But Ha'arud would have none of it, and proceeded to step lightly off the edge of the dome. He hovered, like a bumblebee, a hundred feet above the dusty street. 'Balance,' he said with great satisfaction.
'But,' I asked, 'is the good deed of giving me this demonstration enough to offset the pride with which you exhibit your skill?' I was cold and wanted to get down, and hoped to shorten the exhibition.
Instead, hearing my question, Ha'arud screwed up his face as though it was something he had not given thought to. A moment later, with a shriek of surprise, he plummeted down out of my sight to smash on the mosque's stone steps, as dead as dead.
Ibn Fahad, having lost himself in remembering the story, poked at the campfire. 'Thus, the problem with matters of delicate balance,' he said, and shook his head.
The whispering rustle of our dark visitor brought us sharply back. 'Interesting,' the creature rasped. 'Sad, yes. Sad enough? We shall see. Who is the next of your number?'
A cold chill, like fever, swept over me at those calm words.
'I… I am next…' said Fawn, voice taut as a bowstring. 'Shall I begin?'
The vampyr said nothing, only bobbed the black lump of his head. The youth cleared his throat and began.
Fawn's Story
There was once… [Fawn began, and hesitated, then started again.] There was once a young prince named Zufik, the second son of a great sultan. Seeing no prospects for himself in his father's kingdom, he went out into the wild world to search for his fortune. He traveled through many lands, and saw many strange things, and heard tell of others stranger still.
In one place he was told of a nearby sultanate, the ruler of which had a beautiful daughter, his only child and the very apple of his eye.
Now this country had been plagued for several years by a terrible beast, a great white leopard of a kind never seen before. So fearsome it was that it had killed hunters set to trap it, yet was it also so cunning that it had stolen babies from their very cradles as the mothers lay sleeping. The people of the sultanate were all in fear; and the sultan, whose best warriors had tried and failed to kill the beast, was driven to despair. Finally, at the end of his wits, he had it proclaimed in the market place that the man who could destroy the white leopard would be gifted with the sultan's daughter Rassoril, and with her the throne of the sultanate after the old man was gone.
Young Zufik heard how the best young men of the country, and others from countries beyond, one after the other had met their deaths beneath the claws of the leopard, or… or… in its jaws.…
[Here I saw the boy falter, as if the vision of flashing teeth he was conjuring had suddenly reminded him of our predicament. Walid the under-vizier reached out and patted the lad's shoulder with great gentleness, until he was calm enough to resume.]
So… [He swallowed.] So young Prince Zufik took himself into that country, and soon was announced at the sultan's court.
The ruler was a tired old man, the fires in his sunken eyes long quenched. Much of the power seemed to have been handed over to a pale, narrow-faced youth named Sifaz, who was the princess's cousin. As Zufik announced his purpose, as so many had done before him, Sifaz's eyes flashed.
'You will no doubt meet the end all the others have, but you are welcome to the attempt-and the prize, should you win.'
Then for the first time Zufik saw the Princess Rassoril, and in an instant his heart was overthrown.
She had hair as black and shiny as polished jet, and a face upon which Allah himself must have looked in satisfaction, thinking: 'Here is the summit of My art.' Her delicate hands were like tiny doves as they nested in her lap, and a man could fall into her brown eyes and drown without hope of rescue-which is what Zufik did, and he was not wrong when he thought he saw Rassoril return his ardent gaze.
Sifaz saw, too, and his thin mouth turned in something like a smile, and he narrowed his yellow eyes. 'Take this princeling to his room, that he may sleep now and wake with the moon. The leopard's cry was heard around the palace's walls last night.'
Indeed, when Zufik woke in the evening darkness, it was to hear the choking cry of the leopard beneath his very window. As he looked out, buckling on his scabbard, it was to see a white shape slipping in and out of the shadows in the garden below. He took also his dagger in his hand and leaped over the threshold.
He had barely touched ground when, with a terrible snarl, the leopard bounded out of the obscurity of the hedged garden wall and came to a stop before him. It was huge-bigger than any leopard Zufik had seen or heard of-and its pelt gleamed like ivory. It leaped, claws flashing, and he could barely throw himself down in time as the beast passed over him like a cloud, touching him only with its hot breath. It turned and leaped again as the palace dogs set up a terrible barking, and this time its talons raked his chest, knocking him tumbling. Blood started from his shirt, spouting so fiercely that he could scarcely draw himself to his feet. He was caught with his back against the garden wall; the leopard slowly moved toward him, yellow eyes like tallow lamps burning in the niches of Hell.
Suddenly there was a crashing at the far end of the garden: the dogs had broken down their stall and were even now speeding through the trees. The leopard hesitated-Zufik could almost see it thinking-and then, with a last snarl, it leaped onto the wall and disappeared into the night.
Zufik was taken, his wounds bound, and he was put into his bed. The princess Rassoril, who had truly lost her heart to him, wept bitterly at his side, begging him to go back to his father's land and to give up the fatal challenge. But Zufik, weak as he was, would no more think of yielding than he would of theft or treason, and refused, saying he would hunt the beast again the following night. Sifaz grinned and led the princess away. Zufik thought he heard the pale cousin whistling as he went.
In the dark before dawn Zufik, who could not sleep owing to the pain of his injury, heard his door quietly open. He was astonished to see the princess come in, gesturing him to silence. When the door was closed she threw herself down at his side and covered his hand and cheek with kisses, proclaiming her love for him and begging him again to go. He admitted his love for her, but reminded her that his honor would not permit him to stop short of his goal, even should he die in the trying.
Rassoril, seeing that there was no changing the young prince's mind, then took from her robe a black arrow tipped in silver, fletched with the tail feathers of a falcon. 'Then take this,' she said. 'This leopard is a magic beast, and you will never kill it otherwise. Only silver will pierce its heart. Take the arrow and you may fulfill your oath.' So saying, she slipped out of his room.
The next night Zufik again heard the leopard's voice in the garden below, but this time he took also his bow and arrow when he went to meet it. At first he was loath to use it, since it seemed somehow unmanly; but when the beast had again given him injury and he had struck three sword blows in turn without effect, he at last nocked the silver-pointed shaft on his bowstring and, as the beast charged him once more, let fly. The black arrow struck to the leopard's heart; the creature gave a hideous cry and again leaped the fence, this time leaving a trail of its mortal blood behind it.
When morning came Zufik went to the sultan for men, so that they could follow the track of blood to the beast's lair and prove its death. The sultan was displeased when his vizier, the princess's pale cousin, did not answer his summons. As they were all going down into the garden, though, there came a great cry from the sleeping rooms upstairs, a cry like a soul in mortal agony. With fear in their hearts Zufik, the sultan, and all the men rushed upstairs. There they found the missing Sifaz.
The pale man lifted a shaking, red-smeared finger to point at Zufik, as all the company stared in horror.
'He has done it-the foreigner!' Sifaz shouted.
In Sifaz's arms lay the body of the Princess Rassoril, a black arrow standing from her breast.
After Fawn finished there was a long silence. The boy, his own courage perhaps stirred by his story, seemed to sit straighter.
'Ah…' the vampyr said at last, 'love and its prices-that is the message? Or is it perhaps the effect of silver on the supernatural? Fear not, I am bound by no such conventions, and fear neither silver, steel, nor any other metal.' The creature made a huffing, scraping sound that might have been a laugh. I marveled anew, even as I felt the skein of my life fraying, that it had so quickly gained such command of our unfamiliar tongue.
'Well…' it said slowly. 'Sad. But… sad enough? Again, that is the important question. Who is your last… contestant?'
Now my heart truly went cold within me, and I sat as though I had swallowed a stone. Walid al-Salameh spoke up.
'I am,' he said, and took a deep breath. 'I am.'
The Vizier's Story
This is a true story-or so I was told. It happened in my grandfather's time, and he had it from someone who knew those involved. He told it to me as a cautionary tale.
There once was an old caliph, a man of rare gifts and good fortune. He ruled a small country, but a wealthy one-a country upon which all the gifts of Allah had been showered in grand measure. He had the finest heir a man could have, dutiful and yet courageous, beloved by the people almost as extravagantly as the caliph himself. He had many other fine sons, and two hundred beautiful wives, and an army of fighting men the envy of his neighbors. His treasury was stacked roofbeam-high with gold and gemstones and blocks of fragrant sandalwood, crisscrossed with ivories and bolts of the finest cloth. His palace was built around a spring of fragrant, clear water; and everyone said that they must be the very Waters of Life, so fortunate and well-loved this caliph was. His only sadness was that age had robbed his sight from him, leaving him blind, but hard as this was, it was a small price to pay for Allah's beneficence.
One day the caliph was walking in his garden, smelling the exquisite fragrance of the blossoming orange trees. His son the prince, unaware of his father's presence, was also in the garden, speaking with his mother, the caliph's first and chiefest wife.
'He is terribly old,' the wife said. 'I cannot stand even to touch him anymore. It is a horror to me.'
'You are right, mother,' the son replied, as the caliph hid behind the trees and listened, shocked. 'I am sickened by watching him sitting all day, drooling into his bowl, or staggering sightless through the palace. But what are we to do?'
'I have thought on it long and hard,' the caliph's wife replied. 'We owe it to ourselves and those close to us to kill him.'
'Kill him?' the son replied. 'Well, it is hard for me, but I suppose you are right. I still feel some love for him, though-may we at least do it quickly, so that he shall not feel pain at the end?'
'Very well. But do it soon-tonight, even. If I must feel his foul breath upon me one more night I will die myself.'
'Tonight, then,' the son agreed, and the two walked away, leaving the blind caliph shaking with rage and terror behind the orange trees. He could not see what sat on the garden path behind them, the object of their discussion: the wife's old lap-dog, a scrofulous creature of extreme age.
Thus the caliph went to his vizier, the only one he was sure he could trust in a world of suddenly traitorous sons and wives, and bade him to have the pair arrested
