Emperor of Thorns

34

Five years earlier

Somewhere in the loneliness of the Sahar, amongst the twenty days of our crossing, we passed unnoticed from Maroc into Liba. The Taureg spoke of a land that had lain between the realms long ago, devoured by nibbles until Maroc met Liba in the sands. A land of people who would have done well to heed the saying about inches given and miles taken, or as the locals have it, ‘beware the camel’s nose’ after the story of the camel who begs his way by inches into the tent, then refuses to leave.

Hamada rises from desert sands in low mud buildings, rounded as if by the wind, and whitewashed to dazzle the eye. They look at first like pebbles half-bedded in the ground. There is water here: you can taste it on the air, see it in the stands of karran grass that stabilize the dunes and hold back their tides. As you begin to move among the white buildings you see grander structures beyond, nestling in the slight hollow that holds the city. In some ancient time a god fell to earth here and fractured the deepest bedrock, bringing to the surface the waters of an aquifer untapped in any other place.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been as far from anywhere, Brother Marco.’ I shaded my eyes and watched the city through the heat-shimmer.

‘I’m not your brother,’ he said.

Omal, riding between us, snorted. ‘Far from anywhere? Hamada means “centre”. This is the heart of Liba. Hamada.’

We rode in with the morning sun throwing our shadows behind us, hauling on our reins to keep the camels from bolting for the water. Even so they picked the pace up, snorting and blowing, licking at their muzzles with coarse tongues. Faces appeared at shadowed windows and the drovers called out halloos to old friends. In the shade of tiny alleys scrawny children chased scrawnier chickens.

Deeper in, the streets of Hamada boast tall houses of whitewashed plaster over brick with high turrets to catch the wind. Further still and our column came in sight of great halls in white stone, public buildings to dwarf the works in Albaseat, constructed to the sparse and grand arithmetic of the Moorish scholars. Libraries, galleries for sculpture, pillared baths where desert men might settle in the luxury of deep waters.

‘Not too shabby.’ I felt like the dirty peasant come to court.

‘Gold has been made and spent here.’ Marco nodded. ‘Gold and more gold.’ For once the sneer had left him. It’s an unsettling business having to re-evaluate your world view. Neither of us were enjoying it.

Our caravan turned from the centre road and entered a vast market square with pens partitioned for camels, goats, sheep, and even a few horses. Here black-clad crowds thronged, merchants anticipating the camel train and ready to haggle. Omal and his comrades helped Marco down and set his trunk on the sandy flagstones before him. He approached it with the bandy gait of a man too long in the saddle.

‘I’m not dragging that thing again,’ I said, glad to be off my own camel. ‘It’s been carried twenty days and more, it can be carried for the last mile.’

Rattling a few coins soon found a toothless old rogue with a donkey willing to help us along to the caliph’s palace. The beast looked as ancient as its master and I fully expected its legs to fold beneath it as the three of us lowered the trunk to its back. It proved as contrary as Balky, though, and just hee-hawed its complaints whilst the old man secured the load.

Standing in the heat, sweating while I watched the old man work, the worries that eluded me in the emptiness of the desert returned in force. Since that moment in the Kutta java house when I understood the nature of the trap, it seemed that like Brother Hendrick, impaled on that Conaught spear, I had been driving the blade deeper. Sensible hope of revenge, not that it ever had been sensible, had gone out the window as soon as I realized they knew me, realized I was anticipated. Now in the midst of a desert that could hold me prisoner on its own, I aimed my path at the enemy’s court, set no doubt just a few score yards above the dungeons I would soon rot in.

‘Here’s to you, Brother Hendrick.’

‘Your pardon?’ Marco poked at the brim of his hat to peer at me.

‘Let’s get this done,’ I said, and started walking. Beneath desert robes the copper box, the gun, and the view-ring all rubbed at me, uncomfortable in the heat. It seemed unlikely that any of them would offer salvation.

Broad streets, where the wind scoured only a whisper of sand, brought us past bathhouse and library, law court and gallery, to a steeper dip where beneath the steel sky of the desert a wide and flawless lake reflected the caliph’s palace. Between us and the waters the pillared ruins of an amphitheatre rose from a scattering of rubble. Some work of the Romans, unimaginably old.

‘And what’s that?’ I pointed to a tall tower, the tallest in Hamada, set apart from the palace yet casting its dark shadow down across high walls into the heart of the compound.

‘Mathema,’ the old rogue said over his gums.

‘Qalasadi?’ I jabbed my finger at it.

‘Qalasadi.’ He nodded.

‘We’ll go there first,’ I said. Revenge had brought me here. The need to strike back when struck. Ibn Fayed owed me a debt of blood, but Qalasadi, his debt had a face on it and I would settle that first.

‘Go where you like, Sir Jorg,’ Marco said. ‘My business is at the palace.’

‘And what business is that, Marco? Come now, friend, you can tell Brother Jorg. We’ve travelled many a mile together.’ I showed him my teeth.

‘We’re not brothers—’

I fished into my robes. For an instant Marco flinched, as if he thought I would pull a knife on him. Instead I drew out Yusuf’s die.

‘On the road we are family, Brother Marco.’

I knelt and set the die spinning on the flagstones, whirling like a top on one corner.

‘I’ve come to collect a debt,’ he said. ‘From Ibn Fayed.’

The die rattled across the ground. A two.

‘Go with God, Brother Marco,’ I said.

I came alone to the door of the mathmagicans’ tower. No guard stood there, no windows overlooked it. The tower reached a hundred yards above me, an elegant spire, maybe twenty yards in diameter at the base. The first windows opened about halfway up its length, stepping in a spiral toward the heights of the spire, the stone too smooth for scorpion or spider.

The door had been fashioned of black crystal, flaws glimmering in its upper layers where the sun reached in. I knocked and where my knuckles struck, a circle of numbers appeared, written in gleams, the ten digits the Arabs first gave us.

‘A puzzle?’

I touched one digit, the ‘two’, another grew brighter, the ‘four’. I touched that. The circle vanished. I waited. Nothing.

A harder knock, but my knuckles made no sound against the crystal, just summoned the circle of numbers again. I pressed, chasing the glowing numbers in ever-quicker circles, trying to read the patterns, keeping track for a few seconds then losing the thread.

‘Damn it, I didn’t come to play games.’

The place lay deserted. A few figures moved among the distant ruins, Marco and other visitors toiled up the broad steps before Fayed’s palace, and a thin crowd loitered around the sandy margins of the lake, but not a soul lay within earshot.

I tried again. Then again. Clearly whatever it took to be a mathmagician I wasn’t made of the stuff. The glowing numbers danced their perimeter, fading as I watched. I scowled at the door, and that didn’t work either. More out of frustration than judgment I knocked again and as soon as the number circle appeared I tore the view-ring from its thong and slapped it dead centre. Immediately the procession of numerals sped up, sped again, and blurred into a circle of light. The door began to emit a hum, high pitched and rapidly scaling the octaves. Small lightnings started to fork through the crystal, spreading from the points where the view-ring touched it. My fingertips buzzed with the vibration. Hum became whine became shriek. Vertical became horizontal. And I found myself trying to rise amongst jagged black chunks of what had been a most impressive door.