Hammer of Witches (33 page)

For a moment he could not say anymore. The man was so weak he had to sit on a nearby stone.

Without thinking I cried out, “Father!”

But the man said, “No.” And the cruelty of it cut me so deeply that my hand instinctively tightened around my knife.

“You,” the old man spat. “You are not my son. You are the evil being the Baba Yaga predicted, the one who will destroy all things.” His voice crescendoing, he continued, “I will give you some advice, Djinn! Kill me now, before I have a chance to recover. Otherwise I will bring down such mighty forces upon you, the likes of which the world has never seen!”

You heard him, Luis!
I thought I heard Antonio de Cuellar say.
If you don’t kill him now, he’ll kill you and every Spaniard on this island! I know it’s against your nature. But sometimes a man has to go against his nature and do the thing that ought to be done!

I know his kind,
Admiral Colón added firmly.
He has a
mission and will not stop until he’s dead.

Arabuko said,
You see these beads, Baltasar? They represent the men I killed in battle. To speak is good, in times of peace. But sometimes, to speak is not enough.

And Martín added,
Do what you wish, Sorcerer. History will only call you wrong should you fail.

A squawk from the hameh brought my attention back to the here and now. The bird landed on Amir’s shoulder as the man returned to his swaying feet.

“Strike me down, Djinn!” al-Katib demanded. “Show me your true form!” With disgust he looked upon me and the dagger I held. “You. You pretend to be my son? My son would not stand there with a butter knife in his hands! My son would attack! He would fight! He would never grow up to be such a coward!”

Lavalike heat rushed up to my face as I shouted, “What would
you
know about me? Your
son
? I didn’t even know you were my father until a few months ago! You were my hero, and you turned on us! You left! So don’t lecture me on what I would or wouldn’t do. You don’t know a damn thing about me!” Admiral Colón, Antonio, all of them were right! I needed to end this now, while I still had the chance!

I tightened the grip on my knife and started to rush forward.

Suddenly I thought I heard Jinni cry,
Bal, no!
Her voice stopped me in my tracks.
Give him a chance! Talk to him! Please! Amir will listen!

In my mind I shook my head at her.
Look at him, Jinni. He’s made up his mind. It’s over.
I paused.
He’ll never listen to me.

Anacaona did,
I heard Catalina say.
And Caonabó. They were arrogant, hidebound. They didn’t want to hear a word we had to say. But you spoke with them, Infante, convinced them to come to an agreement. Don’t give up on your father. Try again.

I shut my eyes, trying to be strong, trying to will the tears away.
What would you do, Diego? If you were me. You always helped me before.

And I remembered being seven years old, and my uncle sitting on the stool by my bed. He said,
Once upon a time, there was a man named Amir al-Katib, known as the Eagle of Castile. People called him the Eagle, Bali, because he has a face like a rukh, the giant eagle of Arabia. And they say he’s of Castile because al-Katib is a Spaniard, because he was born right here in Palos. You might wonder, how he could be both a rukh, which is Moorish, and of Castile, meaning Spaniard? I have asked this question many times myself.

But then I realized: He is a Moor
and
a Spaniard. A rukh
and
a hameh.

Something clicked in my mind when Diego said that.
A hero and a traitor. A killer and a father. A protector and a villain.

“Do not stand there, Djinn!” al-Katib shouted across the cave. “Come at me! Show me your true form!”

My true form.
I am a Marrano,
I thought.
A converted Jew, from my uncle and aunt. Half-Christian, from my mother’s side, and half-Moor, from my father. I am Spanish, but Arabuko calls me a Taíno shaman. I am the jack of spades, a hero on a quest to save the world. I am a coward a Storyteller. I’m all of the above, like you. You’re a person. Catalina said it. You can’t interpret a person so quickly. I’ve never understood you. I can’t understand you. You’re the one story I can’t ever hope to interpret.

His features crazed, al-Katib lunged forward, sending the hameh off him in a flurry of feathers. “Why do you stand there? Show me who you are!”

I shut my eyes, bracing myself for my father’s attack. The attack never arrived. I opened my eyes.

The words
A
MIR
AL
-K
ATIB
hung before them. I gasped as a ghostly image of a young man with a clipped beard and long black hair walked through the letters. It was as if I were seeing an older version of myself, reflected in a glass, wearing slightly old-fashioned clothing. The apparition stopped and smiled at the older version of himself. The real al-Katib staggered backward. His gaze darted back and forth from my face to the face of his younger self. I’m sure to him we looked almost exactly the same.

From behind the ghost of Amir al-Katib appeared four more figures. Serena: a young woman with a mischievous smile and thick hair pulled back behind her head. Diego: a slightly older man with thinning hair and spectacles. Jinniyah was there
too, the same as always, and a fourth figure with dark hair and a tranquil expression. My mother, I guessed. I had never seen her before.

The five apparitions blocked al-Katib’s path, guarding me. The old man fell onto his knees. I could hardly bear to look at him, or at the five ghosts I had summoned. I closed my eyes, thinking of my aunt and uncle as I remembered them, happy and older, before the soldiers came. And I grieved over a memory from the childhood I never had, a vision of my parents and aunt and uncle in my room in Palos, gathered together to tell me stories of their adventures.

When al-Katib next spoke, his voice was weak and throaty. “Few alive know of Jinniyah, of David and Sara, of my wife. How, Djinn? How do you know this story?”

I swallowed, trying to take control of my own voice, trying to hold back the tears that were surely coming.

But I couldn’t. “I know because I’m your son.” I flung Rodrigo’s dagger to the side. It slid halfway across the cavern. “And I’m not a coward. I’m here to talk.”

Al-Katib’s lips began to tremble, and a layer of tears formed across his eyes. “Baltasar,” he said at last. He rushed through the apparitions, dispersing them into fog, and finally crushed me in his arms. “Forgive me,” he breathed. He all but collapsed on me. I stood there, trying not to cry. Suddenly fourteen years of heartache and loneliness poured out of me, and I held onto my father for the first time.

After a while my
father looked down at me, his intelligent eyes peeking out under thick eyebrows. Up close I could see those eyes were clouded and iridescent with cataracts. He wiped his tears and spread an arm toward a low, rounded stalagmite. “Come, my son. Sit beside me for a while.”

We sat. Overwhelmed and exhausted, I covered my face with my hands. “You don’t know what I’ve gone through to get here. What you did to me. And Diego and Serena. I . . .”

I couldn’t speak anymore. As I bent over my knees, my father put his warm hand on my back. “It’s all right, Son. It’s all right.”

When I was able to compose myself, he said, “You have no idea what it means to me to have you here. I’ve thought of you every single day. How you were doing. If you were safe. And now you’re here. Part of me wishes you had never come. My life is so full of danger, which is why I never wanted you to be part of it. But I suppose it’s time for me to stop worrying about
you. I see now that you can take care of yourself.”

The old man smiled at me proudly. I didn’t realize until that moment how much I’d yearned for his praise. He said, “I take back what I said before. You are not a coward. Throwing down your blade like that was an act of tremendous courage.”

I tried to smile. “Or tremendous stupidity.”

“I suppose it depends on your point of view.”

“Mostly it depends on if you kill me or not.”

My father laughed, but his laughs dissolved into coughs, and his coughs became tears. “No, my son. I would never harm you.” Through his tears he smirked at me. “At least, not knowingly.” The old man put his hands on his knees, the way Diego used to. “You said you came here to talk. So talk. What would you like to know?”

“We should probably start with why you keep trying to kill me.”

My father blew out a heavy breath and brought a hand to his temple. “Ah, that. Well, it is a rather long story.”

I sighed, amused. “What did I expect? Long stories seem to run in the family.”

The tears in my father’s eyes made them glisten. “Yes. I think you’re right about that.” My father cleared his throat and began his story:

“For the past ten years I’d been fighting for the Moors of Granada. Then, in January, the castle Alhambra fell. Granada suddenly belonged to Isabel and Fernando. After centuries of
war, Spain was finally a united Christian nation.”

“I remember,” I said. “The day the news came, there were parades in the streets.”

My father shook his head. “A rueful day. Many good men died. And for what? More conquest. Power. Wealth. I had seen the same thing before in Constantinople. Looking back over it all, it bewilders me, why I am known as such a glorious hero. It seems I’m always choosing the wrong side.

“After Granada, I wanted nothing more to do with Spain. After what I did, I could never return to Palos, and I knew you were safer there without me. So I decided to continue my travels, this time in Africa. There I found an entrance to the house of the prophet of many names. In Europe most know her as the Baba Yaga. She told me of a great power that traveled west —”

“That will destroy the world as we know it,” I recited.

“Ah, so you know it too. I thought so. In any event, the cards’ suggestion that this power was a Spaniard further sharpened my desire to conquer it. So I sailed west, alone on a runt of a ship, with spells to keep food in my stomach and wind at my sails. Well, not completely alone.” My father nodded over his shoulder at the hameh, who was preening her feathers while perched on another stalagmite. “That one was with me. From time to time, I sent her out to search for another ship heading west, which I knew must be carrying the evil spirit of Baba Yaga’s foretelling.”

“And that’s when the hameh attacked me,” I said.

“Attacked you?” My father sounded genuinely confounded. “No, I sent the hameh merely for surveillance, never to attack! That is very strange. Very strange, indeed.”

Almost amused, I said, “Oh, and I guess you’re going to tell me the other creatures attacked me by accident too?”

My father laughed and brought my head closer to his so he could plant a kiss on the top of it. “Oh no, no! I assure you, the others were very much on purpose! You see, when the hameh returned from her surveillance, there was blood on her claws, and I knew she had discovered what I had sent her to find. There were sailors following me across the Atlantic, and I sent the great Bahamut to destroy them. But summoning such a large creature and sending it such a long distance weakened me, especially since I had other spells working at the time. Not long after, I landed on this island, half-dead and half-mad with fever. I think I attacked some of the natives in my madness. I fear I may have even killed one.”

My father fell silent at the thought. Eventually he went on, “I wandered for days until I found this cave. I stayed here a long while, trying to regain my strength. And when I did, I returned to the shore, only to see three Spanish ships floating in the bay.”

“And you sent Uqba to sink them,” I said.

“Yes. But I was foiled.” My father gave me a knowing look. “There was a powerful sorcerer on that ship.”

I looked away from him. “That powerful sorcerer accidentally
destroyed
the ship.”

“Your captain must not have appreciated that, my son.”

“He did not.”

My father considered my face for a while. I scratched my arms to avoid that look. “So Catalina was right,” I said. “You
did
think I was the evil being in the Baba Yaga’s prophecy. You thought I was going to destroy the world.”

“Not you specifically. I only knew it was a person on one of those three ships. And when you came into this cave just now, I thought you must be that being. A man clever enough to overcome my defenses could very well have the dark powers the Baba Yaga described in her prophecy. Evidently I was mistaken.”

“No,” I said. “I
could
still be the evil power. Or it could be any of the people who traveled with me. Or you. Anyone who traveled west from Spain could fit the prophecy. We have no way of knowing for sure until it’s fulfilled.”

“You may be right.” I waited for him to say more. No more came.

After a time he said, “Enough about me. Tell me about yourself! I want to know everything about you. What was your childhood like? How did you find me? How are David and Sara?”