plucking their harps. In the day, light streamed through the teardrop-shaped windows. Now, the room was filled with the same fading, silvery-pearl luminescence as the outer grounds.
From the garden room, doors led to either side, presenting a choice between the scented darkness of Grandmother’s personal chambers or the even more enchanting realm of her workroom.
Entering Grandmother’s bedroom was like plunging into a cavern. Once Maridah had asked Grandmother why there were no windows, and the old woman had laughed and said there was more than enough light in the garden room.
Maridah paused as the door closed behind her. Candles had been lit, a row of flickering brilliance. The royal physician, an elderly Persian who had always been kind to Maridah, hovered over the bed.
Drawing in a breath, Maridah caught a riot of odors, the smells of medicines and herbs, the smoky tinge of candle wax, the sandalwood that always clung to her grandmother’s clothing. And underneath, the metallic scent she always associated with her grandmother’s magic.
Light fell across the physician’s face as he came forward to kiss Maridah’s palm. The wispy hairs of his beard tickled her skin. He lifted his eyes, brigh
t with age and unspilled grief. “By the grace of the Infinite, you have come in time.”
In time. Maridah dared to breathe. “How does she?”
“Leave us,” the voice coming from the bed was almost a croak. Maridah hardly recognized it.
“Only for a moment,” the physician warned.
Grandmother’s face gleamed like old, cracked ivory in the light of the candles. The room seemed unnaturally still. Then Maridah realized there was no music. Her grandmother always had at least one musician about her, as she loved the soft sounds of oud and flute.
“My friend.” Grandmother reached out her hand, spidery in the flickering light. The physician grasped it. “There is nothing more you can do... for me.”
The old man bent his head, kissed her palm, and departed. Maridah knelt at the bedside and took her grandmother’s hand. The skin felt cool and brittle; the nails had never seemed so hard. Maridah’s breath caught in her throat.
“And you,” the old woman whispered, “you I will miss most of all.”
“No! You must use your enchantments to save your life!”
Grandmother turned on her pillow so that the light filled all the hollows of her skull. “I have.” Pause, breath.
Maridah’s stomach turned cold. In the back of her mind, a thought curled like a wisp of poisoned smoke. When she dies, I must take the throne as Princess of Kharazand.
“Remember. Everything.”
“I will.”
She would never forget the long sunlit afternoons, playing in the workroom, handling the things that even then she knew were not toys: the wonderful carved horses that would, at the turn of a peg near the saddle, rise into the air, carrying their soldier riders, the balls that gave off colored lights as they spun, the bird of silver, the dagger that would cry out if anyone but Grandmother touched its jeweled sheath...
“In the stronghold. A casket. Of brass.”
Maridah nodded. She had glimpsed it, as long as a child’s forearm and half again as wide, the worn patterns glimmering in the shadows. Something about the box had drawn her, a message hidden in the calligraphy of the intertwining arabesques.
“Shall I bring it to you?” she asked.
“Safe. Guard.”
Maridah felt a new expectancy in the air, an alteration in the quality of the light. Grandmother was asking her to do something more than simply keep the old box in a safe place. An almost holy stillness hung in the room, like the temple on the morning her mother, who was to have been the next Princess, had died. Maridah had been up all night, fasting and praying, willing to bargain away everything she owned if only her mother might recover. She’d been at the very extremity of hope, for Grandmother had not returned from a long trip East and the court physicians had said there was nothing more to be done.
And the air had shifted, even as it shifted now, with a welling pressure, an imminence....
“It will be kept safe.” Maridah did not know exactly what she was promising, but she spoke the words like a vow.
“Ah.” Thin fingers brushed the back of Maridah’s hands. A sigh like a whisper: “Then I have taught you well.”
Maridah opened her mouth to ask what it was that Grandmother had taught her, but the air shifted once more, a lightening of that immense weight. The candle light wavered.
Voices broke in upon the stillness, men arguing at the outer door. Maridah recognized the old physician and her own escort, their voices in protest.
“Stand aside!” another man shouted.
Then came her uncle’s voice, lower in pitch, calm. She could not make out the words.
“Mari —” Grandmother roused. Brittle fire flared behind her words. “Leave the box. Take what lies within. It must not fall into any hands but yours. Do you understand?”
“You mean, the contents are for the Princess alone.”
A mute gesture of denial. “What lies within... makes the Princess. Yussuf searched... when your mother died. He will... search again.”
My uncle wants the throne? Maridah could not think straight. How could he aspire to such power? Even if he were not a man, he had no royal lineage; his only claim was his marriage to Maridah’s mother’s younger sister.
“Not for himself,” Grandmother gasped.
Maridah could not breathe. Hadidjah, who could claim rightful lineage by blood. Hadidjah, who had always done her father’s bidding.
“Go. Quickly — through the door behind the ironwood screen.”
The shouting intensified. Maridah could not hear the clash of steel, but she sensed the reek of adrenaline.
Maridah brushed her lips over her grandmother’s forehead. The skin was dry, like dusty silk. Then, under the lash of a terror she had never felt before, she raced from the bedchamber.
The workroom was filled with shelves of scrolls, bottles of alchemical reagents, bars of sealing lead, bins of powdered dragon’s bone and whale horn, and telescopes and astrolabes in their wooden holders. The stronghold itself was no more than a cavity in the inner wall, covered over with a plain wooden panel. Maridah felt a faint prickle as she touched the panel and her fingertips found the indentation. She held it fast, as Grandmother had taught her. It took no magic to open the panel, only a steady hand. A thief would draw back at the shock and then burst into flames.
The prickling subsided. Maridah pushed the panel aside and reached inside. Her fingers closed around something long and cylindrical, then another. She took out two scrolls wrapped in heavy silk. Next came a small carved cube, apparently a solid piece of rosy quartz. This, too, she laid aside.
The brass casket was about two hands’-span long and half again as wide, its edges sealed with a ribbon of lead. On one side, the lead widened into a circle on which was impressed a seal. The faint coppery tang of Grandmother’s enchantments clung to it.
Within the casket, each in a separate velvet-lined compartment, lay the wonderful things she knew so well: the ball of flashing jewels, the top that never stopped spinning until commanded, the horse on wheels that shook its tail.
The horse’s wooden body had gone velvety with age. The tail had been made from real horse hairs, black and gray. For some reason, the black hairs had broken off near the base so that only a few long gray ones remained. A rhyme went with the horse, one Grandmother had made Maridah learn by heart:
I will carry you
Wherever you truly wish to go,
To master me, you must first master your heart.
Maridah slipped the horse and the ball into a pocket of her scholar’s robe, beside the folded paper for taking notes, a wrapped length of charcoal, two handkerchiefs, and a flint. The other pocket, equally capacious, held a few coins, a single dried fig, and a little folding knife.
Smiling at her scholarly provisions, she turned her attention to the top. It was painted in a harlequin pattern of yellow and blue, and felt warm to her touch, humming slightly as if urging her to pick it up.
Underneath the top, she found a wand of yellowed ivory about twice the length of her hand. Delicate carvings curled like vines around it, but otherwise it looked quite ordinary.
When she reached for the wand, sparks erupted from both ends. Fire lanced up her fingers, sending the muscles of her arm into spasm. Her hand jerked away of its own accord. Sweating and gulping air, she wrapped it in her second-best handkerchief and slid it and the top in the other pocket.
The voices came again, accompanied by crashing sounds. Cursing the impulse that had caused her to linger, Maridah searched for the ironwood screen. She found it, deep in the shadows, leaning against one wall. She tilted it aside to discover a door, even as Grandmother had said, although it looked to be no more than a tracery of fine lines. If she had not been searching, she might not have recognized it.
How was she to get through? She saw neither hinge nor latch.
Something bumped her hip, as if she had put a live hedgehog into her pocket. Puzzled, she drew out the ball. The gems on its surface sparkled with inner fire. Brighter and brig
hter they flashed, bringing tears to Maridah’s eyes. The multi-hued brilliance took on a strange density. The ball grew so heavy, Maridah could barely hold it aloft.
The door creaked open, as if the light from the ball had pushed it ajar. As Maridah slipped through, the ball’s radiance diminished but did not go out. The door slid closed behind her.
Holding the ball aloft, Maridah proceeded down the stairs. A delicious sense of adventure filled her. As a child, she’d often evaded her tutors and gone exploring. Her grandmother had secretly encouraged it. Maridah loved exploring the network of corridors, cellars, and dank holes that sent shivers down the back of her neck. Some of these, it was said, were donjeons for the keeping of noble prisoners.
The passage twisted, ever descending. At last, she caught sight of a door, its plain wood somehow preserved from the damp. In the chamber beyond, she found a tiny garden, arched over with a dome like frosted glass and filled with pale, diffuse light. She replaced the ball in her pocket.
Heat lay thick and expectant over the dustless benches. Not a fly buzzed, not a leaf of the trellised roses quivered, and not a single fallen twig marred the whiteness of the paving stones.
In the center stood a statue of a young man of transcendent beauty, naked to the hips. His head was tilted to reveal the perfect grace of his neck. His hands hung at his sides, wrought in stone that had the satiny sheen of marble and the warm hue of flesh. The flowing muscles of his torso ended in a block of uncut stone in place of legs.
Maridah, caught by the masterful rendering of the sculpture, came closer. The air shimmered in front of her eyes, like a mirage, so that the statue seemed to quiver and draw a breath.
She sat down on the nearest bench and rubbed her eyes. Heat seeped along her bones, carrying a sweet, heavy lethargy like opium smoke.
She was weary, so weary. She rested her face in her hands and closed her eyes. Her shoulder and neck muscles ached.
Gradually, Maridah became aware of a noise like creaking leather, faint but distinct. She dropped her hands. The statue — surely its arms had been at its sides, fingers loose, wrists curved slightly inward, as if cradling something delicate. Now one of the statue’s arms was raised, the bend of the elbow framing its head.
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