Call of the Kings

by Chris Page

  ‘Magic,’ replied Twilight. ‘When you have the full enchantments at your command you realize that it surpasses everything else we have. When I attend to my duties at the Festival of the Cowering Dead at Stonehenge back in Wessex, I see and hear the real hell of millions of misspent lives. That’s the annual reality of what I believe in.’

  ‘It’s easy for you to say that because you experience that event and have command of the enchantments,’ said Ramzi. ‘And although I have a little ability and can sense if certain bodily functions are playing up or not working in my patients and, as when you arrived, the spectral presence of others, I can’t change phenomena, make myself invisible, or transform myself instantly to any part of the world. That’s the omnipotent power of the enchantments. The rest of us have to make do with whatever faith we are born into. In my case that’s Islam.’

  ‘And a very good faith it is,’ said the old astounder. ‘Now, let’s get away from that for a while and visit a subject that I have been meaning to ask you about ever since I arrived here. I am most interested in leech-craft, the husbandry of plants and herbs for healing, poisoning, and, although it’s of no consequence to me because I don’t eat, cooking. In particular I would like to know about this wonderful drug you use, and write about, called opium. I read a little about it from your papers in the House of Wisdom. It’s a new one on me and, as far as I know, is not cultivated in Britain.’

  On familiar and assured ground, Ramzi spoke for some time on the benefits and dangers of the white poppy. Opium, from the Latin for poppy juice, is obtained from all parts of the white poppy but particularly the unripe capsules. It had been used by Baghdadi physicians for over a hundred years, although, before Ramzi had experimented by adding it to other herbs and aromatics, only in two basic strengths; weak to feel good or strong to induce sleep. It also had natural inherent qualities for reducing the heat in fevers. Ramzi explained the many mixtures he’d experimented with, some successful and some not, and their applications to particular sicknesses. Then he got onto the dangers of opium and explained its role in inducing an addiction that appeared almost impossible to shake off once it took hold.

  ‘Many times I have been robbed here in my tent by those who know I have many mixed jars of opium-based potions. Their craving drives them to rob me. The sad thing is that most of them are former patients who caught their addiction from treatments I administered to them.’

  He pointed to the sleeping young man recovering from the stab wound and nodded sadly. ‘I can only cure and bring restful sleep to someone with that sort of wound by using my own opium mixtures, yet in so doing I could be introducing him to the hell of opiate addiction.’

  ‘Are there other places in Baghdad where patients or addicts can obtain it?’

  ‘Only other physicians, but they get their mixtures from me when they need it and won’t carry much in the way of stock.’

  Although the climate in Britain was not thought to be conducive to the cultivation of the white poppy, Ramzi gave Twilight a small pot of seeds to see if he could grow it at the Avebury compound. With the promise of a last session together the following evening Twilight once again left the little physician shaking his bald head at the dawn queue of patients outside his tent. Sleep had become an impossibility in the last couple of days, but meeting this venefical stranger from Britain had impacted so significantly on his psyche that he would stay awake for a week in his company.

  In the meantime, Twilight turned down river toward the gleaming golden Palace.

  It was time he visited the mighty caliph, al-Musta’sim.

  Hovering invisibly over the huge and ornate palace with its golden domed roof, elaborate marble rooms, ornate curved bathing pools, massive harem building with hundreds of concubines guarded by muscular Nubian castrates, beautiful gardens, and an army of retainers and fierce-looking guards, Twilight quickly learned that the caliph had left a week ago for his summer camp in the mountains where it would be cooler. The two mounted men on white horses he’d seen two days ago racing across the desert toward the city turned out to be messengers of the caliph. As they sped out from the palace on the return journey, their large linen message pouches he’d seen on their way in stuffed with papyrus scrolls, Twilight followed them at a leisurely pace in the air. Leisurely, that was, for him. The gallant horses, urged ever faster by the knees of their riders with their curved scimitars jammed into brightly coloured waistbands, soon worked up a lather. After an hour of galloping the riders stopped at a small oasis where a camel train had also paused to rest and drink. A small cup of sweet tea later and a good watering for the horses and they were off again, heading toward the blue and green of distant mountains rising out of the vast expanse of sand and rock. Twilight was happy to dawdle along in the clear blue sky and warm breeze above them even though he could see where they were going. An hour later they pulled up their heavily sweating mounts alongside a small tented city by the side of an azure lake in the foothills of the mountains. This was the caliph’s summer camp.

  As two heavily armed men led away the exhausted horses, the two men unslung their linen message pouches and handed them to an impressively moustachioed vizier, who hurried away to present them to his caliph. Wending his way through a maze of tents, each getting larger as he approached the centre of the vast camp, the vizier finally arrived outside what was obviously the caliph’s personal set of tented rooms. With its perimeter guarded by at least fifty heavily armed, fierce-eyed warriors with their right hand permanently fixed to the sheathed handle of sharp-looking scimitars, the caliph’s tented rooms resembled a fortress. Stopping outside, the vizier reached inside each pouch, extracted the scrolls, then handed the dusty bags to a young boy, who scuttled off to get them washed. Affecting a low bow the moustachioed vizier then walked slowly into the tent with his arrival announced softly by a caller standing just inside the entrance.

  And there, resplendent on an elaborately decorated dais, dressed in brightly coloured red and blue silks with a huge red ruby adorning the centre of his pure white turban, reclined the caliph, al-Musta’sim.

  Sitting invisibly in the air above the dais, Twilight was surprised. Somehow, with all the splendour and decorative gold of the palace and now this ornate, tented city in the mountains, he’d expected a fat man. Someone along the lines of Sheik Suleiman Abdul Ra-Hulak, the corpulent, ill-fated Turkish slave trader he’d dispatched with the aid of a king cobra throat strike in Rome.

  Nothing of the sort. This caliph was young, no older than twenty-five, slim, and very fit-looking. The arrogance of rule, vast harem of beautiful women, and extraordinary richness of his life didn’t cloud his direct and friendly demeanour either. Of average height with a small, wispy beard and keen, intelligent eyes, the caliph reminded Twilight of a young King Alfred. As the young caliph rose from his reclining position on the dais, all the others in the room began to leave backwards, slowly, and with many bows, the curled-up toes of their slippers always pointed absolutely at the caliph, they finally cleared the room. With the room finally empty except three, the caliph received the still-bowing vizier with the scrolls tucked under his arm, and lifting him gently out of his deep bow accompanied him to a heavily inlaid sandalwood table where they were joined by the third person in the tented room, a much older vizier. Gray-bearded with an air of venerable wisdom, the older vizier opened the scrolls out on the table and the three of them began to confer on their contents.

  Then there were four people in the room as a smiling Twilight appeared alongside them.

  At first all three of them could only gape in stupefaction as they became aware of the presence of the old astounder, who, smiling in congenial goodwill, his hands held out in a gesture of peace, bowed and spoke in perfect Arabic.

  ‘May Allah be with you always. I come in peace and mean you no harm.’

  After a moment their surprise turned to fear, and each opened his mouth to scream for the heavily armed guards ringing the tented rooms. Twilight’s smile broadened and he wag
gled his finger in admonishment. ‘I apologize in advance but have frozen your speech for just a moment to give me a chance to explain my presence here. I really do mean you no harm and have come from a far-off land called Britain on behalf of the king, William of Normandy, to see if there is a possibility of dialogue over the occupation of Jerusalem. My name is Twilight and I am a veneficus. Providing you don’t call for the guards, a move that would only result in me freezing them as well, you may now speak.’

  Shaking his bare head and flowing gray beard in disbelief, the old vizier was the first to speak in a voice trembling with age and tension.

  ‘Veneficus, you say. I have heard of such people but always thought such talk was the result of a demented mind.’

  Twilight beamed at him. ‘Well, most venerable Hasan bin Abdur Yazuri, even your great wisdom can still be improved, eh?’

  The caliph, coming close and looking deeply into Twilight’s black eyes, did a strange thing. He took both the old astounder’s hands in his, bowed, and kissed them one after the other.

  ‘Twilight,’ he said quietly. ‘We humbly welcome you to our camp here in the mountains and look forward to our discussions. You must forgive our reactions, but we have not met a veneficus before nor are we used to such a sudden appearance in our midst. Your magic is very powerful and I am looking forward to learning more about it.’

  ‘Great Caliph al-Musta’sim. Your humility and welcome to an unannounced stranger brings great credit on you and the house of the Abbasids. I, too, look forward to our discussions.’

  As was becoming the norm when Twilight met new, learned, and concerned people, the questions on both sides about their different backgrounds and cultures ranged far and wide for many hours. The old veneficus engendered an instant trust in people as they bathed in the warm glow of his enchanted and experienced presence. He was helped by his instant and fluent grasp of their language, a courtesy especially valued by Muslims, who were unused to such fluency in a westerner. When he mentioned that he’d also spent the last couple of nights in similar fashion with the stooped little bald physician Ramzi, the caliph smiled.

  ‘An altogether admirable man and skilled physician without whose help my greatly extended family back at the palace would suffer. Apart from taking care of me and all the other household staff, Ramzi is the only man alive who is allowed into my harem alone. With over three hundred women to look after, at least twenty of them are ill at any one time. He is always being dragged into that vast building at all hours of the day and night to tend them and ease whatever ailments they have. He never grumbles or fails to be there at the earliest possible time. He is, in all senses of the word, truly irreplaceable.’

  There followed a discussion about Ramzi’s skill and development of opium as both an addiction and healing agent. ‘Your methods of treatment and pharmacology are far in advance of anything I have seen in Britain,’ said Twilight. ‘Many people die there from battle wounds that quickly turn gangrenous. We don’t seem to have an answer for that pernicious killer. Your culture is also more advanced in other ways.’

  The caliph smiled. ‘Previous inhabitants of my position made sure that all such developments were encouraged. We make no apologies for taking original ideas from others and improving upon them: Greek and Indian science, irrigation and water systems from the Romans, art from the Babylonians to the Persians, and so on. Baghdad has been developed as a centre of learning and wisdom. Our people’s thirst for knowledge is unquenchable and must be assuaged.’

  Later the following morning the caliph and Twilight walked slowly around the sculptured banks of the clear blue lake. For a leader so exalted that his merest whim would be acted upon by a multitude of helpers with inhuman alacrity, al-Musta’sim had a keen inquisitiveness in all things outside his Muslim culture. His questioning of Twilight also showed a sharp intellect that, coupled with an innate politeness and elegance of manner, soon had the old astounder in his thrall.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering why I have so many young ladies in my harem,’ said the caliph with a smile. ‘It’s contrary to the way the western custom works, eh? Monogamy I believe you call it, one wife or husband at a time.’

  ‘It is different,’ replied Twilight. ‘Apart from anything else they would surely be at each other’s throats all the time?’

  ‘Because my father died young, I have been caliph since I was six years old. During the early years all the great decisions were taken on my behalf by Hasan bin Abdur Yazuri, who still, despite his great age, sits alongside me now. When I was fifteen years old I assumed my present position as caliph, albeit under the supervision of the Turks. Because my father died so young, I inherited a great many of his concubines. Many of these women are mothers, and their daughters are, in your terminology, my half sisters. That is why I keep them, not to use as concubines but as a part of a great and extended family. In truth, I only have congress with six of them as my own special wives. All the others I maintain as a sort of benevolent female institution. Their lives would, perhaps, otherwise be rather more difficult.’

  ‘And the sons?’ asked Twilight. ‘What happens to them?’

  ‘They are taken from their mothers as soon as they’re weaned and placed in special institutions where they are schooled and trained as an elite group of future leaders across all the disciplines, especially military.’

  ‘Like the old Spartan schools?’

  ‘Precisely. As I said earlier, we make no excuses for copying great ideas from past civilizations.’

  ‘Why,’ asked Twilight as they sat under the spreading shade of an old olive tree, ‘is Jerusalem so important to Muslims?’

  The caliph sighed. ‘The big question and one which I fear, as did your King William, will tear apart the world as we know it. Here is the simple answer; the complicated version, even though you have great powers of assimilation, will, nonetheless, take us many days to discuss. Four hundred and sixty years ago our prophet had an experience, known in our language as the Lailat ul-Miraj - Night of Ascent. As part of this experience he was taken, in a dream, by a miraculous beast to Jerusalem. From the site of the old Jewish Temple on Mount Zion, a way was opened for him through the heavens until he approached the Throne of God. Accompanied by the angel Gabriel, they were both forbidden to enter this region. During this night he is also said to have communed with other prophets from the past, including Jesus, Moses, and Abraham. The rules for our Muslim prayers were also revealed to him and have become central to our faith ever since. So, it is from Jerusalem that our great Islamic Prophet and God, Muhammad, ascended to heaven to receive the essential rules of our faith.’

  ‘All these great faiths are so inextricably entwined,’ said Twilight.

  ‘And that,’ replied the caliph, ‘is why they will never agree on anything.’

  The younger moustachioed vizier appeared at the far end of the lake walking quickly. As he hurried toward them, Twilight, leaving his mind unread due to a self-inflicted protocol he used with gracious hosts, sensed something was wrong. Approaching the caliph slightly out of breath but still affecting a series of bows, the vizier eventually received the caliph’s nod to speak.

  ‘Most holy leader, some bad news has just arrived with the messengers on white horses. The great physician Ramzi has been attacked and is close to death.’

  Chapter 16

  He doesn’t deserve to die for something I introduced him to.

  Although Tara had been taking the annual Equinoctial Festival of the Dead at Stonehenge on her own for five years, she still experienced a few jangling nerves as it approached. Twilight, knowing that she was ready and knowing that the ordeal had to be singularly overcome at some time, had left her to get on with it. After officiating at seventy-seven such occasions himself, more than any other venefici in their ten-thousand-year history, he’d more than done his bit. Nonetheless, being the only other veneficus allowed access, he was always ready to stand in with Tara if she needed him. The night before the next Festival, Virgile, understa
nding her trepidation at the coming ordeal and knowing that Twilight wouldn’t be around, came to the Avebury compound. He would stay with her until minutes before she was required at Stonehenge, then quickly transfer back to Carnac to steward his own annual gathering of the Cowering Dead. Once his mists had subsided and the shrieks of the cowerers finished for another year, he would then quickly return to Stonehenge and comfort his shaking wife until her normal composure returned.

  It wasn’t that he was any better at facing the annual ordeal, just that he’d handled quite a few more. Besides, as Twilight was fond of saying, the day a veneficus is not disconcerted by a day of screaming cowerers, a great many of whom had been placed in the death mists by that astounder, the ceremony loses some of its significance. And, despite the many other uses of the enchantments, attendance at the festival of the dead was their true reason for being a veneficus.

  Giving her husband a long kiss, Tara bade him good-bye and walked toward the mighty stones of Stonehenge. As the mists began to descend and Virgile disappeared to his own duties, Tara took up her place, closed her eyes, and steeled herself for the first screaming arrival. True to the succession of such things, it was the last people dispatched who arrived first on the scene, and the high-pitched wail of Magnus Groningen quickly assailed her ears, followed by the old woman who’d lured her into his trap. Then it became a succession of hate-filled screams from her and Twilight’s past personal body count, many of whom had been present in previous years. Similarly, Virgile was dealing with two of the three Confrerie, Teneo and Evanesco. Quiritatio, the third member of the evil Francian brotherhood, was conspicuous by his absence as - even though he was dead - being mute, he couldn’t even scream his wrath at the wretchedness of his silent prison in the cowering mists.

  Finally it was over for another year and Tara, rejoined by an equally relieved Virgile, settled down in the arms of her deep-voiced husband to watch the November night envelop Wessex.