Reave the Just and Other Tales (21 page)

“Then there was grief everywhere, for all men were hurt, and so all men believed that the nameless caliph could not endure against pain.

“At last the storm withdrew, thinking itself victorious.

“And yet the caliph stood as he had stood before, with light upon his brow and beauty in his limbs. Nothing about him was changed, except his eyes. There love still shone, love for all peoples and all lands, love which healed all it saw. But with the love was also knowledge of pain, understanding for the injuries and losses which drive men to do ill, forgiveness for frailty. He had accepted pain into his being and searched it to its heart and taken no hurt.

“That was my dream,” concluded the Prince. For a moment, he seemed overcome by sorrow. Then, however, he lifted his head, and in his eyes was a look which might have signified both love and the knowledge of pain. Or perhaps it was only madness. Softly, he added, “It was wonderful. It lives with me still, and will live always. I will forget nothing.”

His Serene Goodness did not reply. But his eyes also shone, and there were tears upon his cheeks, and his hand clung to his son’s until it trembled.

“Such dreams must be valued,” murmured the Most Holy Khartim a-Kul. He may conceivably have been sincere. “To have such dreams is surely a gift from Heaven. We are blessed to be in your presence, my lord.”

During the pause between one heartbeat and the next, Prince Akhmet’s face lost its look of love and knowledge. At once, it became as tight and miserable as a miser’s.

“Wonderful,” breathed the Caliph past the blood on his lips. “Wonderful. Oh, my son.

“High Priest.” A fit of coughing gripped him. When it passed, it left fresh red upon his chin. Nearly gasping, he asked, “How is this dream to be interpreted?”

Khartim a-Kul was nothing if not a politician. Graciously, he deferred to his chief interpreter, not because he doubted what to say, but because he knew the words would carry more weight if they came from a professed student of dreams.

The chief interpreter was a plump individual with more oil in his manner than most men can comfortably digest. “My lord Caliph,” he began, “I pray devoutly that you will live forever. The reading of dreams is at once a mystery and a science. This is because the language of dreams is a language not of words but of images, and images do not speak. They only show themselves and leave their meaning to the insight of the observer. And yet they
are
a language, and all languages must be coherent. Their meaning can be learned, much as other men learn to speak foreign tongues.”

This disquisition left the Prince shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a man restraining outrage. For his father’s sake, however, he did not speak.

“Usually, my lord Caliph,” the chief interpreter went on, “we do not presume to explain dreams until we have studied them, until we have had time to learn the language of their images.” Nevertheless even he could see that His Serene Goodness was losing patience. He hastened to say, “But the present case is exceptional. Prince Akhmet’s dream is so precise that its import is unmistakable.

“My lord Caliph, your son has been given a vision of the journey of man from life to paradise. The nameless suzerain of the dream bore your face as a symbol of goodness, of the virtue and value which the gods intend for all men. If all men were ruled by goodness, the world would be remade into a place of joy. Thus the nameless suzerain has the power to shape the world. He is opposed, however, by the storm of pain, the storm of death, by the conflicting and petty intentions which assail goodness out of fear. And against this storm goodness cannot prevail because it is mortal and must die.

“But when goodness has faced death and understood it, when goodness has learned the true compassion of experience for all fear, all pain, then goodness itself becomes paradise, the perfect and healing home of the soul. Pettiness and hurt are made whole, conflicts are swept away, and joy becomes the heart’s demesne.”

As the chief interpreter spoke, the impatience faded from His Serene Goodness’ face. The strain of his illness also seemed to fade, and peace filled his eyes. He was pleased by what he heard. Who would not have been pleased? Watching him, however, I believed that he would have been pleased by any interpretation which did not falsify the tone of the dream. For a moment, I was fascinated by the contrast between the two lords, father and son. The father thought of reasons to go to his death unafraid. The son could barely contain his fury. At the sight, I was struck by the odd notion that the true benefit of dreams comes, not to those who have them, but rather to those who hear about them.

Then the Most Holy Khartim a-Kul began to intone a prayer, and the notion was forgotten.

But Prince Akhmet had come to the end of his restraint. Despite the prayer—despite the necessity of reverence for the High Priest, or of respect for his father’s pain and contentment—he left the Caliph’s bedside and swept across the chamber to confront the chief interpreter. Knotting his fists in the plump man’s robes, he hissed so that his father would not hear him, “You are a fool! You are all
fools
. You will not demean my dreams with your unctuous pieties. Do you hear me? When I am Caliph, I will have you
beheaded.
”

The Vizier Moshim Mosha Va cast me a look which said, I mean what I say. When this little shit becomes Caliph, I will put an end to my life.

Standing much closer to the chief interpreter than to the bedside, Khartim a-Kul heard the Prince’s words. He was shocked, of course, and outraged. But he could not stop his prayer without drawing the Caliph’s attention to the fact that something was amiss. Grinding his teeth, he continued his unheeded appeal to the gods to its end.

By that time, young Akhmet had left the sickchamber.

He kept his word. As soon as his father’s corpse began to blacken and shrivel on the pyre, he commanded the beheading of the chief interpreter. The man was dead before sundown.

Abdul dar-El Haj’s death was still some days away, however. His son’s dream seemed to give him respite in his illness. He rested well that night, and for a day or two he grew stronger. And when his decline resumed, drawing him steadily toward his death, he remained contented, blessed with peace. He, too, believed the Prince’s dream.

During those days, Akhmet had a number of dreams.

He remembered them all and told them to whoever would listen. The only restraint he exercised was that he did not trouble his father again—and did not permit his dreams to be interpreted in his presence. Yet his look of simony worsened. More and more, I came to think that he was paying the price for his father’s ease.

And at last His Serene Goodness Abdul dar-El Haj died.

At once, all Arbin was plunged into a veritable apotheosis of mourning. That is to say, the entire land was seized by such a frenzy of religious prostration, ceremonial grief, and ritualized emotional flagellation that it became nearly impossible for men like the Vizier and myself to remember that the love underlying the Mosque’s extravagances was genuine. The advisers of suzerains become cynics of necessity, and the Most Holy Khartim a-Kul was surely the most cynical among us. Therefore Moshim Mosha Va and I were hard-pressed to perceive the relationship between show and substance, between the public display of grief and its private truth. But we were grieved ourselves, perhaps not at our best. And, like the High Priest, we had reason to wonder what would become of us with the loss of our lord—but, unlike the High Priest, we had no outlet for our uncertainty.

We were not made less uncertain by the beheading of Khartim a-Kul’s chief interpreter. For that act of tyranny, however, we had been forewarned. We had had time to accustom ourselves to the concept, if not to the actuality. As a consequence, we were more deeply disturbed by young Akhmet’s other contribution to his father’s funerary commemorations.

In tribute to His Serene Goodness, Khartim a-Kul revived a number of extreme liturgies and worships which had not been used for several generations—had not been used, in fact, precisely because they were so extreme. Like several of his fathers before him, Abdul dar-El Haj had become Caliph not as a youth, but as a man, and as a man, with the common sense of his forebears, he had forbidden the exercise of any liturgies or worships which he considered excessive.

Doubtless the Most Holy Khartim a-Kul deserved blame for his breach of recent custom, even though his decisions were made understandable by his fear of his new lord. But he could not have been blamed for the use young Akhmet made of his example.

Entirely to the High Priest’s surprise, the new Caliph revived the old custom of suttee.

As an idea, suttee was alive among the people of Arbin. Upon the death of a caliph, all the ruler’s wives and odalisques were expected to join his corpse in cremation. And this harsh practice was not utterly unjustified. It preserved the succession of rule from the confusion which could result if one of those women bore a son after her lord’s death. For several generations, however, no wife or odalisque had actually been required to commit suttee. Each new caliph of Arbin had spared his father’s women by the simple expedient of claiming them for himself, thus at once establishing his own reputation for benevolence and resolving any questions of legitimacy in his father’s offspring.

The consternation among Abdul dar-El Haj’s harem must have been profound when young Akhmet announced that he would not follow the path of his predecessors. Specifically, he refused to claim or exempt any woman with whom he had shared carnal pleasure. He wished, he said, to begin his rule in Arbin pure. As a demonstration, he said, of his devotion to virtue and the Mosque.

The Most Holy Khartim a-Kul looked as ill as a fish as his priests led the beautiful and innocent women whom Akhmet had loved up onto Abdul dar-El Haj’s pyre. The High Priest was only cynical, not heartless. Primarily to contain his own anger, the Vizier Moshim Mosha Va insisted that the High Priest deserved his distress. I found, however, that I had lost my taste for things which distressed Khartim a-Kul.

When the funerary rites and ceremonies were concluded, the new Caliph disposed of the rest of his father’s wives by divorce. Doubtless he had no interest in hearing what his mother or the other older women might say about his purity or virtue.

The question in Arbin was not, What manner of caliph will Akhmet become? It was, Whom will he kill next?

The necessity of understanding him had become imperative.

“How long will it take, do you think?” asked the Vizier when we were alone. “You are a wizard. You have strange arts.” His tone was bitter, although I knew he meant me no harm. “Read the signs. How long will it take before he has one of us beheaded? How long will it take before he has
me
beheaded?

“
Suttee,
by my beard! We are all disgraced. No civilized people will have dealings with us again for a hundred years.”

Well, I am no prophet. I do not see the future. In the case of young Akhmet, I could hardly see my hand before my face. Nevertheless I had seen Arbin flourish under a line of benevolent rulers. I had watched Arbin’s people grow in tolerance, as well as in religion and wealth. And I had loved His Serene Goodness as much as any man.

“Moshim Mosha Va,” I said formally, so that the Vizier would heed me, “your death is already written—but it is written in the heart of the rock, where I cannot read it. Yet you are the Vizier of Arbin. Safe or doomed, you must uphold your duty.”

“Oh, truly?” he snapped at me. “And must I uphold
suttee
? Must I uphold the murder of interpreters? Must I uphold the whims of a spoiled whelp who remembers his dreams?”

“No,” I snapped back, pretending to lose patience with him simply to conceal my own fear. “You must uphold the succession in Arbin. You must uphold the integrity of the realm. Leave this new Caliph to me.”

The Vizier Moshim Mosha Va studied me until I dropped my gaze. Then he breathed softly, “Yes. Wizardry and dreams. I will leave this new Caliph to you. And may the gods pity your soul.”

“If you will prevent the Most Holy Khartim a-Kul from interfering with me,” I replied, speaking half in jest to dispel the seriousness of the moment, “my soul will venture to fend for itself.”

Moshim Mosha Va nodded without hesitation. Still studying me, he asked for the second time, “Wizard, do you understand our lord?”

“No,” I answered for the second time. “But I will.”

The truth was that I did not need understanding to know that Caliph Akhmet would come to me when he had dreamed again. He had already rejected the interpretation and counsel of the Mosque. And he surely had little use for the Vizier’s manner of wisdom. Where else would he turn?

He did not dream again for some weeks. During the same period, he did nothing outrageously cruel. Apparently, the beheading of the chief interpreter and the burning of all his lovers had sated him in some way. The state and luxury of his new position he enjoyed. The responsibilities he ignored, except as they gave him opportunity to demonstrate new powers or obtain new satisfactions. For the most part, his time was spent replenishing his harem, and there his instinct for tyranny showed itself most plainly, for he seemed to choose his women, not because they were ripe for love, but because they were apt for humiliation. Nevertheless in the eyes of Arbin women were only women. Unthinking people began to believe that perhaps Caliph Akhmet’s rule would not prove intolerable.

I did not make that mistake. I readied my arts and waited.

At last, in the small hours of the night, when even such men as I am must sleep, I was summoned to the Caliph’s chambers.

I arrived to find him busy atop one of his women, and it was clear from the sound of her moans and whimpers that she did not relish the nature of his attentions. I would have withdrawn, of course, but I was commanded to attend and watch.

Had I been Moshim Mosha Va, I might have withdrawn regardless and accepted the consequences. Sadly, I lack the Vizier’s pragmatic soul. Therefore I stood where I was until the Caliph had achieved his satisfaction. Then I risked saying, “It appears that I have misunderstood your summons, my lord. I believed you wished to discuss the matter of dreams. If I had known you wished me to comment on your performance, I would have prepared myself differently.”