Authors: Scott Oden
Jalal glanced up. “How is our Caliph this evening, Mustapha?”
“Restless,” the old eunuch replied. “For days he has wanted no more of the opium pipe, so this night we were forced to mix the juice of the poppy with his wine, instead. He sleeps, but fitfully. I do not know how much longer we can continue this, Excellency. Al-Hasan grows resistant to my arts.”
The vizier’s eyes narrowed. “How comes this resistance? You’re giving him the full measure, are you not?”
“The full measure and more, besides, when he will take it. His dreams are the culprit, Excellency. They give him hope, and in hope he finds the strength to resist. As Allah is my witness, I fear the day is coming when he will try to assert his authority over you, when he will seek to truly reign as Caliph and not simply as a figurehead. His dreams tell him this. He also dreams of his Circassian friend, the one you killed before his eyes, and he demands we send for a Sufi to aid him in interpreting these visions. I do not know how much longer we can deny him, Excellency.”
Jalal sighed, picked up a captured pawn and studied the detail. It resembled a tiny
mameluke
, carved from African ivory and accented with fine silver, clutching sword and shield as it awaited the hand of its master.
Ready to die like a good slave
. “Perhaps,” he said after a moment, “it is time our poor young Caliph is stricken with the illness of his forefathers.”
Mustapha arched an eyebrow. “So soon, Excellency? Are you prepared for the chaos his death will engender? The common folk love him…”
The vizier returned the pawn to the table’s edge. “And so? Who among the peasants would dare thwart me? Who among the courtiers and officers, for that matter? Not the Jandariyah, for their captain answers to me alone. Not the Turks or the Circassian
mamelukes,
for we have winnowed their ranks and thrust their leaders to the margins of influence. All that remain are the Sudanese mercenaries—a contentious lot, to be sure—but so long as their prince, Wahshi, is well paid he will do as I command. Allow the Caliph to linger for a month, Mustapha, and my position will be unassailable. I
will
be Sultan.”
The old eunuch nodded. “So be it, Excellency. By week’s end, our dear al-Hasan will be in the grips of a terrible fever. No doubt mortal.”
“Sometimes,” Jalal said, his lips curling into a devilish smile, “the answer to a problem is profoundly simple.” He reached out and decisively moved a humble pawn forward to capture one of the eunuch’s elephants.
Mustapha sat up straight. The remaining pieces on the
shatranj
board assumed an ominous symmetry. “You’re using
Dilaram
? Oh, you are a cunning one, Excellency. Cunning, indeed. But, is it enough to be cunning? That is the question—”
Before Mustapha could continue, however, another eunuch interrupted—this one well muscled and as black as the Abyssinian night, his skin in marked contrast to his red silk pantaloons and gold-scaled vest. He abased himself on the cold marble beside the vizier.
Jalal glanced over. “Speak.”
“Two men have arrived in Cairo seeking an audience, Excellency. Franks, from Jerusalem, under a banner of peace. They are … they are Templars, Excellency.”
Both the vizier’s and Mustapha’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Surely a ruse,” the old eunuch said, tugging absently at the loose flesh under his chin. “When have those infidel jackals ever honored a flag of peace? I would wager they are not Templars at all, but Assassins…”
Jalal gestured for silence. “What are their names?”
“Hugh of Caesarea, Excellency, and with him a man called Godfrey. They claim to be messengers from King Amalric, bearing grave news. More they would not say. Shall we execute them or imprison them, Excellency?”
After a moment’s pause, Jalal responded with a brusque shake of his head. “Neither. Escort them to the Golden Hall. I will speak with them before I pass judgment.”
“Hearkening and obeying, Excellency.” The Abyssinian eunuch salaamed and hurried off to do the vizier’s bidding.
Jalal looked back at the chessboard. “So, my old darling, you were saying something about cunning?”
6
The twin minarets of the mosque of al-Hakim, whom men called the Mad Caliph, gleamed like naked bone against the night sky. This ruined edifice—long since abandoned as a place of worship—straddled the walls of Cairo between the Gate of Conquests and the Gate of Victory, its covered galleries and sharply crenellated bastions indistinguishable from the city’s own ramparts. A crumbling portico jutted into a broad unpaved square where by day fruit sellers and garlic merchants set up their stalls; by night, square and mosque were the abode of beggars.
Cairo had its share of mendicants and fakirs—gadflies who cajoled travelers or spun exotic tales in exchange for coin—but most of those who clustered about the mosque of the Mad Caliph were truly wretched, the diseased and the insane whose existence depended upon the whims of Moslem generosity. Few regarded them as human; most paid them little heed whatsoever. The blighted aura of pestilence and death that clung to the mosque of al-Hakim provided the perfect camouflage for an agent of
al-Hashishiyya.
“The spies of Alamut hide in plain sight, my young Emir,”
Daoud ar-Rasul had said.
“Chief among them is one called ‘al-Hajj,’ the Pilgrim. He lurks near the old mosque between the gates, posing as a poor merchant even as he watches the comings and goings. When you find him, speak thus in the tongue of Persia: ‘Sharp-eyed are the eagles in the minarets of Nizar,’ and he will know you as a Comrade of the Hidden Master…”
Assad stalked across the square, slow and predatory. A thin mud of trampled fruit and excrement squelched underfoot; clouds of stinging flies arose with each step. During the day, merchants paid a few bits of silver to a censor who would wander the market and sweeten the air. After nightfall, however, the incense faded, leaving behind a ghastly stench of human waste and rotting garlic. None of the beggars picking through the offal left behind by the fruit sellers accosted Assad, nor tried to bar his way; one glance at his scarred face, at the deadly gleam in his eyes, at the well-worn hilt of his
salawar,
was enough to convince them to mind their business.
Assad remembered this place from his childhood, though he rarely had occasion to travel into this quarter of the city. His father had died when he was a boy; he and his mother—a laundrywoman—had joined the household of his uncle, a well-respected
qadi
who lived outside the Zuwayla Gate, on the road to Fustat. The old gatekeeper of the house, also called Hakim, loved to regale him with bloody tales of his namesake, the Mad Caliph.
“He lives inside his mosque,”
Hakim would say, his wide eyes bloodshot and glassy, breath reeking of wine.
“And it is to his mosque that
ghûls
and djinn bring the hearts of children who do not recite their Qur’an properly. Do you know your Qur’an, boy?”
Assad’s lips thinned in a half-smile. Hakim and his stories were one of the few fond memories he had of Cairo.
Flakes of old limestone crunched underfoot as the Assassin ascended the steps of the mosque’s portico. Sickly light streamed out through a yawning archway that led into the interior, giving him enough illumination to see—and to be seen. “I seek al-Hajj!” he said to the beggars clustered beneath the portico. “Is he here?” The ragged figures flinched and yammered at the sound of Assad’s voice. They shrank from him and slunk away, or simply crouched against the wall with their faces averted.
Assad passed beneath the arch and entered the mosque’s courtyard. Ancient columns like palm trunks hewn from yellowed marble held up the decaying arcade; a century and more of filth and neglect caked the floor while the soot of countless small fires blackened the walls. Beggars stirred at his intrusion, their fear giving way to annoyance; from the shadows he caught the glint of rheumy eyes, heard muttered voices. A mad cackle echoed about the courtyard before it degenerated into a fit of coughing.
“Al-Hajj!” Assad called out. Pox-scarred faces glared at him. “Gold to the man who can show me to al-Hajj!”
After a moment, a voice bellowed in return: “Who wants to know?” Assad’s head turned; across the courtyard, in the corner where a fire burned beneath a mottled pepper-pot dome, six men sat apart from the other beggars, dicing for scraps of fruit. In appearance they were as thin and ragged as the rest, but their faces lacked any hint of insanity. The one who spoke canted his head to one side to stare at Assad with his good eye, black and glittering—his other was nothing but a scarred socket.
“Are you al-Hajj?”
“Who wants to know, I said!”
Assad moved out from beneath the arcade and walked toward them, his temper checked by the thinnest thread of reason. “I am but a messenger, sent by an old friend of al-Hajj.”
“Bah!” The one-eyed man grunted. “That whoreson has no friends!”
“You know him, then? Do you know where I can find him?”
“Aye on both scores, praise be to Allah. I know him and I know where he is.” The men around him stiffened as Assad drew closer, their hands dropping from sight. Whoever this man was, with his wiry russet beard and fey locks escaping from beneath a sweat-stained scarlet turban, they thought him important enough to defend.
“Take me to him. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I doubt it not, but he is easy enough to find on your own, stranger. You need only go south, out the Zuwayla Gate, and follow the road to Ibn Tulun’s mosque on the outskirts of al-Karafa cemetery. You know it? Good. Ask anyone there, and they will show you al-Hajj’s grave.” The men around him chuckled. “Tell him Musa sends his regards.”
“Musa, is it?” Assad’s hand dropped to the hilt of his blade as he took a menacing step toward the one-eyed beggar. “Do you think it wise to toy with me, Musa?”
To his credit, Musa did not flinch. “I don’t know you, stranger, as you don’t know me. Perhaps humor at your expense is unwise, but so is assuming I have lied to you. Al-Hajj has been dead a week now, knifed in the caravanserai where he dwelt, not far from here. I found him myself.”
“Are you certain it was al-Hajj?”
Musa tilted his head, showing Assad the burned-out socket of his eye. “Though I have but one of these left, I can still tell a man I’ve broken bread with from one I haven’t.”
“Who killed him?”
“Only Allah, in His magnificent wisdom, can answer that.”
Assad said nothing, his face a mask carved of cold stone. He dipped two fingers into the sash at his waist and brought forth a small linen bag; coins chinked as it struck the ground in front of Musa. “My thanks.” With that, Assad turned and retraced his steps from the ruined mosque.
7
Musa watched the stranger leave; he reached down and picked up the bag, holding it for a moment, weighing it in the palm of his hand. His good eye narrowed to a slit. With a sharp gesture, he summoned a pair of his men closer. “Follow him. Find out who he is and what his business was with al-Hajj.”
Silently, the children of the Mad Caliph drifted out after the stranger.
8
Three quarters of an hour later, Jalal left the palace courtyard—and left Mustapha shaking his head, grumbling at how the vizier had beaten him in six moves. “Predictable, as I said,” Jalal said, smiling at the old eunuch who had been his tutor and mentor as a child. That smile faded now, as he padded down a dim tapestry-hung hallway, bracing for his audience with the Templars.
Templars!
A foul taste filled Jalal’s mouth at the thought of those infidels breathing the rarefied air of thrice-blessed Cairo. What was that Nazarene, Amalric, playing at? Of course, the King of Jerusalem had sent messages to Cairo in the past—from offers of friendship and alliance to outright threats and blandishments—for the pig made no secret of his desire to add Egypt to his demesne, by war or by wiles. But grave news delivered on Amalric’s behalf by the most devout enemies of Islam? To Jalal, that smacked of a less than subtle deception.
The vizier passed through doors of polished teakwood bound in straps of arabesqued gold, guarded by Syrian mercenaries in spired helmets and coats of gilded mail, naked swords gleaming; chamberlains, servants, and eunuchs scurried clear of his path, bowing low. The East Palace was no single structure; rather, it was an aggregation of palaces and mosques, a labyrinth of courtyards and galleries, vaulted corridors and ivy-shaded arcades. At its heart—and indeed at the spiritual heart of all Fatimid Egypt—lay the Golden Hall of al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah.
Built for the first Fatimid Caliph whose name it bore, the Golden Hall stood as a testament to the wealth and power of the Princes of the Faithful and true Successors of the Prophet Mohammad, a bastion of Shiite glory amid a sea of Sunni heresy. Jalal gained entry through a small side door that opened on the curtained alcove housing the Seat of Divine Reason, the throne of the Caliph. This rested beneath a canopy of golden Mosul silk sewn with pearls and precious stones, on a stepped dais of pale white marble—a chair of gilded teak and ivory cushioned in white velvet. Jalal gazed upon it with a lust that transcended the flesh, his face growing hot with desire.
Give me a month! A month and my position will be unassailable! I will be Sultan!
The vizier’s covetous eyes lingered over his master’s throne a moment longer before he pushed past the silken curtain and entered the hall proper.
Domed in gold-filigreed alabaster and paved in the same snowy marble as the dais, the cavernous Golden Hall was deserted save for the Abyssinian eunuch and a score of the mercenary Jandariyah, all of whom scowled with open contempt at the two awestruck Templars—the first of their accursed kind to gain admittance to this holy sanctuary. Nor was the grandeur of their surroundings lost on them. The pair described slow circles, whispering to one another in coarse Norman French, their blunt faces tilted heavenward as they tried in vain to calculate the wealth on display around them. Empty scabbards clanked against their mailed thighs, the sounds amplified by the hall’s perfect acoustics.