Sinbad and The Eye of the Tiger by John Ryder Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

“One thing I advise . . . set a careful watch on Zenobia. If she is a witch she will try somehow to stop us.”
    Balsora nodded sagely. “My men will watch her castle by day and night.” He pointed down at the captain of his guards, who was calming the disturbed horses and reforming the guards. “Zabid there will be in command. He’s the best soldier I have.”
    Sinbad smiled thinly. “Then you’d be wise to order him to cut her throat! He’s no family relation!”
    Sinbad turned away briskly and began snapping orders. Men ran ashore and began gathering up supplies while others began readying the ship for a long voyage.
    Farah watched Sinbad with a worried frown, then sighed. “It is in Allah’s hands,” she whispered to herself.

CHAPTER 5
    Z enobia’s castle was an edifice that automatically gave shivers to whomever looked upon it. It was built on a narrow peninsula of black rock that reached out into the sea, making approach from the ocean difficult because of the sharp offshore rocks over which the waves crashed. The narrow spit of land also made approach difficult from the land, without being observed. It was an isolated, secret stronghold. Everyone knew where it was, but few had seen the interior. Most of Balsora’s subjects avoided the whole area, if possible, and hurried by with averted eyes if they had to pass by on the narrow road.
    Within the forbidding walls of her castle, Zenobia was stalking the long corridors. At length, before her was a winding stone staircase. The first few steps were formed from carved black rock, cemented in place. But as she descended, the steps were carved from the native bedrock, a black basalt, webbed with faint lines of gray granite. Each step was worn, the evidence of centuries of footsteps. A few guttering torches were set in rusting iron brackets on the walls. As Zenobia descended the walls became wet and dank, evidence that she had passed below the level of the sea outside. The stairs curved downward, with the black stone arching overhead, further blackened by the soot of unknown centuries of smoking torches.
    Zenobia came to the end of the carved steps, then crossed a small space, ducked through a low arch, and came into a cavernous room. She threaded her way between the primitive metal presses and the anvils to the far end of the subterranean workshop. There she found her son Rafi working next to a long, narrow bench. His arm was bandaged, but his other arm rose and fell as he hammered on a piece of metal. Behind him, along the long bench, was a shape, under sheets, that resembled the outline of a giant man. Rafi did not see his mother approach and continued his hammering. He was forming a metal heart of bronze. On the bench sat his model—the real heart of an animal, pulsating inside a glass container filled with a translucent liquid that supported the living heart like a gobbet of raw offal in a protective cocoon of aspic.
    Rafi’s noisy hammering stopped as he caught a glimpse of his mother watching him. He looked eagerly at her in an unspoken question, the metal-forming hammer in his fist.
    “My son . . . Sinbad has agreed to help them.” Rafi’s face grew dark with anger. “We must act quickly,” Zenobia said.
    Rafi’s anger gave way to cynicism. “What can the captain of a merchant ship do?”
    “He is taking them to the Isle of Casgar . . . to consult the great sage, Melanthius.” Rafi’s face stiffened. “Is the heart ready?”
    Rafi nodded, “Yes, but . . .” His voice was worried as he peered at his mother. “You said no one could help Kassim.”
    Zenobia strode to the workbench without speaking and picked up the mechanical heart and studied it.
    “Mother . . .”
    “Exquisite, my son.” Then, in delayed answer to her son’s question, she said, “If Melanthius truly lives . . . he is the one person who could.”
    Rafi’s voice flared in anger, echoing off the walls of stone. “You promised me!” He reached out to grab his mother’s