05 Blue Horizon by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith
Language: deu
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Nay, Kadem al-Jurf. I leave judgement and condemnation to God.”

“Bismallah!” Kadem intoned, and Batula and Kumrah stirred.

“There is no God, but God,” said Batula.

“God’s wisdom surpasses all understanding,” said Kumrah.

Kadem whispered, “Yet I know that Zayn al-Din is your blood enemy. That is why I come to you, al-Salil.”

“Yes, Zayn is my adopted brother and my enemy. Many years ago he swore to kill me. Many times since then I have felt his baleful influence touch my life,” Dorian agreed.

“I have heard him relate to his courtiers how he owes his crippled foot to you,” Kadem went on.

“He owes me much else besides.” Dorian smiled. “I had the great pleasure of placing a rope around his neck and dragging him before our father to face the Caliph’s wrath.”

“Posterity and Zayn al-Din remember this deed of yours well.” Kadem nodded. “This is part of the reason that we chose to come to you.”

“Before it was ‘I,’ but now it is ‘we’?”

“There are others who have repudiated their oaths of fealty to Zayn al-Din. We turn to you, for you are the last of the line of Abd Muhammad al-Malik.”

“How is that possible?” Dorian demanded, and suddenly he was angry. “My father had countless wives who bore him sons, and they in turn had sons and grandsons. My father’s seed was fruitful.”

“Fruitful no longer. Zayn has harvested all his father’s fruits. On the first day of Ramadan there was such a slaughter as to shame the Face of God and astound all Islam. Two hundred of your brothers and nephews were gathered up by Zayn al-Din’s reapers. They died by poison, that coward’s tool, and they died by steel and rope and water. Their blood soaked the desert sands and tinted the sea to rose. Every person who had a blood claim to the Elephant Throne in Muscat perished in that holy month. Murder was compounded ten thousand times by sacrilege.”

Dorian stared at him in horrified disbelief, and Yasmini choked back her sobs: her brothers and other kin must be among the dead. Dorian put aside his own shocked grief to comfort her. He stroked the silver blaze that shone like a diadem in her sable locks, and whispered softly to her before he turned back to Kadem. “This is hard news and bitter,” he said. “It takes great effort for the mind to encompass such evil.”

“My lord, neither were we able to treat with such monstrous evil. That is why we repudiated our vows and rose up against Zayn al-Din.”

“There has been a rising?” Although Batula had already warned him of this, Dorian wanted Kadem to confirm it: all this seemed too far beyond the frontiers of possibility.

“A battle raged within the walls of the city for many days. Zayn al-Din and his adherents were driven into the keep of the fort. We believed that they would perish there but, alas, there was a secret tunnel under the walls that led down to the old harbour. Zayn escaped by this route, and his ships bore him away.

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