Three Names of the Hidden God Read Free Page B

father, your son comes!”
    Everyone turned to see a slender young man approach with a small retinue of bodyguards. He was elegant and dressed in silk, and his head was covered with a small turban. All of him shone in the sun, especially t he fine gilded scabbard of his long sword. The lines of his face converged into beauty that was almost feminine, and he walked through the mud with an odd lightness, as though he was floating over it in the air—even his footwear appeared unstained.
    “ Greetings, my father.” His voice carried on the wind, more virile than could be expected out of such a delicate frame. “After much pondering, I am here to solve the mystery for you and to open the gates of this temple.”
    Lealla watched her brother with proud adul ation.
    The Qalif was somewhat less impressed. “ You’ve decided to join us, my son—good.” His words were guarded and there was no change in his expression.
    The Qali stopped before his father and gave him an impeccable bow which by its perfection somehow mana ged to be insulting. He straightened, saying, “Tell all your men to rise out of the mud and step fifty feet away from the temple. It is for their safety.”
    The Qalif motioned to the prostrate head scribe and all the rest of them, including the guards, to ri se and step back. “What will you do?” he asked his son.
    Ruogo backed away with the rest of the crowd and watched in curiosity. The heat of the day beat down upon them, and there was a moment of expectant silence.
    “Well?” the Qalif said.
    The handsome Qali s miled. “This,” he said. And with a flowing movement he drew his long sword and ran his father through with the blade.
    The crowd screamed. For a moment there was shock, then panic; guards lunging forward too late, scribes and birdcatchers and snake charmers and palm readers scattering in every direction. But the murderer son held his father in a last embrace, and as the older man’s lifeblood ran scarlet upon silk, spattered on the mud and their mingled clothing, the daughter of the Qalif drew her hands up and cried, “Silence! Fall back! No one dare lay hands upon the new Qalif of this realm!”
    Her words held such furious power that once again everyone froze.
    Her father, blood pouring from his lips, stared in disbelief at his daughter’s betrayal. “Not you . . . Lealla,” he whispered. “No, not you.” He slumped, released from Khoiram’s hold, and sank on his knees in the mud.
    “ All this time, father, you wasted your love on the wrong child,” Lealla hissed. “If you’d only loved you son and not your daughter, you would still be alive now. But you disdained him, since childhood. All his learning, his grace and wisdom, all in vain! And so we have arranged your downfall through occult methods—Khoiram drained the lake by means of sorcery so that you would come unguarded and bound only with curiosity. At my orders, explosive powder was sprinkled. Not some forgotten god, it was I—my will was carried out when they forced the doors, so that you would know terror, so that you would feel weak. For it’s what you are, weak and impotent, an old blind fool. But enough! Now my brother will rule and I will rule at his side. All these years of waiting, all these endless days . . . it is only him I loved.”
    The Qalif was on his last moments. “ I have loved you both  . . . my children,” he said on his final breath. “My son chose not to see it, chose the path of darkness.” He gasped, a whole-body shudder passing through him. And then he raised his gaze and he said, “I do not curse you, my son, my daughter, though it is within my right. Instead, I ask that you see the truth of what you have done. May the sun never set for you until you do.”
    And with these words the old Qalif fell motionless into the drying mud of Lake Veil.
    Ruogo had been squeezed back by the movement of the crowd together with all the others, and he was now pressed from all sides by