After a moment's descent he heard it strike ground with a muffled thump; as he handed down more rope the line grew slack.
Something, he knew, was down there, something that seemed to support the iron hook without difficulty.
A shiver of apprehension ran through him, and he glanced back out at the surrounding streets.
He saw no one, but he knew that he was being watched. He would not, he swore silently to himself, show himself a coward so quickly as this!
He pulled up the hook, secured it solidly to the wall's outer edge, and then with a prayer and a gulp of air lowered himself down into the blackness.
His feet and legs vanished, yet he felt no different. Then his body was gone. And finally, as his head fell below the top of the wall, he was engulfed in darkness-but only for an instant, and then he was below the blackness and able to see a fine grassy sward just below him, no more than a man's height away, surrounded by flowering bushes.
He looked up, and saw the blue sky and bright sun, and he smiled.
"A conjuror's trick, no more!" he told himself quietly. He quickly pulled himself back up onto the wall, freed the hook, and then, gathering up the ropes once more, he dropped down inside. To the watchers in the alleys, he was gone, and did not return, and gradually, as the sun descended the western sky, they grew bored and drifted away.
Inside the wall, Abu landed catlike, crouched and ready for anything-or so he thought to himself.
When he saw his surroundings, however, his alert eyes glazed slightly. He was in a garden, a garden like none he had ever imagined. Raised in the streets, he had rarely seen any gardens save those scraggly patches of vegetables and herbs in back lots and on rooftops that some of the frugal citizens of Tahrir cultivated. Now he faced a garden like no other anywhere; even the late Court Gardener to Selim ibn Jafar would have been amazed. Blossoms were piled high on every side, a profusion, a myriad of flowers, all vividly colored, varied in size from tiny pinpricks of gold and scarlet to vast parasols of azure and white with petals each as broad as a man's height. All about the thief, save only behind him where the black marble wall stood, were flowers; it seemed as though he had landed in the only clear spot to be found, and that was only a tiny patch of grass scarce big enough for him to stand upon. He marveled that he had somehow not seen this fantastic beauty when he clambered down his rope, and could only guess that it somehow connected with the wizard's illusory darkness. After a few moments, with a shake of his head Abu recovered his senses. He was not to be put off by a bunch of flowers! He stepped forward, and his leg brushed a nearby blossom, a yard-wide whorl of purple and black; and as though released from long bondage, there burst forth all about him the perfume of the flowers, like all the incense of all the world's mosques and temples in one place, pouring out on all sides. He was breathing in thick clouds of scent, such sweet scent as cannot be described. He could not catch his breath, for the perfume so filled him that his lungs could not take in air. In desperation, he drew his blade, flinging his arm out as far as he could and slashed at the mockingly beautiful blossoms. Then he was spinning, and the world went dark. He came to later, he never knew how much later, and found himself lying on the sward, green and smooth, untroubled by the flowers. He could still smell their perfume, but was no longer overpowered by it. Looking up from where he lay he could see no blossoms nor leaves. He stood up warily. Before him, twisted hideously, the purple-and-sable flower that he had first touched lay on the grass. Its thorny stem was slashed through where his dagger had cut it, and from the slash flowed fresh red blood.
The lower portion of the stem did not end in a rooted stalk, but in a narrow green body with a whiplike tail, four short legs, and scaly feet, like those of a great lizard.
Shuddering, he wiped his blade on the lawn and looked about him.
Behind him was the marble wall; to either side was empty grass, and the dreadful gardens stood beyond. Abu realized that even these strange and magical flowers are delicate things. The death of one had frightened away the other plants.
He was sure he had nothing more to fear from the gardens if he kept his wits about him. He looked on to the next obstacle.
Ahead of him was another wall, a dozen paces away across the green, not the wall of the palace but another line of defense, this one only a little taller than his head, and surely no higher than his reach. It appeared to be made of ivory, though he could make out little detail from where he stood. The sun was very low in the west, and already the day's light was fading.
He looked down at the plant-creature he had slain, and kicked at the dead thing, wondering if perhaps he should dispose of it; a sharp pain in his foot informed him that a needlelike thorn as long as his index finger had passed right through his leather boots into his flesh. Upon pulling his foot away he saw that behind the petals the entire upper part of the plant was a ghastly mass of dull-green thorns, all razor sharp and strong as steel.
After removing his boot, bandaging the wound as best he could with a strip torn from the hem of his robe, and slipping the boot back carefully so as not to dislodge the cloth, he limped across the grass to the ivory barrier.
Beyond this inner wall he could see the glistening crystal and stone of the palace itself, its tiled domes flashing and bright in the slanting sunlight. The ivory wall proved not to be completely solid; there were small openings between the carved figures. A curious feature was the nature of the carvings themselves, for each was a different variety of serpent; Abu saw among them vipers, adders, cobras, and a thousand others. Some were such as are not known any longer among men. That was nothing to Abu. Undaunted by the fearsome appearance of the wall, and seeing that the openings made excellent handholds, he leapt up to climb it; but scarce had he left the ground when he felt the ivory writhe beneath his hands. He almost began to drop back, but then thought better of it, and instead, with all his strength, he vaulted over, to land rolling upon a stone-paved terrace. Behind him, the carved serpents hissed, twisting venomously about each other; for one terrible instant he thought they were preparing to follow him. At last, though, they stilled, and were again only lifeless ivory. Trembling, Abu lay upon the flags; then, slowly, he got again to his feet, wincing as he put pressure on his wounded foot. He was on a broad, paved terrace, bounded on one side by the ivory barricade, on two sides by decorative pools and fountains, and on the last by the palace that was his goal. The palace wall was blank, however; there were no doors, no windows, no opening of any sort. High above colored tiles adorned the roof edge, but otherwise the wall was sheer and flat and featureless. Abu saw no hope of gaining entry there. Instead, he turned to his right and limped to the little stone-rimmed ponds that edged the terrace. He saw hundreds of good-sized pools, scattered as irregularly as the stars in the heavens for as far as he could see, each with a fountain in its center, and paths of translucent golden bricks, like amber, wound between them. Each pool was lit from beneath by some means the thief could not fathom, and each glowed a different hue. Abu watched the fountains dance and play in the gathering dusk; they were, like the flowers, much more beautiful than anything in his previous experience. He wondered if they, too, held some hidden menace; their gentle hissing began to seem somehow ominous to him. Still, he had to go on, for he had a task to perform, and did not care to go back over the ivory serpents into the gardens of the poisonous lizard-legged flowers. He could do nothing with the blank walls of the palace; an attempt to scale them, even if successful, might do no good, since he had no reason to believe that there were openings in the roof. He could see no end to the expanse of fountains; it seemed to continue forever. He had already noticed that the grounds inside the wall seemed to be much more extensive than the length of the wall, as seen from outside, could contain, but after all, this palace had been raised by magic, and he had already seen, coming over the wall, that its master was not above the use of illusions. Surely, the water garden did not, in truth, go on forever. If he walked steadily in one direction he would surely come to an end, in time. With a shrug, he set out along one of the walks.