Thief of Baghdad (15 page)

Beside me the Lady Jinni put on a quarter-dense body, too, and leaned beside me.

As Karim finished his thin meal with a swallow of water from his goatskin, the Lady Jinni’s head rested, as though by accident, against my shoulder. I held her there with my arm. Even at one-fourth my density, my excitement was intense; I couldn’t help thinking what it would be like to hold all four depths of her body.

Karim knelt to the southwest, since there lay Mecca, and said his prayers, and then wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down with his feet toward his fire to sleep.

The Lady Jinni murmured in my ear, her fourth-strength breath soft on my cheek: “Oh, you were right, Abu. He’s a wise lad; look how he spares his strength. Listen to the hubbub from the other young men.”

It was true. All over the camp the suitors were chattering, visiting back and forth, bragging of their valor and their certainty of gaining the hand of Princess Amina and the
leewan
of Baghdad.

One or two minor fights had broken out.

Behind Karim the stallion I had given him stood drowsing, one leg hip-shot.

We waited. I started to materialize completely—it was velvet dark now—and the Lady Jinni slapped me and dematerialized altogether. We compromised on one-third corporeality, and I rested, not content, but happier than with no Lady Jinni at all.

Finally, here came Fajid, the rich suitor. The plot commenced. I squeezed the shoulder of the Lady Jinni and we dissolved almost completely; there was no telling from which direction Osman would approach.

Karim awoke when Fajid was no closer than twenty
zars.
“Who comes?”

The rich lad cried: “It is I, Fajid, heir to the largest fortune in all Arabia!”

Karim chuckled: “Greetings, O Fajid, from the poorest thief of the Baghdad bazaars.”

Fajid walked into the tiny circle of firelight. Karim politely reached out and threw a little bundle of camel thorn on the fire; it would leave him short of fuel for breakfast. He offered some dates from his food bag, but Fajid rejected them with a lack of grace that betrayed the Syrian birth of his mother.

“You are called Karim, O Thief?”

“It is my true name. And yours is Fajid, you said.”

“O Karim, have you heard of the wealth of my father?”

“Clearly, O Fajid. Do you remember a box of golden Persian
mohurs
that disappeared from his strong room last fall?”

In the firelight, Fajid looked startled. “Yes. He sent three of his most trusted mortgage-collectors to the Sultan’s Mills, since it was apparent that no one from outside the house could have gained entrance to the well-guarded strong room.”

Karim said simply: “The night the
mohurs
vanished, all dined well and fully on the Street of the Tanners. And several poor men unexpectedly paid off mortgages of many years’ standing on their homes; some of them to your father.”

“In his own
mohurs?”

Karim nodded gravely.

“The Grand Vizier shall hear of this, when I return to Baghdad.”

“Mere rumor. Idle bazaar gossip. But you didn’t come here in the night to discuss my prowess as a thief, O Fajid.”

Fajid said: “No, no, I didn’t.” But he was visibly shaken. The rich’s faith in locks and strongholds is frequently greater than in our Prophet and the Koran, I thought, and having thought it, I rolled it around in my mind awhile; a very well-turned epigram. I hoped I’d remember it to tell the Lady Jinni.

Fajid took a deep breath and said: “This, then, is our business together, O Thief. You are a very poor man, and I am a very rich one. It is my thought that you have no chance of fulfilling the Quest; your food is scanty, your horses are but one, you have no servants to assist you. While I have everything that wealth can provide.”

“Hm,” Karim said. “I had thought to suspend my thievish activities while on the Quest, but then I didn’t realize any of these camps were worth robbing.”

This insolence upset the spoiled boy. Fajid gasped and shouted: “Do you realize to whom you’re talking?”

The Lady Jinni, at that moment, materialized one of her hands and pointed. I followed her graceful finger and turned my full night power on.

There came Prince Osman, stealing across the desert sands, a heavily jeweled dagger bare in his hand. I began to make plans. A quick zoom of all my body over to the right, a sharp tug, and I could have the stallion’s picket pin loose, and his picket line curled around my palm. A leap onto his back, and I could whirl him around by his halter, make him rear and bring his hoofs down on Prince Osman’s back.

I fancy my horsemanship, as all Arabs do. It would be a superb performance, and certain to arouse the admiration of the Lady Jinni. How nice that she had come along with me!

I began to gather my dematerialized legs under me.

Too late. Suddenly Karim pulled his legs up, shot them out again, and a shower of sand and camel-thorn embers went flying into Fajid’s face. The rich lad went over backward, bawling with fear and surprise and pain. Karim followed the kick with one of his fine leaps; it ended up square on Fajid’s stomach.

Then the Thief stooped, snatched a gold-handled dagger from Fajid’s belt, and sent it hurtling, end over end, straight at Prince Osman. Karim must have heard the Prince approaching; the boy had ears like a jinni.

The knife had to cut through a heavy cloak to reach royal skin and flesh. It barely grazed Prince Osman’s side, I found out by zooming a dematerialized eye under his cloak. But he turned and fled.

Karim, almost absent-mindedly, leaped on Fajid’s stomach again before pulling the wealthy one to his feet. Then the Thief delivered a kick to the brocaded seat that sent Fajid stumbling toward the main camp, bawling: “Is there a
hakim
on the desert? I am sick unto death!”

Occasionally, as he ran toward the other suitors, he would stop and vomit the rich food his servants had given him for dinner.

These same servants came out and got him, and he collapsed completely and allowed them to carry him to his tent.

One suitor eliminated; it was a certainty that he would take his sick belly back to Baghdad in the morning.

Floating back, I picked up the trail of Osman. He had thrown away the gold dagger in disgust, and bound up his side with a fold ripped off his turban. He was treacherous, and too conceited to be very bright, but he was a man.

As he made his way back to his camp, he idly slit the waterbags of a couple of suitors who, attracted by Fajid’s racket, had left their camps unguarded. Two more young men who’d go home tomorrow.

I followed Prince Osman to his tent. As he lifted the flap to go in, I caught a glimpse of the Berber girl he had fed Ghamal’s potion to.

What a thing to take along on a quest for a princess’s hand!

12

T
he Lady Jinni joined me in the upper air over Prince Osman’s tent. I said: “Let’s zoom home.”

“To Baghdad? I have no duties there.”

“To the Hidden Grottoes,” I said. “We haven’t finished planning the testing of the suitors.”

We had dematerialized; as we floated side by side my heart was light within me at her beauty. But my night eyes saw that she was frowning. Finally she said: “I’ll tell you, Abu. We know what we’re going to use first: the Living Wood. Why don’t you stay here and observe your young men; I’ll rummage around the back of the Grottoes and dig up a half dozen more tests.”

“Another of your evasions? You know how I feel about you and—”

She floated over and put her soft hand on my mouth. “Hush, Abu. Time enough for all that; we’re young. The truth is, it’s frightfully dusty in the back of the Grottoes; I don’t want you to see me the way I’ll look after searching back there. Fair?”

What could I say? She kissed me lightly on the cheek and was gone. I could go after her, of course; she had failed to revoke my permission making me free of her territory; but disobeying her at this time didn’t seem the best way to win her favor. So I floated gently down to a soft bed of sand on the edge of the oasis and composed myself to sleep.

Dawn broke gray, and then, suddenly, brassy gold. Karim and his horse were both fed and moving out to the east with the first rays; though he had camped in the rear of the caravan, he now had the lead.

Fajid and the two suitors whose waterbags Prince Osman had ruined turned back toward Baghdad, and so did a few other of the young men, footsore or disillusioned. Dematerialized, I walked among the suitors.

One said: “Danger I do not mind, but this traveling from nowhere to nothing, in quest of a blue rose—which I don’t believe exists—no good! I’m turning back to Baghdad.”

And another said, “We must find the first of the Seven Gates that lie in the east. But look: to the east the desert is flat as the blade of a knife, and nothing lies ahead. We shall have to travel today and all tomorrow without reward; for in this light, a man can see two days’ journey ahead of him.” And they pulled out of line and wheeled back for the city and the soothing attention of their nurses, no doubt.

To the east Karim walked his horse, prepared to trudge a hundred days’ journey to get a chance for the Princess Amina’s hand. I doubt if then, or at any time, he dreamed about being sultan, or cared about sitting on the royal
leewan.
The girl was all of Paradise to him.

There was the faintest of flutterings beside me, and someone said my name, so softly that I scarcely heard it. At once I shot fifty
zars
into the morning air, and the Lady Jinni joined me there.

We assumed one-eighth corporeality so that we could see each other’s faces, and still look like patches of cooking-fire smoke to anyone below. She said: “My people are ready.”

“My lady, I don’t know. Several young men have turned back because they saw nothing ahead; perhaps more who would leave will go on if you materialize their goal for them.”

She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Any who would leave over a mere journey will certainly be gone when they have been through my Living Forest.”

“My lady, sometimes I think you hate men.”

She laughed softly, so that it wouldn’t be heard on the ground. “I like men who
are
men. There’ll be none of the other kind left when my testing is through, believe me.”

Remembering how she guarded her home, I believed her.

So here we went. She clapped her hands, and the invisible people who live in the Hidden Grottoes went to work. Ahead of the questing suitors—about as far ahead of Karim as he was ahead of the other suitors—a mountain range slowly formed, misty at first, so that a man might believe that he saw what was not.

Then it gradually firmed in the clear air and the suitors could see that it was forbidding beyond belief; sheer rock cliffs, with never a thorn bush or a scrub oak to make a hand hold; cliffs of grayish rock that rose straight up from the desert floor.

The mob of suitors below us let out wails and cries and moans of despair, according to their individual natures.

The cloud of their noises came up to us, warm and moist in the cool air, and we rocked, not uncomfortably.

At sight of that barren range, a half dozen suitors sent their horses scurrying to catch up with the Baghdad-bound deserters.

The Lady Jinni laughed softly. Disappearing completely, she nose-dived, and went after the horses of the faint-hearted. By pulling tails and slapping flanks with her invisible hands, she got them into a dead run. Zooming back up to me, she said: “We are shaking out the bead sellers, O Abu. Now watch.”

Faint as a Syrian camel vendor’s chance of Paradise, a crack opened in the range of mountains. Narrow at first, it widened; and then, at a wave of the Lady Jinni’s hand, formed into an arch; and glowing for a moment at the roof of the arch, the picture of a blue rose was seen.

The cries of jubilation sent me rocketing up a good five
zars.

The suitors brought their spurs home, lashed their horses with whips and reins, and went charging ahead, storming past Karim, who kept his steady pace, knowing that a walking horse will soon overtake a galloping one in a long quest.

Sure enough, he was the first to pass under the arch. The other suitors streamed after him, and the Lady Jinni clapped her hands again and the arch closed and was no more.

We spiraled to get over the mountains she had created, and came down in the valley beyond.

The Lady Jinni at once made it night there. Full night, dark night, night without a moon or a star.

This miracle was too much for a whole horde of suitors. They turned and galloped for where the arch had been.

The Lady Jinni held them there, in panicking terror, for several minutes, and then opened a narrow crack in the rock and allowed them to escape. They seemed glad to be still alive.

I said: “You do beautiful work, O Lady Jinni.”

She said: “Yes, don’t I? But I’m exhausted.”

“That does not surprise me. Shall I take over? I’ve seen your Living Forest before. I’m sure I remember how to work it.”

“Thanks, Abu. Don’t give them more than two hours of it; they’ll think that is a day or more. We might be able to run all seven of the tests today.”

“And then, tonight—”

“Business before pleasure, Baghdad.”

She took off toward the Hidden Grottoes, and I got down to work. Unable to see anything, the suitors had settled down to camp. There was plenty of wood in that valley. Floating from fire to fire, I exploded each and every log. I ended up at the tidy camp of Karim.

His logs I gave an extra large charge to; I was not going to play favorites.

Karim’s horse followed all the others in the valley, running in wild stampede back toward the west, and something they remembered as a world in which a horse was safe.

But many of the suitors ran forward, and I waited till they had caught up with Karim.

Then I signaled the trees to go to work.

One by one they pulled their roots up from the ground and began using them as feet, walking slowly, inexorably toward the ranked suitors. A few of the young men turned and ran; but many stayed.

I was delighted to see a preponderance of Baghdadians in the stayers.