Read The Waters of Eternity Online
Authors: Howard Andrew Jones
Tags: #Fantasy, #Historical, #Fiction
The Waters of Eternity (13 page)
“Well, here we are, Dabir,” the captain said, “and here they all are, just as you said. Are all of them guilty?”
“It seems so,” Dabir answered. “A number of Bassam’s old lovers joined forces to seek revenge, by the most expedient means possible. These others gambled on who would succeed, probably because each of the women preferred their means of killing him. Any one of these,” Dabir gestured to the crowd at large, “might have done the proper thing and turned over the matter to the city guard, but they were all too eager to lay their money down.”
Fakhir chewed at his thick beard and scowled. “What am I to do with so many prisoners? And rich men’s daughters!”
“You shall not arrest this one,” Bassam said, clasping Samar tighter, “for I am taking her to wife.”
There was a combined gasp from the assembled crowd, and mutters of disbelief.
“She alone sought to warn me,” Bassam declared.
“She set the whole thing up!” someone called. And others shouted, but Fakhir called for quiet.
Bassam spoke on. “She was afraid to warn me directly, because she knew how these murderers would react.”
There were more shouts now about him being a dolt, and various cries of innocence, and improbable speculation about Samar’s ancestry. Again Fakhir called for quiet. He turned to Dabir. “Is this as he says?”
Dabir looked pained. He considered the crowd, and Bassam and Samar as well. “Captain,” he said finally, “here is my thought. Take down the names of all those who are here, and if Bassam ends up murdered, throw all of them into prison. As to their fine, give over all the wagers in yon coffer to the night watch so that more men can be hired and less mischief can be done.”
At this there was a great outcry, if you can believe it, for many of those gamblers thought this unfair and wanted their money back, no matter that they had been taking odds on a murder. Fakhir was arbiter, though, and thought this a fine idea, so long as it pleased Bassam.
The rich man nodded. “Aye. For if not for them and all this nonsense, I would never have learned of the strength of Samar’s love.”
So did matters conclude in that tavern. Bassam was as good as his word and immediately turned over a small fortune to the Tower of Iskander so that they might repair their roof and expand their collection of books besides. Even more money was spent upon the wedding ceremony, which was held only two weeks later. We received an invitation, and a personal note from Bassam, thanking us both at great length. I heard from Captain Fakhir and other friends that it was a most magnificent feast. There were lavish gifts for all comers, and entertainers had been summoned from as far away as Baghdad—indeed, there was so much celebration that it went on for nearly a week. Yet Dabir and I ate quietly at home each evening. Sometimes the glad shouts from the house three streets over was loud enough even to reach us.
Finally, one evening over dinner I could bear it no longer. “Dabir,” I said, “why are we not there?”
“I cannot decide if I did the right thing,” he said, setting down his knife and looking over at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Samar wasn’t warning him to save him—she was trying to drive up the price of the wagers. I’m sure of it. Likely she planned to have the deed done properly after a few more attempts on him failed.”
He amazed me. “You knew that, and said nothing?”
“Well.” He sheepishly offered empty palms. “I thought both of them might be less trouble if they were married. And it did save Fakhir from finding room to jail all that crowd. And,” he added, “it was a very lovely neck for the headman’s block.”
I stared at him a moment, then laughed. “Do you think she knows?”
“That I know? Oh, I’m sure. Did you not see the way she was watching me while I talked to Captain Fahkir? She was certain I would call her out.”
“And you do not think that she will kill him now?”
“Why would she? She has him, and his gratitude. And he has a great deal of money.”
I mulled this over.
“Some marriages are built on much less,” Dabir said. “And she will surely watch her step, knowing that I know the truth.”
“In most marriages,” I said, “the murder attempt comes after the vow. Perhaps they’ll have a better chance with it out of the way beforehand.”
Dabir chuckled. “Aye, well, we shall simply have to hope that the odds are with them.”
Asim stalked out of my subconscious with his personality and authorial tone pretty much fully formed. The setting where he and his best friend were going to adventure, though, wasn’t as clear, and I toyed briefly with the idea of a fantasy world loosely modeled on ancient Arabia before I decided to follow the lead of Clark Ashton Smith, who’d invented an imaginary corner of medieval France for a short story cycle. I fashioned a quadrant of the Abbasid Caliphate that never really existed, north of Mosul, and that is where I set Dabir and Asim’s first short stories.
Once I sat down to draft a Dabir and Asim novel I decided to ground the setting even more firmly in our own reality, with Mosul taking the place of the make-believe Dariashan, and I’ve updated the older short stories to reflect that change.
Very few people who actually existed appear in these stories, though they are occasionally mentioned. Creatures of myth wander through, and, in order to keep readers guessing, they may not necessarily act as described in legend. But then it must be remembered that different storytellers themselves did not consistently describe monsters, no matter that the monsters had the same name. The idea of traits that can be cataloged for creatures like vampires and werewolves is more of a modern conceit. Specific attributes and behaviors tended to be more fluid, even if some of the basics remained the same.
Almost all of Dabir and Asim’s short adventures are included here (although I fully intend to write more). There are three exceptions. One of the stories, “Whispers from the Stone,” is incorporated into the narrative of
The Desert of Souls
. Another, “The Dream Horn,” is slated to be printed in an upcoming anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment. The third, “An Audience with the King,” was the first Dabir and Asim story I ever wrote and is, frankly, goofier than anything else that followed. For now at least I’ve decided to leave it out of circulation. Perhaps I’ll release a revised version someday as an apocryphal story.
A few might be interested to know that not all the stories collected here take place in the interval between the first and second novel. Asim wrote of his adventures with Dabir late in life, and did not always recount things in chronological order. Thus “The Waters of Eternity” takes place at a later time than anything yet written about the characters. More obviously, so does “The Slayer’s Tread,” by which point Jafar al-Barmaki has become the vizier and Dabir and Asim have already encountered the villainous Acteon at least once before.
I’ve discussed how much these stories owe to reading the works of favorite authors (Harold Lamb, Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett, Roger Zelazny, Catherine L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, Fritz Leiber, C. S. Forester, and others), but in a very real way they might not have existed without a series of gifted editors. Fraser Ronald was the first of these; he gave the original Dabir and Asim story a home beside some of my early fiction on his
Sword’s Edge
Web zine. Daniel Blackston was a friend and enthusiastic supporter both at
Future Mystery Anthologies
magazine and in his Pitch-Black anthologies. Without the encouragement of these two men I might not have kept on with the writing of the tales. Later came the talented Chris Cevasco, who published the late lamented historical magazine
Paradox,
and Eric Flint, who ran
Jim Baen’s Universe,
among other fine (and even better known) accomplishments. I am grateful to both of these men, as well as to Ahmed Khan, who helped me fix some historical flaws in “Servant of Iblis” when he reprinted it in his excellent anthology,
Mosque Among the Stars
. John O’Neill, Black Gate’s publisher and editor, has provided a safe haven not just for my work, but for the work of countless other writers of the fantastic. He is long overdue recognition for his commitment to modern speculative fiction with an adventurous twist, and I am particularly grateful to him for championing heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery, subgenres that in too many other quarters are dismissed out of hand. Most recently, Peter Wolverton of Thomas Dunne Books has stepped in to offer sage advice for final cleanup on these tales. Like my wife, sometimes it seems he knows the voices of Dabir and Asim better than I, for both Pete and Shannon are never shy about letting me know when my heroes don’t sound quite like themselves.
Over the years the drafts of these stories passed through the hands of talented critiquers who provided feedback and brilliant suggestions, most especially Shauna Bryce, Chris Hocking, Eric Knight, Angela McConnell, Beth Shope, Clint Werner, Dr. Mark Krahling, and my beloved wife and muse, Shannon. To all of them, and many more, I am indebted, though I owe my deepest thanks to you, the reader, for taking the chance on them. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy what you find here.
“Filled with adventure, magic, compelling characters and twists that are twisty. This is seriously cool stuff.” -- Steven Brust,
New York Times
bestselling author of the Vlad Taltos series
Read on for a preview of the first full-length novel of Dabir and Asim’s adventures, “highly recommended” by Glen Cook
THE DESERT OF SOULS
On Sale Now
And Don’t Miss
THE BONES OF THE OLD ONES
(on sale Summer 2012)
1
The parrot lay on the floor of his cage, one claw thrust stiffly toward the tiny wooden swing suspended above him. The black olive clenched in his beak was the definitive sign that Pago was a corpse, for while he had fooled us all by playing dead in the past, he had never failed to consume an olive. To be sure, I nudged the cage. It shook, the swing wobbled, and the bird slid minutely but did not move a single feather of his own accord.
“He is dead,” Jaffar said simply behind me; simply, but with the weight of the universe hung upon the final word.
I turned to my master, who sat with his back to me upon the stone bench of his courtyard. The second-story balcony, from which the cage hung, draped Jaffar in shadow. Beyond him, sunlight played in the rippling water that danced from a fountain. Flowers blossomed upon the courtyard plants and wild birds warbled gaily. Another parrot, in a cage upon the far wall, even called out that it was time for a treat, as he was wont to do. But my master paid no heed to any of this.
I stepped into the sunlight so that I might face him. Upon another bench, nearby, the poet Hamil sat with stylus and paper. There was no love in the look he bestowed me, and he returned to his scribblings with the air of a showman.
“Master,” I said, “I am sorry. I, too, was fond of Pago.”
“Who could not be?” Jaffar asked wearily. He was but a few years younger than my twenty-five, but due to time indoors looked younger still, no matter his full beard. His face was wan, from a winter illness that had also shed some of his plumpness.
“He was the brightest bird here,” Jaffar continued in that same miserable tone.
“Brighter than many in your employ,” Hamil said without looking up.
“Too true,” Jaffar agreed.
“Is there some way that I can help, Master?” I was the captain of Jaffar’s guard and sometimes his confidant; the matter of bird death, however, was outside the field of my knowledge, and I did not understand why he had summoned me. It is true that I had found Pago entertaining, for in addition to playing dead, he could mimic the master and his chief eunuch, and even sometimes answered the call to prayer by bowing thrice. He did this only when it pleased him to do so, which, as my nephew Mahmoud once noted, was far too much like many men he knew. Also Pago had once perched upon the poet’s chest when Hamil had passed out from consuming the fruit of the grape, and pinched his long thin nose heartily. That had pleased me so that I brought Pago the choicest of olives whenever I knew I would pass by his cage.
“Do you suspect he has been killed?” Jaffar asked.
I blinked. “It had not occurred to me.”
“The master lay ill for weeks,” Hamil said with the patient air of one explaining to a simpleton. “Might it be that someone, in failing to poison him, poisoned one of his most cherished companions?”
“It may be,” I replied, wishing that someone had, instead, poisoned the poet, “but the hakim did not believe the master to have been poisoned.”