Three Princes (9 page)

Oken paced about slowly as he dried himself, then slipped on a plain cotton undershirt with long sleeves and turtleneck also waiting on the towel rack. A pair of black robes were also provided, the kind the night riders had worn. He put one on, settling the tailored shoulders with a gentle shake before fastening the front with the embroidered silk-knotted pieces.

He then immediately unbuttoned it and shrugged it off, holding it away at arm’s length. “Wool! What do I do now?”

“Goat’s wool, not lamb,” Mabruke said from inside the foam covering his entire head and face. He picked up the razor.

“It’s not the animal. It’s the wool— and my suit stinks of camel!”

“I’ll have Zaydane chase down something else for you.”

“If he has to chase it, then it’s got wool and I can’t wear it.”

Oken went over to a bedroll set against the tent wall, relieved to see layers of quilted, padded cotton. “Thank goodness cotton is easier to clean,” he muttered as he spread the bedroll out on the carpeted tent floor.

He stretched out flat on his back, staring up at the gently stirring fan and the amber-colored lamp. “Red Hands, Black Orchids, and woolen clothes—this is not starting out well, not at all.”

THE MIDNIGHT
lights of Marrakech made a soft glow in the landscape below as they rode along narrow passes down from the hidden camp of Zaydane’s Atlas Academy. The speckled ponies were sure-footed and hardy, yet on the small side. Oken had to ride with his feet dragging low in the stirrups; nevertheless, he felt considerably more comfortable riding in control of a horse, however small, than lashed to the top of a camel. The thickly woven, multilayered cotton robe they had found for him to wear was not as warm as the wool everyone else was wearing; Oken could only resign himself to the icy fingers of the night air creeping in at wrist and ankle. His handsome collection of gloves was packed up with his luggage in the rented vehicle. The leather pair they had found for him was stiff and scratchy.

Zaydane and Mabruke rode at the head of the column. The men following Oken and Mabruke’s vehicle had proved to be agents of the Red Hand, seeking revenge for the loss of their underground kingdom in Memphis. As soon as Oken and Mabruke were out of town, Pharaoh’s security forces had gone through the network of tunnels and chambers, wreaking havoc on the entire organization, as well as freeing hundreds of victims who otherwise would have been on their way into slavery in the Indonesia Islands or in deepest Persia.

Mabruke, although pleased with the results of the report, expressed considerable regret at having missed such a monumental assault on that criminal organization.

Zaydane had only laughed and clapped him heartily on the back, assuring Mabruke that maintaining his secret identity was more important than momentary revenge. “They thought they were chasing a simple professor and an overbred secretary. My men made certain that they reported nothing else to those who sent them after you. Be happy—it has ended with the best possible results.”

Oken was happy simply that Mabruke was alive and unharmed, however disgruntled the man might be. Oken still had nightmare flashes from that road battle. He had already in childhood reconciled himself to the permanent nature of his memories. He had yet to reconcile himself, however, to the residue of some of those permanent memories. His remembrance trainers, once his talent was discovered, had prepared him for that drawback. They had warned that sometimes he must simply look away, not turn that corner to see what had happened. Not to know was a kind of security. They also warned that there would be scenes from which he could never walk away. He had been trained in meditation techniques to dissolve the chemistry of emotions that accompany memory. These techniques left him with a cool indifference. Twice in his life, however, they had failed him. The memory of his mother’s shaky handwriting, describing the death of her only daughter and only grandchild, always seared through Oken as though each word were carved into his skin with a needle. Every memory of his beloved sister now bore an unbearable beauty, a holy presence in his mind as though he could reach through the veil of time and touch her. The sound of her laughter would never leave him. He comforted himself with the knowledge that she awaited him in eternity. The memory of Mabruke’s greenish face and limp form in the sakhmetical station would never leave him, nor would he ever lose the peculiar sense of destiny leading him down that dark Ibis Road.

That same sense of destiny made him wonder about the dark road ahead of them, on this peculiar assignment, halfway around the world to the darkest place on Earth, in a quest for the Moon.

ZAYDANE AND
Mabruke led the group out of the mountainside brush and onto a caravan road at some early-morning hour. Oken did not like to think he might have dozed. The night passed quickly. Eventually the rhythmic clatter of the ponies’ iron- shod hooves became the percussion of a long and lovely dream of riding in the royal coach on a high festival day. His sister was there, smiling down sadly at a small, pale child seated beside her. Oken awoke hoping that child had been himself. He knew otherwise.

They stopped for a couple of hours in an off-road patch of scrub with a rocky spring at its center. Goatskin water bags were refilled while letting the horses drink.

Oken found the icy cold splash on his hands and face to be effectively bracing. So were the incredibly spicy cheese-breads handed around out of saddlebags, along with pleasant smoke from a small, portable hookah. Leather-wrapped jars of hot coffee were also brought out. Oken had learned that their mountain brew was so wildly different from the domestic he was accustomed to, that his usual honey was not necessary. The weariness of hours riding on an undersized animal was washed away.

The men sat cross-legged on the moss or leaned against rocky outcrops, passing the hookah and eating while the ponies grazed among the scrubby bushes. Each had been offered oats from a leather bag. The aromatic leaves around them were apparently more tempting.

Zaydane sat with Mabruke apart from the rest of the men. They leaned close and talked together in low voices, making occasional gestures over their heads, as though signaling sacred beings or birds. Oken left them alone. The women in their purple and blue robes had remained behind in the invisible camp in the cliffs high above them. Oken kept his restless attention on eyes, ear shapes, and the subtle patterns of beards. He would know these men if he ever met them again, even if he was not entirely sure of why he should.

Mabruke caught Oken’s eye and waved him over. Oken went to sit with them on the outcrop of rock they had chosen.

“Zaydane would prefer you give your list of orchid displays to his memoryman, Aziel, rather than committing it to paper.”

“Certainly,” Oken said. “I have it on the tip of my tongue.”

Zaydane gave a low whistle, and one of the young men rose from the group at once and strolled over, a slender, loose-limbed young man with sensitive features and black hair braided to his waist.

“Aziel,” Zaydane said to him quietly, “Lord Oken has a list of royal families in Europe which I need. If you would take a moment with him?”

The young man sat down at Oken’s feet and smiled up at him. Oken recited, matching Zaydane’s quiet level. The lad’s dark, liquid eyes kept straying to Mabruke as he listened. When Oken had finished, Aziel’s gaze turned inward for a minute or two as he reviewed and fixed the list in his memory. Then he stood up, his eye lingering on Mabruke.

“Thank you, Aziel,” Oken said.

Aziel saluted and strolled away.

Camp was disbanded and the journey resumed, by the simple gesture of Zaydane standing up and going to his mount. Their quickly set-up rest spot was as quickly erased, and the journey continued, Zaydane and Mabruke in the lead as before. Oken was amused when he realized that their conversation was not to be interrupted by men, animals, or terrain. Mabruke trusted Zaydane completely. Oken registered this realization in his Duat, his ib- heart, his inner world and understanding.

The ride down from the hills after that was a pleasant and relaxing exercise. The day warmed on their backs, drawing a fragrant sweat from the horses. Stretches of road weaved back and forth along the hilly terrain, sometimes leaving them only the sky as guide. The horses kept steadily on.

THE ATLAS
Hills were an obstacle to the Great Sahara Highway, not an obstacle of geography or engineering, but rather of tradition. The Atlas were home to the families who lived upon the sacred mountaintops. They had farmed the sacred valleys since the Ur Time, since Creation. Or at least long enough ago that their revered ancestors had been able to work out solid, written contracts with Caesar himself, along the lines of: You won’t let anyone kill my people, and I won’t let anyone kill your people. By the way, can I interest you in some handmade woolen rugs or maybe some cheese?

The cheese was very good, and the rugs of remarkable quality. The contracts held and became the permanent way of things. The only people who wanted to live on those rugged and rocky slopes were the folks who already lived there anyway.

Cleopatra II was so impressed with the cheese, that she built a temple in Marrakech, the capital of the mountain kingdom, a beautiful temple of marble and greywacke, merging with the hillside, a stone flower perched among the rocks. The temple was dedicated to Egypt’s Nayture Khnoumos, the divine ram. The ram was the major divinity of these hardy and hardheaded mountain folk, and their even hardier and more hardheaded goats. The Egyptian Embassy was housed on the temple grounds. Tourist hotels, markets, theaters, and clubs sprang up over the centuries alongside the temple, echoing its remarkable architecture, a stone garden of Egyptian cultivation in the rocky wilderness.

Coast roads leading inland to Marrakech were broad and finely paved, encouraging travelers and trade. The roads down from the mountains used by the Atlas men were older, narrower, and vigilantly guarded. Zaydane and his riders had been identified and marked as worthy. No one was going to attack them on this side of Marrakech. Oken fell back to dozing.

He awoke to the white walls of Marrakech glowing a pale flame color in the long rays of the afternoon Sun. A mazelike array of shrines and altars was squeezed together along the base of the city walls, on either side of the arched city gates. Alabaster shrines to Hathor and Neith stood shoulder to shoulder with carved oaken altars of Frigg and Danu, with statues in ivory and gold, ebony and pearl, flint, obsidian, and oak. Marrakech was a very holy city. Tourists and mystics alike flocked to her sacred location. The mystics brought the tourists, and the tourists brought business, so Marrakech was a friendly place. Expensive but friendly.

Some shrines were simple—hand-molded, sunbaked altars set between woven-reed walls; some were translucent alabaster or glowing marble, splendidly carved. The oldest shrines were the largest, with columns, and marble steps leading up to the altar. Each such shrine was a frame for sacred artwork, images of divine Nayture in action, a garden of jeweled colors showing sacred faces, eternal moments, stories of this or that great name. The sky itself was gathered up close against these walls.

Whole families crowded shrine steps and pathways, singing and praying with ten thousand voices. The city seemed to float on its own music, a chaotic chorus of the divine presence. Incense burned on every corner, at each crosswalk, from every altar and niche. The gathered smoke was a fabulous mixture of myriad scents and alchemies. It was said that nowhere else in the world was there an odor of sanctity like to that in Marrakech.

Individual market stalls were wedged into cracks and alleys, into any space available amid the altars and shrines. The stalls were shaded by fabulous rugs strung across poles, alive with dangling fringes. A steady, restless crowd streamed along beneath the shade.

The first whiffs in the breeze as they rode closer struck Oken as a heady, fantastic perfume, familiar scents mingled into something uniquely unfamiliar and new. The music of the city grew louder, rising and falling in an unfathomable melody, the multiple voices of faith merged into a single song.

The Horse Road into Marrakech, being one of the oldest routes into the city, was at ground level and led past the shrines along the wall. Late-afternoon light tinted every image with mystery. The scented smoke grew thicker, backed by the hypnotic impact of myriad voices, the musical rhythms of sistrum rattles, stringed cithara and tambour drums.

Oken drank in the scene with solemn, focused attention, lingering on details, while the horses carried them along the road at a gentle walking pace. He made careful note of the faces and of the artwork, some ancient, some brightly restored, all original and unique to this sacred city. Here was his private reward for his professional skill at remembrance, a sudden burst of imagery. People, movement, sounds, and smells would always be there inside him, his preview moment of eternity. He could return here in memory and walk among the thronging crowd of the faithful in that sacred lane before the shrines. He could visit the divinities in their shrines one by one.

His attention was caught by a sudden chorus of children laughing and calling out, “Silly rider! Silly rider!”

Children ran alongside Mabruke as he rode, a giggling, smiling mass of children, each dressed in the same cut of a simple, green street tunic and boots. Their heads were shaved Egyptian- style, with only the single long forelock, braided with polished beads. They were laughing at Mabruke, who was riding perched atop his small mountain horse in an awkward compromise between the length of his legs and the shortness of the horse’s legs. His knees were all akimbo.

To further amuse the throng of children, Mabruke draped the reins around the saddle horn, then stood up in his stirrups, balancing as nonchalantly as though he were on the ground. The stolid little horse reacted to neither the throng of noisy children nor to the unusual pose of his rider. Mabruke beamed around at the children as he passed by. His brilliant white smile in his dark face further delighted them.