The Eight: The Fire Part 10

'I think one man can lift that veil,' Shahin replied. 'We go to seek him tomorrow in the Rif. His name is Mulay ad-Darqawi, a great shaikh. It is he whom they call the Old Man of the Mountain.'

All things are hidden in their opposites gain in loss, gift in refusal, honour in humiliation, wealth in poverty, strength in weakness...life in death, victory in defeat, power in powerlessness, and so on. Therefore, if a man wish to find, let him be content to lose...

Mulay al'Arabi ad-Darqawi, Rasa'il The Bu-Berih Hermitage The Rif Valley, Morocco The Old Man of the Mountain Mulay al-'Arabi ad-Darqawi, the great shaikh of the Shadhili Sufi order was dying. He would soon be far beyond this veil of illusion. He had expected death for many months indeed, had welcomed it.

That is, until just this morning. Now everything was changed and different.

It was G.o.d's irony, as the Mulay himself should understand better than anyone. Here he had been prepared to die in peace, melded into the bosom of Allah just as he longed for. But G.o.d had a different idea.

Why should it be a surprise? The Mulay had been a Sufi long enough to know that when it came to Allah's ways, the unexpected must always be expected.

And what the Mulay was expecting right now was a message.

He lay beneath the thin coverlet on the slab of stone that had always served as his bed, his hands folded over his breast as he waited. Beside this plinth sat a large skin drum with a single drumstick attached to the side. He'd asked to have it brought here to him in the event he needed it suddenly, as he was quite sure he would.

Flat on his back, he gazed up at the ceiling toward the sole window, the skylight of his isolated hermitage the Zawiya, the 'cell' or 'corner' this tiny, whitewashed stone building high atop the mountain that had served for so long as his remote dwelling place. It would serve as his tomb, he thought wryly, once he himself had been turned into a holy relic.

Outside, his followers were already waiting. Hundreds of the faithful knelt upon the snowy ground in silent prayer. Well, let them wait. It's G.o.d who makes the schedules here, not me. Why would G.o.d keep an old man lingering like this unless it was important?

And why else would He have brought them here to the mountain? First, the Bektas.h.i.+ initiate, Kauri, who'd found shelter here ever since his escape from the slavers. The boy had insisted all these months that he was one of the protectors of the greatest of secrets, along with a girl who was still missing. According to the boy, she had been captured by the sultan Mulay Suliman's forces, which made it difficult if not impossible to find her. The daughter of Ali Pasha Tebeleni, she'd been entrusted with this relic by the great Bektas.h.i.+ Pir himself, the Baba Shemimi, nearly one year ago a relic that the Mulay had always imagined might be no more than a myth.

But as of this morning, lying here on what would soon be his deathbed, the Mulay ad-Darqawi had understood at last that all of the story must indeed be true.

For now, Sultan Suliman was dead. His retinue would soon be scattered like leaves on the wind. The girl must be found before it was too late.

And what had become of the valuable relic that had been entrusted to her?

The shaikh ad-Darqawi knew it was Allah's will that he, and he alone, answer these questions; that he gather his strength from within to accomplish this final task demanded of him. He must not fail.

But to succeed, he first needed the sign.

Through the open hole in the ceiling the Mulay could glimpse the clouds moving across the sky. They looked like handwriting. The Mystic Pen of G.o.d, he thought. 'The Pen' had long been among the Mulay's favorite suras from the Holy Qur'an, one that helped explain how the Prophet was chosen to write it. For as all things are known to Allah, the Most Merciful and Compa.s.sionate, it had been known to Him that Muhammad may peace be upon him could neither read nor write.

Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, it was the illiterate Muhammad whom G.o.d had chosen as messenger of His revelations. Among His earliest commands to the Prophet were 'Read!' and 'Write!' G.o.d always tests us, the Mulay thought, by insisting upon something that may at first appear to us, ourselves, to be quite impossible.

It was many decades ago, when Mulay ad-Darqawi was himself a young disciple on the Sufi Path, that he had first gained the skill to separate truth from vanity, wheat from chaff. That he'd learned how one might sow in pain and penury here on earth, in order to reap that otherworldly harvest of joy and riches. And after many years of honing this patience and intuition, at last he had discovered the secret.

Some called it a paradox like a veil, an illusion that we created for ourselves: something of great value that we couldn't see, though it lay right before our eyes. The followers of 'Isa of Nazareth called it 'the Stone that the Builders Rejected.' The alchemists spoke of it as the Prima Materia the Primal Matter, the Source.

Each master who'd found the Way had said the same: a discovery of great simplicity, and, like many simple things, breathtaking in its magnitude. Yet it was also wrapped in mystery, for did not the Prophet say, 'Inna lillahi la-sab'ina alfa hijabin min nurin wa zulmatin?' G.o.d has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness?

The Veil! Yes, that's what those scudding clouds resembled those clouds just over his head! He squinted his eyes, the better to study the clouds. But at that moment, just as the wispy clouds above were moving beyond the Mulay's window of vision, they parted. And there in the sky he thought he saw a large equilateral triangle comprised of clouds, feathery, like an enormous pyramidal tree with many branches.

In a flash of insight, the Mulay ad-Darqawi saw the meaning. Behind the Veil lay the Tree of Illumination.

Behind this veil, as the Mulay now understood, lay the illumination of the Tariq'at, the Secret Way that was hidden in the chess set created by al-Jabir ibn Hayyan more than one thousand years ago, and that piece now sought by his fellow Sufis the piece the Baba Shemimi had protected.

The boy himself, though he'd held it in his hands, had never seen it, for it was veiled by a dark material. In confidence, he revealed to the shaikh Darqawi that he'd been told it was a most important piece that might be the key to all: the Black Queen.

Thanks to his vision, the Mulay now believed he knew precisely where this piece must have been hidden by the sultan Suliman or his forces. Just like the Prima Materia, like the secret Stone, it would be hidden in plain view, but it would be veiled. If he died now, before sharing this vision, the thousand-year-old secret might die with him.

The old man marshaled what power he could to put aside his coverlet, arise from his plinth, and stand without aid on bare feet upon the cold stone floor. With frail and trembling hands he grasped the drumstick as firmly as he could and took a deep breath. He needed all his strength to beat the familiar tattoo of the Shadhili Sufis.

The Mulay commended his soul into the hands of Allah.

And he began to beat the drum.

Kauri heard a sound that he had not heard since he'd left the White Land: the sound of the Sufi tattoo! This could only mean that something of great importance was happening. The crowds of mourners heard it, too; one by one, they looked up from their kneeling prayers.

As Kauri knelt in the snow alongside these hundreds of others who had drawn together here awaiting the shaikh Darqawi's death, he strained to make out the weak sound of the drum, trying to divine the meaning of its message. But he was frustrated, for it was unlike any other cadence he'd ever heard. Just as each drum had a voice of its own, he knew that each rhythm held a different import, one that could be completely grasped only by the ear initiated into its specific significance.

But more shocking than the sound of this incomprehensible drumbeat was the location from which it derived: the Zawiya, the stone cell of shaikh Darqawi where the saint lay dying. The crowds murmured in amazement. It could only be Darqawi himself who beat the tattoo. Kauri prayed that this also meant there existed hope of some kind.

For ten months, ever since his escape from those slave merchants who'd clapped him in chains at dockside, Kauri had sought in vain to learn the fate of Haidee and the chess piece called the Black Queen. No effort on his part, nor on that of the Shadhili Sufis, even of the shaikh himself, had turned up a trace of either. It was as if the girl and that critical key to al-Jabir's sacred legacy had both been swallowed by the earth.

As Kauri listened, it seemed the drumbeats from within became steadily firmer and stronger. Then he noticed a stirring at the fringe of the crowd outside. One by one, men were rising to their feet to clear a path for something moving in their direction. Though Kauri could not yet make out just what it was, there was whispering.

'Two hors.e.m.e.n,' said his neighbor in a choked voice that mingled awe and fear. 'They say perhaps they are angels. The saint is drumming the sacred beat of the Pen!'

Kauri looked at the man in amazement, but the man was looking past him. Kauri glanced back over his own shoulder to where the crowd was parting for whatever came their way.

A tall man astride a pale horse moved through the crowd, with another man behind him. When Kauri caught a glimpse of the white desert robes, the coppery hair swinging loose about his shoulders, it recalled those forbidden icons of 'Esus the Nasrani' that the priests had kept in their fortress monastery of St Pantaleon, on the Isle of Pines, the place where the Black Queen had been hidden.

But the horseman who followed was more of a revelation. He wore the indigo litham!

Kauri sprang to his feet and rushed forward along with the others.

It was his father, Shahin!

The al-Qarawiyyan Mosque Fez, Morocco The glow of sunset was gone from the skies; darkness had set in. The lacquered tile roofs of the al-Qarawiyyan Mosque glittered in the torchlight of the courtyard. The keyhole arches around the court's periphery were already deep in shadow as Charlot, alone, crossed the vast open expanse of the black-and-white-tiled floor, en route to Isha, the last evening prayer.

He'd arrived as late as possible, but still with enough time to enter the mosque with the last group of wors.h.i.+ppers for the day. By now Shahin and Kauri, already within, would have secured their hiding place as planned. Shahin had deemed it best for Charlot to arrive separately, after nightfall. For though his red hair was now completely concealed beneath a turban and his heavy djellaba, by day the cornflower blue of his eyes would be conspicuous.

When Charlot reached the fountain court the last stragglers were performing their ablutions before entering the sanctum. Beside them at the basin he quickly removed his shoes, careful to keep his eyes always downcast. When he'd finished was.h.i.+ng his hands, face, and feet, he surrept.i.tiously tucked his shoes into the pouch beneath his robe so they wouldn't be found here once everyone had departed the mosque for the night.

Lagging until the others had entered, he pushed open the great carved doors of the mosque and stepped into the dim, hushed interior a forest of white pillars stretching in all directions, hundreds of them as far as the eye could see. Between these, wors.h.i.+ppers already lay prostrate on their prayer rugs, facing east.

Charlot paused near the door to gauge the terrain from the drawing of the mosque the shaikh had provided them.

Despite the warmth of Charlot's garments and the warm dull glow provided by oil lamps throughout the great hall, he could not help but feel a terrible chill. He trembled, for what he was doing was not only highly dangerous; it was forbidden.

The al-Qarawiyyan was one of the oldest and most sacred of mosques, founded nearly a thousand years ago by Fatima, a wealthy woman from its namesake city, Kairuan in Tunisia the fourth sacred city of Islam after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.

So sacred was al-Qarawiyyan that mere entry by a giaour, an infidel like himself, might be punishable by death. Though he'd been raised by Shahin and knew much of Shahin's faith, one could scarcely overlook that Charlot's mother had been a novitiate nun and his natural father a bishop of the Catholic Church in France.

Indeed, in every regard, to spend the night here within this sacred precinct, as the shaikh had recommended, was completely unthinkable. They would be trapped here like birds in a sack, with no recourse to their natural element.

But the shaikh ad-Darqawi had a.s.sured them in a lofty tone suggesting he was already well conversant in the tongues of angels that he had it on highest authority that the chess piece would be found within the great mosque of al-Qarawiyyan and that he knew where it was hidden: 'Behind the veil, within a tree. Follow the parable in "The Verse of Light," and you will surely find it.'

G.o.d doth guide whom He will to His Light: G.o.d doth set forth parables for men: and G.o.d doth know all things.

Qur'an, Sura xxiv: 35, 'The Verse of Light'

'"The Verse of Light" is part of a famous sura in the Qur'an,' Kauri explained to Charlot in a whisper.

They were hiding behind a heavy tapestry in the funereal annex of the mosque, where the two had been seated on the floor, concealed with Shahin these many hours, ever since the Isha prayer ended and the mosque was locked up for the night.

According to the shaikh ad-Darqawi, the only occupant of the vast mosque from now until dawn would be the Muwaqqit, the Keeper of Time. But he remained all night in his private chamber high in the minaret, relying upon sophisticated instruments an astrolabe and a pendulum clock, gifts to the famous mosque from Louis XIV of France to make his important calculation: the precise moment for Fajr, the next of the five canonical prayers prescribed by the Prophet, which took place between first light and sunrise. They should be safe in this alcove until then, when the gates were unlocked. Then they could mingle with the morning wors.h.i.+ppers and depart.

Kauri went on speaking in a whisper, though there was no one nearby to hear. '"The Verse of Light" begins by affirming that it's meant to be taken as a parable a kind of encrypted code concerning "G.o.d's Light." It gives five keys: a niche, a lamp, a gla.s.s, a tree, and some oil. According to my teacher, the Baba Shemimi, these are the five secret steps to illumination if we can decipher the meaning, although scholars have debated its meaning for hundreds of years without any real resolution. I'm not sure how Shaikh Darqawi thought this would lead here to the mosque or help us find the Black Queen-'

Kauri stopped when he noticed Charlot's sudden change of expression, as if the latter had been overcome by some unbidden emotion. His face had gone white; he seemed to have trouble breathing in the cloistered s.p.a.ce. Without warning, he'd precipitously jumped to his feet and pushed aside the heavy curtain. Kauri glanced quickly to his father for guidance, but Shahin was on his feet as well and had grasped Charlot by the arm. He seemed quite as upset as Charlot.

'What is it?' Kauri said, stepping out to draw the men back behind the tapestry before they were found.

Charlot shook his head, his blue eyes clouded over as he gazed at Shahin.

'My destiny, you said, did you not?' he asked Shahin with a bitter little smile. 'Perhaps it was never anything about Kauri that blocked my vision. My G.o.d. How can this be? Yet I still cannot see it.'

'Father, what is it?' Kauri repeated, still in a whisper.

Shahin told his son, 'What you've just told us must be impossible. A total paradox. For the piece we've come here to find in the mosque tonight the chess piece that you brought out of Albania eleven months ago cannot be the Black Queen of al-Jabir ibn Hayyan. For we possess the Black Queen. It once belonged to Catherine the Great. It was retrieved from her grandson Alexander more than fifteen years ago secured for us by Charlot's own father, Prince Talleyrand. How could Ali Pasha also have possessed it?'

'But,' said Kauri, 'the Baba Shemimi claimed that the Albanian Bektas.h.i.+s and Ali Pasha have possessed this piece for more than thirty years! Haidee was chosen by the Baba because her natural father, Lord Byron, had a hand in its history. We were to take it to him for protection.'

Charlot said to Kauri, 'We must find this girl at once. Her role may be critical to everything ahead. But first, is there any way that you can decipher that parable?'

'I believe I may have done so already,' said Kauri. 'We must begin at the place of prayer.'

It was nearly midnight once they felt sure that the Muwaqqit was well asleep when Shahin, Charlot, and Kauri crept down the steps from their alcove in the loft of the Funereal Mosque.

The Great Mosque was deserted. The expanse beneath its five vaulted domes was hushed as an open sea beneath a starlit sky.

Kauri had said that the only spot in the mosque that 'wore a veil,' as the shaikh had stressed, was the alcove where the prayer niche was located the niche itself being the first step in the parable of 'The Verse of Light.'

Within this same niche lay the lamp that was always kept burning, which in turn was contained in the gla.s.s surrounding it 'like a brilliant star, lit from a Blessed tree.' The tree in the 'Verse' was an olive tree, which produced a luminous light from ever-burning oil a magic oil, in this case, for 'fire scarcely touched it.'

The three men silently slipped by the marble pillars and headed to the prayer niche at the far end of the mosque. Once they'd reached it and pa.s.sed through the curtain, they stood together before the niche and gazed into the lamp within its sparkling gla.s.s container.

At last, it was Charlot who spoke. 'You said that the next step in the Qur'anic verse would be a tree, but I see nothing like that here.'

'We must pull aside the veil,' said Shahin, pointing to the screening curtain they'd just pa.s.sed through. 'The tree must be on the other side, inside the mosque.'

When they pulled back the drapery to reenter the mosque, they saw what they had not recognized before as the final key: There before them, suspended by its heavy golden chain from the central dome of the great al-Qarawiyyan Mosque, was the enormous chandelier, glittering with light from the thousands of oil lamps, many with luminous cutout stars and suns. From this vantage point, seeing it hanging there from the central dome, it resembled an ancient drawing of the World Tree.

'The tree and the oil both here together the sign,' said Shahin. 'Not the illumination that the Baba Shemimi seeks for my son, perhaps. But at least we may be enlightened enough to discover whether there is another Black Queen up there.'

They were fortunate that the gearing mechanism for the chandelier had been well oiled; they moved it in silence. Still it took extraordinary effort by all three to lower it by the chain only to discover that the lowest it would reach was just enough to enable the stewards of the mosque to replenish or relight the lamps with long-handled tapers or spouts. When all was done, it hovered ten feet off the ground.

As the sun moved toward its inevitable rise, the three were in serious panic at their plight. How to get up there into the 'tree'? At last, a decision was reached.

Kauri, as the lightest in weight of the three, removed his outer garments, stripped down to his s.h.i.+ftlike kaftan, and, with Charlot's help, was hoisted onto his father's shoulders. The boy climbed onto the heavy branches of the chandelier, taking care not to disturb the many flickering bowls of luminous oil.

Shahin and Charlot watched from beneath as soundlessly and with great dexterity Kauri ascended the tree, branch by branch. Whenever he s.h.i.+fted his position too far, the enormous chandelier swayed slightly, threatening to spill some oil. Charlot found himself holding his breath. It took a conscious effort to calm his racing pulse.

Kauri reached the top tier of the lowered chandelier perhaps sixty feet in the air, more than halfway to the dome. He looked down to where Charlot and Shahin waited so far below. Then he shook his head to indicate that there was no Black Queen.

But it has to be here! thought Charlot in a frenzy of anguish and doubt. How could it not be here? They'd all been through so much. Their journey across the great desert and the mountains. Kauri's capture and narrow escape from bondage; the plight of the girl, wherever she might be. And then this paradox.

Was Mulay ad-Darqawi's vision as poor as his own had become? Had there been some mistake; had the shaikh misinterpreted the message?

And then he saw it.

Gazing at the gigantic chandelier from beneath, Charlot thought he saw something that wasn't quite aligned. He moved to the exact center of the structure and looked up again. There at the core he saw a dark shadow.

Charlot raised his hand and motioned to Kauri, high above. The boy began his precarious descent more difficult by far than the trip upward lowering himself, step by step, and skirting the thousands of dishes of burning oil.

Shahin stood beside Charlot beneath the tree and watched the descent. When Kauri had reached the lowest tier of the chandelier, he swung two-handed from the bottom rung and Shahin wrapped his arms around the boy's legs to catch him. Except for a quick intake of breath by Shahin, all had been accomplished in complete silence.

All three sat on the ground and looked up at the hollow core of the chandelier, where the lump of coal had been inserted. They had to get it out and as quickly as possible, so they could raise the chandelier again well before the muezzin's call to morning prayer.

Charlot made a sign to Shahin, who stood with legs planted widely apart and held his hands like a stirrup for Charlot to step onto. Charlot climbed to Shahin's shoulders and stood precariously, extending his arm and reaching into the chandelier's core. His fingers brushed the piece but he couldn't quite grasp it. He motioned for Kauri and extended his hand. Kauri clambered up the two men's bodies and swung himself up to the first rung once more, until he was above the chess piece. Reaching inside the chandelier's core, he pressed down on the piece of coal. It was dislodged and moved downward, sliding through the core toward Charlot's extended hand.

At that same moment, a loud chiming like that of a gong shattered the silence in the vast hall. It seemed to come from somewhere high up, toward the entrance. Charlot flinched, momentarily withdrawing his raised hand to correct his balance when everything suddenly went topsy-turvy. Kauri had s.n.a.t.c.hed at the coal from above, trying to halt its downward progress, but had failed. Shahin staggered under the unbalanced weight, and Charlot toppled from his shoulders to the ground, rolling to one side just as the weighty chunk of coal crashed like a meteor, from ten feet above, onto the carpeted marble floor between them.

Charlot leapt to his feet and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the piece in a panic as the loud chiming continued echoing off marble pillars, magnified on high from the hollowed domes. Kauri swung from the bottom rung of the swaying chandelier and dropped to the floor amid a shower of hot oil. Together the three braced for flight And then it stopped.

The chamber was again swallowed in silence.

Charlot glanced back at his two astonished companions. Then he understood, and he laughed despite the danger that still hung in the air around them.

'Twelve chimes, wasn't it?' he said in a whisper. 'That would be midnight. I'd forgotten about the Muwaqqit and his ruddy French pendulum clock!'

After the predawn prayer Charlot and his companions, mingling among the other wors.h.i.+ppers, moved through the gates of the courtyard into the streets of Fez.

The day was already beginning. The sun s.h.i.+mmered like a filigreed platter through the silvery veil of fog that was just melting away. To reach the nearest gate of the walled city they must pa.s.s through the medina, already bustling with merchants of legumes and viands, the air thick with the exotic aromas of rosewater and almonds, sandalwood and saffron and amber. The largest and most complex market district in Morocco, the Fez medina was a confusing labyrinth where, they all knew, it was easy to become hopelessly lost.

But Charlot would not begin to feel secure with this chess piece hidden within the pouch beneath his garments until he could set foot outside of the city's imprisoning walls, which loomed around them everywhere, like those of a medieval fortress. He had to get out if only long enough to draw his breath.

Furthermore, he knew they must find a suitable place to hide the chess piece in the short term, at least until they could trace the path of the girl who might hold the key to the mystery.

Within the medina, not far from the mosque, lay the famous five-hundred-year-old Attarine Medra.s.sa, one of the most beautiful religious centers in the world with its carved cedar doors and grilles, its walls replete with richly colored tilework and golden calligraphy. The Mulay Darqawi had informed them that the medra.s.sa roof, which was open to the public, provided a bird's-eye view of the entire medina. It would allow them to map out their exit route.

And more important, Charlot was drawn to this spot. Something was awaiting him there though he couldn't see what it was.

Once on the parapet with his companions, Charlot looked out over the medina, trying to get his bearings. Below lay the maze of narrow streets dotted with shops and souks, fawn-colored houses with small gardens, fountains, and trees.

But immediately beneath them right here in the al-Attarine souk just below the medra.s.sa's walls Charlot beheld a remarkable sight. The sight. The vision he'd been awaiting. The vision that blocked all the others.