Kasyx stepped down into the room,
and faced the three men. ‘I am Kasyx,’ he said. ‘I have come to demand the
release of my fellow warrior Samena. Which one of you is the spawn of
Yaomauitl?’
The European cleared phlegm out of
his throat, and gave Kasyx a buttery smile. ‘You have extraordinary bravado, my
friend Kasyx. Are you not aware that any child of Yaomauitl is always closely
watched by his father, and that anything you do to the child, the father will
repay seven hundredfold?’
‘We are Night Warriors,’ said Kasyx.
‘We have no fear of Yaomauitl, or of anything that Yaomauitl can do.’
‘Then that tells me that you are
very
inexperienced
Night Warriors, my
friend Kasyx.
A Night Warrior who knew Yaomauitl
well would take far more care than you. Turn around, and see for yourself.’
‘Kasyx,’
Tebulot
muttered, and Kasyx turned.
The door through which they had
entered had been locked. The handsome youth stood beside it, jangling the keys
in his hand. Worse than that – between the Night Warriors and the door stood
four tall creatures dressed in close-fitting black hoods and suits, with eyes
that gleamed yellow and malevolent, like the eyes of panthers.
‘The Black Ones, the Afreets from
the desert,’ the fat European explained, quite nonchalantly. ‘They are the
stuff of Arabian nightmares; the beings which wake up even the most Westernised
of Moroccans in the middle of the night, sweating and trembling.’
The thin man with the
kif
pipe began to repeat over and over
again a
zikr,
a magic phrase that,
endlessly chanted, would eventually take the
kif
-smoker into a state of magical trance. Behind them, the Afreets
began to move forward, their feet utterly silent on the mosaic floor. The fat
European smiled, and began to waggle his foot in time to the
zikr.
‘The Afreets destroy their victims
by twisting their heads around and around, until they are facing behind them.
You can always tell the victim of an Afreet, because his head is around the
wrong way.’
‘Tebulot,’ Kasyx advised him. ‘Get
ready to hit them, and make sure you’re quick.’
‘Give me a little more power,’ said
Tebulot; and Kasyx reached over and grasped the machine-carrier’s shoulder for
a moment. The deep energy of Ashapola poured through his fingers into Tebulot’s
body. The charge-scale on Tebulot’s machine glowed golden, and he slowly pulled
back the T-bar until it clicked into the fully armed position.
‘It is a pity that the new
generation of Night Warriors should die thus,’ smiled the fat European. He
shook a cigarette out of an untidy paper package, and scratched a match on the
sole of his shoe, so that it burst noisily into flame. ‘However, it is always
the least principled who survive.’
‘Kaluakaluakalua!’
the thin man suddenly cried out, in a high penetrating voice.
The Afreets pounced forward,
bounding noiselessly through the air as if they were shadows of some invisible
creatures in another room. Tebulot swung round, and let fly a dazzling burst of
energy, a squib-like shower of detonating sparks and lancing fire. One of the
Afreets screeched and tumbled over, his body ripped into cinders and tatters of
fabric. Xaxxa swung up off the floor, sliding his feet upwards until they were
on the same level as his head, then hurtled himself around like a propeller.
His feet caught a second Afreet in the back of the head, audibly snapping his
neck. The yellow-eyed creature twisted and collapsed to the floor as if he were
a marionette whose strings had been abruptly cut.
A third Afreet leaped on Kasyx,
seizing hold of his upper arms with hands that gripped like metallic pincers.
Kasyx heard his crimson armour buckle, and felt the supernatural pressure of
the Afreet’s fingers against his muscles. But then he discharged a controlled
burst of energy; and his armour suddenly jumped alive with blue snakes of
electricity. The Afreet juddered and shook and dropped to his knees, his hands
burned and smoking. Tebulot turned and fired from the hip with his heavy
machine, blasting the Afreet’s head from its shoulders in a spray of ashes, and
leaving a neck stump like a tree-trunk that had been incinerated by lightning.
‘Get that last one!’ Kasyx shouted;
but as Xaxxa twisted himself around on a corkscrew of glowing energy, and
Tebulot swung his weapon around, the last surviving Afreet lithely rolled over
behind Samena, and seized hold of her head.
‘Stop!’
roared
Kasyx, as the Afreet started to twist her head to one side.
The thin man said something quickly
in Arabic, and the Afreet stopped, its eyes smouldering like
kinki
lamps. The fat European drew in a
leisurely fashion at his cigarette, and then slowly blew out smoke so that it
issued from his mouth and disappeared up his nostrils. ‘I see that you are not
prepared to sacrifice the life of even one of your fellow warriors,’ he said.
‘This makes you very vulnerable, does it not?’
‘Tebulot,’ Kasyx instructed, ‘point
your weapon at the one in the middle, the one with the scarves wrapped around
his head.’
Tebulot did as he was told.
‘Full charge?’ asked Kasyx.
‘Ninety per cent,’ said Tebulot.
‘Enough to wipe out everything standing in my line of fire for three
kilometers. Including, of course, our pal here.’
‘Xaxxa,’ said Kasyx, and indicated
the fat European and the thin man with the
kif
pipe.
Xaxxa poised himself ready, and
said, ‘I can take ‘em out before you can blink, man.’
Kasyx now approached the young Arab
in the
tegel-moust.
‘Can I speak to
you directly, spawn of Yaomauitl?’ he asked. ‘Or are you going to persist in
using these two interpreters?’
The young man raised his head
slightly. Behind the veils of muslin, Kasyx could make out the chilling slanted
eyes of the Devil himself.
‘We have been to San Hipolito, and
seen your father’s tomb,’ said Kasyx, unsteadily.
‘We know who and what you are, and
we also know how to defeat you. Before another week is out, we shall have
cornered your father Yaomauitl, too; and believe me he’s going back to that box
and back to that vault, and this time he’s going to stay there for ever.’
‘You are accursed,’ the young Arab
said, in the coldest of voices. His breath fumed through the muslin as if the
room were refrigerated. ‘You are a dog of Ashapola, and my father and my many brothers
shall have revenge on you.’
‘Well, you can promise what you
like,’ said Kasyx, trying to sound confident. It wasn’t easy, because he was
badly afraid, and he knew that Tebulot and Xaxxa were too, for all of their
nonchalance. ‘But if you don’t let Samena go, right this minute, we’re going to
evaporate you, and that’s a promise.’
The young Arab said, ‘Very well, my
friend. The finger-archer will be released. But let me warn you, you have made
a serious mistake. It is not for nothing that my father Yaomauitl is known as
the Deadly Enemy. We shall have our revenge on you, believe me; and the pain
that you shall suffer shall outweigh ten thousand times the pleasure you are
feeling now that you have succeeded in having her freed. I promise you this,
Kasyx, by all the torments of Hell.’
‘Let her loose,’ Kasyx insisted.
Tebulot drew back the T-bar of his weapon, and lifted it up to his shoulder, so
that he could aim it more accurately.
The young Arab raised one hand to
the Afreet. At once, the Afreet released Samena’s head, and stood back, an evil
shadow. Then the young Arab spoke quickly in Arabic to the fat European, and
the fat European in turn spoke to the thin man with the
kif
pipe. ‘The girl is to be released
Inch ‘Allah;
and the Afreet is to return to the world beyond
dreams.’
Positioning his cigarette between
his lips, the fat European climbed to his feet, and went over to Samena. He
took a heavy clasp knife out of his pocket, and unfolded it, keeping one eye
squinched up against the smoke that rose from his cigarette, as if he were
winking. All the time, Tebulot’s aim never wavered once from the young Arab in
his enveloping robes, and Xaxxa remained poised to strike if necessary at the
thin man with the
kif
pipe. The fat
European cut methodically through the cords which tied Samena’s wrists, and
then untied her blindfold and her gag. She opened her eyes, and stared at Kasyx
and Tebulot in agonised relief.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she said.
Kasyx said to the young Arab, ‘Let’s
get rid of that Afreet, shall we?’
The young Arab nodded to the thin
man with the
kif
pipe, and the thin
man recited his
zikr
again, and the
Afreet twisted and faded like smoke, as if it had never existed at all.
Kasyx went over to Samena and helped
her up. Then he edged his way back behind Tebulot and Xaxxa, keeping his arm
protectively around Samena’s shoulders.
It was then that he felt the floor
shifting and stirring beneath his feet. He knew what was happening. Morning was
approaching, and Andrea was gradually beginning to wake up. The North African
dream would soon fold and collapse, like imaginary
origami,
and be forgotten for ever in a blatant flood of Southern
California daylight.
‘Time for us to go, I’m afraid,’ he
told the young Arab.
The young Arab raised both of his
hands. ‘Revenge shall be mine.
Mektoub,
it
is written.’
Tebulot said, out of the corner of
his mouth, ‘Do you want me to blast him?’
Kasyx nodded, and just as quietly,
he said, ‘I’m going to draw the octagon now. Wait until it’s right up above our
heads, then let him have it. That way, if he tries to retaliate – if he
can
retaliate – we’ll be well out of the
dream before he can hit back.’
Kasyx raised his arms and began to
describe the electrical blue octagon in the gloom of the room. The octagon
reflected in the silvery face-mask of Xaxxa’s fighting-helmet and lit Tebulot
and Samena in an eerie supernatural light.
‘Are you ready?’ Kasyx asked
Tebulot.
‘One thing!’
the
young Arab called, as Kasyx prepared to lift the octagon over their heads.
There was very little time left now. The integrity of the dream city was
beginning to come apart. Dozing memories of other days in Andrea’s life were
beginning to intrude on the equilibrium of the building all around them: sudden
flashes of walks along the San Francisco Embarcadero, flickers of Paris,
lectures at UC San Diego. Faces, voices, snatches of music. The floor began to
ripple like water, somewhere the wailing of panpipes rose up again, to warn
them that morning had arrived, and that all through the Western time zones, in
the minds of millions of sleeping people, whole imaginary landscapes were
crumbling and vanishing, whole metropolises were collapsing. The Atlantis of
the night was sinking down again to the seabed of the collective unconscious.
Tebulot lifted his weapon, and aimed
it at the young Arab’s head.
‘Fire when I give the word,’ Kasyx
murmured.
But the young Arab said, in a
strange, strong voice, ‘You would not break the code of the Night Warriors,
would you,
effendi?
The code of the
Night Warriors honours a deal struck; and the deal that you struck was to give
me my life in exchange for your finger-archer.’
He turned toward the door of the
room, and beckoned, and the pale, handsome boy who had first admitted them
appeared. He was nudging in front of him the woman in the white solar topi, the
dream-personality of Andrea herself. In one hand, the boy held a large curved
knife, and he was smiling.
‘If you attempt to kill me, then
this lady will die, too,’ said the young Arab.
Kasyx turned to Tebulot, and then
back to the Arab. ‘If you so much as touch her,’
Kasyx warned, ‘this dream will
collapse, with you in it.’
‘Ah, yes, but at least I will take
you with me.’
Xaxxa said, ‘He’s got us, man.’
‘Your black friend speaks the
truth,’ the young Arab told Kasyx. ‘You have got what you came for, the
finger-archer Samena. Be satisfied with that.’
Kasyx said, ‘If you so much as
touch
that woman...’
But now the dream was falling apart
on all sides. Kasyx quickly grasped the hands of his companions, and initiated
the slow descent of the octagon, to take them out of the dream and back to the
real world. Behind the young Arab, the wall of the room had disappeared
altogether. There was a beach there now, a windswept shoreline, somewhere
Andrea used to live when she was a child.
A split-second before the octagon
descended in front of his eyes and blotted out his view of the young Arab
altogether, Kasyx saw him unwinding the veils which covered his face, and for
one heart-swallowing fraction of a moment, he glimpsed the hideous face of
Yaomauitl’s embryonic son as it really was. Bulbous, malevolent eyes;
cheekbones and gristle and semi-transparent skin; and a mouth that was
stretched with two layers of developing teeth.