The Dark Lord

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Near Iblis

Mohammed became aware of the sky rippling like glossy cloth. The branches of the fig tree were dark in relief against the unremitting brilliance of the heavens. He focused and the sky settled back into a perfectly unremarkable blue. The sun remained a bright disk, shedding only a cold clear radiance on white-limbed trees and emerald grass.

This world is illusion, Mohammed realized. The thought seemed to have emerged from a great depth, slowly ascending to his waking consciousness. Did not Moha change shape as I watched? Is not the city filled with phantoms and deceit? Is anything here real? Am I real?

For an instant, Mohammed felt a plunging sense of vertigo. Everything seemed to whirl about him with tremendous winds-there was no earth beneath his back-no air to breath-not even the cold glare of the perfect sun on his face. Horrible, gut-wrenching fear clawed at his mind, urging him to scream or flee or strike out wildly. He could feel his hands and feet fray, dissolving in the storm.

I am real! he answered, trying to shout against the maelstrom. No sound issued from his mouth. Indeed, there was no sound around him, no rush or wail of the winds, no singing zephyrs, no blast upon his face. He forced his eyes open again. The sun remained overhead. The leaves of the fig silhouetted, perfectly motionless, against the blue sky. I am real. The fig is real.

Tentatively, he forced a hand to rise and brush against the mottled gray-and-white bark of the tree. I can feel you… but where did you come from? From this sterile earth? With an effort, for his muscles were stiff with disuse, Mohammed turned his head and looked into the forest. There were no fig trees. There were no trees with irregular bark, surrounded by a litter of fallen twigs. Not like the many-fingered leaves scattered around him at the base of his tree. Wait… He remembered putting something in his pocket, long ago, past an eternity of battle and driving rain and the god speaking in the sky with a voice of thunder. I was eating a fig, as we sat waiting in darkness for the Persian horsemen to cross the stream. Zoe was at my side.

Neck creaking, Mohammed looked down and found the tattered remains of his cloak still clinging to his body. Bloodstains on the cloth had turned dark brown and the leather greaves on his shins were cracked open. I put the pit in my pocket, he remembered, the pocket of my cloak.

Straining, his skeletal fingers groped in the crumbling fabric and found the pocket eroded away. Only the roots of the tree could be felt.

"A seed fell," Mohammed croaked, "on barren ground and yielded up this life. Where none had been before. Fruit to feed me, leaves to catch the tears of the dead, the conscience of the earth to remind me of the will of the lord of the world. As he made all things from darkness and men from clots of blood." He sat up.

As before, the city lay below him, beyond the grassy sward. The creature Moha was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the faint trill of pipes and the merry thump and clatter of drums touched his hearing, rising from the streets and houses below. The pungent smell of a dung fire pierced the air. The sound brought the promise of joy and the warm embrace of old friends in hospitable surroundings.

"What would I see…" he mused aloud, climbing to his feet, spindly arms clinging to the bole of the tree. His legs began to shake with fatigue. Mohammed gritted his teeth, tasting the sting of bitter alkali from eroded bone and enamel. "What would I see there, if I passed through the broken gate and into the city?"

"You would find rest and comfort," a voice said, "at the end of a long, hard road."

Mohammed pushed away from the tree to stand unsupported. A woman was walking up the hill towards him and for just an instant he thought Khadijah had returned from the forest of the dead. She was of middling height; her hair tied back, a long dress of soft, subtle colors falling to her feet. Her hands were unadorned with bracelets or rings and thin, almost translucent fabric clung to her breast and thigh.

Mohammed tensed, seeing now something of Zoe in her oval face, high cheekbones, dark eyes. Another spirit, he guessed. "Who are you?"

"I am Raha," she answered in a warm, friendly voice. Streaks of white crept through obsidian hair. "The last of your guides."

Swallowing, Mohammed felt his dry throat crack. The voice was so familiar… but he could not put a name to her, no familiar face, nothing but a faint memory of singing-a lullaby-and a rocking sensation. A camel? A ship at sea? He felt his skin grow cold. A crib? It was a crib. Mine. "Where would you guide me? Into the city? Into death?"

"Yes," Raha said, concerned. "Aren't you tired? You have traveled a long way, seeking solace for the emptiness in your heart." She lifted a hand, pointing to the gates and towers. "What you seek, what your heart desires, lies within the city. An end to your labors, deserved rest, your family, respect, honor. A white beard covering old knees as you cradle your grandson in your arms."

"And the dead trapped in the dark wood, what of them?" Mohammed tugged at the scrap of a cloak around his neck and the decayed wool fell to dust between his fingers. With the movement of his limbs, the rest of his garments sighed away, falling in a brown rain around his feet. "I will not abandon the innocent."

Raha raised her chin, pointing into the wood. "They cannot enter, my lord, because you are here, balanced between life and death. While you remain, they cannot pass into the city and thereby to the land of the dead."

Moha said the same thing, Mohammed remembered. Is it true?

"You must choose to pass on," Raha continued. "You are endangering those who still live." She smiled and Mohammed felt her compassion like a physical blow, a balled fist in his gut. "Every spirit fears change-and yours is very strong! It clings tenaciously to the memory of life. These are not your arms and legs," she said, gesturing to the weak, spindly limbs holding him up. Raha's forehead wrinkled in thought. "This is the flesh of a dead man, withering in the ground. You must let go of this illusion of life. Free the multitude trapped in this terrible balance. Don't you hear them wailing, frightened, each alone in the darkness?"

"I do," he said. "But I will not yield to your foul master! My work among the living is not complete. The great and merciful one has set me a task, which remains yet undone. So, I say to you, malign spirit, I will return to the living world. I will not enter the city. Yet, by my absence, the dead will be freed to pass on, and find peace."

"But," Raha said, perplexed, "your work is done. The Emperor Heraclius, who betrayed the cities of the Decapolis, is dead, his corpse only one among thousands, nameless and unmarked. Your people have been freed, your enemies revenged. Even now they claim a great destiny in your name. Your teachings will live on, forever. The allotted span of your days has come to an end."

"The lord of the wasteland," Mohammed said sharply, "sets the beginning and the ending of each man's life-yes, he who made men from clots of blood, from clay-he sets the rising and the setting of the sun! Not you, not your master, not his slave Moha or any other power! I was struck down by treachery, my efforts incomplete! The voice from the clear air guides me, showing a clear and righteous path against evil!"

Raha stepped back from his vehemence, an expression of grave concern coming over her. "Evil? My lord, all things have an ending. There is no evil in death, only the wheel of change, of life, turning as it has always turned. The means of change do not matter, only its inevitability. All things end! Even you, even I."

Mohammed licked his lips, overcome by a sensation of nervousness. She is speaking the truth.

"O Man, observe," Raha said, spreading her hands wide. A glittering circle opened in the air, through which Mohammed saw a thicket of pine and thistle. A stag crashed through the brush, followed by a swift, golden bolt of fur. The lion struck hard, massive jaws crunching into the stippled brown neck of the deer. Both animals went down in a cloud of dust and branches, the stag kicking, the lion's rear claws tearing bloody streaks across a heavy tan pelt. "Here is the engine of the world, of all creation! There is no permanence-only change-and in this world, men die. Women die. Everything passes with the turning of the wheel. New life springs from the old." Raha looked up, her lambent dark eyes blazing. Mohammed felt a void open before him, saw scattered stars glitter on a field of sable. They grew, swelling enormous and dark, a doorway opening in the air before him. "Your time has come. Accept this."

A faint, ethereal wailing trembled in the air and Mohammed knew the dead were pleading with him, shouting in their faint voices, bending their will upon him for release. He felt the weariness of his bones, the fatigue settling in what muscle and sinew remained. Even his thoughts were slow, attenuated, stretched to the utmost. He heard temple bells and the chant for the dead, a slow, mournful dirge on a thousand voices. Drums rolled, echoing the tramp of sandals on a dusty plain. A funeral procession, he recognized. It must be mine.

"No," Mohammed managed to gasp. He was on his knees again, barely able to stand. "I will not abandon my purpose. The judge of judges will account the deeds of my life, when I stand before him. Until that day, when the lord of the world commands me lay down my purpose, I will not surrender."

"Are you the maker of all things?" Raha knelt beside him, a pale hand on his shoulder. "Are you the judge of good and evil?"

"No!" Mohammed drew away from her. "I am only a man."

"How can you know your purpose continues? This is the end of your time. You must pass on!" A tone of urgent pleading crept into her voice.

"No-I will not! I will not be driven by thirst, by fear, by temptation, by the blandishments of the spirits here. I will endure. A great evil has entered the world-a serpent with countless heads, arms, bodies-I have seen the dark power walking under the sun, cloaked in the shape of a man. The voice from the clear air has spoken, setting me to strive against shaitan and all his spawn."

Raha shook her head in despair. "Still you seek to name evil. I ask again, are you the judge of judges?"

"I am not," Mohammed snapped, "yet the voice of the empty places guides me to a righteous life! My heart sings to hear him, showing me a certain path. I will not let the whole world die, consumed by the serpent, crushed in leviathan coils! I will not step aside, while there is work yet undone!"

The woman rose, lips pursed. She cupped her hands and a spark appeared, fluttering like a butterfly. The flickering glow lit her face with warm light. "You are not listening. Certainty is oblivion. Immutability disaster. Only in the motion of change-in birth and death-is there life. The voice speaking to you is only one of many, only part of a great chorus. Everything, even what you name evil has a place in that choir."

"No-" Mohammed recoiled. "Not the abomination! The Lord of Serpents is a stain on the perfection of creation!"

A beneficent smile spread across Raha's features. "Creation is imperfect. In all things a flaw-even in the wisdom of your guide, this voice from the clear air." She closed her hands over the light sputtering between her fingers. Darkness flooded the air around them, drowning sight of the grass, the city, even the swaying branches of the fig. "You claim the power in the desert as your patron, saying he raised the race of men from clay, from blood, from the very soil. So he did."

A vision burst over Mohammed, stunning his mind. A vast city rose up around him, cyclopean towers piercing leaden clouds, titanic shapes moving in the chill air. In the distance, mountains of ice encroached upon the city, glittering blue-white walls looming over soapstone colored buildings. Abandoned doorways yawned on streets tenanted solely by cold whirlwinds. A singular slate-gray tower swelled into view, colossal, every surface covered with deeply incised glyphs and signs. A window filled his vision and he looked down upon a great chamber, filled with shining, dark machines. Glimmering lightning flared in the shadows and something huge bent over a slab of mirrored black stone. Glossy rust-colored wings shifted, one pair, then four rising and falling around a ridged circumference. A tiny creature squirmed and writhed on the gleaming table, screaming endlessly. Bright red blood smeared silky fur. Stubby-fingered hands groped mindlessly at the air. Delicate white cilia descended, adjusting minute jewel-like tools.

Mohammed jerked back, horrified. Raha was watching him from the darkness. The vision faded, the vast city falling away into dimness, buried by the relentless ice. The terrible cold lingered, pricking his skin as the tiny knives had worked in the living body of the furred creature.

"Did you think the birth of the race of men was pure? No-even in the beginning there was imperfection." Raha drew close, her hands radiating a faint heat. The light between her palms glowed through her skin and Mohammed could see the outline of delicate finger bones. "From base flaw rose wonders unlooked for. The power, which presses the Sun and the Moon into its service, encompasses all things, men not least of all. Do not seek certainty, my lord. How can love grow, among such cold geometries?"

"Was-" Mohammed's horror choked the words in his throat. "Was this the face of the Wise One, who created men from dust, from a little germ…" He could not continue, stunned.

"Is the face of a newborn the face of a grown man?" The woman's voice was faint in the darkness. "Is the face of the grandson, the face of the grandfather? As the wheel turns, even the foulest act may plant a seed of joy. All things transform…"

Raha opened her hands, letting stuttering, flaring light spill forth. Mohammed staggered back-in the flashing light, in the dark spaces between the warm golden flare, Raha filled the world; enormous, blue-black arms like wheel spokes, reaching from earth to sky, myriad faces looking upon all directions and compasses. A thousand hands moved as one, a bending forest pressed by hurricane winds and delicate feet danced on the crown of the world, ringed with whirling, blazing suns. The man became aware of a tone, a singing single note, vibrating in the void. His eyes widened, and the last of his body cracked and crumbled into ash, rushing away in the wind from the abyss.

The woman closed her hands and the vision collapsed into a burning fire-encircled mote, then a shimmering cruciform letter, then into nothing. The golden light faded and the trembling tone faded away into the sighing branches of the fig tree. Even the sky snapped back into focus, a flat curtain of blue arcing overhead.

"Do you see?" Raha said. "You must let go of this shell. You must go onward."

Mohammed could only feel the thud-thud of his heart. Even the woman's voice was very faint and far away. Glorious visions blinded him, and most of all, he heard a familiar, beloved sound, echoing in the spaces between his heartbeat, in the spaces between Raha's words.

It is the sound of the morning of the world, he wondered, overcome with fierce emotion. The wind blowing in empty spaces. The tide. The moon. The roar of the surf on a barren shore. It is the voice from the clear air.