Beyond the Dar al-Harb, page 2
part #2.50 of Thieves' World Series
Just such a shadow was lying on street, wall and roof at this moment; for by preference the desert dwellers always rode into the city late in the day; and even now the twilight was fading fast about him. But Jami had no grapnel with him; and even if he had, it was not his way — though few of the native inhabitants of ’Ayla would have given this tall, burly barbarian from the Dar al-Harb credit for it — to do things unplanned. He turned away and headed toward the coffeehouse of Tahmasp al-Farsi.
Twenty minutes later, he entered that particular establishment. The premises consisted of a single large room, around three walls of which ran a carpeted platform on which the guests sat cross-legged on cushions — Jami’s legs ached at the sight of them. After years in Arabia, his legs still went to sleep if he had to sit that way for any length of time. These people, used to the position since childhood, found it merely comfortable.
“Ah, Jami,” said Tahmasp al-Farsi, himself, bustling up to him.
The proprietor of the coffeehouse was a short, tubby man in a brown and black striped caftan and white turban.
“Your friend the Firanji —” (for once the Arabic word for Frank, the name they gave all Europeans — even on occasion Jami himself — actually fit, since the man in question had had a French father) “— the Firanji minstrel has already come and gone. He left word he would find you at your own house, later.”
“Thank you, Tahmasp al-Farsi,” said Jami, politely. “My thanks for passing that message on to me. But in fact I was looking for someone else as well.”
His eyes were roaming around the seating platforms as he spoke. “Have you seen the Persian magician just lately come here to ’Ayla? I’d like a word with him on behalf of the Guild of Jewelers —”
He broke off, for his eyes had found a portly figure, taller than the average.
“Ah, I see him now,” Jami said, starting across the open central part of the floor toward the stranger.
The Persian magician, Jami thought as he approached the man, made an imposing figure — and knew it. The other was tall enough to carry his extra weight with an air of importance. He was perhaps twenty to thirty pounds overweight and he wore a silk caftan of a bright emerald green trimmed with bands of fine green damask. A sash of forest green girdled his ample waist and carried a silver pencase. Most remarkable about his appearance was his turban. Its white fabric was wound about over some sort of tall red velvet cap, the exposed tip of which stuck up like a thin, sharp spike. The headgear marked him as a Shi’ite Muslim but to Jami’s eye gave him an air of authority as if it were a crown. Placed on the floor below the platform on which he sat were the red velvet slippers he, like the other patrons, had taken off and placed handily before sitting down.
On the middle finger of his left hand, he wore a gold ring with a large, square-cut orange stone in it. No, Jami corrected himself, the stone was a ruby. The lamplit interior must have distorted the color. Before the magician was an embossed brass tray bearing two of the small, handleless coffee cups and a plate of roasted melon seeds. The Persian finished the seed he had been nibbling and reached for a cup.
By this time Jami was almost to the man.
“May I join you, Magician?” he said, halting in front of him.
The magician glanced up. He looked directly at Jami, which the latter found disconcerting. In the Arab world it was considered impolite to look directly into someone else’s eyes, particularly when strangers were meeting for the first time.
“Sit down. Join me.” The magician’s voice was a deep, resonant bass, his eyes were black. He made a sweeping gesture of invitation with his left hand to the empty cushion on the other side of the tray before him. In truth, the establishment was only about half full at this hour, so that there was some little distance separating the magician from the other customers that were both behind and before him on the platform.
Jami seated himself.
“The other cup is for you. I was expecting you.”
“Expecting me?” Jami looked keenly at the other, as he folded himself up on the opposite cushion. It was not possible; but, he reminded himself, you could never tell what was possible with those who worked in any area of magic — from Hobe, the speyman of his boyhood back home, to whatever kind of the unreal Persian magicians like this one engaged in. Magic was a fact, in this Christian year of our Lord 1359 — the Muslim year 735 — which non-magicians had to live with.
“Of course,” said the magician. He waved the hand on which the ring now glinted as black as some secret recess in the center of the earth. “You may tell Umar al-Hafiz that the spell on his strongbox, the one that sends it with its contents for safety to the home of the Djinn, will work promptly from now on. My fee will be one of his emeralds, which I have already selected. I will come to the shop tomorrow to pick it up.”
“So, the sick spell is already cured?” Jami grinned wolfishly. “That was fast.”
“A small matter,” said the magician, “— to one of my attainments, that is. It was a weak magician who sold your jeweler friend the spell in the first place, and such spells can only be as strong as those who cast them. Also, any such spell will decay after its strength runs out. Luckily for Umar al-Hafiz, my strength as a magician is great indeed. I have remade the spell so that it will not decay until the hour of his death, at which time his heirs will need access to it.”
“It seems as if I hardly needed to come at all,” said Jami. “If you knew my errand and could do your work from a distance.”
“Not only do the hungry seek food, food seeks the hungry,” said the magician unctuously. “You were not to know that I know the thoughts of sultans and slaves alike — and even of a licensed infidel visitor in the Dar al-Islam like yourself, Jami Ibn Walter al-Ilarethi al-Firanj — that is to say — al-Scoci, rather than al-Firanj.”
Jami sat very still; but within he was jarred as if by a physical blow. He had not thought there was anyone here on this southern side of the Mediterranean who had even heard of the small kingdoms of Scotland, of which one had been — and with the Lord’s help, still was — his father’s.
“Few people have heard of my homeland,” he said at last, slowly.
“True enough,” said the magician, folding his plump hands together. “Doings in the barbarous and unbelieving Dar al-Harb hold little interest to most of those in our blessed House of Islam. But I am more than most. I know not only your proper name and place, but that you were a prince and brave fighter in your own land before you came among us. You speak, Jami al-Scoci, to a full adept of the Inner Science, Mir Akbar ibn Ja’far al-Surawardi al-Shiraz; but you may address me simply as Mir Akbar. Such adepts as myself are few, but we form a brotherhood that is sworn to simplicity and humbleness; and do not, like lesser workers with the Art, pride ourselves or puff ourselves up about our abilities.”
“I see,” said Jami.
His reply was almost automatic. His mind was suddenly busy with the thought that perhaps somehow the skills of this Mir Akbar could be put to use to aid him in the revenge he had waited so long to wreak. He reached out and drank unseeingly from the cup in front of him; and the thickly sweet taste of the coffee brought back the memory of sitting opposite Sheik al-Birain in the other’s tent as they spoke of an attack Jami would lead for the sheik on one of the heavily armed, but rich, caravans that passed through al-Birain’s territory.
For a second, also, the lovely, brown face of Sati came back to him. Not as he had last seen the small girl from Hindi, dead on the midden heap of al-Birain’s camp, but as he had known her in life — smiling at him in spite of the persecutions of the Muslim women of the camp. He pushed that image from him. He had been thinking, he reminded himself, of some way the magician’s powers might help him to deal with al-Birain now that the sheik had finally decided to visit ’Ayla…
“You are interested in my ring?” The voice of Mir Akbar roused Jami to the awareness that he had been mindlessly staring at the point of light that was the ring of changing colors on the magician’s hand, now extended toward him so that it was held close under his eyes.
It was, he now saw, a rock crystal ring, its top cut in the shape of its owner’s seal. He had seen many like it in Umar’s shop. Now, however, its color had become a rich green and, close as it was, he was able to read the Arabic letters of the inscription on it. They spelled out kulluhu sirr, which translated to “they are all hidden.” He had heard of that phrase somewhere as an anagram of the occult arts of Islam.
“I see you can read,” said the voice of Mir Akbar in his ear. “A ring like this, varying only with the seal of him who owns it, is worn only by a Master of Inner Science. I, of course, am not only that. I have also scaled the Emerald Rock on the peak of the Cosmic Mountain; and beheld both the Midnight Sun and the Black Noontide.”
“Wondrous!” said Jami, recovering and straightening swiftly from his examination of the ring.
Mir Akbar beamed.
“Well, no doubt,” he said. “But for one like myself…”
He waved his ringed hand lightly in the air.
“Indeed, you are an observant man, Jami al-Scoci,” he went on. “Not that that surprises me. Calculations I made from the letters of your real name indicate very good fortune for those helping you in any way. I told Sheik al-Birain so, not half an hour past —”
“Al-Birain?” Jami’s interruption was unexpectedly sharp. Mir Akbar frowned.
“Indeed. The desert sheik that just today rode into town. As it happened, he had heard of my presence here and asked me to wait on him earlier today, in his camp outside these walls as soon as it was set up and before he rode in to visit, as he does now, at the home of Sulayman Tufeek.”
“He already knows me,” said Jami, tightly.
“So I was aware, even before he spoke,” said Mir Akbar. “My art also let me see at that time that you would come seeking me here, so that I have arranged to be here where you could find me. Since you carry good fortune to those who help you, I will be such a one. You may ask me three questions. I do not say how I will answer, if at all, to any of them; but the man I read you to be will find in this opportunity I offer much of use to him. Ask, then.”
Jami’s mind raced. He had thought no further than the fact that al-Birain was here in town, which to Jami was now home territory. There had been no time to plan the means by which he might make the sheik pay at last for what his malice had caused him to order done to Sati.
Jami had heard vaguely of occult calculations that could be made from the letters of a person’s names but had paid little attention to what had been said then. Still, if this Mir Akbar was willing to be at all forthcoming in his answers, valuable information might be gained. What Jami’s heart wanted most was the chance to rob al-Birain in proportion as the sheik had robbed Sati of life and Jami, himself, of Sati. Killing the sheik was not practical. Al-Birain’s whole tribe would be out for Jami’s life if it ever became known he was the killer; and that fact would be hard to hide, since there would be no reward in doing whatever he was about to do to al-Birain unless at least al-Birain knew who had done it — and it would be difficult to fulfill that requirement and keep Jami’s hand in the sheik’s death hidden from those who would automatically avenge him.
But if Jami could just frustrate al-Birain in what the other wanted most, preferably of something he wanted almost as much or more than life itself…
“Very well,” said Jami, “and I thank you for the offer, Mir Akbar. Tell me, with your amazing wisdom and insight, what is it al-Birain wants, more than anything else?”
Mir Akbar laughed silently, his belly jiggling his sash up and down.
“It doesn’t take a magician to tell you that,” he answered. “Any astute man who knows the Dar al-Islam as a whole can tell you — though of course I can tell you more, being able to look into the minds of men. What al-Birain wishes is what he has wished for, for a long time — to make himself Sharif of Mecca and control the holy places.”
Jami sat for a moment, chagrined. This was not the information he wanted. He himself, as first a slave, then a free leader of warriors under the sheik, had come to understand as much about al-Birain. What he needed was information he could not otherwise discover, information useful here and now.
“Let me put that another way,” he said, “what does al-Birain seek here in ’Ayla, on this visit?”
“Two!” Mir Akbar held up two fingers. “Two questions gone, Jami al-Scoci. Now you have asked information that only such as I could give you. The desert sheik has come to ’Ayla in search of one thing only, one thing he greatiy desires to help him in becoming Sharif and to satisfy his own pride of self. That thing is at this moment the most valuable thing in Ayla, and al-Birain does not yet have it in his possession.”
He stopped speaking and smiled wickedly at Jami.
“You haven’t told me what that thing is,” Jami said.
“Nor will I,” said Mir Akbar, “unless you make it your third question to me.”
“That’s hardly fair,” said Jami. “It seems to me that my last question required you to tell me what it was.”
“Did I not say I did not promise even to answer?” countered Mir Akbar. “It’s up to you to ask if you want to learn.”
Jami shrugged.
“Very well,” he said. “What is this thing; and why is it so valuable to al-Birain?”
“A double question.” Mir Akbar shook a finger at Jami. “But out of the goodness of my soul I will answer both parts anyway. If you should go to the House of the Flowery Brotherhood in this city; and if you could pass all their guards to a small room hidden in the walls behind where the magic automatons play their music so that those of the Brotherhood may dance themselves into what they conceive to be a holy state of transport — fools that they are, for the magic that makes the automatons play better even than men inspired robs these worshipers of strength each time they dance — but that is neither here nor there.”
He paused to sip from his small cup of sweet coffee.
“If,” he went on, “you could so pass to the room I mention, entering the passageways behind the music platform and always keeping to the left as you go, you would encounter great danger, of course, but you also might come at last to the chamber that holds what the Brotherhood wishes to sell to al-Birain for riches that have given even him pause at the price — the White Flower of Passion.”
“The White Flower of Passion?” Jami stared at him. “And that is — what?”
“Not what, Jami al-Scoci,” said Mir Akbar, wiping his lips. “Who. Though in truth she is neither woman nor thing, but something of both; a work of magic beyond the imagination of all but the greatest of us in the Inner Science. Have you never heard of her? There are desert tribes that think of her as a talisman, the possession of which means that her owner may successfully achieve anything he desires — certainly to be Sharif of Mecca if he wishes; and it is the allegiance of those tribes that al-Birain needs to further that ambition. Also — it is said that possession of the White Flower, who is lovely beyond any man’s dreams, confers on that man a potency with women such as has never been seen in any individual otherwise. The workers of Ebal obtained her. The Brotherhood of the Flower got her from their Mother House in Persia, who obtained her from where and how even I do not know. They had hoped to use her to gain converts; but she has been little use in that effort. Which is not to be surprised at — magic and religion always work badly together, for reasons beyond the understanding of anyone less than a Master of the Inner Science.”
“What is she — it — then?”
“Ah, you may well ask. She began existence as a very rare flower — but there are correspondencies between flowers and women, which again are not understood by the common minds — a rare flower, one of a kind that bloomed only once in a thousand years. The flower she was bloomed; and that bloom was made into a woman by one who was a greater magician even than myself — a magician so great I’ll not even speak his name now, though he’s been dead more than four hundred years. Most of the time, she sleeps. But when she wakes, no man can resist her.”
Mir Akbar’s belly shook with silent laughter, again.
“Al-Birain,” he said, “grows old in spite of his ambition, and finds himself wearying more quickly than he used to in the arms of his women. In addition to what the White Flower will do for him in gaining the allegiance of the desert tribes I spoke of, he thinks the White Flower can make him young again. And so she can — and that is his personal reason for wanting her.”
“And,” said Jami, “this flower-woman is in the House of the Brotherhood of the Flower, so you say.”
“So I tell you. There is no doubt she is there. High as her price is, al-Birain could, of course, pay it, with the loot of a hundred caravans in his coffers. But he is of the desert and used to taking what he wants, rather than buying it; though as a good Sufi Muslim, his word — once given — is as carved in rock.”
“Interesting,” said Jami, thoughtfully. “Yes, I know his word is good. His word —” Jami emphasized his last utterance “— was good, even to me, even as a slave and infidel.”
“Do you not want to know more about the Flower of Passion?” There was a note of something very close to malicious humor in Mir Akbar’s voice. “I will tell you more. The White Flower sleeps except when she’s needed. She wakes only when the Veil of Time is wrapped around her. Once wakened, she’ll stay awake until the man she’s with falls asleep. It’s a mistake to wake her lightly. She has only one purpose with a man, and no one can resist that purpose, no matter what else might be threatening at the moment.”
