"You are ugly, Alhazred." The voice was deep and rough, but the tone was not unkind.

I looked up from the letter I was drafting to a seller of acids disputing his recent price increase. Beyond the glow from my oil lamp, my library lay in deep shadow. I smelled a scent like damp earth. "Thank you for that sentiment, Uto, I'll cherish it always."

The patch of darkness I spoke to detached itself from the wall and took the form of a crouching naked ghoul. The manhood that dangled between his thighs was impressive, but not as impressive as the hooked talons on the ends of his long fingers. "There was gossip that your face is disfigured, but I did not imagine how severely. The glamour you usually wear hides it well. My heart is sad for you."

By reflex, I raised my hand and touched the place where my nose should have been. There was only a hole there now. My nose had been cut off along with my ears, and my cheeks deeply scarred, by the late ruler of Sana'a in Yemen, land of my birth. In my foolish youth I had served as the royal poet, and had committed the indiscretion of lusting after his beautiful daughter, Narisa. His punishment of me had been creative. After disfiguring me, castrating me and feeding me my own body parts, he had cast me out in the desert to die. Yet here I was, in my house on the Lane of Scholars at Damascus. And the king? He has suffered an unfortunate accident, the result of a falling roof tile.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of having you break into my house, Uto, leader of the White Skull Clan?"

I used a formal address as a matter of politeness. It is good to be polite when a ghoul stands near you in the shadows with his claws spread. So far as I knew, I was on good terms with Uto, who from time to time supplied me with fresh corpses for my necromantic experiments from the burying ground he and the members of his clan inhabited.

He made the harsh, rasping noise that is laughter for ghouls. "Do not fear, my friend. I have come to you for help."

Setting my