Nadir held his own piece of roast wrapped in fresh steaming flatbread, and was done with eating it in two hungry gulps. But he was too shy and too proud to ask for more, although his stomach continued to growl in emptiness. It had shrunk accordingly, after his endless days in the desert, for he had had nothing to eat most of the time except for occasional bits of sparse growth and fallen date-fruits and the endless supply of soothing water that had nearly fooled him into satiation. In this mortal place of human and animal smells, his stomach had re-awakened and was making itself known to Nadir.
Something was not exactly right, and he could not quite pinpoint it, not at first. And then it occurred to him: he missed washing down his meager food with the clean water from the wooden cup. The cup had kept him company for so long that it now seemed forever. He missed its familiar liquid balm.
And with that thought taking hold of his awareness, Nadir brooded, his intense little features forming into a menacing frown.
Sitting nearby, one of the Lord’s guards noticed the boy’s dark demeanor. “What’s the matter now, little man?” asked the blue-eyed guard called Zuaren. He was chewing his food with animation and with a show of healthy white teeth.
Nadir glared at him, then said, “I have to get back my cup. Ris gave it to me, and it belongs with me and none other. It is my sister, the water that flows from it! I must have it back.”
“Or else, what will you do?” Zuaren said, moving closer to him on the floor. He settled just alongside the boy.
“I don’t know,” Nadir said. “But I must do something. Grandmother—that is, Ris—told me I must always fight injustice, and this is my first test. I cannot fail her.”
“Amazing, isn’t it,” said Zuaren, looking into space in front of him and ripping off a piece of flatbread, “to have a goddess for a grandmother? You must be a lucky little man indeed. Tell me, what is it like?”
“It is like nothing,” Nadir said sullenly. “She was just Grandmother. And why do you care?”
“I don’t, actually. But I am curious as to what it is about you that made Tazzia grow meek and obedient, even for the little time it took you to feed it the water. Maybe it was that cup of yours. They say gods can sense each other, and each other’s handiwork.”
Zuaren spoke quietly and did not turn his head toward the boy.
Nadir watched his profile. “How did you end up with the job of guarding Tazzia?” he asked.
“And how did Tazzia end up where it is now, bound and helpless, and under the Lord’s whim?”
Zuaren laughed. “And how did you? ”
“I am not bound and helpless! And I serve no one!” Nadir exclaimed.
“Shhh, not so loud,” the guard replied in a level soft tone. “The first thing you need to learn is not to react. That is your first lesson. When you flail out in passion, you become vulnerable.”
Nadir stared at him, but kept his silence.
“Good,” said Zuaren. “Now we can talk like men.”
He touched the shoulder of someone from the Lord Urar-Tuan’s household sitting on the other side of him, closer to the hot coals and the food stone. “Hand me some more of that bread and meat, will you?”
The other man turned around with the intent to grumble at the interruption. But, seeing who it was that spoke, he suddenly drew in his breath and, nodding, proceeded to load up a piece of flatbread with the fried food. This he passed to Zuaren.
“Thank you, friend,” the guard said in reply, grinning, showing once more his teeth. He took the food and, as Nadir watched in surprise, he deposited it in the boy’s lap.
“Eat,” Zuaren said. “For someone who’s come out of the desert after consorting with gods, it looks like it took the flesh off your bones, in addition to other things.”
“I would rather not eat more of his food than I have to. His charity is already gagging me because I know what I’ve traded away for this sorry bread and meat—my honor.”
The guard chuckled.
“It took you all this time to come up with that, eh?”
Nadir stared at him, and then in peculiar silence took the food and started to put pieces of it in his mouth.
Zuaren lifted one dark handsome brow. “You learn fast,” he said. And then added, “Good for you, little man. You did not react, and you proceeded in wisdom by not wasting a good meal when you need it for strength. Therefore I will help you.”
Nadir stopped eating.
“Yes,” said the older man. “You heard right, and I will tell you what I mean, but later. When the sun sets and it is time for sleep and darkness.”
And then he drew his head close to the boy’s ear as though leaning forward to adjust his clothing and his prominent daggers, and uttered in a voice that was barely above silence, “I will help you get the cup back. Do not leave here, and wait for me.”
And then Zuaren rose, silent like a large cat-creature, and was out of the tent. No one turned to look at him leaving, though there came a tensing in many backs. Nadir remained eating in the corner, in suddenly relieved, ravenous silence. The night in a desert oasis comes quickly, like the falling cloak of a swarthy god. With it the temperatures plummet, for the desert knows only extremes, no middle ground. Nadir shivered, sitting outside the small cooking tent belonging to the servants of Lord Urar-Tuan. All around him, bluish dusk. A few steps away stood his patient pack-beast, tied to a spare tent peg driven into the ground. It was starting to fall asleep, having just eaten its fill of dried grain that Nadir had traded earlier in the day for one of his twelve gold coins. Since he had no lesser currency and the grain vendor had no change—or pretended to have none—he ended up paying exorbitantly. Then, to water the animal properly, Nadir had to stand patiently in a long line at the common well, waiting his turn. How odd it had been for him thus, not to have immediate access to water.
Water is a treasure in the desert. . . .
Nadir knew with every passing moment that he lost something irretrievable, something that had no price in human terms. He had lost it in exchange for twelve gold coins. Gold for water. . . .
A sudden acute memory pierced him like a clap of thunder. In the rapidly cooling dusk, in a state of amazing mental clarity, Nadir shivered with terror, shivered with self-hatred at what he’d done.
He had done the very same thing that those others had, so long ago it seemed—they who had tried to barter for water with cold metal.
And Ris had given them what they asked.
“Ris!” Nadir exclaimed in an agonized whisper, having a sudden insane need to speak out loud, or else internal waters would come bursting. “Grandmother! Forgive me for what I have done! How could I? How?”
And in that same moment in the darkness, he heard the soft neighing of a horse, only a little away. It came from the other side, from the front of the greater tent. The moon was rising.
Nadir crept around the side of his dozing pack-beast and then made his way on tiptoe around the tent. Just as he was about to come to the very front, he felt something sharp poke his side, and a strong hand came around his mouth from behind in the darkness.
“Halt . . . not a sound.”
Nadir’s outcry happened only in his mind, because he recognized in the hissing whisper the voice of Zuaren.
The hand released him, and Zuaren turned the boy by the shoulders to face him, turned his little dark face to the moonlight.
“Make no sound, little man, I don’t want Grego to hear us,” Zuaren said. “He is over there, next to Tazzia, nodding off as usual.”
“What—” Nadir began, his dark eyes wide open and glistening in the moonlight. In reply, Zuaren, his own face fathomless shadow, put a finger to his lips and motioned with his hand for the boy to follow.
They moved in silence for about thirty paces until they were on the other side of the tent, and Nadir could see the shadow form of the fabulous horse standing silhouetted against the ichor-dark sky and the even darker foliage of the oasis.
And then, as his eyes got acc
ustomed to the intensity of looking at the shapes of night, Nadir saw a wondrous sight.
Tazzia was translucent.
Half corporeal, half ghost, the horse stood with its head lowered in sorrow, while with every smoothing caress of the moon’s glow its mother-of-pearl form fluctuated in solidity, like a swaying forest of water vapors. And at times, like clouds passing through its insides, the mists thickened or thinned so that in snatches one could see the opposite side, see right through the creature.
And then Nadir could feel a faint vulnerable touch in his mind, a presence. And yet it was so insubstantial that he was not quite sure if it really happened, was not sure—
“Look at him . . .” Zuaren whispered. “The night is cruel to him, for his nature is that of hot warping air, and the cold saps his strength. He is an immortal and thus cannot be relieved by death. And yet he suffers the agony of the dissolution of his flesh every night. Sometimes I try to light a small fire near his feet, but the Lord saw me and would not allow it, for Urar-Tuan wants him to feel the agony, wants him weak and pliable. And so I bring hot coals or rocks wrapped in cloth, and lay them invisibly nearby to relieve him. . . .”
“But why?” Nadir whispered. “Why does the Lord want this to be? What has this beautiful creature done to deserve it?”
“Why should its beauty be a point of consideration? Few living beings deserve such treatment,” Zuaren retorted, and Nadir was instantly shamed.
“What will happen? This is not right!” the boy whispered after a long silence, as he watched Tazzia shimmer in and out of existence.
In answer, Zuaren leaned forward and looked closely into his eyes. “Promise me, boy, that you will say nothing of this to anyone . . .” he whispered. “Promise me!”
And after Nadir nodded, his little face very serious, Zuaren said, “I will soon take Tazzia away from here.”
Nadir’s face glowed in animation.
“But,” Zuaren continued, “I will need your help. Can I count on you, little man?”
“Yes!”
In the moonlight Zuaren grinned, baring his teeth like ivory. “Good,” he whispered. “Now come with me, away from this place where we may be found, and I will tell you more of Tazzia and of how he was bound to Lord Urar-Tuan. You want to hear more of him, do you not? Yes, I know you do . . . you are under Tazzia’s thrall.”
As the moon rode the vault of heaven near the zenith over the desert, Nadir settled near Zuaren at the foot of an old palm. The older man handed him a piece of bread and some hard cheese made from camel’s milk, and then told the story of Tazzia.
When Zuaren was hired by Lord Urar-Tuan to guard Tazzia, the creature had already been in the Lord’s possession for quite some time. What he knew were things disclosed by other servants, and much of it had been exaggeration and the result of fearful overactive imaginations, so that he had to wade through the fabricated morass to establish the truth. It seemed that back in his own distant land somewhere in the great Middle of all places, Lord Urar-Tuan had dabbled with the powers of the world that are normally left unpronounced—
those ancient half-formed lurking forces that permeate the fabric of night, the energies that are released in the slow decay of sunset into indigo dusk, the essence in the wind that comes forth only with cold, as the two greater shining celestial entities and the lesser pinpoint ones hide beyond the horizon. . . .
For, in the things that reside between day and night, at the moments of dawn and sunset, hides the One who is known as the Lord of Illusion. He can never be seen at times of great clarity—which usually happen when there is great celestial light—but only during twilight. At such in-between times, the Lord of Illusion slithers in like one’s shadow, and begins a slow interplay with one’s greatest weakness.
For most that weakness is lust.
For others it is self-delusion. That is the downfall of the cleverer stronger ones, the ones who cannot be tempted.
Instead, they can be deceived.
And that is what had happened with Lord Urar-Tuan. In his great intelligence and learning, Lord Urar-Tuan had conceived the idea that he could bind the Lord of Illusion Himself like a personal servant. He had read the most ancient books of wisdom, filled with symbol-writing that he had to learn first—symbol characters that were like flowers or like tiny marks of a brush. And from them he gleaned the secret rituals that were needed to invoke the Lord of Illusion into this reality.
It had taken him many moons and the cycles of many seasons. During that time Lord UrarTuan had become an esoteric man. In the course of this, he had also taken a herbal draft of ancient ritual potency and impregnated a wife who bore him a very extraordinary child. That child was human but on the verge of otherness, and that child was his means of calling forth Illusion. She was none other than the little Egiras, a thing of wicked beauty and a creature bound to the Lord of Illusion from the moment of her conception.
“I hate her,” said Nadir, interrupting the tale. “She is the one who caused Lord Urar-Tuan to mock me and take away Ris’s cup from me. She is a horrible little beast!”
“Ah, but she is much more than that, and she is worse than you think,” Zuaren said with a rueful smile. “Be wary of her, boy, even more so than of her father. For she belongs not to her father but to Him.”
And then Zuaren continued to tell what he had learned.
After Egiras was born, and when she was old enough to walk—a mere toddler with precocious eyes—Lord Urar-Tuan began the ritual of seducing the Lord of Illusion. What one thing could there be that would tempt Illusion Himself? What would draw Him into the mortal world to fully manifest in the flesh, and to remain thus, bound?
It is said that Illusion is drawn to more Illusion out of curiosity, for it recognizes itself and wants to look and admire and fathom it from the outside.
Lord Urar-Tuan had observed during his sometime travels through the deserts of the South that upon occasion, when the temperature of the air grows to a nearly unbearable point, the air begins to take on a translucent form. It shimmers, warps, and often acts like a great wondrous mirror standing upright in the desert and reflecting from afar places and objects that are not really there but hundreds of miles away.
The desert nomads call it a mirage.
For many it is a true Illusion.
And Lord Urar-Tuan had a marvelous moment of insight. He would create a unique mirage that would be irresistible to the Lord of Illusion, even in the middle of day. That mirage would seduce and trap Him in the mortal world, and then Urar-Tuan would have at his disposal terrifying wonder. . . .
And thus the Lord traveled with a richly laden caravan from his distant homeland to the deepest desert, here. And he had brought his daughter with him on the journey. Egiras, the little girl of five summers, had come eagerly, paying not a moment of heed to her weeping mother, who was sure she’d never see her child again.
At some point among the scalding sands, when the sun stood mercilessly at the zenith, Lord Urar-Tuan determined that this was the precise location and moment that was pointed to in his esoteric calculations.
“Stop here,” he told the caravan leader and his men. “And now, I want you to build me a fire.”
The Lord’s retainers looked at him with confusion, but obeyed nevertheless. They selected a flat place on the sands and set out in a particular arrangement the specially prepared logs of wood painted with a resin that contained in it bits of divine sorcery. Then they poured a flask of pure distilled alcohol in the center of the woodpile.
When all had been made ready according to the meticulous instructions, Lord Urar-Tuan stepped forward, leading his small daughter by the hand, and took out a tiny dagger—as tiny and sharp as a needle. This he used to prick the little index finger of Egiras, at which she cried out once in anger, but then was oddly silent and unlike a child of her age. Lord Urar-Tuan guided her forward and extended her hand over the center of the woodpile. He squeezed her finger until several drops of dark blood came falling and stained
the amber resin coating of the wood.
One last drop he directed to the very middle of the woodpile, to fall upon the alcoholstained sand. When he was done, Egiras stood back and sucked her finger with a blank expression on her face, and her lips were colored with a bit of her own lifeblood.
Then the Lord motioned for all but his daughter to retreat, and they obeyed so that UrarTuan stood alone with her. Hiding in the wagons of the caravan, they watched from a distance, seeing their Lord take out something pale and glittering from the folds of his clothing. Some swore it was a rare transparent diamond. Others claimed it was nothing but a piece of ordinary glass brightly polished and shaped by artisans into a plump convex shape. No matter. Because Lord Urar-Tuan raised the object before him at arm’s length and pointed it between the woodpile and the sun.
Within seconds the wood began to smoke. And as the ordinary caravan folk watched in wonder, a bright orange-gold flame burst forth from the wood.
And then the flame took form. . . . The form was vague at first, a bare flicker of deviation from ordinary fire, a merest hint of otherness. But then it began to solidify, and in moments it took on the distinct shape of a horse.
It stood before them, the fire horse, wrought of licking flames, semi-transparent, elegant and menacing. For it had the same dark eyes as did Egiras. There appeared to be two spots of dark deep crimson akin to her blood in the eye-sockets of the flame-creature. And though in reality the girl’s eyes were jet, they bore a resemblance to the fire eyes in slanted form and expression.
“Behold the Fire Horse! She is your kin spirit, Egiras!” exclaimed Lord Urar-Tuan in his native tongue. “Can you feel the bond?”
But Egiras stared coldly at the creature of flames, and she replied sullenly, also in the language of their homeland, for it was the only one she knew as yet, “No, father.” And then she added, “This thing is nothing, temporary and fickle—while my own fire burns forever.”
And saying that she turned away from the marvelous sight of flames in living form, the streaming warping air currents all around. And she was thus to miss the soft fluctuation in the fabric of the air just behind the flaming mare.