The Book of Fours Read online

  “What are you going to wear, honey?” Joyce asked her daughter.

  Buffy gaped at her. “Huh?”

  “To Natalie’s service.”

  “I hadn’t given it much thought,” Buffy replied, smiling reassuringly at Willow. But Willow was already carrying the bowls to the table.

  “Funerals. Who plans for them?” Buffy asked, seating herself.

  “In many cultures, people prepare for their deaths all their lives,” Willow said. “It’s not at all unusual to plan a funeral service. Look at the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Their pyramids took years and years to build.”

  “That’s right.” Joyce nodded. “I just read an article about mourning wear during the Civil War. They had large wardrobes of black gowns and special jewelry made out of the hair of the deceased. There were even quilts with tombstones on them, and when someone in the family died, their tombstone was moved to the center of the quilt graveyard.”

  “I think it’s Indonesia where the widow has to sit with the body for something like three years,” Willow continued. “The village has to construct an entire village for her husband’s ghost to inhabit.”

  Suddenly I’m feeling like a slacker, Buffy thought. She dug into her ice cream.

  Buffy’s mother looked thoughtful. “I think that’s somewhere else in Southeast Asia. But you could be right.”

  “Will there be cake?” Buffy blurted. “At the reception?”

  “Buffy,” her mother said reprovingly, “how can you ask such a thing?”

  “But . . . ” Buffy protested. Clothes okay topic, food not. “I’ll wear something black,” she said decisively.

  “And not too revealing, all right, dear?” Joyce asked.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll sit shiva,” Willow ventured. “We sit with the body, you know. Only, not for three years.”

  “It’s a lovely custom,” Joyce replied. “I’m sure it gives the bereaved a lot of comfort, to have friends and family gathered around.”

  “It’s supposed to, anyway.” Willow made a face. “It’s actually a little bothersome.”

  “What do you wear?” Buffy asked.

  Willow took a thoughtful bite of ice cream. “Something conservative. Dark-colored.”

  “Not too revealing,” Buffy added authoritatively.

  “Never.” Willow wore her earnest face. “Some of my relatives are Orthodox. They wouldn’t even wear short sleeves to a funeral.”

  “Then it would be a bad deal to have someone die in Reseda in July,” Buffy mumbled.

  “Also?” Willow continued. “We don’t embalm people.”

  “Ewww.” Buffy looked first at her friend and then her mother. “How come we can talk about that stuff, and not cake?”

  * * *

  Despite staying up until almost dawn, Willow woke early. She tried to get dressed quietly and leave the Summers home, but Buffy caught her and herded her back inside. “What are you doing?” she asked like a stern mom. “We’ll drive you home.”

  “It’s no big deal, Buffy,” Willow said. “It’s really early and I don’t have to be at the bat mitzvah for hours yet. So I have plenty of time to walk it.”

  Buffy was not pleased.

  “Willow, no way. Besides, Mom will want to cook you some pancakes because you always tell her how good everything is and I’m an ungrateful wretch who wolfs them down, belches, and then retires to the couch to watch the big game with my hand in my pants.”

  “I’ve never said you were ungrateful,” Joyce said, coming down the hall in her bathrobe. She was smoothing down her hair, which was in serious bedhead mode. Even when Mrs. Summers was disheveled, Willow thought she was one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen in real life.

  “But you have said I wolf them down,” Buffy countered.

  “Maybe once I said that.” She looked at Willow. “The problem with daughters is that they hold a grudge.”

  Buffy turned to Willow. “The problem with moms is that they never forget anything.”

  Buffy and her mother started bickering gently, nothing worth paying attention to. Willow was relieved that the heavy sorrow of last night had not followed them into the sunshine.

  After the breakfast dishes were done, Buffy, Willow, and Mrs. Summers dressed and trundled into the SUV. Chatting about this and that—Joyce about the art gallery, Buffy about getting some new boots—they headed out for Willow’s house. Willow sat up front with Buffy’s mom, watching the familiar scenery while Buffy begged her mother to change the radio station from easy listening to something “from this century, and also, from the Earth planet.”

  “Neil Diamond is still trendy,” Joyce countered.

  “Oh, Mom, please. At least turn it down. It’s humiliating,” Buffy whined. She was leaning from the backseat into the rearview mirror, putting on some lipstick.

  “Will, this is your color. Most definitely,” she said, smacking her lips and examining them.

  Willow gave her a look. Buffy was always trying to get her to “accentuate her beauty.” Which was her nice way of encouraging her to visit a makeup counter more often than once every two years or so.

  “I think Willow looks charming the way she is,” Joyce said. “Fresh and natural.” She smiled at Willow, who smiled back. “When I was your age, we either wore tons of makeup or none at all. There wasn’t much in between.”

  “Just try it,” Buffy insisted, tapping her on the shoulder. “If you don’t like it, we’ll give it to the poor.”

  “Okay.” Willow reached for the lipstick, but Buffy let go before she had it. It tumbled down the front of Willow’s pink sweater and thence between her feet to the floor of the car. “Whoops. I’ll get it.”

  “Sorry, Will,” Buffy said. “I’m all butterfingers. I missed a perfectly good kill last night, too, I am so mortified to say.”

  “You be careful, honey,” Joyce said quietly. “Wow, it’s getting foggy all of a sudden.”

  “Mom, you know I always am,” Buffy replied.

  Willow unbuckled her seat belt and bent over, snaking between the console and her knees. The floor mat was black and that made it hard to see anything. She fished around with her fingers.

  “Where is it?” she muttered. “I don’t see it anywhere. Buffy, did it roll back there?”

  “Mom, look out!” Buffy shouted.

  That was the last thing Willow heard before the crash.

  The Book of Twos

  Prologue

  In the Desert of the Arabias, A.D. 1200

  Sallah ibn Rashad understood now why he had not been buried up to his neck in sand and left to die. It was a far worse punishment to be sent to this forsaken burrow of a town, and made to act as physician for the repugnant human refuse who inhabited it.

  The city walls had long since fallen into disrepair. The local pasha, son of a son of a son who had proven himself a bold and merciless conqueror, was a dissolute man who cared for nothing more than his hookah and his harem. Through the broken-down streets of my lord’s “kingdom”—a warren of filthy mud hovels, populated by degenerates, thieves, and low, common women—talk of King Suleiman’s assassination was rife. But that was all it was, mere talk. No one wanted to bother with the murder of such an ineffectual prince. He did no good, but he committed no ill.

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” the people said.

  They came to ibn Rashad for toothaches and labor pains, and open sores that an occasional washing would have prevented. They stank and they had no teeth. They had precious few brains, and their entire economy was built on graft and corruption: remove bribery, and there would be little commerce at all.

  Sallah ibn Rashad wanted to thank Allah for sparing his miserable life, but misery kept him silent. He had been banished from the now-distant Court of the Great Suleiman because of his interest in magick. Though the sultan surrounded himself with astrologers and diviners, Sallah was not of the proper caste to toss bones and read bloody entrails. If the jealous magicians of the court had known he could conju
re the dead and speak to demons, they would have murdered him while he slept. But that much, at least, had remained a secret.

  Now, as he waited for the next miserable patient, in what surely was the town’s most magnificent home, but was to him tangible proof of his downfall, he thought of the young maiden who had betrayed him. Ceceli was her name; a veritable houri, a dewy young thing presented to him by a grateful landowner named Taran. Sallah had cured him of gout, and the man had paid him in gold and jewels, and Ceceli, his most prized possession.

  “She is from another land,” Taran had explained. “One I’ve never heard of. But the people there are a lovely brown color, and her hair is a heavenly mass of curls, and her blood is hot.”

  Perhaps for the landowner, she had been thus. When Sallah approached her, she wept bitterly and begged him to leave her alone.

  He had never been so insulted in his life—and by a woman!—and he informed her that he would have her whipped and sent back to Taran, who would hear of how she had disgraced him.

  “I have no doubt that he will cast you into a pit and let you starve,” he added.

  Awaiting the next caravan back to the landowner’s vast estates, Sallah grew careless. He conjured Hilmesh, a demon, a brilliant, if evil, creature with whom he enjoyed a game of chance of an evening. Ceceli saw Hilmesh, stole evidence of ibn Rashad’s work in the Arts, and packed them into the saddlebags of the lead camel when the caravan finally arrived.

  When he put her in the palanquin, he thought she seemed eager to leave, which was odd, since once the caravan reached their destination, she would certainly be put to death.

  However, once she revealed his conjuring, first to Taran and then to King Suleiman himself, she was rewarded with her freedom, an estate, and a handsome bridegroom of aristocratic breeding. It was he, Sallah ibn Rashad, who then awaited execution!

  But the insufferable girl came forward one more time, and begged the sultan to exile him to a faraway land, where his magick could be put to good use. Without guile, she told ibn Rashad she had interceded on his behalf because he had not forced her when she begged him to stay away.

  “For this kindness, I have begged my sovereign for your life,” she explained, filled with her self-importance.

  “You honor me,” ibn Rashad had replied. He kept his hands in the sleeves of his thickly embroidered robes so as not to lunge at her and strangle her to death, right on the spot.

  And now she had her slaves, and her palace, and her status while he lived no better than a beggar.

  I will have revenge, he thought. I will repay her one day, and she will die screaming.

  As he walked into his private office, arrayed in robes he once would not have clothed a slave in, his weathered, dull manservant wafted a censor of fragrant smoke at him in preparation for the arrival of his next patient. The smoke cleansed; it also perfumed. But nothing could really obliterate the stench of the disgusting wretches who contaminated his walls.

  “Well?” ibn Rashad said to his man, who was very old and very grateful to have a floor to sleep on and scraps from his lord’s table to eat. He had come with the house, and the only reason Sallah had retained him was that he had a beautiful granddaughter who came to visit now and then.

  “Your Honor, your next patient has come from a great distance. He travels with a retinue and at least one concubine, to keep him warm on these cold desert nights.” The old man leered.

  Despite his elation—finally, I will once again entertain a person of quality!—ibn Rashad felt queasy at the notion of this toothless fool in the throes of carnal ecstasy.

  “Why did you not inform me of this sooner?” he demanded of the creature. “This house is hardly prepared to welcome a man of means and taste!”

  The man pressed his tremulous hands together and salaamed. “I apologize most abjectly. Who knew that the winds of Allah would blow such a fortunate into the path of Your Honor?”

  He had a point. Still. “Make haste. Where he is? Prepare something to eat. Something decent.” Again, his senses were assaulted by the mere thought of his serving man touching food, but these were the circumstances under which he now lived, and he must make the best of them.

  If I ever see that woman again, by Allah, I will gut her.

  The doddering ancient bowed low. “Honored and esteemed master, his servant sent ahead a runner. That one tells me that his master is near death, and has struggled to stay alive only in hopes of help from you.”

  “I see.” Ibn Rashad was amazed, and profoundly curious. Who could this man be?

  Just then, the heavy velvet and silken hangings parted from the mosaic archway.

  It was Taran. Though ibn Rashad had last seen him only three years before, the landowner had aged horribly. The middle-aged man was now an old man indeed, bent with infirmity. He tottered forward and leaned against one of the intricately decorated columns.

  “Sallah ibn Rashad,” he wheezed, making an attempt at a salaam. “One hundred thousand apologies for this intrusion. But I am quite ill, and you cured me once.”

  Ibn Rashad frowned at the swaying heap of fine velvet robes. “You have the temerity to come to me for help, when you nearly caused my death?”

  The man’s hands trembled. “Prolong my life, and I will give you all I have.” At that, he clapped his hands; they were so thin and brittle that ibn Rashad half-expected them to snap off his wrists.

  A woman stepped forward, her luxurious veils completely concealing her appearance; from the crown of her head to the curves of her golden sandals, she was concealed. Gauzes and delicate gold tissue hid even her eyes. But sensuality radiated from her, and ibn Rashad was speechless by the attraction he felt for a female he could not even see.

  “This one has kept me alive, with elixirs and potions handed down in her family. But she has done all she can. She begged me to come to you, in order that you may restore me. If you succeed, I will extol your virtues to Great Suleiman, may he reign forever in mercy and compassion, and give you all my lands and my place in the Court.”

  He nodded to the woman, who reached up her hands and pulled down her veils. It was Ceceli, more beautiful and desirable than ever before. He thought to himself, How could I have condemned her to death? How could I have sent her away? He was mesmerized by her; fascinated. He could barely think as he surveyed her modestly covered form. When she had come to him the first time, she had been dressed for pleasure, and he knew what lay beneath those wifely robes.

  “Her young husband died soon after their wedding,” Taran filled in. “She is unprotected, and she offers herself in marriage to you if you will help me. As her lord and master, you will be doubly welcomed in our homeland.”

  Ceceli lowered her head, then looked up at ibn Rashad through her kohl-rimmed eyes. He swam in a thick pool of heat. Perspiration broke across his brow.

  “Is this true?” he asked her.

  She dipped her head. “If you already have one or more wife, I will gladly take my place beneath her in status,” she said meekly.

  “She betrayed me,” ibn Rashad pointed out to Taran.

  “In order to save her own life,” Taran replied.

  Then the landowner began to cough. Soon the spasms racked his body, and Ceceli guided him to a carved ebony bench, upon which he sat very slowly and painfully. Light shown down upon his face from a brass lantern whose sides were cut into geometric shapes. Taran’s features were lost in wrinkles and the skin hung down in slack jowls on either side of his mouth. If he could see, it was but poorly. His eyes were milky.

  Ibn Rashad examined him, using percussion against the man’s bony chest. What he heard there confirmed his initial diagnosis, as well as the man’s prognosis: death, within days, if not hours. Ibn Rashad was bitterly disappointed, but he avoided the urge to lie. There was nothing to be gained from it.

  “You have the consuming disease, and you are going to die very, very soon. I cannot cure you.”

  “Of course, great physician,” the man rasped, without
a trace of irony. “That much I know. My hope is that you can prolong my life.”

  Ibn Rashad was confused. “That is up to the mercy of Allah, may His Name be revered throughout the ages.” He salaamed.

  “I ask only that you give me time enough to travel to the Pool of the One Who Gathers and Preserves,” Taran continued.

  Frowning, ibn Rashad pulled on his beard. He had no idea what Taran was talking about. He looked to Ceceli for an explanation.

  “We have heard of it at Court,” she said. “It is an oasis of healing deep in the desert.” Her gaze was steady, but she leaned forward, as if willing him to acknowledge the truth of her statement. “Do you not know of it?”

  “No,” he said frankly.

  She looked markedly shocked, even disappointed.

  Taran frowned at her. “Foolish, useless woman,” he snapped. “You told me he would know!”

  Clearly flustered, she moved her hands. “I thought I understood . . . I must have misheard . . . ” She looked to ibn Rashad, and again, he was fired by her beauty. He would do anything to help her.

  “Great one,” he said to Taran, “I pray you, come into my home and rest. You have traveled far. Let me consult with this woman, and with my books, and see what I might deduce.”

  Taran had slumped. He looked half-dead. Listlessly he waved a hand and said, “Oh, very well.”

  “We must make good use of our time,” Ceceli said to ibn Rashad. Her eyes grazed him, and her lips turned up in a secretive smile. Ibn Rashad reeled.

  “I shall do what I can, but I, unlike the God of Everything, can not perform miracles.”

  So Taran was put to bed, barely in his right mind; he muttered something about needing his potion and Ceceli set about at once mixing powders and pouring them into a glass of mint tea. He drank it down and fell into a deep slumber.

  Ibn Rashad reached for the glass, wishing to examine the contents. She held it out toward him, but it slipped from her delicate fingers and shattered on the tiled floor.

  “Ah! A thousand apologies,” she murmured.