Thief of Baghdad (14 page)

“Agreed then,” Osman said.

But Fajid was frowning. “Only one thing, though. What in the world shall I talk to him about? I mean, a fellow out of the bazaars and I don’t have much in common.”

“Women,” Prince Osman said, with more wisdom than I had given the Sturdy One credit for. “All men have one thing in common: women.”

“By the Prophet,” Fajid cried, “that is good! I must remember that to tell to my father.”

“Right after evening prayers, then,” Prince Osman said, and reined away.

I climbed rapidly and put on forward speed, too. I would have to be back at the suitors’ camp right after evening prayers, then, to see how my Karim handled himself. I might even have to intervene, though every time I did, it seemed, Karim and I seemed to work at cross purposes.

My best speed is fast, indeed; I’ve won many a floating race at Mount Kaf. The suitors were left far behind as I went through the air. Safe from prying eyes, I materialized in order to feel the good cold air on my face; it quite refreshed me, and I was singing a lusty song as I got to the Rocky Sands and circled for a landing, losing speed as I spiraled down.

Behind me lay the Abi-diz River, and ahead of me were the Hidden Grottoes in which the Lady Jinni of the Rocky Sands made her home. I started to enter the grottoes, and then thought better of it, and floated back to the river to wash and make myself presentable.

Now that I was here in the Rocky Sands, it didn’t matter too much whether I was materialized or not! Everything is magical in that country which belongs neither to Persia nor to Baghdad, but to jinns and spirits and camels with the faces of humans, women with their feet twisted backward—these died while in adulterous rapture—and other odds and ends of the Oriental ghost world.

The entrance to the grottoes was guarded by a pair of matched two-headed dogs, very handsome. I reached up—they were taller than I—and patted the nearest head of the left-hand or southern dog. The other one had been the possession and pet of the Lady Jinni for a hundred years; I had sought to win favor for her by conjuring up—it quite exhausted me—a mate for her dog, but she had pretended to scorn it, saying that a conjured-up animal was never as satisfying a companion as one who had come about naturally.

Her scorn must have been pretended, I thought, or she wouldn’t have my gift right at the entrance to her grotto.

Past the dogs a mighty abyss barred the way. The Lady Jinni had constructed it with no bottom whatsoever, a concept quite beyond me and also beyond the mind of any male jinni I had ever discussed it with; a feminine piece of building.

Materializing a flute, I played a short stave of an old Persian love song, and was rewarded by a heavy rustling noise on the far bank of the abyss. Slowly, the Great Snake of the Hidden Grottoes uncoiled himself and flung his head over on my side. He was, usually, half a
farsakh
long and ten
covidos
wide; in wet weather, he was inclined to contract himself somewhat to avoid rheumatic contacts with the damp sand; but at this time of year, he was broad enough to make a very comfortable bridge.

Of course, I couldn’t float across the Bottomless Abyss; floating or zooming in another jinn’s territory is the most frightful behavior, socially.

“You’re not very fast today,” I said. But he only hissed at me, a sound like the bursting of all the waterskins in Baghdad at once.

On the other side of the abyss the Lady Jinni had built a glacis of pure, polished ice (she had her hippopotami slide down it each morning on their backs in order to keep the polish perfect) and there was only one way up it. Sighing—this sort of thing becomes very tiresome—I played the middle stanza of the Hamitic
Song of the Nile
, and two salamanders appeared.

Their red hot feet dug into the ice very nicely, and I rode up standing with a foot on each of their backs. Of course, I jumped off every second or so to cool my soles on the ice.

At the top of the glacis, things got simpler. Oh, I’ll admit that not every jinni would feel happy about swimming the Sea of the Five Salts while splashing with one hand to keep the purple-and-gold eels away; and the throwing and climbing of the Living Vine is a trick not widely known in these latter days.

But then I was on the terrace outside the Lady Jinni’s court room, and ready to enter. Well, not quite ready; the sea had ruined my appearance and, tired as I was, I had to materialize up a whole new outfit of clothes. I made them of blue velvet brocaded with gold thread; no use sparing myself now.

Then I strolled into the court room.

The Lady Jinni was on her throne, materialized as a maiden of seventeen. Only her eyes told me better; she was very vain of them, and never materialized another pair; and they had in them all the wisdom of her three hundred and eighteen years of jinning. (I had been there when she was born. Her father, who for many years was Jinni of Upland Afghanistan, had been an old friend of mine.)

She looked up from a bit of fancy work she was occupying herself with; she was plaiting four fancy collars for her guard dogs. She said: “Well, O Baghdad, you do look tired. Couldn’t you have conjured yourself a suit that fits better than that?”

I looked down; she was right. I had completely forgotten to make allowances for the weight I had lost swimming the Sea of the Five Salts, not to mention what I had sweated out with all that materialization of clothes and flutes and so on.

But this was no time to change; I wrapped my cloak more closely around me and bowed. “Five hundred years have fallen from my eyes at the sight of you, O fairest of Lady Jinns.”

“That’s right,” she said. “You are an old one, aren’t you? And how’s that silly sultan you have in Baghdad?” She laughed annoyingly. “Why do you keep him, anyway? Is he some sort of cousin of yours, on the human side?”

“A distant cousin, about to be removed,” I said, which I thought rather clever.

But she didn’t laugh. “Well, you’ve finally come to your senses. Or is he dying of natural causes?”

“He’s abdicating,” I said. “He is going to give up his
leewan
to the man who wins the hand of his daughter, Amina.”

“Oh, yes,” the Lady Jinni said, “the Princess Amina. Tell me, is the cast in her right eye as bad as people say?”

“I hadn’t noticed it.”

“Don’t sound so superior about it. If you’d look at girls’ eyes more often and the rest of them a little less, Baghdad would be much better run . . . Which reminds me. Who
is
running Baghdad?”

“No one,” I said. “It is now a jinniless city.”

She gasped. “Oh, Abu,” she said, calling me by name for the first time. “You haven’t deserted your city, just to see me, have you? You know the rule of the Great Jinni who wears the Seal of Suleyman; you know it very well.”

Her anxiety for me was very sweet; sweet as
rahat lakhoum.
It was a terrible temptation to let her think I had risked being made human just to come and see her; she would have been impressed and grateful, and her gratitude would have been as warming as the morning sun after a night on the desert.

But I am an honorable jinni. I said: “I am here on legitimate business, O Lady Jinni.”

She sighed. What she said then was very feminine. “Nobody ever does anything for me.”

“But you’re glad that I am safe from the wrath of Suleyman?”

She shrugged. “I hate to see any of my friends become enhumaned. What’s this great and pressing duty of yours, O Baghdad?”

I hated her calling me by my title, but there it was; she was all business again. So I told her about the potions, mine and Ghamal’s, and the quest for the blue rose that the suitors were on. I told her about Karim, too.

“He sounds good,” she said. “I’ve no use for a man who lets his jinni do all the work. But you shouldn’t have put the Princess into a coma; think of the time she’s wasting. After all, human girls are only young fifty or a hundred years.”

“Somewhat less than that,” I said. “But there wasn’t anything else I could think of at the time. I certainly couldn’t let Ghamal feed her that love potion.”

“I don’t know,” my Lady Jinni mused. “It could be rather fun to drink something that gave you no choice about falling in love . . . Oh, well. Since you’re here on business, let’s get started on thinking up an obstacle course for these suitors. Let me see. I’ve got a Valley of Living Trees around some place, very scary, and very dangerous, too. And then there’s—”

She looked so entrancing, frowning over her conjuring, that I couldn’t resist. I slid my arm around her shoulders, pulled her dear face toward mine—and the jinnish wench changed like that, into a crocodile, with the Lady Jinni’s eyes peering out from under scaly lids.

As I shrank back, she laughed through her rows of sharp teeth: “You are here on business, Baghdad. Stick to it!”

Since it was a question of either sticking to business or kissing a crocodile, I stuck to business.

We had hardly planned the first two obstacles of what I was beginning to think of as The Quest when it was time for me to go back to the desert and the suitors. I said: “O Lady Jinni, do I have your permission to float?”

She said: “But this is not the time to talk of floating. You’ve just gotten here. And I haven’t shown you over the Grotto yet. I did over the whole south cavern last year, it’s charming.”

“For an hour, two hours, no more, O Lady Jinni.” I explained about the plot between Osman and the rich suitor to murder Karim. “I don’t really fear the outcome,” I said, “but I think it is my duty to see how the young man handles himself.”

She nodded gravely. “Yes. You don’t want to make a second mistake in choosing a Sultan of Baghdad.”

“The present Sultan is not of my choosing. He is the legitimate heir to the
leewan
. I simply let nature take its course.”

“You’re a great believer in nature,” the Lady Jinni said, removing my hand, which had been pursuing its own delights. “Permission to float or zoom, materialized or invisible is granted, then. Good until—stop that, Abu Hastin—revoked. You know, I think I’ll float with you. The sight of all those young men will be very pleasant after an afternoon spent with an old—”

“My lady!”

“Joke. You’re not really old, Baghdad. In fact, at Mount Kaf, I found your father as importunate as you are; quite a lively jinni.”

“Father’s never thought and grown old.”

“Some things do not require thought. Shall we float?”

So we took off. It was the hour of sundown; fifty
zars
above the ground it was cool and refreshing, so we stayed materialized in order to enjoy it to the maximum. At the entrance to the Grottoes, the Lady Jinni looked down, and said: “Just a minute, Abu Hastin,” and nose-dived, fast.

I followed her to the ground. The guard dogs were fighting with each other, growling and whipping their tails stiffly. They weren’t really angry, I noticed: their four mouths were snapping, but not really biting, though both had plenty of opportunity to do real damage.

The Lady Jinni beat them into apologetic subjection with her tongue; they acted as though they would rather she’d use a whip, laying their heads on the ground, whining at her feet.

When we were airborne again, she said: “Really, that dog you gave me just won’t learn. It’s what I always say; the wisest jinni who ever trod Mount Kaf can’t conjure up an animal with a real heart and mind.”

“It seemed to me that you couldn’t tell one dog’s behavior from the other.”

“Men!” she said. “If they give you a gift, they have to go on preening themselves over its magnificence for the next hundred and fifty years.”

“O my Lady, it is too nice an evening to quarrel.”

She nodded, and we floated along together. In the west, the sinking sun was sending back gold and red and purple reminders of daylight; in the east, as I looked over my shoulder, a mirage had sprung up, and through some trick of twisted desert light, a camel caravan could be seen, apparently walking a hundred
zars
above the desert. They were about to reach a date-palm oasis.

I tapped the Lady Jinni’s shoulder, and she turned. We treaded water until the mirage faded.

She said: “I wonder where they were, or if they were at all?”

“Somewhere in Persia. Surely not in the mind, since we both saw it, and no sorcerer could illusion a jinni as wise as you.”

She smiled and said casually: “Oh, I’m not so wise.”

“There is a saying old as Mount Kaf: ‘Call a smart woman beautiful, and a lovely woman wise.’ ”

“Why, Abu, what a nice thing to say. I’m beginning to think you really do care for me.”

Giving myself a little extra left arm, I floated nearer her as we hastened through the darkening sky. “To me there is no other city than Baghdad; not to be the Chief Jinni himself would I willingly leave my beloved city. Yet if I could spend a short time—less than a century—with you, I would willingly agree never to walk the bazaar of that city again.”

“Abu Hastin! Be careful; the Wearer of the Seal of Suleyman hears all . . . I think there are your young men now.”

Below us on the desert there was a line of men strung out, not moving; the suitors had camped for the night. Camel thorn fires were already sending up smoke and columns of heat that made the upper air unsteady. Without words we both dematerialized and spiraled down.

It was a big camp; some of the young men, like Fajid, the rich youth whom Osman the Sturdy had talked to, had brought their body servants. Karim was camped alone, off to one side of the others. I nudged where I thought the Lady Jinni was, and pointed. Her dematerialized hand found mine, and squeezed in acknowledgment. My heart pumped as though I were flying over the Himalayas.

Now the swift desert night was full upon us; I called on the power of my night eyes. Karim had built himself a tiny fire, and was toasting some
kaarks
over it, munching them with a few olives; slim fare. I ached to materialize a skewer or two of
shish kebabs
for him; he’d need his strength in the tests ahead.

But to do so would be cheating; and the Lady Jinni was there to watch me.

He had camped in the lee of a sand dune, to protect himself from the hard breeze that springs up in the night. I floated to rest, and leaned back against the dune. I was outside the circle of firelight, and it was safe to materialize enough to make resting comfortable.