The Towers of Samarcand (25 page)

Luke said nothing. If they knew the direction to travel, then it was just possible. But they didn’t. He felt her hand slide into his.

‘Well, there’s no one I’d rather die with,’ she said.

They walked for some time in silence then, comforted by each other and the darkness around them. It was inconceivable that they could still be heading in the right direction but there was some small solace in knowing they could do nothing about it.

‘If only we had a fish,’ Shulen murmured.

‘A fish? Why are you suddenly so particular about what you eat? Won’t camel do?’

She laughed softly. ‘Not that sort of fish. A lodestone.’

‘A lodestone? What’s a lodestone?’

‘I heard of it in Konya. The Arabs call it
al-konbas
. It’s a piece of metal which has special properties. If you rub a needle against it, and float the needle in water, it will point to the south.’

Luke had stopped and was staring at her in the dark. He let go of her hand.

‘Why is it called a fish, Shulen?’

He heard the rustle of shoulders shrugging. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the lodestone was made in the shape of a fish?’

Luke’s heart was beating fast. He felt inside his thoub to where the paizi lay heavy against his chest. ‘Shulen, do you have a needle?’

She was very still. ‘Why? Do you have a lodestone?’

‘Perhaps.’ He was trying to keep his voice calm. He brought the chain of the paizi up over his head. The fish was face-up in his hand, invisible to all. ‘And a candle and bowl. Do you have those?’

Khan-zada had heard them. She approached Luke and pulled something from her hair. ‘Here is your needle.’

Then Shulen went to her camel’s side. Her camel had been one of the two that had stayed and her baggage contained a candle and a bowl: the stuff of healing. She lit the candle and, placing the bowl on the ground, poured the precious water into it. Matthew and Nikolas had come up and the five of them knelt around it as if in prayer.

Luke turned the paizi over to show them the fish in the light of the candle. ‘It would make sense, wouldn’t it? I mean this must happen to couriers all the time.’

He rubbed the needle against the fish and carefully placed it into the water. Immediately it began to turn. Then it stopped. Luke gave a sigh of relief.

‘I think we have our south,’ he said softly.

*

The two women rode on a camel from then on, the bowl held by one, the candle by the other. They were two high priestesses bent over a sliver of metal, able to bestow life or death on those that followed them. Luke led them, while Matthew and Nikolas walked on either side of Arcadius, who was slumped over the second camel.

Well after the grey dawn had crept up around them, they were still moving, knowing that to stop was to risk not starting again. They had all drunk another cup and one of the skins was empty. The sky was overcast. Luke brought his camel next to the one carrying Arcadius. The big body of his friend was hardly moving.

He looked at Matthew. ‘I am going to suggest we take a gamble.’

Luke turned to the two women still hunched over their little altar behind. They had erected a clumsy awning above them to shield them. He said: ‘I’m sure that we strayed south in the storm. So if we aim off a bit to the north, we must hit the road.’

It made sense. The road, even covered by sand, would be faster than the open desert. They had hardly any water left and Arcadius was dying.

Shulen glanced at Arcadius and nodded. Her throat was parched and sore from the sand that she’d swallowed in the storm. She could no longer speak without pain. She looked into the bowl and pointed out their new course.

It was only an hour later that Nikolas, now in front, let out
a cracked shout. His feet had made contact with something hard. They’d found the road.

They stopped to rest there, knowing that sleep would more likely come with the relief. They put up their tents and drank a single gulp of water each. Arcadius was lowered from his camel and helped to drink his. Then they lay back and tried not to think of their thirst. None of them spoke.

By evening and the time to leave, the thirst was tormenting them. There were perhaps two cups for each remaining in the skin and they did not know how far they still had to go to reach Bokhara. There was no food but it didn’t matter. None of them wanted to eat for to do so would worsen their thirst. Luke sat in the sand and felt empty of strength. His head spun and there were dots in front of his eyes. He was staring at the belly of the women’s camel and thinking of the water inside.

‘No,’ whispered Khan-zada from above. ‘It will kill you.’

He squinted up at her and noticed that the pale disc of the new moon hovered above her like a halo. It was behind cloud and it was faint but it was there. It meant hope. Was the sky clearing?

He put a hand on the ground and slowly pushed himself to his feet. His three friends were still sitting and he went over to them. Two of them were staring ahead without seeing. Arcadius was lying on his back, shivering as if from a fever. Very gently, the three of them lifted their friend on to the camel.

With the veiled moon above them, they should have been able to travel faster that night. The desert around them now had substance and they could even see the outlines of dunes. But they were tired and weak and their stomachs raged with the pain of emptiness and their swollen throats made each swallow a thing of agony. Every step they took was like ten.

And Arcadius was dying.

Luke was out at the front, still leading the camel on which the two women sat above the compass. He heard a thud behind him. He stopped and turned.

Arcadius was lying on the ground with Matthew and Nikolas kneeling on either side of him. Luke dropped the rope and staggered over to them.

‘What happened?’

Nikolas was shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry. I fell asleep.’

Luke knelt. He looked down into Arcadius’s face. It was without movement. He gently lifted his head and tried to pour water into his friend’s mouth but the lips wouldn’t open. He turned to Matthew. ‘I think he’s finished,’ he whispered. He felt the tears pricking his eyeballs. ‘He won’t drink.’

Khan-zada and Shulen had dismounted and were now kneeling beside Luke. Shulen put her hand over his. She leant forward to look into Arcadius’s face. ‘It’s too dark to see if he’s breathing.’

Then, in an instant, it wasn’t.

Arcadius’s face had turned to silver and his friends looked down at its peace and then above to the sky. There were a million, million stars in a heaven that was suddenly clear. There were more stars than they’d ever seen and, sitting back on their haunches, they stared up at them.

Luke turned back to Arcadius. His friend’s eyes were open.

‘I’m sorry,’ Arcadius said.

Luke gazed into eyes that still trusted him, eyes that knew they were looking at their final night. Tears ran down his cheeks.

Then Khan-zada was next to him. She whispered into his ear. ‘Luke, look.’

He turned. She was pointing at a star brighter than the others. ‘Venus,’ he whispered. ‘Kervan Kiran, the morning star. Arcadius, do you see it?’

But Arcadius’s eyes had closed.

‘No,’ whispered the Princess, ‘not Venus. It’s the wrong direction. It’s the Kalyan Minaret. It’s a beacon.’

‘A beacon?’

‘Yes, Luke, a beacon to guide travellers into Bokhara. We have arrived.’

Bokhara the Holy, with a mosque for every day of the year; Bokhara the Magnificent, second city in Temur’s empire; Bokhara the giver of life, where the Prophet Job had struck his rod into the dusty ground and brought forth water.

Bokhara: the giver of life
.

The Kalyan Minaret, taller than any building in the world, had, over the centuries, rescued many travellers from the desert to its west. By day, it looked down on a bulbous seascape tiled in azure and majolica and from its giddy heights muezzins fanned the flame of the city’s faith. By night, it was a lighthouse.

And, like those it brought in from the desert, it was a survivor. Even Genghis Khan had spared it before trampling the pages of the Koran into the sand of the mosque beside it. Now Luke stared up at it in wonder.

It was the morning after they’d reached the city and the time in between had been spent in the deepest sleep that he could remember. They had almost crawled through the city gates and only Khan-zada, her head held high, was able to give the command that they should be taken to the Ark citadel immediately and given rooms, food and water.

Arcadius had been lifted gently from his camel and carried before them through the streets to the citadel. It was the hour after dawn and they were full of people who’d parted to let pass a man either dead or near to it. Behind him strode a woman, unveiled, recognised by some who nudged their friends to make their reverences. On one side of her was a tall, fair man with a paizi around his neck, on the other a thin beauty dressed as a man. Behind staggered two giants. It was a curious party.

The Ark citadel was a town within a city. It was a jumble of palaces, offices and mosques behind thick, sloping walls which stood like vast ochre teeth in the centre of a sanded
registan
where executions took place to drumbeats, markets rang with merchants’ prices and teeth were pulled for two dirhams a tooth, or one if people could watch. Within the Ark was a hospital and it was there that Arcadius had been taken, his face ashen and his limbs without movement. He was little changed when Luke visited him the next morning. If anything, he was greyer. Luke lifted his feeble hand from the sheets.

‘I failed you,’ Arcadius breathed, turning to him. ‘You relied on me.’

‘You didn’t fail me,’ said Luke. ‘You lived.’

Arcadius tried to smile but he was full of anger at himself. He’d not be with them when they got to Tamerlane. ‘This will be the biggest game we’ve played yet,’ he said, frowning, ‘and I won’t be there to play it with you.’

Luke smiled. ‘There’ll be plenty still to do when you join us.’ He took the paizi from around his neck. ‘Here, have this. You’ll need it to get to us.’

*

Later, the rest of them prayed in a mosque built at the place where Job had stamped his rod and which Tamerlane had
venerated with a new dome. They were praying to the same God in different ways and their prayers were of entreaty. They were safe for now, but their friend was not. Afterwards they sat in a square with a fountain next to a fig tree and Luke asked the question again.

‘Will he live?’

There were men in white caftans who’d come with them from the hospital to pray and who sat across from them, quietly talking. Khan-zada gestured to them.

‘Luke, Bokhara was the home of Ibn Sina, the greatest healer the world has ever seen. He lived here when the Samanids ruled this city four centuries ago but the doctors still practise what he taught. Arcadius will be in good hands.’

Luke looked from Khan-zada to Shulen. The women were curiously alike. Both were healers, intrigued by the alchemy of plants and oils, who’d themselves performed a curious alchemy over the past weeks. He stood. ‘I’ll see to the camels,’ he said. ‘Highness, can we send someone with a paizi back to fetch Eskalon?’

But Eskalon was already on his way.

*

Three Varangians, Shulen and Princess Khan-zada left Bokhara at dawn the next day, taking the road east to Samarcand. The country they rode through was Mawarannahr, the land beyond the river, a rich and fertile place full of beauty, human and otherwise. It was here that another Greek had come long ago to choose Roxanna for his wife. They rode on horses that Khan-zada had commandeered from the imperial stables, just as she’d taken clothes for herself and Shulen from the imperial wardrobes. She was, after all, Temur’s daughter-in-law.

They rode down the valley of the Zarafshan, a route lined
with silver poplars beyond which stretched citrus orchards and vineyards and fields where row upon row of cotton fleece hung like iced breath amidst women bent beneath bales. It was land that drank water fed by channels, and wheels pulled by camels; a land of mixed bounty, where cattle meandered next to goats and Karakul sheep, whose infant lambs had the best wool in the world. It was a land of roadside stalls selling gigantic melons, striped like a Venetian’s hose; a land of mud-baked villages and grape-juice sellers and boys with sticks; a land of turbaned men atop donkeys, legs spread out like oars. It was a land of vigour.

The road was a good one, their horses fast, and it was early evening when they came to Samarcand. Ibn Khaldun had called it the ‘Mirror of the World’. But when Khan-zada reined in her mare to gaze at its beauty afloat in a distant wash of gold and blue, she murmured: ‘Behold, the Garden of the Soul.’

Luke, his two friends and Shulen reined in their horses next to her and stood silent in wonder. Enormous domes, towers and minarets soared above a distant mantle of green like a magician’s crown.

‘Where’s the army?’ asked Nikolas.

Luke exchanged glances with Matthew. ‘If it’s not here, then it’s somewhere else. My guess would be on the road to China.’

They rode on, marvelling at the scale of the city they were approaching, bigger than anything they’d ever seen. As they drew closer, they saw that it was ringed by immense gardens.

‘They say he rarely goes into the city these days,’ said Khan-zada as she rode up beside Luke. ‘And when he does it’s to throw meat and money to the masons building his wife Bibi Khanum’s mosque.’

‘The one without foundations?’

‘Indeed,’ smiled the Princess, turning to him. ‘Temur belongs to the steppe. He prowls around the city, moving from garden to garden as if not trusting to touch the monuments he’s creating. I’m told he’s currently holding court in the Garden of Heart’s Delight, which is just outside Cairo.’

‘Cairo?’

‘He’s given all the new suburbs the names of the greatest cities on earth to prove that Samarcand is the greatest of them all. So we have Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, Sultaniya and Delhi.’