Sinbad and The Eye of the Tiger (7 page)

Standing on tiptoe, Rafi placed the heart in the Minaton’s great chest cavity. His hands were busy for a few moments as Zenobia watched impatiently. There were a few taps, a scrape or two, more rasps of metal on metal, then Rafi withdrew from the chest of the great metal creature. With a grunt he lifted the massive curving metal plate from the floor, and set it in place across the creature’s chest with a clang. In a few moments the chest plate had been bolted into position and Rafi stepped back, wiping his hands, and surveying the completed metal monster with a sly smile of satisfaction.

Zenobia drew back and began to chant. “Brave and proud Bull, whose mighty heart my son Rafi has fashioned of purest gold—
Beat!
With the power of a hundred mortal men as only I command you—
Beat!”

Zenobia sprinkled a drop or two from the liquid in a locket around her neck onto the bulging metal chest of the metal monster. She closed her eyes and began muttering an incantation as the liquid turned into a green drifting smoke.

“O Mighty Abu-Salem . . . you who rule over a thousand devils!” Zenobia’s hands stretched out over the bronze chest before her. “By all the powers of Hell and Darkness . . . give strength and life to this your creature.” Her voice rose to a shrill cry.
“Minaton! Minaton!”

She paused, exhausted with effort, as the echoes of her words died. Zenobia bent over the Minaton, her gaze hard and expectant.

There was a soft, slow boom from the cavernous chest of brazen metal. Then another. And another.

Zenobia’s feline features distorted in a fiendish grimace of triumph as her head came up. Her mane of hair fell back, her eyes gleamed, and her mouth breathed out her hot words—“He lives!”

Rafi’s own eyes glittered as he saw the giant metal fingers flexing and a shudder pass through the huge body. On the stool, near the head, Zenobia saw the bronze eyelids click open. She turned toward her son with an expression of delight, sweeping down from the wooden stool to stand by her offspring and admire their creation. Her fingers stroked the creature’s metal cheek, her eyes shining in triumph.

Zenobia whispered triumphantly. “Perfect . . . perfect . . . a colossus of bronze with the energy of the sun . . . and mine to command!” Her eyes caressed the bronzed giant lovingly. “My Minaton . . . my Minaton . . .”

Nubian slaves carried the treasure up the gangplank and across the deck to the hold. Sinbad and Farah watched Aboo-seer supervising the stowing of the precious cargo, while Hassan admired the exotic chests and boxes, many of them works of art in themselves, and wondered what might be stored inside of their artfully decorated lids. Aboo-seer ordered the chests, several at a time, put into a net and lowered into the hold by means of a small deck crane.

Sinbad called out to Aboo-seer. “As swiftly as you can, old friend! We must be away before nightfall!” The muscular sailor nodded at his captain, then burst into a curse at the clumsiness of the slaves. “Careful there, you donkeys! That’s a Caliph’s ransom in your slippery fingers! Take heed or the whip will be blistering your backs!”

Sinbad’s attention was caught by an object covered by a scarlet cloth. It seemed to be a large box, carried by slaves who were trying to maneuver it through the opening in the ship’s railing. Aboo-seer shouted impatiently at them. “You heard the Captain! Move yourselves—or you’ll feel my fist around your ears!”

In fear, the last slave hurried too much and slipped. His unexpected surrender of the weight of the shrouded object was too much for the others. The crimson-covered object started to fall back into the watery space between the ship and the quay. But Aboo-seer got there first and added his muscle to the weight and the box went over the railing jerkily, falling to the deck with a heavy thump.

Farah stifled a scream and cried out. “Carefully! I implore you!”

But the fall was too much. There was the sharp splintering of wood and the accompanying screech of an animal. The scarlet covering slithered off, caught by the foot of a staggering slave. Sinbad was stunned, for under the bright cloth was a cage, now much the worse for wear, and within it a baboon.

Farah reacted with horror and took a faltering step toward the sagging cage and screeching baboon. But Aboo-seer’s surprise turned to amusement and a faint contempt. “A pet baboon!”

The baboon chattered and squealed angrily and shook the iron bars of his cage. The sailors around the deck dropped their work to laugh and gather around the cage.

Maroof bent to look at the baboon, grinning widely. “Oh, he’s a handsome specimen!”

To Sinbad’s surprise Farah broke away from him to run to the cage, and he noticed none of the slaves were laughing like the sailors. He dismissed that, for they were probably in fear of the whip so often employed as a goad and for punishment.

Farah tugged the cloth free from the feet around the cage and quickly recovered the cage. She looked back over her shoulder at Sinbad. “Please . . . make them go away!”

“Does he do tricks, Princess?” Aboo-seer asked in a laughing voice. His face fell when Sinbad snapped out orders.

“Aboo-seer! Maroof! Hassan! All of you! Back to work or I will make baboons of the lot of you!”

The men on the deck walked away, some still laughing, for they had little fear of their captain’s wrath over such a minor matter. But Aboo-seer peered at his captain shrewdly, then looked at the princess, who was still almost at a panic state.

She was kneeling by the scarlet-covered cage and in a gentle voice was speaking softly to the baboon within. “There, there . . . they mean no harm . . . it’s all right now . . .”

There were tears in her eyes when she looked at Sinbad and a shiver of odd fear went through the seaman.

Z
enobia’s castle loomed dark against the starry night. The river of stars that men were beginning to call The Milky Way outlined the spires and walls in dark silhouette. No light, no movement could be seen. Only the night breezes and the crash of waves on the rocks could be heard.

Below the castle, hidden in a cluster of barnacled rocks, Captain Zabid squinted his one good eye at the castle. One of the two soldiers with him stirred fitfully behind him, making a disgruntled sound. “Deathly quiet,” he muttered. “Not even a rat stirring.”

Zabid nodded agreement. “As bleak and as black as the ruins of Gomorrah.”

The second soldier shifted his seat on a wet rock. “What do you suppose they do there? I’ve heard things . . . strange things, y’know? My sister’s cousin used to live nigh, over them hills to the east. She said there was things going on here you wouldn’t believe. Women,
beautiful
women, as silent as a post, but doing their work—”

“Hah!” the first soldier snorted. “Nothing wrong with a silent woman, methinks!” He gurgled a little quiet laugh and started into a story about a woman whose tongue had been cut out by an annoyed husband as Zabid moved on.

Zabid went over the rocks silently, then stopped as he saw two soldiers asleep in a cup of rock. He crept silently into the crevice and kicked the feet of a gently snoring soldier. The man awoke with a cry and reached for his dagger, but Zabid had grabbed him by the throat, shaking him angrily.

“Make a noise and I’ll slit your throat!”

The soldier blinked, looking about in dazed befuddlement. “What? What?” he sputtered.

“Keep awake,” Zabid growled, standing up. He saw that the other soldier had come sheepishly awake and was watching them, fearful of more admonishment, the kind Zabid was known to give lazy and reluctant soldiers.

But the one-eyed captain seemed to concentrate more on the sounds of the surf and the night. “Keep awake,” he growled absently.

The first soldier yawned as he gathered up his sword and spear. “Two nights we’ve watched,” he complained. “My backside has a hundred wounds . . .”

Zabid’s one hawk eye swiveled to him and the soldier cringed involuntarily. “The orders are to keep a watch on Zenobia’s castle—no matter if your backside has a
thousand
wounds!”

The dark-haired captain turned away and walked to the opposite side of the cup of rock. He looked up at the moon, now waning away almost to nothingness.

The sea swells rose and fell with the relentless clock of moontide. Sinbad’s ship rose and fell on the dark blue bosom of the ocean. The colorful sails billowed out, pushing the wooden ship through the waters, cleaving the sea, foaming the waves, sending spray flying back over the deck to sting the cheeks of Sinbad.

The turbaned captain squinted at the sun, swept the horizon with a practiced eye, and his legs compensated for the tilt and sway of the deck. Sinbad felt the salty tang of the air, heard the snap of canvas, the hiss of water along the ship’s side, and the sound of a song from the crew’s quarters.

Out of the corner of his eye Sinbad spotted the leap of a fish. A seabird dipped and banked, then plummeted toward a spot of ocean. With a sudden flurry of wings it was airborne again, but in its claws was the squirming, flopping shape of a fish.

Sinbad took a primitive instrument from a compartment near the helm and took a reading on the sun. Then he watched the crew on the deck for a few moments, savoring the feeling of salt air and a moving deck beneath his feet.

One sailor was brewing tea over a low, wide-legged brazier. Another was sharpening a dagger on a flat stone and testing the point with his thumb. Abdul was mending a much-mended shirt and Sinbad grinned. “Abdul, if you spent less at the gaming tables you might afford a new shirt!”

Abdul looked up with a grin that showed several absent teeth. “Aye, Cap’n, but a shirt only keeps you warm—it doesn’t stir the blood!”

Sinbad laughed, then saw two more sailors throwing dice against the cabin wall and sighed. He didn’t stop it for he was of the mind that all sailors gambled—on everything: returning home, surviving the next storm, eating food stored for weeks or months in smelly holds, coming back aboard from leave in a cutthroat port. And he was the biggest gambler of all, he thought, gambling ship, crew, his life—and the life of Princess Farah—in a mad adventure to find a myth and have him perform a miracle.

Sinbad turned to Bahadin, at the helm. “Three degrees west.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

Sinbad took another deep breath of the salt air and grinned as Aboo-seer came up the ladder to the poop deck. “The sea is as calm as a shallow pool and the wind fair.”

The sailor nodded. “Perhaps the Princess Farah can be persuaded to come up on deck today.”

“Perhaps.” Sinbad agreed.

“Four days since we set sail,” he said, shaking his head. “And never once out of the cabin. It is unhealthy.”

Sinbad made apologies for her. “The seas have been rough until now. She is a poor sailor.” Aboo-seer spit over the side, then put his gaze on the same horizon as the bearded helmsman. “I shall try to persuade her,” Sinbad said. He heard a scrape and went to the stern rail to look over the side.

Hassan was painting the worn window framing of Sinbad’s cabin, a task they had meant to do in port at Charak. He was held by a rope around his waist. He saw Sinbad’s shadow and grinned up at him, shading his eyes with a paint-flecked hand. Sinbad smiled at him and moved on.

Hassan continued to hum the tuneless little ditty that Sinbad’s appearance had interrupted. His hand slopped on paint with not too expert a hand, but he cared not. He was more interested in remembering the bawdy words to the tune, taught to him by a tawny-skinned wench in a disreputable tavern in Cyrene, on the African coast west of Alexandria. He stopped when he heard a strange grunting sound, followed by Farah’s voice. He frowned as he heard the strange animal grunting again, a kind of guttural chattering. Then again, the voice of the princess.

Intrigued, Hassan edged closer to the cabin windows, pushing out from the stern and letting the roll of the ship move him on the end of his rope toward the windows. He peered in and almost dropped his paint jar and brush in surprise.

Hassan stopped with his feet on the recessed sill of the high transom that ran across the back of the ship. The windows, which were composed of small panes of expensive glass set in frames, were open and the sailor could see and hear easily.

The cabin was cluttered with inlaid boxes and brass-bound chests that housed the more fragile of Balsora’s treasure-payment to Melanthius and some of Farah’s clothing. Along with the princess’s wardrobe chests, the containers so filled the cabin that there was little room to move. But a space had been cleared, and a small table set between the bunk and the lashed-down treasure pile. On the table was a chess set. On the bunk, with her back to the windows, was Princess Farah, intent upon the chessboard. Across from her was the cage, its broken slats now mended, and within it was the baboon.

And the baboon was playing chess with Farah.

Hassan’s brow became deeply furrowed and his curiosity overcame his caution, as it had many times before—not always to his credit. He peered closer to certify that what he had thought he had seen was indeed what he was seeing.

To himself Hassan muttered, “A baboon that can play
chess?”

But his words were heard by Farah and she leaped to her feet, startled and wide-eyed, peering at the suspended sailor as though he were some sort of savage apparition. She threw herself between the windows and the baboon, but not before the baboon had reached out from between the bars of his cage to wave his hairy hands and utter wild screeching noises at Hassan.

In self-protection—and with a bit of embarrassed nerve at being caught eavesdropping—Hassan waved his paintbrush at the baboon and uttered a screech himself.

Farah motioned him away. “Go away! He is frightened of you!”

Hassan blinked. “I am frightened of
him!
Baboons can turn savage!”

Farah seized the discarded scarlet covering and threw it over the cage. The baboon continued to chatter and mutter but his rage was disappearing. “He is
not
savage!” Farah cried at him.

“With those teeth? Those nails or claws or whatever you call what he has?” Hassan did not want to dispute a princess, but after all, sense was sense. He had seen a tribe of baboons kill one man and scar two others for life.