This choice: Agree to do it the imam's way • Go Back...Chapter #7The Seventh Veil Remains Hidden by: imaj   The sun is setting in the west as you reach Amarah, casting a hazy red glow over the town. The traffic picks up a little as you enter, with a few cars passing you as the imam drives his truck down the wide palm lined boulevard in search of a hotel. The few pedestrians you see stop and stare as you go by them. On the face of it, almost everything seems normal.
But that’s unusual in itself. You had to pass through several military checkpoints on the way to Amarah, and the towns and villages you came through were either abandoned or heavily scarred with damage of some kind on another. Here, life seemingly goes on as if the chaos in the outside world isn’t happening at all.
And then there are the posts. You spot a few of them on the roadside: two metre high poles hammered into the ground with no obvious pattern to their location. They look charred and burned, an odd little bit of destruction in the otherwise ordered appearance of the town.
It takes a little while, but eventually you and the imam find a hotel to stay in. As you walk in behind the imam, you note that the geometric pattern floor tiles are old and faded as they click underfoot. The check in desk seems worn and its wooden surface is marked with heavy grooves. At least everything seems spotlessly clean though.
The clerk is a young man, younger even than the Tariq guise you have adopted. He looks up at your with bright eyes as you approach. “Are you here for the seventh veil,” he asks enthusiastically.
The imam’s gaze flickers to you for a moment. “No,” he replies after a few moments. “My nephew and I were travelling south, to the border. We require a room for the night.”
The clerk looks a little down cast. “Oh,” he murmurs, before suddenly brightening up. “But this means you have a great honour. When the seventh veil visits our town tomorrow he will induct you into the Flame of Purity himself. Oh I am only in the first veil myself…”
You and the imam share a look. The clerks witless gushing gives the impression that someone has tampered with his mind hard. You would have to draw heavily on your link to Eldibria to achieve something like this, and the effect would likely only be temporary. The expression on the imam’s face tells you he has reached the same conclusion.
“We would like that,” says the imam stonily. “Now about that room…”
“Oh, of course,” smiles the clerk. “Only the best for my soon to be brothers.”
The best turns out to be a small, sparsely furnished room one floor up with twin beds a view of the road outside. You sit down on one of the beds as the imam draws the curtains shut. The covers feel skittish under you hands.
“We were right to come here,” says the imam and he sits opposite you. You nod in agreement. “The boy’s thoughts did not seem his own. The next step is to interrogate him, or someone else suffering the same influence.”
“I didn’t see anyone else in the hotel,” you say.
“So the boy then.”
“I meant that it would be easy to get him up here with no one else seeing,” you explain. “I could knock him out for a few minutes and we could carry him up here. That way we won’t be interrupted.”
“Ah, of course,” says the imam with a thin smile. “Good.”
The clerk doesn’t see you coming, thanks to your cloak. You approach silently and put him under for five minutes. Though he is slim, his build is muscular and that makes him relatively heavy. It requires both you and the imam, one under each of the clerk’s arms, to carry him back to the hotel room. There the imam props him up in one of the chairs.
The clerk moans and starts to stir as the imam secures him in place on the chair. Bindings at his wrists and ankles hold the clerk firmly. The imam is just finishing tying a length of rope round the clerks midriff, looping it round the back of the chair, when the clerk’s eyelids start to flutter.
“What…” mumbles the clerk. “Where am I?”
“You are with friends,” says the imam gently. Your own affinity for Eldibria lets you sense what the imam is doing. He lacks the subtle touch that you, or even Maria Cardozo, possess. That doesn’t hinder him though. He drags away at the clerks emotions, leaving him lethargic and barely able to move.
“What’s going on…” says the clerk, but his voice is slow and uneven.
Imam el-Bayoumi ignores the question and continues to instead to work his ousiarchs. His lip trembles, almost as if he is talking silently to himself. The air in the room becomes thick and heavy, a sign that the imam is drawing on Lurga too. You wipe your brow. However bad you feel, the clerk must be feeling worse. Doubly so given the effects of the lethargy curse the imam is working on him.
It’s a potent synergy, you realise. You remember Margaret Dillon, who would bore straight into you with Lurga until you yourself found the answers she needed. Or Frank, who’s physical approach bordered on torture. Imam el-Bayoumi’s approach is different again, but who wouldn’t spill everything to a person who your every instinct screams is your friend. Especially when so tired.
“Tell me about the Flame of Purity,” says the imam. His tone is friendly, and you recognise a little of your own technique in using Eldibria to convince someone you are their friend.
The clerk grins. Whether that is because he sees the imam as his friend now, or because he holds the cult dear, you do not know. “The flame burns away all falsehoods, all lies and impurities. It reveals the truth beneath,” says the clerk dopily. His grin, if anything widens, giving his features a skull like cast. “When we are ready, when we are closer to God, we shall dance in the beautiful fire and be made anew.”
You pace about the room, checking at the window periodically. The road outside is quiet, a fact that does nothing to assuage your mounting doubts. The clerk’s ramblings have set you on edge. They sound nothing like any religion you have ever heard of. You can see the imam is as troubled as you are.
“You said something about the seventh veil,” asks the imam gravely.
The clerk’s head jerks up and down as if pulled by strings. “He comes,” he states boldly. “Tomorrow. He will bring the people from the outlying villages into the first veil. You as well, if you will let him,” continues the clerk. “Open yourselves and let the fire scourge your heart.”
You and the imam share a look. That last statement is more than a little ominous. “Who is the seventh veil,” probes the imam insistently.
A wave of uncertainty passes over the clerk’s face. It is only their for a few brief moments before it vanishes under a tide of adoration. “He is the seventh veil,” answers the clerk meaninglessly. “He will bring the fire and the rebirth.”
“What is his name,” interrupts Imam el-Bayoumi. “What is the seventh veil called?”
“His name,” echoes the clerk, looking perplexed. “He is the seventh veil.”
“His name,” interrupts the imam. The sense of pressure, the thickness in the air, ramps up as Imam el-Bayoumi focuses his will on the clerk.
You find yourself drifting over to the window, anxious to escape the pressure surrounding the clerk and the imam. The road outside isn’t quiet now. An unruly looking mob is half running down the street. Some bear torches, old fashioned wooden sticks dipped in pitch. Others break away from he group, running ahead whooping and hollering before being subsumed back in the crowd moments later.
One member of the crowd doesn’t look happy to be there though: An old woman, frail looking and grey haired. She is being dragged along by two young men. You watch with a mounting horror as they tie her roughly to one of the posts you saw dotted round the town earlier.
A scream distracts you from the scene outside. You spin round to see the clerk’s face contorted in agony. He screams and screams and when there is no air left in his lungs, his face still stays stuck in the same rigid pose. It lasts for seemingly a minute, then he slumps forward in the chair and remains still.
“This is bad,” says Imam el-Bayoumi. He picks himself up from beside the dead body of the clerk and averts his eyes, unable to look at the body of the clerk. He never sees the serpent of fire that uncoils itself from around the clerk’s thigh and evaporates. “I pressed him about this so called seventh veil. Something, somehow, had clouded the man’s mind. And now he is dead because I tried to pierce that cloud.” The imam’s expression is sour and unhappy. Nobody feels guilt like a Lurga.
“It’s worse,” you reply, beckoning him over to the window. He joins you by your side just in time to see one of the mob dash gasoline from a large plastic canister over the old woman.
The mob is silent now, arrayed round the woman in a half circle. She wails and curses to no effect. A lone torch bearer steps forward from the group. He throws his torch at the base of the post. Flames engulf the old woman.
You want to look away. You want to but you can’t. The torch bearer stares up towards the hotel, right at your window. From across the street your eyes meet. He lifts his arm wordlessly and points right at you.
Others in the mob start pointing too.
“We have to get out of here,” you say, a note of panic rising in your voice.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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