Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “What did you bring with you?” I asked Martala.

  “Only this.”

  I felt the hardness of the bone roller of the scroll of the Old Ones.

  “Clever girl. That was quick thinking.”

  Sliding my sword into its scabbard, I took the scroll and put it away in the usual pocket of my coat. It amused me to think that neither Farri nor Altrus had the scroll, yet. They would come searching for us, that was certain, but it would take them a while to disengage from each other and gather their men.

  “We must leave Alexandria with what we presently bear on our backs. With what I bear on my back,” I corrected myself.

  “Yes, we must leave this place, but we are not so destitute as you believe, Alhazred.”

  I clutched the slender shoulders of the girl in hope.

  “It is wise to be prepared,” she said. “Follow after me, before we are noticed.”

  Through narrow and crooked streets she led me. I did my best to remember the way we came, but at last was forced to admit to myself that I was as lost as I had been at the docks. From time to time we stopped and listened in the night for the sound of footsteps behind us, but heard nothing other than the bark of dogs. Martala pressed me ahead of her into the mouth of an alley so narrow, the brick walls brushed my elbows. At its end was a wooden door. In the darkness I was able to trace its edges with my fingers. I felt for its latch and found that it was locked.

  Martala slid her slender body past mine while I pressed my back to the rough bricks. A key rattled in the lock. Wooden hinges creaked. She pulled me stumbling over an elevated threshold onto floorboards, then closed and bolted the door. The smell of dust nearly choked me at the back of my throat.

  “What is this place?”

  “A house of safety. Let me light the lamp and I will tell you about it.”

  I heard her feel her way into the room, then scratch steel on flint to ignite a tinderbox. She applied the flame to the wick of a brass oil lamp. By its glow I saw that we stood in a room some five paces square. For furniture it boasted no more than two chairs with woven reed seats, a table supporting the lamp and tinderbox in the middle of the floor, and a closed cabinet against the wall on the left. A heavy tapestry hung on the wall nearest the door, its faded pattern obscured by dust. I lifted its edge and saw behind it a shuttered window. On the other side of the room a flight of steep stairs led upward into shadow.

  “A single bedroom above,” Martala explained.

  “Does any other person know of this house?”

  She shook her head, regarding me with satisfaction. Her complete lack of nervousness calmed my fears. I forced the tightness out of my shoulders and neck and sat in one of the chairs at the table.

  “Not long after coming with your corpse to this city, I judged it would be wise to have a place of concealment, in case Farri showed himself. I rented this house for a year, after assuring myself that the owner would not return in that time or make troublesome inquiries. I visit here seldom, only to keep the lamps filled and the cabinet stocked with food and water.”

  “Where did you hide the key to the door?”

  She blushed in the lamp glow and set the key on the table.

  “I have worn it night and day.”

  For a moment her words puzzled me since I had noticed no key hanging about her neck. Then I understood.

  “You are wise beyond your years. You say there is food here?”

  She opened the cabinet and took out a round loaf of flat brown bread and a block of hard cheese, then set a wicker-bound beaker of wine and a pewter goblet on the table. The bread was like stone, but not moldy. I clinked it against the tabletop and broke it with difficulty between my hands, filling the goblet twice before my thirst was quenched and I felt able to pass it to the girl. She made a face as she sipped. Wine was never to her liking. The dry old bread resisted my teeth. She did not even attempt it, but sat nibbling a piece of cheese, watching me.

  “We cannot go back to your house,” I said, my mouth full of crust flakes.

  “Your house,” she corrected.

  “Yours, mine, or the Caliph’s, if we go back there we will surely be taken. I wish we had the jewels, but they are lost. We must make our way with what we carry, a familiar condition that does not trouble me.”

  “Even so, we are not completely lacking resources,” she said with a glint of amusement in her ice-gray eyes.

  She returned to the cabinet and opened its left side. From its depths she took two daggers and two swords and laid them across the table. The larger curved dagger nestled in a sheath of ivory trimmed with silver and possessed an ornately carved hilt of the same material. The smaller straight blade had a plain sheath of black leather. One sword was shorter and lighter than the other. I saw that the cabinet also contained a shelf of folded clothing, and two pairs of boots.

  “Stout travel tunics and cloaks,” she explained. “And there is this.”

  She laid a leather purse on the table between the swords. I snatched it up, and could not mute my pleasure when I felt its contents. With eager fingers I loosened the knobs of the drawstring and poured several of the jewels into my hand.

  “I took a small number of them and hid them here, Alhazred. When I awakened you from death I meant to tell you about it, but there was no time.”

  “With these we can buy horses, or passage on a ship.”

  “We? You mean to take me with you?”

  I looked at her with surprise. Her voice held childlike uncertainty.

  “A man must have a servant when he travels.”

  The beginning of a smile touched the corners of her lips. She hid it behind the goblet as she sipped from its rim, eyelashes lowered to the wine.

  “Where will we go?”

  I sat back and pondered the question.

  “Egypt is no longer safe for either of us. I cannot return to the land of Yemen, and have had my fill of wandering the desert. Let the dark man keep it for his own. We must go forward, across the sea.”

  “Yes, but where?”

  From my pocket I took the scroll of the Old Ones and unrolled it. There was a passage toward the end that I had noticed in the course of copying its contents. It was not a part of the original text, but had been added in pen by a later hand—perhaps by one of the owners of the scroll prior to its coming into the possession of the Jew. The gloss was written in tiny Greek letters between the text of the scroll itself, and it was a commentary on a reference in the text to the alchemical mutation of human flesh. I was forced to tilt the papyrus to catch the light of the lamp before I could read it aloud.

  “In a valley between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris lies the Well of the Seraph, the waters of which restore to wholeness flesh that has been withered or struck off. The location of the well is forgotten, unless perchance it is known to the wisest head of Babylon.”

  “Babylon? Does it refer to the fortress at Fustat?”

  “I think not. The rivers are far to the east, and Babylon is a city there.”

  “I have heard of this other Babylon,” Martala murmured. “It was once a great kingdom.”

  “What is its head, do you suppose?”

  She frowned in thought.

  “When I was a child, a magician at Memphis kept an oracular talking head made of brass in a cedar box. My father heard it speak. But he said the head was a fraud. A boy spoke into a long brass tube so that the head itself seemed to utter words.”

  I rolled the scroll and put it back in its pocket. Drawing the dagger from its ivory sheath, I studied my face in its polished steel. The glamour had passed. I saw myself as I truly appeared, realizing for the first time that the girl had been looking upon the unveiled horror of my face without a qualm. She had grown accustomed to her monster.

  “It is not my wish to remain a eun
uch the rest of my life—my second life. If there is a charm or spell that can restore my manhood and my face, I intend to find it. Then I will go back to Sana’a and kill that fool, the king, and take his daughter for my own.”

  A shadow passed over Martala’s eyes. She regarded me evenly while I removed the woolen baldric with its empty leather sheath from my shoulder and fitted the new dagger and sheath to my belt.

  “We travel to Babylon?”

  “Yes. We will seek out the head, whatever it may be, and learn from it the location of this well.”

  “Babylon may be far enough to escape Farri’s wrath,” Martala said. But her voice held doubt.

  “Farri has concerns of his own. The rich Jew who lost the scroll believes Farri his enemy, thanks to certain words I uttered. Let them occupy each other while we make our departure from this land.”

  We ascended the almost vertical stair, the girl going first with the lamp in her hands to light the way. The sway of her naked buttocks as she climbed made me regret the empty space between my thighs. The room above boasted the same dimensions as that below. The low ceiling was no more than slats of wood supporting the red clay tiles of the roof, but the walls had been plastered and whitewashed around the year of my birth, though the whitewash had faded to gray and the plaster was flaking off in sheets. The room held a narrow bed, a low wooden stand with a crockery basin for washing and a stoppered clay beaker filled with clean water, a brass chamber pot, a peg board on the wall, and a single stool. I saw that the plain boards sealing the window would admit scant light during the day, but, what was more important, they would let little of the glow from the lamp escape at night. The same smell of dust that choked me in the room below hung on the air.

  I stripped and did my best to wash my body in the basin. As had been her custom before my death, Martala dried me with a towel. Her gentle touch soothed my nerves. Only after my body was clean did she wash the dried blood from her head and upper lip. I made use of the pot. When I lay naked upon the bed sheet on my back, she climbed onto the narrow mattress to press her skin against my right side. I put my arm under her shoulders. Beyond the shutter, the sun must have been about to rise in the east. It had been thirty hours since I had last slept.

  With the strange clarity of mind that sometimes comes in fever, I knew that I dreamed but could not awaken myself. I walked alone across the desert at night, as I so often did during my dreams. The flat land was ridged with small ribs of windblown sand and speckled with stones the size of plums that turned treacherously beneath the soles of my boots. I began to run in haste, fleeing something that I could never see when I paused and looked back to scan the horizon. The moon hung low above the distant hills, and sent my long shadow rippling in front of me over the sandy ridges. I wondered if it was the moon I tried to escape, then realized that no man could outrace the moon.

  Turning from the silver crescent at my back, I saw him standing before me and stumbled in my haste to stop before I ran into him. He stood with his arms raised and outspread, his black robe and cloak flowing on the night breeze. I tried to look up into his face, but lacked the courage or the strength of will. Each time I struggled to raise my eyes, a terror gripped my heart and forced my gaze to the sands at his feet.

  “Why do you flee me, Alhazred?”

  Hollow amusement rasped on his sibilant voice. He spoke a strange language, but I understood it.

  “You frighten me, lord.”

  “You are my servant. There is nothing to fear.”

  Again I fought to lift my face, but found that I could not see. As I tilted up my head my eyelids closed. No effort would open them for so long as my face was turned to his. I spoke blindly to him.

  “I thought you had abandoned me.”

  He laughed, a sound that turned my bones to well water.

  “Your life is bound up with my purposes. There is a new task for you in the lands of the east.”

  “What would you have me do?” I asked meekly. All resentment or rebellion left me like a passing shadow. My heart trembled, and I longed to get away from him, as a child yearns to be released from the critical inspection of his tutor.

  “My enemies are massed in the east. They have sealed their stronghold against my sight. You must learn their purposes.”

  “How will I know them, lord?”

  No answer came. I found that I could raise my head and keep my eyes open. The vast desert stretched empty to the starry horizon. Again I knew that I was dreaming, and this time forced myself awake.

  Martala sat on the stool with her feet together and hands on her knees, watching me with a serene expression. In the dim splinters of sunlight slanting through the cracks in the window shutters, one half of her face was bright and the other half shadowed. She might have been the statue of a goddess such as I had seen in Memphis, so still she sat.

  She had put on a tunic of pale blue linen richly ornamented at the neck, hem, and around the narrow sleeves with bands of yarn dyed in muted shades of pink, gray, lime, and lemon. Or perhaps the colors had faded due to numerous washings. It bore the curious arabesques so common to the tunics of the Copts, embroidered on its shoulders and front panels at the level of her shins. These were square, the more common shape, although round arabesques were also to be seen in the street. Such was its length that it would have covered her feet, but the leather belt at her waist drew it up to reveal the toes of her new boots. At her waist I noticed the small dagger in its sheath and the smaller of the two swords from the cabinet. She had bound up her hair and hidden it beneath a round hat of dark green felt that extended low in the back, so that she gave the appearance of a slender boy.

  A fine mist of sweat covered my body. The unmoving air in the bedroom would soon become unbearable as the sun continued to beat down on the roof of this dwelling. I watched dust motes dance in the slivers of sunlight.

  “What hour is it?”

  “Near ten of the morning.”

  I listened to the noises of the street that came down the narrow alley. They might have emanated from another world. How long, I wondered, could we stay safe in this place? With a sudden determination, I forced myself to sit.

  “I must find us passage on a ship sailing north. That is the quickest route to the headwaters of the Euphrates, which will carry us to Babylon.”

  “What port do we seek?”

  I tried to visualize a map of the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean in my mind. It was not a region I had ever studied with intent to travel there.

  “As far north on the eastern coast as we can reach.”

  I stood. She rose with me and stepped forward to put her hand on my bare chest over my heart.

  “Let me make the arrangements, Alhazred. You know nothing of the streets. I have formed associations that will be useful in gaining information without being observed.”

  What she said was true enough. I was apt to become lost, and even if I found my way would be conspicuous wandering the docks trying to secure passage in a ship. Both Farri and Altrus would expect us to attempt to flee by sea, and would have agents watching for me. The girl was less noticeable in her new tunic, with her hair coiled up and hidden beneath her hat. Farri would recognize her in an instant, but his daughter might overlook her in a crowd, and it was likely Altrus would be watching for her long black hair.

  I nodded my assent and without another word she left me and descended the stair. I heard the door open and shut. She had been waiting only for me to awaken, to gain permission to act on whatever plan she had made in her own mind during the night. There was little else for me to do but trust in her cunning.

  After relieving my bladder and washing the sweat from my limbs with a towel moistened in the basin, I went naked down the stair and took the remaining tunic from its shelf in the tall cabinet. It would be prudent to change my clothing, since my dark-blue Muslim coat was eas
ily recognized. The boots I ignored. I had no intention of giving up my old footwear, just when my boots were beginning to fit my feet. The girl had left the lamp alight, and I saw that the leather purse no longer rested beside it. The green cloak was also missing from the cabinet. No doubt she had chosen the green cloak because its color matched her hat, leaving me the black cloak.

  I studied at arm’s length the sand-colored linen of the tunic in the lamp glow. It bore the characteristic pattern of the Copts, four square arabesques, and embroidered bands of brown, black, and white at its neck, sleeves and hem—less colorful than the tunic of the girl, but more eye-catching than I would have wished. Perhaps Martala had picked the garments for this very reason. They did not resemble the clothing of two people who sought to hide. These reflections were in my mind while I put on the linen undershirt that had been folded beneath the tunic, then slid the tunic over my head.

  I returned with thoughtful steps up the stair to gather my boots, belt, and other things, but retreated as swiftly as I was able from the heat that radiated down from the exposed tile roof like the prickle of glowing iron. The upper room was not for the living during the hours of day. An open window might help cool it, but I doubted it would be pleasant to sit in no matter what was done. For a time I considered removing Gor’s skull from my belt. Farri would know it at a glance, as would Altrus. In the end I allowed it to remain. So long had I worn it, I would feel strange unless its hardness tapped against my thigh. I started to place the scroll into my new tunic, then realized that it had no opening in the front, and in any case, no pockets. The scroll and the rag that contained the white spiders would have to be carried elsewhere.