Just then the specter approached the temple. He was awe-inspiring with his stern gait, broad shoulders, and black raiment. He passed by the nobles and proceeded till he neared the soothsayer’s location. He said with the same strange rumble from which the diviner could make out the words only with difficulty that night: “I told you, Crow of Misfortune, to go and live anywhere but in the desert if you happened to acquire an enemy here.”
He took the atrocious dagger, which was planted in the dirt, and stabbed the diviner in the throat. Everyone saw the lethal blade gleam in the light of the setting sun before disappearing up to its hilt in the priest’s throat. The poor man emitted a weird rattle and seized the hilt with both hands. He leaned forward a little, and his eyes bulged out until onlookers thought they would drop from their sockets. Then he swayed as he struggled and fought to extract the ferocious blade from his throat. Blood flowed even more vigorously than the blood of the sacrificial offering, soiling his veil and flowing over all his clothing. When the gulled man moved in his attempts to save himself, his blood soiled the stones of the wall too. Everyone asserted that they heard the rumble of thunder far away at that moment, even though there was not a cloud in the sky. When they turned, they saw lightning split the horizon to the north, and they understood everything.
A voice cried out, “Did you hear what he said? He referred to our master as ‘the Crow of Misfortune.’ How could we have forgotten that all the tribes call diviners crows?”
At the moment the group snapped out of their stupor; some rushed to the diviner and others dashed after the specter, who had disappeared.
Ahallum pulled the dagger from the diviner’s throat and the flow of the blood increased. The frail body shook with a feverish convulsion before becoming rigid forever.
Emmamma embraced him for a long time, mumbling like a mentally deranged man: “Here you have preceded us to the shore of forgetfulness, which you always wanted to reach first. And you, Master, accept your crow as a sacrificial offering!”
Thunder rumbled loudly, and the horizon blazed with lightning. People turned to see that legions of black clouds had begun to assault the desert from the North.
XI THE DAGGER’S SECRET
Confucius said, “Fish were created for water; man was created for the Dao.”
1
Thirst for the neck vein grows intense, desire for blood blazes, the tongue trembles with lust to plunge into flesh, the cutting edge gestures — craving to meet the beloved body — and the blade fidgets in the cavity of the scabbard, grieving for its loss and protesting against its suppression, cursing the punishment of confinement to these dark recesses. The body that is extended between the two leaves of the scabbard, however, remembers the talisman, recalls the symbols carved on both sides of the blade with a tongue of fire; so it appeals to the sign of the first peoples, who were the only ones to discern the dagger’s secret. It propitiates the symbol by narrating the story of the beginning. So it talks about its amazing ability to pass through bodies, to swim in blood, to tear into the toughest meats, to glide between networks of veins, and to slip down ignoble paths to avoid chunks of bone. It whispers a secret, saying that discovery of articulated joints is the greatest trick in the whole trip. It gives to this discovery the name “trade secret.” It concludes by saying that a nomad will not only double the length of his life if he discovers this secret but will accomplish his ancient dream of attaining happiness, because progress down the way of articulations is an amulet that protects one against evils and that saves a nomad from falling into captivity. I open a door in the mute body, I make a path through the deluge of blood, I slip between the groves and disappear in the jungle, I scout for locations, I always choose the soft track, I avoid rough terrain, and I’m bent on fleeing from hard ground. The Way turns north. I go north. The generous Way curves west. I bend west. The path rises; I ascend. I glide up. The tour ends with an obstinate solid mass. I stop. I scout around. I turn north, investigate to the west, and retreat a step. I take two steps forward. I search the grim wall for its secret, for its hidden gap. I never tire of searching. I don’t stop investigating until I discover the treasure, until I discover the cleft. I never struggle against the solid mass. I don’t try to force my way through. Instead, flexibility, research, and patience will open a fissure for me in its body. I slip through the narrow gap like a serpent slipping through subterranean excavations. Then I shoot down a new Way without any strife, without any controversy, without any chaos.
By using this small stratagem, I attain peace of mind and win my master’s confidence.
2
I was born a slave like every other being in the desert. The secret of my existence is concealed in my blade, in my tongue. The secret of my master’s existence is concealed in the handle. My destruction lies in my handle. My master’s destruction is in the edge of my tongue. If he seizes the hilt, he obtains life. If he releases the hilt, others seize it. Then the blade becomes his fate. The blade can bring destruction, because destruction entered the desert inside my tongue. That was why the first peoples created the forbidding scabbard to hide my intentions, to restrain my desire, and to suppress my eternal craving for a brother’s throat.
In the short distance lying between the hilt and the beginning of the blade stretches the law of life and the law of death. A person came who succumbed to temptation and yielded to desire; so he took possession of the hilt. The desert bowed down to him because he possessed the hilt. Then he became sultan over the desert. The blade became the fate of anyone who hesitated. These people became slaves, captives, and mamluks in the sultan’s kingdom.
No one in the desert knows how the sultan was able to discover the secret of the hilt and the secret of the tongue. Most probably the jinn tribes whispered the matter to him, because the desert people realize that members of this mysterious tribe become allies of the sovereign once he grasps the terrifying hilt. By night they tell him what he should do during the day. They brief him on the intentions of evildoers even before these miscreants tell themselves what they intend to do. It has been said that the sultan’s desire to possess the hilt originated with the jinn. So he would not go to sleep without first wrapping his fist around the hilt. Later, he fastened his fingers to the hilt with a rope of palm fiber. Later still, he secured his fingers around the hilt with straps of fresh leather, and once these straps dried, his fist and the hilt formed a single hand. It has been said that this ruler surpassed in cleverness even the jinn sages themselves. So their demons feared him, and their clever schemers were afraid of him. Then it came to pass that he subdued them and they became his servants; he put them in charge of his enemies among the people of the wasteland. His sovereignty over the desert was unchallenged because aspirants to power despaired of ever seizing hold of the hilt now that it formed a single body with his hand.
3
The jinn were the first to discover the horror of metal. Then they avoided blades and fled from the tongue to the farthest kingdoms. It was said in one report that they experimented with it. It was said in another report that they weren’t stupid enough to try it themselves but observed its domination over the people of the wasteland when the sultan of the wasteland mastered them with a hand strapped to the hilt. So they read this as a prophecy.