The Sleeper in the Sands (23 page)

He returned to the Palace at dawn-break, and hurried at once to where he had left Haidee asleep. She still lay there with eyes closed, her face the image of untroubled innocence, and as Haroun bent low beside her he made certain that the ring was still secure around her neck. Once he kissed her, very lightly on her brow, and he longed to pick her up and hold her in his arms, for he dreaded that he might never again have the chance. But he left her instead in the calm of her sleep and he continued to the room of the Princess Sitt al-Mulq, praying that she too might have had a dreamless night. Even as he approached it, though, he could hear her wordless screaming; and he knew at once that some great horror had been inflicted in the night.

And so indeed it proved. The soldiers lay slumped around the Princess’s bed, their eyes protruding with a look of inexpressible terror, and their throats cut so wide that their heads had been almost severed from their necks. The Princess herself was still alive but screaming horribly, her eyes tight closed, and though Haroun shook her, he could not wake her from her nightmare. She seemed very much paler, and horribly thin, and across her breasts was the line of a third oozing scar. Of her assailant, however, there was not a sign.

All that day, Haroun fought to save the Princess’s life. At last, towards evening, he began to hope that he had kept her from the black gates of Death, although she remained very pale and still could not be woken from the horrors of her dreams. ‘I can do no more,’ he told the Caliph, who had been pacing the room behind him all day. ‘As to what may happen in the darkness of the night’ - Haroun shrugged and shook his head -- ‘Allah alone is all-seeing and all-great.’

‘Then you must trust He hears your prayers,’ the Caliph answered him curtly, ‘if you wish your daughter to live.’ And he turned, and left Haroun alone with the Princess. And Haroun, gazing from the window, saw that the sun was sinking into the western horizon, and night was already darkening the east.

He did not, though, order new soldiers to keep guard upon the room, but remained alone with the Princess himself. Sometimes he would rise from her side and cross to the balcony to survey the mighty labyrinth of Cairo spread below him, and he would imagine, standing where he was, that he could glimpse into the heart of every human soul it sheltered, and penetrate the mysteries of every narrow street; yet even as he thought so, he knew it was an illusion. And then he would raise his eyes from the city, and gaze upon the prickling silver of the stars; and he would dread to think what strange shadow he might suddenly see brushing past the moon, borne upon the winds.

Yet the hours passed and nothing came, and the darkness, slowly, began to fade. At the first light of dawn, high like an arrow, there rose a muezzin’s cry and then another, and then cries without number, minaret answering minaret, and Haroun turned to the east and bowed down to pray. But even as he did so, he heard from behind him a sudden soft footfall, and turning, he saw a shimmering of brightness and then a ripple of gold bent low across the Princess.

‘Leila?’

There was no answer.

Haroun rose to his feet. ‘Leila?’ He took a step forward, and as he did so the brightness shimmered and appeared to grow more distinct. He could see now, haloed by the gold, Leila’s face and raven-black hair, and her bright ruby lips which were parted in a smile. ‘O my Dearest,’ she whispered. ‘Do you not love me more than all the world?’

Haroun gazed at her in silence. She rose slowly, with the venomous beauty of a deadly snake, and as she did so he saw -- which he had failed to notice since the first time he had met her -- that she was the image of the idol in Lilatt-ah.

He tried to stagger backwards, but found he could not move. ‘In the name of Allah,’ he whispered, ‘what hellish thing are you?’

‘O my Husband,’ she smiled at him sweetly, ‘do you truly not love me more than all the world?’

‘More than all the world,’ he answered, ‘save for only one thing.’

‘And that is?’ she whispered.

‘Our daughter, Leila - our daughter, our child!’

She froze, and the smile began to vanish from her parted lips. ‘And so it was,’ she whispered, ‘once before, long ago. Only one, O Haroun, have I ever loved like you -- and he too betrayed me as you have done.’ Her eyes suddenly clouded, and Haroun saw in them, to his astonishment, a loneliness as cold as the icy depths of space. Then she smiled again, and this time, upon her lips, he recognised mingled pity and contempt. ‘As you have chosen,’ she whispered, ‘so must you pay. Farewell, O my Husband. Forever, farewell.’ He felt her mouth brush his own, as his senses began to melt into a perfume of darkness.

The Caliph, arriving early that morning in the chamber of his sister, found her lying asleep, her expression very calm. Haroun was kneeling beside her and the Caliph assumed, for he had not been able to observe the physician’s face, that all was well and a cure had been found. But then Haroun turned to confront him, and at the sight of his expression the Caliph was struck dumb with consternation. Never before had he seen a look of such despair -- and at once he hurried forward to his sister’s side.

He knelt down and seized her hand; but Haroun, watching him, shook his head wearily. ‘Do not think you will wake her, O Prince, for she is lost in a sleep from which she cannot be roused.’

The Caliph’s brows darkened. ‘What do you mean? How can that be?’

‘She is the victim of the spell of a most powerful jinni.’

‘Can you not break it?’

‘As I told you once before, O Commander of the Faithful, I have no knowledge of the magical arts.’

The Caliph smiled at him very coldly. ‘Yet as you also told me once before, you do have the knowledge of how such arts might be invoked.’

Haroun shook his head impatiently. ‘There is no time for this, O Prince.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I must leave here at once.’

‘Not until you have given me your reason.’

‘There is someone I must hunt down.’

The Caliph smiled coldly once again. ‘But there is something else you must also find.’

At once Haroun froze. ‘I do not understand.’

‘Why’ - the Caliph s smile broadened - ‘the Secret Name of Allah.’

Haroun narrowed his eyes, but did not reply.

‘If that were discovered,’ the Caliph hissed with sudden force, ‘if its syllables were pronounced, then would not the powers of the ancient jinn be mine?’

For a long while Haroun continued silent. ‘You know, O Prince,’ he murmured at last, ‘that it would be a blasphemy and a danger to hunt the secret out.’

‘Yet I command it.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘You will not refuse me, O Haroun al-Vakhel.’ The Caliph’s grip tightened on the Princess’s hand as he began to kiss it long and feverishly. ‘For as I love my sister, so you love your child.’ He laughed. ‘But no matter -- you have seen stakes above the gateways to this Palace before.’

Again, for a long while, Haroun did not reply. Then at last he breathed in deeply, and crossed to the balcony. ‘You must swear to me,’ he whispered, ‘upon all that is holy, that you will protect my daughter for as long as I am away.’

‘I swear it,’ the Caliph replied, ‘so long as you will swear to me now, upon your same daughter’s life, that there will be nothing you will not attempt -- nothing at all - to restore my sister from this spell and to keep her for ever preserved from death.’

Haroun paused. ‘You cannot know what it is you ask.’

‘Yet I ask it still.’

‘You are truly prepared for the horrors I may uncover, horrors long buried these thousands of years?’

‘For the power of the ancient Jinn, what would I not dare?’ The Caliph crossed to Haroun’s side and gripped him by the arm. Then he pointed towards the northernmost wall of the city, where two minarets could be seen rising high into the haze. ‘The mosque,’ he whispered, ‘which I vowed to build is now complete - and yet not altogether, for there is a stone there still plain and unadorned. It waits to be inscribed with the Secret Name of Allah. Return with that secret! Return with it fast! For then, O my friend’ -- the Caliph paused, and smiled - ‘I shall possess the wisdom and secret of all things. Why!’ -- he laughed suddenly - ‘I shall be a god myself]’

A shadow passed across the face of Haroun, one of pain and foreboding, but still he bowed low in acceptance of the terms, then turned without a word and left the room. The Caliph listened to the echoes of the footsteps fading away, as he turned to gaze out across the city once again, and the minarets of the newly-completed mosque. ‘Not long now,’ he whispered. He crossed back to his sister and clasped her in his arms, kissing her lips and all across her face. Still she did not wake. The Caliph shuddered and grinned, and kissed her once again. ‘All will be well!’

That same day, the Caliph rode from his palace to the Bab al-Futuh and passed into the marble courtyard of the mosque. He placed guards by the doorways to the two minarets, and ordered that no one but himself should ever be permitted to ascend them. Then he climbed one himself, until he paused midway up by a thick and heavy door, framed around its archway by unadorned blocks of stone. The Caliph reached up to touch the highest block, smoothing it reverently with the palm of his hand. It was on the same stone face, he had always trusted, that the Secret Name of Allah would one day be inscribed; and now, so it seemed, his faith would be fulfilled. Such good fortune, the Caliph thought, could not be an accident. He had always been the favourite of the stars and the heavens -- surely such a favourite was ordained to be a god?

And from that time on, every evening he would ride to the mosque and climb the stairway of the minaret, and though the stone remained blank, yet still his dreams and ambitions ever grew in their scope. Rumours, as they did so, likewise began to grow, dark and turbulent, whispered in tones of horror, so that all of Cairo soon seemed dizzy with dread. In the minaret, it was claimed, a demon was kept; the mosque had been built with the blood and bones of children; the Caliph himself was none other than Iblis. All this was spoken, and increasingly believed, and reported back by the Caliph’s spies. But the Caliph himself, when he heard it, only smiled; and still, every evening, for the course of one year, he rode from his palace to the Bab al-Futuh.

Then it happened one evening, as he passed through the gateway which led into the mosque, that he was greeted by a trembling captain from his guards. The captain fell to his knees and kissed the Caliph’s feet. ‘O supreme and happy Prince,’ he gulped, ‘some villain has entered your minaret, for I shortly arrived here to find my soldiers drugged, nor have I been able as yet to wake them up.’

But to the captain’s surprise the Caliph only laughed, then reached into his saddle for a heavy purse of gold. ‘Lead on,’ he ordered as he tossed the purse into the captain’s hand, and then, when the captain did so, laughed once again to see how the door to the minaret hung open. He climbed down from his horse and ordered a torch to be passed to him; then he hurried inside and began to climb the steps.

Midway up, by the heavy door, he raised his torch to inspect the stonework. Immediately, however, he frowned at what he saw. It was true that there was an inscription, freshly carved upon the stone above the arch; but it was not a name, nor even a word, but rather an image of the disk of the sun, and crouched underneath it were two kneeling figures. The Caliph shrank back in astonishment. ‘What is this blasphemy?’ he cried out aloud. Then at once he spun round, for he had heard from the darkness the sound of mocking laughter - and looking behind him, he caught the sudden glimmering of a face.

‘Haroun al-Vakhel?’ The Caliph swallowed. ‘Haroun al-Vakhel?’ He shouted now, trying to suppress a faint wave of panic. ‘Haroun al-Vakhel, is that truly you?’

The pale face drew nearer, climbing the steps; and as it did so the Caliph saw that his supposition had been correct. Haroun paused before him and smiled, then slowly bowed his head. ‘O Commander of the Faithful, you see I am returned.’

The Caliph observed Haroun closely. He appeared very weary, for he was not only pale but thin and hollow-cheeked, and his clothes were dusty and travel-stained. A dog was by his side and Haroun, as though almost unaware of what he was doing, stooped briefly to stroke the animal’s head; and as he did so, so his expression seemed suddenly to lighten and ease. But then he gazed up once again; and the Caliph was filled with a sense of great wonder, for there appeared in the eyes of Haroun a strange and profound incandesence, which seemed to hint at the experience of unparalleled marvels. The Caliph turned again to glance at the image of the sun. ‘Returned, I trust,’ he asked, ‘with your quest achieved?’

Again, Haroun smiled and bowed his head.

‘What is the meaning’ - the Caliph pointed -- ‘of this sun with its rays?’

‘It will be a great wonder to you, O Prince, to learn of the mysteries I can now reveal.’

‘I am desperate to hear of them.’

‘Tomorrow, then, O Prince, return here to this tower, for at the moment I am weary from many trials and vicissitudes. Tell me, though, first, before you depart - how is my daughter?’ He reached out to tug upon the Caliph’s robe, and a strange look of craving seemed to pass across his face. ‘Tell me, please, O mighty Prince -- is she still alive and well?’

‘She has been guarded, as we agreed, with the very closest of attention.’ The Caliph frowned. ‘But surely you will come with me back now to the Palace?’

‘No.’ Haroun climbed to the door and swung it open. ‘I will stay here for now’

‘Why,’ asked the Caliph suspiciously, ‘what is your business?’

‘Sleep. I must have sleep.’

‘But my sister?’

‘Your sister?’

‘Will she recover? Will she live?’

A thin smile flickered across the lips of Haroun. ‘Oh yes,’ he whispered. ‘As I promised . . . she will live.’ He turned. ‘Good-night, O Prince.’ Then he passed through the doorway, his dog following him, into the darkness of the minaret beyond; and the Caliph stayed rapt a long while in wonder and thought. Then he left the mosque and returned to his Palace, and hurried to the sick-room of the Princess Sitt al-Mulq, where she had lain beneath a spell for many long months. But when he arrived it was to find that she was no longer there, nor had anyone seen her risen or removed. The Caliph, though, was nothing perturbed, for he knew that it was the proof of Haroun’s new-found magic, the proof of the power of the Secret Name of Allah. And so he summoned Masoud and gave him instructions that the next day, in every mosque in every neighbourhood of Cairo, a new prayer was to be cried out from the minarets, proclaiming the divinity of the Caliph al-Hakim. And it was done as he had ordered; and the Faithful listened in shock and disbelief.