Sinbad and The Eye of the Tiger (12 page)

The white-haired old man roused himself, looked sharply at Sinbad, then answered. “No, not completely . . .” His voice trailed off again, but he caught himself and continued. “No, the nations themselves may have disappeared, their monuments and statues and good work crumbled to dust, but their achievements remain.”

Farah’s eyes went upward. “Like these temples?”

Melanthius nodded. “Exactly.” He stepped away from the table, moving briskly now, as thoughts were beginning to come to him. “But we need more than architecture to heal your brother.” The old Greek paused and reached through the bars of the cage to pat the baboon. “I was thinking of the writings . . . and the legacy . . . of Arimaspi . . .”

Sinbad furrowed his brow, thinking hard, but nothing came. “The Arimaspi?”

Melanthius smiled. “The original inhabitants of Hyperborea . . . the land beyond the North Wind—!”

Sinbad laughed in recognition. “At the World’s End!”

Melanthius smiled, then asked the turbaned sea captain, “You’ve heard of Hyperborea, Captain Sinbad?”

“ ‘Heard,’ yes,” he said with a gesture. “An old sailor’s yarn, a wild story of a lost valley right at the top of the world—surrounded by a vast belt of ice, where nothing could exist . . .” He broke off, self-consciously, as if embarrassed by repeating such lies.

Melanthius spoke firmly. “It does exist.”

Sinbad shook his head with a short laugh. “Never . . .”

“There are many authorities . . .” began the bearded Greek.

Sinbad made a wide gesture of dismissal and rejection and stepped away from the group. “Poets and dreamers!” he scoffed.

“No,” The old man said strongly. He faced Sinbad and spoke levelly. “Men of science. Herodotus knew and spoke of it.” The old scholar held up a finger, then added another and tapped it with the forefinger of his other hand. “Pythagoras understood some of its mysteries.” A third finger was raised and tapped. “Archimedes of Syracuse, a very dear friend of mine, based many of his inventions on principles originally developed by Arimaspi mathematicians . . .”

Sinbad sneered. “And where did this friend of yours
find
these principles?”

“In a set of ancient scrolls.”

Sinbad looked around. “Where are they?” He turned again. “Are they
here,
these scrolls?”

“Where?” The old Greek looked around, slightly puzzled. “Um, well, the last I saw them they were . . . um, yes . . . over there, under the jar of scorpions.” He stopped and put the end of his finger in his mouth. “Or did I leave them under the ostrich egg . . . ?”

Melanthius started shoving things about and a jar of dried snails fell to the floor and broke. The snails turned to pale dust. The old man shoved a pile of scrolls off the table and they fell, sending up more dust. “Must get things cleaned up,” he muttered. “An orderly mind is a clean mind . . .” He got down on his knees and began rummaging through some crocks and bottles, rattling and crashing about. He picked up one ewer and looked closely at it.

“Hmm, thought I’d used that up.” He set it down, picked up a portfolio made of elephant hide, opened it, shuffled through some sheets, muttered something about always meaning to get it back to Euclid, then tossed it aside. The old man rose, started looking through another table laden with paraphernalia. He picked up another dark bottle, held it against the light, shook it, peered again. “Thought you’d be dead by now,” he said and set the bottle back into the dark. He knocked over a rack of vials which spilled. One broke and something slithered away into the clutter.

“Let me find them, Father,” Dione said, rising.

“Now
where
did I put . . . ?” His voice trailed off as he pulled a scroll from the mess on the table and unrolled it. “Um . . . transmogrification of . . .” He tossed it aside. “No, not that, one.” He pulled out another as Dione started a more systematic search.

He unrolled another scroll and read it for several moments, his lips moving soundlessly, until that scroll, too, was discarded. He picked up the tiny bronze figure of a woman and looked at the papers under it. “I
know
it’s around here somewhere. A bundle about this big, with three . . .”

“Here,” Dione said, producing a dusty bundle from a straw-filled box. She dusted them off as a sleepy lemur raised its head and was looking over the edge with huge round dark eyes. “Jason was using them as a mattress.” The animal grunted and Dione turned back to him after she had handed her father the bundle. “Oh, now he’s angry because I’ve woken him up.”

Melanthius granted. “He sleeps too much, anyway. He’s getting very fat.” The old Greek untied the twine around the roll of parchments and started spreading them out. “Time we found him a Medea,” he said, but his voice faded as his eyes started searching the scrolls.

Long minutes passed, with only the rasp of stiff old parchment and the sputtering of candles and oil lamps to break the silence. Neither Sinbad nor Farah wanted to break the scholar’s concentration. Jason, the lemur, climbed slowly out of his box, then laboriously got himself up on another chest, and from there to the table. The old Greek scholar patted him as he walked across the parchments, then lifted him to lie across his shoulders while he perused the ancient documents.

“Here, give me a hand,” the old philosopher said, spreading out all three of the scrolls. Eager to help, Sinbad, Farah, and Dione used bowls of fruit, geological specimens, goblets, and other objects to weight down the stiff, heavy paper.

Sinbad peered down at the aged documents for the first time. They were yellow with age, cracked and dusty, and in some places torn. Sinbad saw that they were filled with curious designs, fragments of maps, and everywhere decorated with triangular shapes that suggested the form of the pyramids. The writing on the parchments was a variation of runic cuneiform, a writing that had its origins in clay tablets, where scribes used wedge-shaped sticks to create an alphabet. Sinbad had seen similar writing, in old scrolls from Assyria, Babylon, Akkadia, Persia, and other civilizations long gone or in decline. As most people were right-handed, the script read left to right, so that the scribe could see what he wrote as he did it, a method Sinbad found superior to that of the Hebrews, who wrote in the other direction, their hand hiding what they were writing.

They stood respectfully about for several minutes as the white-haired scholar read eagerly aloud, muttering unintelligibly to himself. Sinbad reached out and unconsciously picked up a wine goblet. The corner of the scroll that it held down suddenly curled and Melanthius started. “Oh!” he said. He wiped at his eyes. “Oh, I quite lost myself there.” He smiled up at Farah and Sinbad, pointing to the scrolls.

“I managed to smuggle these out of Athens when I was banished.” He touched the parchment rolls reverently. “They are more than two thousand years old.”

Sinbad tilted his head at the Greek magician. “Banished? For what reason?”

Melanthius chuckled. “The charge was blasphemy, but it was really because the Government wanted to be rid of me. It is really remarkable how they can ignore something until it is convenient for them to use it against you. Blasphemy is quite handy that way.” The old man shrugged. “I asked too many questions. I made them nervous.” He laughed ruefully. “Maybe it wasn’t just asking questions, it was the questions I asked.” He shrugged. “Well, in any case . . . here I am.” He pointed at a scroll. “Now this first scroll, Captain Sinbad, is really of more interest to you than to me.” Sinbad peered closer. “Sailing directions.” His linger pointed at crude maps and long lines of cuneiform letters. “All the information you need to get us from the Pillars of Hercules to Hyperborea.”

Sinbad shook his head. “I can’t read it.”

Melanthius nodded. “Complicated, I agree. I even had to show Archimedes how to decipher it.” He smiled and patted the scroll. “But don’t worry, I’ll be there to translate it for you.” He looked around and looked up at the big turbaned man. “I’m coming with you.”

Farah’s lips parted in surprise. “To Hyperborea?”

The old Greek nodded again. “Certainly.” He smiled. “To journey there has been my life’s dream.” He tipped his head toward the baboon resting in its cage, holding onto the bars and watching everything. “And it is the only way to restore your brother to his proper shape.”

The white-bearded scholar smoothed his hands across the other two scrolls. “These tell of a warm lush valley at the northernmost point of the world . . . sealed in by wide seas of ice and snow.” He pointed to marks on the dun parchment. “Here lived the Arimaspi, the civilization that learned to conquer the elements . . .” The old man’s voice grew excited. “. . . And who left behind . . . there, in the valley of Hyperborea, a shrine.” His fingers traced a path and pointed. “The Shrine of the Four Elements of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water.” His eyes glowed with excitement. “And within the Shrine is the source of all then extraordinary power. A power that enabled them to preserve their valley against the ice, and to comprehend the mysteries of transformation.” He paused for breath, then looked at the others. “I have been experimenting with a similar power.”

Sinbad asked dubiously, “Is there truly such a valley?”

“Beyond a doubt!” Melanthius answered at once.

The excitement grew suddenly in Sinbad. The adventure now seemed to truly have a goal. “Then how soon can you be ready to sail?” he asked the old man.

Melanthius laughed as he moved to the lens of a complex optical structure. “The journey would be impossible,” he said, adjusting an uncut ruby that formed part of the device. “You would be traveling into the coldest regions in the world.” He shook his head and bent an eye to the polished lens.

“But you just said—” began Farah.

“Cold, certainly,” Sinbad agreed quickly. “Difficult and dangerous, perhaps . . . but not impossible. And we will have
you
to translate the scrolls!”

The old, bearded philosopher laughed again. “No . . . no . . .” He waved his hand at Sinbad as he kept his eye to the lens. “I’m too old . . . and there is so little time . . .” He pulled back and looked around the great cluttered room almost helplessly. “So little time,” he repeated.

Sinbad grabbed his shoulder and spoke in eager words. “Come with us, Melanthius!” He gestured toward the baboon, who was watching everything quietly. “It cannot be that this noble prince shall spend the rest of his days in a cage.”

Farah stepped quickly to their side. “The Shrine is his one chance . . . and
you
are the only one who can lead us there.” She clutched at the old man’s robe, her eyes brimming with tears and the desperation showing plainly on her face. “Please! Say you will!”

Melanthius was absorbed in the experiment he was conducting and seemed not to notice. “Dione,” he said, “move the ‘key’ out of the way . . .”

Farah and Sinbad exchanged worried looks. The old Greek took a candlestick and put it in front of the ruby and adjusted a lens behind it. Dione reached in and moved a metal object carefully.

Speaking almost as if to himself, Melanthius said, “That is the key found with the scrolls . . . it opens the only door to the Shrine.” Sinbad looked at the metal object; it was the oddest key he had ever seen.

The old man muttered on, his bearded face pressed close to the lens. “. . . to see Hyperborea . . . to visit the Shrine and examine the very
source
of life . . .” Suddenly he chuckled and his face broke into a wide smile. “Archimedes would split himself with envy!” He was silent a moment and the smile faded. “Now stand back a pace,” he said quietly.

Melanthius refocused the lenses and at once a powerful red beam of light appeared on the side of a nearby beaker of water, a red shaft which came from his ruby gemstone lens. In a second or two the water began to boil. The old man stepped back, just as the beaker exploded in steaming fragments, showering scalding water over that end of the bench.

Melanthius stared with undisguised delight at the shards of broken glass and the tendrils of steam. “Imagine that force a million times greater!” His eyes swung to Sinbad. “Used not for evil—but for good
—that
is what the Arimaspi have left us!” He turned fully toward them.

The old man examined their faces one by one. “There are stories of ships caught by the ice, crushed like straw baskets! Ice forms on the sails, on people . . . ! The cold eats into you until you cannot move or think! There are stories of ancient beasts, great horned and tusked woolly things, as big as elephants, caught in the ice, frozen—but not dead!”

Sinbad blinked, rousing himself from his almost mesmerized concentration on the imagery the powerful old man had exposed. “But if we are to heal Kassim . . . !”

The old man smiled, his eyes shifting to the curling scrolls. “Ahh . . .” he sighed. “To see Hyperborea . . . it would be the crowning achievement of my long career . . .” His head snapped back and he launched a hearty laugh at the low ceiling. “Hah! The things I can tell Archimedes!”

Farah turned bright-eyed from her rapturous look at Sinbad to speak to the old man of Casgar. “If we succeed,” she said earnestly, “my uncle will strip his entire kingdom to repay you—all the gold in Charak!”

The old man looked astonished. “Gold? But I have no need of gold.” With a short laugh he stepped around the table and led them to another dusty corner of his great meandering laboratory and stopped before a curious and complicated machine. It was metal, large and cumbersome, with inlays of alchemical symbols, with a lever at one side. Near the bottom was a bronze head, that of a satyr or devil, with a wide, screaming mouth. Patting the dormant lemur, which was still riding his shoulder, Melanthius reached out and pulled the brass-bound iron lever to set the machine in motion.

There was a whirring and the whole machine jerked as if struck. Then there were several thumps, a loud hiss, some flashes revealed by inset rubies that acted as tiny windows, then some more whirring, a series of mechanical clicks. The whole device gave a sudden bonging wrench and a sudden bright stream of gold coins poured out of the machine, clattering noisily into a kettle set below the mouth of the devil’s face.