Free Omar Khayyam - a life by Harold Lamb Page A

His thin brown beard, carefully combed, lay against the gray silk of his tunic. He spoke briefly to a group of men—handed the papers to one who seemed to be a secretary, and acknowledged their salaams of farewell as they all backed, bowing, toward the far door.
    Tutush advanced with Omar. They paused once to make salaam and then knelt on the carpet before Nizam al Mulk.
    For some seconds the eyes of the Minister from beneath shaggy brows considered Omar. Then he glanced over the sheets of paper in his fingers. "You are the son of Ibrahim of the Tentmakers, student in mathematics, disciple of Master Ali? When you were a boy you studied philosophy under the Sufi Imam Muaffak?"
    He spoke in the crisp modulated voice of one who talks in public for long hours and is listened to. Tutush, who sat apart from Omar, said nothing whatever.
    "Master Ali writes that you have a strange power. There is no power save from Allah. I wish to know one thing. Tell me by what divination you predicted to our Lord the Sultan, who was then prince, the fate of the battle of Malasgird and the double death of the Christian Caesar and our own lord, upon whom be blessing!"
    Omar felt the blood rush to his face. If only he could think of some plausible story. But he suspected that the man with the austere eyes and the cold voice would brush aside any pretense.
    'The truth——" he gulped. "Highness, it was a jest."
    Nizam stirred impatiently. "What words are these? Explain yourself. It could not have been a jest."
    "But it was." Omar felt sure of himself now. He was telling the thing as it happened. "Highness, I wandered that night through the camps and came to the one guarded by Turks. I did not understand much of their speech—did not realize that the young lord was the prince. The professors about him made a foolish mistake in pointing out the star Suhail. The whim came to me to voice a prophecy in their solemn manner. That was all."
    "You are abrupt to the point of discourtesy." The Minister leaned back against his cushions. "How do you account for the fact that this—jesting prediction—foretold three events. Ay, the battle, and the deaths of two kings?"
    Omar thought for a moment. "Highness, how can I account for it? Nothing happens except by the will of Allah, yet this happened."
    "Nothing happens except by Allah's will. I wish I knew what led you to say that." Nizam spoke as if Omar had been a lifeless thing under examination. "Certain it is that you could not have known the day and the hour of the birth of the Roumi king; you could not have calculated the sign ascendant at his birth. How did you cast the horoscope of the Sultan Alp Arslan?"
    Tutush blinked involuntarily, perceiving the snare beneath the casual words.
    "I did not cast it," responded Omar.
    "But you have skill enough to make such calculations?"
    "Certainly. So have five hundred others."
    "Perhaps." Nizam's brows knit. "But I have yet to hear of a three-fold prediction made by any other. And Master Ali believes you are gifted with a strange power."
    Tutush, who had been ordered by Nizam to find out all that was to be known about Omar Khayyam, made an imperceptible sign of confirmation.
    "Son of Ibrahim," demanded the Minister suddenly, "hast thou not heard that Malikshah hath asked for thee many times since the death of his father?"
    "I had not heard."
    Both men glanced at him, and Nizam seemed satisfied, although he made no comment. "Thou art young to appear as yet in the Presence," he mused. "And since thy prophecy was but—a jest—thou hast need to tread with caution upon the carpet of audience. I do not hide from thee that Malikshah would receive thee with favor; yet a word such as thou hast spoken to me in this room would cast thee into disgrace, if not into the torturer's hands. . . . What reward wouldst thou ask of the Sultan for that strange prophecy of thine?"
    At the swift probe of the question Omar flushed. It seemed to him that his whim of that night had become a