Thief of Baghdad (12 page)

“Let the Prince Osman be searched!” he cried. “Our daughter has been poisoned!”

At once every blade in the court was out of its scabbard. Mossul was not going to let its Prince be searched, and Baghdad was not going to let its Princess be poisoned without taking vengeance.

I had done about as bad a piece of jinning as any my father had ever perpetrated. If the Great Jinni of Suleyman didn’t send me to Syria it was because he had learned of a worse place.

Then I made a resolution. I would take a chance. Well, not such a big chance; it is harder to get stuck in a coffee cup than in a bottle or a lamp.

It was the only thing I could do. If I started heaving balls of fire around, it wouldn’t be considered a miracle; it would be considered a signal to start hostilities.

So I dematerialized, slid into the cup that the Princess had dropped, and rematerialized as the popular conception of a jinni: something ten feet tall, brawny as a guard at the Sultan’s Mills, and with long, fierce mustaches. I felt like an awful fool.

9

S
even hundred years before, when, at the age of sixty-two, I had been considered a full-grown jinni and capable of going to work, the Great Jinni had told me, as I kissed the Ring of Suleyman, to watch this giant-materialization business.

And I’d taken him to heart. The sudden appearance of something ten feet tall isn’t good for people; it can cause heart attacks, mature incipient ulcers and precipitate miscarriages.

But this was no small emergency.

I must say that the reaction I got was soothing to my lonesome ego. The Lady Mariam let out a scream as shrill as her usual giggle; up behind the screen I could hear a couple of plopping noises as some handmaidens fainted; and several strong soldiers got so upset that they dropped their scimitars.

Very gratifying.

Even Ghamal shrank away from me, as I deepened my voice and boomed: “I am the Jinni of Baghdad!” in a voice calculated to make both the chamberlains swoon with envy.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten how tall I’d made myself. My head was almost touching the dome of the great hall; as a result I started an echo around my ears that would have my head aching for a week.

Abdir the Foolish proved, at that moment, that being foolish isn’t always a drawback; he was too silly to be impressed. “Tall, isn’t he?” he asked. “How tall is the Jinni of Mossul, O Osman?”

Prince Osman wasn’t feeling so sturdy at the moment. He said: “I don’t know, O Sultan. A jinni appeared to my grandfather once, but I don’t really think I’ve ever met one. No, no, I’m sure I haven’t.”

Sultan Abdir said: “Hm. Can’t think of a single one of
my
ancestors who didn’t see a jinni, sooner or later. What brings you here, O Jinni? If it’s to give me three wishes, the first one is, please get my daughter off the floor and back into shape. Not suitable at all for a royal princess to be lying on the floor unconscious. Not at all.”

Aware of the echo, I zoomed my ears down to my waist before I answered. It didn’t matter what I did along those lines; the more weird my behavior, the more impressive I’d be. “The Princess has been bewitched!” I roared. Even from down where my ears now were, sticking out of my waistband, my voice was awfully loud. It distressed me; I hate being boorish; but this was, as I’ve said, a great emergency.

“Bewitched, eh?” Abdir asked. He was holding up very well, for the most foolish sultan in Baghdad’s history. Well, he came of good stock. “You do it, O Jinni?”

Fireballs would be safe now. I snapped one out of the fingers of my right hand, letting it land at the Sultan’s feet before it exploded, so it wouldn’t scorch me. “No,” I thundered. “This is the work of man, not Jinni!”

“Well, name him,” Sultan Abdir said, “and I’ll have him beheaded!”

Eyes were switching to Osman; after all, the Prince was the only one who’d had a chance to slip the drops to Princess Amina. Here we went toward war again; time to change the subject.

“Who he is, what his name is, doesn’t matter,” I bellowed. I took a reef in my protoplasm, and reduced myself to a mere eight feet, put my ears back up where they belonged. “The Princess Amina has been given a love potion,” I said. “These things should be kept out of the hands of the ignorant!”

Ghamal and Prince Osman were glaring at each other now. If I’d done nothing else for Baghdad, I’d broken up that unholy alliance; a good service to my city.

The Sultan had used up his emergency stock of wisdom. Ghamal recovered enough to bow toward my knees, and say: “O Jinni, in your wisdom, bring our Princess back to health and restore joy to the hearts of all Baghdad!”

Prince Osman was just goggling at me. But his chamberlain chimed in: “And to the hearts of Mossul, too, O Jinni!”

“This is not work for jinns,” I said, haughtily. “The peculiar potion that the Princess has drunk must take its course.” That sounded a little like a bazaar
hakeem
selling a two
-maumudi
charm; I dressed it up: “Strange are the ways of the world, and little known to the ignorant.”

“Speak then, O Jinni, and tell us what we must do.” That was Ghamal, still in control.

I had left room above my head to raise my hands. I did so now, and let a little fire leak out of my fingertips. I can be a very dramatic jinni if I have to be, though I don’t really care for these effects; too maudlin.

That gave me time to think, because I really didn’t have a plan at all; I’d materialized only to gain time. Then I had it, and I almost ruined everything by laughing out loud.

“Two things,” I said.

“We hear,” Ghamal said, “and we shall obey.” He’d gotten a pretty bad scare; for a while there, Prince Osman had been about to lop Ghamal’s head off and worry about the consequences later.

“Two things,” I said again. “One, the Princess can only be awakened by a man who truly loves her—and whom she truly loves.”

Prince Osman looked worried. He was such a sturdy dolt, he probably couldn’t imagine a girl who didn’t truly love him; but after his behavior with the Berber girl, he might have had doubts about his true love for the Princess Amina.

“And the other thing, O Jinni?”

I let a little silence build after Ghamal’s question.

When the silence had grown impressive enough, I let them have the word; but this time I didn’t boom, I whispered, dramatically: “He must bring her a blue rose!” and at once dematerialized.

Floating above the court, I was gratified by the silence I had induced; that was the quietest bunch of Arabs I’ve ever seen. When they did recover their voices, it was just to murmur; and they were all murmuring the same thing: “Blue rose, whoever heard of a blue rose?”

Oh, some of the shiftier ones weren’t murmuring at all; no doubt they were wondering if Kismet could be fooled with a dyed flower.

Suddenly I realized I’d forgotten something. I would have to materialize again. But I took my time; in what form would I be most impressive? I mean, if you are going to be melodramatic, do a good job of it; these giant-materializations may be lower class, and beneath a Jinni of Baghdad, but if done at all, they should be done with style.

So I became a one-eyed monster, seven feet tall—well below the echo in the dome—and five broad across the shoulders. I considered having two mouths, but that might cast superstitious doubts as to my truthfulness. “Let all who love the Princess try!” I boomed. And I really boomed, now that my ears were below the dome. “The poor, the rich, the city, the country! Let the quest be barred to none!”

Prince Osman sneered; how could a member of the fellaheen compete with a noble prince? But he bowed deep, and said: “O Jinni, who has heard of a blue rose?”

Well, I had, for one. But they wanted a pronouncement, not a simple statement of fact. I juggled a couple of fireballs, rolled my single eye impressively, and again gave them the word: “Go through the Seven Gates, if you would find the Blue Rose; the Seven Gates of Man’s Trial.”

It went over big. Some of the more absent-minded of the courtiers were having their slaves write it down.

“The First Gate is in the east; it appears where it is not,” I said, giving them the old twist that Orientals love so well. “Seek it in the east,” I intoned. “The east, the east, the east . . .” and disappeared as I said it, leaving only the echo in the dome crying, wistfully: “The east, the east, the—” It impressed me.

But I couldn’t wait for my applause. Time to go get Karim out of the Sultan’s Mills, if I could persuade that stubborn young man to accept a little jinnish help.

Do that, and then get over to the east and start setting up the Seven Gates. Some of them were already there, of course; all of them had been there once, but they’d gotten into a terrible state of repair; no jinni anywhere around had used them to test men in a hundred years or more.

They lay in the Rocky Sands.

Of course.

I had finally figured out how to combine duty and pleasure, business and love. In testing the suitors of the Princess Amina, I was acting exactly as a good jinni should; in using the Seven Gates for the test, I was following tradition.

And if, in doing all this, I had to call on the Lady Jinni of the Rocky Sands to help me, that was a reward I had earned in all fairness; I was being more than true to the Jinns’ Code.

10

K
arim was back on top of his oil press when I floated gently through the bars of the Sultan’s Mills again. Young as he was, and strong as he was, prison life was beginning to gaunt him down; the life of a prisoner in the Mills was only a few weeks, which wouldn’t worry Ghamal; there were always more prisoners where the first ones came from.

I had timed my arrival for the end of the fourth four-hour shift of the day. The sun was down in the desert sky; the prisoners were working by the light of huge oil flares.

The bell rang, the overseers furled their whips, the prisoners dropped their jobs. Time now for a few minutes in which to eat, and then to sleep where they fell, until the starting bell, seven hours from now. A hard and cruel day those prisoners had: sixteen hours of work, an hour for meals and rest, seven hours of sleep.

As before, I materialized as an old prisoner, miserable, in rags. Karim recognized me at once. “Ho,” he said. “Glad to see you, O Jinni. How is my brother?”

“I had no time to see Malek,” I said. “But you can see him yourself, if you want to. I am about to get you out of this place, Karim.”

He had sunk down beside me, holding his ration of moldy dates. He looked almost too tired to eat. I gave him some more of the
rahat lakhoum
from my pocket. He thanked me idly. Then, munching, he said slowly: “O Jinni, you mean well, and I thank you for the sweets. The food and the work in this place are not evenly balanced. But for the escape, no thanks.”

“You are the stubbornest young thief I have seen in all my seven hundred—”

He interrupted me rudely: “Temper, temper, O Jinni. It seems to me, venerable one, that what a man does, he must do himself; the help of a jinni is very fine, but it must be paid for.”

“No. What I do, I do—for my own reasons. There is no talk of payment. What payment, indeed, can an ordinary man make to a jinni?”

“If this be true, then why do jinns do things for people?”

Shrewdly spoken, indeed. He had me speechless for a moment, no mean feat. When I had thought awhile, I said: “Jinns are mortal, like humans. Jinns have duties, entrusted to them by the will of the Great Suleyman, whose Ring the Chief Jinni wears. I am the Jinni of Baghdad, but I cannot be Sultan of Baghdad.”

Karim’s laughter rang strangely in the Mills, where laughter was never heard. Two overseers started for us, and Karim choked himself off. We were silent until the overseers were satisfied that we were not enjoying ourselves, and then the Thief of Baghdad said: “Ho, O Jinni. Sultan of Baghdad, indeed. I am a poor man, and a thief and now I am a prisoner. Don’t tell me you’re going to make me sultan!”

Again he had me silent. “No,” I said finally. “If I made you sultan, you might not rule wisely. Some things a man must do for himself, so that he grows in stature and wisdom, and comes prepared to the high places of the world. But someone is going to be sultan, and I think it might be you; certainly I don’t want you in jail when the testing is being done.”

He had finished his
rahat lakhoum,
and was disconsolately chewing on his prison dates. Perhaps I should have brought him a skewer of kebabs or two, but if he did my bidding, he’d be eating good solid bazaar food soon enough. He asked; “What is this talk of testing?”

“Sultan Abdir has offered his
leewan
and the hand of the Princess Amina to anyone, fellaheen or sherifheen who can cure the Lady Amina of her coma.”

He came erect, his weariness forgotten, at once. “Cure? Princess Amina is sick?”

“In a coma,” I said. “She lies pale and helpless on her couch. It has been said that she will not rise again till one who loves her brings her a blue rose.”

He jumped to his feet. He was so upset that he didn’t stop to ask by whom it had been said, which was just as well. He didn’t have too much confidence in me. And he didn’t ask where blue roses could be found. All he said was: “I’ve got to get out of here!” and started for the gate.

Catching his ragged clothes, I held him back; it took a good deal of my jinnish strength. In his youthful self-confidence, he had been about to fling himself on the guards at the gate, and get a spear in his chest for his pains. A punctured hero was no use to me.

“You had better use my help, O Karim.”

“Sure, sure, anything . . . Poor Princess, lying— If I find the man who caused this I’ll . . .”

There seemed no reason to tell him I’d caused it. I had an idea that if he found that out, I wouldn’t be able to dematerialize before suffering a good deal of damage. So I just materialized a bag of pearls and thrust them on him. “Here, take these. The best Indian pearls. With these, any man should be able to get out of any prison.”

Upset as he was, he took time to grin and thank me. He opened the bag and ran the pearls through his fingers. “Very nice,” he said professionally, “but they’re not all Indian. This one is from the Persian Gulf, and these are from the Andaming Isles; distinctly second-grade. But, thanks, O Jinni.”