As he raced his horse toward the caravan, a shout went up from the man in charge, now in the lead and heading toward a half-erected gold and white tent. The other guards took it up and the air was filled with short, high, loud cries, as if they were laughing deliberately. At once, other guards came to the perimeter of the camp, scimitars drawn, and answered back. Pandy could see a few women join the crowd, staring at the approaching strangers over thin veils covering their noses and mouths. As the group reached the tent and began to dismount, a large man approached the horse rider. He was wearing the same garments as the other guards but more richly embellished. There was gold trim on his sleeves and gold fabric woven through his turban, and instead of a ruby, it was held together with a giant emerald. Pandy watched all five guards give a formal salute and greeting to this man as he began to question them about the new arrivals.
Suddenly, a shout went up from somewhere in the growing crowd.
“Pandora!”
Pandy was so startled that she didn’t know where to look. Two guards instinctively drew their blades.
“Let me through. Pandora! I know her! I know them!”
Pandy finally spotted a head of black hair close to the edge of the crowd and moving fast, but she couldn’t see the face. The woman was waving her arms and would have fallen upon Pandy’s feet, since Pandy was still on her camel, if several guards had not stopped her and were about to roughly throw her back.
“Pandora, it is Mahfouza!”
Pandy’s mind went blank. Did she know this woman? How?
“Wang Chun Lo! I taught you to dance!”
Instantly, Pandy remembered everything: Wang Chun Lo’s Caravan of Wonders, a gathering of strange and wonderful living oddities that had stopped for the evening just outside of the abandoned temple in Egypt when Pandy was hunting for Vanity. All members of the troupe had put on their show especially for Pandy and her friends, and that performance had included one of the most stunning things Pandy had ever seen: Mahfouza and three other Arabian girls, all of incomparable beauty, dancing as if each one had her own personal muse on her shoulder. Their movements, the music they made with tinkly bells on the ends of their fingers had overwhelmed Pandy. But then, at the very end of the performance, they had invited (dragged, in Alcie’s case) Pandy and the others onto the floor and had taught them each to “belly” dance—or had tried to at least. Pandy did remember spinning and falling down a lot.
“Mahfouza?”
“Yes! Yes!” the girl cried, then she pushed her way past the guards. “She knows me! Let me through, you donkeys!”
Pandy was off her camel in a heartbeat, and she flew into Mahfouza’s arms. Although she really didn’t know this girl at all, to Pandy she was a touchstone, something even slightly familiar in an unknown world.
“Why are you here? Where are the other dancers? Is Wang Chun …?” Pandy asked when they finally let each other go.
“No, no. We will talk of me later,” Mahfouza answered quickly. “The guards have told their captain that one of you is sick?”
“Iole,” Pandy said.
“And only three of you came off the desert, but I see the youth. Where is … oh, her name? I have forgotten her name!”
“Alcie.”
“Alcie! Of course. Where is Alcie?” Mahfouza asked.
Pandy took a deep breath and felt the tears well up.
“Alcie is dead,” Pandy choked out.
Mahfouza’s shoulders dropped and her face went slack as she stared at Pandy.
“Stay here a moment,” she said, then she marched toward the captain of the guard. Pandy saw Mahfouza gesturing toward her and Homer, then back into the caravan. At last she saw the captain nod and wave her off as if Mahfouza’s words were insignificant and a bother.
“Come,” Mahfouza said, racing back to Pandy. “You will all stay in my tent. Tell the youth. I will have them bring Iole.”
As Pandy and Homer collected their things off the camels, she told him of their coincidental, unimagined link to the caravan in the form of the beautiful dancing girl.
“Pandora, this way!”
They saw a guard carrying Iole in his arms, following Mahfouza.
“This way!” Mahfouza called back to Pandy and Homer as they hurried to keep up. Dido wove his way after them, his pure whiteness causing whispers and stares.
Passing many tents, Pandy could not help but notice the wild color combinations: black and olive and cloud gray, lemon and blue and silver, bloodred and lime and brown. They came to a large tent, striped in colors of plum and cherry, and found Mahfouza inside, commanding the guard to be careful as he placed Iole on a pile of floor cushions. Pandy motioned Dido to a spot on the floor out of the way, indicating he should lie down and stay.
“I know a little medicine,” Mahfouza said, bending over Iole as the guard left. “We shall see.”
Several minutes later, after much gazing and gentle poking, Mahfouza looked up, stricken.
“It is beyond me. Any potions or elixirs I know would be useless. I am sorry.”
“Do you know what she has?” Homer asked. “Why she’s so—”
“Wait just one tick on the sundial!” Pandy interrupted. “There’s someone here called ‘the Physician,’ right? Some big shot, ooby-dooby guy, right?”
Mahfouza gasped slightly.
“Right?” Pandy went on insistently. “Well, let’s go get him, for Apollo’s sake!”
“The captain would never allow it,” Mahfouza whispered.
“We don’t know that until we ask!” Pandy said.
“The Physician is under constant guard.”
“I don’t care!” Pandy said through gritted teeth. She stormed out of the tent with Mahfouza on her heels.
“Dido, stay! Homer, please look after Iole,” Pandy said over her shoulder. “Which way?”
“Come,” said Mahfouza, heading toward the front of the caravan. When they reached the two guards at the entrance to the gold and white tent, Mahfouza began to speak, but Pandy put a hand on her arm, silencing her.
“Let me,” she said. “It might mean more if everyone thinks that a stranger, even a maiden, has respect enough to learn their language.”
“Save that for the captain,” Mahfouza said. “I will get us past the guards.”
Mahfouza expertly negotiated their entrance into the captain’s tent by explaining that Pandora, as leader of her group (an extremely rare position for a woman in Arabia), wished to pay her respects and express her gratitude to the captain for allowing them into the caravan. Once inside, she did this with several other groups of guards until at last she and Pandy stood in front of the captain, who remained silent and motionless.
“Exalted is He,” Mahfouza said, making a gesture of greeting and respect.
“Exalted is He,” Pandora quickly echoed, attempting the same movements.
The captain of the guard looked surprised at hearing a young girl, dressed in strange garments, obviously from far away, speaking his language.
“Your Persian is flawless,” he said. “How is this so?”
Pandy began to lie on the spot. She didn’t consider it a large lie, but rather a necessary bit of cunning: part of that set of powers that included a growing intellect fueled by a bad situation, which her father alluded to the night before she left her home.
“The power to think things through, to see the big picture, not just the small scene. To use your wonderful mind to its absolute fullest. And don’t forget, sweetheart, you’re semi-immortal … so the power of your mind might manifest itself in interesting ways … You’ll ask, you’ll ponder, you’ll learn.”
Pandy heard her father’s words clearly in her head.
So instead of telling the captain that she’d drunk the ashes of the evil magician Calchas in an abandoned temple in Egypt, she said respectfully, “I attended an excellent school in … in my native homeland, of Greece. I am Pandora Atheneus Andromaeche Helena of the House of Prometheus. It is, um, well known in Greece, as
it is everywhere, that Persian is a beautiful language, but not easily mastered. Therefore, I made it my personal goal to speak it as well as possible. I am honored that you find me …”
What was the word? She’d heard Iole use it a hundred times!
“… adept, sir.”
“I do,” he replied. “Now what is it you wish? Although, I think I already know.”
“One of my companions is very ill and there is in this camp a physician.”
“No,” said the captain flatly.
Pandy took a deep breath and pleaded her case again and again, using various stratagems, fabricating a rich tale of Iole being of great importance, the daughter of a statesman and very wealthy. The captain remained resolute. Finally Pandy, seeing Iole’s life slip from her grasp, stopped the lie. She looked at the captain, a small sag in her shoulders.
“She is one of only two friends I ever had,” Pandy began. “The other is dead. Please, please don’t let me lose this one, too.”
The captain, moved by the single tear coursing down her cheek, relented.
“He will be brought to you in chains and they are not to be removed,” he said. “The dancer’s tent will be surrounded with a man every five paces and two at the entrance. Two will be inside the tent with their backs to the proceedings, as I am aware there may be some examination. If any of you attempts to help the Physician escape, you will regret it. Is all of this understood?”
“Yes, yes!” Pandy cried. “Thank you!”
She and Mahfouza bowed low and ran out of the tent.
“Well done, Pandora!” Mahfouza said.
“It was the truth that worked. Who knew?” Pandy replied. “And, please, call me Pandy.”
They burst into Mahfouza’s tent to find Homer, sitting over Iole, fanning her with a small cushion.
“She’s burning up,” he said.
“Douban is on his way,” said Mahfouza.
“Who’s that?” asked Pandy.
“Douban,” Mahfouza replied, then she looked incredulously at Homer and Pandy. “Douban the Physician? Surely you have heard of him?”
Pandy and Homer shook their heads.
“He is the greatest physician in the known world. I cannot believe his fame has not traveled to Greece.”
“Well, we have Apollo,” Pandy replied.
“At any rate, he will be here soon,” Mahfouza said. “So now we will wait.”
Settling themselves close to Iole, the group was silent for a long time. Then Pandy looked at the lovely dancer, whose concern for Iole seemed to match her own.
“Mahfouza, why are you here? Now? Why aren’t you with Wang Chun Lo? Did something happen? Where are you going?”
“Pandy, please,” Mahfouza said, smiling. “Let me answer these questions before you ask any more.”
“Oh, sorry,” Pandy said. “I’m just curious.”
“Wang Chun Lo’s Caravan of Wonders is doing well, I must assume. Instead of four dancers, they now have only three. I received word of trouble at home, so I have left to be with my family.”
“I’m sorry,” Pandy said. “How far are you traveling?”
“To Baghdad.”
“That’s where we are going,” Homer cut in.
“I thought you were Arabian,” Pandy said.
“That’s only for advertising.” Mahfouza smiled. “Wang Chun Lo thought it would be simpler to bill us as four exotic Arabs, but in truth, we were from all over. Pandy, you are still on your quest to find the remaining evils, yes?”
Pandy nodded.
“Baghdad is such a small, backwater town on the Tigris. I cannot imagine a great evil taking up residence there. It was only my father’s business, providing goods to ships in port, which forced my mother to make a home there. The house still stands, I believe, but I fear my parents are dead.”
“What?” Pandy cried. “How do you know? What was the message? Who told you?”
“No one told me. It was not that kind of message.”
Mahfouza rose off of her floor cushion and went to a wooden trunk from which she pulled a carved box, not unlike the box that Pandy carried in her leather pouch.
“The day I left to join Wang Chun Lo, my father gave me a dagger. He told me that no matter where I was, if the blade was clean when I pulled it from its sheath, all was well with him. But if the blade was bloody, he had been terribly injured or worse. On that same day, my mother gave me a string of pearls, saying that if the string remained loose and I was able to slide the pearls back and forth, she was fine, but if the string was fixed and unmovable, she too was either injured beyond hope or already dead. For several years I kept both items in this box. I had pulled the dagger from its sheath many times and found it clean, and I had draped the pearls around my neck. Then, for several months I actually forgot to do these things, thinking that all was and always would be well. Shortly after you came to us in Egypt and we all learned what had happened and why you were on your quest, I became frightened.”
Sitting again, she placed the box on the ground in front of her and lifted the lid.
“As it turns out, I had good reason to be.”
Mahfouza held up the dagger and slowly drew the blade from the sheath. Blood began dripping everywhere, staining the carpets and cushions. She sheathed the dagger again and put it in the box. Then she took out a strand of large pearls, frozen in a straight line, not one pearl loose.
“I don’t even know the exact day these items became like this,” she murmured.
Replacing the pearls and closing the lid, Mahfouza looked at Pandy.
“Do you know what ‘Baghdad’ means?” she asked.
“No,” Pandy said softly.
“Bagh means ‘God’ and dad means ‘gift,’” she said. “It is a gift from God. That is how I always saw it. The city is a trash heap, really, but I loved it. It is my home. And now I fear it is my parents’ grave.”
Once again, Pandy felt the tremendous weight of the responsibility of her actions. If Rage was in Baghdad and Mahfouza’s parents had suffered because of it … it was all her fault.
“I’m sorry,” she began. “I’m so very sorry.”
But she was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching and encircling the tent. Seconds later, two guards entered and took up their posts. Shortly after that, four guards shoved their way through the entrance. They surrounded a small, frail man and a youth appearing to be only slightly older than Homer; both were clothed in simple white robes. Shoving them into the center of the room, the four guards departed.
“Don’t try anything funny,” one guard said as the tent flap closed behind him.
The older man turned and looked from Mahfouza to Pandy to Homer, then his eyes came to rest on Iole.
“Did someone call for a physician?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Tale of Douban
the Physician
With his eyes trained on Iole, the man glided across the floor of the tent. Pandy noticed that neither he nor the boy were in chains, as promised. Perhaps even the captain realized there was nowhere to escape to. Mahfouza rushed across her tent.
“Thank you, Douban,” she began.
“Not now, my dear,” he said quietly, patting her arm as he passed her. “Come, my son.”
The youth, with only a glance at Pandy, followed his father. They knelt over Iole and studied her face, flushed and beaded with sweat.
“What do you see?” Douban asked the youth.
“There is no visible trauma,” the youth replied. “Her fever is high. Her lips are cracked, so she has lost much fluid. It is either an infection or digestive.”
“Good … for a start. And I concur,” said the elder man, and then he looked up. “Who can tell me of this girl?”
“I can,” Pandy spoke up. Then she looked at Homer. “We can.”
“Do so,” said Douban.
“We’ve been, uh, days in the desert,” Pandy started.
“Eleven,” said Homer.
“Eleven. And she was fine up until two days ago. Then she couldn’t keep her food down, she can’t drink.…”
“From where have you traveled?” asked Douban.
“From Greece,” said Pandy. “I mean, originally. But we were most recently in Aphrodisias.”
Douban looked up at Pandy.
“How are you called?”
“Huh?” asked Pandy. “Oh, you mean my name. I am Pandora of Athens.”
The youth’s eyes widened and, suddenly, Douban’s entire face became a mixture of pure astonishment, disbelief, concern, and joy; yet only the corner of his mouth moved, rising upward slightly.
“Can you believe it?” Mahfouza said suddenly. “And I was speaking of her only the other night!”
“Yes, my dear,” said Douban, speaking to Mahfouza but staring intently at Pandy. “But her fame preceded her long before you recounted the dancing lesson. This may explain much.”
He turned his attention back to Iole.
“What has been your diet?”
“Huh?” Pandy replied.
“Food.”
“Oh! Well, we started out with fresh supplies, but we ran out of those about a week ago. So we’ve been eating flatbread and dried fruit.”
“Show me your stores,” said the Physician.
“Well, we don’t really have stores,” Pandy said, reaching for her leather pouch. “It’s all in here.”
“You cannot possibly keep enough food in that small space.”
Inadvertently, Pandy looked to Homer.
“He’s gotta know,” Homer said.
“Right,” Pandy said, turning back. “Athena, the goddess … she’s Greek.”
“I’m acquainted with your pantheon,” Douban said.
“Oh, yeah, well, when we first started out, she enchanted my carrying pouch so that it would always give us dried fruit and flatbread. So that we wouldn’t starve if we ever got into trouble.”
“Let me see what it can produce.”
Pandy reached in her pouch and brought out a handful of dried dates, apricots, and figs and several small pieces of flatbread, then handed everything to Douban. Carefully, the Physician turned the bits over in his hands, sniffing them in short bursts that wrinkled his nose like a squirrel’s, examining each and every morsel in the filtered purple and crimson light of the tent. Then he handed them to his son, whose reaction, while slower, was the same.
Pandora Gets Angry Page 4
