The Prophet of Akhran

by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman

  Sond concealed his smile. “Where do these dogs keep the keys to the cells, Zaal?”

  “On their fat bodies, O Djinn,” answered Zaal with a glance of bitter hatred.

  Sond walked over to investigate. “You do seem to be carrying a monumental load in the area of your gut, sidi, the djinn said, speaking to the guard who was slumped against the wall. “I will relieve you of some of that weight, sidi, if you will but give me the keys to the cell.”

  The guard, coming around with a groan, retorted with a foul oath suggesting something physically impossible that Sond might do to himself.

  Fedj slammed the man’s head against the wall with a swift backhand. “What kind of language is this? How do you expect the boy to learn to respect his elders if you speak in that manner, sidi?”

  “I grow tired of this,” growled Raja impatiently. “Let us kill him and take the keys.”

  “Oh, ho!” howled the guard, glaring around them from rapidly swelling eyes. “You don’t frighten me! I know that you djinn may not take a human life without the permission of your God. And where is the Wandering Akhran these I days? Dead, from what we hear!” The guard spit on the floor. “And good riddance. We’ll soon make short work of his followers!”

  “He has a point,” said Fedj. “We cannot take a human life.”

  “Ah, but is he human?” Usti inquired complacently. “Is any of this. . . this”—the djinn waved a hand at the guards—”excrement?”

  “An interesting technicality,” commented Fedj.

  The other two guards looked fearfully to their leader, who turned exceedingly red.

  “What do you mean? Of course, I’m human!” he blustered. “You just try killing me and see how much trouble you’ll be in!”

  “Is that a command, sidi?” inquired Sond politely. “If so, I hasten to obey—”

  “Nno!” stammered the guard, realizing what he’d said. His voice raised to a shrill shriek as the djinn loomed over him. “No!”

  “The keys, sidi, if you please?” Raja held out a gigantic hand that would have engulfed the guard’s neck without any effort at all.

  With a vicious snarl the guard lifted the keys from a belt around his waist and hurled them, cursing, to the floor. At Sond’s gesture, Zaal leaped to pick them up and brought them to the djinn.

  At that moment there came a rattling on the door, and it burst open under the combined strength of Mathew and several nomad women, who flooded into the room, daggers flashing in their hands.

  Mathew gasped and stared at the massive djinn. His face was grim. He had obviously prepared himself either to meet death or to mete it out, and this unlookedfor respite literally stole away his breath.

  Walking forward, Sond bowed low before the astonished wizard and held out the keys. “These are yours to do with as you will, O Sorcerer. Have you further need of us this night?”

  “I . . .I—You don’t serve me,” Mathew faltered.

  “No, Lord Sorcerer. We serve one who serves you.”

  Sond looked to a point above Mathew’s shoulder, to the boy’s great confusion. “The Lady Asrial.”

  “Wait!” said Zohra. “Yes, we need you. The gates—”

  “Raja, come with me! Hush!” Sond cocked his head, listening. “My master!” he cried in a hollow voice, and vanished.

  Raja disappeared. Fedj and Usti remained, staring at each other uncertainly.

  Then they heard the sound—a strange and eerie sound that made the hair on the neck rise and sent a shiver over the bodies of all those in the room.

  The frenzied yell of a rampaging mob.

  And it was coming closer.

  Chapter 9

  The tunnel ran from the palace, dipping down below the busy central street of Kich, rising up to the newly built and lavishly decorated Temple of Quar. The tunnel’s floor was smooth, swept clean, and dry, its condition undoubtedly maintained by the servants of the Imam. Torches stood in wroughtiron sconces affixed to the wall, their flames smoking and wavering in the draft that came with the opening of the door from the garden. Entering the cool, dimly lit tunnel, Khardan marveled at the peace and silence below ground when all above him was noise and chaos.

  Moving swiftly, neither speaking—bodies tensed and readied for danger—the Calif and the Paladin of the Night traversed the narrow tunnel. They traveled a long distance. Glancing back, Khardan could no longer see the entrance. The floor they walked began to slope upward, and they knew that they were nearing the Temple. They moved more cautiously and quietly—out of instinct more than necessity. With the praying, swaying, chanting, screaming crowd located almost directly above them, they could have held a game of baigha down here, complete with horses, and no one would have heard them.

  Soon the two could see, glittering in the torchlight, the eyes of another golden ram’s head, and they knew they had reached their destination. Auda carefully studied the door. Carved of a single, massive block of marble, it sealed shut the tunnel entrance like a plug. There were no seams that Khardan could see, no ring embedded in the rock with which to pull it open, and he was just about to suggest—in mingled relief and frustration—that their way was blocked when Auda laid his hands on either side of the golden ram’s head, fingers covering the eyes, and pressed.

  There was a click and a crunch, and the stone door shivered slightly, then began to turn, revolving around some unseen central post. Stepping back, Auda waited with obvious impatience for the slowmoving stone to swing into an open position. Beyond the door, Khardan could hear a voice speaking, and he tensed, thinking they had been discovered. He soon realized—from the tone and the few words he could catch—that it was the Imam, and he was apparently addressing his priests prior to going out to address the crowd.

  No one had noticed them.

  “How did you know how to work this?” Khardan whispered, his hand gingerly touching the locking device.

  “What, the door opening?” Auda glanced at him, amused at the nomad’s awe. “I have operated hundreds more intricate and complicated than this. In the palace at Khandar, one must be a mechanical genius to move from one’s bedroom to the bath.”

  “What about the door on our way out?” Khardan asked uneasily, looking behind him again, though it had long since been lost to sight. “Will it be locked? We may be needing to get through it in a hurry!”

  “There was no such device used on entering that door. I doubt if you will find one on your return.” The Paladin coolly emphasized the singular. “This door is much newer, built more recently than the tunnel itself, which is—I should judge—probably as old as the palace. Who knows where it led before this? Some private playground of the Sultan’s, I should imagine.”

  The stone had almost completed its rotation, moving in oiled silence.

  “But why a locking device here and none at the palace?” Khardan argued.

  Auda made an impatient gesture. “Undoubtedly the entryway is guarded by the Amir’s guards, nomad. Except on this one night, when they were needed to help with the crowd or”—his thin lips tightened in a grim smile—”perhaps Qannadi gave the guards orders to be elsewhere.”

  Spend the cold winter in here, little mouse, said the lion, pointing to his throat. It is warm inside and safe, very safe…

  Khardan shivered and, suddenly anxious to end this, pushed past Auda and slid through the crack in the stone that was barely wide enough to admit one man turned sideways.

  He entered a murmuring, whispering chamber, warm with the heat of many bodies, smelling of perfumed oil and incense and melting candle wax and sweating flesh and holy zeal. It was lit by the light of many, many candles flickering somewhere on the altar at the center of the room. Khardan caught only a glimpse of that altar, his view blocked by the soldierpriests. Their backs turned to the Calif, they were staring straight ahead with rigid intensity at the Imam, who stood in their midst. No one had heard the opening of the stone door, which was not surprising, considering the reverberating voice that held them mesmerized. But t
hey must feel the rush of cool air on their backs, and Khardan realized with a pang that it would be necessary to shut the door. Hurriedly he glanced about the candlelit altar room, trying to find something that would give him a point of recognition for the tunnel door, which—he could see—would become one with the wall once it was shut. But to his astonishment, Auda left it open. Taking the nomad by the arm, the Paladin hustled Khardan well away from the entry. They moved silently, their backs pressing against the wall, until they were almost halfway around the large room.

  Of course, Khardan thought to himself, the blood beating in his ears, it doesn’t matter if they discover someone has entered their sanctuary. They’re going to know in a matter of moments anyhow, and this insures our way out.

  “—Sul’s Truth seen in Quar,” the Imam was saying. “The world united in worship of the One, True God. A world freed of the vagaries and interference of the immortals. A world where all differences are smoothed out, where all think alike and believe alike—”

  As long as they think and believe like Quar, added Khardan silently.

  “A world where there is peace, where war becomes obsolete because there is no longer anything over which to fight. A world where each man is cared for, and no one will go hungry.”

  Slaves are cared for, in a manner of speaking, and rarely allowed to go hungry since that would inhibit their usefulness. A chain made of gold is a chain still, no matter how beautiful it looks upon the skin.

  Khardan turned to glance at Auda, to see how the Paladin was reacting to this, and saw suddenly that ibn Jad was no longer standing beside him. The Paladin of the Night had been absorbed into the darkness that was his birthright, the darkness that watched over and guided him.

  Khardan was alone.

  “We will go forth!” continued Feisal, and Khardan could see above the heads of those standing in front of him the priest’s thin arms upraised in exhortation. “We will go forth and bring this message to our people!”

  Khardan began to move, impelled by fear that ibn Jad might strike before the Calif could speak, impelled by the need to try to bring sight to the blind eyes of these fools, impelled by his own need to make this one last attempt to save his people.

  “In the eyes of Quar, all men are brothers!” Feisal lifted his voice to a shout.

  “If that be so,” answered Khardan, his own cry reverberating off the walls, the candles flickering in the rush of cool air that was flowing in through the open doorway, “if that be so, then prove it by freeing your brothers—my people—who are sentenced to die with the dawn.”

  Gasps and shouts of alarm rippled through the crowd. The soldierpriests reacted with a speed that astonished Khardan. Before those around him could have comprehended who he was, they turned on him. Rough hands grabbed his arms, steel cut into his back, a sword was at his throat, and he was a prisoner before the last words had been spoken.

  “Let us slay him now, Holy One!” One of the soldier priests pleaded. “He has defiled our Temple!”

  “No,” said Feisal in a gentle voice. “I know him. We have spoken before, this man and I. He calls himself Calif of his people. Calif of barbarous bandits. Yet there is hope for his salvation, as there is hope for all, and I would not deny it to him. Bring him to me.”

  The order was obeyed with alacrity, and Khardan was thrown at the Imam’s feet, where he lay on the floor, surrounded by a ring of steel.

  Slowly, as his eyes raised to meet the liquidfire eyes of the priest, Khardan rose to his knees. He would have stood facetoface with this man, but the hands of the soldierpriests pressed on his shoulders, holding him down.

  “Yes, you know me,” Khardan said, breathing heavily. “You know me and you fear me. You sent a woman to try to murder me—”

  A roar of outrage met these words. The hilt of a sword smashed into Khardan’s mouth; pain burst in his skull. Groggily, tasting blood from a split lip, he spit it on the floor, and he raised his throbbing head to look into Feisal’s eyes. “It is the truth,” he said. “That is how Quar will rule. Sweet words in the daylight and poisoned rings in the night—”

  He was prepared for the blow this time and took it as best he could, averting his head at the last possible moment to keep it from breaking his jaw.

  “No more!” said Feisal, seeming truly distressed by the violence. He laid his delicate fingers on Khardan’s bleeding head. The touch was hot and dry, and the fingers quivered on the nomad’s skin like the feet of an insect. The intense, zealmaddened eyes gazed into Khardan’s, and such was the strength and power of the soul within the priest’s frail body that the Calif felt himself shrinking and shriveling beneath the fiery sun blazing above him.

  “This man has been sent to us, my brethren, to show us the overwhelming difficulties we will face when we go out into the world. But we will surmount them.” The fingers stroked Khardan with hypnotic sensuality. The candlelight, the pain, the noise, the smell of the incense, began to cause everything in his sight to swirl around him. He found a focal point only in the eyes of the priest. “Who is the One, True God, kafir? Name him, bow to him, and your people are freed!”

  The fingers soothed and caressed. Feisal was certain of triumph, certain of his own power and the power of his God. The soldierpriests held their breath in awe, awaiting another miracle. Had they not seen, countless times, the Imam lead one poor benighted soul after another into the light?

  Khardan had only to speak Quar’s name. He held the life of his God in his hands. The Calif shut his eyes, praying for courage. He knew that—by speaking the next words—he doomed himself, doomed his people. But he would save Akhran.

  “I know nothing of One, True God, Imam,” he gasped, the words bursting past a barrier erected by Feisal’s stroking fingers. “I know only my God. The God of my people, Hazrat Akhran. With our dying breath, we will honor his name!”

  The fingers on his face grew cold to the touch. The eyes stared down at him not with fury but with sorrow and disappointment. “Give me a knife!” Feisal said softly, holding out his hand to his priests. “Death will close this man’s mortal eyes and open those of his soul. Hold him fast, that I may do this swiftly and cause him no undue suffering.” The soldierpriests gripped Khardan’s arms. One tilted back his head, exposing his throat.

  Khardan did not fight. It was useless. He could only pray, with his last conscious thought, that Zohra would succeed where he had failed. . .

  “Give me a knife,” Feisal repeated.

  “Here, My Lord,” said a voice, and the body of the Imam suddenly jerked and went rigid, the eyes opened wide in astonishment.

  Auda yanked his blade free. He raised his hand to strike again, when Feisal wheeled and faced him. An expanding stain of blood was spreading across the back of the priest’s robes.

  “You would murder me?” he said, staring at Auda, not so much in anger and fear, but in true amazement.

  “The first blow I struck was for Catalus,” said Auda coolly. “This I strike in the name of Zhakrin.” The silver dagger, the hilt decorated with a severed snake, flashed in the light of the candles on the altar of Quar and plunged into the breast of the Imam.

  Feisal did not scream or try to dodge the blow. Flinging wide his arms, he received the deadly blade into his body with a kind of ecstasy. The dagger’s hilt protruded from his flesh. Clutching at it, the Imam staggered and lifted his eyes to heaven. Prayerfully holding up his hands—crimson with his own blood—Feisal tried desperately to speak.

  “Quar!” He choked and pitched forward across the altar, falling in his last prostration to his God.

  Paralyzed with shock and horror, the soldierpriests stared at the body of their leader. It seemed impossible that he could die and they waited for him to stand, they waited for a miracle. Yanking the black medallion from around his neck, Auda tossed it upon the corpse—then, darting forward, the Paladin caught hold of Khardan. He managed to drag the nomad from his captors’ nerveless grip and propel him, stumbling, toward the door in the wal
l before the fury hit.

  “They have slain the Imam! The Imam is dead!” The wail was terrible to hear, rising to a shriek of insane rage as they realized their miracle was not forthcoming. “Kill them!” came one cry. “No,” cried others, “capture them alive! Save them for the torturer!” And still another cry, “Slay the prisoners! The blood of the kafir to pay for his! Slay them now! Do not wait for morning!”

  A sword flashed in front of Khardan. Smashing its wielder in the face, the Calif grabbed the blade from the man’s hand, drove it into the body, and ran past without looking to see his enemy fall. The door stood ajar. The path to it was clear. No one had thought to block it.

  “Nomad! Behind you!” came a hollow cry.

  Khardan turned, knocked aside a swordthrust in time to see the Paladin sinking to the floor, one soldierpriest driving a sword into his back, another into his side.

  Yelling wildly, Khardan slashed at the priests, killing both of them. Others, undaunted, longing to martyr themselves and die with their Imam, ignored the danger of his flashing blade and hurled themselves at him. Grabbing hold of Auda, hacking to the left and the right, Khardan dragged the wounded man to his feet.

  The Calif saw out of the corner of his eye a priest raise a knife. He held it poised to throw, but it was knocked from his hand by another, who howled, “Do not kill them! The executioner must make them pay! A thousand days and nights they will live with their agony! Capture them alive!”

  Savage faces loomed near Khardan. He heard blades whistle, saw them flash, and beat them off, thrusting and kicking, clawing and fighting his way inch by inch toward the tunnel door. One hand kept hold of the Paladin, and he did his best to try to protect Auda, but he could not be on all sides at once, and he heard another groan escape the man’s lips, felt the body shudder.

  “Sond!” cried Khardan desperately, though he knew the djinn could not enter the Temple.

  “Sond!” Fire spread along Khardan’ s upper arm and tore through his shoulder blade. But he was at the tunnel door, and he had made it to safety.