But the desert ahead was three hundred miles of scalding desolation, with few staging posts and fewer oases. Travelling as fast as they were able with camels, it would take at least two weeks to cross. Luke knew that it would be their greatest challenge yet. He looked over at Arcadius, who had sat down on the ground, staring at it. His friend was sickening.
‘We stop and rest here. And tonight we cook.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DESERT OF KARA KUM, SUMMER 1399
Their mistake was not leaving immediately to journey on through the night.
In Mashhad, they’d bought tents to shield them from the sun and Khan-zada had warned them of the merciless heat of the Kara Kum; they should travel at night and sleep through the day. But Luke had judged Arcadius too tired to go on. So they left at dawn, the twelve humps of their six camels undulating down the last slope of the Alburz Mountains like a lumpen snake, the two horses behind. An hour later they were out in the fractured hinterland of the desert, watching lizards disappear before them and tufts of brittle grass fade to nothing. Then there was sand and stone and more sand.
At first the land was flat and hard and their camels stepped with measured ease amongst the rocks and the ride was not without comfort. But soon the landscape around them began to rise into dunes, carved to arabesques by the wind. By mid-morning, the heat was unbearable, the leather of their saddles too hot to touch. The sun above them was a pulsing furnace, different from the one that had risen that morning. This was a malignant force, a purveyor of death not a giver of life.
Luke saw Arcadius hunched over his camel’s hump and called a halt. ‘We’ll put up the tents while we still can and rest. We move on at dusk.’
They slept fitfully in heat that was searing even in shadow. The camels sat together and yawned and grunted as they chewed their oats and Arcadius mumbled and groaned in his half-sleep. As the sun went down, they rose and ate and took down the tents and soon were on their way under a generous moon and the first pinpricks of stars.
They rode all night and grew dizzy watching the vast canvas of the heavens, connecting the stars into shapes they recognised, trying to pull patterns from the scatterings between. They didn’t speak because their voices were too thin and their messages too feeble to intrude upon such majesty. Even their camels, heads high beneath the moon, confined themselves to the sounds of movement and defecation.
And as Venus rose to lead them into morning, Luke heard a faint tune. It was Khan-zada singing and her song was a sad one, a plaintive caress offered to her fellow riders that made them think of home and of loss. Luke thought of Anna and Shulen thought of Luke. But Khan-zada’s song was to one who was long dead: Jahangir, whom she’d loved more than life itself.
The days and nights joined head to tail like the camels beneath them. They rose at sundown and walked or rode until dawn, when they stopped to eat and then sleep. Except that they never really slept. The heat was too great for anything more than a sort of delirium, a hybrid state between the conscious and unconscious in which they cried out to no one of things buried deep.
All the time, Arcadius grew worse. He hardly spoke at all now and rode with his shoulders slumped, staring at the hump before him. Matthew and Nikolas took position either side of him to make sure he didn’t fall. In the mornings, it became more and more difficult to persuade him to continue. His friends glanced at each other, worry in their eyes.
They travelled for a week before they came to Merv, once the largest city on earth. It had made the mistake of opening its gates to Tule, son of Genghis, who had butchered the population nearly two hundred years past. The city was a place of ghosts and Khan-zada hurried them through.
A week later, they had entered and left Chardzhou and had crossed the Amu Darya River, which the Greeks had called the Oxus, and were only days from reaching Bokhara. But Arcadius had got much worse. He was beset by tremors and headaches and would eat nothing. It was dusk when the camels put their heads into the sand.
Luke said: ‘I’ve seen this before.’
The sandstorm was on them before they’d had time to secure the tents, the scream of the wind rushing towards them like an army of howling dead. It hit them hard and they bent double from its impact, their feet stamping for footholds. Luke had taken Shulen’s hand and Matthew was trying to shield Khan-zada, his big back to the storm. Only the camels seemed likely to withstand the onslaught.
‘We need to find cover!’ yelled Matthew into Luke’s ear.
‘Yes, but where?’
‘No,’ shouted Khan-zada from behind, ‘we must keep moving. There’s no shelter and if we stay here we’ll be buried alive.’
It seemed impossible but they had to do it. Staggering headfirst into the chaos, Matthew and Luke half carrying Arcadius, they led their camels and horses in a direction they hoped was east. The sand stung every part of their bodies, drilling their heads and shoulders and filling their eyes and ears and every fold of their garments. They could see nothing but the dim outlines of camel and man ahead and could hear only the roar of the storm and the snap of their garments. At last they could go no further and sat huddled behind their camels, closing their eyes against the raging world outside.
The storm continued through the night and most of the next day, and when it was over, they were buried in sand and numb with exhaustion. It had finished as suddenly as it had begun. A giant hole had opened in the ground and sucked the wind back into hell. The Varangians began to dig their way out of the sand. Luke saw that Arcadius hadn’t moved.
‘Matthew, help me.’
They rose and staggered over to their friend, pulling the sand from his hunched frame. His back was rising and falling. He was breathing.
Matthew lay back. ‘Thank God.’
Luke lifted Arcadius’s head. His face was a mask of sand, his eyes closed. He gently wiped the sand away with his sleeve. ‘Arcadius?’
One eye opened. It gained focus, blinking, and recognition came into it. Arcadius smiled slowly. ‘Can I have some water?’
Luke’s skin was already in his hand. He lifted it to his friend’s lips. ‘Here. Drink.’
Arcadius drank and then let his head fall back against Luke’s chest. He was already asleep. Luke lowered him slowly to the ground and rose. He walked over to sit with Shulen. ‘I don’t know if Arcadius can do much more.’
Khan-zada rose and came to sit next to them. She took a small flask from her cloak. ‘Give him this. It will help him go on. For a time.’
Luke took the flask and got up. He looked beyond his friends to where he expected the camels to be. Four of their six camels had gone, and both of the horses.
Nikolas said: ‘It must have happened during the storm.’
Luke shook his head. ‘They could be miles away by now, in any direction.’
‘What were they carrying?’ asked Shulen.
‘That’s the bad news,’ said Nikolas. ‘All of the food and most of the water.’
Matthew rose and went to stand by Luke. ‘What are we going to live on?’
‘Food is not the problem. We can kill a camel if we have to. It’s the water. How much do we have left?’
Not much. Two skins, half-full, between six of them.
‘How far are we from Bokhara?’ asked Nikolas. ‘It can’t be too far.’
‘If we knew where we were,’ said Khan-zada, ‘it would be no more than two days away. We could get there on the water we have. But the storm has forced us from the road. We don’t know which way to go.’ She glanced at Arcadius. ‘And we have a sick friend.’
Luke had produced Ibn Khaldun’s map and laid it flat on the ground. He pointed to a black square on it. ‘The oasis at Bokhara is large, is it not? So a wide area around the city will be cultivated, with many villages. Even if we can’t get back to the road, if we head north-east, we should get to it. We can use the stars.’
But Khan-zada was shaking her head. ‘There will be no stars,’ she said quietly. ‘A storm such as that throws too much in
to the sky. It will be overcast for days.’
They were all silent for a long while, sitting in a circle in the sand. The storm had left their throats dry but no one mentioned water. Luke looked up at the leaden sky and then at the vast sea around them. There was nothing there: no hill, no tree, no blade of grass; nothing but mile after mile of black sand. And night was coming. Black on black.
‘Well, we can’t stay here,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘The wind came from the east and I remember which direction that was. We need to move.’
Drinking a cup of water each, they tightened the remaining two camels’ loads and wrapped themselves against the night cold. Luke and Khan-zada woke Arcadius and gave him water. Arcadius rose, as if in a trance, and allowed himself to be supported by Matthew and Nikolas. They put him on to one of the camels and each held an ankle either side.
They set off but the going was much harder than it had been. The sand off the road was deep and every footstep an effort. Even the camels stumbled and sank to their haunches in drifts. Later, when it was dark and there were no stars to watch over them, Luke and Shulen walked side by side.
‘We can’t do this, can we?’ she asked quietly. ‘We cannot reach Bokhara before the water runs out, can we?’
Luke said nothing. If they knew the direction to travel, then it was just possible. But they didn’t. He felt her hand slide into his.
‘Well, there’s no one I’d rather die with,’ she said.
They walked for some time in silence then, comforted by each other and the darkness around them. It was inconceivable that they could still be heading in the right direction but there was some small solace in knowing they could do nothing about it.
‘If only we had a fish,’ Shulen murmured.
‘A fish? Why are you suddenly so particular about what you eat? Won’t camel do?’
She laughed softly. ‘Not that sort of fish. A lodestone.’
‘A lodestone? What’s a lodestone?’
‘I heard of it in Konya. The Arabs call it al-konbas. It’s a piece of metal which has special properties. If you rub a needle against it, and float the needle in water, it will point to the south.’
Luke had stopped and was staring at her in the dark. He let go of her hand.
‘Why is it called a fish, Shulen?’
He heard the rustle of shoulders shrugging. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the lodestone was made in the shape of a fish?’
Luke’s heart was beating fast. He felt inside his thoub to where the paizi lay heavy against his chest. ‘Shulen, do you have a needle?’
She was very still. ‘Why? Do you have a lodestone?’
‘Perhaps.’ He was trying to keep his voice calm. He brought the chain of the paizi up over his head. The fish was face-up in his hand, invisible to all. ‘And a candle and bowl. Do you have those?’
Khan-zada had heard them. She approached Luke and pulled something from her hair. ‘Here is your needle.’
Then Shulen went to her camel’s side. Her camel had been one of the two that had stayed and her baggage contained a candle and a bowl: the stuff of healing. She lit the candle and, placing the bowl on the ground, poured the precious water into it. Matthew and Nikolas had come up and the five of them knelt around it as if in prayer.
Luke turned the paizi over to show them the fish in the light of the candle. ‘It would make sense, wouldn’t it? I mean this must happen to couriers all the time.’
He rubbed the needle against the fish and carefully placed it into the water. Immediately it began to turn. Then it stopped. Luke gave a sigh of relief.
‘I think we have our south,’ he said softly.
*
The two women rode on a camel from then on, the bowl held by one, the candle by the other. They were two high priestesses bent over a sliver of metal, able to bestow life or death on those that followed them. Luke led them, while Matthew and Nikolas walked on either side of Arcadius, who was slumped over the second camel.
Well after the grey dawn had crept up around them, they were still moving, knowing that to stop was to risk not starting again. They had all drunk another cup and one of the skins was empty. The sky was overcast. Luke brought his camel next to the one carrying Arcadius. The big body of his friend was hardly moving.
He looked at Matthew. ‘I am going to suggest we take a gamble.’
Luke turned to the two women still hunched over their little altar behind. They had erected a clumsy awning above them to shield them. He said: ‘I’m sure that we strayed south in the storm. So if we aim off a bit to the north, we must hit the road.’
It made sense. The road, even covered by sand, would be faster than the open desert. They had hardly any water left and Arcadius was dying.
Shulen glanced at Arcadius and nodded. Her throat was parched and sore from the sand that she’d swallowed in the storm. She could no longer speak without pain. She looked into the bowl and pointed out their new course.
It was only an hour later that Nikolas, now in front, let out a cracked shout. His feet had made contact with something hard. They’d found the road.
They stopped to rest there, knowing that sleep would more likely come with the relief. They put up their tents and drank a single gulp of water each. Arcadius was lowered from his camel and helped to drink his. Then they lay back and tried not to think of their thirst. None of them spoke.
By evening and the time to leave, the thirst was tormenting them. There were perhaps two cups for each remaining in the skin and they did not know how far they still had to go to reach Bokhara. There was no food but it didn’t matter. None of them wanted to eat for to do so would worsen their thirst. Luke sat in the sand and felt empty of strength. His head spun and there were dots in front of his eyes. He was staring at the belly of the women’s camel and thinking of the water inside.
‘No,’ whispered Khan-zada from above. ‘It will kill you.’
He squinted up at her and noticed that the pale disc of the new moon hovered above her like a halo. It was behind cloud and it was faint but it was there. It meant hope. Was the sky clearing?
He put a hand on the ground and slowly pushed himself to his feet. His three friends were still sitting and he went over to them. Two of them were staring ahead without seeing. Arcadius was lying on his back, shivering as if from a fever. Very gently, the three of them lifted their friend on to the camel.
With the veiled moon above them, they should have been able to travel faster that night. The desert around them now had substance and they could even see the outlines of dunes. But they were tired and weak and their stomachs raged with the pain of emptiness and their swollen throats made each swallow a thing of agony. Every step they took was like ten.
And Arcadius was dying.
Luke was out at the front, still leading the camel on which the two women sat above the compass. He heard a thud behind him. He stopped and turned.
Arcadius was lying on the ground with Matthew and Nikolas kneeling on either side of him. Luke dropped the rope and staggered over to them.
‘What happened?’
Nikolas was shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry. I fell asleep.’
Luke knelt. He looked down into Arcadius’s face. It was without movement. He gently lifted his head and tried to pour water into his friend’s mouth but the lips wouldn’t open. He turned to Matthew. ‘I think he’s finished,’ he whispered. He felt the tears pricking his eyeballs. ‘He won’t drink.’
Khan-zada and Shulen had dismounted and were now kneeling beside Luke. Shulen put her hand over his. She leant forward to look into Arcadius’s face. ‘It’s too dark to see if he’s breathing.’
Then, in an instant, it wasn’t.
Arcadius’s face had turned to silver and his friends looked down at its peace and then above to the sky. There were a million, million stars in a heaven that was suddenly clear. There were more stars than they’d ever seen and, sitting back on their haunches, they stared up at them.
Luke turned back to Arcad
ius. His friend’s eyes were open.
‘I’m sorry,’ Arcadius said.
Luke gazed into eyes that still trusted him, eyes that knew they were looking at their final night. Tears ran down his cheeks.
Then Khan-zada was next to him. She whispered into his ear. ‘Luke, look.’
He turned. She was pointing at a star brighter than the others. ‘Venus,’ he whispered. ‘Kervan Kiran, the morning star. Arcadius, do you see it?’
But Arcadius’s eyes had closed.
‘No,’ whispered the Princess, ‘not Venus. It’s the wrong direction. It’s the Kalyan Minaret. It’s a beacon.’
‘A beacon?’
‘Yes, Luke, a beacon to guide travellers into Bokhara. We have arrived.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BOKHARA, SUMMER 1399
Bokhara the Holy, with a mosque for every day of the year; Bokhara the Magnificent, second city in Temur’s empire; Bokhara the giver of life, where the Prophet Job had struck his rod into the dusty ground and brought forth water.
Bokhara: the giver of life.
The Kalyan Minaret, taller than any building in the world, had, over the centuries, rescued many travellers from the desert to its west. By day, it looked down on a bulbous seascape tiled in azure and majolica and from its giddy heights muezzins fanned the flame of the city’s faith. By night, it was a lighthouse.
And, like those it brought in from the desert, it was a survivor. Even Genghis Khan had spared it before trampling the pages of the Koran into the sand of the mosque beside it. Now Luke stared up at it in wonder.
It was the morning after they’d reached the city and the time in between had been spent in the deepest sleep that he could remember. They had almost crawled through the city gates and only Khan-zada, her head held high, was able to give the command that they should be taken to the Ark citadel immediately and given rooms, food and water.
The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Page 19
