Read Online The Waters of Eternity by Howard Andrew Jones - Free Book Online Page B

with evil looks. Sometimes the alchemist babbled that no one could learn the secrets he had unearthed, and sometimes he demanded to know which alchemist had hired me, no matter the count of times I explained that I worked with Dabir, who was favored of the caliph.
    In the end it was futile. Dabir’s expression was somewhere between confusion and sorrow when he made apologies before having me turn over the whole of my coin purse.
    Even this Ferran eyed suspiciously. It lay untouched in the center of the floor as I backed out of the home on Dabir’s heels.
    “He is not a criminal?” I asked.
    “Nay, he is not the man. His laboratory is a smelly wreck and there are tomes everywhere, but he is working only on the transmutation of gold.”
    “Only?” I asked. This seemed a matter of too great import to dismiss so off-handedly.
    He smiled sourly. “Generations of alchemists have wasted their time in the effort. It is one of their favorite hobbies, and a fruitless one.”
    “Might he have been hiding the truth from you?”
    Dabir shook his head. “All the open texts scattered through his work space dealt with transmutation….” He reached up with his left hand and with fingers and thumb massaged both temples. “The matter of his door shames me, Asim.”
    “There is no need for shame,” I told him. “They profited by the encounter. The money we left will buy them a more handsome door. And hopefully one more sturdy.”
    Dabir chuckled, but did not speak. We left the quarter and turned down the Boulevard of the Ebony Stallion, that most pleasantly fragrant of streets in Mosul, decorated with garden paths and flowering trees.
    We stopped at home to replenish our money and I endured another scolding from the cook, querulous crone, who ever took her wrath for Dabir’s habits out on me. Was I in charge of his steps, so that I might know when he would return to eat? Such answers never pleased her.
    We walked for evening prayers to the great mosque, and after we rolled up our prayer rugs to expose the inlaid tiles Dabir announced we would dine out.
    “That shall not please the cook,” I said. “She was a tower of displeasure.”
    “She will understand,” Dabir said. “We are at work, Asim.”
    It was a fine point, but one unlikely to garner compliments should I present it.
    “What is our destination?” I asked.
    “The tavern where the victims drank their last. There should be enough activity at this hour that we may learn something.”
    I did not like the look of the men who loitered in the street near the tavern. They were swaggering youths who watched our approach with sneers and lacked the sense to fear me, even when I put hand to hilt. They did not molest us, though one called out something that made the others laugh.
    It was as though we passed through a curtain of sounds and scents, for on the other side of the tavern’s arch the smell of roasting fowl and the sweet fragrance of the forbidden wine mingled with the patter of drums and the warbling of a lute. I have never cared much for music but am fond of drums, and the knobby-kneed youth who beat the skin upon the stage did not lack talent or energy.
    Dabir found a rug along the wall and sat. As I moved to take the space across from him, he shook his head quickly.
    “We must not sit together.”
    This was curious, but I did as he bade and sat with my back to his. Dabir called for a bowl of wine and the sour-faced keep brought him one. He paused by me, but I waved him off.
    “What do we watch for?” I asked softly, without turning to look at him.
    “The lure. Ask yourself, Asim. What one thing would draw young men from different walks of life?”
    “The wine?”
    “More than the wine, Asim. The wine brought them only here. But their death did not transpire here.”
    “The youths in the street?”
    “There were no marks of violence upon the victim we saw, save for those inflicted after death.”
    He pestered me like a gnat. Surely he meant to drive me