The Moghul

The advance of Prince Jadar's army west toward the Rajput stronghold of Udaipur was like nothing Brian Hawksworth had ever seen. Jadar was marching into the heart of ancient Raj...

The moon was high, bathing the sleeping veranda in a wash of glistening silver, and the air was deliciously moist, heavy with perfume from the garden below. From somewhere among...

They were deep within the center of Surat, nearing the river, when suddenly the street opened onto a wide stone-paved plaza. The first thing Hawksworth saw through the torchligh...

Nadir Sharif leaned uneasily against the rooftop railing of his sprawling riverside palace, above the second-floor _zenana_, and absently watched his Kabuli pigeons wing past th...

Hawksworth heard the exultant cheer of the Rajputs riding behind him and snapped awake. It was midmorning of the third day and he had been dozing fitfully in the saddle since da...

Father Manoel Pinheiro's clean-shaven face was grim and his lips set tightly against the brisk air as he pushed a path through the crowded alley, headed toward the riverside pal...

"Ambassador Hawksworth, His Majesty has asked me to ensure you are wanting in nothing while you wait." Nadir Sharif was standing on the wide marble balcony when Hawksworth emerg...

The dark sky had begun to show pale in the east, heralding the first traces of day. Hawksworth stood in the shadows of his tent, at the edge of the vast Imperial camp, and pulle...

Brian Hawksworth stepped lightly off the prow of the barge as it eased into the riverbank and worked his way through the knee-deep tidal mud onto the sandy shore. Even here, acr...

Prince Jadar passed the signal to the waiting guards as he strode briskly down the stone-floored hallway and they nodded imperceptibly in acknowledgment. There was no sound in t...

He watched from the quarterdeck as the chain fed through the whitecaps of the bay, its staccato clatter muffled, hollow in the midday heat. Then he sensed the anchor grab and fe...

The imminent wedding of Prince Allaudin and Princess Layla was a momentous event in the history of the Moghul empire. It represented the final merging of two dynasties. One, tha...

"On the day of Mubarak-shamba, the twenty-eighth of the month of Dai, there came first reports of the pestilence in the city of Agra. On this day over five hundred people were s...

The dream was more vivid than reality, intensely colored and astir with vague forms that drifted through his mind's ken, appearing then fading. The room seemed airless, a musk-f...

A drum roll lifted across the dark plain, swelling in intensity like angry, caged thunder. It rose to fill the valley with a foreboding voice of death, then faded slowly to sile...

East along the Tapti River valley the land was a verdant paradise, a patchwork of mango and pipal groves and freshly turned dark earth. By mid-October the fields of cotton, corn...

"There, on that hill, Inglish, is where I was born." Arangbar pointed to the high sandstone walls of a distant hilltop fortress, outlined against the midday sky. "It's called Fa...

The events of that morning were almost too improbable to be described. After taking on the Indian pilot, Hawksworth's plan had been to make landfall immediately, then launch a p...

Nadir Sharif studied the pigeon as it glided onto the red sandstone ledge and rustled its feathers in exhausted satisfaction. It cocked its white-spotted head for a moment as it...

He felt the palanquin drop roughly onto a hard surface, and when the curtains were pulled aside he looked down to see the stone mosaic of a garden courtyard. They had traveled u...

"Now we will begin. As my guest, you have first throw of the dice." Mirza Nuruddin fingered the gold and ivory inlay of the wooden dice cup as he passed it to Hawksworth. Then h...

Hawksworth waited anxiously by the rear entryway of the _Diwan- i-Khas _and watched the three Jesuits file silently through the tapestried archway beside him. Father Alvarez Sar...

The two _chitahs _tensed at the same instant and pulled taut the chains on their jewel-studded collars. They were tawny, dark-spotted Indian hunting leopards, and they rode in c...

The light of a single flame tip burned through the haze of his vision, and then he heard words around him, in a terse language as ancient as time. He tried to move, and an achin...

The room was musty and close, as though the rainy season had not passed, and the floor was hard mud. Through crude wooden shutters they could glimpse the early sun stoking anew...

"Many years ago I was a _devadasi_." Kamala sat, pillowless, on the carpet, watching as Hawksworth ate. Her musicians, the flautist and the drummer, knelt silently behind her. N...

The bells sounded ending the afternoon watch and calling the first dog watch. Only four hours since noon, but already the morning's carnage seemed a memory from a distant lifeti...

"Pinnace is afloat, Cap'n. I'm thinkin' we should stow the goods and be underway. If we're goin'." Mackintosh's silhouette was framed in the doorway of the Great Cabin, his eyes...

The night sky above the courtyard was afire, an overturned jewel box strewn about an ivory moon. They passed through a gateway of carved columns and ornate brackets, into a smal...