A Thousand Nights Page 5

  I sat up and took the cup from her hand. I wondered if I ought to rise altogether and bow, but before I could move again, she took a seat amongst the cushions at the foot of my bed and tucked her feet beneath her, as though she were a daughter of shepherds herself.

  “Seven nights,” she said to me. “I suppose I will not be able to avoid you for much longer.”

  I wondered if she had thought to care at all for her son’s wives at the start, and learned to ignore them the way the rest of the qasr seemed to. The women in the thread room still did not speak to me, though they spoke to themselves in louder and less cautious voices. At least they no longer looked so surprised when I appeared each morning, and no longer avoided my gaze when I told them I would see them the next day.

  “It is my honor to meet you,” I said. I did not know what to do, or even what to call her, so I drank my tea and prayed that I did not give offense.

  “My son says that you are not afraid of him,” she said to me.

  I had not known that they were on speaking terms. I did not know if she approved of his marriages. I did not know if she feared him.

  “I do fear him,” I said, which was close to the truth. “I fear him as I fear the desert sun and poisonous snakes. They are all part of the life I live. But the sun gives light, and snakes will feed a caravan if they are caught and cooked.”

  “And under my son’s rule, we have peace and prosperity,” she said, her voice bitter. Her husband had not ruled well.

  “And I have no escape from him,” I agreed.

  She looked at me for a long time, and I finished my tea.

  “I will tell you of my son,” she said. “Not the man he is now, for that you know as well as I do. But I will tell you what he was like when he was a boy, and what he was like when he learned to hunt.”

  I wondered if she meant for me to pity him, but I remembered the others who had lived in this room before me, and my heart was not moved. Still, I had no other business today, and our father had always told my brothers that the best routes are the ones best known.

  “I will hear you,” I said.

  “Come to the gardens when you are dressed, and we will speak,” she said to me, and then she left, the wooden screen sliding shut behind her.

  The serving girls came in, breathless with excitement, though they did their best to keep their faces blank. Today, at last, my hair was coiled simply about my head, though they twisted it instead of braiding it, which looked better and was more difficult to secure. I thought I might have more pegs in my hair than held our father’s tents to the sand by the time they were done. Then they led me to the garden, the one with the fountain I had seen on my first night, and I sat down next to Lo-Melkhiin’s mother. There was a basket of figs before us, and a jug of sweet-water.

  “I am from the south,” she said to me. “Where our desert is blue and looks like water, but will kill you if you drink it.”

  Our father had told me of this, and my brothers had seen it too. It was their favorite tale to tell to me and to my sister. A great blue and boundless desert, that heaved under the wind and grew or shrank with the size of the moon. Creatures did live in it, underneath the surface, like our burrowing snakes and insects; but if a man drank from it, he went mad and died, the same as if he had tried to drink sand.

  “We have different animals there,” she continued, and I remembered myself and paid attention. “So when my lord came to marry me, and brought me my first lion skin, I knew that I must follow him back to see the creature that had such glorious fur.”

  I wondered what it must have been like to be unafraid of lions. When my sister and I first took up the herds, we were told how to kill jackals and hyenas; but, my brothers insisted, should a lioness come, she can take whatever sheep she likes. The males, I had learned when I was older, were different, but still vicious, particularly when they were alone.

  “I loved him, though he was something of a fool,” she said. “He was kind and fair-minded. In better times, he would have made a fair ruler. But it was not to be. I grew ill, and whatever makes the water come to us from far away failed. The lords he trusted betrayed him, and lined their own pockets instead of looking after their people in the towns and villages. And then my son was born.”

  Lo-Melkhiin had, I think, ten summers more than I did. By the time I was born, we were accustomed to the hard times. My father traveled farther and was home less frequently. My mother and my sister’s mother had learned to stretch every thread, every loaf, every cut of meat, as far as they could. We did not starve, and neither did any in our father’s tents; but in the towns, they did not fare as smoothly.

  “My son grew up hard, like the times, but with the kindness of his father’s smile,” she said. “I knew that he would be a better lord than his father, and my husband knew it too. He spent hours ensuring that Lo-Melkhiin had all the best teachers and weapons-masters. If there was a craft my son wished to try his hand at, his father found him a craft-master.

  “But what he loved most of all was hunting,” she said. “He learned the desert’s secrets with the ease a hawk learns to fly. By the time he had twelve summers, he was already bringing home more meat than the qasr’s huntsmen, though the pickings were still lean in those times. He traveled far and wide, seeing more of the land and the desert than his father ever did, protected by his loyal guards wherever he went.”

  I had heard of the guards of which she spoke. Their names were legend now, as was his. Fleetfoot and Farsight had not saved him from whatever-it-was, the day he last went into the desert. His mother spoke fondly of them, though, so I did my best to control the emotions that would otherwise have rioted on my face.

  “He took his first lion in his sixteenth summer,” she said. “The beast had been stealing sheep from a village close to the city, and there was worry that it would soon develop a taste for children. My husband forbade Lo-Melkhiin to go after it, but he made his guards take him out anyway, and three days later, he returned with a fine pelt.

  “After that, it was as though the beasts took to taunting him,” she said. “Though I suppose they had no more game than we did, and were forced to find the easy prey of sheep. And every time he rode out, he came home with a pelt. I loved them dearly. They were soft, and they smelled of such wildness. I was fading then, breaking under the sun, and the lion skins my son brought to me were one of the few joys I still had.”

  She carded her fingers through her wig as she spoke, smiling at the memory.

  “And then he went out after one last pelt.” The smile disappeared from her face. “And you know what happened after that.”

  We sat, listening to the fountain, and the sun climbed above us.

  “My lady mother,” I said at length, not thinking it odd that I should call her the same thing I called my sister’s mother. “Why do you tell me this?”

  “I would have you know your husband,” she said. “It is not fair for you to think him only a monster. The men of the court will tell you that he has done much good for us, and that your death and those of the others are the price we must pay. I wanted to tell you that he was good, before, and that his father and I wished for him to be a better man. He is not that man. But every day you live, I will pray to the smallgods of my house that he will become that man again.”

  She left me then, and I sat in the garden until the hammer of the sun became so hard that I was forced to seek shade. It still did not matter to me that Lo-Melkhiin had once loved his mother and his people. He shed blood and kept peace, but only the peace was of note. I was not content with that, though I did not wish for some other girl’s death to pay the price instead. Seven days in the qasr had made me determined to get seven more, and then more besides. But I had a map of the trade route now, or at least a better one than I did before Lo-Melkhiin’s mother told me about her son. Perhaps there was a weakness, a fault, I could exploit in him.

  But I thought also of what she had said at the end, of what all the stories said: he is not that man
anymore.

  I DID NOT GO TO THE thread room that afternoon. Instead, I went through the gardens to see the great statues that Lo-Melkhiin’s artists had made. When I saw the statue of his mother again, standing strong and straight on the backs of the lion pair, I stopped. The first day that I saw the statue, I had thought it striking and beautiful. Now, having met the flesh-and-blood woman herself, I was less sure. The statue seemed harder, and not because it was made of stone. The face was more pointed, the mouth drawn down, and the shoulders broader than they were in life.

  The worst, though, were the eyes.

  I had seen the like on the other statues in the qasr gardens. It did not seem to matter if they were men, women, or animals. All were carved in an uncomfortable beauty, such that no living creature could duplicate. And all had eyes that were not quite right, staring off into corners as if they expected to find unspoken horrors there. To look too long at any of them was to court madness.

  “Do you like this one?” said a voice behind me. I turned, and saw the guardsman who had given me salt in the desert. He was not dressed in his uniform, the leather armor that deflected blades and arrows—and must have been murderous in the sun—but wore linen breeches and a tunic belted at the waist. The carved wooden box hung there, next to his eating knife.

  “It is striking,” I said to him. “But having met the subject, I do not think I like it.”

  “I do not like it, either,” he confessed, coming to stand beside me. “And I feel I am allowed to say as much, as it was me that carved it.”

  I choked. I had never met a stone carver before, let alone one as famous as Firh Stonetouched.

  “My lord, I am sorry,” I said. “I meant no offense.”

  “I am no lord,” he said, “and I spoke true when I told you I do not like it. I do not like many of the statues I have made for Lo-Melkhiin, even though he does me great honor by putting them on display in such fine settings as his own gardens.”

  “I thought you were a guardsman,” I said. I wished, not for the first time in my life, that I had my sister’s gift with words. I could tell stories well, if I learned and practiced their telling, but I was not gifted when it came to making them from whole cloth.

  “I am,” he said. “I came here to serve Lo-Melkhiin’s father, right before he died, and then I served Lo-Melkhiin.”

  “Carving, then, is entertainment to you?” I said. My mother did not approve of idleness, and since my brothers would not lower themselves to sew, many of them whittled bone tools as they sat around the fire at night.

  “It was, once,” he said. “I could make shafts for arrows, or tent pegs—nothing finer. It kept my hands busy, you see, on long watches when the night was cold.”

  I looked at the statue. It was a long way from arrows and pegs by the evening’s fire to carven rock in the center of Lo-Melkhiin’s gardens.

  “What turned you to stone?” I asked.

  His face darkened.

  “I rode with Lo-Melkhiin to fetch a bride,” he said. He had forgotten to whom he spoke, and I saw when he remembered, looking at me with a jerk of his head.

  “It is all right,” I said. “Please continue.”

  “Very well,” he said. “On those rides, we number few, and Lo-Melkhiin takes his turn at keeping watch and saddling the horse, as if he was a common guard. He spoke to us, and we to him, and he watched me carve. He said I had good hands for stone, should I want to; when we returned, I found this great hulk of rock had been quartered to me.

  “I ignored it for a good long while. Six wives, I think. Or maybe eight. I apologize, my lady, but sometimes I do not like to keep track.”

  I could not blame the qasr folk. Lo-Melkhiin’s wives numbered in the hundreds, and some had barely survived long enough to make a mark upon the qasr way of life. It was too much to expect them to mourn.

  “Each time we rode out, Lo-Melkhiin watched me carve, and told me that I had hands for stone. And each time, I did not listen,” he said. “And then one night I dreamed, more vividly than I have ever done, of a statue that was trapped inside a great block—a statue of Lo-Melkhiin’s mother, astride a pair of lions.

  “When I woke, my tools were already in my hands, and I was halfway to my feet before I thought about it. I had never carved stone before, and the statue I had seen in my dream was beautiful. I knew it was foolish to think that I could make something of that quality on my first attempt. Even arrow shafts take practice.

  “I did not stop for food or drink, not even when the sun was high above where I worked. My hands cracked and bled, and my throat screamed for water, and I did not stop. I baked in the sun, and I did not care. I thought only of the statue, the one that I would free from the stone.”

  If you separate the ram from the ewes when they are in heat, he will go mad trying to get to them. It does not matter how you tie him down. If he can smell them, he will break all his bones, and yours, trying to reach them. It sounded as though the madness that had overtaken the carver was the same.

  “At last, it was finished. I came out of my trance and Lo-Melkhiin was there. I think he had watched me for some time, though I had been lost in the work and did not see him arrive,” he said. “He looked at it, from top to bottom, and declared it perfect. He thanked me for so wonderful a work in the name of his mother, and named me Firh Stonetouched, because when the stone and I worked together, we wrought beauty. He asked what boon I would have from him, and I told him that I was happy as a guard. I do not love stone, you see, but sand and sky. I did not wish to leave them.”

  “But the other statues?” I asked. “What about them?”

  “Those I carved in fits like madness,” he told me. “Sometimes Lo-Melkhiin rides with me, and then gives me stone. And I always carve it, even though I do not like to, and the results haunt me in every garden in this place.”

  I looked at his hands. They were dark brown from the sun and wind, and callused from his horse’s reins and the shaft of the spear he carried when it was his turn to walk the wall. I saw no cuts or damage. It had been seven days since I had come here, and that would not have been enough time for his hands to heal if the carving-madness had overtaken him.

  “Did you carve nothing when I came?” I asked him.

  He smiled, truly smiled for the first time since he had begun to speak to me.

  “I carved arrow shafts, my lady,” he said, “in the tradition of my father’s father’s father. I do not trade them for gold and herds, as he does. Instead I use them to buy my way out of chores in the barracks I would rather not do. Then I have free time to come here, to the garden.”

  “I am surprised,” I said. “I would think, from what you have said, that you would stay as far from your statues as you could.”

  “You are right, lady-bless,” he said. “But the flowers are lovely, despite the stone, and the fountains are still as wondrous to me as they were the day I got here. For those two beauties, I will overlook my dislike of the statues, and of their eyes. I cannot ever seem to fix their eyes.”

  “The fountains are magnificent,” I agreed, but suddenly I was uncomfortable.

  Always, it seemed, men would overlook unpleasant things for the sake of those that went well. The statues’ eyes for the melodious sounds of the fountain. The deaths of their daughters for the bounty of their trade.

  There was great beauty in this qasr, but there was also great ugliness and fear. I would not be like those men who turned their eyes from one to see the other. I would remember what those things cost. Whether he knew it or not, the carver’s hands were moving over the lion’s bodies, like he was carving them again. Had he his tools, I’ve no doubt he would have found some new stone to make it into some dreadful semblance of life. Even so, I could not hate him. He had given me salt in the desert, and he had looked at me when the other guards had avoided my gaze. It was possible that he, who had come here to serve a man he loved, was as much a prisoner as I was, though he was held by different promises. I could not be saved from
the death that awaited me inside these stone walls, but he might yet find his freedom in sand and sky. I watched as he lost himself to the quiet music and ever-changing patterns of falling water.

  “May your hands find what you love,” I whispered, too softly for any but my smallgods to hear. “May your work not frighten you, but bring you joy instead, and may it bring joy to others. May you carve for yourself, and not for Lo-Melkhiin.”

  I left him there, with his hands on the flanks of the lions he disliked and his eyes on the falling water. As I came close to the garden’s arch, I heard a rustle in the low shrubs, and knew that one of the serving girls had watched us as we spoke. My marriage might be unconventional, and as yet unconsummated, but it seemed that at least my attendants were certain to mind me. I would not be left unchaperoned with another man, not even one as respected as Firh Stonetouched.

  Lo-Melkhiin had given him that name, he said. I wondered what his name had been before, if he had had one—or if the sun had baked it from his mind the day he carved Lo-Melkhiin’s mother.

  ON THE TENTH MORNING, when I woke alone in my comfortable room and was not dead, I was not surprised. A chill ran through my blood, and the walls closed in around me. I had seen the strange power ebb and flow between Lo-Melkhiin’s hands and mine. I suspected that my inevitable death would not be the result of poison, nor a blade, nor his fingers crushing my windpipe. There was something at work here that I did not understand; some wicked smallgod of Lo-Melkhiin’s family, or perhaps the demon from the stories, played upon our linked fingers. That would be my end. I could not pray to the smallgod my sister had made of me. The words stuck in my throat. But I could pray as I always had, to the bones of our father’s father’s father, even though they were very far away.

  I breathed deep, as my mother had taught me, and drew the picture of clear blue sky and calm brown sand in my mind. Before, when my sister and I had done this, we had held hands and pinched each other to keep from giggling. We did not lack piety by any means, but we were children, and children will find laughter wherever they can. My mother had frowned, but my sister’s mother smiled with us.