PROLOGUE
"I remember the mountains in the morning. They caught the sunlight when it first appeared. The tips would become orange and then red and I would shiver because I remembered the meaning of life. The location was somewhere in Central Asia – I cant tell you exactly where, arid , heart-rendingly beautiful and cruel. It won't be any use trying to name it you won't find that name on your map .I warrant you cannot even pronounce the name . I remember the smells of early dawn, there were smells of small herbs that were growing on the side of the mountains the wild weeds which Babushka used to make into her concoctions ``…I call her Babushka but i'm not sure that she was Russian .She was a blend of so many races , her ancestors must have come from all corners of that continent .She prayed many times a day to Allah but her blue eyes were slightly Mongolian and her hair the color of the Steppes. Her skin was indeterminate, darker than really beautiful and sweet smelling like the herbs she delt in. She would have been so beautiful when she was young. I know of course that she is old but I cannot say by looking at her how old .
"She knew many stories from many countries because when she was young she had traveled so far and wide and lived among so many famous people . I suspect that she had been a courtesan… but I must tell you that neither would I be surprised if she had said she was a nun…. Really my babushka was a mystery as deep as the sources of the mountain streams in that cold beautiful asian land I told you of …
"So let me tell you about the tips of the mountains…They became red before the rest of the day. And what is so remarkable about that ? Well it thrilled me as I sat shivering in the darkness of the valley below .It amazed me to see that while standing in what was essentially night I breath up towards the light of a new dawn .And I imagined that from the top of the mountain a person standing in daybreak could still see down into the blackness of night below , like we spy into the fearsome dark corners of our souls and wait for them to fade into dawn. And let me come back again to the herbs….I don't actually like plants but all of nature pleases me in the peace it has to offer.
"Some of these herbs Babushlka used to cure illness some to cause peculiar changes in the psychology of people …the stories she told me may indeed have been told by the delirious patients whose cuts she quietly sewed up and whose broken bones she firmly set .They were stories about life, you see.
'The other stories were probably her experiences. This I suspect because the main characters always happened to be beautiful and fearless young girls with names like Razina ,Sebira, Sukena and so on .Underneath their different responses there was always a certain similarity of character .
"I am sure however that she never wished for anyone to suspect that it as in fact her experiences she was talking about : her mother had belonged to an unforgiving Asian cult which maintained that one of the great sins was to gossip and spend precious time in bragging , spreading rumours and being idle. Storytelling on the other hand was permissible if it taught one morals ,provided happiness and kept the author gainfully employed…"
At this point in the hakhawathi's story he was abruptly interrupted by their act of topping a nearby ridge in the terrain. A most breathtaking sight awaited the travellers.
The valley below resembled a huge and infernal graveyard. As far as the eye could see there were more structures shaped like the parts of skeletons of indeterminate creatures.
Gruesome. twisted and sun bleached , they imitated on a giant scale . the bones of failed monsters and djinns shaped by centuries of wind.
"Then the famous valley of the Bone Mountains…"breathed the hakhawathi.
" I have heard , "squeaked Lou, tremulously, "that there are mazes which trap travelers forever and it is the rock in their bones which adds to the size of the mountains. This is a place of death!"
"Well, he knows just how to boost our morale!" complained Ibn Jibbal sourly.
"Well, it is true ,"said Carreras, "one must know what one is heading for instead of walking stupidly into territory where angels fear to tread. There is no bravery when one is unaware of the consequences, just stupidity"
Abruptly he stopped, gasping and looked around himself with an expression of wonder. He began to mutter indistinctly." A desert. Of rocks. A place of red stones. Like bones. !"Abruptly he whipped a chip of a broken mirror out of his pockets and stared at himself in its reflection, in a most demented and peculiar manner. When he turned back , Carreras saw the others staring at him dubiously.`
"You see, before Mokhtazib left us, he looked into my eyes and he saw the strangest things there…eyes reflect the world in front of a person, and when certain people looked in to my eyes they see at certain times, the land where Al Kasan is travelling. When we were almost entering the Medini Triangle, Mokhtazib looked into my eyes and he saw, not the silent and barren sand desert I was traversing , but a strange red desert of rocks. He told me this and I could not understand. It means that Al Kasan was here a little while back"
This statement was greeted by a profound silence which was broken by a scuffle as the listeners in a coordinated movement wheeled their horses the better to get a close look at his eyes. Carreras laughed at their eagerness.
"It is not visible all the time! Only at certain times. Rest assured, I have seen what I need to see."
His smile died down as he saw the others staring at him pointedly.
It was windy in the Red desert of rocks and their clothes flapped about and their hair blew and whipped around their faces.
Then he saw what they were looking at.
It was his own hair and clothes. They were unmoving, unaffected by the wind.
Chapter 1 -
Moonlight across the dunes. Gentle, ululating expanses of sand.
This is the scrub dessert surrounding El Thebsi and there is a soft breeze in the air and the muffled sound of hooves in this sand.
A lone horseman accompanied by a lithe desert Saluki gallops his way towards the vast red fortress on the horizon. He is smiling in the moonlight beneath his shawl, the dog is frisking with job ince this is their home and they have been away for months and they long to be back home.
The horse is most eager too, because of its exhaustion - it has traveled uncounted miles
The horseman shouts.
The fortress does not reply.
The dog begins to curve around and whimper, dashing erratically back and forth in anxiety. The horseman, Carlos Romero DeLa Nostra y Carreras - he wheels his horse around the dog and urges it on, suddenly uneasy at the atmosphere that exudes from his home.
"What has happened? Where is everyone?" Carreras chokes into his face covering, his joy changed in the flicker of an eyelid, into blind panic.
The ancient and heavy gates of the Ochre fortress lie open and from beyond comes the ugly ominous silence of abandonment, tragedy and loss.
Carreras leaves Saklawi outside tethered loosely to a crumbling post and races after his whimpering dog, his horror giving him wings. The guard posts are empty, no single soul has come forth to meet him and the heart within him begins to thud in unspeakable horror.
"Ibn Jibbal, where are you? Sebira! Who hears me reply, it is your master returned '' his voice cracked in panic and then he remembered it was best to be silent in case some unspeakable danger waited within to ambush him too. Although he knew that without his family he may as well be dead. His death would matter nought if his worst fears were to be true- that the Ochre fortress had been invaded and plundered and all were ruined and killed including Sebira and the very animals of the place, their bones whitened during the threescore days of his absence…
His boots crunched loudly as he stumbled across the courtyards, diving in and out of kitchens and stables and stores. His breath came in ragged, disbelieving gasps and his mouth was parched with dread.
But Carreras did not trip over the desiccated bodies of his loved ones nor did the stink of death meet him so he decided that no matter what miseries they had suffered they had to be alive: possibly kidnapped, and spirited away, perhaps already sold to slavery.
And if there was no one to tell him who it was, how it happened then he must find the grisly clues himself if this was the last thing he did.
Careras stopped at a well and peered down it.
He threw down a bucket and hoisted this up and was about to drink deep of the cool water, when something, a foul and nightmarical animal, loathsome and hairy jumped on him from behind and knocked the bucket from his grasp. Kesab the sand hound instead of jumping to his masters defense merely wagged his tail rather limply and the hideous animal proceeded to scream shrilly and hysterically into the Spaniards ears,
Carreras with considerable difficulty peeled the hairy nightmare off the back of his head and examined it in the moonlight.
"It is as I thought. You little monster. It is Mushkila, Ibn Jibbal's pet monkey! Where is your master, you mangy creature from the pits of purgatory...? Take me to him at once! You hear?"
It seemed Muskila was agreeable. He crashed off into the shadows screaming and gibbering and Carreras rushed after him, the hound Kesab bring up the rear tripping and skidding. They stumbled across disarrayed furnishings and disordered draperies and as Careras ran he was worrying more and more if that was possible. The monkey was leading him down into Ibn Jibbals dungeons.
He hoped his friend was alive.
Someone had to tell him who had been responsible for this pillage and kidnapping or massacre if it was one. The fortress was locked and deserted so
