“The madness of Al Hakim has brought it about,” declared another, lowering his voice and glancing warily around. “How long shall we suffer this Shiite dog to lord it over us?”
“Have a care,” cautioned his mate. “He is caliph, and our swords are his – as long as Es Salih Muhammad so orders it. But if the revolt breaks out afresh, the Berbers are more likely to fight against the Sudani than with them. Men say that Al Hakim has taken Zaida, el Ghazi’s concubine, into his harim, and that angers the Berbers more, making them suspect that el Ghazi was slain, if not by the order of Al Hakim, at least with his consent. But Wellah, their anger is naught beside that of Zulaikha, whom the caliph has put aside! Her rage, men say, is that of a desert storm.”
De Guzman waited to hear no more, but rising, he hastened out of the wine-shop. If anyone knew the secrets of the royal palace, that one was Zulaikha. And a discarded mistress is a sure tool for vengeance. De Guzman’s mission had become more than a private hunt for the life of a personal enemy. Even now out of the mysterious fastnesses of the caliph’s palace rumors crept, and already in the bazaars men spoke of an invasion of Spain. De Guzman knew that the ferocious fighting ability of the Spaniards would not, in the end, avail them against such a force as Al Hakim might be able to hurl against them. Perhaps only a madman would entertain the idea of world empire, but a madman might accomplish it; and whatever the ultimate fate of Europe, the doom of Castile was sealed if the hordes of Africa rolled up the mountain passes. De Guzman thought little of Europe; the lands beyond the Pyrenees were dim and shadowy to him, not much more real than the empires of Alexander and the Caesars. It was Castile of which he thought, and the fierce passionate people of the savage uplands, than which no other blood beat hotly through his veins.
Skirting el Mansuriya, he crossed the canal and made his way to the grove of palms near the shore. Groping in the darkness among the marble ruins, he found and lifted the slab. Again he advanced through pitch blackness and dripping water, stumbled on the other stair and mounted it. His fingers found and worked a metal bolt, and he emerged into the now unlighted corridor. The house was silent but the reflection of lights elsewhere indicated that it was still occupied, doubtless by the slain emir’s servants and women.
Uncertain as to which way led to the outer air, he set off at random, passed through a curtained archway – and found himself confronted by half a dozen black slaves who sprang up glaring, sword in hand. Before he could retreat he heard a shout and rush of feet behind him. Cursing his luck, he ran straight at the bewildered black men. A flickering whirl of steel and he was through, leaving a writhing, bleeding form behind him, and was dashing through a doorway on the other side of the broad chamber. Curved blades were whickering at his back, and as he slammed the door behind him, steel rang on the stout oak, and glittering points showed in the splintering panels. He shot the bolt and whirled, glaring about for an avenue of escape. His gaze fell on a gold-barred window nearby.
With a headlong rush and a straining gasp of effort, he launched himself full into the window. With a splintering crash the soft bars gave way, the whole casement was torn out before the impact of his hurtling body. He shot through into empty space, just as the door crashed inward and a swarm of howling figures flooded into the room.
V
In the Great East Palace, where slave-girls and eunuchs glided on stealthy bare feet, no echo reverberated of the hell that raged outside the walls. In a chamber whose dome was of gold-filigreed ivory, Al Hakim, clad in a white silk robe that made him look even more ghostly and unreal, sat cross-legged on a couch of gemmed ebony, and stared with his wide unblinking eyes at Zaida the Venetian who knelt before him.
Zaida was no longer clad in the rags of a slave. Her dolyman was of crimson Mosul silk, bordered with cloth-of-gold, her girdle of satin sewn with pearls. The fabric of her wide bag drawers was sheer as gossamer, seeming to glow softly with the pink flesh it scarcely veiled. Her ear-rings were set with great pear-shaped jewels. Her long lashes were touched with kohl, her fingers tipped with henna. She knelt on a cloth-of-gold cushion.
But amidst all this splendor, which outshone anything even this play-thing of princes had ever known, the Venetian’s eyes were shadowed. For the first time in her life she found herself actually to be a plaything. She had inspired Al Hakim’s latest madness, but she had not mastered him. A night, an hour, she had expected to bend him to her will. Now he seemed withdrawn from her, and there was an expression in his cold inhuman eyes which made her shudder.
Suddenly he spoke, ponderously, portentously, like a god voicing doom: “It is not meet that gods mate with mortals.”
She started, opened her mouth, then feared to speak.
“Love is human and a weakness,” he continued broodingly. “I will cast it from me. Gods are beyond love. And weakness assails me when I lie in your arms.”
“What do you mean, my lord?” she ventured fearfully.
“Even the gods must sacrifice,” he answered somberly. “Love of a human is blasphemy to the godhead. I give you up, lest my divinity weaken.”
He clapped his hands deliberately, and a eunuch entered on all-fours – a newly instituted custom.
“Send in the emir Othman,” ordered Al Hakim, and the eunuch bumped his head violently against the floor and backed awkwardly out of the presence.
“No!” Zaida sprang up in a frenzy. “Oh my lord, have mercy! You can not give me to that black beast! You can not – ”
She was on her knees, catching at his robe, which he drew back from her fingers.
“Woman!” he thundered. “Are you mad? Would you draw doom upon yourself? Would you assail the person of God?”
Othman entered uncertainly, and in evident trepidation; a warrior of barbaric Darfur, he had risen to his present high estate by wild fighting and a brutal form of diplomacy.
Al Hakim pointed to the cowering woman at his feet and spake briefly: “Take her!”
The Sudani never questioned the commands of his monarch. A broad grin split his ebon countenance, and stooping, he caught up Zaida, who writhed and screamed in his grasp. As he bore her out of the chamber, she twisted in his arms, extending her white hands in passionate entreaty. Al Hakim answered not; he sat with hands folded, his gaze detached and impersonal as that of a hashish eater. If he heard the screams of his erstwhile favorite, he gave no sign.
But another heard. Crouching in an alcove, a slim brown-skinned girl watched the grinning Sudani carry his writhing captive up the hall. Scarcely had he vanished when she fled in another direction, garments caught up above her twinkling brown legs.
Othman, the favored of the caliph, alone of all the emirs dwelt in the Great Palace, which was really an aggregation of palaces united in one mighty structure, which housed thirty thousand servants of Al Hakim. He dwelt in a wing that opened on to the southern quarter of the Beyn el Kasreyn. To reach it, it was not necessary for him to emerge from the palace. Following winding corridors, crossing an occasional open court paved with mosaics and bordered with fretted arches supported on alabaster columns, he came to his own house.
Black swordsmen guarded the door of black teak, banded with arabesqued copper which separated his quarters from the rest of the palace. But even as he came in sight of that door, down a broad panelled corridor, a supple form glided from a curtained doorway and barred his way.