Phantom (34 page)

"Go away!" he panted. "I don't want you here… I don't want anyone…"

"Stop wasting your strength," I ordered. "Do you have any idea what you may have taken?"

"No," he muttered. "I've made no study… of your crude Persian toxins… I don't make a habit… of poisoning people as a rule. It's not a form of death I find…
esthetically
pleasing."

"Ground glass would account for the internal bleeding," I said grimly. "There are various substances with which it could have been combined. Most of them produce a protracted and agonizing death."

"How long?" he inquired shortly.

"Those who are lucky die within forty-eight hours, but I have known a strong man to linger up to ten days."

"Ten days," he echoed. "Then… I could get to Ashraf?"

I looked down at him in amazement.

"You could never endure that journey in this condition."

"I must," he said. "There are… instructions… I have yet to give… And I must see… with my own eyes… one last time."

I shook my head. "You'll die on the road long before we reach the palace. Why give yourself so much more unnecessary pain?"

"The pain is nothing… compared to the regret… the
frustration
! Nadir"—his voice dropped to an exhausted whisper and his hands clenched taut with agony on the rim of the marble bath—"please… order a
takheterewan
… secretly… and take me back to Mazanderan tonight"…"

I could not deny such a desperate plea for help.

Against my better judgment I did exactly as he asked.

The outer shell of the Mazanderan palace was nearing completion, sufficient of the building now standing— erected by the hands of more than a hundred laborers—to create a glorious illusion of the past.

The columnar structure, with its double porticoes on three sides, and its soaring, elegantly fluted shafts, echoed back to the glories of the Persian Empire under Darius and Xerxes. But the outer facade was a cunning illusion designed to deceive the mental defenses of an unwary courtier. Within, using the versatility of our high-quality baked bricks and with his own unique technical ingenuity, I knew that Erik intended to create an interior belonging entirely to the future. He had guarded his secrets jealously until now, revealing to the laborers only as much as they needed to know at each stage of construction. But rather than take those secrets to his grave, he entrusted me, at the outset of our mission, with documents that would ensure the structure's completion in the event of his death. I did not dare to look at them, and as I watched his protracted suffering on that never-ending journey, I fully expected to be required to hand them on to the master mason in charge.

When we reached the palace, Erik was carried into the echoing edifice on a litter and there, pulling himself up on one elbow, he looked around incredulously.

"Give me those papers!" he said in a voice that was suddenly thunderous with rage. "And fetch the master mason here to me now!"

He was on his feet when the trembling man came to kneel before him.

"You have not followed my instructions. Why?"

"Forgive me, master," the man stammered. "1 did my best… but the specifications were so—so complex… 1 did not understand them."

Erik snatched the riding whip from my hand and brought it down across the man's shoulder with a violence that made the fellow stumble backward.

"Next time you don't understand something," he said awfully, "ask, damn you!
Ask
!"

"You weren't here, master," sobbed the man in terror, "you weren't here to ask. It has been more than three weeks since you came to us."

Erik let the whip fall to the ground.

"Yes," he said faintly, "you are right… This is a damnable way to build. Get up now… arc you hurt?"

"No, master," said the mason, wonderingly.

"You are very fortunate," said Erik with a sigh, "that I lacked the strength to break your neck. Come to my tent now and I will go through the plans with you… give you my last instructions. You will listen very carefully—and you will not be afraid to tell me if you do not understand. I swear to you now that as long as you show me honesty I will show you no more anger."

I was present throughout that interview, but the technicalities of pivots and trapdoors and echo acoustics were well beyond me. For three hours Erik leaned on the little makeshift table, explaining and reexplaining with extraordinary patience, occasionally sketching an extra diagram to illustrate a particular point more clearly.

The hands of my watch stood at midnight before the master mason said that he understood everything.

"Are you sure," Erik persisted, "absolutely sure this time?"

"Yes, master."

Erik sighed.

I turned from the flap of the tent in time to see him fall.

By dawn he was delirious, wandering in dark nightmares of the past.

"It was an accident," he whispered, "it was an accident… I didn't mean to make her fall… I didn't want you to see… Oh, Father… why did you make me do it…
why
?"

As I bent over to place a water bottle to his lips, he clutched at my arm in terrible panic.

"Give me back the mask!" he sobbed. "Give me back the mask and let me go home… I hate it here… I hate this cage… this filthy cage!"

He fought with me like a madman for several minutes, and when he fell back on the pallet exhausted I was able to see tears glistening on the mask.

"Where's Sasha?" he suddenly demanded with quiet fear. "
Where is she
?"

"She's here," I said with hesitance. "She's here, Erik, she's—she's quite safe."

He closed his eyes.

"Don't let her out tonight," he begged, twisting his fingers in my sleeve. "Promise me you won't let her out… promise me!"

I promised; it seemed to calm him.

When he slipped from delirium into a coma, I had him carried the half mile to my house at Ashraf.

There was nothing more I could do for him now except permit him to die in some semblance of comfort, in a place where he had once shared a child's laughter.

My orders were strict on our arrival: Reza was not to be told of Erik's presence.

But before the end of the day someone had betrayed me and I found I had no option but to wheel the child into that deathly silent room.

"Why did they poison him?" Reza's speech was slurred now and increasingly difficult to follow. 1 bent down and placed one hand on the child's emaciated shoulder.

"You must understand that he has many enemies, Reza. He has become too powerful. There are many people who hate him and wish for his death."

"If I speak to him, will he hear me?"

"I don't think so, Reza… I don't think he can hear anything now."

"But he might," persisted the child, "he might. Father, may I stay here with you for a while?"

I had no heart to refuse. I wheeled the chair beside the bed, and when the child's fingers groped blindly across the coverlet I leaned over and guided his hand to Erik's thin wrist.

"I want you to wake up, Erik," said Reza simply. "My music man is broken and no one else knows how to mend it."

There was no response from the skeletal figure in the bed.

Over and over Reza repeated his request, with ever shriller intensity, until I knew I could not permit this terrible travesty to continue any longer. Then, as I moved toward the chair with quiet determination, I saw Erik's fingers stir briefly on the coverlet. The child saw nothing, of course, and I wheeled him from the room without speaking of it, not wishing to raise false hope.

And indeed it was not until the following night that Erik opened his eyes and looked up at me with quiet lucidity. "You should have told me it was broken," he said.

A month later, as we sat together on the veranda taking thick, sweet coffee with crushed cardamoms, a messenger from the khanum arrived bearing a letter which commanded Erik's immediate return to Tehran.

As I watched, Erik got up, brought his hands together briefly, almost in an attitude of prayer, and then opened them to reveal a heavy purse nestling on one palm.

"I never received this message," he said.

"Master?" The man took the purse from him and stared at it with obvious bewilderment.

"You did not survive your dangerous journey through the Elburz… a landslide… a tiger… a Turkoman— there are half a dozen deaths a solitary messenger could have met. Choose whichever pleases you and disappear. There is sufficient in that purse to ensure you never need to carry messages again. Go now and be sure you do not speak of this to anyone. If you betray me, I promise that I will take the greatest pleasure in personally arranging your extinction!"

When the man had gone I looked up with a sigh.

"She will send again, Erik. This can't buy you more than a few weeks' grace."

"Two months are all that I shall need."

"To finish the palace?" I said in astonishment. "Surely that is impossible."

He looked down on me with great pity.

"I am not speaking of the palace," he said gently.

I felt suddenly cold, as though all the blood had ceased to run in my veins.

"Two months," I echoed. "Erik, surely you are mistaken, he must have longer than that—he must!"

He sat down beside me and leaned forward in his chair, forcing me to look at him.

"Nadir… the child does not deserve to suffer all that will very soon lie ahead of him."

"What are you telling me?" I said numbly.

"I am telling you nothing—merely asking you to remember that death can come in many shades. Some are harsh and infinitely painful to look upon; others can be as peaceful and beautiful as the setting sun. I am an artist, and many colors lie upon my palette. Let me paint him a rainbow, and give you the means to decide where it ends."

I let him paint that rainbow.

For two months the kaleidoscope whirled, making beautiful, many-hued pictures that still glow in my memory like fresh oils. The sorcery of an incomparable genius focused like the sun's rays on the tinder-dry imagination of a child. My house was filled with magic and mystery as Erik seemed to cause the very earth itself to yield long-kept secrets. Windows opened into a world of fantasy, and bridges of music spanned deep chasms into a strange and secret realm. It was a timeless period of wonder, bounded only by the rapid creep of a cruel reality that no magic could keep at bay.

Two months indeed were all I needed to see the terrible signposts at which Erik had darkly hinted. The evening that Reza began to choke unexpectedly on the drink I was holding to his lips, I suddenly understood what horrors lay ahead.

A dull heaviness closed in around me as 1 sent a servant to fetch Erik from the palace site.

He came at once; and as he stood before me in his white mask and his black cloak, he looked every inch the khanum's Angel of Doom.

Taking a vial from his sleeve, he placed a little colorless liquid in a small glass of sherbet and handed it to me.

"It will be quick," he said quietly, "and he will feel nothing."

I stared at the finality of that glass with horror.

"No," I said with sudden panic, "I can't do this. I will let nature take her course after all."

He looked at me steadily.

"Nature is a cruel and unfeeling goddess. Will you abandon your child into her merciless hands?"

Covering my face I turned away from his relentless gaze.

"I am his father… how can you know, how can you understand, what it means to take life from your own child?"

He was silent for a moment; then I felt him lay his fingers briefly on my arm,

"This is no longer your burden," he said softly. "
Wait for me here
."

Once again experiencing that curious paralysis of will, I watched him take up the Koran and pass into the adjoining room.

Time slid through my limp grasp and there was a sluggish throbbing in my head that seemed to extend to all my muscles. His voice was like a dead weight in my mind, dragging me down and numbing all inclination to resist.

The moment of choice had been taken from me and now the last sound my son would hear was the voice of an infidel… an unbeliever…

Swirling, drowning in that bottomless lake, 1 grasped the knife of my faith and freed myself from the strangling weeds that were settling around me like a shroud. 1 broke loose from the spell that bound me and rushed into the silent chamber beyond.

Save for the muted glow of a candle in the prayer niche, the room was in darkness now. All the windows along the garden side of the wall had been pushed wide open to admit the wind that was blowing in from the Caspian Sea.

Erik turned as I entered the room. For a moment the wind took his cloak, making it swirl out around him as he came toward me with all the slow majesty of a winged angel returning to earth.

"There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet," I whispered hoarsely.

There was a faint answering sigh in response, the barest flutter of breath from Reza's slack white lips.

The boy was already dead when Erik laid him in my arms.

We do not bury our dead in coffins.

Washed and shrouded, Reza's small body was committed directly to the earth, in accordance to the customs of my faith. I dutifully opened my doors to those who came to pay their condolences; I saw that the coffee and tea and traditional halvah were served, and on the fortieth day the women of my household covered their heads while verses from the Koran were intoned solemnly and prayers said to send the spirit of the departed to paradise.

When all was done that needed to be done, I went back to court. Erik was already there. The morning after Reza's death an armed guard had arrived with orders to escort him to Tehran, and I believe he was relieved to go with them. I was unable to express my confused and contradictory emotions. I let him ride away without speaking the word which might have lifted that leaden shroud of grief and guilt from his shoulders. This time he did not look back at the house and I knew he would never set foot on my estate from choice again.

I had barely arrived at the Ark when I received orders to wait upon the shah, and I went to his chambers with careless indifference, prepared to accept whatever punishment was doubtless to be visited upon me for aiding and abetting Erik's lengthy period of absence. I half hoped for imprisonment, since that at least would spare me the daily ordeal of attending my child's unhappy murderer.