The Eye of Midnight (20 page)

In the darkness he bowed his head and sighed. “What a fool I've been,” he whispered to himself. “How did it ever come to this?”

Maxine laid her hand gently on his leg.

“I'm sorry, my dear,” he said. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Is there still hope, Grandpa?” she asked.

“Hope?” said Grandpa. “Yes, of course.” He did his best to give her a reassuring smile, though he accomplished little in the dark.

“A popular poem comes to mind,” he said, “about a sportsman named Casey—a cricket player, I believe. But it might well be applied to our current situation.”

He rested his head against the wall, reciting slowly:

“The lane is long, someone has said, that never turns again,/And Fate, though fickle, often gives a second chance to men.”

“A second chance, huh?” said William, who had not been sleeping either, apparently. “Well, it better get here quick, or we're all in big trouble.”

“There's something else, Grandpa,” said Maxine. “They've got your jinni.”

The colonel raised his eyebrows with mild interest. “Do they indeed?”

“Can they bring it to life, do you think?”

“I doubt that very highly, my dear.” He chuckled. “The Rafiq has heard the old legends, I'm sure. He would be exceedingly pleased to have a fiery jinni at his beck and call, but I suspect he has erected the
al-kaljin
more as a sort of trophy—a symbol of the Hashashin's dominion and power.”

Maxine leaned her head on Grandpa's chest. “Maybe
we
could wake it up,” she said dreamily. “Maybe it could help us get out of this horrid place.”

Grandpa laid his chin on her head, indulging her fantasy. But in the darkness William tugged thoughtfully at his ear, repeating Maxine's words under his breath.

His thoughts were interrupted. Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. The
fida'i
were coming for them.

A key turned in the padlock, and the
fida'i
entered. They dragged Grandpa and the cousins from the cell and pushed them into the corridor with Binny Benedetti, who staggered as he walked. The wrists of the two men were bound, and their captors herded them all into the temple, where the drumbeat thundered out across the open floor.

Blazing torches surrounded the empty hall, and the walls were draped with long black banners emblazoned with the symbol of the Hashashin. A fire had been kindled in the enormous furnace, and the inferno leapt hungrily inside, framing the dark shape of the jinni high above the center of the dais. Its long shadow stretched across the temple, and the statue flickered glossy black in the orange glow of the flames.

William and Maxine were separated and lashed to the pair of boilers at the very back of the temple—the thick ropes cinched tight around them until they could scarcely breathe—but Binny and Grandpa were brought to the center of the floor and made to kneel atop the great seal of the twelve-pointed star.

The Rafiq sat at the foot of the jinni, watching over all, his knuckled fingers gripping the armrests of the black throne like grasping talons. Behind him stood a man in a sleeveless bloodred cassock that brushed the floor. His scalp was smooth-shaven, the sockets of his eyes were smeared black with kohl, and he bore a great scimitar, which he shifted from one shoulder to the other as the prisoners were led into the temple.

All around Colonel Battersea and Binny, the floor of the factory began to fill with the phantom shapes of the pale-cloaked
fida'i,
and with gray-haired attendants, and with male and female servants, until the hall was awash with bodies and the room began to seethe in cadence with the drum. Then came other strains, strident and ecstatic, to join the steady throb. A group of pipers seated before the dais blew a droning dirge on flutes of bone, brass finger cymbals rang on unseen hands, and a high-pitched human wail rose above it all—a plaintive, frantic yodel that made the cousins' hearts beat hectically.

The tattoo of the drum quickened, and the music swelled, and the press of the faithful on the floor parted. A procession of twelve men approached the dais. They were dressed in hooded white robes girdled with crimson sashes, and their faces were grim as they ascended the steps and took their seats on either side of the black throne.

Twelve women carrying silver pitchers mounted the steps and stood before the twelve chairs, unwinding their headscarves and laying them across the knees of the seated men. They poured steaming water into the bowls at the feet of the
fida'i,
and, taking up straight razors and silver shears, they shaved the men's beards and trimmed their hair and mustaches neat, until the twelve sat freshly combed and clean-shaven and hardly recognizable from their former selves.

Gray-capped valets came forward next and undid the scarlet sashes of the twelve and removed their white robes, and the
fida'i
stood upon the stage, stripped of all but their linen undergarments. Finally the brown paper bundles under each chair were undone, and the contents were revealed.

Inside each was a different livery—disguises of various form and function. The
fida'i
donned these strange vestments, and Maxine and William looked no longer upon desert assassins but on inhabitants of the West.

Post carriers and milkmen; police officers and whitewashers; bespectacled salesmen and collared priests—all standing in a solemn row.

The transformation was chilling and complete.

When all was accomplished, the Rafiq rose from his throne and walked the length of the dais, stopping behind each chair to mutter instructions of bloodshed and treachery, and then he held up his hand. The music fell silent, and he cried out in a loud voice for all to hear.

The meaning of the utterance was lost on William and Maxine, but in the frenzy of his rant and the wildness of his eyes, they felt his lust for destruction and power. The sound of the words drummed deliriously in their ears, rising in a feverish torrent, until at last he stopped and pointed a finger across the room, toward the iron gate and the city without.

“The hour has come,” he called, and his voice rang like tempered steel. “The Old Man of the Mountain bids you rise and kill.”

“We are living daggers,” intoned the twelve
fida'i
as one, “thrust by the hand of the Old Man.”

A great bellows was worked, and the flames in the furnace crackled ravenously and leapt within, so that even across the temple William and Maxine winced as they felt the heat on their faces. The drum began again, more urgent yet, and in the corner of the hall the windlass creaked, and the spiked portcullis began to rise. The faithful on the floor yammered and shook, their voices rising in an overwhelming clamor.

“Go!” shrieked the Rafiq above the din. “Go forth and destroy!”

The
fida'i
stirred and staggered, trancelike, from the dais, and William and Maxine watched in horror as they pushed through the grasping throng toward the open portal. At that moment, to the cousins' astonishment, the ropes that bound them fell slack. They shed the cords and turned to see Nura standing behind the boilers, her black dagger bare and flashing in her hand.

“Nura!” gasped Maxine. “Where have you been?”

The small girl didn't answer. Her eyes were focused on the dais, where the Rafiq motioned to the bare-armed swordsman behind him. Raising his finger, he turned and pointed toward Binny and Grandpa at the center of the floor.

Nura stiffened and took a trembling step backward, as if she might turn and flee, but she mastered herself and faced the cousins once more.

“There is something I must tell you,” she said, her words tumbling out in a frantic rush. She gave them both an earnest look. “You are my family,” she said.

“Sure, Nura,” replied William distractedly as he watched the scarlet-draped swordsman cross the dais. “You're like family to us, too.”

“No,” said Nura, shaking her head fiercely. “We are
family.
Flesh and blood.” She pointed toward the kneeling form of Colonel Battersea. “Your grandfather is my grandfather, too,” she said. “I was afraid to tell you. Afraid of what you might think. I imagined that you would look at the color of my skin and not believe the truth—that we are sharing the same blood, the same name.”

She raised her hand, palm outward, fingers outstretched. Maxine stared at it in bewilderment, and then she raised her hand as well and nodded. For one moment, their palms met and their fingers locked.

A single tear slid down Nura's cheek.

“Remember,” she said. “We belong to each other. Always.” And with that she turned and darted away.

“Nura, wait!” cried William, but it was too late. He started after her, but what he saw next made his knees go weak beneath him.

The swordsman descended the steps. He drew his scimitar as he crossed the floor, and when he had reached the prostrate forms of Grandpa and Binny, he spread his feet and raised the prodigious blade.

William and Maxine couldn't bear to watch. They clenched their eyes shut and abandoned every hope.

But in that hideous instant a great clatter filled the temple.

A pale horse thundered past the boilers, straight into the assembly of the
fida'i,
with Nura on its back. Its tail was high, its ears were pinned back flat, and its eyes rolled white as it slammed into the crush with a crunch of bone and sinew. Nura kicked the mare in the flanks, urging it deeper into the center of the crowd, and every soul in the temple turned to gaze at the unexpected entrance of the small girl and the ashen horse.

She never reached Colonel Battersea. Her hopeless charge fell short. In the midst of a hundred clawing hands, the mare reared and made an unearthly sound, and Nura tumbled from its back beside the twelve-pointed star.

Maxine screamed in horror as she watched the girl fall. At the center of the temple Nura floundered and tried to stand, but the
fida'i
swarmed over her in fury.

Nura's arrival had thrown the Hashashin into howling disarray. Seizing his opportunity, Grandpa lunged to his feet, driving his shoulder into the midsection of the executioner. He swung his bound hands like a mallet, clubbing the man to his knees, and the curved sword clattered on the steps. In a single motion Grandpa scooped up the fallen blade and freed Binny's wrists and then his own. He pushed the gangster toward the open gate, and then, catching the terrified horse by the mane, he swung up on her back.

The mare bucked and launched her rear hooves, sending one of the
fida'i
sliding across the floor in a sodden pulp. Colonel Battersea posted in the saddle, settling the mare beneath him, and plunged her forward into the masses. His sword swept down along the horse's gray flanks, and the Hashashin fell away before him like spindrift breaking on a rocky shore. Cleaving a path to the bottom of the steps and sawing hard on the reins, he wheeled the horse to face the center of the dais.

The Rafiq's eyes burned with a smoldering rage, and he extended a long finger, pointing at Grandpa as if he meant to hold him frozen with the gesture. He spoke a word of contempt, and the faithful rallied to his call, swarming around Colonel Battersea like flies to a fresh carcass.

The pale horse shouldered through the throng of cloaked figures, her withers streaked with blood and sweat, and Grandpa slanted in the saddle and smote down the closing ranks behind. A single
fida'i
broke from the boiling mob and bounded to the end of the dais, taking a great flying leap off the top step and bowling Grandpa from the saddle onto the floor, but the old colonel rose and shrugged the enemy aside. All around him the Hashashin fell back before the sweeping scimitar.

Maxine and William watched their grandfather in awe. His years dropped away as he wheeled and slipped unscathed among the clutching masses. They had never seen anything as magnificent as the sight of the weathered knight in the gray flannel suit, his legs spread wide and his bright sword swinging in a savage compass—a shelter from the evil that assailed them.

But Colonel Battersea's heroic stand was doomed at last to falter.

“Things fall apart,”
the poet Yeats once wrote,
“the center cannot hold,”
and in the end Grandpa staggered. At the back of the hall, the cousins watched helplessly as the horde of Hashashin pressed in around their grandfather.

“It's now or never,” William whispered to his cousin, glancing anxiously toward the top of the boiler. “We have to try to wake the jinni.”

He had no time to explain. Pushing Maxine aside, he seized the boiler ladder and had just begun to climb when he felt a crushing weight on his back. He lost his grip, and his forehead struck the iron rung with a clang. He fell from the ladder and crumpled on the floor.

A rough hand rolled him over, and a heavy knee sank down on his chest. William groaned in pain.

One of the white-cloaked
fida'i
knelt over him and drew his knife. With a jerk he forced the boy's chin up and raised the glinting blade, his knuckles white upon the hilt.

“You have troubled the Old Man and defied his servants,” he said, his voice as cold and dead as the plague. “Your life is forfeit.”

William looked up at the snarling face and was stunned to see Maxine's own pale features hovering there as well, just behind the man's right shoulder. Her lips tightened in a thin line of determination, and in the next instant the Hashashin gave an inhuman howl, flailing his arms and grasping at the middle of his back. William watched in confusion as he lurched and twisted, and then he glimpsed a glint of crimson and understood. There between the man's shoulder blades was Maxine's ruby hat pin, quivering like an arrow.

The
fida'i
reeled away, and in the brief space that Maxine had bought him, William struggled to stand, then scrambled up the ladder once more, his feet missing the rungs in his panic as the living, surging floor fell away beneath him. His palms were wet, and his head swam. Looking down, he saw Maxine's tense face following him as he climbed.

He reached the top of the ladder and eyed the narrow plank. His legs felt like limp asparagus as he edged out onto it, out to the middle of the gap. The board bobbed woozily under his feet, then gave an ominous crack.

In a fit of desperation William lunged for the far side of the gap, and as he did, the timber splintered and fell into the void. He felt a searing throb in his chest as he crashed against the far wall and clutched madly at the rough planking. For a moment only his chin was visible above the brink, and then, with a supreme effort, he hoisted himself up over the edge, laboring to pull himself onto the attic floor.

He lay there, gasping and weak, uncertain that he was still alive. The clay sphere sat beside him on Nura's canvas sack. Grasping it and clambering to his feet, he turned his gaze out across the temple and spotted the black statue.

There was no time to think of the cost of missing his aim. Down below the
fida'i
had pinned Grandpa in the middle of the floor, and the Rafiq was descending the steps toward him. William took two short steps and let the clay sphere go, launching it with all his strength. It arced unseen among the gloomy rafters of the temple, and then a thunderous boom echoed across the hall. Behind the Rafiq, a blaze flared, furious and brilliant, at the foot of the jinni.

The statue made a savage roar as the explosion engulfed it. Blue flames licked over it, and the black-lacquered surface blistered like the pox. The creature's horsehair beard crackled and curled about its head, and the jinni seemed to shrug and rise up to its full height within the pyre. Its eyes burned white. Vivid tongues wormed from the gaping mouth, and it stood like a diabolus, wreathed in a column of twisting fire. The black pennants that draped the furnace ignited with a hungry growl, and the flames raced high toward the ceiling. The Rafiq reeled as the temple kindled behind him, and in the choking reek of black smoke the multitude on the floor descended into chaos.

Moments before, the full wrath of the Hashashin had been fixed on Colonel Battersea, but now the ranks of the faithful parted and dissolved. They fell back from the dais and scattered like the whirling sparks above, driven on a fiery breeze.