Another sharp intake of breath.
She was silent an instant, then whispered, ‘I see.’
‘Mother, I wondered if you thought I took after my father?’
‘I … I think you do, darling. I think you do, in all kinds of ways.’
‘I hope I don’t die like he did, then,’ said Omar, adopting a casual tone.
‘Darling,’ cried his mother, ‘don’t say such things! Don’t say them – you can have no idea what it means to me. I lost my husband – I could not lose my son, too. Please, darling, don’t speak of such things. Don’t.’ Her voice was thick with tears.
‘I’m sorry if I distressed you, Mother,’ said Omar, who was trembling like a leaf. He thought, I’m sure she does suspect it was no ordinary crash. And she as good as told me that she had no choice but to accept what my uncle had done, for my sake. Would the fond uncle have killed his baby nephew, too? He may well have held that threat over Omar’s mother. And she – poor, gentle, weak soul – had accepted the deal. He took a deep breath and said, ‘Don’t worry, Mother. I promise I won’t think of sad things again. And I will think of my father in life, and my uncle beside him.’
‘Oh, darling,’ she said, and her voice had dissolved now. ‘Take care of yourself. Take care. Please, Omar, take care.’
‘I will try to, Mother. Oh – my uncle says to remember him to you, and to tell you that later you can come and visit me.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice was very small.
‘Not yet, though.’
‘Oh.’ He could hear her pain, and her grief, and her fear. He wanted to be there, to hold her. But all he could say was, ‘May I speak to my sister?’
‘She has gone to town with Jamila,’ said his mother, a little fretfully. ‘You did not warn us you would be calling today. I did not think that –’
‘Please don’t worry, Mother. I will speak to her another time. Take care of her, Mother. And of yourself.’
‘Oh, my darling boy,’ she wept down the phone, ‘how I wish that I could … that I could …’
‘Don’t, Mother,’ said Omar quietly. ‘I will call you again soon, Mother. Goodbye.’
‘Take care, Omar,’ she said, with a catch in her voice. ‘Take care. Oh, my dearest child, take infinite care. I couldn’t bear it if … if I lost you too.’
Twenty-three
Omar lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, his heart burning with fierce emotions. What was his duty? Should he try to avenge his father? If he stayed silent, and his uncle really had murdered his father, didn’t that make him into the worst kind of son? For an agonised instant he thought, oh, if only I had been on that plane with my father. Or better still, if I had never been born.
He was pulled out of his dark thoughts by a knock on the door. The Secretary’s insinuating voice said, ‘Omar, you are wanted in the small audience chamber.’
Omar jumped.
Shouting, ‘I’ve been asleep – just got to get ready,’ he ran to the bathroom and closed the door before the Secretary could come in. He ran the taps and scrubbed at his face, trying to make his eyes look less swollen. He rummaged through the bathroom cabinet and luckily found some eye drops. Quickly, he put them in. When he went back into the bedroom, the Secretary was standing at the open door. He looked curiously at Omar, who flushed and said, elaborately rubbing at his eyes and yawning a little, ‘I must have slept badly – I ache all over.’
‘You do look a bit puffy,’ said the Secretary. His eyes searched Omar’s face, as if looking for clues to God knows what. Then he shrugged. ‘But come on, we must not keep your uncle waiting.’
In the small audience chamber Omar was ushered to a seat beside his uncle. Sprawled in his chair, the tyrant looked in high good spirits.
‘Wait till you see what I’ve got for you!’ he said, without bothering to look twice at Omar.
Omar was glad of that. He could hardly bear to even glance in his uncle’s direction, much less hold his gaze.
‘Come on, come on,’ waved his uncle to the Secretary, ‘tell them to get this show on the road!’
The Secretary bowed and scurried out of the room, but not before he’d flung Omar a glance in which curiosity and contempt warred in equal measure. Omar had no idea why the man should look at him like that, and nor did he care.
‘Well, Omar, you did very well on camera, you know. The TV people told me you look very natural and handsome on the tapes; they’re going to be broadcasting the whole thing tonight. Imagine that, eh, boy? We’ll make a film star of you yet!’
The nausea rose in Omar’s throat.
He whispered, ‘Oh.’
‘Oh? Is that all you can say?’ His uncle had twisted around to look at him properly. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You spoke to your mother?’
As if you didn’t know, thought Omar. He nodded. His uncle’s eyes narrowed.
‘You look like you’ve been crying,’ he said, to Omar’s horror. ‘Silly woman – did she upset you, make you homesick?’
Omar said nothing. The tyrant reached over and clapped a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. ‘What did I tell you about keeping women in their place? We are men. We must be strong. It’s time you realised that, Omar. Ah!’
His exclamation came as the door opened and two men were pushed into the room. Their hands were bound behind their backs and their heads were covered with sacks. Dressed in tattered clothes, they were barefoot – the flesh of their feet bruised and torn. They were followed by some guards, the Secretary, and a black-suited shaven-headed man with a terrible face. One of his eyes was covered with a patch, and the skin on half of his face was puckered up and glistening, as if he’d been burnt in the past.
Omar gripped the arms of his chair so hard he thought he was going to faint. What was the tyrant doing? Why had he been brought here to see these prisoners?
His uncle jumped up. His eyes were shining with excitement. He nodded to the man with the scarred face.
‘Tell us, Mahmoud!’
‘Your Excellency,’ said the man, bowing low, ‘We have captured these two traitors – one a Shadow Walker in the city, the other, I am sad to say, a distant cousin of mine, from a treacherous branch of my family. We believe these men are implicated in many crimes.’ His voice was hoarse, breathy.
‘Mahmoud is one of the most dedicated members of the White Wolves,’ the tyrant explained happily to Omar. ‘He and his comrades will always protect us from the dark doings of evil men. And they suffer for it. Mahmoud himself only barely escaped with his life last year when he fought with traitors who had taken refuge in Ameerat. Appreciate what they do, Omar.’
Omar nodded, his heart beating wildly as he thought of the scene on the mountain, when the White Wolves had attacked Burhaan’s party. He caught Mahmoud’s good eye, and recoiled at the cold, gleeful cruelty in it.
‘Your Excellency,’ said Mahmoud, ‘would you like to gaze on the faces of these traitors before we put them to death?’
‘Omar would like to,’ answered the tyrant, turning around to grin at his nephew. ‘Isn’t that so?’
‘No,’ Omar whispered, but no-one took any notice. Mahmoud, grinning as much as the tyrant, whipped the sack off one of the prisoners’ heads.
Omar was staring into the eyes of a stranger – a young fair-haired man, deathly pale, with a great bloody wound. One eye was closed shut, with a big purple bruise around it; the other eye, of a pale green, glared defiantly. He was gagged.
‘This one’s a Shadow Walker,’ said Mahmoud. ‘We found him with a cache of weapons.’ He walked up to the other man. ‘And this piece of filth is …’ He whipped the hood off the other man, and to his utter horror Omar recognised the face. It was Darseen!
Mahmoud said, with great satisfaction, ‘We have been after this filth for a long time. He has evaded us every time. But this time, we caught him red-handed, ferrying messages to the Shadow Walkers from Kirtis.’
‘Yes,’ said the
tyrant, ‘and we hear your men have captured this one’s brother and his men in Kirtis. Excellent work, Mahmoud – but what of the biggest traitor of them all? What of Gur Thalab, who, it appears, has returned?’
Mahmoud’s good eye flashed red.
‘We will get him soon,’ he growled. He stared into Darseen’s face. ‘Do you hear? We will get him soon. And then all your plans will be at naught. He escaped me in Ameerat, but I will not fail a second time to kill him.’
Darseen kept his head high and his eyes focused on a point over Mahmoud’s shoulder. Every bit of him expressed rejection and contempt. He had not once looked at Omar.
Omar felt faint. He remembered what Burhaan had said – that Darseen would not be going with them on the mountain because he had ‘other work to do’. He thought, if it had not been for me, telling them about the Shadow Walkers to save my own skin, Darseen would not be here. And if it had not been for me, wanting help to get the antidote for Latifa, Burhaan would not have been captured, or Gur Thalab be in danger.
‘But … but I don’t understand. These men aren’t the ones who took me, Uncle,’ said Omar.
‘Silence, you fool!’ roared his uncle. ‘Why are you still afraid of these men? You can see they’re men for yourself, humans who can be killed, not immortal monsters. Why are you spineless? Look at them, boy, look them right in the eye, and spit on them. Go on – they can’t hurt you, you know,’ he added, with a touch of disgust, as Mahmoud grinned in agreement.
‘But I don’t want to!’ shouted Omar. ‘I don’t want to! I won’t!’
‘I won’t, I won’t – spoilt brat,’ said his uncle, and whipping around on him, he gave him such a stinging slap that Omar was sent sprawling.
‘Get up,’ said his uncle contemptuously. Omar lifted his head and caught the two prisoners’ blank stares. He wanted to die.
‘Please, Uncle, I tell you, these men have nothing to do with anything. The ones who kidnapped me – they were smaller, almost dwarfish, and they were dressed in white.’
‘That’s not what you said before,’ said his uncle. ‘Omar, you are squeamish. A squeamish man can never be a good leader.’
Mahmoud said silkily, ‘Your Excellency’s nephew will learn, I am sure, sir.’ His good eye scoffed at the idea, though. Everyone here scorns and despises me, Omar thought. And for good reason. A red mist was beginning to appear in front of his eyes; his throat was dry with suppressed rage and hatred and shame.
‘I don’t want –’ began Omar but his uncle cut him short.
‘It is of no account what you want and don’t want. You will do your duty. Now, Omar, I want you to look into these men’s eyes and see the enemy that –’
The red mist flamed up in Omar, and at last he found the words in him. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘I will do nothing. Nothing, do you understand, Uncle? I will never be like you. Never.’
He heard the indrawn breaths of the guards, Mahmoud and the Secretary. But the young Shadow Walker and Darseen didn’t move or make a sound. Their eyes were fixed not on Omar or the tyrant, but at some point far away. Omar thought, dully, they’ve already accepted their deaths, they are simply ignoring everything else. We might as well be ants to them. He thought of the welcome he’d received in Darseen’s father’s house, and his heart bled.
‘Never, do you hear, Uncle?’ he repeated. ‘I am not what you think I am. I hate and fear everything that you are, everything you stand for. I no longer care what you will do to me. It does not matter. If you kill me, then this family dies with me, and so too does your reign, which will be the best thing for Mesomia. Once you are dead your vicious friends will argue over the spoils like dogs, and then what can you do? You cannot rule from the grave, Uncle. All the sorcery in the world cannot defeat death.’
Now the eyes of the prisoners were on him, but Omar scarcely noticed. It was as if a dam had burst in him, a dam of wild and horrible feelings he had held inside ever since he could remember. He walked over to Darseen.
‘I know this man did not attack me,’ he said steadily, ‘because he was kind to me. He helped me when I was in trouble. And this other man,’ he said, pointing to the young man, ‘he is just like any other true man in Mesomia, who hates you and all you stand for.’ Fear was beginning to rise in him now, but he was trying to thrust it away. ‘These are the men who truly love our country, Uncle. But you – you – what have you done? You claim to love Mesomia, but you have turned our beautiful country into a place of mourning, and our towns and cities into cemeteries. You have raised wicked and greedy men to positions of power, and you have made the name of our country a name the rest of the world spits on.’ He paused.
‘But that is for others to challenge you with. For myself, there is this: you repaid the goodness and bravery of my friend, my saviour, Latifa, with darkness and evil. And you killed my father, your own brother. And those things I can never forgive, and for those I call you to account.’
The tyrant had gone deathly pale. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. His eyes glared wildly.
But his voice was quite steady as he said, ‘Well, that was quite a speech, Omar my boy. The worm turns, eh?’ His mouth stretched in the rictus of a smile. He approached Omar. ‘Who told you that I had supposedly killed Ali?’
Omar said nothing. The tyrant looked at the Secretary.
‘Faisal …’ he began.
‘You cannot think it was I, sir,’ said the man, white to the lips.
‘Oh no, I know it wasn’t you,’ said Haroun al-Alakah, still in that quiet, steady voice. ‘You owe me too much. I want you to investigate it – later. Right now, you are to take this Kirtis scum to be executed, without delay.’ He turned towards Omar, who was standing frozen to the spot, all his desperate courage ebbing away as he sensed the eye of the storm approaching him. ‘And you, Omar, you will come with me. On a little trip. To the Black Prison. Mahmoud, send for my car. Have it at the gate at once.’
‘No,’ said Omar, backing away. ‘No, you cannot …’ He tried to put himself between the guards and the prisoners, and was sent sprawling to the floor again.
‘Get up,’ said the tyrant. ‘Get up, boy. It is time you learnt some truths. Time you grew up.’ As the door closed behind the others, Omar’s uncle leant over to him and touched him on the shoulder. Omar felt the touch like a bolt of electricity, like a thrill of pure horror – the chill, electrifying touch of evil. He shrank back.
His uncle laughed. ‘There is no reason why you should love me,’ he said. ‘Love weakens and makes cowards of all men. Hate is much stronger; you showed more courage today, when hatred animated you, than when love for that rubbish of a beggar girl filled you.’
‘You are quite wrong,’ said Omar in a strangled voice, unable to look away from the black-marble eyes staring into his. He could feel the powerful pull of his uncle’s hideous mind, searching out all the weaknesses in him. And how many there were. How many chinks that evil man could find to hit him in.
‘Poor fool,’ said his uncle, almost gently. ‘You do not know mankind as I know it.’
‘I do not wish to,’ cried Omar.
The tyrant hauled Omar to his feet and, holding him in a firm grip, marched him out of the audience room. Everyone they passed in the corridors flattened themselves against the walls and averted their gaze, not wanting to know. No-one would come to his aid. No-one ever would. Because that was the way of life in the country his uncle had created – Mesomia, once famous for her beauty and learning and poetry, fairest of the jewels of the Al Aksara peninsula, and now a place that might as well be a dark and hideous province of the hellish realm of Jehannem itself.
Twenty-four
Nobody spoke in the car as it sped on its way to the most dreaded place in all Mesomia. Mahmoud was in the front with the driver, separated from Omar and his uncle by a sheet of glass. Every so often, Omar could see the cruel, curious flash of his one-eyed glance in the rear-view mirror, and he knew the secret policeman was looking forward to whatever torture the ty
rant was going to have inflicted on his nephew.
Omar thought his last hour had come. Once he entered the Black Prison he would never come out again – not alive, or at least not sane. The fear numbed every bit of him; he felt as if he floated in his body and was already part-dead. He also felt a curious sense of peace. For it would be better to be dead or mad than to be the heir of the tyrant. He did not want to live in a world where goodness and kindness and courage were crushed underfoot and labelled as treachery and evil, while evil itself ruled triumphantly over all.
He felt tainted: in his veins flowed blood that was kin to The Vampire’s. He thought of all the years of his life that had led to this – the moments of joy and sunlight and peace he’d had, back home, when his uncle was far away – and realised they were stolen moments. Stolen from the great ordeal of Mesomia, the darkness into which it had plunged since the violent overthrow and murder of the King.
Now they were at the Black Prison. The great thick walls reared before them as the guards opened the heavy gates. The place had been built as a fortress in the days of the great Mesomian kings and had been turned into a prison two hundred years ago. It had never had a good reputation – not even in the time before The Vampire had become the ruler of Mesomia – but now its name evoked shivers in even the bravest of the brave. And Omar was nowhere near that. The numbness and sense of peaceful resignation faded away and now a vast horror and terror engulfed him as the car rolled silently into the prison yard. The heavy iron doors shut behind them.
The car stopped. Mahmoud jumped out and opened the back doors. He looked most cheerful and eager; of course, this place was his spiritual home, a paradise for every cruelty and viciousness. Omar’s uncle looked perfectly at ease, too. But even in his fear Omar noticed the pallor and rigidity of the driver, who did not get out but stayed frozen in his seat, staring straight ahead, trying to look like a statue. It took some time – and his uncle’s shouts, and finally, rough yanking – to pull Omar from his own seat. As he stood there in the yard, with shaking legs, he noticed how still everything was around them. There was not a sound, not a movement. There was only a smell – a terrible, terrible smell, like singed chicken. The smell of burnt flesh and bones. The smell of death. He could see where it came from: the great tall funnel of a chimney, belching evil-smelling smoke into the air. This is how they dispose of the bodies of those they kill, Omar thought. They do not even allow their victims to be buried, as they should be. They do not even allow the families to grieve over their bodies.
The Tyrant's Nephew Page 13
