The 22 Letters Read Free Page A

shivered in the mountain air that grew cooler and cooler as he climbed, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky. He was now coming to a mass of tortured rocks, twisted pillars standing against the skyline. He stopped. He hoped they were rocks. They might equally be the shapes of fiends and demons turned to stone—or at least, the towers and castles of mountain spirits. Or even if no supernatural beings dwelt in this desolate place, wild mountain men might. Among these pinnacles a traveler would be defenseless against ambush.
    Aleph thought of his soldier brother, Zayin. Wasn’t there something he said soldiers did to guard against ambush? Send out scouts? Cover their flanks? But there was only himself. And what was it that his sailor brother Nun used to say? “When in Danger and in Doubt, always keep a Good Look Out.” But he was afraid of what he might see if he did look about him among these petrified shapes.
    So he shut his eyes, and he felt himself turning to stone as he heard a rough voice shout “Halt!”
    He kept his eyes shut. He was certain that he was petrified, that he had become merely another of the pillars of rock that stood for ever on the desolate mountainside. That was what they were, petrified travelers. He would never move again.
    He heard strange incomprehensible voices—the language of demons—about his ears. Then he jumped. Something sharp had poked him from behind. He opened his eyes and turned round. There stood a strange soldier with a naked sword.
    The soldier spoke again in the unknown language. But the gesture of his sword meant “Move!” and Aleph forgot his state of petrifaction and moved, his mouth dry with fear. As he came round the base of a great rock he came face to face with a number of men. Some of them were soldiers in foreign armor. The others he knew. Among them was Kaph, the overseer, sitting on the ground in an attitude of great dejection.
    Aleph’s fright turned to anger, and his speech returned: “Kaph!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Why did you desert the camp? And—and what are those slaves of ours doing with those chains?” For two of the men he recognized as slaves from Kaph’s work party were advancing on him, carrying chains and manacles.
    Kaph spat. “Ask them yourself. They’re the masters now. We’re the slaves.” And he lifted his manacled wrists. And as Aleph felt the fetters being put on his own legs, he began to understand what he meant.
    That night on the mountain Aleph was more miserable than he had believed possible. He had not been looking forward to sharing a shelter with the rough log men at the camp. He had dreaded a night alone among the rocks. But here he was, chained to the surly Kaph, hungry, listening to the foreign soldiers laughing and eating round a fire while their captives shivered in the cold night air, wondering what the future held. He almost wished that his fantasy had been true, it would have been better to be changed to an unfeeling pillar of rock.
    He could not sleep, but though Kaph, too, was wakeful, it was difficult to get him to talk. When he did, it was little comfort. “How’s it feel then, Master Aleph, to become a slave?” he mocked. “I reckon you must have taken a fancy to it though, following us all this way just to get caught. You and your bird and all.”
    Poor bird, Aleph thought. He must let it go now. No reason why it, too, should remain a prisoner. But he would have to wait until daylight, it couldn’t fly in the dark.
    â€œHow was I to know you were captives?” he said to Kaph. “I saw the hoof prints of the oxen, and I followed them. I didn’t know what had happened. I still don’t. Who are these soldiers? Where did they appear from?”
    â€œAppear’s the right word. That’s just what they did, appeared like spirits from the forest. There we were, working, and all of a sudden we