Sinbad and The Eye of the Tiger (22 page)

On the sand Melanthius had drawn a strange, grotesque face in the sand, a gorgonlike face with a huge gaping mouth. Sinbad craned his neck to look, then asked the Greek philosopher, “What will that mean to Trog? Or to anyone?” He stopped, recognizing the drawing. “It’s the face drawn in the scrolls.”

“The face that marks the entrance to the Valley, the Gate to the Shrine . . .”

The huge hulking figure just stared at the scratching in the sand and Sinbad made a noise of disgust. “It means nothing to him . . .”

The baboon peered at the drawing, then started gibbering and grunting up at the huge beast-man. Slowly, very slowly, Trog nodded his head. The baboon chittered and jumped up and down and the caveman still nodded.

Melanthius stepped forward to ask a vital question. “Where?” He peered up at the impassive face of the troglodyte. “Where?”

The baboon made more grunts and then Trog slowly raised his immense arm and pointed. Sinbad, good sailor that he was, noted the direction, compared it with the position of the sun and estimated the time of day.

Melanthius was delighted, and he took the other hand of the great beast-man and said, “Excellent, my good fellow! Excellent!”

Sinbad studied the drawing in the sand, then his booted foot went out and he obliterated the drawing, smoothing the sand until there was nothing but boot marks.

Zenobia’s clawed foot scratched on the polished metal deck of the sleek bronze boat. She held on to the shrouds tightly, for her balance was not too good and the ship rocked steadily from the crash of ice into the water. All around them icebergs were shedding weakened chunks, splitting and forming new icebergs. Ahead of them was the immense wall of the ice pack itself, constantly shedding grotesquely large blocks of ice, which usually flipped over to hide most of their great bulk underwater. Rock-hard splinters of ice broke away and fell, splashing loudly into the chill sea. Cracks like explosions split away more and more chunks, some small, some as large as temples or small hills.

The bronze ship rocked steadily from the waves set up all around them by the icebergs as they shed unstable sections, and from ahead, the birthplace of the great frozen mountains.

Rafi ran up the ladder, his feet clanging on the metal rungs, crying out to his mother. “Look, there! There!” He pointed ahead at what she had already seen—the cave opening.

Rafi braced himself on the poop deck by his mother and looked breathlessly ahead. The cave entrance was like a shark’s mouth, triangular, toothed with great spears of ice hanging down. He glanced down at the Minaton, who was still steadily rowing, his bronze arms moving rhythmically.

“Make for the cave!” Zenobia ordered. “But slowly!”

The bronze ship slowed. Great hunks of ice continued to fall from the face of the ice pack that capped the world, crushing into previous ice flows, breaking them and tilting up huge slabs. The water was almost white with the activity, and the noise, sharp edged and shrill in the chilled air, was loud and dangerous-sounding.

Zenobia’s teeth gleamed in a triumphant smile. “At last! The entrance to the Tunnel of Ice. The way to Hyperborea!”

Rafi gulped. “We are going in . . . ?”

Zenobia nodded, her eyes hot upon the blue-white ice wall, “Minaton!” she cried. “Cease!” She studied the entrance carefully. “It was too narrow for Sinbad’s ship! He did not pass this way! Now we shall be there before them!” She cried out to the bronze creature below. “The tunnel, Minaton! The tunnel!” She pointed with her arm out stiffly, aiming at the mouth of the tunnel. Then she shivered and clutched her tiger and panther fur coat around her tightly. Her bronze boat moved toward the cave opening, the Minaton directing the gleaming ship toward the hole. Rafi looked nervous, and his eyes were watching the higher reaches of the ice pack. The closer they got, the bigger they realized the wall of ancient ice was. He bit at his lip and turned his rings nervously as the chunks of ice broke away to the left and right, falling into the sea with loud, shattering noises.

A chunk fell from the top and crashed into the sea just ahead of them, falling across the cave mouth. Rafi twitched, but his mother never moved. They approached the cave mouth far too swiftly for Rafi’s nerves and before he could formulate a line of argument for not going in, they were.

A splash behind them caused Rafi to turn, a curse upon his lips. A chunk of ice as large as the ship had fallen just behind them, the wave tipping the vessel forward, thrusting it deeper and more swiftly into the cave.

“Get a torch, Rafi,” Zenobia ordered.

“Yes, Mother,” he said nervously, and ran down the brass ladder to light and mount a torch in the prow. All around him were the sloping walls of ice, wet and glistening, with huge stalactites that dripped water down upon them. He lit a second torch and carried it back to the poop deck to mount it in a bracket. Then he shivered. His furs were proof against most of the cold, but his shivers came from fear, not the weather.

The ice tunnel was big—big enough for the mast of the bronze ship, but still Rafi felt trapped, enclosed . . . caught.

The Aurora Borealis was a glittering, shimmering, ethereal curtain that hung in the sky mysteriously. Hassan grunted into Sinbad’s ear as they climbed the hill toward the mountains that Melanthius had said were the ones that concealed the Valley of Hyperborea.

“Beautiful . . . but cold, too, huh, Captain?”

“Aye, Hassan. Beautiful . . . but you have to come so far north to see them that you are in dangerous territory.”

Everyone paused to get a good look at the awesome sight, even Trog, who was carrying the baboon. One of the sailors started walking again and as he passed the massive troglodyte he muttered to his companion, “Where was he when we were lugging those sledges, hey?”

The prow of Zenobia’s ship was a cluster of flaming torches. Rafi pulled out a burnt-out one and threw it into the water below, where it sizzled. Then he lit a new one in the flames of the others and jammed it into the bracket. Then he scampered down and back to where his mother stood. He felt much safer close to her. Their eyes probed the darkness ahead, down the sloping walls of the ice tunnel, past the light of the torches, searching for the way, hoping to avoid any ice falls or traps.

“I see no evidence of passage by Sinbad’s ship,” Rafi said.

Zenobia gave her son a quick look. “Ships seldom leave tracks upon the waters, my son.” Rafi flushed and was silent.

Suddenly the torchlight revealed a startling sight and Zenobia’s command to the Minaton echoed in the icy vaults. “Minaton! Ease your labor!”

The ship still drifted, but the torches were enough light for them to see an extraordinary sight. Within the walls of ice on both sides were ghostly shapes, frozen in a tomb of eternal ice. Rafi gasped at the numbers revealed by the blazing torches. They seemed to stretch on and on, a long enormous catacomb.

Zenobia grasped the railing with hands almost as clawed as her clawed foot. The frozen bodies of strange humans formed a bizarre and terrifying mural along both sides of the winding tunnel. Some of the bodies seem perfectly preserved, with odd clothing and weapons. Others were petrified, withered and ancient beyond belief, with all fabric rotted away. Still others were formless and disturbingly hideous, and some were little more than arrangements of skulls and bones.

“The last of the Arimaspi?” Rafi whispered, his voice quavering with fear.

“Who can say?” Zenobia said, her eyes drinking in the sight.

Rafi gulped. The place frightened him more than anything except the thought of losing his mother. “Let us go back,” he said to his mother in a rasping whisper. “We shouldn’t be here . . .”

“No,”
she said firmly, her eyes darting from shrouded figure to mummified corpse.

Rafi’s chin trembled and he closed his eyes against the sight. The contents of the frozen catacomb shook him and again he pleaded with his magician mother to go back.

“No,”
she said without looking at him. “Even if we
wanted
to we couldn’t.” She gestured at the walls around them. “There isn’t room to turn.”

“Please . . . this place . . .”

"No,
Rafi.” Her eyes came around to glare at him and he ducked his face away. “Would you deny your mother a chance at changing
this?”
She thrust out her clawed foot and he felt like retching.

“No, no . .”

They drifted in silence, but Rafi noticed something. “Mother . . .” She ignored him, but he persisted, the fear that something was going badly wrong driving him on. “Mother . . .”

She looked at him with exaggerated annoyance. Rafi pointed at the Minaton, then at the water. “The Minaton is not rowing . . . but the boat is still moving . . .”

Zenobia took an immediate interest. “Yes . . . yes . . . there is an extraordinary force pulling us like a mighty magnet . . .” Her lips pulled back in a grimace. “Drawing us to the Shrine!” She laughed, a strangled crackle that echoed against the ice walls. “Pulling us like a mighty, invisible chain . . . drawing us north!”

Her laugh thundered in the tunnel of translucent ice and Rafi gulped, staring into the darkness ahead. The torches were still revealing shadowy figure after shadowy shape encased in the ice. He shivered again, then again, but not from the cold.

“Haunted . . .” he whispered to himself.

S
inbad and his companions moved faster now, their excitement and urgency matching the giant strides of the hairy Trog, who led them now, straight at the looming mountains across the green valley they had first entered.

“Six wives?” Hassan asked Maroof.

The black sailor shrugged. “Mohammed had six once. You remember him? Thin, exhausted, worn-out fellow?”

“Aye. But then he let his harem run him, instead of he running them.
I
wouldn’t let that happen,” grunted the sailor smugly.

“Uh-huh. But six
lovely
wives . . . each more beautiful than the other? And nothing to hinder you? Tell me you wouldn’t try to satisfy them all!”

Hassan grunted again. “Aye, at first. To sample them all, of course. But later on, no. I’d run things at
my
pace. You’ll see.”

The black Maroof laughed at him. “Aye, and after you’ve given these beauties a good taste of it,
then
you’ll change things around?” The sailor laughed heartily and slapped his companion on his back. “Sure you will, old friend, sure you will.”

“I won’t end up like Mohammed, worn out before his time, with that haunted look.”

“Perhaps,” conceded the black sailor. “But you might consider less than six, of course.”

“Less than six?” The burly Hassan seemed outraged by the suggestion. “But we were promised . . . !”

Laughing, Maroof shoved at him. “Each chooses his own death, and there are worse ways to go, eh?”

“Five at the
least . . .
”

“Well, consider this. One, of course, to cook and sew and fetch and carry. Then another for variety, and to keep the first one company while you are drinking in the tavern.” Hassan nodded in agreement. “Then a third, so that two cannot make a truce and conspire against you.”

“And a fourth?”

Maroof nodded. “So that they will form two friendships and never be able to get a majority to act against you.”

“But I would own them! They must do as I say!” protested Hassan angrily.

The other seafaring man nodded wisely. “Of course . . . except that no man ever truly owned a woman. You can own a camel, you can own a ship, you can own a sword . . . but not a woman. Give them enough time and they will own you, no matter how much you should pay for them.”

“That is another thing,” Hassan said morosely. “How much should I pay for a wife?”

Maroof shrugged expressively as they climbed. “Whatever you do, it will not be right. If you pay more for one than another, that one will lord it over the other. The cheaper wife will shirk her duties and sulk.”

“Perhaps I should buy six . . . or four . . . at the same time and price?”

“If you could, but that is buying quantity, not quality. You must think of quality first,” he said. “One
good
wife is worth several bad ones, regardless of the purchase price.” He looked shrewdly at his younger companion. “Never buy a wife when you are lustful. Slake your lust and
then
go buying.”

“That seems . . . but she must
make
me lustful, just to look at her!” A leer crossed Hassan’s face.

Maroof bobbed his head. “Aye, but only when your loins are not full. You must think of other things than the pleasures of the bed, my friend. That is important, true, but it is not all. You might even consider an ugly woman.”

“An ugly wo—!” Hassan was shocked.

“Aye, for she will be eternally grateful. Make her your first wife and she will keep the others in line.”

Hassan grinned wolfishly. “Good advice . . . I shall start with four, an ugly one that can cook superbly . . . then three beauties . . .
then
I shall consider the purchase of one or two more, as I might come across them. For spice and variety, of course.”

“Of course,” sighed the black Maroof. “Variety is the greatest aphrodisiac of all.”

“Aphrodisiacs?” Hassan asked quickly. “With six wives . . . well, four to start . . . one might have need of such . . . um . . . aids.” He looked sideways at his friend. “What do you know of such things?”

“What I said is still the best advice. Variety.” He sighed, seeing his friend’s curious countenance. “There is Aquileus, found in eagle’s nest. It is purple in color and comes from Persia. The Egyptians, now, they are much more elaborate about it. They hold with several baths a day—”

“Ugh,” Hassan grunted in disgust. “A
day?”

The other man nodded. “The dress of the women is diaphanous, for they hold that the subtly veiled body will arouse the erotic impulse more than the totally unclothed one.”

The burly Hassan thought a moment. “That is often true, yes,” he said. “Please go on.”

“They use dipilatories to remove the hair, and much perfume. As you know, they use more cosmetics than most. They use plant juices to make the eyes glow, and of course, as many ornaments as possible to increase the visual attention and the sensual inclinations.”