The Prophet of Akhran Read online

  Majiid cut their words off with a weary movement of his hand. “Do nothing.”

  Nothing! The aksakal stared at each other, the men of the Akar glowered, and Jaafar frowned, shaking his head. Hearing the unspoken defiance, Majiid glared round at them, the dark eyes flashing with sudden fire.

  “Would you fight, fools?” he sneered. “How?” He gestured toward the oasis. “Where are the horses to carry you to battle? Where is the water for your girba? Will you fight Zeid with swords that are broken?”

  “Yes!” cried one man passionately. “If my Sheykh wills it!”

  “Yes! Yes!” shouted the others.

  Majiid lowered his head. The lookout remained on his knees, staring up at him pleadingly, and it seemed for a moment that the Sheykh would say something more. His mouth moved, but no words came out. With another weary, hopeless gesture of a wasted hand, Majiid turned back to his tent.

  “Wait!” called Sheykh Jaafar, striding forward on his short, bandy legs, his robes flowing about him. “I say we bid Zeid come speak with us.”

  The lookout gaped. Majiid glared, his lips meeting his beaky nose in a scowl. “Why not invite the Amir as well. Hrana?” he snarled. “Exhibit our weakness to the world!”

  “The world knows already,” snapped Jaafar. “What’s the matter, Akar? Did your brains leave with your horses? If Zeid was strong, would he skulk about the southern well? Wouldn’t he come riding in here to take this oasis, which all know is the richest in the Pagrah? Tell us what you have seen.” Jaafar turned to the lookout. “Describe the camp of our cousin.”

  “It is not large, Effendi,” said the lookout, speaking to Majiid, though he answered Jaafar. “They have hardly any camels. The tents of our cousins are few in number and are put up halfheartedly, straggling about the desert floor like men drunk on qumiz.”

  “See? Zeid is as weak as we are!”

  “It is a trick,” Majiid said heavily.

  Jaafar snorted. “For what purpose? I say Zeid has arrived for this very reason—to talk to us. We should talk to him!”

  “What about?”

  The words fell from Majiid’s lips as meat falls from the hand of a man baiting a trap. All there knew it, including Jaafar, and no one spoke, moved, or even breathed, waiting to see if he would nibble at it.

  Jaafar did more than that. He calmly swallowed it whole.

  “Surrender,” the old man answered.

  “One by one,” said Sheykh Zeid, “the southern cities of Bas have fallen in the jihad. The Amir is a skilled general, as I have said before, who weakens his enemy from within and hits them with the force of a thunderbolt from without. Those who surrender to Quar are treated with mercy. Only their priests and priestesses are put to the sword. But those who defy. . .” Zeid sighed, his fingers aimlessly plucking at the hem of his robe as he sat crosslegged on the frayed cushions in Sheykh Jaafar’s tent.

  “Well,” prodded Jaafar. “Those who defy?”

  “In Bastine,” Zeid said in low tones, his eyes cast down, “five thousand died! Man, woman, and child!”

  “Akhran forbid it!” Jaafar cried, shocked.

  Majiid stirred. “What did you expect?” he asked harshly, the first time he had spoken since Zeid had ridden into camp. The three men sat together, sharing a meager dinner that only two of them made even a pretense of eating. “The Amir means to make Quar the One, True God. And perhaps he deserves it.”

  “The djinn say there is a war in heaven, as well as down here,” offered Jaafar. “At least that is what Fedj told me before he vanished three days ago.”

  “That is what Raja told me as well,” Zeid agreed morosely. “And if that is true, then I fear Hazrat Akhran is being hardpressed. Not even the sirocco to plague us this year. Our God lacks spirit.” Sighing, the Sheykh shoved his food dish aside; its scant contents were instantly snatched up and devoured by what few servants Jaafar had remaining.

  Majiid seemed not to hear the sigh. Jaafar did, and gave Zeid a piercing glance but said nothing, it being considered impolite to interrogate a guest.

  The conversation turned to the dark events of the tribe. Zeid’s people had fared much the same as the rest of the desert nomads in the battle with the Amir.

  “All the women and children and most of my young men, including six of my sons, are being held captive in the city of Kich,” said the Sheykh, whose clothes hung loosely on a body that had formerly been rotund. “My men eat their hearts out with worry, and I will not hide that I have lost more than a few—gone to the city to be with their families. And who can blame them? Our camels were captured by the Amir and now serve his army. I note that your horses are few. Your sheep?” He turned to Jaafar.

  “Butchered,” the little man said, eyes rimmed red with grief and anger. “Oh, some survived, those that we were able to hide from the soldiers. But not nearly enough. What I don’t understand is why the Amir didn’t just butcher all of us as well!”

  “He wants living souls for Quar,” said Zeid dryly. “Or at least he did. Now, from what I hear, that’s changed. And not with Qannadi’s wish or approval, if rumor be true. The Imam, this Feisal, is the one who has ordered that all who are conquered either convert or die. “

  “Humpf!” Majiid sneered skeptically.

  Zeid shook his head. “Qannadi is a military man. He does not relish murder. I am told that he refused to give the order for his troops to kill innocent people in Bastine and that the Imam’s priests were forced to do it themselves. I heard also that some of the soldiers rebelled against the slaughter, and that now the Imam has an army of fanatical followers of his own who obey him without question. It is said, Majiid,” Zeid chose his words carefully and kept his eyes lowered, “that your son, Achmed, is very close to Qannadi.”

  “I have no son,” said Majiid tonelessly.

  Zeid glanced at Jaafar, who shrugged. The Hrana Sheykh was not particularly interested in this. He knew Zeid was purposefully withholding bad news and wished impatiently he would spit it out.

  “Then it is true that Khardan is dead?” asked Zeid, treading more cautiously still. “I extend my sympathies. May he ride forever with Akhran who, it seems, may have taken him specifically to be at his side in the heavenly war.” The Sheykh paused, expecting a reply to what everyone in the tent knew was a polite fiction. Zeid had heard—as he heard everything—the story of Khardan’s disappearance, and had circumstances been less dire and he not been a guest in the camp, the Sheykh would have taken grim delight in pricking the flesh of his enemy with gossip’s poisoned dagger. But with a much larger sword at their throats, there was no sense in that now.

  Majiid said nothing. His face, so heavily lined it might have been scarred by the slashing strokes of a sabre, remained unchanged. But it seemed from the glitter in his eyes that he was listening, and so Zeid continued, though whether he was spreading balm on a wound or rubbing salt into it, he had no idea.

  “But it is Achmed of whom I have heard reports. Your second son, it seems, though captured with the others, now rides with the armies of the Amir. Achmed has become a valiant warrior, I hear, whose deeds have won the respect and admiration of those with whom he rides—those who were once his enemies. They say he saved Qannadi’s life when the general’s horse was killed beneath him and the Amir was left on foot, surrounded by the Bastinites who were fighting like ten thousand devils. Qannadi had become separated from his bodyguard in the confusion, and only Achmed remained, sitting his horse with the skill for which the Akar are famous, fighting singlehandedly all attackers until the Amir could mount up behind him and the guard was able to break through and rescue them. Qannadi made Achmed a Captain, a great thing for one only eighteen. “

  “Captain in an army of kafir!” Majiid shouted, bursting out with such pentup rage that the servants dropped the food bowls they had been licking and cowered back into the shadows of the tent. “Better he were dead!” he thundered. “Better we all were dead!”

  Jaafar’s eyes opened wide at such blasphemy
, and he instantly made the sign against evil, not once but several times over. Zeid made it, too, but more slowly, and as his lips parted reluctantly to speak, Jaafar knew his cousin was going to impart the news that had been resting so heavily upon his heart.

  “I have one other piece of news. Indeed, it was in the hope— or fear—of relating it to you that I came to camp at the southern well.”

  “Out with it!” Jaafar said impatiently.

  “In a month’s time the army of the Amir returns to Kich. The Imam has decreed that we must come into the city and reside there in the future, and furthermore that we give our allegiance to Quar or—” Zeid paused.

  “Or what?” Majiid demanded grimly, irritated at the Sheykh’s dramatics.

  “In one month’s time, our people will die.”

  Chapter 3

  Kneeling beside the hauz, Meryem threw the goatskin girba into the public water pool with an irritable gesture that sent the water splashing and brought a disdainful glare of disapproval from a wealthy man watering his donkey near her. Flicking imagined drops from the fabric of his fine robes, he trotted off toward the souk with muttered curses.

  Meryem ignored him. Though her bag was filled, she lingered by the hauz, indolently dabbling her hand in the water, watching the passersby and basking in the obvious admiration of two palace guards who happened to be sauntering through this part of the city of Kich. They did not recognize her—one reason she was using this hauz located at the far end of town instead of the one near the palace—for which Meryem was thankful. Last week several of the Amir’s concubines and their eunuch, visiting the bazaars, had seen her and recognized her. Of course they had not given her away. They knew she was doing some sort of secretive work for Yamina, wife of the Amir and ruler of Kich in her husband’s absence. But Meryem heard their giggles. The veils covering their faces could not cover their smiles of derision. The eunuch had smirked all over his fat body and, under the excuse of pretending to assist her, had the effrontery to lean down and whisper, “I understand the dirt of manual labor, once ground into your pores, never washes out. You might, however, try lemon juice on your hands, my dear.”

  Lemon juice! To a daughter of the Emperor!

  Meryem had slapped the man who was no longer a man, causing one matronly woman to come fluttering to her aid, waving her hands and shouting at the eunuch to be off and leave decent women alone. Of course this brought only more laughter from the concubines and an affected stare of offended dignity from the eunuch, who flounced off to regale his charges with his cleverness.

  Since then Meryem traveled far out of her way each day to fetch water. When Badia questioned the girl about the unusual amount of time she was taking in her task, Meryem said only that she had been harassed by soldiers of the Amir. Badia, mindful of Meryem’s supposed history as the wretched daughter of a murdered Sultan, said nothing more to the girl. Meryem gnashed her teeth and plotted revenge. The eunuch especially. She had something very special planned for him.

  But that was in the future—a future that held for her. . . what? Once she had thought she knew. The future held Khardan, she held Khardan. Khardan was to be Amir of Kich and she his favorite wife, ruler of his harem. That had been her dearest dream, only months before when she was living in the nomad camp and saw Khardan every day and yearned after him every night. One of the hundreds of daughters of an Emperor who did not even know her name, given as a gift to the Emperor’s favorite general, Abul Qasim Qannadi, Meryem was accustomed to giving herself to men without pleasure. But in Khardan she had discovered a man she wanted, a man who gave her pleasure, or at least so she dreamed, having been thwarted in her attempts to bring Khardan to her bed—a circumstance that had added redhot coals to her already raging fire.

  But the Amir’s attack on the nomad camp had wreaked havoc on hundreds, not the least of which was Meryem. At first it seemed ideally suited to her plans. She had given Khardan a charm that caused him to fall into a deathlike sleep in the midst of battle. Spiriting him away, she had intended to bring him to Kich, where she planned to have him all to herself and gradually lead him—through ways in which she was highly skilled—to help her overthrow the Amir. But that redhaired madman and the blackeyed witchwife of the Calif had literally knocked Meryem’s plans right out of her head. They had taken Khardan away, somewhere beyond Meryem’s magical sight. Now she was back among the nomads, pretending to be captive as they were captive in the city of Kich, living a dreary life of drudgery and toil, and spending each night looking into her scrying bowl, hoping to see Khardan.

  She no longer burned with lust when she spoke his name, however. Without his physical presence to fan the flames, the fire of her passion had long since cooled, as had her ambition. The only emotion she felt now upon speaking his name softly when she looked into the bowl of enchanted water was fear.

  Know this, my child. If I hear his name on the tongue of another before I hear it on yours, I will have that tongue torn from your mouth.

  Thus had spoken Feisal, the Imam.

  Staring into the water of the hauz, Meryem heard those words again and shuddered so violently that ripples of water spread from her shaking hand. It was aseur, after sunset, nearing evening. She could hear the sounds of the bazaars closing for the night—the merchants stowing wares away, endeavoring to politely hurry the last few straggling shoppers before slamming shut their stalls. Badia and the others would be waiting for her; the water was needed for cooking dinner, a task with which she would be expected to help. Sighing bitterly, Meryem hefted the slippery goatskin and began to lug it back through the crowded, narrow streets of Kich to the hovel in which the nomads lived by the grace of the Amir.

  She looked at her hands and wondered if what the eunuch had said was true. Would the filth and dirt ever wash out? Would the hard spots on fingers and palms fade away? If not, what man would want her?

  “This night, I will see Khardan!” Meryem muttered to herself beneath her breath. “I will leave this place and, with Feisal’s reward, return to the palace!”

  The house was dark and silent. The six women and their numerous small children who were crowded into the tiny dwelling were wrapped in their blankets, asleep. Squatting on the floor, hunched over a bowl of water that she held in her lap between her crossed legs, Meryem sat with her back to the others, the folds of her robes carefully concealing her work. Occasionally, in a murmuring voice, the girl would speak a prayer to Akhran, the God of these wretched nomads. Should any of the women waken, they would see and hear Meryem bowed in pious prayer.

  In reality, she was working magic.

  The water in the bowl was black with the shadows of night. If the moon shone, no ray of its light could penetrate for there were no windows in the buildings that piled up on top of each other like toys thrown down by a child in a tantrum. There was only a door, carved into the baked clay, that stood always open during the day and was covered by a woven cloth at night. Meryem did not need light, however.

  Closing her eyes, she whispered—between the tossedoff empty prayers to Akhran—arcane words, interspersed at the proper intervals with the name of Khardan. When she had recited the spell three times, taking care to speak each word clearly and properly, Meryem stared into the bowl, holding her breath so as not to disturb the water.

  The vision came to her, the same that came every night, and Meryem began to curse in her heart when suddenly she halted. The vision was changing!

  There was the kavir—a salt desert, glittering harshly in the blazing sunlight. And there was that incredibly blue body of water whose gentle waves washed up on the white sand shore. Often she had seen this sight and tried to look beyond, for she knew in her heart that Khardan was here, somewhere. But always before, just when it seemed she would see him, a dark cloud had fallen before her vision. Now, however, no cloud marred her sight. Watching intently, her heart beating so she feared its thudding must waken the slumbering women, Meryem saw a boat sailing over the blue water to land upon the salt shore. S
he saw a man. . .the redhaired madman, it was, curse him! step from the boat. She saw three djinn, a little driedup weasel of a man and one other, dressed in strange armor. . .

  Yes! Khardan!

  Meryem shivered in excitement. He and the redhaired madman were helping to lift someone else from the floor of the boat. It was Zohra, Khardan’s wife. Meryem prayed to Quar it was Zohra’s corpse they were handling with such gentleness, but she dare not spare time to find out. Her hands trembling with eager delight, she quietly rose to her feet, dumped the water onto the dirt floor, and—wrapping her veil closely about her face—slipped out into the empty streets. Glancing around, to make certain she was alone, Meryem reached into the bosom of her robes. She drew forth a crystal of black tourmaline, carved in the shape of a triangle, that hung around her neck on a silver chain.

  Lifting the gem to the heavens, Meryem whispered, “Kaug, minion of Quar, I have need of your service. Take me, with the speed of the wind, to the city of Bastine. I must speak to the Imam.”

  Chapter 4

  Achmed climbed the seemingly endless marble stairs that led to the Temple of Quar in the captive city of Bastine. Formerly the Temple of the God Uevin in the free capital of the land of Bas, Quar’s usurped place of worship was—to Achmed’s eyes—extremely ugly. Massive, manycolumned, composed of sharp angles and squared corners, the Temple lacked the grace and delicate loveliness of the spires and minarets and latticework that adorned Quar’s Temple in Kich. The Imam, too, detested the Temple and would have had it torn down on the spot, but Qannadi intervened.

  “The people of Bastine have been forced to stomach enough bitter medicine—”

  “For the good of their souls,” Feisal interposed piously.

  “Of course,” returned the Amir, and if there was a twist to the corner of his mouth, he was careful that only Achmed saw it. “But let us cure the patient, not poison him, Imam. I do not have the manpower to put down a rebellion. When the reinforcements from the Emperor arrive in a month’s time, then you may tear down the Temple.”