It was necessary for them to circle to the east to avoid the war, which for all they knew, was still being fought in the territory of Hamadhān. But when they reached the capital city that gave the territory its name, Hamadhān appeared sleepy and peaceable, with no hint of the great slaughter that had taken place only a few miles away.
When Rob saw the house it seemed to him that it suited Ibn Sina better than the grand estate in Ispahan. This mud-and-stone house was like the clothing Ibn Sina always wore, unprepossessing, shabby and comfortable.
But within was the stench of illness.
Al-Juzjani jealously asked Rob to wait outside the chamber in which Ibn Sina lay. Moments later Rob heard a low murmur of voices and then, to his surprise and alarm, the unmistakable sound of a blow.
The young physician named Bibi al-Ghurī emerged from the chamber. His face was white and he was weeping. He pushed past Rob without greeting and rushed from the house.
Al-Juzjani came out a short while later, followed by an elderly mullah.
“The young charlatan has doomed Ibn Sina. When they arrived here, al-Ghurī gave the Master celery seed to break the wind of the colic. But instead of two danaqs of seed he gave five dirhams, and ever since then Ibn Sina has passed great amounts of blood.”
There were six dānaqs to a dirham; that meant that fifteen times the recommended dosage of the brutal cathartic had been given.
Al-Juzjani looked at him. “I myself served on the examining board that passed al-Ghurī,” he said bitterly.
“You weren’t able to look into the future and see this mistake,” Rob said gently.
But al-Juzjani wasn’t to be consoled. “What a cruel irony,” he said, “that the great physician should be undone by an inept hakim!”
“Is the Master aware?”
The mullah nodded. “He has freed his slaves and given his wealth to the poor.”
“May I go in?”
Al-Juzjani waved his hand.
Inside the chamber, Rob was shocked. In the four months since he had last seen him, Ibn Sina’s flesh had melted. His closed eyes were sunken, his face looked caved in, and his skin was waxen.
Al-Ghurī had done him harm, but mistreatment had only served to hasten the inevitable result of the stomach cancer.
Rob took his hands and felt so little life that he found it hard to speak. Ibn Sina’s eyes opened. They bore into his; he felt they could see his thoughts, and there was no need for dissembling. “Why is it, Master,” he asked bitterly, “that despite all a physician is able to do, he is as a leaf before the wind, and the real power lies only with Allah?”
To his mystification, a brilliance illuminated the wasted features. And suddenly he knew why Ibn Sina was attempting to smile.
“That is the riddle?” he asked faintly.
“It is the riddle … my European. You must spend the rest of your life … seeking … to answer it.”
“Master?”
Ibn Sina had closed his eyes again and didn’t answer. For a time Rob sat next to him in silence.
“I could have gone elsewhere without dissembling,” he said in English. “To the Western Caliphate—Toledo, Cordova. But I’d heard of a man. Avicenna, whose Arab name seized me like a spell and shook me like an ague. Abu Ali at-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina.”
He couldn’t have understood more than his name, yet he opened his eyes again and his hands put a slight pressure on Rob’s.
“To touch the hem of your garment. The greatest physician in the world,” Rob whispered.
He scarcely remembered the tired, world-whipped carpenter who had been his natural father. Barber had treated him well but had stopped short of affection. This was the only father his soul had known. He forgot about the things he had scorned and was conscious only of a need.
“I ask your blessing.”
The halting words Ibn Sina spoke were pure Arabic but it was unnecessary to understand them. He knew Ibn Sina had blessed him long before.
He kissed the old man goodbye. When he left, the mullah had settled by the bed again and was reading aloud from the Qu’ran.
74
THE KING OF KINGS
He rode back to Ispahan by himself. Al-Juzjani had remained in Hamadhān, making it plain that he wished to be alone with his dying Master in the final days.
“We shall never see Ibn Sina again,” Rob told Mary gently when he returned home, and she averted her face and wept like a child.
As soon as he had rested he hurried to the maristan. Without either Ibn Sina or al-Juzjani the hospital was disorganized and full of loose ends, and he spent a long day examining and treating patients, lecturing on wounds and—a distasteful chore—meeting with the hadji Davout Hosein regarding the general administration of the school.
Because of the uncertain times, many of the students had left their apprenticeships and returned to their homes outside the city. “This leaves few medical clerks to do the work of the hospital,” the hadji grumbled. Fortunately, the patient population was correspondingly low, people instinctively feeling more concern about impending military violence than about illness.
That night Mary’s eyes were red and swollen and she and Rob clung to one another with a tenderness that had almost been forgotten.
In the morning when he left the little house in Yehuddiyyeh he could feel change in the air like dampness before an English storm.
In the Jewish market most of the shops were uncharacteristically empty, and Hinda was frantically packing up the goods in her stall.
“What is it?” he said.
“The Afghans.”
He rode to the wall. When he climbed the stairs he found the top lined with strangely silent people and at once saw the reason for their fear, for the host of Ghazna lay assembled in great strength. Masūd’s foot warriors filled half the small plain outside the western wall of the city. The horsemen and camel soldiers were encamped across the foothills, and war elephants were tethered on the higher slopes near the tents and booths of the nobles and commanders, whose standards snapped in the dry wind. In the midst of the camp, floating above all, was the serpentine banner of the Ghaznavids, a black leopard’s head on an orange field.
Rob estimated this Ghazna army to be four times as large as the one Masūd had led through Ispahan on his way west.
“Why haven’t they entered the city?” he asked a member of the kelonter’s police force.
“They have pursued Alā here and he is within the city walls.”
“Why should that hold them outside?”
“Masūd says Alā must be betrayed by his own people. He says if we deliver the Shah, they will spare our lives. If we do not, he promises a mountain of our bones in the central maidan.”
“Will Alā be delivered?”
The man glared and spat. “We are Persians. And he is the Shah.”
Rob nodded. But he did not believe.
He descended the wall and rode the horse back to the house in Yehuddiyyeh. The English sword had been stored away, wrapped in oily rags. He strapped it to his side and bade Mary to take out her father’s sword and barricade the door behind him.
Then he remounted the horse and rode to the House of Paradise.
On the Avenue of Ali and Fatima, people stood in worried groups. There were fewer persons in the four-laned Avenue of the Thousand Gardens and no one in the Gates of Paradise. That usually immaculate royal boulevard showed signs of neglect; caretakers had not groomed or pruned the landscaping of late. At the far end of the road was a solitary sentry.
The guard stepped out to challenge as Rob approached.
“I am Jesse, hakim at the maristan. Summoned by the Shah.”
The guard was little more than a boy and looked uncertain, even frightened. Finally he nodded and stepped aside so the horse might pass.
Rob rode through the artificial woods created for kings, past the green field for ball-and-stick, past the two racing tracks and the pavilions.
He stopped behind the stables, at th
e living quarters that had been given to Dhan Vangalil. The Indian weapons-maker and his elder son had been taken to Hamadhān with the army. Rob didn’t know if the two men had survived, but their family was gone. Their little house was deserted and someone had kicked in the clay walls of the smelting furnace Dhan had built with such care.
He rode down the long graceful approach road to the House of Paradise. The battlements were empty of sentries. His mount’s hooves clattered hollowly across the drawbridge, and he tethered the horse outside the great doors.
Inside the House of Paradise his footsteps echoed through the empty corridors. Finally he came to the audience chamber in which he had always come before the king, and he saw that Alā sat in a corner alone on the floor, his legs crossed. Before him was a ewer half-filled with wine, and a board set up with a problem in the Shah’s Game.
He looked as rank and untended as some of the gardens outside. His beard was untrimmed. There were purple smudges under his eyes and he was thinner, making his nose more of a harsh beak than ever. He stared up at Rob standing before him with his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Well, Dhimmi? Have you come to avenge yourself?”
It was a moment before Rob realized Alā was talking of the Shah’s Game and already rearranging the pieces on the game board.
He shrugged and took his hand from the hilt, arranging the sword so he could be comfortable as he sat on the floor opposite the king.
“Fresh armies,” Alā said without humor, and opened by moving an ivory foot soldier.
Rob moved a black soldier. “Where is Farhad? Was he slain in the fighting?” He had not expected to find Alā alone. He had thought he would have to kill the Captain of the Gates first.
“Farhad was not slain. He has fled.” Alā took a black soldier with his white horseman, and at once Rob used one of his ebony horsemen to capture a white foot soldier.
“Khuff would not have deserted you.”
“No, Khuff would not have run away,” Alā agreed absently. He studied the board. Finally, at the end of the battle line he picked up and moved the rukh warrior carved in ivory with killer’s hands cupped to his lips, drinking his enemy’s blood.
Rob baited a trap and sucked Alā in, giving up an ebony horseman in exchange for the white rukh.
Alā stared.
After that the king’s moves were more deliberate and he spent more time in contemplation. His eyes gleamed as he gained the other white horseman but cooled when he lost his elephant.
“What of the elephant Zi?”
“Ah, that was a good elephant. I lost him too at the Gate of al-Karaj.”
“And the mahout Harsha?”
“Killed before the elephant died. A lance through the chest.” He drank wine without offering any to Rob, directly from the pitcher and spilling some on his already filthy tunic. He wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand. “Sufficient talk,” he said, and settled into play, for the slight advantage was with the ebony pieces.
Alā turned grim attacker and tried all the ruses that once had worked so well, but Rob had spent the last years pitted against finer minds; Mirdin had shown him when to be daring and when to be cautious and Ibn Sina had taught him to anticipate, to think so far ahead that now it was as though he led Alā down the very paths in which annihilation of the ivory pieces was a certainty.
Time passed, and a sheen of sweat appeared on Alā’s face, though the stone walls and stone floor kept the room cool.
It seemed to Rob that Mirdin and Ibn Sina played as part of his mind.
Of the ivory pieces there came to be on the board only the king, the general, and a camel; and soon, his eyes holding the Shah’s, Rob took the camel with his own general.
Alā placed his general before the king piece, blocking the line of attack. But Rob had five pieces left: the king, the general, a rukh, a camel, and a foot soldier, and he quickly moved the unthreatened foot soldier to the opposite side of the board, where the rules allowed him to exchange it for his other rukh, no longer lost.
In three moves he had sacrificed the newly reclaimed rukh in order to capture the ivory general.
And in two more moves his own ebony general periled the ivory king. “Remove, O Shah,” he said softly.
He repeated the words three times, while he positioned his pieces so there was no place for Alā’s beleaguered king to turn.
“Shahtreng,” he said finally.
“Yes. The agony of the king.” Alā swept the remaining pieces from the board.
Now they examined one another and Rob’s hand was back on the hilt of his sword.
“Masūd has said if the people don’t deliver you up, the Afghans will murder and pillage in this city.”
“The Afghans will murder and pillage in this city whether they give me up or don’t give me up. There is only one chance for Ispahan.” He clambered to his feet, and Rob rose so a commoner would not be seated while the ruler stood.
“I will challenge Masūd to combat, king against king.”
Rob desired to kill him, not to admire or like him, and he frowned.
Alā bent the heavy bow few men could have bent, and strung it. He pointed to the sword of patterned steel Dhan Vangalil had made, where it hung on the far wall. “Fetch my weapon, Dhimmi.”
Rob brought it and watched him strap it on. “You go against Masūd now?”
“Now appears a good time.”
“You wish me to attend you?”
“No!”
Rob saw shocked disdain at the suggestion that the King of Persia would be squired by a Jew. Instead of being angry, he felt relief; for it had been said impulsively and regretted as soon as uttered, since he could see no sense or glory in dying alongside Alā Shah.
Yet the hawk’s face softened and Alā Shah paused before leaving. “It was a manly offer,” he said. “Consider what you would like as reward. When I return, I shall issue you a calaat.”
Rob climbed a narrow stone stairway to the highest battlements of the House of Paradise, and from this aerie he could see the houses of the wealthiest part of Ispahan, Persians standing atop the wall of the city, the plain beyond, and the Ghazna encampment that stretched into the hills.
He waited for a long time with the wind whipping his hair and beard, and Alā did not appear.
As more time elapsed he began to blame himself for not having killed the Shah, certain Alā had gulled him and then made good an escape.
But presently he saw.
The western gate was hidden from his sight but there on the flat plain beyond the wall the Shah emerged from the city, astride a familiar mount, the savagely beautiful white Arabian stallion, which was tossing its head and prancing smartly.
Rob watched Alā ride straight for the enemy camp. When he was close, he reined up the horse and stood in the stirrups as he shouted his challenge. Rob couldn’t hear the words, only a thin, unintelligible shouting. But some of the king’s people could hear. They had been raised on the legend of Ardewan and Ardeshir and the first duel to choose a Shahanshah, and from the top of the wall rose the sound of cheering. In the Ghazna camp, a small group of horsemen rode down from the area of officers’ tents. The man in the lead wore a white turban but Rob couldn’t tell if it was Masūd. Wherever Masūd was, if he had heard of Ardewan and Ardeshir and the ancient battle for the right to be King of Kings, he cared nothing for legends.
A troop of archers on fast horses burst from the Afghan ranks.
The white stallion was the fastest horse Rob had ever seen, but Alā didn’t try to outrun them. He stood in the stirrups again. This time, Rob was certain, he shouted taunts and insults at the young Sultan who would not fight.
When the soldiers were almost on him, Alā readied his bow and began to flee on the white horse, but there was no place to run. Riding hard, he turned in the saddle and loosed a bolt that felled the leading Afghan, a perfect Parthian shot that drew cheers from those watching on the wall. But an answering hail of arrows found him.
Four arrows found his horse as well. A red gush appeared at the stallion’s mouth. The white beast slowed and then stopped and stood, swaying, before it crashed to the ground with its dead rider.
Rob was taken unawares by his sadness.
He watched them tie a rope to Alā’s ankles and then pull him to the Ghazna camp, raising a trail of gray dust. For a reason Rob didn’t understand, he was especially bothered by the fact that they dragged the king over the ground face down.
He took the brown horse to the paddock behind the royal stables and removed the saddle. It was a task to open the massive gate alone but the place was as unattended as the rest of the House of Paradise, and he manhandled it himself.
“Goodbye, friend,” he said.
He slapped the horse on the rump and when it joined the herd he shut the gate carefully. Only God knew who would own the brown horse by morning.
At the camel paddock he collected a pair of halters from the impedimenta hanging in an open shed and chose the two young, strong females he wanted. They knelt in the dust chewing their cuds, watching his approach.
The first tried to bite off his arm when he drew near with the bridle; but Mirdin, that most gentle of men, had shown him how to reason with camels, and he punched the animal so hard in the ribs that the breath whistled from between the square yellow teeth. After that the camel was tractable and the other animal gave no trouble, as though it learned by observation. He rode the larger and led the second beast on a rope.
At the Gates of Paradise the young sentry was gone, and as Rob traveled into the city it appeared Ispahan had gone mad. People were rushing everywhere, bearing bundles and leading animals laden with their belongings. The Avenue of Ali and Fatima was in an uproar; a runaway horse careered past Rob, causing the camels to shy. In the marketplaces, some of the merchants had abandoned their goods. He saw covetous glances directed at the camels, and he took his sword from its sheath and held it across his lap as he rode. He had to make a wide berth around the eastern part of the city in order to reach Yehuddiyyeh; people and animals already were backed up for a quarter of a mile as they tried to flee Ispahan through the eastern gate to evade the enemy camped beyond the western wall.