Beyond the dar al harb, p.1
Beyond the Dar al-Harb, page 1
part #2.50 of Thieves' World Series
In the chamber of the White Flower
The way Jami followed led to the room where the Flower of Passion slept. Softly, he withdrew his sword from its scabbard, and held it up to the room. In the bright metal he saw reflected a golden animal-like body flecked with silver. Its muscles were enormous, and it had a huge head with a massive mouth showing a glimpse of great canine teeth.
Jami had seen — in Europe, before he had come to this land where the making of imagaes was a religous crime — a drawing of a creature called a sanaja, a magical creature whose glance, like the basilisk, could kill.
He lifted his sword in both hands, took one long and silent step within, closed his eyes as the creature whirled to face him, and struck downwards…
Look for all these TOR books by Gordon R. Dickson
BEYOND THE DAR AL-HARB
HOKA! (with Poul Anderson)
THE LAST MASTER
THE MAN FROM EARTH
PLANET RUN (with Keith Laumer)
THE PRITCHER MASS
THE OUTPOSTER
SLEEPWALKERS’ WORLD
SPACE WINNERS (coming in January)
STEEL BROTHER (coming in December)
Gordon R. Dickson
A Tom Doherty Associates Book
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
BEYOND THE DAR AL-HARB copyright © 1985 by Gordon R. Dickson.
“On Messenger Mountain” copyright © 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.
“Things Which Are Caesar’s” copyright © 1972 by Gordon R. Dickson.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
First printing: November 1985
A TOR Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
49 West 24 Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
Cover art by Alan Gutierrez
ISBN: 0-812-53550-2
CAN. ED.: 0-812-53551-0
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Beyond the Dar al-Harb
On Messenger Mountain
Things Which Are Caesar’s
Beyond the Dar al-Harb
A CHANGE IN THE CHORUS OF SOUNDS THAT MADE UP THE voice of the bazaar was the first warning, a sudden silence from farther up the walled and dome-covered street that contained the bazaar shops in the walled city of ’Ayla. The change was registered unconsciously by both Umar al-Hafiz, the jeweler, and Jami al-Kafir — Jamie the Infidel — but neither reacted because at the moment the attentions of both were occupied elsewhere.
Umar sat cross-legged on a scarlet cushion, his white caftan tucked primly about his small body, his turbaned head bent low with concentration as he delicately weighed some pearls in a scale. Umar was wealthy and could have afforded a magic balance that would have given him the value as well as the weight of what he measured; but he preferred the old methods and was not a man to spend money unnecessarily — though in other ways he was generous and charitable to a fault, as Jami had reason to know.
Jami himself stood behind Umar in the shadows with his hand lightly resting on the hilt of his sword. He had been watching an individual he took to be a Sufi holy man. The fellow had been lingering on the other side of the dirt street that ran between the closely packed rows of shops. Dim sunshine filtered down on the bazaar through the skylight in the dome above them — for the day was nearly spent.
There was something about the holy one that made Jami uneasy. His ragged and dirty blue robe, patched as most holy men’s robes usually were, had a strangely contrived air about it, almost as if the patches had been sewn on as a design, instead of being the natural result of wear and use. Beyond this, he was blind in one eye and the lid over the empty socket had sunken in in an ugly fashion. There was a certain cringing but arrogant air about him, as if he was ready to crawl or attack, depending upon the strength of the person he faced — an attitude that did not fit his tattered garb.
Now Umar finished his weighing and scooped the pearls from the pan into his hand. He lifted his head. By this time the silence had extended itself down toward them and, going ahead of it, like the first strong wave up the beach ahead of a sudden breath of storm, a whisper…
“The Desert Men…”
There was a hissing detestation in the message as it was passed around the brick walls separating shop from shop. The Bedouin, the Men from the Desert, were not loved by the city dwellers; nor did the Bedouin love those of the city.
Umar automatically lowered his hand, so that the pearls would be out of sight. He frowned. The first faint puff of the hot evening breeze blew down the covered street ahead of those whose coming the whispers heralded.
It was in such a time of year as this, always, the time of the hot winds from the wastelands beyond the walls of ’Ayla, that the Bedouin sometimes came to the city. As Jami and Umar watched, the first of them rode into sight — like cloaked demons, slim men on prancing, fine-legged horses. They wore the typical voluminous robes of the wastelands, and headcloths rather than the turbans that were the mark — and the privilege — of all true believers in God and the Prophet. They sat proudly, ignoring with a fine disdain the merchants they passed, who looked back at them with open hatred.
Umar sat, stiff and unmoving on his cushion, watching the delicate hooves of the horses turning the muck and earth of the street.
Jami also watched, the sight of the riders bringing back deep-buried memories and a savage feeling of anger, of which even Umar, his patron in ’Ayla, knew nothing. Once he had ridden with some of these very men who were passing — though none of those identified him now among the shadows into which he had drawn, at the back of Umar’s shop. Once he had sworn revenge on their leader, who should be along at any moment now, and that oath still lived.
The silence was profound now, except for the muffled noise of the horses’ hooves and the creak of the saddle leathers as the riders passed. They rode two by two, neither speaking to each other nor to those they passed. The animosity from the shops around them was a solid thing in the dim air under the domes; and their disdain of it was an equally solid thing.
They passed more quickly than it seemed they might, for their horses did not linger. And then came one rider, the sight of whom made Jami’s breath catch in his chest. This one was surrounded by what were obviously guards. His robes were a clean and shining white, and his headcloth — also white — was held in place by a circlet of gold. A gold sash cinched the robes around his narrow waist. Above those robes, his shoulders were broad, his face was middle-aged, dark and brilliant with piercing brown eyes and a harshly beaked nose over a straight line of a mouth and a small, sharply pointed gray beard. This resplendent rider did not glance toward Umar’s shop any more than the others had; but Jami felt his guts suddenly knot with the fury he had carried secretly inside him for more than two years now.
A gray parrot was perched on the leather band encircling the chief rider’s right wrist, a parrot hooded like a falcon. As the rider passed, the bird turned its blinded eyes toward the shop of Umar.
“Marauder!” it shrieked suddenly, loud in the stillness, “Look to your goods! Marauder!”
“It is written,” muttered Umar, so softly that only Jami could have heard him, “that Gehenna holds a dwelling place for the proud.”
The little jeweler continued to sit unmoving, watching the passing riders, a statue in his white caftan with the bands of inscriptions woven into the borders at wrist and hem. With his snowy turban and black velvet carpet slippers, he made a rich contrast to the plainness of Jami, who bulked taller and even wider-shouldered than the Bedouin leader, in the shadows behind Umar.
In variance with the garb of Umar, Jami’s clothes were strictly practical. His thigh-length tunic was of unbleached cotton, and under it he wore narrow, brown cotton trousers that disappeared into knee-high boots of cloth. Since Jami was an infidel in Moslem eyes, one of the things forbidden to him in law was the turban. Instead he wore a flat cap he had deliberately had made in a shape not unlike the bonnet of his Scottish boyhood.
A plain leather swordbelt supported the scabbard holding the sword he was specially licensed to carry under the surety of Umar and the religious fellowship to which Umar belonged. Otherwise, as a non-Muslim visitor from the Dar al-Harb — the House of War that lay beyond the known and civilized world of the Dar al-lslam — he would have been permitted no such weapon. Infidels who went armed in Muslim lands risked the pain of grievous punishment.
Umar, however, had gone personal surety for Jami’s being allowed the weapon — on the grounds that Jami was employed by him and his fellow jewelers as a guard for them. Jami, who had been born a prince in a tiny Scottish kingdom, would have been shocked to learn that Umar and his fellows thought of him as an object of charity — infidel though he was. But this, the little jeweler had never let him guess; any more than Umar could himself have guessed the reason Jami had stepped back out of sight with the passing of these particular desert riders, or their connection with Jami’s coming to ’Ayla, two years before.
It was a large thing Umar had done, going surety for that sword; and it spoke well of his trust in Jami, for if the tall infidel should misuse the weapon, the consequences would recoil upon the jeweler as well.
Under the cap, the ends of Jami’s rebellious dark red hair curled up. His very coloring marked him for wh
The desert men continued to ride by. Umar continued to sit motionless, propped on his scarlet cushion above the brightly carpeted floor of his shop. He made no move to pour another glass of pomegranate juice from the carafe on the silver tray beside him. In his studied immobility, in the dimly-lit store, Jami thought, he might have been mistaken for some heathen idol.
The last of the horsemen passed. Umar’s hands began to move busily, gathering his valuables together in preparation to locking up the shop. He sorted his gems by colors and shapes, into small black velvet bags, and stacked ingots of precious metals on a square of heavy white silk.
“They are proud, indeed, those sons of Iblis,” muttered Umar as he worked. “You know who they are? You know the Sheik al-Birain — he with the parrot on his wrist?”
“The Sheik of the Two Wells —” Jami’s tongue echoed the Arabic words Umar had spoken, but his mind translated the words into his birth language. “Yes, I know him — of him.”
The last two words made a hasty correction. But Umar, busy gathering up his valuables, did not seem to notice.
“As always they will be staying at the house of the merchant Sulayman Tufeek,” said Umar, “and doing business with him — much good may it do either them or Sulayman,” said Umar. “You can give me a hand with the shutters once all this is locked away — what are you staring at?”
Umar had turned his head as he spoke and caught Jami’s eyes again on the holy man who was still lingering across the street.
“It’s only al-Muqla,” growled Umar contemptuously.
The name translated to “The Eyeball.” It was not complimentary. Jami looked at the jeweler in some surprise.
“It’s not like you to misspeak a holy man,” he said. “Particularly a Sufi, like yourself.”
“Al-Muqla a Sufi? Holy?” Umar snorted. “As holy as those he lives with in their khaniqah, on the Street of Silence — those who call themselves the Brotherhood of the Flower! You’re an infidel and I suppose shouldn’t be blamed for not being able to tell a true holy Sufi from such as they. See the skillfully arranged patches, and the other parts of the robe worn thin with a stone to make them seem like the wear sustained by one who truly walks in the way of the Prophet!”
“That robe did look a little too good to be true to me,” said Jami, slowly. “That’s why I was keeping an eye on him. I thought he might be a thief, dressed up —”
“Thief! They’re worse than thieves, the Flowery Brotherhood!” snorted Umar, tying up the ends of his wrappers to tightly contain their contents. Jami stared at his small friend and employer, a little bemused at the heat of Umar’s attitude toward al-Muqla. Jami himself knew little of the Brotherhood of the Flower, beyond its name and the location of its khaniqah, which he had always assumed to be nothing much more than a Muslim counterpart of the monasteries he had been used to in Christendom.
However, it was all one to him — a Christian. He stopped himself just in time from shrugging. But something of his attitude must have shown in his face, since Umar went on to further denunciation of the Flowery Brotherhood, which he, as an orthodox Muslim and a devout Sufi, plainly found shocking or worse.
“What is a true holy man?” snapped Umar. “One devoted to prayer, good works and preaching from the words of the Prophet, blessed be his name —”
Jami thought of the Blue Friars, or the Companions of St. Giacomo in Europe, Christian equivalents of the organized Sufi orders. However, Umar was continuing.
“But the Islam this Brotherood of the Flower offers is a sham and a lie. They substitute the vain imaginings of men for the holy law of the Prophet, on whom be everlasting peace. They forget the favor of God and grasp instead for the pleasures of Shaitan-inspired music, and songs by gazelle-eyed young men. In my own Brotherhood of Jewelers it is otherwise, as even thou knowest, Jami… but I waste breath on one who knows not Allah. Only, take my word for it that the Brotherhood of the Flower — that Flower they pretend to be so secret it may not be named — is in no way holy, nor are any of their practices holy.
“Take the metals, the package is heavy and better suited to your muscles than mine. I will take the gems and we will put them in the safe cabinet.”
He tied together the ends of the cloth with the jewels as he spoke, and picked it up. Jami did the same with the white cloth holding the scraps and bars of gold and silver. As Umar had said, the latter had weight despite its lack of bulk. Together they went to the back of the shop to what seemed to be merely an intricately carved chest of wood that stood about knee-high. With his free hand, Umar threw back the lid of the chest, showing an empty interior with room for a great deal more than their bundles. “There!” said Umar, as they set the packages down inside. He closed the chest, took a step backwards, in which Jami joined him, and murmured a few words, describing interlocking circles in the air with both hands as he did so. He stopped speaking and gesturing. Both men eyed the chest. For a long moment nothing happened; and then, first the outlines, then the body of the chest began to grow indistinct, as if it was becoming insubstantial before their eyes. Slowly it thinned, until finally it was gone, vanished completely. Umar reached forward and waved his right hand through the space it had occupied. His hand met no more resistance than that provided by the empty air itself.
Umar frowned.
“That spell works more slowly lately,” he said. “Did you mark that, Jami? Just this last week the chest has been taking longer and longer to disappear.”
“You’re right,” said Jami.
Umar combed the gray hairs of his short beard with his fingers, worriedly.
“It should not be so,” he said. “And the mage I bought the spell from is gone this eight months now with a caravan into Persia.”
Jami thought for a moment.
“You know the coffeehouse of Tahmasp al-Farsi,” he said. “I’ve been meeting a friend of mine — Lukas de Finistere — there, now and then, about this time of day; and lately there’s been someone there who is newly come to town. They say he’s a magician, and he’s certainly Persian. Mir-something… Mir Akbar, I think his name is.”
“Ah,” said Umar thoughtfully. “He would want a large fee, of course…”
“Who could you find who wouldn’t?” said Jami. “Shall I see if he comes there this evening? It’s about the hour now for him to arrive.”
“Yes, yes,” said Umar, crossly. “Of course, I’d deny no one a fair price for magic done for me; and if it’s needed — yes, seek him out and tell him my problem.”
“I’ll go now,” said Jami.
“After you help me put up my shutters.”
“Of course.”
Jami grinned at the dapper little man.
With Umar’s words still in the back of his mind, he helped the other secure the shop, then stepped into the bazaar street and turned left, in the direction the desert dwellers had gone.
He did not, however, go directly to the coffeehouse, but hurried along until he reached the gates to the outer courtyard of Sulayman Tufeek, a kinsman to more than one desert chieftain and for that reason the man to see if you had goods to send over the caravan routes. As Jami reached the gates of Sulayman Tufeek’s courtyard, they were just swinging closed, although it was not yet evening.
He watched from a distance without approaching the gate himself. Within him, the rage, the hollow madness he had felt at the sight of the horsemen and particularly at the sight of Sheik al-Birain, himself, woke once more.
He turned and began to walk a circuit of the house. On three sides the courtyard wall set up the boundary of Sulayman Tufeek’s property. But on the fourth, that side that fronted the Street of Tears, the courtyard wall ran only halfway, back to where it reached the front of the house; and from there on that side was the tall, blank side of the house itself, unclimbable. However, in the street and near the point at which courtyard wall met house wall, there was a solitary sycamore fig tree. It stood too far from the wall to be of any use as a means of entry — which was probably why it was allowed to survive uncut. But the shade of its thick branches would make a well of darkness in the evening when the last of the light and the thoughts of food and sleep would make guards careless. At that time an active man with a rope and grapnel could go up the wall by the house and wait hidden in the shade on the lower roof until darkness fell, after which all the jumble of Sulayman Tufeek’s rooftop levels would be open to soft-footed traffic.
