Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  The captain was losing the battle of words. As his mutinous crew prepared to pull him aside and rush the cabin, I unbolted the door and stepped into the sunlight. They let forth a roar of rage and started toward me like a single beast. I raised both my hands.

  “It is true,” I cried. “I am not like other men.”

  This admission halted them. The captain turned with a puzzled expression.

  “I am not a djinn, but a necromancer.”

  A murmuring sigh ran through the crew. In a few moments they would gather their anger and rush forward. I spoke quickly.

  “What was seen was not my face, but the face of the familiar spirit that serves me. With this spirit I can work wonders. I can raise a breeze.”

  As I spoke, I gestured with my index finger across the line of men who faced me. One by one their eyes widened as they felt the cooling touch of the djinn on their skin when she passed through their bodies.

  “It’s true,” Ulik rumbled in wonder, stepping away from me. “I felt it. A breeze.”

  “I can do more than this,” I said. “I can shape and harden the very air itself into anything I desire.”

  With theatrical gestures I shaped my hands into a horn and raised them to my lips. I blew a long noisy breath out between my curled fingers, then another, and another. On the third breath I let my hands close together and passed the jewel into my palms on the tip of my tongue. Lowering my cupped hands from my face, I held them out and slowly opened them to show the sparkling stone. The gasps of wonder came from almost every throat. Carelessly, I tossed the jewel to Ulik, who caught it before he could think, then held it up on his outstretched palm as though it were hot and burning him.

  “Keep it,” I told him in an indifferent tone. “I can make another any time I wish.”

  The captain backed away from me, terror in his eyes, his sword raised in front of his body in defense.

  “You are a necromancer,” he breathed. “What have I brought onto my ship?”

  “Nothing that will harm you, unless you attack me. It is true, I could kill you all with a few words, but if you do not molest me, I will summon a breeze and we will continue our voyage. I will even make a few more jewels for you as tokens of my good faith, before we reach Suez.”

  “If you can summon a wind, do it,” the captain said.

  I laughed as though he had spoken in a childish manner.

  “I will summon a wind, but it cannot be done in an instant. It is a great work of magic to call a wind big enough to move this ship.”

  “How much time do you need?” Ulik asked, fingering the jewel. Part of his anger had turned to fear, and another part to greed, as I had hoped.

  “A night and a day. By sunset tomorrow you will have your wind.”

  All backed as far away from me as the crowded deck of the ship allowed. They looked at each other, uncertain what to do. Many eyes turned to the jewel between Ulik’s thick fingers, and the eyes of the captain were among them.

  “You swear you will summon this wind?”

  “I swear it.”

  “And that you will make more jewels for my men, as compensation for carrying an unclean thing on this ship?”

  “I swear it, and this also I swear. I will slay with a word the first man who tries to harm me.”

  With as much dignity as I could muster, I turned and entered the cabin, slamming the door behind me. There I stood in silence, listening to the low murmuring of voices as my fate was decided. I had done as much as lay within my power. When a knock came on the door, I knew I had won the battle.

  “Enter,” I said carelessly.

  The captain opened the door, but did not come into the cabin. He looked at me as though seeing some demon in the shape of a human being. His sword still hung drooping in his hand.

  “We will wait to see whether you summon the wind, as you have sworn to do. If the wind comes, I will take you to Suez, as we agreed.”

  “I can ask for no more from an honorable man.”

  I started to leave the cabin. He put up his hand in alarm.

  “No, you must remain here. The crew would not work if they saw you walk the deck. You will be safer here.”

  I knew he spoke the truth, and nodded my agreement. Silently, he closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the gloom. I was unclean, a monster. As much as I had tried to pass as a man among men, they had perceived my taint. I almost cried out with relief when I felt Sashi enter my body, so gladdened was my heart by her company.

  That night and the following morning I waited, listening to the sound of the rigging and the sail, which hung limp on its mast. Either a breeze would rise up, or it would not. If no breeze came, it was almost certain that I would be killed. Since there was nothing I could do to change this, I was not as frightened as I might have expected, but the uncertainty robbed me of sleep.

  Around noon on the following day, a steady wind began to blow from the south and filled the sail. I listened to the movements of the crew in the rigging and the shouted commands of the captain, and at last I was able to sleep for a few hours. When I woke, I found food placed just outside the door of the cabin. I opened the door, but saw no member of the crew. They must have hidden themselves at the sound of the door’s latch being thrown. Somewhat to my surprise the food was not poisoned.

  Toward sunset I left the cabin and stood on the upper deck, to the terror of the steersman, who could not leave his post at the tiller of the ship.

  “Men of the Eye of Mecca,” I cried. “Gather to witness the working of a miracle. I will fashion a jewel from thin air, as I promised. Each day I will make another jewel, so that you may share in their value when your captain sells them.”

  The jewel was already prepared beneath my tongue. I repeated my strange performance of the previous day, and produced another glittering stone. Since none of the crew, including the captain himself, would approach me, I set the jewel on the deck and returned to the cabin. Each afternoon saw the production of another gem. The crew would have little to complain about when the total payment for the passage was added together, I reflected, and wondered how much of the money the captain and the first mate would share with the others.

  It was as though a great weight lifted from my shoulders when the captain knocked on the door of the cabin to announce that we had entered the port of Suez. I wasted not a moment leaving the ship. It appeared deserted, but looking back just before I stepped over its rail onto the planking of the dock, I saw several faces twisted in hatred as their eyes tracked my movements. One man spat and mouthed a silent curse at me. I could not resist making a meaningless gesture in the air as I returned his glance. He paled and fell stumbling as though struck in the face.

  I walked away from the Eye of Mecca without a backward glance.

  Chapter 15

  The whispers would never cease. They would spread from mouth to ear like a disease, pursuing me wherever I went. The best I could hope to do was stay in front of them by moving quickly. It had been my intention to go first to Alexandria, but having told Jabir that I had an uncle in Alexandria, it seemed prudent to avoid it for the present, since he would assume that to be my destination. Alexandria would still be there, whenever I chose to enter its walls. The reputation as a great wizard was not such a burden in Egypt, where wizards were common, as it would have been in Yemen, but the Christians might see it as a reason to persecute me, and denounce me to the soldiers of the Caliph. Decades after the conquest of the Nile, the greater part of the people remained Christian, though the rulers were Muslim.

  After leaving the dock in Suez I entered a wine shop, and by asking discreet questions was able to learn the residence of a Jewish money lender, scarcely taller than a ghoul, who impassively exchanged for silver dirhams the rings and ankle chains I had stolen from the corpse of the girl in honey. He refrained from asking the sourc
e of the ornaments, and made no comment on the dagger cuts through the bands of the rings and the links of the chains. I realized that I would need gold dinars if I was to pay my way through Egypt, so reluctantly I sold one of the jewels from the nameless city. The little man grunted in appreciation when he held it up to the light from his window and peered at the red flashes of fire in its heart through a round lens of clear glass. It would not be long before he was evaluating the others I had given to the crew of the Eye of Mecca, since he was the only person in Suez who traded gems for gold, or so I had been told.

  In the market place I bought a pair of leather boots and a leather purse to hold the coins. The boots came up to the middle of my shins, and were trimmed on the outside with brown rabbit fur. For no obvious reason, the leather laces had been dyed a bright green. I thought my worn stockings and sandals worthless, but the cobbler was happy to give me a trifling reduction in the price of the boots in exchange for them. Though not really new, the boots were a pair in good condition sold to the cobbler that day, their owner having died of a convulsion the week before. They fitted my feet almost perfectly, and were not as hot or uncomfortable as I expected.

  My dagger I had polished and sharpened by a tinker who sat before his grindstone under a stripped awning while his son, who could not have been more than twelve, fashioned a copper pot over his knee while squatting on the ground. The tinker told me that he could not match the quality of steel in my dagger with any knife on his table, which was my own private judgment, though I said nothing. He made no attempt to sell me a knife, but removed the rust from my own blade and put an edge on it that was as sharp as any razor. Watching him grind the steel on his stone, which he turned by spinning a wooden wheel under his table with his bare foot, I was reminded that I had not shaved my beard since boarding the Eye of Mecca, and after leaving his table I located a barber in the marketplace and had my head and chin shaved clean.

  Even though I had washed in the sea scarce more than a week ago, the only way to ensure that the hatchlings of the lice did not return was to remove all traces of my hair. I watched it fall around my feet without regret, listening to the snip of the barber’s shears close to my ear holes, and the scrape of his razor. At first I wondered how the spell of glamour would endure a close scrutiny of my head and face by both sight and touch, but after a few minutes I realized that it was proof against the closest examination. The barber gave no sign that he felt anything amiss, but chattered unceasingly while he snipped. He was one of the hairiest men I have ever seen. Both the long braids of his head, and the thicket of a beard that almost covered his face, were black as jet. Seeing his lack of attention to his hands, I was not sorry that my ears were already gone, for pieces of them would surely have fallen to the ground beside my locks of hair.

  The babble of voices and the milling of bodies in the market, the bleat and cackle of the animals penned for slaughter, the shrill cries of the vendors, the smells of cooking and human sweat, the flashing colors of the awnings and robes, so bewildered my senses that at intervals I had to close my eyes and concentrate to still the spinning of my head, but after a time I grew able to endure them. Even so, my discomfort never left me. I felt vulnerable, as though naked. The hostility of these noisy human beings seethed just below the surface, and I feared it would suddenly erupt against me for some trifle. This did not occur, but my sense of danger never left me. Though I walked among men, I no longer felt myself to be one of them. I knew that if they sensed how alien I truly had become, they would turn and rend me to pieces like a pack of wolves.

  I did not seek a lodging for the night in Suez, but immediately made arrangements to travel to the Delta. By asking discreet questions, I learned that it was possible to go by small boat along the course of ancient waterways which the Egyptians had dug centuries ago to link the head of the Red Sea to the mouth of the Nile. This system of canals had been allowed to decay and fill with silt, but part of it was still navigable by flat-bottomed boats, which were drawn along by donkeys while their masters kept them from running aground by pushing the boats away from the bank of the channel with long poles. At several places, where the course of the canal had filled completely with sand, it was necessary to debark and walk or ride overland. Even so, water travel was always easier than land travel, so I chose to journey to the Delta by way of the ancient canals.

  My departure was none too soon. As I sat in the stern of a boat with a triangular sail that would take me to the mouth of the first canal, gazing back at the outskirts of the port, I noticed several soldiers on the reedy shore of the gulf who pointed at me in animated conversation. It was with relief that I watched this group of gossips obscured behind the bank of a low hill. I crossed my legs and let my mind empty, lulled by the gentle rocking of the craft.

  Transfer to the little pole boat that plied the canal system was the work of a few minutes. The water channel ran neither wide nor deep, and much of it was choked with plants, but the boatman had no difficulty finding a passage through the tall grasses. As twilight drew near, I felt a profound sense of peace. The only sounds were the tinkle of the bell at the bridle of the donkey, and the scrape of the boatman’s pole against the stone blocks along the bank. The old boatman and the youth who led the donkey did not converse. Perhaps they had already said all they wished to say to each other. I welcomed their silence, and sat listening to the lazy buzz of flies in the gathering twilight.

  After night fell and the stars spread their glittering cloak across the heavens, we continued on by the light of lanterns, one hung on the curved bow of the boat, the other carried by the youth who led the donkey. Fluttering white moths made a halo around his head. At last they stopped to rest their animal, and I found myself sharing a rough hut of woven reeds with the old man, the boy, and the beast, which the old man would not leave outside in spite of my attempted bribe. I was able to get a few hours of sleep on a dirty reed mat before the journey resumed at first light of morning. The canal system opened into a salt lake, the western shore of which we followed, then resumed on the far side of the lake. So we progressed the second day and night, but on the third day I left the canal and traveled overland on the back of a hired horse to the town of Bubastis, in the Delta of the Nile.

  My first glimpse of the ancient land of Egypt was not impressive. Bubastis was a farming town on a lesser tributary of the Nile, surrounded by plowed fields irrigated by channels that let the waters of the river wet the crops. Barley and wheat appeared to be the primary produce. There were also many groves of fruit trees and an abundance of flowers that were natural to the place, but so large and bright in their colors, and so numerous, that they appeared cultivated. Oxen moved ponderously in the fields, drawing plows or pulling carts. The town itself was of no great size, but stone ruins on its outskirts showed that in the past it had been a more populous place. Much of the town was built of these old stones, which the residents had gathered and used to erect their houses and walls. Those too large to be easily moved had been left in the fields, and the farmers plowed around them.

  It was the greenest land I had ever seen. Everywhere, something grew, and not only grew but flourished. Water flowed with such abundance, it formed an obstruction to progress, so that small bridges were constructed to allow the countless irrigation channels to be crossed. Many of the freshly plowed fields were wet with water, and the black mud of the earth stuck like excrement to the shoes of anyone foolish enough to attempt to walk through them, so that it had to be periodically scraped off with a stick or knife. Everywhere life thrived. The sunlight was thick with swarms of flies of all kinds, both those that were harmless and those that bit. Great flocks of birds nested in the reeds at the bank of the river, and when startled into flight, they blocked the sun and their wings made a sound like thunder.

  Cats swarmed the paved streets within the walls of the town, displaying neither affection nor fear of the horses and wagons. They were curiously elongated and had very short hair,
so that they appeared at a distance to be hairless. As I was making my way to the market place, after leaving my hired horse, as arranged, in a stable near the gate of the town, I saw a cat kicked by a donkey when it tried to run between the donkey’s legs. Rather than ignore the animal and pass on, as I assumed he would, the portly merchant who sat astride the donkey dismounted with a horrified expression and knelt in the street. He tried to stand the cat on its feet, but it was too badly injured. A crowd gathered, their faces solemn. Anyone looking at them without seeing what lay at their feet would have assumed that a horse had struck a child. Eventually a woman came from one of the houses and took the cat up in her arms. The merchant opened his purse and gave her money. With tender care she carried it inside, and it was evident that she intended to nurse it back to health.

  I watched all this with amazement. It was not as though there was any shortage of cats in Bubastis. On the contrary, it was scarcely possible to walk without brushing one with your toe, although the citizens took great care to avoid kicking the creatures or stepping on their tails. In any other city they would be treated like vermin, but here they were given greater affection than the hordes of dirty children that ran screaming at play through the narrow streets. I saw more than one merchant strike away with the back of his hand a naked beggar child that tried to steal from his cart, but the cats were allowed to walk and climb where they wished, and steal what they liked.

  Shaking my head in puzzlement at this mystery, I entered the open gate of the market. I was hungry, and let my nose draw me to a vendor who cooked strips of lamb spitted with peppers on reeds over a charcoal grill. As I stood eating, I watched a juggler perform on the broad paving stones in the open space at the center of the square. Naked to the waist, he balanced swords by their points on his forehead and both outstretched palms while dancing from one foot to the other, to the sound of a flute played by his less muscular partner, who capered around him like a monkey. Accustomed as I was to performances at the royal palace at Sana’a, I was unimpressed. The townsfolk were easier to please, and paid him with applause and a few bronze fils, which they tossed into his upturned turban.