The Twin Sorcerers

by Der Nogard

  Ghazan girded himself in mail armor, the typical mail armor of the Southern peoples, even sporting the typical strong, cap-like helmet of the Canxir, and he was ready to face his doom. He knew that his future was lost, as Princess Rusudan had already predicted it, but the prince was ready to meet it anyway.

  It was not long before Ghazan reached the cave of Aisin, which lay at the foot of a mountain. Bending over a pool of crystal blue water, Ghazan found a maiden arrayed in veil like the noble women of his own people. Alarmed to find such a maiden as this alone, and in a place such as this, Ghazan immediately dismounted his horse and ran to her aid. The woman’s veil fell accidentally when she turned to look at her and Ghazan spied that she was of a truly startling beauty. Her cheekbones were high and her eyes were large and had a scene of wild horses running free in a far off land. What could be more enchanting than this to a man of the Banu Yunus? The maid told Ghazan that her father was the Burinkhan of Quban, and that he would pay a ransom to any man that returned her to him. Their land was plagued by the dragon Aisin and the people were too afeared to come to the mountain and return her back to her father’s high-walled city.

  The maid said that she would accompany Ghazan into the cave to slay the dragon, after which he might return her to her father. This seemed the proper course of action as there was no time to lose. Ghazan agreed to this course and lead both the lady and his mare, Khurshid-Begum, into the cave where he was to meet Aisin and the seven lesser dragons that guarded Aisin himself. The cave was in a constant state of rumbling, and as the prince faced the dragons, he had to worry over the rising fear in his mare and the safety of the maid that he had brought with him. The odds were great, but the prince slew all the lesser dragons as the princess looked on, only having trouble with the last, a beast called Cihangir. This dragon wisely hovered in a distant corner of the cave, forcing Ghazan to dispatch it with bow and arrow rather than with the holy lance Hulagu.

  Cihangir dispatched, Ghazan prepared to lead the princess and his mare into the last chamber of the cave where Aisin awaited when the princess stayed his hand.

  “You had better mount your horse,” said the maid. “The dragon that dwells here is so formidable that no weapon will touch him without the aid of a steed, even your great lance Hulagu.”

  “Know you this because your father’s historians and scribes have studied this dragon that has haunted your land?” the prince asked.

  He mounted the mare as bidden.

  “No,” said the princess.

  “Know you this because you father, the Burinkhan, has warred with this forbidding creature before?” Ghazan asked.

  “No,” said the princess.

  “Then how is it that you know this?” asked the prince.

  “I know for I am he,” said the princess. And with a great crack of thunder and a terrible peal of laughter, the woman vanished into a mist and the shape of a dragon occupying the great mass of the cave suddenly appeared. Prince Ghazan drew back in terror and the horse reared up and made to break away. The mare was stayed by the prince who tightened the reins. The sight of the great green dragon inspired a sense of mortification in the animal that none of the other dragons had.

  After various charges and failed assaults, Ghazan was tossed from Khurshid Beg and forced to flee to a corner of the cavern with his lance Hulagu.

  “Is it fear I smell on your skin?” the dragon hissed. “You think you can best the greatest dragon of the steppes with those carnival tricks?”

  The dragon’s voice occupied all of the space around Ghazan like he spoke with the particles of the air itself.

  Aisin went on: “Come closer so that you may know frost!”

  And with this, the dragon unfurled his great tongue, which was covered with terrible white patches.

  The cavern grew suddenly very cold. Ghazan had the thought to jab the dragon’s tongue rather than its body and when he had done this, the dragon let out a terrible wail.

  “It was not fear,” said Ghazan. “It was surprise. I thought you would be blue as Rusudan depicted you.”

  Disoriented, the dragon withdrew to the farthest nook of the cave, which had a low wall. Seeing this new advantage, Ghazan remounted his mare and charged forward with his lance until he had cornered Aisin. They parried with each other, there was one feint and then another, and finally Ghazan gripped the holy lance Hulagu and speared Aisin in the chest.

  The dragon screeched with such a furor that it shook the cave, threatening to send the walls crashing down. The dragon thrashed about and Khurshid-Begum tossed its rider and fled, never to be seen again by Ghazan.

  “Who?” the dragon asked in great anger. “Who are you?”

  The prince, suddenly alarmed, did not answer.

  “You may have bested me with the ogress’s blood, stranger, but know this. You shall no longer find welcome in your country. The honors you hoped your father would one day heap open you will never come. No country shall ever claim you as its son!”

  “Why don’t you say plainly what you mean, beast?”

  Aisin thrashed about, clinging to a life that was rapidly fleeing.

  “You are not your father’s son,” the dragon hissed. “You are not even of the bloodline of the Banu Yunus. You will never find a warrior’s hard-earned repose, never upon this earth!” And with those bitter words, the dragon Aisin died.

  The Azag-al-Walaq cast off his former self like a shadow and became Dost again. He left the Southern lands, traversed the Randalkand, and reached the border of the lands of the Banu Yunus. He came into a broad valley, hemmed in by mountains. A traveler would never have known that they were so close to the open desert. Here, the desert wind was held off as if by magic. The mountains lent the environs a sense of fortification, serenity, and warmth, even if the nights were cold. The bareness that the desert inspired, a sparsity that seemed to form the twin reactions of sumptuousness and cruelty in its higher orders, feeling seemed absent here. Here one might still feel the moisture of the great river Randal that traversed Randalkand carrying with it cities like rubies clinging to a necklace of blue gold. Here one was reminded that existence entailed more than the twin realities of life and death. There was always the thin line of limbo in between.

  Dost turned in his rough bed of grass and tossed aside his coverlet. The sun was high up in the sky. He had slept longer than he wanted or needed to. He leapt up to his feet and surveyed the area in this secluded corner of the valley. When he was sure that it was secure, he returned to the stream and considered his most pressing concerns, namely drink and repast. The drink part was simple enough. He would merely draw from the water of this stream. There was plenty of it to be had. He would fill his three flasks, including one that was meant for the boiled wine that Randalkand was famous for. All three of these would be filled with water; he would need them as there would be at least three days of travel through the desert to reach the city of Maler.

  He knew the land well. Though it was a desert land, the nights were cold and the sky released enough moisture to sustain a large population. The kings of this land, the sultans of Maler, built canals and aqueducts to carry water from the mountains and highland lakes hundreds of leagues away. They were able to fashion a city that clung to the edge of the desert like a diamond ring clinging to the finger of a dead man. Perhaps a time would come when this jewel too would die, like the host that had already embarked on its journey. There was something about these old lands.

  The land was old before the Banu Yunus settled here. There were ruins that stretched as high as the rim between the upper atmosphere and the lower atmosphere. The people here called it the dragon line, as it was the path just above the clouds that the dragons liked to travel. The people here understood the creatures well. Their land teemed with them, though the legendary beasts generally did not live here. The dragons preferred the mountains and the steppe. They did not favor the open desert, only coming to it to fly. It was a middle ground to them. In the minds of these beasts, as the Banu
Yunus perceived them, there must be better bounty to be found elsewhere. Of course, the question of what dragons truly wanted was a different subject altogether. There were draconologists who studied this science, often using the ancient texts of men who had made everything up, and Maler was not known for its draconologists. There were some, some directly under the sultan’s patronage, but when it came to this science, the official schools were lacking. Indeed, it was said that the knowledge that was held by the man of the open desert was more than what was known by the official in the city, even for all his texts.

  There were different orders of dragon, a thing which Dost knew well, as he was a Banu Yunus of the open desert. Every man and woman who shared blood descent with the conqueror through one of his ninety-nine sons knew the stories about dragons. Times had changed and dragons were no longer commonly seen, though they could still be spotted if one paid attention. That star in the night sky that suddenly seemed to move, or a dark in the sky that was a deeper dark than the blackness of night: those were dragons hovering or in flight.

  Sometimes you heard the crack of them. Their speech could be described as a crack of thunder, but this was more like an earthquake if quakes of the earth could talk. It was terrible wail, like the earth itself in its death throes, and these wails engendered an often insurmountable fear in the hearts of people, especially women. Horses too had a particular fear of dragons, though it was said that the tall sturdy horses of the Banu Yunus were fearless. They were like this because they were descended from the wild horses that Yunus himself tamed when he entered this land by crossing over the mountains to the East. He peopled these lands with his sons. He sent his daughters into the Randalkand where they married the dukes in that land, becoming ancestors of the people there to through the distaff side.

  But the land of the Banu Yunus held evidence of the people that had been there before. They built high temples, monasteries, and palaces topped with domes. They decorated in tiles, tiling their domes blue, green, and yellow: creating a world that must not have seen real to Yunus and his sons when he found it at the end of his travels. He loved it so dearly that he did not leave, though there were better lands to be had. Great warrior that he was, a warrior who wrestled with wyms, a warrior who took the wym bile to a great sorcerer to fashion his sword Velikiy, this warrior finally in old age decided to rest in the enchanting land of twin cities clinging to a desert, for the ruins of cities already existed on the sites of Maler and Marchande, those cities which live today. These cities would be built on the tells, the high mounds of the previous ruined cities, perching these towns above the desert so they might be seen from many leagues away.

  Maler was the greatest of these towns. Dost remembered it as a bustling port city. It was hemmed in by two high walls, but the harbor of the city was within the inner and outer wall, and a portion of the town had spread outside of the outer wall, even though this second wall had been built at a later date to accommodate for the many peoples of various origins that flocked to the town. Maler was not built on an arable site, its founders more concerned with taking advantage of the eastern and southern trade routes. In this city one might find every make of slave, carpet, jewel, food, cloth, horse, whatever it was your heart desired. All might find satisfaction in this city that seemed made to cater to the acquisitive hearts of men.

  The sultan’s city of Maler must have resembled the city that had been built before it. It too had high green domes, and the portals of its great buildings had blue tiles and ceilings of intricate honeycombs. Perhaps it was the remains of the old tiles of the domes of portals that rest under the Tell-Babi. The city had twelve gates, each as tall as a temple and each with its own elegant façade of multicolored tiles. The warriors of Maler were word famous with their black uniforms and high helmets. They were the terror of the enemies of Maler and a boon to its friends. They fended off the invasions of foreign kingdoms and nomadic tribes who frequently made incursions into this land. These armies also engaged in military endeavors of their own initiation, raiding foreign lands for booty or helping an ally in their fight.

  Dost knew all of this too well. He lay down his kujala and bent over the stream. He cupped the water with his hands and brought it up to his lips for a drink. He kissed the water and when he was done, he filled his flasks so that he would not be parched before he reached the city. He may not encounter another valley like this or an oasis until he reached the town, and even if he did, his particular situation required that he keep a low profile. He wanted no one to know that the Azag-al-Walaq was in this land. He must cast off this identity if he was to successfully assassinate the sultan.

  As he filled his last flask, Dost heard a familiar sound. It was a rustling in a low persimmon tree and a gentle snort. It was the characteristic sound of a horse, and as Dost had cast off his former steed in the Randalkand, he might find good use of this one, if it was suitable. The high, black steed of the Azag-al-Walaq would have bene recognizable, with its well-known exoskeleton of bones along its temples, only slightly concealed on the sides by the horse’s flowing black hair. This feature of frightening external bones was a genetic quirk that had scared away other men in the lands of the Cerkes. They were known for their penchant of taming wild horses. They would leave it for better men. This wild black horse was not for them, but as soon as he had seen the steed, the Azag-al-Walaq had known that he was meant to ride.

  That horse was gone now, set free in the highlands of Randalkand. It was given back to the earth that had created it, as his master no longer had any use for it. He would find a new horse here, upon this edge of a barren land. Hearing the horse’s soft neigh a second time, Dost whistled a gentle song. There was silence and then the horse approached. It must have been drawn to this valley spot by the stream. Indeed, there were probably many other horses here in this valley so close to the desert. Their line would have been peopled by the ancient wildlings of this land as well as the rebellious horses that had broken free of their masters in the desert and had come here. These twain origins would naturally create horses that had a little bit of the wild in them, but should be easily tamed by the skilled horse tamer.

  The horse neared Dost, an approach that the warrior could discern by the incessant rustling that grew louder and louder. When Dost saw the beast he gasped: it was another black horse. And it was a mare. He could not believe his luck. Though it was risky for a warrior as well-known as he to enter a foreign land with another black horse, Dost was naturally a risk taker. He just could not resist the lure of a tall and slender black horse, a beauty that would instill both surprise, wonder, and envy in all that saw it. Its coat was so black that it flashed in the light. A thing so wondrous Dost had seldom seen. He wondered if that sense he felt was joy. No, it must be satisfaction. “I know that with this horse I might accomplish my destiny.” He sighed. “With this horse I might find the death that for so long has called to me.”

  Dost removed his shirt and used it as a flag to attract the horse’s attention. The horse would have seen him, but some horses perceived people with something like anger while others regarded Man with disdain. A true wild horse would have an instinct to buck its rider, even if it allowed him to mount, but a true horseman could break this instinct, to the mutual benefit of both horse and rider. The world was ruled by men after all and a wild horse could only run free for so long. Dost waved the horse down and it neared him, choosing to stop and take a sip from the pound near Dost. The warlord spent a few moments watching the horse. It turned to look at him a few times as it took its fill of the water, but it seemed unconcerned. The warrior laughed and sat down beside the horse. You might call this “getting to know each other.” The black mare would take some time to break, yet she would be broken.

  Chapter Three

  Dost broke his mare and finally came into the lands of the Banu Yunus. What he found there, in the lands of the sultan of Maler, were not what he expected or what he remembered. These scenes had a home in his memory, for they were places that h
is father had inhabited. They were places of anger, envy, and dreams of revenge. He had been here before.

  The land was yet a desert, as desert lands were not known throughout time to become something else, but they were peopled differently than they had been when Dost was a child. Everywhere he went he found mendicants begging for alms. Their looks and their entreaties were wild. They even seemed to frighten the hearty natives of the place. They wore tattered black cloths that exposed their chests. They wore twisted twigs upon their pates; crowns that seemed to be chosen because the thin branches resembled human bones. Dost was not often afraid, but something about these people disturbed him. They were camps of them outside all of the major towns of the Banu Yunus, and there were whole villages of them at the large oases.

  Though Dost was of a mind to avoid the large settlements, so as not to attract any notice, on the third day of his travels through the lands of the Banu Yunus, his mare wanted drink. As he did not wish to lose the bond between horse and master that had newly been forged, Dost decided to allow his horse to have the water it craved, though they could have waited until they reached the city. It was a good mare and Dost did not want to risk having to find another. The warlord came across one of these villages of acolytes and as there was no other settlements nearby, not on this fringe of the desert, he had little choice but to lead his horse to it. The warrior dismounted and led his mare by the reins into this open, un-walled tenement.

  “Come, girl,” said Dost. “Whoa, come, come. There is nothing to be frightened of.