Harem Of Aman Akbar Part 8

"We are are unbelievers," Amollia reminded her, quite unnecessarily, but Fatima ignored her. unbelievers," Amollia reminded her, quite unnecessarily, but Fatima ignored her.

"I would especially not ask you to perform for me the one small favor I had in mind without a.s.suring that you would live to perform it."

"Ahh," Aster said gloomily. "A favor."

"You need not sound like that, my girl. It isn't a large task for a person such as yourself, who tricked the Emir's wives into giving up the carpet of Selima, and who has stayed a step ahead of a powerful djinn all this time. I desire only that you take the King a couple of gifts for me. Having a real errand at the palace from a bona fide saint and her chosen representative may even help you gain the company of this Hyaganoosh you seek. First, I want you to give the King this," and she stripped from her neck a thin gold chain, upon which was a charm of a hand, broken in half. Aster accepted it.

"And second, I wish you to pluck a lemon from a tree that grows in the mountains."

Aster smirked as if this was what she was expecting. "A special tree, wise one?" she asked with mock innocence.

"You might say so," Fatima nodded.

"Now I wonder how I came to know that?"

"It isn't all that that special," Fatima said. "Any one of the trees in the garden of the King of Divs will do. All you need is one little lemon to give to my s... to the King." special," Fatima said. "Any one of the trees in the garden of the King of Divs will do. All you need is one little lemon to give to my s... to the King."

"Couldn't you have one of the monkeys do it?" Aster asked.

Fatima sounded genuinely shocked. "The monkeys are sacred to Saint Selima!"

"As opposed to the three of us who are unbelievers and therefore expendable, you mean? Even so, wise one," Aster grinned and dropped the necklace around her own neck. She seemed more cheerful rather than less now that her fears had been confirmed, which I suppose just goes to show how much some people like to be right.

But if Fatima was sending us into danger, she at least provided us with food: melons, oranges, dates, nuts, bread and rice, wrapped in cloth packages. All of this we dropped into netted bags that hung from our sashes. She also gave us a piece of silver to lodge us when we reached the city, and the promised talisman.

The talisman was disappointing in appearance, for it was nothing but a soiled and tattered rag. Fatima swore solemnly, however, that it was a sc.r.a.p of the headcloth actually worn by Saint Selima during the last few years of her life. It was, Fatima a.s.sured us, redolent of the saint's essence.

"Most a.s.suredly it is redolent of something," Aster agreed, and handed it to Amollia. "Here, you take it. It doesn't suit my coloring."

"You are not to wear it, infidel," Fatima said impatiently. "You hold it forth, thus." She demonstrated with a monkey. "And allow any beast you meet to sniff it. The beast will then smell the scent of Selima and will understand what is in your heart and you, as bearer of the cloth, will understand what is in the heart of the beast."

The monkey was leaping up and down ecstatically and chattering, but since that was not uncustomary behavior for a monkey, I was not persuaded.

But Fatima was adamant. "With the aid of this cloth you will be as safe in the jungle as if under guard, which in a way you will be. You should have no trouble reaching Bukesh with time to spare to run my little errand. It is not only of importance to me, you understand, but also for the good of the kingdom that the King receive the lemon and eat it personally. Did I stress that? He must eat it personally." She paused and sighed, as if it were she who was going to perform a difficult and distasteful task instead of us. "It has, you see, a certain knowledge of bitterness beneficial in the extreme to one whose life has been too sweet."

Aster ignored the poignancy in the voice of our benefactress. "We'll do as best we can for you, wise one," she said. "But you realize we may never reach this lemon grove of yours. For one thing we have an old enemy after us-the djinn of whom we told you-even now he might be ready to pounce upon us. Also, we might get lost and never find the lemons at all. And if we did, maybe we wouldn't outsmart the gardener and he'd put the guard on us. And what makes you think the King will see us? Since we're women, we probably would have an easier time applying directly to the headwoman in the harem for justice, as Um Aman's friends advised us to do in Kharristan."

But Fatima would hear none of it. She had far more advice and instructions than kernels of rice to share with us. We need not worry about the djinn, she said, for djinns couldn't fly over salt water, as we had. We were perfectly safe therefore from our old enemies, at least the supernatural ones. To avoid new enemies of the same sort and also to avoid getting lost, we needed only to be very sure to always take the right-hand path wherever there was a choice. If we followed the right-hand paths, she maintained, we would also come to the exact spot at the foot of the mountains where the Div King's minions would not trouble us, and we could pick our lemon and be on our way. As for being received by the King, send him the charm Fatima had given Aster. That way we would be bound to see Hyaganoosh and and be able to carry out the little favor. Of course, if that was too much to ask, Fatima could always find some hovel in the village where we might be taken in as long as we were willing to work in the rice paddies for our keep. She would naturally have to have back the headcloth of Selima and the other gifts. be able to carry out the little favor. Of course, if that was too much to ask, Fatima could always find some hovel in the village where we might be taken in as long as we were willing to work in the rice paddies for our keep. She would naturally have to have back the headcloth of Selima and the other gifts.

Heartened by such encouragement and advice, how could even the most ungrateful and incredulous unbeliever fail to hasten to a.s.sure her that all would be done even as she directed? Shortly after morning prayers she waved us down the path to the village.

Chapter 8.

The first thing we noted about the village-and this with great relief-was that none of the women wore veils or abayahs. This may have been because these folk were not believers, as Fatima had indicated, but it seemed more likely to me to be because the accursed garments were simply too ungainly for traversing the steamy, overgrown jungle paths. Without Um Aman around to protest on the behalf of propriety, we removed ours likewise.

Amollia strolled on ahead of Aster and me, swaying with her stately, graceful walk down the single muddy street. She was dressed in her own native garment, not the golden one in which I had first seen her but a plain white cotton printed with rusty brown designs and wrapped in a fashion similar to Fatima's gown. Her jewelry clinked lightly as she walked. Aster, still in her indigo trousers and jacket with the long weighted sleeves, frisked from one side of the road to the other, using the necessity of avoiding work animals and their drivers as an excuse to peek into the various hovels and garden plots and thus appease her unabashedly vulgar curiosity. I still wore the lightweight, pale green gown I had worn away from Aman Akbar's palace, and followed cautiously, trying to keep feet and hem out of the reeking piles and puddles in our path. Altogether we made a spectacle as colorful in this remote village as the procession of jugglers, acrobats, dancers and musicians that sometimes had paraded past my latticed window on their way to some revel or other in Kharristan. Little wonder that heads turned as we pa.s.sed. Little wonder that almost immediately we acquired an elephant.

It happened thusly. A recalcitrant oxen being disciplined by a child of perhaps six years was taking its chastis.e.m.e.nt none too calmly, thus necessitating our hasty removal down a small side street. Whether it was the sound of loud and long lamenting or the curious sight of a gray hump rising beyond the thatched rooftop that piqued our-meaning Aster's-interest, I am uncertain. However, upon investigating, we saw that the lamentations were issuing from a man seated in a thatched lean-to adjoining the house. The lean-to contained only a rough table upon which were scattered some tools-a fine-bladed saw, an awl, a block of charcoal, various pipes tipped with clay, an anvil and a small, unlit oil lamp of the type the holy woman had used. These things he ignored, instead holding his head in his hands and weeping, tears streaming between his fingers, tufts of hair standing straight out from his beard and unturbaned head.

Beside the lean-to, an elephant shifted from foot to foot as if embarra.s.sed. With its trunk, it s.n.a.t.c.hed thatch from the roof and shoved the thatch into its mouth in an almost absent-minded fashion.

The elephant was far better attired than the man. Upon its back it bore draperies of many-colored silks, embroidered with gold thread and jewels, and upon its head it wore a matching harness. Both adornments were trimmed all around with tiny golden bells that tinkled merrily as the elephant ate and the man wept.

"My word, business must be very bad for that poor man to be so upset. Perhaps we should ask if we could help him," Aster said to me, her voice raised even higher than usual so that the man would overhear and might explain himself if he cared to.

He did.

"On the contrary, lady, business is much too good," he said mournfully. "And please, I beg you. Do not help me. It is help from another well-meaning lady which has brought me so low. Oh, that that monkey-loving female had never come out of her shrine long enough to give me that accursed ruby!"

"You don't seem to be a grateful sort of fellow," Aster sniffed, twitching her trailing sleeves disdainfully away from his threshold.

"How can I be grateful for my ruin?" he wailed. "Soon the beast will demolish my house, my wife's garden, and then, who knows, the whole village. And who may stop it? Besides which, it will all be my fault."

"Perhaps you had better explain yourself," I said severely. I wanted him to understand that I was in no sympathy with his complaint against our mutual benefactress. But on the other hand, we might be able to test the headcloth by using it to cause the elephant to cease doing whatever it was doing that so upset the man.

"I was formerly a maker of bra.s.s vessels and inexpensive nose rings for ladies. Always I had fancied I could do great works of art, if only I had the proper materials. I had heard of the woman at the shrine of Selima-who in this place has not?-but had not met her until one day my youngest child was s.n.a.t.c.hed away by a tiger. Fortunately, the lady was nearby and persuaded the tiger to abandon my child in favor of an oxen-though I confess, we could have done more easily without the child than the oxen. To express my grat.i.tude for her interference, I presented her with one of my nose rings, a creation I had made up especially for a gentleman who, as it happened, had more taste than funds.

"Say what you will about these religious fanatics, some of them are well-born and that woman has a very fine eye for workmanship. She admired the object very much, though she said she must refuse it as she had given up such things when she sought holiness. She further asked me what a man of my talent was doing wasting himself in this village. I answered that I had often wondered the same thing myself, but that I was too poor to better myself. If only I had gold and fine gems. I was sure I could make jewelry and vessels fit for the King himself. She looked very interested when I said that, and later brought by a ruby stone and some old gold settings from which the gems had been removed, saying that she had no further use for such things.

"I was astounded! Sure that my fortune was made, I dreamed and planned until I had the perfect design in which to use the materials fate had placed in my hands. The work went swiftly, for, as I suspected, I was always meant to deal with fine materials.

"And as luck would have it, a caravan pa.s.sed through and an emissary from Jokari bought the bracelet for enough rupees that I should not have had to work for a year. Not only that, but I imagined the honor the King would heap upon me if only he should chance to ask the maker of this special treasure. Naturally, I knew it would be but one trinket among many, but it was so outstanding that I had hope of attracting his particular notice.

"And, alas, I did. A month ago a caravan returning to Jokari arrived, and with it instructions for me to present myself at court to be recognized and favored by the King. I had to spend part of my commission on a fine suit of clothing to be presented in, and more in travel expenses. And once I arrived in Bukesh I had to buy lodging and gifts for my family and friends, did I not? But though I spent the last of my funds, I was not downhearted, imagining the riches the King would bestow upon me.

"But when I was granted an audience with His Magnificence, did he give me gold? No. Jewels? No. Robes of honor-well, I suppose had he not been distracted by affairs of state and his pressing need to take his afternoon nap he would no doubt have done so, but he did not. No. What he gave me was this elephant!

"An elephant, mind you! How am I to feed an elephant? How do I maintain it? Why, keeping up with shoveling its dung alone will leave me no time for my chosen labor."

"But the beast is clothed in fine cloth and jewels and little gold bells!" Aster pointed out. "Surely you can sell those and-"

He shook his head sadly. "Alas, I cannot. His Majesty explained to me that I was being given care of this elephant because the beast is a n.o.ble veteran. Its trappings are its own possessions. I could not even ride it home without it rolling its eyes most fiercely at me. The beast is to live a life of luxury-at my expense! I cannot even sell him, as such an act would be judged ungrateful and a treason to the throne. No, I am ruined, doomed, while this beast literally eats me out of house and home!"

"I see," Aster said. She seemed for once to be at a loss for words.

Amollia meanwhile had paid little heed to the man but had gone, headcloth in hand, straight to the elephant. Its one small eye regarded her anxiously, almost entreatingly, as she stroked its crinkled gray trunk. The beast had stopped devouring the man's thatch, a great boon since that form of dining had been most distracting not only because of the noise it produced but also because of the showers of scorpions and small serpents falling at intervals as they were dislodged from their resting places. The elephant now calmly ate a large portion of the pistachios Fatima had provided for our journey.

"Is there no way we could convince you to let us have this beast?" Amollia asked, fixing the man with her black-eyed stare so that he stammered and forgot to weep.

"L-lady, I only wish I could. But I cannot sell him. To do so would be treason."

Aster's tongue leapt once more into action. "Sell him, no, of course not, for we have already heard how attached you are to this marvelous creature. But perhaps we could rent rent him?" him?"

"Rent? Rent-hmm... yes, rent. An excellent idea. I see no objection to that, if you truly wish to have an elephant to walk with you on your journey, for he will not allow you to-"

I think he started to say "ride" but was compelled to stop at the sight of the great animal kneeling and with its trunk gently a.s.sisting Amollia to mount herself upon its head.

Amollia pulled one of her ma.s.sive silver bracelets from her arm and a necklace of raw amber from her neck and flung the jewelry to the man. "This should do it," she said.

"For such a great beast as that? Playmate of my children? Wonder of all the village?" He tried to sound indignant.

She jerked a golden ring from her finger and tossed it on the pile. "My last offer. One more word and you keep the elephant."

"Take him and blessings upon you," the man said, quickly grabbing up the jewelry. With Amollia's beads twined in his fingers, he steepled his hands together under his lower lip and bowed. Before the rest of us mounted, he insisted we remove the trappings so that he could retain them "for safe keeping."

We were off to a fine start. We had only to turn right at each fork and ride our elephant and we would no doubt proceed speedily to the lemon tree, pluck Fatima's gift for the King, who would in his newfound wisdom and grat.i.tude send forth his men to rescue Aman Akbar and require Hyaganoosh to restore our husband to his proper form. Perhaps he was a truly beneficent King (if not a far-sighted one, as the incident of the jeweler and the elephant suggested) and he would restore to Aman Akbar his property, maybe even reward the rest of us with some treasure.

I liked riding on the elephant, though I was positioned upon his high broad back and the posture was awkward. Amollia had the best place, right behind his ears, with Aster, whose legs were the shortest, behind her. I had to straddle the beast and alternated between having my legs stuck straight out in the air with my skirts rucked up to my knees or bending my knees sharply up to my chest and resting my heels on the roll of the animal's sides. But to ride him was finer by far than walking.

Where the road was crowded, with people going to and from the curious hillside fields Aster explained were rice paddies the people fled from our elephant's great feet. Even the oxenlike water buffalos, ma.s.sive animals good at growing rice, Aster said, gave us wide berth. Yes, I liked riding upon this elephant very much, and I began to wonder if I could get the King to send my father such a beast. That would show my mother's cousins a thing or two!

As for the elephant, he seemed happy enough to be in our company. I find I have been referring to him as casually as if I had known such creatures all my life. I had not. Amollia supplied us with much lore concerning elephants and entertained us for a time with stories about those she had known. But even before that, when she had first approached the creature as if he were a valued and respected friend, I had felt no fear or antipathy toward the outrageous-looking animal.

For all his ponderous appearance, so swift was our elephant that we had pa.s.sed most of the settlements by mid-afternoon and were heading into a forest of lush, thickly intertwined greenery. Here the road forked, both tongues darting into the trees.

Amollia stopped the elephant and looked from the trails back to us. "This is very strange," she said uneasily.

"How so?" Aster asked. "It is as Fatima described it to us. She said there would be a fork in the road."

"Yes, but why just as the road enters the jungle? Cutting one path alone through such a tangle and keeping it clear is difficult, why cut two? Surely the paths do not go in such different directions until later on and if so, why does one not skirt the edge? I saw nothing at the village of such importance that it need be so conveniently connected-"

"You forget what the metalsmith said about the caravans," Aster reminded her. "No doubt the paths connect to trade centers and the caravans come from some port located more auspiciously near the sh.o.r.eline. Naturally commerce would demand-"

The rest of her argument was literally drowned out as the monsoon arrived, promptly and abruptly. That day the rains began in no gentle, drop-by-drop dribble, but with a sudden opening of the heavens which deposited a sea of hard rain upon our heads in a continuous pounding deluge.

Amollia shouted over her shoulder to us, "The elephant wishes us to dismount."

"Why?" I shouted back, not caring for the idea.

"So it can roll in the puddles," she screamed in reply, rotating her middle finger to show how the elephant would roll. "Elephants like getting wet as much as they like eating."

"I do not!" Aster cried. "Ask the elephant to take us into the jungle where we will be safe from the storm before he-"

With a roar and a crack the rain-silvered trees were illuminated by a jagged bolt of fire which flashed from the heavens to strike the ground immediately to the right of our good beast. Forgetting his bath and his riders and all sense of decorum, the elephant bolted.

I was thrown back with a jolt that sent every date, nut, and kernel of rice I had consumed in the last four days flying back up into my mouth. For a moment I tottered on the beast's back, but another bounding step threw me forward again and threatened to topple me. I grabbed for Aster, and clung to her waist. She in her turn clung tightly to Amollia, who had laid an earlock on the elephant and who was shouting what were meant to be calming words at the beast's head. Only my skill at clinging to horses' backs-quite a different matter from the one at hand-kept me from losing my grip and falling to my death beneath the thunderous feet. By the time he stopped, I was no longer interested in elephants.

We slid from the beast's back like wax drippings sliding down a candle, and my joints had all of the steel of the same melted wax.

The beast's flight had brought us to a river bank, and the three of us sank onto thick gra.s.s while the elephant disported himself in the water, his terror forgotten in his pleasure at seeing so much water. We cowered beneath the trees and watched his antics wearily.

Aster laughed weakly as the beast sprayed its head with a shower from its trunk. The rains had lessened their force now and no longer stormed around us but pattered gently down in a soothing manner that served to relieve the heat. The gra.s.s gave up its warmth in steam that carpeted the forest floor.

"Pitiless pachyderm," Aster said. "He nearly killed us."

Amollia shrugged, "The lightning might have killed us. Never have I seen that kind of fire from a monsoon! But see you, between the rain and the river, our friend has found elephant paradise."

While the elephant bathed, we each ate a cold rice ball and one of the pomegranates with which Fatima had supplied us. Afterward, Amollia displayed a new talent for climbing trees, climbing a palm with what seemed a single liquid motion. Flashing us her strong white grin from the shade of the broad fringed leaves, she wrenched loose several and threw them down for us to use in fashioning a portable rain-shelter, which we could hold above our heads as we rode. We also pa.s.sed our first night beneath it.

Just before we slept, Aster opened one eye and rolled lazily onto her side so she faced us. "Do you suppose we took the right?" she asked.

"Hmm?" I asked.

"The right. Do you suppose this is the right fork? I'm wondering if when the elephant stampeded, he took the right fork or the left one?"

Amollia reached out and touched the foot of the beast, who was dozing beside our resting place. "Being an elephant," she said, "he no doubt made his own road."

I dreamed all night of riding the elephant, my bones jolting even in my sleep. I hesitate to mention where the blisters which disturbed my slumber were located, and resolved that the next day I would walk until the blisters upon my feet matched those elsewhere.

In the morning the rain might never have been, except that the path was muddy, though the heat had already sucked the moisture from it so that in some places the dark brown had already turned light and dusty. Brilliant flowers bloomed among sparkling leaves, bright as emeralds.

I walked a few paces behind the elephant all morning and though the view ahead was not the sort of which bards sing, I felt the better for having momentarily come down in the world. Around midday we came upon water once more and the elephant wanted to bathe again. Amollia and Aster also dismounted.

I sat down upon the river bank and watched the elephant, who found to his delight that he could wholly submerge himself in these deep waters and did so, only the tip of his trunk protruding. I thought about swimming across to the other side and seeing what lay ahead, but felt too lethargic. Amollia and Aster took the opportunity to stretch their legs, exploring a little path that wandered off to the left of the one we were on. The flowers bloomed in even greater and gaudier profusion than elsewhere, and the exclamations of my companions that floated back to me with the bird songs and chatterings of monkeys above the low music of the water indicated that the flowers were even more beautiful farther on.

When I felt the first spit of rain on my arm, I knew that more time had pa.s.sed than any of us thought, and I rose reluctantly and started down the path after my wayward co-wives, thinking to meet them returning. However, when I had walked for several minutes, it occurred to me that I was wasting time, since I had the use of a perfectly good, if rather waterlogged, elephant, and could enlist his aid in apprehending the strays. With this idea in mind, I trotted back down the path, but when I came to the spot where the elephant had been bathing, he was gone-ears, tail, trunk, tusks and all.

Cursing the inconstancy of elephants and people who were never around when one needed them, I once more ran down the flower-bordered trail, and began calling. Soon the din of the rain beating on the roof of the jungle m.u.f.fled my cries, even to my own ears, and I ran dumbly on, and sometimes blindly too, for here along the river the overhead protection was not very great, and I cursed myself for several varieties of an idiot for neglecting to bring along my palm-leaf parasol. Thus I failed to notice the strange, idol-ridden edifice until I had almost run past it. Only when I heard myself hailed and turned to see Amollia's grin flashing at me from the stone doorway did I see what the thick vegetation had all but concealed.

It looked like no dwelling I had seen in my own country or in Kharristan, and blended as well with the jungle as if it had grown out of it. Its tallest towers rose only to the tops of the tallest trees and were curved from top to bottom and ridged with rings of carved and pitted stone. The structure was not a single rectangular building, but a series of interconnected towers, tall and squat, capped with domes or open to the sky, and reminded me of nothing so much as a patch of elaborately carved toadstools. Drawing closer, I perceived that some of these carvings were hewn into a series of scantily clad women of a shapeliness I had never seen duplicated in real life and could never hope to attain.

Amollia's grin widened. "Wait until you see the ones inside. They're enough to turn you into an old woman, just looking at them!" Nor did she exaggerate, for the carvings on the inside of this outlandish place were indeed more depressingly fantastic than those on the outside. In these the voluptuous stone figures were twisted with inhuman bonelessness around each other in the performance of an astonishing variety of s.e.xual activities. Almost more interesting was the fact that these antics were illuminated by the flames of hundreds of candles set into various recesses in the walls. Upon the floor lay fine carpets thick and spongy as moss and in colors richer than those of the flowers along the path. Stacks of fat pillows were strewn about the room. Silver and gold trays filled with fruits were beside each stack. Down one wall of the largest tower room a stair of shining water cascaded into a pool whose bottom was paved with an infinitely intricate web of tiles as gorgeously colored as the carpets.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"Judging from the carvings and the furnishings," Aster said, "it is a.s.suredly a retreat for some pasha who keeps a private harem in the jungle, away from the sight of his regular wives. He's probably taken them all to a bazaar somewhere on a big shopping spree."

"If they look like that, I don't think I want to meet them," I said, sitting down on the stone threshold so as not to get the expensive furnishings wet. I felt a little dazed by the splendor, and also by my jaunt through the jungle in search of these shameless voluptuaries, each of whom sank down upon a pile of cushions and proceeded to peel herself something.

"Throw one of those here," I said irritably. "If we're to be slain for trespa.s.sing, I want to die well-fed."

"The door was open and we no sooner walked in than we saw the candles," Aster said through a mouthful of plum. "Probably the servants are off somewhere praying. Everytime I can't find someone in this country, that seems to be what they're doing."

"Wherever they are, they should be very glad that we are here and equally glad we are willing to stay awhile," Amollia said with mock seriousness, waving her hands outward in a fluid gesture that encompa.s.sed the entire room. "Otherwise, with all of these candles alight, who knows what damage could befall this house?" She sighed, snuggling deep into a pillow and closing her eyes. "No, they are very lucky indeed we happened along in time to be of a.s.sistance."