It is conceivable that I could have helped him then. But still I did not understand. I had lived too long in the world, away from dreams.
“My lord,” I said, “you are the Caliph. You will do what you wish.”
He strove to master his emotion, without success. “And what is it that I wish?”
There I failed him. As if I were wise and sure, I replied, “You wish to make your dreams live. That is why you have summoned me.”
He stared at me while the tears dried in his eyes, and his mouth drew down into lines of simony, and I knew then that I had failed him. “Explain yourself, wizard,” he said in the tone of a man who hurt women for pleasure.
Now, unfortunately, I could not stop or recant. “My lord,” I answered as well as I could, “dreams and wizardry have much in common.”
From within my robes, I produced a bouquet of rich flowers.
“Both are composed of illusion and freedom.”
When I spread my hands, the flowers became butterflies and scattered themselves about the chamber.
“Yet the freedom and illusion of dreams are internal and may only be reached in sleep, without volition.”
Again I spread my hands, and now music could be heard in the air, soft voices whispering melodiously of magic and love.
“The freedom and illusion of wizardry are external, matters of choice.”
A third time I spread my hands, and this time flame bloomed in my palms, rising toward the ceiling as I spoke.
“You wish the power of wizardry to make the wonder and glory of your dreams accessible to your waking mind, to make wonder and glory matters of choice.”
When I lifted my arms, the flame enveloped me entirely, causing me to disappear from his sight. Only a pillar of fire remained before him, burning the air, consuming nothing. From out of the flame, like the voice of the music, I said, “Wizardry is the path you must follow to pursue your dreams. You must turn away from cruelty and become my disciple. You will find no true happiness in the pain of helpless girls.”
Then I stepped from the flame and let the fire go.
“My lord,” I said, speaking quietly to contain my fervor, “allow me to serve you. I have knowledge which will enable you to make your dreams live.”
That was my best effort, yet I had already lost him. He held a harsh bit clenched between his teeth, and his eyes were as wild as an overdriven mount’s.
“So you are a fool after all, wizard,” he snarled. “You do not understand. For all your knowledge, you cannot comprehend the worth of my dreams.”
The truth must be told. Behind my aged composure, I was near to panic. Nevertheless fright has its uses. It gave me the courage to say, “You are mistaken, my lord. I comprehend very well. Dreams have no worth in themselves. Their only value is the value we find in them, the value we bring to them with our waking eyes and hearts. Because they stir us or move us or teach us, they are precious. Otherwise they are nothing.”
The Caliph regarded me, a twist of loathing on his lips. “Do you believe that?”
I made some effort to hold up my head. “I do, my lord.”
“Then, wizard,” he said grimly, “you will have the satisfaction of dying for your beliefs. They are a fool’s beliefs, and they become you.”
I could think of no way to appeal to him as his guards dragged me from the chamber.
For reasons which I did not grasp at the time, however, he let me keep both my head and my life. Instead of sending me to the block—or to the lion pits, or to any other more imaginative or painful death—he sealed me in my workrooms, with little food and water, less light, and no companionship. Indeed, the only contact I had with the court or Arbin came daily at noon, when for a brief time the Vizier Moshim Mosha Va was permitted to stand outside my door and report on the state of Caliph Akhmet’s rule.
At first, of course, I believed that I was simply being held in my rooms until a suitable torture and death could be devised. By the second day, however, I began to think that young Akhmet had other intentions. When the Vizier came to my door, I asked him, “Why am I not dead? Does the Caliph imagine I fear death so extremely that I will go mad here among my arts and tools?”
In a sour tone, Moshim Mosha Va replied, “He is not done with you, wizard.”
“What remains?” I inquired, daring to hope that I would be given one more chance.
“Who can say?” The Vizier’s words were deferential, but his manner of speaking was savage. “Our illustrious lord surpasses us all. There are signs, however, which perhaps you will read better than I can. This morning he commanded one of his wives to be stretched upon the rack. And while her limbs strained with agony, he mounted her. His thrusts caused her to bleat like a sheep.”
“Indeed,” I muttered to myself. “How quaint.” Then I asked, “And what pleasure did the Caliph take in this action?”
“He appeared blissful,” retorted the Vizier, “if such fierceness may be called bliss, until he had spent himself. But then his joy curdled. He ordered the torturer racked until he died, as though the fault lay in the instrument of his will. I think, however, that he meant the man no harm. He was merely vexed.”
Perhaps that was the point at which I began to understand Caliph Akhmet and his distress.
“Indeed,” I said again. “You have become sagacious since the passing of His Serene Goodness, Vizier. You have grasped an important truth. He means harm to none of us. He is merely vexed.”
Moshim Mosha Va made a noise which would have been a curse if the Caliph’s guards had not stood beside him, listening. After a moment, he resumed, “Nevertheless the hand of our good lord’s vexation is heavy. Why do you not free yourself, wizard? Surely wizardry is good for that, if not for Arbin.”
It may have been possible for me to do as he suggested. I could have conjured an affrit to appear before the guards and command them to unlock my prison. Perhaps they would have obeyed instead of fleeing. Freedom lay no farther away than the other side of the heavy door. Yet the distance was too great for me. I had loved Abdul dar-El Haj. I loved Arbin. And I had begun to hope again.
“Wizardry is illusion,” I replied to the Vizier. “It is not power. And it is assuredly not freedom. I will await my Caliph’s pleasure.”
Then, whispering to reduce the hazard that the guards would overhear me, I added, “In the meantime, you must provide for the succession.”
The Vizier snorted in disgust and went away.
For a number of days subsequently, he came at noon as he was permitted, bringing me the news of Arbin, which was essentially the news of Caliph Akhmet’s attempts to achieve the sensation of his dreams through the exercise of power. He caused considerable pain and occasional death, striving to grasp a knowledge of mortal hurt. At unexpected intervals, he was generous, even benign, so that he could see gratitude on the faces of his subjects and compare it to the look of their distress. Well, he was young, and the young are foolish. He had had too few years in which to learn that power binds rather than releases. It was little wonder that he was vexed.
Therefore I readied myself for the time when he would summon me again.
He did not summon me again, however. Instead, covered by a bright blaze of daylight and torches, he came to see me in my workrooms. The door was flung open, allowing me light for the first time during my captivity. Among guards armed with lamps, Caliph Akhmet strode forward to confront me.
I endeavored to hold up my head, but failed. My old eyes could not bear the brightness. As if I were weeping and ashamed, I bowed and hid my face before my lord.
“Wizard.”
I was unable to see him. I could only hear the strain in his voice, the struggle against frailty and grief.
“I need you.”
“My lord,” I mumbled as if I had become decrepit, “I will serve you.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“You are the Caliph. You will do what you wish.”
“I do not know what I wish.”
Indeed. This I had already grasped. Softly, I said, “Tell me what troubles you, my lord.”
Out of the light blurred by my tears, young Akhmet answered, “Wizard, I am only myself.”
There at last I became sure that I had gleaned the truth. “The same may be said of all men, my lord,” I responded gently.
“But all men do not remember their dreams!” If a tyrant can suffer anguish—if such pain can be ascribed to a man who causes so much pain in others—then the Caliph deserved pity. “They are the most wonderful dreams! And I remember them all. Every touch, every color, every joy. Nothing is lost. I have with me now the first dream as clearly as the last, and both are desirable beyond bearing.
“But when I have dreamed, I awake, and I am only myself.
“Help me, wizard.”
“I will, my lord.” My voice shook, and I cursed the blindness of so much light, but I did not falter. “You wish to live your dreams. You desire to be possessed by dreaming, to give yourself to that glory and freedom always. You wish to cease to be yourself. Therefore you resent anything that takes you from your dreams, any interpretation, any distraction, any release which restores you to your mortality. Waking, you strive for joy and accomplish only dross.
“My lord, I can make you dream always, waking or sleeping. I can enable you to be entirely the dreamer who remembers, beyond interpretation or distraction or release.”
I felt his hands clutch at my robes, felt his fingers grip my shoulders to implore. “Then do so. Do so. Do it now.”
“Very well, my lord. Give me a moment in which to prepare myself.”
In order to gather my strength, as well as to draw the attention of the guards to me, I stepped back from Caliph Akhmet.
Rising to my full height, although I was still effectively blind, I said in the resonant voice of wizards, “Let all witness that what I do now, I do at my lord’s express command. He has made his wishes known. I seek only to fulfill them. By my arts he will become his dreams, become dreaming incarnate.”
Before the guards could ask whether it lay within their duty to permit this to happen to their lord, I spread my arms and filled the room with fires I could not see.
I did not need to see them, of course. I knew them well. Their suddenness made them seem hotter than they were, and they blazed among my tables and periapts and apparatus as if Caliph and wizard and guards were about to be consumed in conflagration. They did no hurt, however. Instead, as they leaped, roaring silently toward the ceiling, they began to spew out the known stuff of young Akhmet’s dreams. Mandrill leaped and snarled, spitting rubies and blood. Nilgai chased silver fear among the flames. City lights unfolded maps of tyranny across darknesses implied by the cruel gaps between the fires. His Serene Goodness Abdul dar-El Haj stretched his mouth to let out a cry of love or pain. Akhmet’s swollen member ached for the most glorious and rending ejaculation. To all appearances, my workroom had been filled with dreams come to madness and destruction.
Caliph Akhmet saw those fires no more than I did. They were intended for the edification and appeasement of his entourage. He saw, rather, that I reached among my vials and flasks, uncorked a dusty potion, and poured a liberal draught into a goblet ready with arrak.
“Drink this, my lord,” I said as my arts distracted the spectators. “It will enable you to live your dreams even while you are awake.”
Young Akhmet had not been a tyrant long enough to learn the fear which corrupts and paralyzes hurtful men. He took the goblet and drank. I could not see the expression on his face.
_______
Several days later, after Akhmet had died, and I had outfaced the accusation that I had killed him, and a previously forgotten relation of His Serene Goodness Abdul dar-El Haj, discovered and prepared by the Vizier, had been installed as the new Caliph in Arbin, Moshim Mosha Va took me aside and challenged me.
“The truth, wizard,” he demanded. “You killed that little shit, did you not?”
“I did not,” I replied in feigned indignation. “Did not the guards declare that I gave our lamented lord no draught or potion, but only a vision of his dreams? Did not the best physicians in Arbin proclaim that our lamented lord showed no evidence of poison? This truth is plain, Vizier. Caliph Akhmet brought about his own death by refusing to eat or drink. He died of thirst, I believe, before he could have died of hunger. Can I be blamed for this?”
“Apparently not,” growled the vexed Vizier. “Yet I will continue to blame you until you answer me. By what miracle have we been freed of him? What wizardry did you use? What power do you have, that you do not reveal?”
“Moshim Mosha Va,” I responded piously, “I gave our lamented lord exactly what he desired. I gave him the capacity to dream his wonderful dreams while he remained awake. Sadly, his dreams so entranced him that he neglected to live.”
The Vizier treated this answer with disdain. He could not obtain a better, however, and in time he grew to be content with it.
Wizardry is illusion. I put the potion which had drugged Caliph Akhmet away in my workroom and made no use of it again. I am a man, and all men dream. But I have forgotten my dreams. I have no wish to become a tyrant.
Penance
The previous evening, I had restored the Duke’s son and heir, the Lord Ermine, bringing him back from the deep mortality of his wounds. For safety’s sake, I had given of my life in the strict privacy of the Duke’s chambers. Indeed, I was attended only by Duke Obal himself, so that no lord of the Duchy, no official of the court, no commander from the field, and no servant in the palace would witness what I did. And when I had infused the young man with my vitality, his death had withdrawn from him, allowing him to rest and grow strong again. Then, depleted and grieving, I had crept quietly from the palace, observed by none except those whom the Duke had commanded to protect me.
Now, in the dusk of the battlefield, I scavenged to restore myself.
All day, Duke Obal’s forces had labored against the High Cardinal’s siege. Sorties had ridden forth from the walls of Mullior, probing for weakness in the Cardinal’s holy persecution. Feints and forays had spent their lives and their horse to protect the Duke’s fervent efforts to shore up his defenses, as well as his attempts to ensnare or sabotage the Cardinal’s siege engines. Arrows of flame had flown the sky among heavy stones arching from the trebuchet, their flights punctuated by the blaring of the Duke’s few cannon, the flatter shouts of his fusils, and the more brazen replies of the Cardinal’s harquebus. Now gunpowder added its reek to the stench of charred flesh and garments, the odor of opened bowels, the stink of sweat and pain. On such days, death and bodies seemed to fall like rain, although they fed no harvest on the churned ground. The only crop of so much killing was blood.
Yet it suited me, in its way. To my cost, I gained sustenance from it, and grew strong again. Giving my life to the Duke’s son had left me famished and forlorn—so near collapse that my daily resolve to wait until dusk nearly drove me mad.
I had vowed that I would feed from no man or woman except those to whom God had already given death. And in daylight the battlefield was too hazardous for me. I could be hacked apart as easily as any other man, or killed by shot, or burned to death. Nothing warded me except the brief strength which I had already spent in Duke Obal’s name. Until I fed, I was as frail as I appeared—and no less contemptible. Indeed, daylight itself threatened me. It encouraged witnesses and denunciation. Therefore I awaited the sun’s decline, although my hunger and weakness were anguish.
When the sun at last dipped from the heavens, however, drawing daylight westward off the plain of battle, I presented myself to the secret portal in Mullior’s outer wall. There the guards had been commanded to let me pass—and to admit me again when I was done. This, too, was hazardous. If ever the guards had refused my reentry, I would surely have fallen prey to the High Cardinal’s retribution. But they were ignorant of what I was, and had never scrupled to fulfill their lord’s instructions. Piously they gave me Godspeed whe
n I departed, and welcomed me when I returned. Doubtless they considered me a spy, charged with some small, regular mission for the Duke, and for that reason they wished me well. Duke Obal was well loved in Mullior, as in the Duchy at large.
My own love resembled theirs, although I did not demean the Duke by speaking of it. Even in Mullior, my esteem would have brought him execration, if I were known.
Concealed by twilight and battle fume, I emerged from the portal and followed failing light across the human wreckage of the siege. Crouching as I went, I scurried among the corpses and the dying—as timorous as the vermin which now thronged the field, and as ravenous.
It was commonly said of my kind that we drank blood. The High Cardinal himself had pronounced anathema upon me in those terms, calling me “blood-beast” and “spawn of Satan.” We were misunderstood, however. I did not drink blood. I did not consume blood at all. I drew life from blood—and I drew it by touch. The vitality in the blood of any man or woman who still lived could sustain me.
It was a fact of my nature that I absorbed nourishment and strength more quickly and easily, and with more pleasure, through the touch of my tongue than of my fingers. But at need any portion of my flesh would suffice. Life passed by blood from the one who bled to me, and I was made whole.
As for those who bled— Their lives became mine, and so they died.
For that reason, I fed only from the doomed.
Because their vitality was diminished, tainted with death and therefore noxious, they sustained me ill. I was forced to range widely to preserve myself, groaning with the nausea of my kind.
Nevertheless I was scrupulous, careful of my vow, although it was commonly believed that my kind had no souls and no conscience, and existed beyond the reach of God’s redemption. I had joined my heart to Mother Church, and to the sweet maid Irradia, for whom I still wept, and what I had sworn to do I did. I took no life which had not already been claimed by God. Any of the fallen for whom the faintest hope of rescue or healing still breathed, I passed by.