The following is an extract from Folk Tales of Central Asia by Dr. S. L. W. Raleigh, an Orientalist and folklorist, one of whose tales are of unwitting relevance to the events of the past years. The book itself was composed some two decades ago, and Mr. Raleigh has since ceased to travel and retired to the country. Needless to say, he came across this story in his younger, more adventurous days in the service of the Royal Institution.

On my way across the steppe to the home of the Tajiks by camel, I made a week's stop, as many do, in the fabled city of Samarkhand. It is a place almost as old as the cities of the Chaldees, a city of the Silk Road and of Tamerlane. Through it have passed ancient Persian, conquering Grecian, wiley Chinaman, pious Mohammedan and heretical monophysite. Now I passed through as well, staying, as it happened, with a Welsh missionary by the name of Mr. Thomas, who had travelled the world, found the venerable little city to his liking, and stayed to do God's work there. He was a lively man, and a welcome sight after weeks with only my local guides for company. When he discovered I had an interest in folk tales and legends, he passed on to me one of the stories the locals tell, a very picturesque oriental tale of necromancy which I record here.

In Samarkhand there was once a noble by the name of Borijin, descended from the nomadic Turks but domesticated by generations settled in the city. He owned a fine house built upon the honest labours of commerce, buying and selling supplies with the itinerant merchants of the caravans. His wife had died some years previously, but had left him a fine daughter, whose name is lost to history, but whose beauty is not. With her father's wealth and liberality, she never had want of luxuries, and her beauty brought her many suitors. It was assumed by all that her father would eventually consent to her marriage to a suitable man, who would then become his heir. Many men wanted this great prize, but it transpired that none of them would win it.

At the same time, a charlatan mystic by the name of Theophanes came from the west. He had already defrauded a score of victims from Constantinople to the remote peoples of Bactria, always eluding his irate pursuers by guile and a flair for disguise. He was a former student of the theurgists, but his own youthful piety and enthusiasm had turned to cynicism. He began in Samarkhand by selling fraudulant charms and talismans, supposed to ward off various evils, from plague to demonancy. Through luck and sleight of hand, he convinced the more gullible portions of the local population of their efficiacy and of his own mystic knowledge. Within a year, he had made a name for himself, and had established a comfortable home.

For Borijin, however, the year brought only sorrow. His beloved daughter grew sick, withdrawing to her chambers and not emerging for weeks. The wisest doctors and alchemists were brought from as far as distant Alexandria, but their most attentive ministrations were rewarded only with a worstened condition. She sickened, and before the spring came, Borijin's daughter had died.

A day and a night passed in which Borijin's servants could not coax him from his room. He did not eat or drink, and from the sound of his uneasy footfalls pacing his bedchamber from dusk until dawn, his servants knew that he did not sleep, either. At morning prayers the next day, Borijin emerged from his seclusion and sent out a message: the sorceror Theophanes was to be brought before him. Two of his guards went out into the city and found the charlatan in the market selling his talismans and dispensing obscure and supposedly oracular advice to petitioners. The guards told the charlatan-mystic to attend their master's court, although they did not disclose why. Avariciously, Theophanes hurried to the side of the rich noble.

"Theophanes, I have heard tell of the wonders you work", said proud Borijin. "You will work a wonder for me." Amidst the merchantile splendour, Theophanes rashly promised anything. Borijin lead Theophanes through his chambers, into those of his daughter. Beneath the watchful eyes of Borijin's twin Numidian eunuchs, Theophanes entered her sanctum sanctorum, where she had lived and died, and where she lay yet. Theophanes knew what he was to be asked to do before Borijin spoke, and blanched.

"Master...", be began, hesitantly. Borijin's eyes flared with grief and impatience, whilst Theophanes flinched. The eunuchs, he saw, each had a glaive as tall as a man.

"You will do this thing I ask of you, and you will be rewarded." Yet Borijin's countenance disclosed a liberality which did not extend to mercy for those who disappointed him. He dispatched Theophanes promptly, accompanied by his seneschal, who was to help him acquire any materials he should need.

Theophanes made his way back to his own home, and made some preparations he claimed necessary. The sensechal followed him under the pretence of rendering assistance, and yet Theophanes knew he was there as the eyes of Borijin, to ensure Theophanes enacted the rite as promised. Theophanes made an excuse to the seneschal that it would be necessary for him to meditate and pray for some while in complete solitude to ensure his mental and spiritual purity, and took himself off to his workshop for some hours. There, the self pitying magus gathered together incense and strips of papyrus inscribed with heiroglyphs, Greek and Hebrew, and sobbed quietly.

He emerged in the early evening, dressed in the simple toga of the Academy, and with the tools of his trade in a simple satchel. It was a simple trick, but he looked scholarly, suitably aloof, and possessed of both gnosis and a calm self confidence. He arrived at the house of Borijin and said that the rite could take several nights, so it was best that they began as soon as possible. Borijin nodded and left to allow Theophanes to work his works. Theophanes lit incense, anointed the deceased's corpse, and spoke in low tones in Aramaic, Demotic and any other language he knew to be alien to his listeners, the eunuchs and the seneschal. Accustomed to such activities by long practice, he maintained his facade throughout much of the night, and drew the rite to a close with the promise of more the next evening, which was duly supplied.

However, by the third evening, the credulity of his audience was streched increasingly, and his plans, such as escape from the watchful eyes of the seneschal, or the substitution of the corpse for a living double, evaporated into desperate dreams. The moon waned, and Borijin was intent upon reaping the rewards of Theophanes' labours and seeing his daughter drawn back into the living world. As Theophanes contemplated yielding to his fears and confessing his deceptions, his eyes alighted upon the scroll he had once acquired from an Alexandrian Jew for five solidii of gold, in the days before his disillusionment with theurgy, when he had sought wisdom with the Coptic Hermeticists. Its undeniably impressive provenance might buy him one more night of credulity, and one more day of life, before the inevitable glaives of the Numidians. Theophanes took the scroll and the ritual accoutrements prescribed within it to Borijin's daughter.

He anointed her as it directed, and spoke the words it dictated. He fashioned a talisman inscribed with her name, called back her soul. He followed every ostentation and particular the scroll described, up to the final snuffing of the room's candles. He offered her shadow up to gods in return for her life, and extinguished the final tallow.

In the darkness, a movement. For mere moments, there was a fumbling. From the torches in the corridor, a candle was relit.

Borijin's daughter was emaciated but animate. The seneschal fainted away, and the Numidians quivered. Theophanes recanted three decades of incredulity. He passed the amulet into Borijin's safekeeping and retired to rest for the first time in many nights. Two days later, when he emerged refreshed and vigorous, Borijin had already secluded his daughter in her chambers, away from prying eyes. None were to speak to her, or to see her. She was his most precious flower, and he would not lose her again.

Theophanes was indeed richly rewarded. He received all the gold and silver Borijin could give, and instead of living in luxury, as he would have done before the rite, he spent his wealth on his reinvigorated curiosity. He sent agents down the Silk Road to Cathay, to Constantinople, to the Neoplatonists of Harran and to the Parsee magi. He was a frugal scholar, receiving scrolls and codicies from across the world, attempting to unlock the secrets he had so long held in contempt. He discovered that none of the vaunted schools of mystics seemed to know more than he did, and yet the efficacy of the rite showed that someone, somewhere had genuine gnosis, so the second disappointment of Theophanes spurred him to greater efforts where the first had so demoralised him.

The months passed. Borijin's daughter, once the object of so many suitors, remained cossetted away in her quarters. She was no longer talkative, and her father ensured that none disturbed her. His business took him on long journeys along to the caravanserais of the Silk Road, from which he returned weeks later. During this time, his seneschal would look after his affairs in Samarkhand. One of his many duties was to oversee the servants of Borijin's household, and he would daily see the handmaiden of Borijin's daughter. She appeared drawn and worried, but rarely overworked. The seneschal, concerned, asked her what was the matter.

"My mistress is withdrawn and sullen since her experience with Theophanes," said the handmaid. "She does not eat the food I bring her and only changes her clothes and sleeps when I tell her to. She is alive, yes, but she has lost her will and her vivacity. She is a recluse."

The seneschal went about his business, troubled, and considered the problem at length. He resolved to wait until his master came home, for Borijin, who devolved all other responsibilities to his skilled lieutenant in his absence, would not relinquish the guardianship of his daughter to anyone but her handmaiden and the eunuchs. Daily, the handmaiden emerged from the secluded rooms of her mistress bearing a small meal, barely touched.

Two days before Borijin was due to return, the handmaiden left the house on business about town, and did not return at the appointed hour. The seneschal, on business of his own, set out to look for the handmaid, and discovered her in the house of her father.

"Why has she abandoned her mistress? Where will I find a replacement at such short notice, and without my master, who should be consulted in this matter?"

"She will not go back," the maid's father replied, sternly," and I will not let her go back. Her mistress is not the same since the sorceror revived her. She is no longer wholesome, and we will have nothing more to do with Master Borijin whilst she remains in his house."

"Is this how you repay years of Master Borijin's protection?" riposted the seneschal indignantly.

"I must protect my daughter, as your lord protects his. She asked me to return this item to you, as it belongs to her mistress. Good day to you sir." At that, her father handed him the ritual amulet and closed the door.

The seneschal resigned himself to the loss of a servant, at least for that night, and returned home, where he arranged for a meal to be conveyed to Borijin's daughter by one of the Numidians whilst he returned to his quarters for the night, where he fell into a fitfull half slumber. However, he could not rest and so he rose from his bed and sat at his desk, looking thoughtfully on the amulet in the glow of the flickering oil lamp. "I wish I could see her condition myself", he soliloquized. He mused on the difficulties of ascertaining her condition when so few were permitted access to her, and after a few minutes, deep in thought, he rose to his feet, intending to make once again for his bed, when he heard soft footfalls behind him.

He turned just as she stepped into the light of his oil lamp. She wore her white night dress, and looked at him glassy eyed. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, and yet she was pale and thin, with a pinched and consumptive appearance.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in astonishment. She mechanically opened and closed her mouth repeatedly, as if trying to form words, but her lips could not frame, nor her lungs issue, a sound. He stared for a moment, and was struck by this.

She was not breathing.

"Go! Go," he implored, "return to your room now, please! The Numidians will see that you are gone, and you are not permitted to leave, nor I to entertain your presence." She had already turned to pad slowly from the room on her cold, bare, dead feet when the room's curtain was turned aside from without, and the eunuchs entered, their glaives held before them. They saw their charge in her night attire, and the seneschal in his, and the foremost of the two pierced him through the heart with his blade before anyone could utter a word.

Borijin returned to discover his seneschal dead, and although he regretted the loss of his most able and previously loyal attendant, he considered it a fair price for the honour and safety of his daughter. Borijin appointed the trusted Theophanes to replace his disgraced seneschal, found a new maid for his daughter, and attempted to return to the normal running of his affairs.

Theophanes, however good he may have been as a charlatan, and latterly, as a genuine mystic, was unschooled in the arts of administration. He spent weeks attempting to balance his master's accounts and manage his servants in his absence, but discovered himself devoid of the flair for business which his predecessor had possessed in abundance. Added to that, the seneschal had left copius notes of the manner in which he had conducted the business of the house, but he had done so in a personal shorthand which quite defied the capable polyglot Theophanes' ability to decode. Theophanes would have been desperate if he had believed that Borijin's business interests were loosing money under his guardianship, but he was even more distressed at being unable to fully assess his situation. Despairing of his skill with the contract and the abacus, he turned to his skill with theurgy to supply his want.

In the darkness of the night before the new moon, he stole into the necropolis beyond the city walls and found the shamefully small tomb of the disgraced seneschal. He disinterred the body, and returned home with it slung over his donkey and hidden beneath a sheet of linen. He took it to his own home, not to his quarters in the house of Borijin where he had more recently been residing, and during the following day made preparations for the rite which was to commence the next evening. He repeated the ritual he had performed once before under the darkly shadowless night of the new moon. He recited the incantations, laid out the candles and anointed the now decaying body. He fashioned a talisman upon which was the name of the seneschal, and as the closing act, he extinguished the light of the solitary candle which illuminated his activities.

After a moment, Theophanes relit the candle and commanded the figure to rise. It did so, and the theurgist was struck by its smell. The rite had healed nothing. It was a corpse, but which was ambulatory. Stifling his rising bile, Theophanes spoke again.

"Seneschal, tell me what you know of Borijin's household." The corpse looked upon him blankly from empty eyes.

"Tell me the secrets of its maintainance, and the means by which you served him so well for so many years." Still, the figure made no response. Theophanes continued to demand information, and the corpse remained unable to furnish it. The rite had taken several hours over the course of the night, and the ritualist did not mark the first pale rays of dawn as they cut through the window of his home. He did snap to attention when he heard the knock on his door. There was a shout from outside. It was Borijin. Theophanes turned to move the evidence of his sorcery from view before admitting his visitor, but his delay did not stop Borijin. The door opened.

Borijin said, "Theophanes, you are late, and I was worried for your safety." His words faded as he caught the scene of witchery, and the horrifying remains of his dead servant. "What has been done to you?" he asked the corpse, and received no reply. "You do not speak?" He was met only with silence. His former servant did not even acknowledge his presence. He left without another word, and made straight for his daughter's chamber.

"Daughter, do you still speak, or are you mute too?" He stroked her cheek, cold to the touch, and looked into her eyes, but she did not look back at him, even though her empty eyes met his.

He left her room, tears in his eyes, and spoke to the Numidians:

"Go to Theophanes' house and seize him and his scrolls of sorcery. Take him beyond the city to the caves in the hills, and seal him inside with bricks and mortar. Leave him there with his infernal manuscripts. Then you may return home and bury my daughter and seneschal. They are both dead, although they walk."

So Mr. Thomas concluded his picturesque tale. He informs me that if this story was first inspired by a genuine event, from which a distorted myth grew, the persons are lost to history, and the cave and its captive have never been located.

It's supposed to be a prelude to a longer and broader narrative which will hopefully span from Ancient Egypt to the First World War, although whether this magnum opus will actually materialise I can't say.