Nine White Horses (8 page)

And yet, as he rode, his brows were one black line of
discontent. “Duty,” he said to his mamluk. “Duty. Always duty. Do you know no
other word?”

“I know one other,” said Khalid. They were, for the moment,
alone; as always in such circumstances, he had forsaken the submission of the
slave for the directness of a brother. “Love. Your father loves you, Kehailan.
And how do you repay him? You squander his riches in your debaucheries. You
mock his wisdom with your folly. When your presence in the diwan would gladden
his heart, you abandon him for the pleasures of the hunt.”

“He will feast on those pleasures tonight.”

“Surely. And will you feast with him? A Circassian maiden holds
your heart, a Saklawi colt your mind. When you have ridden them both, you will
sleep, with never a thought for your father’s sadness. He never sees you but when
you would have another mount or another woman; when you have won his consent to
either, you leave him, with a scant word of gratitude to ease his loneliness.”

“Loneliness?” Kehailan was not, yet, angry. He was very
proud of his self-restraint. “He has all of Egypt to bear him company.”

“All of Egypt,” said Khalid, “is not his son.”

It was nothing new, this litany of Khalid’s. It was the mamluk’s
besetting flaw. Not only did he do his duty, and Kehailan’s besides. He did his
utmost to impress it on his master. But that the slave should dare it on this
day of all days, when nothing should have marred the purity of his master’s
joy, came very close to the edge of the unforgivable.

The Pearl of the East fretted gently, eager to rejoin the
chase. For once he had no thought for her. “My father takes joy with me in my
youth. When I am older I will be as drably dutiful as even you can desire.”

“Will your father be alive to see it?”

Kehailan was still. Even the wind had paused to marvel, so motionless
did he sit. With utmost softness he said, “You are my slave. My hand holds your
life and your death. Speak again of my father’s passing, and you die.”

He spoke the purest truth. Khalid bowed to it. But he said,
“You hasten that passing with your profligacy.”

Kehailan swept out his sword. Khalid bowed his neck and
waited, entrusting his soul to Allah; but keeping his eyes steady on his
brother and his master.

With a cry of despair, Kehailan clapped spurs to the white
mare’s sides. Never in her life had she known such pain. She gasped with the
shock of it, stretched to her full length, and fled.

o0o

Kehailan let the mare choose her own wild path. Tears—of
rage, he could hope—had blinded his eyes. He cared little where she bore him,
and less what he might find there.

He heard it first: a roaring like wind, but deep as the
voices of dragons. It was laughter; but laughter such as he had never heard.

The mare wheeled and shied. Kehailan battled her into
trembling immobility. His eyes had cleared, and gone wide.

He had come to the heart of the wilderness. It was a wild
place, a place of ruins and of greenery, such as the creatures of the air are
said to love. In its center upon a shattered pavement roiled a madness of wings
and horns and claws, from which rolled the laughter. It reared up, and it was
an ifrit of truly miraculous hideousness, and beneath it, struggling, a woman
as white as the moon. She was bound with silk and steel, her body all one great
cry.

Kebailan abandoned the saddle. The ifrit’s tail lashed; its
wings fanned the stench of the nether Pit. It rose over the woman. Its fangs
gleamed as it laughed, fondling her with one great taloned hand, so that she
writhed and tossed.

It was, most emphatically,
he
. Kehailan checked at sight of that shaft which would have shamed
an elephant. Surely the demon would not, could not accomplish what so plainly
it had begun.

Most certainly it meant to try. Kehailan leaped high in the
air, and smote with all his strength.

The fine Damascus steel, child of nine forgings, treasure of
his house, rebounded as if from adamant. Its edge was sorely notched.

The ifrit’s hide twitched as at a stinging fly. Kehailan
struck again at the base of the great bullneck, seeing Khalid in it, gaining
force from his wrath.

The blade broke at the hilt. The ifrit, distracted, turned
its horrible head.

“Allah,” whispered Kehailan, alone and unarmed and beginning
to suspect that he should be afraid. “Ya Allah.”

The ifrit stiffened at the Holy Name. Kehailan, inspired
with terror, raised his voice to something very like its wonted clarity. “In
the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the All-Knowing, and by the Seal of Suleiman,
upon whose memory be prayer and peace, I command thee, begone!”

The ifrit towered against the sky. Kehailan stood straight
and composed himself for death. The demon clapped its mighty wings and roared.
It swelled; it smoldered; it burst in an appalling stench.

The silence was thunderous. Kehailan’s hand stung. He
gripped the broken hilt of his sword, and it was as hot as if he had held it in
a fire. He dropped it with an exclamation.

The woman, bound still, beseeched him with her eyes. She was
even more beautiful than he. He would have fallen upon her as she was and had
his will of her, but the splendor of her gaze made him pause.

He bent to unbind her. If his hand escaped his will and
ventured a caress, it was no fault of his; nor did she seem to take it amiss.

As the last cruel shackle fell away, her arms rose and
coiled about his neck. Her lips seized his. Her eyes laughed and beckoned and
were irresistible. She drew him down into her garden of delights.

o0o

Kehailan left it late and reluctantly, with many a
backward glance. But the gate had closed against him. His flesh, feeble
creature, was glad of it. It lay all spent, and sang of sleep. Only her fingers
held him back from it, wandering in the downy thickets of his beard. “My heart,”
she said, and her voice was musk and honey, “and my conqueror. I owe you more
than my life.”

He stared at her, dazed and blinking. He was in love, he
knew it surely. He had forgotten every graceful word he ever knew. “Come,” he
stammered. “Come with me. I love you. I must have you.”

Her finger silenced him, a moth-wing brush upon his lips,
more potent than any blow. Her eyes were dark with regret. “Alas,” she mourned,
“I may not.”

“Who? Who is he? I will kill him!”

His passion made her smile. “You are my heart’s beloved. It is
only . . .” She broke off as if she would veil a secret. She
kissed him until his every muscle had loosed, and withdrew, holding him down
with one slender hennaed hand. “No, my dear lord. Truly I cannot. And yet, for
the horror from which you freed me, and for the delights with which you have
bound me, I would give you one small gift.”

Hope sang in his heart. “You?”

She shook her head, all sadness. “I am not my own to give. But
of the rest that the world may offer, I grant you your heart’s desire.”

“You are my heart’s desire.”

He drowned in the sweet sorrow of her smile. When he had come
to life again, she was gone. He stood in a green solitude upon a broken
pavement, and in his hand a hilt without a blade. Her voice filled his ears. “Utter
the words of faith, and it is yours, whatever you wish most to possess or to
be.” And even her voice was gone, and he was alone.

The silence shattered. Horns rang, bounds bayed, men shouted
aloud, hot upon a scent. The hunt burst out of the wood, his own guards
foremost, and leading them all, crying his name, Khalid.

A great rage surged up in him. That she was gone, and they
were not. That he could never be free of them. Free as the beast of his name:
child of wind and fire, swiftness made flesh, unvexed, untrammeled,
untormented.

His head tossed. His heart swelled, bursting, crying aloud
its deepest desire. To escape them all. To be free. “There is no god but God,”
cried Kehailan, “and Muhammad is His Prophet!”

The hunt parted to swirl about him. None of it vanished.
Khalid sprang down, unslain and untransformed, even his pricking tongue intact;
reaching to embrace, and to bind, and to beg pardon in his fashion that had
ever been too haughty for a slave’s.

Kehailan thrust away from him, cursing the falsity of women.
He had nothing that he wanted, and least of all the freedom he had prayed for.
From Khalid, from guilt, and from the iron bonds of duty.

Something was strange. Like an itch, but an itch deep
within. Like pain that was close to pleasure. His eyes were growing dim. But
his ears unfolded wonders. And his nose…

“Allah!” Khalid’s shock was sharp in his nostrils. “Kehailan.
Kehailan!”

Kehailan threw up his head. His blood had turned all to
fire. But it was not pain. It was a wonder and a splendor. He stamped: the
pavement rang. He shouted his exultation: it was a stallion’s scream.

He wheeled, tossing his mane. The hunt stood stock-still. He
laughed at them.

Some of them were wondrous sweet. Mares with languid eyes,
slender necks, rumps rich and full and brimming with blessed madness.

But freedom was sweeter. He gathered his wonderful new body,
leaped a wall of hounds, drank deep of the wind’s wine. Already he was drunken
with it. He laughed and spun and sprang into flight.

o0o

Khalid lay on his face at the wazir’s feet. His garments
were rent and torn; his turban was lost; his head was heaped with the ashes of
his grief, that he must break the heart of the man who had been a father to
him.

Even before he could gather breath to speak, the wazir knew
what he would say. “My son?” the old man asked, calm with the immensity of
grief.

“Alive.” Khalid gasped it. “But—”

The wazir breathed a prayer of thanks, but darkened again all
too swiftly. “But? He is ill? He is hurt?”

“No,” Khalid said, “O my father. But—”

“He is taken? He has fled?”

“My lord!” Khalid’s desperation silenced the litany of
disaster. “Oh, my lord, I cannot speak of it. Come with me and see what you must
see.”

o0o

They had lured him with his own Pearl of the East, bridled
him and bound him and compelled him to return to his father’s house. In the
end, for weariness, he had submitted. He stood in the court in a wary circle of
men, sweating and trembling, but snorting defiance.

The wazir saw him, but only when he saw in none of the
circling faces the lineaments of his son’s. He approached the stallion with
respect but without fear. A more hangdog creature had seldom come to face him.
Its head drooped almost to the ground; its ears flattened. It backed as far as
its bonds would allow, and tried to crouch, as a hound when it is whipped, or a
son when at last he has passed the limits of his father’s forbearance.

The wazir gentled him, speaking softly. “Peace, be still, O
son of the wind, O dancer in the dawn, O brave in battle, great-eyed, white as
the moon, thy mane a fall of sweet water, O beautiful, be still.” And he was
still, but quivering, as hands learned the shape of him, his strength and his
soundness, and the silk that was its covering.
“Al-ashab al-marshoush,”
the wazir named the color of him, a
whisper, calming him: the grey that was best beloved of kings, rose-dappled,
flecked with ruddy darkness, mark of the strongest and fairest of horses.

“A
kehailan
,” said
the wazir, “of remarkable perfection. Come out now, my son; have no fear of my
anger. Whatever you have paid, such beauty is well worth the price.”

The stallion gasped like a man. His body, driven to extremity,
reared up. The wazir caught the bridle. His servants had begun to melt away.

Khalid prostrated himself again at the old man’s feet. “A
kehailan
,” he said to the stones beneath
him, “and al-Kehailan. This is your son, O my lord.”

His throat closed. The silence was terrible.

“No,” the wazir said at last, quite calmly. “This is not my
son. This is the fruit of his latest folly. Shame be upon him, that he has
commanded his servant to spin such a tale.”

“My lord,” said Khalid. “My lord, I spin no tale. It is
Kehailan. By Allah I swear to the truth of it.”

This silence was more terrible yet. Khalid ventured to raise
his head. The wazir held the bridle still; he stroked the white head with its
great frightened eyes.

As if Khalid’s stare had waked him to what he did, he
withdrew, moving slowly. His hands trembled, but his face had not changed. Only
in his eyes had the blow left its mark; and that was deep, a mortal wound.

“My son,” he whispered. “O my son.” His voice rose. “How? Who
has done this to him? In the name of Allah, I command you, speak!”

Khalid obeyed him. He dared do no other, though his soul quivered
and sank under the weight of the wazir’s gaze. He told as much of it as he
could know, and more that he could guess; nor was he so very far from the
truth. “And thus after a hard chase we caught him, and we brought him back to
you, my lord; but of the sorcerer who wrought this, we have found no sign. If I
may have your leave, I will go, I will search—”

“You will do nothing.” Khalid shrank in upon himself. The wazir’s
face, so placid in repose, so noble even in deepest grief, had stilled into a
mask more deadly than any snarl of rage. His voice was terrible in its
gentleness. “You have never loved him. You have always lusted after what is
his. You drove him to this, you, with your serpent’s tongue, your net of truth
that, woven, shaped a lie.”

Khalid shrank more tightly still. He did not venture to sift
the truth from falsehood wrought of grief. His guilt loomed larger in him than
any threat of death. His intemperate tongue had driven his master away, full
into the sorcerous trap.

“I am called merciful,” said the wazir, “and I cannot be otherwise.
I do not take your life. Ill as you have served my son, you remain his servant.
If he chooses, he will slay you. It is no matter to me. I have forgotten your
name.”