Phantom (27 page)

The way he spoke of the human race was oddly unsettling. It was as though he did not include himself within the species at all. A shiver passed through my body, and I was deeply relieved when we were out in the sunlight again. I asked him no more questions. I did not want to know what kind of a man collected skeletons from tombs and dissected dead bodies to satisfy an "academic interest."

Several times before we left Kazan he devastated me with fresh evidence of utter amorality. Walking with him through the streets of this "Little Moscow" one night, I was horrified to observe that, each time we passed a wealthy Tartar merchant, a leather purse would appear briefly in Erik's hand on its way to some hidden repository in his cloak. It seemed to me that these purses were leaping into his fingers by magic alone, for though I watched him closely, I was never able to register the moment when his hand dipped effortlessly into a capacious pocket. Later I began to understand that the only reason I had seen anything at all was because he wished me to see. He appeared to enjoy shocking me, and I am forced to admit that though his company was certainly highly disconcerting, it was never for one single moment dull! I was like a well-behaved child playing truant from school in the company of a perfect rogue. When he offered to teach me the trick, I actually hesitated for a moment, weighing the consequences of being caught, before refusing with a show of righteous indignation.

But reality descended upon me abruptly once we left behind the Tartar splendor of Kazan. During our interminable trek through the primeval forests that lined the banks of the Volga, I suffered many uneasy moments. We were a small party, completely vulnerable to the bands of robbers ' who roamed the waterways in search of foolhardy and unwary travelers. Darius slept with a loaded pistol beside his pallet and persuaded me to do the same. But Erik seemed utterly indifferent to the danger, often disappearing by himself into the thick of the forest without warning or explanation and remaining absent from the camp for several nights.

On closer acquaintance I found him moody and changeable; it was never possible to predict his humor or anticipate the moment when good temper would abruptly give way to bad. He was subject to fits of black melancholy, and when such a mood came upon him he would withdraw into his tent and refuse to move any farther, neither eating nor speaking for days at a time. Anyone who disturbed him at such a moment did so with considerable risk to life and limb, for as we quickly learned, he had a violent and ungovernable temper. And then again, just as unpredictably, he would become amusing and sociable once more, showing off his astonishing skills as magician, musician, and ventriloquist, stunning us all with each fresh evidence of his inexhaustible ingenuity. In such a mood he was occasionally prepared to linger by the campfire and humor my curiosity with tales of exotic travel. He seemed to have lived for a time in most of the countries that cover Europe and Asia, and in India he had spent a brief sojourn among the mystics in the tented empire of Karak Khitan that lies south of the western Himalayas.

He was a born storyteller. Extraordinary legends fell from his lips with a rhythmic and compelling intensity that held the listener spellbound. I learned more of the secrets of the world during those weeks of travel than I could ever have done in a whole lifetime of study; but of his personal history I gained very little insight. He never spoke of the life that must once have been his in the days before he began to roam the earth, driven by an insatiable lust for knowledge. He hid his past, just as he hid his face, and even the most innocuous attempt to pry was greeted with hostility.

We had traveled in this manner for several weeks when the weather abruptly turned against us. For days in succession heavy clouds rolled in over the Volga and rain sluiced down from the iron-gray sky in a relentless sheet that turned the ground beneath our horses' hooves into an impassable quagmire. We were soaked to the skin as we rode, and it was impossible to dry our clothes at night around the inadequate braziers in our tents. The steamy tropical heat of Mazanderan seemed very far away, and in this unseasonably cold and cursedly wet spell I took a cold that left me coughing like an old man. By the time we reached Kamichin, where the storms closed in and made further travel out of the question, I was burning up with fever.

Darius covered me with the driest blankets he could find and 1 spent a wretched night listening to the rain drumming incessantly on the stretched hide of the tent. By morning pain was knifing through my chest with every breath I took.

I was still struggling to draw air into my lungs when Erik strode unexpectedly into my tent and bent over my pallet.

"Your servant told me you were ill." His eyes examined me with shrewd concern. "How long have you had pain on breathing?"

"A few hours," I said sullenly. "This filthy climate and your stubbornness are entirely to blame for it."

He put a cold hand on my forehead and I gasped at his chilling touch. It was not a natural coldness, such as I could safely have attributed to the weather, but rather the stone-cold, bloodless chill we associated with death, a coldness that would remain unchanged even in the fierce heat of Mazanderan. I twisted my head away from a touch that reminded me so uncomfortably of mortality.

"Inflammation of the lungs," I heard him mutter. "I shall prepare an infusion that will help."

"So you're a doctor, too, are you?" I said rudely. "Is there no end to your accomplishments?"

He rose and looked down on me with extraordinary calm.

"I have certain skills that you may have cause to be glad of. But, of course, if you would prefer to rely on the remedies of your idiot servant, that is certainly your privilege."

He walked out of my tent without a backward glance and I lay glaring at the leather walls with feverish irritation. Why should I trust him? He was as likely to poison me as anything else, particularly after the manner in which I had insulted him. I did not feel inclined to submit to dubious Gypsy cures. Inflammation of the lungs! What could he know of it?

I remember very little of the following days. I plunged into a realm of fevered nightmares, through which I was only dimly aware of Darius tending me and a strange, dark, faceless shape that occasionally bent over my pallet to utter some scathing challenge.

"
Try
, damn you! I can do nothing for you if you're just going to give up!"

Each time I heard that voice I had a vague impulse to struggle up and hit its owner, and for a little time the darkness would recede from me. But I was growing very weary and all I really wanted to do was to slide effortlessly down into the welcoming oblivion, down, down, down into the peace where Rookheeya waited patiently for me.

And then there was the music.

Music soft and soothing as a waterfall… music that coaxed my unwilling soul back up into the light with its sweet, unspoken promise.

Trust me, follow me, let me show you the way to her side.

I believed in the music… I followed it without question.

And when I woke in the grayness of my tent with only Darius beside me, I wept at the cruelty of its fiendish deception.

"He said you would wake weeping, if you woke at all, master," said Darius quietly. "He said I was to take no notice and give you this."

Darius lifted me from the pallet and trickled a little foul-tasting syrup down my throat.

When he laid me down again I saw the Koran lying beside my head.

And then I knew just how close to paradise I had been.

If my extremity of illness had aroused Erik's concern, certainly my convalescence appeared to bore him utterly, for he did not come near me again until I was back on my feet. And when I made some tentative reference to gratitude he only laughed rather scornfully and told me that my death would have proved most inconvenient to him at this point in the proceedings.

He stayed with me on that occasion until quite late in the evening, taking advantage of my weakened state to win a hefty sum of money from me in successive games of chess. But at length, when he grew bored with my uninspired play, he got up, put the chessboard away, and tossed his winnings down on my pillow.

"What is this?" I demanded in surprise.

He shrugged. "You're tired, it wasn't a fair contest. But beware—tomorrow we shall treble the stakes and believe me, I shall show you no quarter."

He turned and strode out of the tent without another word, and in his wake the wind blew the flaps apart. As I struggled over to tie them shut I glanced out and saw it happen.

A man in Kalmuck dress came at him from the undergrowth with a knife, but before I could utter a word of warning, Erik had rounded like a wildcat on his assailant.

A thin lasso whipped through the air, neatly garroting the intruder with one swift, savage jerk, and the man fell dead in the churning mud almost before I had time to blink. I was dumbstruck by that lightning reflex, an automatic, merciless response which betrayed all the instincts of a jungle predator to whom killing is as natural and commonplace as breathing. He had killed before, many times; of that simple fact there could be no question of doubt.

As I stood at the mouth of my tent gaping in open-mouthed horror, Erik bent down to release the lasso with a careless flick of his fingers and replace it in some unseen repository in his cloak. He was utterly composed and detached; had he wrung a chicken's neck instead he could hardly have displayed less emotion, and this deadly calm unnerved me as much as the ruthless, unthinking speed with which he had killed.

Pushing the body aside with his foot, he glanced up and saw me standing there, staring at him like some witless idiot.

"Go back inside your tent, Daroga," I heard the frown in his voice. "I should find it enormously tedious to have to save your life a second time."

And with that he turned on his heel and disappeared into the enveloping darkness.

I returned to my bed deeply shaken and tried to reconcile myself to this new and most unwelcome knowledge.

He was not merely the greatest magician, the most remarkable ventriloquist, and the most accomplished musician 1 had ever seen. He was also the most coldly efficient murderer.

Only the most suicidal fool would fail to treat him with wary respect.

The small ship that waited for us in Astrakhan harbor was still flying the imperial flag, and

Erik's vanity was sufficiently mollified by the sight of it for him to board the vessel without protest. I promised him privacy during the voyage… I would have promised him the moon and the stars to get him safely out on the Caspian Sea, where I could be reasonably certain that he could not contrive to vanish on me again.

The final stage of our journey was mercifully uneventful, and at length we sighted the great chain of sandhills that ran along the edge of the Mazanderan seacoast. Behind them lay the
murdabas
, or dead waters, an endless succession of stagnant lagoons surrounded by dense jungle, swamps, and quicksand. Every manner of reptile wallowed in those stinking morasses, and clouds of mosquitoes hummed incessantly in the pestilential air. The maritime provinces were a death sentence to unacclimatized Europeans, and once we had landed I made haste to the gentle air of Ashraf, where the sweet, familiar scent of cypress trees waited to embrace us.

The little houses with their sloping roofs, wide verandas, and stained-glass windows had never looked more beautiful, and though I knew we should press on inexorably to Teh-ran, where the court was in residence, Allah himself could not have commanded me to go a step farther without a sight of my child.

If I had hoped to impress Erik with the grandeur of my estate and my royal descent, I was quickly disappointed.

"I understand that princes outnumber the camels and fleas in Persia," he remarked with gravity.

I felt myself flush. Allah, he had barely set foot in the country! How had he managed to unearth that most wretched of proverbs so soon?

He studied my discomfort for a moment with quiet amusement.

"Never mind, Daroga," he said softly. "If I am ever seized by the need to shed royal blood, at least I now know where to find it."

I sensed the smile behind the mask, and in spite of my annoyance I could not help laughing with him.

"You will have to learn to muzzle your tongue at court," I warned him seriously. "Merciless wit is a very dangerous possession."

"I shall try to remember that… and in the meantime, all mockery aside, I am truly honored to sleep beneath your royal roof tonight."

I was moved by his genuine courtesy, astonished to see him shed his cold, abrasive manner and assume instead the demeanor of a perfect houseguest, charmingly civil and appreciative. This invitation to my home seemed to mean something deeply significant to him, and if it were not for the mask I could almost have believed I was entertaining a young gentleman from the British mission.

We sat together on the veranda in quiet civility, while my curious servants plied us with caleans, coffee, and ices; and it was there that my son stumbled upon us, while his attendant hovered apologetically at a distance, expecting rebuke.

"Father! You've been away for so long! I thought you were never, ever going to come back!"

I untwined myself from the urgent grasp that I had missed so much and set the boy back on his feet, steadying him when he seemed to lose his balance.

"Reza," I reproved gently, "this is no way to conduct yourself in front of guests."

Erik stood in silence as the child turned his vague, wandering glance toward him.

"May your heart never grow narrow, sir," came respectfully enough; and then, with a sudden burst of excitement that would no longer be contained within the prescribed limitations of decorum: "Oh, sir… are you
really
the greatest magician in the whole world?"

"Some have called me that."

Erik's voice was oddly gentle. He took the child's outstretched hand and turned it over in his grasp so that it seemed for a moment as though he studied the palm.