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hopelessly at Jim and Brian, shrugging his shoulders; but Brian was scowling
now, and he quickly turned back to the door and began hammering on it again.
Open! he cried in a piercing, high-pitched voice. Open, in the name of
Allah, the beneficent, the all-hospitable. Two great men, beloved of Allah,
the sultan and our Bey, here in Tripoli, are come to visit with abu
al-Qusayr.
There still was no response, but Brian growled and the man kept up his
pounding and his cries. Finally, there was the noise of bolts being drawn and
bars being lifted, and the door opened to reveal a tall, stately-looking man
in a rich, heavy robe of red. He was silver-haired and upright. He glared down
at the guide.
Dog of the wharf, he said. Why do you clamor at this door? Do you not know
what you risk by disturbing the mind of abu al-Qusayr?
Forgive me, O gracious one! said the guide. But with me are two great men,
lords among the Franks and nasranies of the north, who are directed here by
friends of abu al-Qusayr. Not for a king s ransom would I disturb so all-wise
and powerful a man. But I think that these with me are expected by him.
The silver-haired man in the red robe directed his glance at Jim and Brian.
Your names, sirs? he asked, with a surprising change of speech to a
courtly, even European manner.
I am Sir Brian Neville-Smythe, said Brian. With me is the Mage, Baron Sir
James Eckert de Malencontri, whom your master is expecting.
I must not claim the title of Mage, however, said Jim hurriedly, for the
eyebrows of the silver-haired man had climbed up on his forehead on hearing
that title. I am a magician of relatively low rank; apprentice, however, to
the Mage S. Carolinus, who has said that I would find friendship and direction
from abu al-Qusayr, as a fellow member of the Magician s Kingdom.
The man in the doorway relaxed.
You are expected, sir, he said-again with more of a European way of
speaking than that of one of the locals. Jim wondered if his invisible
translator was carrying him over what essentially was a switch from one
language to another. Looking past Jim and Brian now, this man beckoned the two
luggage-carriers forward and pointed just inside the doorway.
Leave your burdens there, he said. They will be taken care of.
My pay! Our pay! cried the guide. O munificent masters, we have not yet
been paid!
Jim produced a silver coin and passed it to the guide.
But it was to be a gold dinar, wailed the guide.
That s not what the shipmaster told us, said Jim.
It was to be gold! It was to be gold- clamored the guide.
Cease thy clamor, snapped the man in the red robe, and get thee hence
happily with what thou hast, lest devils and scorpions follow thee to thy
grave!
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Ignoring the guide and the bearers, he turned once more to Jim and Brian.
Enter, messires, he said. He stood aside to let them come through the
doorway in the narrow space left between himself and their luggage. Then he
closed the door behind them upon the sound of lamentations and protests from
both the guides and the carriers. Five drachmas would have been ample. You
have been robbed, messires, but there is little help for it, I know, in a city
like this, where you are not known and you do not know its ways. Come, Sir
Brian, Sir James. Sir James, my master is indeed expecting you. Follow me.
He led them down the short, dim-lit and narrow corridor toward a farther
door, from which several other men, obviously lesser servants, ran in, ducked
past them and ran on to the outer door. Jim heard the sound of the bolts being
driven home and the heavy bar being lifted back into place. They stepped
through the inner door.
Suddenly, it was as if they had stepped back into a palace out of the Arabian
Nights.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They had entered a large room with a lofty, white dome-shaped ceiling and one
wall that was not a wall but spaced pillars, showing either an open corridor
or a balcony beyond them. Entrances, both high and wide, in the other two
walls ahead, opened on further rooms beyond, giving glimpses of similar high
ceilings and stone walls.
The stone itself was beautifully fitted, and jutted out to make a gallery on
the wall to Jim s left, its floor some fifteen feet up. Shielding the gallery
was a screen of worked stone, with intricately curved, small apertures
piercing every part of it, so that it was in effect a screen of wrought stone
to hide anyone who might be standing behind it and looking down. A few pieces
of furniture, mainly hassocks, cushions and low tables, were lined up against
the walls of the room, leaving the center of it completely open, increasing
the appearance of its size-an appearance that was reinforced by the
light-colored stone of the walls. Bright daylight seemed to be flooding in,
not only through the pillars, but from other, hidden parts of the room, either
by clever architecture or magic, so that the whole place seemed to float in
mid-air.
If you will follow me, messires, said the red-robed man; and led them off
through one of the farther entrances which were rectangular to about six feet
off the ground, and then swelled into an onion-shaped arch with a sharp upward
point in the center.
They followed him, through rooms that were almost identical with the first
they had seen. Carpets, with indecipherable figuring upon them, were
everywhere. Occasionally they caught sight of men, dressed in loose green
blouses and trousers, passing through the corner of a room-from doorway to
doorway-in the same rooms they traversed.
Now that he stopped to think of it, Jim remembered that the servants that had
run to rebar the door had also been dressed in green. The red-robed man paid
no attention to these, however, so Jim and Brian also ignored them; and they
went for some distance, always flooded by the remarkable daylight that seemed
to penetrate into every room, even those that had walls on four sides and no
visible form of lighting otherwise.
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