The Little Book of Al-Wathiq

Found in the lich-king Philip IV’s personal library in Cassandreia. It is written in Greek, with the Arabic characters for Al-Wathiq used throughout where his name appears.

An affectionate dedication is written on the inside cover. The dedication reads:

    “All my best!”

On the second page there is an inked headshot of a young woman dressed in garb that Arben associated with the Caucuses mountains. Beneath her picture is an inscription in Arabic. The inscription reads:

    Alas!  That there was before Adam!

On the left-hand pages throughout are repetitions of the Arabic character zā, and someone has hastily drawn in diacritic marks for each. It is supposed this is the Arabic noise for ‘buzzing.’

On the right-hand pages throughout is the following Greek text:

    Behold the Caliph Al-Wathiq!  A man of many parts: a scholar, hafiz, doting son, a patron 
    of the arts.  Four were his pleasure palaces: The Eternal or Unsatiating Banquet, filled 
    as it was with every repast, viand, and aliment; the Temple of Melody, or the Nectar of 
    the Soul, home to infinite sorts of diverting musician; The Delight of the Eyes, or the 
    Support of Memory, in which the most curious artworks and whim-whams were collected, 
    including the enchanted and forbidden paintings of Mani, and mechanical devices alluded 
    to hereafter; and the Retreat of Mirth, or the Dangerous, as brimming with lovely maidens 
    as the fabled castle of the first of the three dread emirs of the genii.  Happily might 
    he have spent his days within their foursquare confines, but the dancing saber of a mute 
    giaour enflamed his curiosity, and link by link he forged a chain about himself, a chain 
    of desire to learn the secrets of the pre-Adamite kings!

    How many millennia, among the small things of moss and coral, ruled the kings before 
    Adam:  Solomon Rad!  Solomon Dakoi!  Solomon, called Tzan Ben Tzan!  Beings of pure 
    spirit, or some say of pure fire, they ruled all the earth before the days of Adam!  The 
    genii still half-remember their golden age, before the days before the fall.

    To take up the scepter of the pre-Adamite kings, to rule on a throne of cedar beside Tzan 
    Ben Tzan!  Al-Wathiq should have known, should he not? that suffice is Lordship of the 
    Faithful for contentment.  But, alas, he was swayed by the honeyed words of the giaour, 
    verily, and soon he has pitched into the chasm all the ephebes, Herod-like, soon he has 
    burned his loyal followers in the tower of his blasphemy.  His mother, a Roman witch, led 
    him astray!  Iblos himself led him astray!  The stars formed for him the sign towards a 
    precious stone he would someday rule by, and he dreamed it to be the sokrot!  And thus he 
    proceeded to the horrible Kaph, lingering on the way to betray the hospitality of the 
    Emir of the Crystal Dome.  All things must be experienced if one is to be wise!  Can 
    those who have tasted not sin be truly virtuous, for can any choose virtue if he has not 
    tried the delights of betrayal, sodomy, cannibalism, and murder?  Ah, there he met 
    Noronia, the fairest of jasmine blossoms, among the spectral dwarves.  Accursed be her 
    cousin, the effeminate and oft naked Gulkhenros!  Together they died, together interred, 
    but the dark powers of Al-Wathiq to life returned her.  Who will do so now?

    In Estakra, hand on breast the pre-Adamite kings recline on their beds of cedar.  For 
    there within the hollow of their bosoms burn their hearts forever, literally, the flames 
    licking up through the hole.  And of all agonies, mother, Noronia, Lord of Mercies, this 
    is the most exquisite, this is the one that does not end.  This, and the agony of 
    knowledge!  Alas that there was before Adam!

    They did not catch him then, behind the obsidian door where she and he wail forever.  He 
    lies now recumbent on a bed of incorruptible cedar.  Al-Wathiq could not return, but he 
    imagined himself a new Musalima, as he who hated the Hellenes had called himself once a 
    new Cyrus.  The place of severing, named for the woman who slew that great king, and 
    mocked him as a puppet—unsur-passed the cruelty!—it was here he found the vice of sloth, 
    ah the vice of complacency, the one vice in which he could never indulge.  His terrible 
    eye glittered!  Karabasmos is no more!  The bells of the city of blood toll silently, 
    only heard is the slapping of the wet cords against the walls of the tower.

    But where is the beautiful stone, his fate, to vanquish the nine, doomed to die, the will 
    of the Musselman come to Europe, as Attila brought the will of the sun and the moon?  
    Unlike Karabasmos, the old fellow is clever, and his phulakterion is doubled and 
    redoubled, as in a brace of abominable mirrors.  One of them will prove final, or fatal, 
    or fated.  The others are noise; but it is drawing this diamond from the rubble at the 
    edge of the sea of glass that must give one pause.  A skull and a stone, a skull and a 
    stone, in every cavern, in every hollow.  Like the cacophony of night, like the locusts 
    in the cedars, they are noise.

    None dare leave the land, this land of eternal torment.  It is Hell here, here on Earth, 
    the pre-Hell, and none can leave.  The Caliph and his Emirs, lost in the fog.  Odessa, 
    its library of Lysimachus, stands so close by, and the thirst for knowledge will not 
    abate.  Who shall have it if he shall not?  Who shall have what he shall not?  Not 
    Gulkhenros!  No one!  But the gears of his plan spin, like the wheels of Abdula Almanam’s 
    wonderful nightingale.  An eye for an eye, is it not?  For is he not the eye?

    Lament for Al-Wathiq, lament for Al-Wathiq!  Will Monkra and Nekra heed the last trump 
    and begin spilling blood ere his plans are fulfilled?  Will even the city of blood drain 
    all away, and leave Al-Wathiq adry?

    Behold the Caliph Al-Wathiq!  A man of many parts—but fewer, now.  That thing that burns, 
    that thing, is that his heart?