Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “Why did you listen at the wagon?” the girl asked.

  “Didn’t you hear the language of the Old Ones? They spoke the name Shub-Niggurath.”

  She digested this, along with the fig she chewed. I heard it squishing between her teeth.

  “What did they say in the language of the Old Ones?”

  I searched my memory, wishing there was sufficient light to study the scroll in my wallet. My ear for tongues had always been good, but the inhabitants of the wagon voiced the ancient words with a thick accent.

  “It was an injunction to Shub-Niggurath to fulfill her covenant with the crafty race,” I ventured at last.

  “A bold folk, to give orders to one of the Old Ones.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What is the crafty race?”

  I shook my head, realized that she could not see me in the darkness, then did not bother to answer, since I had no answer to make.

  When we descended from our hiding place in the early morning, we found the people of the wagon preparing to rejoin the road. A boy and two girls, one older and the other younger than him, pulled up the sticks of the stockade and bundled them on a rack beneath the rear of the wagon. The boy eyed me as we approached. He was no more than twelve years of age, but his face had the blank stare of an adult, giving nothing and expecting nothing in return. The girls glanced at us, but otherwise pretended we did not exist. Their silence was unnatural in children. The bleats of complaint from the goats made the only sound on the still morning air.

  I stopped beside the wagon and waited. After a few minutes, the boy went to the back and said something through the open door. A woman poked out her head and glared at us. From beyond her, I noticed two men approaching, their backs heavy under bundles of sticks bound with ropes. They were dressed after the manner of horsemen, in short belted tunics and leather surwals the legs of which tucked into the tops of their high black boots.

  “What do you want?” the woman demanded in Arabic.

  Another woman with gray hair left the wagon without glancing at us and went to the smoldering cooking fire. She began to poke its embers with a burnt twig. In moments, flames raised their heads around the iron pot that sat across the hearth stones. She took off its copper lid and stirred its contents with the same blackened stick.

  “We have heard it said that you foretell the future by lines in the palm,” I told the younger woman.

  She shrugged a long strand of black hair from her eye and proceeded to bind her head with a striped yellow and white scarf. Her body was slender beneath her dress of gold-embroidered red silk, her face attractive in an angular kind of way.

  “What of it?”

  I decided to take a more direct approach.

  “We have silver.”

  This made her pause. She eyed me in an appraising manner, not neglecting to study the bulge of the wallet over my shoulder.

  “I have a little time before the morning meal,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the cooking fire. “Come inside.”

  Martala followed silently at my heels as I approached the wagon. The men ignored us. They deposited a few of the sticks next to the fire, and began to tie the others to wooden brackets at the side of the wagon. The boy gave Martala a knowing smirk that was out of place in a child of his years and flipped up the hem of his ragged shirt. To her credit, she restrained the urge to box his ear, though I sensed it was an effort for her.

  Within the wagon, the woman opened a small circular table with folding legs. I saw three narrow cots fixed on the left wall, one above the other, and on the right side a large cupboard secured at the top by ropes stood with its doors wide, revealing upper shelves filled with all manner of cooking implements, spices, and jars. The lower shelves held bottles, clothing, and other household articles. At the rear of the wagon, beneath the window that opened on its exterior driver’s seat, stood an ornately carved cabinet of blond sandalwood. It had the look of a portable shrine, and was of unexpected richness. I wondered if it had been stolen from the house of some wealthy landowner. The shadowed space within the wagon possessed a distinct odor that was a mingling of spices, wood smoke, and stale sweat.

  She nodded her kerchief-bound head to a row of stools that hung along the wall. I took one and Martala took another. We sat at the round table, and the woman seated herself on the opposite side with the sandalwood cabinet at her back. Her keen black eyes glanced from my face to that of the girl with startling penetration. They returned to stare at me with a trace of amusement. I wondered what she saw.

  Taking out my purse, I jiggled it to make the coins within it clink, and drew forth a silver dirham of the middle size. She held it up to the light from the open door to examine the beardless profile of the old Sassanian emperor Yazdegerd, and put it into her broad girdle.

  “Give me your hand,” she commanded.

  I did not know which hand she might prefer, so I extended my left. She grunted, but accepted it. As her fingers touched mine, I felt a tingle. She released my fingers and stared at me, speaking words in her own tongue.

  “I cannot understand your language,” I told her.

  “You are one of us,” she said. “How can this be?”

  I glanced across at Martala, who shrugged her shoulders. The elder of the two men put his head around the corner of the wagon and looked at us from beneath the brim of his hat, but his bearded face betrayed nothing. He withdrew when the woman waved him away with an impatient jerk of her head.

  “You are not alone,” she said, nodding with a kind of smile.

  “This girl is my servant.”

  She made a noise of disgust in her throat.

  “You know what I refer to, the one you carry inside.”

  Can she mean you, Sashi? I thought.

  She sees me, Alhazred. She has the second sight that you receive from the white spiders. She has something more, a djinn inside her.

  This quickened my interest.

  What kind of djinn?

  I cannot identify it. The spirit is like none I have ever encountered. It will not speak to me.

  The woman seemed to listen to my very thoughts as Sashi talked within my mind. She frowned and withdrew herself slightly.

  “I was wrong. You are unlike us. You carry a companion, but she is not of the Mother.”

  “Your words are curious,” I said, affecting a dull-witted smile. “I do not understand them.”

  “No matter,” she said brusquely, dismissing my curiosity. “Give me your hand.”

  She grasped it firmly and studied its palm.

  “You were born into poverty, but were raised up to a high estate. You provoked the anger of a great man and suffered the penalty.”

  As she said this, she glanced at my face, and I knew she saw its mutilation beneath the veil of glamour.

  “You fled into the wilderness, and for a long time you wandered in search of wisdom. Many men seek your death.”

  She drew a harsh breath, and stared into my eyes.

  “You died and were reborn. Now you search for a way to regain the love that you lost. Someone watches you, a dark man of the desert. He is not your friend, but neither is he your enemy.”

  “These are matters of the past and present. What of the future?”

  She squinted at my hand, shaking her head and mumbling, then released it with a gesture of dismissal.

  “I cannot see your future. It is veiled, just like your face.”

  I nodded. A more honest teller of fortunes I had never encountered. An understanding of sorts passed between us. I knew that she knew more than she was telling, and she knew the same about me. As an act of good faith, I decided to reveal myself, and used the word and gestures of the glamour in their reverse order to strip away the veil of illusion from my features. Her eyes narrowed, but she be
trayed no other reaction.

  “Why did you really come here?”

  “We are pursued by an assassin who has seen both my faces. Alone on the road we are easy to identify, and vulnerable to attack. I wish to travel with your wagon, so that the assassin will not find us and will pass over us on the road.”

  “Cannot you lie in wait for this assassin and kill him?”

  “If you knew the assassin, you would not ask such a thing,” Martala muttered.

  The woman ignored her.

  “We do not travel with those not of our own race,” she said.

  I lifted my purse and let it fall on the table with a rich clink of coins. She eyed the purse, and many thoughts passed through her mind. I did not need the power of second sight to divine their trend. If we were close, and misfortune befell us, the contents of the purse would be fair game for the first person quick enough to seize it up from my corpse. She named an amount in gold, and I counted it out and gave it into her hand.

  “Very well, you may walk beside the wheels, and eat with us if you wish, but you must sleep outside the wagon at night.”

  “What name are you called?”

  “We are Thugians. In our own language, the name signifies the wise race, for we are knowing in the ways of beasts and men.”

  “No, you misunderstand. If we are to travel together we must know what to call you.” I told her my name and the name of the girl.

  “I am Naleen, wife of Belok who is the tall man with the bushy beard you have seen. The younger man is his brother, Ell. The old woman heating our stew is Belok’s mother, Urga. My son is called Rakk, my older daughter is Pula, and my younger daughter Leti. Now you have our names, and power over us. And I have your names.”

  The threat was not voiced, but was plain enough. Any magic I might work with their names would be matched by magic against us using our names.

  A faint tinkling came from the lower shelf of the open cupboard. I looked for its source but saw only a row of tall bottles of clear glass that appeared to be empty, although they were tightly sealed with corks and wax. They were in shadow, but I observed a kind of mist swirl in the nearest bottle. Without haste, she stood from her stool and shut the doors of the cupboard, securing them with the wooden latch. Her posture indicated that our business was concluded.

  I left the wagon with the girl. The horror of my face provoked as little reaction from the men and children as it had evoked from the witch. They glanced at me, then looked away. I found their lack of surprise at the change in my features unnatural. We sat on a flat stone some distance from the fire, where we could talk without being overheard.

  “She plans to slit our throats while we sleep,” Martala murmured, voicing a thought that had passed through my own mind.

  “I don’t think so. That she would kill us for our gold I have no doubt, but not while we are traveling with the wagon. That would be poor hospitality.”

  “Not every race is as mindful of the rules of hospitality as your own,” she said.

  “I wonder what they keep in that shrine?”

  “Ask the bitch. No doubt she will show you, if you pay enough gold.”

  “You may be right. But not today. First, we must gain their trust.”

  She laughed scornfully.

  “We could travel with these cutthroats for a year and not gain their trust.”

  “I grant your superior knowledge of thieves and vagabonds,” I said patiently. “Even so, I mean to travel with the wagon. It is the best chance we have of avoiding the notice of Altrus. If he does identify us, he will be reluctant to attack in the presence of so many people.”

  She could not argue with the good sense of my words, but they did not change her opinion of the Thugians. Perhaps she recognized in their nature a muddy reflection of her own image, and disliked the reminder that until joining me, she might have passed as one of the children of the wagon.

  The stew was better than I expected. Sitting in the covered pot overnight had not hurt its flavor. As the level dropped, the old woman added water from a water skin, and used her knife to cut onions and parsnips into it. A rabbit, freshly caught and skinned by the boy, also contributed to its contents. At the end of the meal, she covered the pot and took it off the embers, but did not empty it. I wondered how long the same stew had been eaten and replenished. The fanciful idea came to me that it might be older than the gray-haired hag that stirred it.

  While the men wordlessly harnessed the small horses to the wagon, the children gathered the goats into a tight, milling mass by cutting the air with their switches and hissing like snakes. This noise seemed to subdue the animals. They waited with docile expressions on their long faces for the wheels of the wagon to lurch into motion. The road ran no great distance from the camp site. We found ourselves moving along beside the turning wheels, which exerted a kind of entrancement on the mind. When the wagon wheels became trapped in deep ruts of soft sand, we put our hands to the spokes with the two men and the boy, and urged them free. This was hard work, but it came at infrequent intervals, and by walking far enough to the side of the wagon we were able to avoid the worst of the dust.

  It soon became apparent that Naleen led the family of wanderers. Belok grunted and cast her dark looks when she ordered him about, but he never failed to do what he was told. No one contested her words, not even the children. She was an impressive woman with proud breasts that showed no sign of sagging beneath her long-sleeved dress of red and gold, and wide hips that accentuated her slender waist, well displayed by her broad embroidered girdle. Had it not been for the expression of malice that settled around the drawn corners of her mouth, she might have been beautiful.

  None of the women of the wagons wore veils, but all went about shamelessly with their faces exposed like men, presumably because it was more practical for travel along the road. The deep-blue Persian cloak and starry head scarf worn by Martala blended well with the bright clothing of the Thugian women. My own brown cloak looked a little drab in comparison. To better play the part of a wanderer, I tied around my forehead a yellow kerchief striped with white that I bought from the eldest girl, Pula. This seemed to be a kind of emblem for the Thugians. Almost all the men of the wagons we passed on the road, and many of the women, wore such a yellow and white cloth around their heads, or necks. I saw Belok cast me a long glance when I put on the kerchief, but he did not order me to remove it.

  At noon we stopped to rest and water the ponies, and to have a brief uncooked meal of bread and cheese. Martala made herself useful by helping the men care for the little horses. I sat on a hillock as I finished my crust and watched the children at play, if it can be called that, for they conducted themselves with utmost seriousness.

  While Pula stood staring off into the distance, affecting indifference, Rakk crept up behind her with his yellow kerchief twisted between his fists. When he was close enough, he threw it over her head and around her neck, and proceeded to choke her with it. She fought him vigorously, and if she managed to twist out of his grasp, she taunted him until his cheeks burned. If he managed to hold her until she tapped upon his fists with her hands in a gesture of submission, he released her to gasp for air, then strutted around like a breeding cock to show his superiority. The younger child watched these exertions and urged her sister to greater efforts. It was a strange game that I found disquieting in its implications.

  At the approach of evening, we camped outside a village. The wagon attracted the inhabitants, who came in small groups or pairs to trade and have their fortunes told. I noticed that none approached the wagon alone. The villagers treated the travelers with barely disguised contempt, yet were eager to barter with them for spices, dried roots, charms, amulets, rings, glass beads, bright kerchiefs, and other magpie treasures. Many came with shameful faces seeking potions from the witch Naleen. Love philters and medicines against impotence were no doubt a popu
lar purchase in this remote land. I wondered if she also sold poisons.

  Leaving Martala with the wagon, I walked into the village at twilight to draw water from the well that occupied the center of the market square, which was no more than a beaten patch of bare ground surrounded by stone and wattle huts. As I filled my water skin from the well bucket, I discover that my presence was unwelcome. A dozen dirty children in rags gathered, jeering at my face which I had not troubled to conceal. When their number was great enough to give them courage, they threw stones until I withdrew myself. They followed me to the edge of the cultivated vegetable gardens that surrounded the huts, but went no further, for the shadows of night had fallen.

  We continued along the road in this manner for three days, and might have gone on without incident all the way to Damascus, when we came to a place where the road crossed a narrower track that extended in a more northerly direction. The wagon was compelled to stop and wait for the passage of an uncommonly large and wealthy caravan. I guessed by the silver bells on the equipage of the camels and the gleaming ceremonial armor of the mounted guards that it was a royal procession of some sort. Two-score mounted and armored soldiers protected three wagons, their interiors enclosed by hanging curtains of silk embroidered with gold and silver thread. The central wagon, larger than the other two, was covered entirely in gold leaf. Dozens of camels bore heavy loads, tended by innumerable well-dressed slaves.

  “They must be carrying home the corpse of some prince,” Martala muttered.

  Her mood was soured by the clouds of fine dust raised by the hooves of the camels and horses. I glanced at Belok, who stared at the gold leaf on the sides of the big wagon with an avaricious glint. His eyes widened and his lips parted in amazement, causing me to look back at the passing wagon.

  A woman of exquisite beauty held the side curtain wide to gaze out with a bored and impatient expression. Her arm was covered by a sleeve of transparent silk of a delicate pink, and a silver bracelet adorned her wrist. She blinked against the brightness of the sun, her gaze passing over the yellow wagon, and for a moment her eyes met mine.