Thief of Baghdad (17 page)

“Listen to what I know,” she said, and whispered in Karim’s ear, at length. He turned a fiery red and sweated harder than ever.

“And then, in my chamber,” Kadeejah said, “I have a long bath, heated, which I keep filled with sweet-scented oil. The bath is big enough for two, and if you think that they know how to make love in Baghdad, wait until—”

“If you know all,” Karim said, “then you must know where the blue rose is.”

Kadeejah said: “There isn’t something wrong with you, is there? No, I suppose not, or you wouldn’t be so anxious to win the Lady Amina. Listen, if it’s the sultanate you’re after, I’m not exactly poor. Look—”

She snapped her fingers. Of course, what she expected was for her creator, the Lady Jinni, to put a bag of gold or maybe jewels in Kadeejah’s hand. But the Lady Jinni seemed not to be in tune with her illusion; nothing happened. Finally I had to conjure up something; I made it a bag of pearls.

Kadeejah sighed with relief and said: “O Karim, if it is wealth you seek, why—here,” and handed him the bag with a great air.

He took it from her, opened it, and spilled some of the pearls out into his hand.

Oh, my. I had forgotten that I was dealing with a professional thief. He rolled the pearls between his fingers and said: “I have seen these before. Kadeejah, are you a creature of the Jinni of Baghdad?”

“I have never met him,” she said honestly enough.

“He usually appears as an old man, not very appetizing,” Karim said. “The truth is, I don’t think he’s very bright, for a jinni.”

“We waste time,” Kadeejah said. “Oh, I am sick with longing for you.” She had led him back to the couch; now she pressed against him so closely that he had to sit down. She ran her fingers through his hair. “What can it matter to your quest if you dally a night and a day with me? The blue rose will still be there.”

“Where is it? Where is the blue rose?”

“Listen, O handsomest of thieves. I have a rose, not blue, but white that I can give you. It lies in a magic casket.”

“But it is a blue rose I seek.”

“As I say, the casket is magic. All who look at the rose will see it as blue, save only you and I.”

Now, at last, Karim was tempted. He didn’t object at all as Kadeejah slid her hand inside his robes and slowly caressed his chest. He didn’t try to stop her as she put her lips to his ear and deftly wriggled her tongue around.

But then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “It is not by magic that I would gain the hand of my Lady Amina, but by my courage and strength.”

The fool! Not by magic! The Lady Jinni and I had nearly broken our conjuring muscles to test him, to save Princess Amina from Osman of Mossul, and he didn’t know there’d been any magic going on.

Great shades of the goat whose milk the Prophet did drink, this was a young dolt! But the big dolt was young; he wasn’t naturally stupid, just young and self-confident and in love. Time would cure all those things, and he had everything else a sultan needs.

Kadeejah sighed, and slid off Karim’s lap; she had done everything the Lady Jinni had built her to do, and to no avail. She walked a step away from Karim and then stood, her hands held up to the heavens in supplication.

And with that, the test was over. The palace disappeared in a roar of fire and smoke and earthquake, Kadeejah turned to stone and became a statue—such as infidels make for the enrichment of their homes—and Karim was left lying on a sandy slope. After a moment, there was another roar, and the Arabian—or maybe the Red—Sea came rushing up the shore, spewing its spray on Karim as he lay there.

Very nice. But my boy was exhausted. He slept, and never heard the surf or felt the foam.

I went looking for the Lady Jinni.

She was in the upper air, over where the palace illusion had been. She was doing fast dives through the air, as though to cool herself; but it was not hot up here. When she saw me, she did a lazy roll and came up alongside me. “So Karim was too much for my Kadeejah?”

“You know, then?”

“Yes, I’ve sent her back to the Grottoes till I need her again. I keep her as a statue to remind me how she looks; I don’t think I have ever conjured a better looking illusion.”

“And Osman, O Lady Jinni of my devotion?”

She gave a very peculiar laugh. “What do you think? Osman took the magic rose, or what he thinks is the magic rose.”

“And before that?”

She rolled away from me in the clear air, and floated with her back to me. Her voice came to me only faintly. “Oh, Abu, I couldn’t tell you! They must be
very
sophisticated in Mossul. Why, once or twice I caught the illusion blushing!”

“We are indeed sophisticated in Mossul,” a deep voice said.

The voice had come from behind me. We both rolled around, and there was a Hairy Jinni, just materializing.

The Lady Jinni cried: “Mossul! I told you to wait, and I’d send my crystal hawk to tell you how your Prince Osman came out.”

The Hairy Jinni of Mossul cried: “But I grew impatient, O my Lady.”

The Lady Jinni shrugged deliciously. “Just as well. I have another errand to send the hawk on . . . You needn’t worry, Mossul. You’ve got as tricky and evil a prince there as you’ll find in all Muslimdom.”

“Bad, bad,” the Hairy Jinni cried, rubbing his hands. That is what they say where we would say: “Good, good.”

“No doubt he’s on his way to Baghdad,” the Hairy Jinni said. “Permission to enter your jinniship, Abu?”

“Certainly not,” I said. Even if he hadn’t offended me by calling me by my first name, I wouldn’t have let him into Baghdad. There isn’t a one of them you can trust.

“Didn’t really expect to get it,” he said cheerfully enough. “And now, my Lady Jinni, I owe you a favor.”

She nodded. “You might be able to pay it off right now. Abu Hastin, we promised your suitors seven tests, didn’t we?” She waited for my nod, and went on. “Counting the castle, how many have we given them?”

“Five or six,” I said. “I really don’t remember. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Since there’s only one suitor left, why bother?”

“I have never done sloppy work, and I don’t intend to start now,” the Lady Jinni said. She counted on her fingers: “The Living Wood, the Burning Plain, the Precipice, the Sea. And of course, the Palace. Only five, I make it.”

“Wasn’t there one more?” I asked.

She said: “It seems to me there was. Anyway, we can do it this way: The Swinging Bridge and the Fight with the Hairy Monster. That way he can count them as one or two, whichever comes out right. Mossul, would you mind being the Hairy Monster? I’ve conjured up so many things today, I’m getting a headache.”

“Delighted, O my lady,” the Hairy Jinni said. “It would come natural to me, eh? And an excellent chance to pay off my debt; I don’t like these things hanging over me. Allow me to conjure up the Swinging Bridge, too; no use tiring yourself, and I’m quite fresh.”

He bowed, dematerialized and was gone.

Frowning, I looked after him. “He won’t cheat, will he, O Lady Jinni? I mean Karim is supposed to win.”

“He’s in the Rocky Sands,” the Lady Jinni said calmly. “My people will be watching him; he won’t cheat. They bluster and they roar, Abu, but they’re really afraid of us. Still, I wanted him tied up while you went back to Baghdad. You’d better not leave your city jinniless while Osman’s about. That’s quite a man, that prince. I’ve never in my life . . .” Her voice trailed off again, dreamily.

“Permission to return?”

“Ordered to return,” she said. “I’m dying to know how everything comes out.”

But when I tried to kiss her good-by, she put her hand in the way. So I kissed her hand, and did my fastest float for Baghdad.

14

T
ime being what it is when there is conjuring and magic going on, I arrived just as Prince Osman did. With a sigh of relief, I materialized as my favorite old man, and set my feet on Baghdad soil again. The first thing I did was buy a lot of
rahat lakhoum
from a passing vendor. Then I happily pushed myself into the crowd going to the palace to see Osman’s arrival.

The Prince had left his bodyguard in Baghdad while he went on the Quest. Now they fell in behind him as he galloped to the palace on a milk-white charger, the casket with the rose in it held up triumphantly in his right hand.

Ghamal met him at the door to the palace, bowing low. Prince Osman flung the reins of his horse to a soldier and strode into the palace as though he owned it; we fellaheen crowded in with him.

He gave us a princely glare: “When I am master in Baghdad, this riffraff will learn its place!”

Ghamal rubbed his hands with glee. “Then you have found the blue rose, O Prince! The other suitors all returned empty-handed, or carried by their servants.”

“All the other suitors?”

“Well, Karim the Thief is still missing. Perished in the desert, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Prince Osman said. But he frowned. “Do we have to go through all the folderol of royal greetings, Grand Vizier? I have the rose; take me to the Princess, and we’ll have done with this matter.”

“Without royal greetings, nothing is official, O Prince.”

Prince Osman sighed. So did I. Pulling my turban over one eye, I dematerialized the eye and sent it zooming back to the Rocky Sands to see how Karim was doing. Then I leaned against a pillar, chewed my
rahat lakhoum
and tried to hear as little of the chamberlains’ goings on as possible.

The zooming eye picked up Karim just as he came off the Swinging Bridge to be faced by one of the most formidable Hairy Monsters I have ever seen. That Hairy Jinni of Mossul was a fine actor; he’d conjured himself into something I wouldn’t care to meet in a dark bazaar myself.

Screaming, the Hairy Monster flung himself on Karim.

Meanwhile, the chamberlains were finishing up. Ghamal prompted Sultan Abdir the Foolish, and the Prince and the Sultan exchanged greetings and gifts. Then there was a clapping of hands, and the Lady Mariam led a procession down the stairs from the harem: herself, then four ladies-in-waiting, and then the Princess Amina, carried on a litter by a sextette of sweating eunuchs.

The people gasped. The Lady Amina, in her long sleep, had increased in beauty; it was almost unbearable to look upon her, she had become so radiant.

Even Prince Osman the Sturdy paled a little at the promise that this incomparable loveliness was to be his. But he rallied and stepped forward. “I give you this rose,” he said, with great originality.

But he had his trusty chamberlain at his side. “The Prince Osman of Mossul, mightiest of warriors, greatest of lovers, pride of the Muslim world, star of the desert, brings a rose. But no ordinary rose, O you listeners of Baghdad. This is a rose snatched from the the very fingers of Shaitan! This is a rose to conjure with! This is a rose to restore the health of the Lady Amina, promised bride of the rose bringer! Behold this rose, the only blue rose in the world!”

Prince Osman opened the casket, and held the rose up for the court to see. To them it did look, indeed, like a blue rose. It even had a slightly bluish sheen to me.

The Princess Amina lay still as the desert on a windless day, only her highly desirable bosom moving slightly.

Prince Osman knelt and took her delicate fingers, placed them inside the casket, curved them around the stem of the rose.

Princess Amina’s eyelids fluttered slightly. The court and the fellaheen drew their breaths in deep awe.

Then the Princess opened her eyes, and closed her fingers and drew the rose out of the casket.

For a moment it was a true blue rose, held there in those lovely fingers, and slowly it blanched until it was pure white.

Then, just as slowly, the petals withered, turned brown and dropped, until the hand held only a stalk and a few thorns.

The Princess Amina let the stalk drop. Her eyes closed again, and she fell back on her pillow, as unconscious as ever.

There was a stifled angry roar from the court. There were mutters of “trickery” and “deceit,” and a few courtiers, genealogically minded, remembered that Prince Osman had Syrian blood on his mother’s side.

Prince Osman stared in dismay. But not for long; he was the Sturdy, after all. He vaulted the bed on which Princess Amina lay, and ran to the door leading out to the great courtyard.

Making a trumpet of his hands, he bellowed to his troops, out between the inner and outer gates: “Mossul! To me, Mossul!”

Even at this distance I could hear the soldiers clattering and banging as they gathered up their arms and leaped for their saddles.

Scimitars were drawn in the court itself as Baghdad prepared to defend its Sultan, as Osman’s bodyguard ranked itself behind its prince.

Time to jinni things up a bit. I remembered that the captain of Osman’s bodyguard seemed to have some misgivings about his princely master. I sidled over to the captain and plucked at his sleeve.

He glanced down at me. “Go away, old man,” he said. “Go peddle your dates elsewhere.”

Well, as an old man in fellaheen clothing I was not too awe-striking; I forgave him. But with a deft and graceful twist of my left hand I materialized a stunning emerald and ruby bracelet. “Give this to Lydya,” I said.

That got his attention. War and the preparation for war fled his mind. He snatched. I twisted my wrist again; the same bag of pearls I’d given Karim twice appeared. I figured I was about to get rid of them for good. “These are yours if Baghdad doesn’t fall,” I said.

The captain grabbed again. But he had a good deal of honesty. “What can I do?” he asked. “I am only one man, and Mossul outnumbers Baghdad two to one in fighting men.”

“Only time is needed,” I said. “Help is on the way.”

He nodded. I moved away. Behind him I could hear his voice calling plaintively: “But who are you?” Soldiers are usually slow-witted, outside their own work.

The captain was moving on Prince Osman. I could leave the delaying action to him. Me, I had to jinni as I had never jinnied before.

Concentrating all my not-inconsiderable powers, I zoomed a brain-wave to the Rocky Sands, zoomed it at twice the speed of light, and directed it straight at the Hairy Jinni.