A Thousand Nights Page 2

  “Make me a smallgod,” I whispered to my sister. “When I have gone.”

  “I will make you a smallgod now,” she said to me, and the tack jingled as Lo-Melkhiin’s men dismounted and came near. “What good to be revered when you are dead? We will begin the moment they take you, and you shall be a smallgod before you reach the qasr.”

  I had prayed to smallgods my whole life. Our father’s father’s father had been a great herdsman, with more sheep than a man could count in one day. He had traded wool to villages far and near, and it was to him we prayed when our father was away with the caravan. Our father always returned home safely, with gifts for our mothers and work for my brothers and profit for us all, but sometimes I wondered if it was the smallgod’s doing. For the first time, I wished that our father was here. I knew he would not have saved me, but I might have asked if he had ever felt the smallgod we prayed to aiding him on the road.

  “Thank you, sister,” I said. I was unsure if it would help me, but it could not harm me.

  Lo-Melkhiin’s guard closed his hand on my arm, but I followed him willingly toward the horses. His face was covered by a sand-scarf, but his eyes betrayed him. He wanted to be here no more than I did, yet he did his duty, as did I. When he saw that I would not fight him, he relaxed, and his hand became more a guide than a shackle. I stood straight and did not look back, though I could hear the wails behind me as my mother began to grieve. Perhaps I should have gone to her, instead of my sister’s mother. But she would not have helped me. She would have done what my father could not, and she would have tried to keep me safe. She would have cost me my sister.

  “I love you,” I called out. The words were for everyone, for my mothers, and the words were only for my sister.

  My sister was on her knees when they put me on the horse, her white linen browned by the sand and her hair falling forward across her face. She chanted in the family tongue, the one my father’s father’s father practiced when he tended his sheep, the one we heard at my father’s knee as he taught it to my brothers and we sat close by to overhear. My sister’s mother knelt beside her and chanted too. I could hear the words, but I could not make them out. I knew they were for me, for I could feel the way the wind pulled at my veil, curious to see the face of the girl who received such fervent prayer.

  Lo-Melkhiin sat atop his horse and laughed, for he thought she wept to lose me. But I knew better. I could feel it, in my soul.

  LO-MELKHIIN’S HORSES WERE SWIFT, like the wind circles that danced on the sand. Our father’s tents, and the tents around our well, were swallowed up by the sky before I had time to look back at them. They had been my whole world, before the guard lifted me into the saddle, and now they were lost to me. Never again would I tell my sister stories, using the warm light of the lamp to make shadows with my hands on the canvas. I would be a queen, for however short a time, and I would never live in a tent again.

  Lo-Melkhiin rode at the head of the party, and his guards arrayed themselves around me in a loose formation. They need not have bothered. I was new to riding, and spent my concentration staying upright. Even had I been able to get away, I had nowhere to go. If I went home to my village, the guards could simply follow me there, and if I tried to flee into the desert, I would be food for the sand-crows sooner than if I stayed my course. So I watched the guards, how they sat and how they held their legs against their horses’ flanks. I did my best to mimic their seat, and after a while my muscles ached. I was glad my veil hid my face. I had no wish for them to see me suffer.

  When the sun was high, we halted to water the horses. They were desert-bred, and could ride all day if they had to, but their way would be easier if we let them rest. Lo-Melkhiin wore no spurs. I had always thought that horses must be expensive, because even our father did not have one, and now I knew they must be, because Lo-Melkhiin was kind to his. He held the beast’s head himself, and raised the water skin to its lips for it to drink. His hand was light upon the horse’s face, and I began to wonder.

  What sort of man could have so much blood on his hands that he could choose a wife within moments of seeing her, and know that she would soon be added to the litany of the dead, but would call a halt on the ride home to spare the horses? I had not stopped to think, in my haste to save my sister. I had thought of her life, of her mother’s happiness, and I had not thought about what was to be my marriage. One night or thirty, I would know Lo-Melkhiin, who laughed at my sister’s tears and watered his horse with his own hands.

  We had spoken of marriage, of course, my sister and our mothers and I. We had stitched the purple dishdashah I wore, and filled it with the hopes and dreams of our future. We knew that someday, our father would announce my sister’s match, and then mine soon after, and we would move into the tents of our husbands’ families. There would be a feast, and songs, and all the old traditions. And there would be the wedding night. I would have none of that, now, except the last.

  I looked down from my perch on the horse’s back. No one had come to help me dismount, and I was determined not to fall trying. The guard who had pulled me away from my sister was tall, and wore riding leathers much more suited to the desert than my dress. He came toward me, holding out a water skin. I took it from him, drinking only a little before handing it back, and he did not meet my eyes.

  “Salt,” said Lo-Melkhiin. It was the first word I heard him say.

  The guard passed up his salt canister, a small ornate box he carried at his waist. When I held it in my hands, I realized it was wood, and worth more than the cloth I wore. Inside it was the precious mineral that would keep us all alive in the desert sun. I licked my finger and coated it in the coarse white grains. I knew it would taste foul, but I slid my hand under my veil and forced myself to eat it all, and then the guard passed me the water skin again. I took more this time, to cleanse my mouth of the taste, but I was still able to watch him stow the canister away, carefully, securely. Almost lovingly. It was worth more than wood to him.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Too late, I wondered if that was permitted. Some men did not allow their wives to speak outside the home, and certainly not to other men. I was not a wife yet, but I was as good as wed, and Lo-Melkhiin might be the kind of husband who expected a demure, retiring creature.

  “You are welcome,” the guard said, and there was no fear in his voice. He still did not look at me, and I knew it was because he pitied me. He pitied my death.

  Lo-Melkhiin swung back into his saddle, his heavy robe billowing behind him, and his light boots tucked against the belly of his horse. At that signal the other guards remounted. I shifted, trying to find a place on my seat that did not feel bruised, but could not. I ground my teeth behind my veil, and we rode on.

  Time is an odd thing in the desert. They say that in the city, the Skeptics have found a way to measure time with water and glass, but in the desert, the sand goes on forever, and takes time with it. You cannot tell how far you have come, or how far you have to go. The sand is what kills you, if you die in the desert, because the sand is everywhere, and it does not care if you get out. So we rode for hours, but it felt as though we rode for days. We were not on a caravan route, so we passed no travelers or other villages. Had I to guess, I would have said that we were riding in a straight line back to Lo-Melkhiin’s qasr, where other travelers would have followed the circuitous route made safe by the oases. But our direction, like our duration, was blown about with the sand.

  As the sun drew near the horizon, and the sky turned from blasted blue to a dark and darker red, I saw a distortion in the distance, and knew that we were, finally, close. Lo-Melkhiin’s father’s father’s father had built the qasr of white stone. Our father and brothers had told us of it, for they had seen it when they were out with the caravan, and now that my mother and my sister’s mother no longer traveled, they liked to hear tales of the world. In the daytime it gleamed, gathering the sun’s rays into itself, heating slowly as the day progressed. As night approached and
the desert cooled, the heat came out of the walls and tried to find the sun again, but since the sun was setting, the heat moved in weaving lines, seen from a distance like through a veil of the finest silk, blurred and indistinct. But it was no false vision, seen by one sunstroked and delusional. It was solid, and we were drawing near.

  The city was made of three parts. At the heart was the qasr, where Lo-Melkhiin lived, met petitioners, and where the temple stood. Around it were the crooked streets and pale houses, the dust and dirty tents. And around that was the wall, high and strong. There had not been invaders in generations, but the wall was from a less peaceful time. We prospered under Lo-Melkhiin—or, men did, and it was men who kept the accounts of everything, from grain and sheep to life and death.

  The city gates stood open, for Lo-Melkhiin was expected. I imagined that at one time the people had come to see Lo-Melkhiin’s bride to wish her well. In my village, we sang for prosperity and long life when the bride went past. Those songs were not heard inside the qasr, not for me. There were people in the streets, come to see their momentary queen as I passed under the towers, but they were quiet and did not sing. Most did not look at me for very long. Mothers pulled their children away, hiding them in doorways instead of behind tent flaps, though they looked and dressed the way our mothers did. The guards rode close by me now, but Lo-Melkhiin rode by himself. He had no fear of his own people; most of them he did not rule harshly.

  The horses could sense that they were nearing home, and pranced through the streets. The guards sat up straight in their saddles, trying to look the part, though they were covered in dust. I could only cling to the reins and pray that I did not fall. The city had roused me again, lights gleaming warmly. I had the false sense that I was home. The long hours in the desert had numbed me, and I’d forgotten my aching body; now my muscles were screaming. When we came at last to the stables, the guards dismounted and the salt-guard came to take me down. I let myself nearly tumble into his arms, and when he set me on the ground, he waited a moment before releasing me. I straightened my legs and my back, and there was fire along my bones. I bit my tongue against the pain of it, but I would not lean against the guard.

  “This one has more than her face to give her spirit,” Lo-Melkhiin said. He was not laughing when he said it. I thought it odd, as he had laughed at my sister’s discomfort before, but his attention had already turned to a new man in a fine red robe. I took him to be the steward, and his words confirmed my guess.

  “Her rooms have been prepared, my lord,” he said. “As have yours, if you are ready to go in.”

  “I shall walk the wall for a time,” Lo-Melkhiin said. “I wish to look upon the stars.”

  “As you say,” said the steward with a bow. He gestured to the salt-guard, who still stood next to me. “Come.”

  The other guards fell away, and the salt-guard took my arm again, gently this time. We followed the steward inside; my hesitation on the steps drew a long gaze from my escort, but no remarks, and we continued down a long corridor and through a garden. There was a sound in the garden I had never heard before, like soft whispering, but it was too dark to see what caused it. It reminded me of something I had heard long ago, but the feel of the city, of the qasr, drove the desert from my memory.

  On the other side of the garden, a woman waited. She was old and her cloth was plain, though it was well woven. Her back was unbowed and she smiled at me. It was the first smile I had seen since the morning. She drew me into a well-lit bathing room, waving off the salt-guard and steward, and I followed her toward the smell of heavy perfume and the whispering sound of moving silks. Other women waited for us there, with brushes and oils and cloth so fine it glittered in the light of the lamp.

  They would wash and prepare me like a bride, but I knew that I was being dressed for death. Yet there was that sound, pulling at the whirlwind of my thoughts. I decided in that moment that I must live through the night, because I wished to know what made that sound. I walked up the stairs, and into Lo-Melkhiin’s harem.

  WHEN THE SUN BURNED OUT our fifth summer, we had a rainy season like none I have seen since. It began quietly, dark mist on the horizon, and I did not know that it was something to be feared. My sister and I were with the sheep, who did not stray during the hot times because they knew that if they wandered, they would die. The first sign was when the ram took fright, bleating more desperately than if we had been bringing him to the knife for dinner. He butted at us, and at the ewes, and we wept. He had been our pet, and we had made much of him, feeding him the best greens we could find, and leaning up against his flank for sparse shade in the heat of the sun.

  He knocked me off my feet and was set to trample me when my brothers arrived. They did not shout at us, nor did they tease, as was their custom. This was the second sign, and when we became truly afraid. They took our staves from us, pushing our small herd back to the village, and when I fell, legs weak from being hit by the ram, the eldest of them—the only full brother my sister had—picked me up in his arms when he might have scorned me. We fled, not to the tents, but to the honeycombed caverns where we enshrined our dead. The sky was much darker now, an odd dark. It was not the black night that I knew; it was grey and boiling, and there was a green around the edges of it that I did not like.

  When we reached the caverns, our mothers were waiting for us before the entrance. They were dressed in their priestly-whites, as they were on funerals and feast days, and at their feet lay the scattered remains of a hasty ceremony. We did not come here with the living—or we had not, in my lifetime—and so I knew from my mother’s lessons that since we did not bring a body with us today, we must beg for entrance.

  Behind us, the rest of my village clambered up the rise, carrying all they could. It was not everything. Below, where the tents were clustered, I could see many beloved objects left behind. Fear took me, though I still did not know why, and I clung to my sister and to my mother’s priestly-veil.

  “May we go in?” asked our father, his tone the hushed and reverent one he used when my mother was thus dressed, and not the commanding voice he used in our tent.

  Our mothers looked at one another, and something passed between them. They had not yet begun to whisper to us of this office—of the small, terrible power they held with the dead among the village—but I could see it in their eyes, even if I could not decipher it. My mother nodded, and my sister’s mother raised her hands.

  “We have made the offerings and done the rites,” my sister’s mother said. “We have not heard the dead speak against us, and so we bid you enter, though there may yet be a price.”

  “I must risk it,” our father said to them, “because the clouds draw nearer, and we have nowhere else to go.”

  Clouds. The word felt strange against my tongue as I repeated it, and I feared its weight there. They were closer now, dark and heavy, and low in the sky. They waited for us, but they would not wait very much longer.

  “Then enter,” said my mother. She spoke to our father, but she cast her arms wide to include everyone. “Enter, but be careful where you tread. The dead sleep lightly when there is wind such as this in the air.”

  We left the sheep outside with my sister’s older brother to guard them. We went into the caves, and our mothers spread white cloaks on the ground for us to sit upon. Our father went to each family, advising them where to sit and how best to settle their belongings so they did not disturb the dead. Then he returned to us.

  “Come,” he said to my sister and to me. “You must see this, so that you will know it.”

  He had not spoken to us so directly before. Always his orders had come from our mothers, or from my sister’s brother. We were the girl-children, born so close together that few men could tell us apart, save that the older of us was already more graceful. We did not know what to do, so my mother pushed us forward and my sister’s mother twisted the hem of our father’s robes into our hands.

  “Do not let go,” she said to us. She had spoken before o
f a price. “No matter what, hold fast and return to us.”

  We followed our father back to the mouth of the caverns, where my sister’s brother waited with the sheep. The clouds were above us now, stretching as far as the eye could see. I did not like the taste of the air, and when I wrinkled my nose, our father smiled.

  “Yes, daughter-mine,” he said. “Remember this smell. Remember the skies, how they look. Remember how the sheep worried you and tried to knock you down. Remember all of that, and remember what comes next.”

  He smiled. It was the most he had ever said to me. I was afraid, but I also felt the sand in my heart turn to glass. Whatever was coming, our father wanted my sister and me to see it, to know it, and to be safe from it when it came again. This was how I learned that he loved us.

  As we watched, the sky turned to black and finally the clouds could hold no more. They burst with wet, and the sheep reared up and pressed themselves against the hill. It was water, I saw after a moment. And it was deafening. All the water I had ever seen in my life had come from our well. I had bathed with it and drunk it and poured it over melon vines, but I had not ever seen anything like this.

  “It is called rain,” our father said. “It falls upon green hills far from here, and rushes to us down the dry wadi bed. But when the smallgods will it, the clouds slip free from those green hills and come to us with speed, and with such water as you will see only a few times in your life. We need the water, but it is dangerous, and soon you will see why.”