A Tale of Two Sorcerers - Sinister Cutlass (good books to read for adults .txt) 📗

 Outside the palace wall, the torches guttered. It was nearly midnight, and Adhemar hurried along the causeway. He hoped his wife, Sümeyra, would be asleep by now, so he wouldn't have to endure her being beautiful, good, and wifely.

 

She would be intolerably open, as she always was, always yielding without question to his greedy arms. She would read him like a book in her native Iznikoran, rather than in the language of Agrabah with which she had struggled when he brought her here. She would draw out the thorn in his side before he was able to convincingly pretend it wasn't there. Then he would have to explain how he acquired it…

 

Adhemar wanted to collapse in the sheets in his lightless room and forget himself.

 

The street where he lived was a chasm of deep night, lightened only by the moon, and empty of people. Adhemar shuffled quickly to the two-story structure he shared with his wife and two children, and turned the key in the lock. He leant in, easing open the wooden door, and through the gloom he heard the baby's mewling.

 

Adhemar winced and inwardly cursed. Shutting the door as quietly as he could, he crept across the flagstone floor and fled into his study.

 

In the hot shadows of the bedroom, Sümeyra suffered under sweat-dampened sheets and under her curtains of curly dark hair. She cradled a little head in her shoulder, but the baby only cried and fussed. Sümeyra had tried to get him to feed, but he only buried his face in her arm. She'd sung some low strains, but he might as well have not heard her.

 

This was not Sümeyra's first child, and she was becoming annoyed that her son did not deem her efforts sufficient. A headache began to pulse in her temples, and she thought she heard her husband escape into his study before she could summon him for help. Not that she should need to, she thought; this was her job, after all.

 

Still, she wanted to sleep, and her son was making this impossible.

 

There was a soft padding of tiny feet on the stone floor, and Sümeyra squeezed her eyes shut in exasperation. Oh, wonderful. The other one's loose. A path of tiny pressures on the bed, and a three-year-old girl poked her head into Sümeyra's hot circle of distress. Some reflected moonlight found its way through the two rectangular windows and shone on the girl's large dark eyes as she looked at the squirming baby in her mother's arms.

 

"No, no, no, Mayya… go back to sleep," Sümeyra pleaded softly, running a hand through her daughter's inky hair. "Jafar will be alright. I promise I will get him to shut up soon."

 

"Why won't 'e go to sleep?" the girl asked, and she touched the wisp-soft hair on her brother's sweat-dampened head experimentally. Her tiny finger trailed down his smooth, plump cheek and arm. "Maybe 'e's thirsty?" she suggested.

 

"No, Mayyadah, he isn't. It's probably the heat that's bothering him. I should get up and draw a bat-...-th...."

 

Sümeyra faltered as she noticed that her son's cries had precipitously disappeared once her daughter touched him.

 

He now grasped Mayyadah's small finger, studying her with large, uncomprehending, black eyes. In the dim light reflected from his sister's face, it was just barely apparent that his stunned confusion and curiosity melted into a dimpled, tongue-tipped smile.

 

Mayyadah giggled and uncurled her brother's fingers from her own pointer.  She tickled his stomach, earning a cascade of giggles from him. Sümeyra smiled warmly on the pair and felt relieved and thought it was just a little bit strange that a tiny girl could have the composure and wherewithal to so quickly and confidently calm a fussy infant. Indeed, she even felt a bit jealous.

 

In his study, behind closed doors through which Sümeyra and Mayyadah knew not to enter, Adhemar leant over a rosewood desk, his head buried in his arms. Against the cool surface, his head sagged in sleep; he was lost to the world. An inkwell, reed pen, and two ink-marked pieces of paper rested near his arms.

 

Adhemar had a younger brother, Farshad, who governed the city of the Anvari family's origin, who had aged into serenity and tolerance, and who could be counted on in his mature years to return a letter from Adhemar with solicitousness and a written balm of sustained, reasonable thought.

 

But in this case, regarding news of the deeds of Jabril's contingent, Adhemar felt that it wouldn't do to risk early exposure by putting the sordid information immediately in the post. Feeling thus stifled, he had resolutely written two letters. On the first paper was written:

 

 

My dear brother,

 

 Tonight, our family has both risen higher and sunken lower than imaginable. Maziyar, Jabril, and I contracted a magician, who calls himself 'Destane', to assist us in staging a coup against Talal Sayegh. He enthusiastically agreed to our proposition, and thoroughly enchanted the sultan and several of his advisors and friends, before dispatching them all to an anonymous, shameful fate.

 

Farshad, I saw a young man in his 20s wield the powers of heaven, and reduce thirteen rich, dutiful lives to lifeless mounds of gray sand and release the lot into the desert.

 

I suppose one must look at it as a mercy that he will terminate the families in the same way – at least they will not live to sustain the loss of their fathers, brothers, and cousins.

 

 Jabril ibn Saddaq Halabi is our new sultan, and Maziyar his grand vizier. I served them faithfully, according to their wishes, though I admit I forgot my place and asserted the notion that Destane might enchant the minds of Agrabah, and beyond, if necessary – the demon surely had the power. Jabril contradicted me, and demanded a violent action in order to bolster his claim to rule.

 

Frankly, Farshad, I believe he has long waited for just such a chance to spectacularly establish his personal legitimacy on a number of levels.

 

 It is difficult for me to express this, but I realize that my participation in this affair will change the course of, and shape the rest of my life, my children's lives, and our lives. The multitude of possible manifestations of these changes, which I cannot hope to imagine accurately at this stage, terrifies me.

 

 I hope that you are able to travel to Agrabah soon, and comfort me with your keen mind and attentive heart.

 

 

On the paper he would actually send his brother was written merely:

 

 

 

Farshad,

 

 Jabril has claimed the sultanate, and appointed Maziyar his grand vizier. He has not yet divined a purpose for me, so at present I will continue in my capacity as an ambassador.

 

Please visit Agrabah as soon as you are able. We have much to discuss.

 

 Your solicitous brother, Adhemar

 

A Sleepless Night

 Some hours past midnight, Maziyar Anvari strode swiftly home, a long black shadow slipping through the gauzy darkness, having lately parted ways with Jabril and Destane.

 

Only the scholarly might be awake now, lamp flames glowing in the windows of their studies, but no such private room faced upon the street, so only menacing moonlight illuminated Maziyar's way. At last, he reached his own house, and he flowed through the dark ground floor, heading – knowingly – for the courtyard beyond.

 

In the shade of a fig tree in the center, a female figure sat on a bench. She leant forward pensively, her wrists straining as she gripped the edge. Under the touch of the moon, bangles glinted at her wrists.

 

She appeared like an ancient weeping woman in marble bas relief, her gown in sculptural folds and her hair in glassy waves.

 

Malakeh, who was not actually weeping, lifted her head at the sound of her husband's footfalls on the flagstones. She rose and extended her arms to him, and they impulsively crashed together, Maziyar's arms curling about her waist, and Malakeh's elbows on his shoulders as she grasped his head and kissed him deeply.

 

When they both stopped for breath, panting, Malakeh still tangled her fingers in her husband's curls, desiring to bury him in the warmth of her relief, gratitude, and admiration. She breathed him in, and caught a scent of magic, like stormy air, and she involuntarily rocked against his hips.

 

When her logical thought caught up with her, her cheeks burned. She looked sharply at him, mortified. Maziyar smiled at her, merely bemused, black eyes glittering hopefully. To reclaim some dignity, she gently pressed her palm against her husband's chest, putting some inches between them.

 

"Is it done?" she asked.

 

"For tonight," Maziyar murmured, looking a bit put out. He rubbed her shoulder, and a silence fell between them.

 

Malakeh timidly ventured, "I worried what he'd do to you… and it would have been all my fault…"

 

Maziyar shook his head. "He needs us right now. He has one short-term ambition, and he needs to use Jabril's royal authority as leverage in order to achieve it. Malakeh, beauty, you've played a distinguished role in ensuring the greatest success to date for my family."

 

Malakeh's lips curled, her proud smile tightening to anxiousness. She trailed fastidiously maintained fingertips along his sculpted cheekbone, and murmured, "He won't always need you."

 

"We'll deal with that when we come to it, won't we?" Maziyar assured her, his voice rising slightly. He captured her wandering fingers and gave the knuckles a slow kiss.

 

His confidence… what a rich, tasty thing that was, Malakeh thought. How fatly intoxicating. How it thrillingly enlivened his otherwise hard features, and enticed one to hope and to let him lead, instead of to think for oneself. He dreamed longer distances than he strategized. However pathetically diffident Adhemar was, Maziyar truly did need his brother. This Malakeh understood. And there was something Maziyar needed to understand.

 

"Promise me you won't allow the sorceror to come anywhere near our family, " she pressed. "Warn me when he will be received at the palace... for the children's sake."

 

"Of course," Maziyar replied, laughing lightly. "Did you imagine you would be socializing with him on those occasions? You are a presumptious woman!"

 

Malakeh smiled weakly.

 

"Still," Maziyar continued. "I'm glad you told me, before I might have invited him to dine with us."

 

His wife's jewel eyes expanded and her cultivated black eyebrows furrowed in an expression of aristocratic terror.

 

Maziyar laughed sympathetically. Before – and after – everything else, Malakeh believed the man who called himself Destane to bear the muck and the mind of the streets. Even on her best days, she regarded the notion of feeding and entertaining such creatures at one's own expense as a quixotic, self-righteous venture divorced from good sense. One practices discipline – not indulgence – with stray dogs.

 

"Oh, what must that magician have done to earn your bitter distaste?" a mirthful Maziyar mused aloud, idly fondling a jet-black spiral of Malakeh's hair. Then he thought of an agreeably concrete question that he felt would shed light on the matter. "What does your father think of him?"

 

"Well, naturally, " said Malakeh, shaking her head as though it was obvious. "He thinks of him as a coarse malignance, who can, unfortunately, make himself useful."

 

"On that occasion you told me about… when your father hired him for a magical hand in financial assistance–"

 

"Don't call it that,"