The Waters of Eternity

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Dabir sipped at the wine, and our host, in the sunlight of the high windows, proved younger than I thought. Surely she could not be older than two dozen years, near our own age.

  Dabir commented upon the worth of the food and the kindness of the welcome. Both traded words about the pleasant weather and sundry unimportant things. Finally, as I was starting on the third cake, Dabir said something curious.

  “Is there not a treatise by Khalid,” he asked, “that discusses the eyeballs of goats?”

  Jamilah blinked in surprise. “Indeed there is. Is that why you have come?”

  “It is.”

  “I thought you had no interest in alchemy.”

  “I am interested in it, but I do not study it. Do you have this book?”

  “I do. I shall retrieve it for you.”

  She left quickly, the scarlet alcove curtains swaying after her passage.

  I waited only a moment before turning to Dabir. “You have never mentioned this woman, and you seem most…familiar.”

  “She is a friend,” Dabir replied, “from my youth.”

  His tone did not invite further discussion, but I was not about to let him dismiss the subject so simply. “A friend?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I was barely thirteen when I studied here,” he said. “She and I did talk, but…”

  “Oh?” I prompted.

  Dabir replied to this only with a stare, which amused me, but I did not think quickly enough how to pry further before Jamilah returned with a slim book and passed it to him. She sat down opposite us as he began to read.

  “What is this regarding?” she asked.

  Dabir thumbed carefully through the pages. “The goats’ eyeballs were to be prepared for an elixir of life, were they not?”

  “Your memory is as sharp as ever, Dabir. That is true.”

  “And was there not some discussion of using the eyes of men?”

  “There may have been—why do you ask these things?”

  He glanced up. “Because I believe some reader of Khalid, or of his sources, has taken this message to heart, for at least two men have turned up dead and eyeless in the passing weeks.”

  Jamilah laughed shortly. “You jest! No, I see you do not. Much of those writings are but chaff, as any wise one knows.”

  “Didn’t your father test the experiment with the goats’ eyes, in later years?”

  Her mouth twisted in an unpleasant fashion. “And it yielded nothing, as I told him. Do you mean to insult my father again?”

  Dabir glanced up. “I mean only to point out to you that even the wise are deceived when someone they revere mixes clever words with foolish ones into a single paste. In a book, such words somehow bear more water than they do when spoken aloud.” He must have found the passage for which he searched, for he fell silent and stared at a page. Jamilah watched him, hawklike.

  He set down the scroll. “There are many fools, Jamilah, and some of them are alchemists. Surely you know some?”

  “You look for suspects.”

  “I do.”

  She pursed her lips, thinking for a moment. “Alchemists as a whole seem more inclined to madness. There is Ferran, though. He dwells near the Western gate. He is…stranger than most. If you wish to speak with him, be careful.”

  “How is he strange, Jamilah?” Dabir asked.

  “It is said he looks for forbidden knowledge. He is secretive and dangerous.”

  That described most scholars and miracle workers whom we encountered, but I held my tongue.

  “Twice he has been investigated by the city guard because of rumors that he was found haunting the burial yard,” Jamilah explained further, “and it is said that he acted most suspicious, but that nothing incriminating could be found.”

  That certainly sounded suspicious to me, and I traded a glance with Dabir. The fellow might have gone from the troubling practice of harvesting from dead men to creating his own.

  “I thank you,” Dabir said formally to Jamilah, bowing his head. “I thank you likewise for allowing me to peruse this book, and for your fine hospitality. Asim and I must now depart.”

  “So soon?”

  “We must speak with this Ferran while the day is young.”

  She rose to her feet. “You are always welcome in my home, Dabir. As is your fine mind. You would take pleasure in many of my experiments.”

  “I thank you. Perhaps I will return.”

  I swatted at a beggar who dared our heels as we left the home. “Did you learn what you wished from the book?”

  “I may have learned more than I wished,” Dabir said, though he did not explain. “Khalid was one of the greatest alchemists,” he continued after a moment, “but he did not hesitate sometimes to relay anecdotes or incidents that he himself had not witnessed. I altogether prefer the approach of Thucydides.”

  “A Greek alchemist?”

  “Greek, yes; alchemist, no. I am thinking of style, not subject.”

  A thought had been scratching at me, and I could not help myself from attending it at last. “Have you taken pleasure in some of her experiments before?” My voice was without guile, but a grin betrayed me.

  Dabir smirked. “Sheath your wit, oh braying ass. I was but a boy.”

  “She is fair,” I observed, “if a trifle thin.”

  “All but the roundest women are too thin for you, Asim.”

  III

  Ferran lived in a poor quarter of the city, and the smell of his furnaces threw stink to the heavens. Clearly someone was there, for the noxious black smoke was steady. Yet no one answered the summons my fist made upon the door.

  “How long do you wish me to pound?” I asked Dabir.

  “Give him another moment.”

  I did, then knocked with greater force. Dabir frowned.

  “Shall I open it?”

  After a short moment, he nodded.

  I had noted that the door shook whenever I struck. Two good kicks resulted in splintering. A third forced the door ajar, a fourth set the wood swaying on its hinges, and a fifth smashed it down upon a carpet within the residence. Dust drifted up from the carpet to either side of the door’s edges.

  From out of the dim hallway beyond the reception room came a hairy Turk, naked save for his vest and pants. In his hand he bore a huge curved saber.

  I leapt into the hall and whipped out my blade. My blood sang! Here was the sort of challenge at which I excelled.

  “Begone!” the Turk cried, and swung at my head.

  Sparks flared in the gloom as I caught his sword against mine. He had strength in his wiry arms.

  “We need answers, Asim!” Dabir cried from behind, which was a not-so-subtle admonition not to kill the fellow. Dabir had scolded me in the past for leaving no foe alive to question. Doubtless he supposed that sparing an enemy is a simple matter when he is trying to behead me with a sharpened four-foot length of metal.

  “You shall not learn my master’s secrets!” the Turk cried, and launched a series of furious cuts. I blocked them, turning as I did so that I might take in the space. He followed me. Curtains hung in two alcoves on either side of the small square room. The curling toes of a boot projected from beneath one of them.

  Powerful the Turk may have been, but I had learned his pattern. I let him swing, and struck hard against his sword so that his arm flung wide from his body. Against another I would have made the death blow, but I stepped in close and slammed my fist into his face. There came a mute crack, and though my knuckles smarted, he shouted and staggered back, thumping a foot against the fallen door. While he stumbled, I grabbed through the curtain and pulled forth a shriveled old man with a gray beard and frightened eyes. He let forth a shriek when he saw me, and a louder shriek when I brought the edge of my sword near his skin.

  “Have your man lay down his sword,” I told him. He croaked for the slave to do so, and the Turk did, tenderly holding his hand to his nose with his off hand.

  Dabir entered, brandishing the medallion given him by the
caliph. In the dim light there was no reading it.

  “I am Dabir ibn Khalil, and I bear the medallion of the caliph, which gives me warrant to act as I see fit to safeguard the caliphate. We seek only to question you.”

  That took some doing. With the old man’s paranoia, obtaining answers was more challenging than one might expect. Two hours we spent in that place, my eye and hand ever wary. For a long time Dabir walked alone through the fellow’s laboratory while I stood guard over the alchemist and his slave, who both sat with evil looks. Sometimes the alchemist babbled that no one could learn the secrets he had unearthed, and sometimes he demanded to know which alchemist had hired me, no matter the count of times I explained that I worked with Dabir, who was favored of the caliph.

  In the end it was futile. Dabir’s expression was somewhere between confusion and sorrow when he made apologies before having me turn over the whole of my coin purse.

  Even this Ferran eyed suspiciously. It lay untouched in the center of the floor as I backed out of the home on Dabir’s heels.

  “He is not a criminal?” I asked.

  “Nay, he is not the man. His laboratory is a smelly wreck and there are tomes everywhere, but he is working only on the transmutation of gold.”

  “Only?” I asked. This seemed a matter of too great import to dismiss so off-handedly.

  He smiled sourly. “Generations of alchemists have wasted their time in the effort. It is one of their favorite hobbies, and a fruitless one.”

  “Might he have been hiding the truth from you?”

  Dabir shook his head. “All the open texts scattered through his work space dealt with transmutation….” He reached up with his left hand and with fingers and thumb massaged both temples. “The matter of his door shames me, Asim.”

  “There is no need for shame,” I told him. “They profited by the encounter. The money we left will buy them a more handsome door. And hopefully one more sturdy.”

  Dabir chuckled, but did not speak. We left the quarter and turned down the Boulevard of the Ebony Stallion, that most pleasantly fragrant of streets in Mosul, decorated with garden paths and flowering trees.

  We stopped at home to replenish our money and I endured another scolding from the cook, querulous crone, who ever took her wrath for Dabir’s habits out on me. Was I in charge of his steps, so that I might know when he would return to eat? Such answers never pleased her.

  We walked for evening prayers to the great mosque, and after we rolled up our prayer rugs to expose the inlaid tiles Dabir announced we would dine out.

  “That shall not please the cook,” I said. “She was a tower of displeasure.”

  “She will understand,” Dabir said. “We are at work, Asim.”

  It was a fine point, but one unlikely to garner compliments should I present it.

  “What is our destination?” I asked.

  “The tavern where the victims drank their last. There should be enough activity at this hour that we may learn something.”

  I did not like the look of the men who loitered in the street near the tavern. They were swaggering youths who watched our approach with sneers and lacked the sense to fear me, even when I put hand to hilt. They did not molest us, though one called out something that made the others laugh.

  It was as though we passed through a curtain of sounds and scents, for on the other side of the tavern’s arch the smell of roasting fowl and the sweet fragrance of the forbidden wine mingled with the patter of drums and the warbling of a lute. I have never cared much for music but am fond of drums, and the knobby-kneed youth who beat the skin upon the stage did not lack talent or energy.

  Dabir found a rug along the wall and sat. As I moved to take the space across from him, he shook his head quickly.

  “We must not sit together.”

  This was curious, but I did as he bade and sat with my back to his. Dabir called for a bowl of wine and the sour-faced keep brought him one. He paused by me, but I waved him off.

  “What do we watch for?” I asked softly, without turning to look at him.

  “The lure. Ask yourself, Asim. What one thing would draw young men from different walks of life?”

  “The wine?”

  “More than the wine, Asim. The wine brought them only here. But their death did not transpire here.”

  “The youths in the street?”

  “There were no marks of violence upon the victim we saw, save for those inflicted after death.”

  He pestered me like a gnat. Surely he meant to drive me toward truth, but I did not see it until the singing girl came to the stage.

  She was quite fair. Though on the slender side, her arms were rounded—she was no gangly youth. Long blonde tresses trailed out from beneath her yashmak. Her dress was not so scandalous as that of many singing girls, though of course her face was uncovered by veil. Gold bracelets flashed upon her pale arms and ankles, and her slim waist was bared.

  Her voice was low and I paid it little mind, but I frankly stared at her flashing eyes as she tossed her head this way and that over the course of her song. And I fancied she returned my gaze. She smiled slyly and slid her eyes to other men, though they returned to me.

  “The Circassian has eyes for you,” I heard Dabir say. “Her singing is…not altogether unpleasing, but I do not think that her chief draw.”

  A moment later he continued. “Do what you can to win her favors, Asim. Though it seems your broad shoulders have done that already. You, now, are the quarry.”

  Forgetting myself, I glanced over my shoulder at him. “The quarry?”

  “We will test a theory of mine. Approach and praise her when she ends her song.”

  I could not now ask my friend’s reasons, for the girl had finished. She spread arms to the crowd and lowered her head, and coins rained before her slippers. I rose, hand steadying my sword, and wove through the tightly packed tables. I stopped before her, then dropped a fist of bronzed daniks into the bowl at her feet.

  She lowered her head, as though she felt modesty, then looked up at me through her lashes in such a way that my heart sped.

  “Yours is a lordly offering,” she said, “and I am unworthy.” Her voice rang with the inflections of the north, and this, too, pleased me. Why is it that an accent makes an attractive woman more appealing still?

  “Nay, you are more than worthy. May your bowl be as overflowing as your charms.”

  Her smile broadened and she artfully brushed back a lock of hair. Seeing that she would not be singing immediately, the musicians struck up another song.

  She put a dainty hand upon my shoulder, leaned close, and spoke into my ear. She might have shouted to be heard over them, but this was more pleasing. Her hair was fragrant with rose water. “A lord like you,” she purred, “deserves a private song. Would such a thing please?”

  “It would.”

  “Follow me after the length of time it takes milk to boil,” she whispered in a more businesslike tone. “Tell no one, lest some other seek to woo me.”

  I nodded.

  Her eyes kissed mine, and then she glided off through a back curtain. I returned to my seat.

  “That seemed to go well,” Dabir said. I relayed what the girl had told me.

  “Ah. Then follow, and I will shortly follow you. On no account,” he added quickly, “are you to consume any foodstuffs she offers. Especially almond cakes.”

  “None?”

  Dabir laughed shortly. “I do not jest, Asim. Take no food she gives, lest it be your last.”

  “You think her a poisoner?”

  “She may be. Guard your person well.”

  After the proper time I left Dabir. No one halted my progress through the back curtain and out the rear door, where the girl awaited me, her hair grayed in the darkening evening. She had donned a veil, and the night’s breath stirred it. She spoke but one word, “Come,” then pressed her fingers against mine. Poisoner she might be, but her touch stirred my baser interests.

  It was a short wal
k to her apartment above a rug merchant’s.

  “I sent my servant to light candles for us,” she explained, for light glimmered through the shutters. A short man opened the door for us, bowing low. Behind him the room was richly furnished. Low couches were spread with silks and fine pottery stood on low shelves.

  “Bring my guest sweets and wine, Fahd.”

  The servant bowed and then left through a back door.

  “Come, take your ease.” She guided me to a couch. Her fingers found my waist and undid my sword belt. I did not wish to be unarmed, but let her proceed, uncertain as to how far I should carry Dabir’s ruse.

  “I wish you to be comfortable,” she said, making a show of removing her slippers, then setting the belt beneath a low table by the couch. She laid a palm across my chest. “Lie back. Take your ease.”

  It was a pleasure to accommodate a woman who demanded so little.

  The servant returned with a platter and set it on the table.

  “Leave us, Fahd.”

  He left through the back door, and it shut behind him. She poured a cup for me. “Drink.”

  “Sing for me,” I said, though I took the cup.

  “If it pleases you.”

  And thus she rose, though I did not truly wish her to depart my side, and stepped past a brass brazier. It had been sprinkled with perfumes, and pleasing scents curled in the smoke that rose from it.

  She sang me a song of love and I was well pleased with her performance, if not her voice. So pleased, in fact, that I found my fingers had set down the cup to clutch an almond cake near my lips, and I froze. I returned it to the platter.

  When the song was finished, she sank onto the couch. “Does the music please you?”

  “It does.”

  She lifted a cake. “Please, eat.”

  “I have already eaten.”

  “I insist.” Her fingers brushed across my lips and she presented the dessert to me.

  “I am not hungry for food,” I demurred.

  She stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout.