The Broken Sword (6 page)

Saladin made an elegant gesture with his hands. "If you develop a taste for it."

A
t the villa in
Tangier, Saladin taught Aubrey a great deal about painting. The young man learned to mix his own paints and use other media to better bring out the things he wanted to express. He discovered that a single line or a space between colors could speak volumes. Although his work still resembled Saladin's, it had begun to shimmer with promise.

In time, Aubrey forgot his distaste for his friend's past; or perhaps he had convinced himself that Saladin had lied about his murder of the washerwoman and others. The two of them lived an odd sort of monastic life revolving around the lofty ideals of art.

Then Saladin began bringing guests into the villa. They were all Arabs, what seemed to Aubrey to be a whole tribe of them, all with Saladin's strange killer's eyes. Though they were respectful of Aubrey, they kept distinctly apart from him. Even at meals—which had changed since their arrival from the delicate European cuisine he favored to platters of
mechoui
or
pastilla
served, to the chef's dismay, on a sheet on the floor— there was no conversation until Aubrey left the room. Then the chamber would explode in a din of loud talk. Aubrey, who was fluent in Arabic as well as a number of other languages, did not deign to eavesdrop on these conversations from which he was excluded. Instead, he returned to his paintings, telling himself that he was not jealous of Saladin, who no longer had the time to tutor him or share with Aubrey his vast knowledge of art and history.

Three weeks after the Arabs arrived, he made plans to return to Paris.

"Make it London," Saladin said in response to his decision. "It would be more convenient for me."

Aubrey closed his eyes with exasperation. "Difficult to believe as this may be, Saladin, my main concern is not with your convenience. If you must know, your
friends.
.."

Saladin laughed. "They are not my friends, darling boy, and I know they aren't yours. Let's call them relatives." He turned his hands palms up. "A necessary evil, eh? Besides, they may be of some use to you in the future."

"To me? What on earth would I want with them?"

Saladin shrugged. "What does one do with a virtual army of men who will obey one's every command?" He placed his hand on Aubrey's shoulder. "I have designated you as my heir. After I'm gone, their fealty will be to you and you alone."

Despite the fact that he could think of no circumstance whatever in which he would require the services of Saladin's noisy relatives, Aubrey felt oddly touched. "Why have you chosen me?" he asked.

Saladin laughed. "If I'd chosen one of them, the poor devil would have his throat cut within the week!"

Aubrey swallowed. "In that case, I may have to decline the honor."

"Oh, they wouldn't kill you." Saladin smiled. "Unless you let them." He cracked his knuckles. "You need to learn about power."

"Power? I hope you're not suggesting I become a politician."

"Real power, Aubrey. The power to manipulate not only men, but the universe itself. To master the laws of nature and defy them. To live, perhaps, forever."

Aubrey's eyebrows knitted together in an amused grimace. "Are you saying that's what it will take to control your relations?"

"I am not joking!" Saladin roared, his whole being transformed in an instant into something terrifying. Aubrey reeled backward involuntarily. "I am talking about magic," the older man said between clenched teeth.

"Magic... I see." Inwardly, Aubrey made a note to leave the house for the airport as soon as humanly possible. He would buy whatever clothing he needed in Paris: "If you'll excuse me for a moment—"

Like the talons of a great bird of prey, Saladin's hands snaked out with lightning-fast speed to grab Aubrey's shirt collar. The young man emitted a brief, horrified cry.

Saladin laughed uproariously. "What did you think I would do? Stalk you through the boutiques of Paris?"

"I... what... I..." Aubrey cleared his throat and straightened his shirt. "Stalk me where?"

"You were thinking of clothes shopping, weren't you? Of fleeing this place because I am obviously mad, and probably dangerous?"

The young man's mouth fell open. "You knew what I was
thinking?"

Saladin sniffed. "That was nothing."

"It wasn't
nothing.
You may have guessed that I wanted to leave, but there was no way you could have known about the clothes.” He frowned. “What else can you do?"

The tall man smiled, seductively as a woman. "My boy, you have no idea," he said. "Sit down."

Aubrey eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then complied with a sigh. Saladin was no doubt going to try to talk him into keeping his dreadful relatives while he pranced off to London. "You know, I'd rather not—"

Saladin waved him down gently. "Tell me, Aubrey, what do you wish for most?"

"I beg your pardon?" Aubrey asked wearily.

"It was a simple enough question. What do you want out of life?"

It took a moment for him to answer. "I don't know, really. To paint, I suppose."

"You suppose?"

Aubrey made a noncommittal gesture.

"Come now. Surely even a spoiled princeling like you has dreams. Isn't there anything—anything in the entire spectrum of human achievement—that you truly desire?"

Aubrey felt the carpet with the toe of his shoe.

"To be a famous artist?" Saladin prodded. "A celebrity? A genius, perhaps?"

Aubrey looked up and smiled shyly, scratching the end of his nose. "That sounds awfully pompous."

Saladin shrugged. "It doesn't matter how it sounds. I only asked what you wanted."

"Just what are you getting at?"

"Is that your wish?" Saladin pressed. "To be a genius artist of great renown?"

"All right, damn it, yes!"

"Ah."

"I do hope there's some point to this line of—"

"Would you sell your soul for it?"

Aubrey laughed. "What?"

Saladin gazed into his eyes. "I asked if you would sell your soul to get your wish," he repeated slowly.

"Sell my soul? You mean to the devil?"

"Devils. There are more than one. But you would sell it to me."

Aubrey laughed again. "How bizarre."

"Is it?"

"What would you want with my soul, anyway? Provided I had one, that is."

"Oh, you have one. I would make an offering of it."

"To this vast array of demons you speak of."

"Yes." He grinned. "It would increase my own power. And it would initiate you."

"Initiate. As an artist and a devil."

"Umm. Do you agree?"

Aubrey rolled his eyes. "Why not," he said, rising. "You hereby have my soul. Now, about your relatives . . ."

"You won't ever have to worry about them again," Saladin said cryptically. "Go clean yourself up." Saladin placed a long bony hand on the young man's back. "I'm going to bring you into my life."

A
ubrey hadn't thought much
about where they were going—to dinner, perhaps, or to one of Tangier's famous if clandestine pleasure houses, though it was difficult to imagine Saladin taking pleasure in any mundane way. He refused to operate a telephone or drive a car. He never flushed a toilet, leaving the servants in the villa to follow, grumbling, after him. He expected them to bathe him as well, and dress him each morning. Aubrey could only imagine what a woman would think of his troublesome mentor.

And so he was dismayed when they entered not an elegant nightspot surrounded by bouganvillea and open to the stars, but a seamy dive in the old section of the city, where a one-eyed man opened the door to them and led them to a dirty table in a smoke-filled room.

The waiter brought them whiskeys. Aubrey's glass had some crusty substance dried onto its rim. He pushed it away in distaste. "I hadn't thought this would be the sort of place you liked to frequent," he said grimly.

Saladin only smiled. The two whiskeys sat silently unattended as Saladin looked slowly over the room. After a few minutes, the one-eyed man nodded from a faraway corner. Saladin rose.

"We've been announced," he said.

"To whom?" Aubrey was thinking that there was no one in the room he would even remotely like to meet.

"You'll see."

He led the way through the crowd of thieves and smugglers to a narrow door beneath a stairwell. As they passed through it into the darkness, Aubrey hadn't a clue what to expect—a Middle Eastern speakeasy, perhaps, or an opium den complete with wizened Chinese men smoking hookahs. But he was not prepared for what he saw.

The room was a cavern, with thousands of candles burning from tiny clefts of rock, dotting the dark chamber with eerie, wavering flames. In the center stood twelve men dressed in long black robes with hoods pulled over their faces. They were still as statues, and utterly silent.

Aubrey fell back while Saladin strode forward in measured steps. As he approached the men, one of them produced a black robe similar to the others and held it out for Saladin, who raised his arms and allowed himself to be dressed. The final touch was a large silver pentagram suspended on a chain. As this was placed over Saladin's head, the monks—which was how Aubrey had come to think of them—took up a chant.

The music was droning, like the buzzing of bees, its cadences rising and falling in rhythm almost like the Gregorian chants or those of the Russian Orthodox Church, yet this music held none of the serenity of any sacred liturgy Aubrey had ever heard. These sounds were disturbing in the same way Saladin's paintings were disturbing—dissonant, angular, frightening, irresistibly compelling. They sang in a language Aubrey had never heard, a mellifluous tongue with neither the harsh gutturals of Arabic nor the explosive tongued sounds of the Romance languages. Just listening to the unknown words chanted in their musical singsong brought to mind visions of ancient and secret rituals. As the chant grew in intensity and volume, Saladin took his place, not with the group, but standing in front of it. The others parted to form a vee with him at its apex.

He positioned himself directly in front of Aubrey and offered his hand. Smiling nervously, thinking that this must be some extravagant joke, Aubrey took it.

Saladin led him toward a low dais made of black onyx on which rested a large silver chalice. Two of the monks knelt before the chalice and lifted it toward the initiate.

"Drink it," Saladin said.

After a moment's hesitation, Aubrey accepted the vessel and drained its contents. It was wine, of a high quality, but with an aftertaste of bitterness.

"You've put something in it," he said. To his astonishment, his words were already sounding garbled, thick as bubbles made of honey, while the chant continued in the background. "What are you..."

He swooned. Several of the monks caught him before he fell. As his eyes struggled to open, they undressed him, then stood him naked upon the dais.

The chant felt like a tangible presence, enveloping him, holding him upright. In his narrowed vision Aubrey saw the music weave like silk scarves among the candles and the covered, faceless heads of the monks. The music and its words, the perfect, indecipherable yet oddly familiar words rose steadily, again and again, dancing like dark creatures. And then, more prominent than anything else in the cavern, were Saladin's eyes.

You are soulless
, they said to him.

Despite his drugged state, Aubrey felt a small frisson of fear roll up his spine.

Don't resist the darkness. Embrace it. Swallow it whole. It will comfort you.

Sweat trickled down the side of Aubrey's face.

Now you must become death.
Saladin's eyes grew to fill up Aubrey's entire vista. They were hypnotic, luminous. They spoke to a part of his mind that had never before been used, opening it like a maidenhead.
To harness the powers of the dark gods, you must make them submit to your will. You must become Thanatos, bringer of chaos, who breathes fear and fire and snuffs out life with a touch of his hands. Thanatos, supreme god of death.

"Thanatos," Aubrey repeated slowly. "I am... Thanatos."

Yes.

"Yes," Aubrey groaned.

I am death.

"I am death," he breathed.

I am the power.

"The power..." He felt the surrounding darkness enter him with an almost sexual penetration, and with it came the realization that he had been longing for this darkness all his life.

It was why he had loved Saladin's art from the time he first saw those terrifying canvasses. Saladin had known the great hidden truth, that somewhere within the horror of death was the power of the universe. Ordinary people avoided the power, feared it, and thus were at its mercy. Only by grasping death with one's whole spirit could a man overcome his fear. And once that fear was overcome, the power of death entered into his own body like the spirits of the dark gods themselves.

"I am death," he said, this time of his own accord. He became aware of his nakedness, and reveled in it. The sinews of his body stood out like ropes in the flickering light. His organ swelled, erect.

"Thanatos," Saladin said aloud.

Rising out of, the monks' chant came the word again: "Thanatos."

In the newly opened corner of his mind, Aubrey realized with absolute certainty what he wanted above all other things. Not to be an artist or a celebrity, although those things would come to him. What he truly wanted was
this.
To be here, wallowing in the thick power of the dark, to live in the forbidden zone of existence.

"Thanatos," he repeated.

One of the monks approached the initiate holding a spitting black cat. Another presented him with a curved dagger. Aubrey picked up the cold blade slowly, clutching it so hard that it drew his own blood. Then, with one quick stroke, he disemboweled the creature, screaming as he struck so that his voice and the agonized wail of the dying animal melded into one sound, feeling its blood caress him with the touch of a lover.

And the chant droned on. "Thanatos," Saladin whispered.

"Thanatos," sang the monks.