Alamut (27 page)

Then he would look at her and upbraid himself for a fool. She had begun in fascination with a creature out of Gereint's stories. She was seeing him entirely and simply, now, as himself; as no one not of his own kind had ever seen him, even his father.

On this last day in Damascus, she had damned the proprieties and come out of the women's quarters. She wanted to see the city plain, for once, before she left it. She saw it from horseback, wearing a veil to keep from being spat on, but she was a Frank and that was obvious. Aidan had his doubts of her wisdom, but in the circle of his mamluks — his; God's bones; he was still not used to it — and with him at her side, she was as safe as she could ever be. His hellions were unsure of her, as yet. Raised in Islam as they had been, and drunk with their young blood, they did not like the thought of a woman riding like a man. Even if she was as tall as one, and a Frank.

She had enough Saracen in her, and enough Norman noblewoman, not to care in the least what a pack of freed slaves thought of her. She was more interested in seeing this jewel of earthly cities. Sometimes she was even more interested in seeing how close she could ride to Aidan without either being seen or rousing her mare's dislike of being too close to a male, even a male who was a gelding.

Aidan, who was hardly that, encouraged his horse to snake his head and sidle. Otherwise he would seize her then and there and overwhelm her with kisses, and that would not be wise at all.

oOo

The astrologer was gone from the Gate of the Clock. Aidan smiled to himself.

Joanna wanted to go inside. It was not forbidden to a woman, but a Frankish woman was hardly welcome. But she was stubborn. She caught his eyes and held them. “Why does anyone have to know? Do they all know what you are?”

His breath hissed between his teeth. That was boldness beyond belief. No mortal had ever asked — ever dared —

She said none of the things she could have said, that would have presumed on what was between them. “I'd like to see,” she said.

After a long moment he spoke. “We are,” he said, “emirs come to pray for success in our enterprise. It would help if you tried to walk accordingly.”

Her grin was too wicked to stay angry at, her swagger too perfectly like that of a Seljuk princeling with a fine sense of his own importance. One of Aidan's mamluks — not a Turk — snickered. He left that one, and five more, on guard over the horses. The others fell in about the two tall figures who might have been good Muslim captains come to pray in the holy place. Aidan at least had no need to pretend to more than his usual semblance of humanity. He was still full of Joanna's reaction to him in his splendid new coat.

The mosque was as much a city as a place of worship. Its galleries were full of merchants: perfumers and sellers of bread waging a war of scents, and bookbinders and jewelers and crafters of glass like jewels sending forth a manifold dazzle of light, and all of them raising their chants to beckon the pilgrim in. The western minaret was full of holy men, and they higher they were, the holier they grew, until the highest seemed to sit directly under heaven. In the regions below, circles of boys chanted the Koran round their teachers, and men stood guard over the first Koran that ever was made, and a veil concealed the cell from which Aisha, beloved of the Prophet, had kept his word alive when he was dead. About them all, the mosque was like a garden of stone: many-colored marbled to twice man-high, then the jeweled glitter of the greatest mosaicwork that was ever made or conceived of, every city of the dawn of Islam set living on those walls to endure, it was said, beyond the end of the world.

The center was peace, and the ornate simplicity that was Islam. It was vast, the hall of prayer, and empty, its lamps of gold unlit but glimmering in the gloom, its massed carpets glowing between the pillars, and the golden vine winding round its
mirhab.
There were people here in numbers enough, but the space was wider than they, and quiet. Somewhere, someone chanted the Koran.

It seemed most logical, and most natural, to sit on the carpet by a pillar, face toward the niche of prayer, and simply be. Joanna sat close. With no one to see but the mamluks, whom he trusted, Aidan wound his fingers with hers. She smiled at him, a quick smile, with promises in it for later. “This is holy,” she said softly, “even if it is not our holiness.”

He nodded. It was like her, to understand without needing to be told. They needed it, this peace. He had no great gift of presience, but because he was what he was, he could know that they would not have such quiet again.

Almost he clutched at her, to hold her, and this hour, and all that they must lose. She had turned from him; she was taking in the purity of the space. It was Roman once; then it was Christian, full of the chants and incense of the Greek rite. Now it was Allah's.

He kissed her fingers one by one. She smiled, although she did not look at him. Her hand curved to fit his cheek.

oOo

Ishak saw them down the length of the mosque. At first he thought that his eyes were failing him. The mamluks were clear enough in their scarlet livery, but the two in the middle blurred and wavered like heat-shimmer in the desert.

It was only that they were in black and the hall was dim, and he was winded with tracking them down. Aidan, he could see well enough once he set his mind to it. He wondered vaguely who the other was. Another Frank, maybe; or someone from the House of Ibrahim.

He could not spare breath to care. He had tried hard, so hideously hard, to forget what he knew; and he had succeeded. He had never even been tempted to tell the Frank his family's secret.

Tomorrow the Frank was going. Probably he would never come back. Ishak was not moved, except as a child is, wanting what it knows it cannot have, to beg the Frank to take him on the caravan. There was the family to think of, and Masud, and the sultan.

But the Frank had been Ishak's guest, and Ishak thought they might be friends. The Frank was exotic and splendid and more apt for mischief than anyone else Ishak had ever known. Ishak was going to miss him sorely.

If he died because Ishak had not warned him...

That was not a man with him, though she was as big as a man, and ugly in an inescapably Frankish fashion. And shameless. Stroking him, here, in the very house of God.

Franks had no decency at all.

He shivered. His stomach clenched tighter even than his fists. People said that Franks were too pallid to have any passion, all their fiery humours chilled and quenched by their cold northern climate and their taste for unclean meats. Not these two, he could well see. They were unseemly.

But, like animals, oddly beautiful. They knew no better.

Aidan knew steel. Ishak's father would say that that was enough.

He was avoiding thinking of what he ought to be thinking of. He should escape, now, while they were occupied; before they saw him.

He swallowed hard. He had not come so far, to turn coward and slink away.

He drew himself up, tugged his coat into order, smoothed what beard he had. With his best face forward, he went to break his given word.

oOo

The woman was not so ugly, close up. Merely plain. She was modest enough to snatch for her veil when she saw him coming, Frank enough to shrug and give it up since he had already seen what there was to see. She had bold eyes. He blushed under them, and could not even begin to pretend that he had come here by chance.

He could at least pretend to ignore her. He greeted Aidan with none of his usual lightness, squatting within the circle of mamluks, who knew him and did not try to stop him. But once he was there, he could not say what he had come to say. He could not even circle round to it. He scowled at his boots instead, and let them think him impossibly rude.

Aidan touched his shoulder, lightly, as if to bolster him. “Come, sir. You knew I'd be leaving as soon as I could.”

Ishak nodded, swallowing. “It's not — I — ” He gathered himself under those eyes like his father's steel, rippling like it,dazzling him, and said as levelly as his body's trembling would let him, “Sir Frank, it's not that you must go. I understand; it's no pleasure, but I accept it. It's what you go to. I don't think you understand what the sons of knives are.”

“I think I may,” said Aidan, but not as if he had taken offense. “They're very subtle, and very deadly. They almost never fail to kill where they are commanded. Except with your sultan.”

“Allah's hand was on him,” Ishak said.

“And it can't be on me, because I am a Christian?”

Ishak shook his head until his turban rocked on its moorings. “No, no, no! Allah defended him: kept the Old Man from using his strongest weapons. Nothing but human force went against the sultan.”

Aidan, for a wonder, seemed to be listening to Ishak, and heeding what he heard. “He said something to me of that. That not all the
Hashishayun
are human men.”

“Ya Allah! Don't name them!” Ishak caught his voice before it spiraled into hysteria. “What...what do you know of their magic?”

“Little,” said Aidan. “They're masters of stealth. They're mad — bewitched, some say; or drugged. They live to die and pass to Paradise.”

“Nothing more?”

“Is there more?”

Those eyes were too damnably keen. Ishak fixed his own on his feet. “They have magic, prince. Devil-magic. And they are mad. What law or reason or sanity can any man compel, on folk who care only to kill and then to die?”

“Then,” said Aidan with such lightness that Ishak groaned in despair, “I'll have to be madder than they.”

“Can you be stronger, too? And deadlier?”

“I can try.”

“You'll still die,” Ishak said. “Unless you have magic, too.”

Aidan smiled. “I have magic.”

Ishak's chin snapped up. “Are you first cousin to Iblis?”

“I've been accused of it,” said the Frank.

Ishak ground his teeth in frustration. He wanted to burst out with it, all together, all bare. And he could not. His throat clenched when he tried to speak; to name her. To warn this innocent of the Old Man's devil-bitch.

Magic. What could Franks know of true and high and deadly magic? They were hardly more than savages.

Even this one, who looked like an eastern lord. He smiled at Ishak, thinking no doubt to calm a child's fears. Child that he was himself. What power did he have, to face what laired in the Mountain?

Ishak could not — could not — speak of her. The spell's shape was distinct as bit and bridle, as a shackle on his tongue. He cursed her to blackest hell, but he was silenced.

He rose without grace, choking on tears as much of rage as of grief for a friend. “Prince,” he said. “Prince, if you will not be wise, at least be warned. Trust no one. No one, do you understand?”

“Not even myself?”

Ishak tossed his head. “Allah! You would drive a saint to murder.” He thrust the words out one by one, with all his strength of will and wit. “You are hunted. Your life is worth no more than a pebble in the desert. Pray your God to watch over you. No lesser power can defend you.”

“I understand,” said Aidan. The light mad mockery, at least, had left him. “I do, Ishak. How much have you risked, to tell me this?”

Ishak's blood ran hot, and then cold. His shoulders hunched. “It doesn't matter. My father — makes knives — for — ” His voice died. His throat throbbed and burned. He was dizzy, sick.

The Frank caught him before he toppled. He leaned against that slender strength; but only briefly. He willed himself erect. “I have to go,” he said. “Go — go with God. May God defend you.”

oOo

The boy all but fled, head down, stumbling as if he had gone blind. Aidan started after him, stopped. There was power on him. To break it, or to pierce it, might break his mind.

The cold that had struck when the sultan spoke of magic, had sunk to the bone. It was real; it was true. And Aidan had never seen. He had held in his hand a blade of Farouk's forging, stained with Thibaut's blood, and he had never understood, nor remembered.

There was a power in Masyaf. Stronger than he, perhaps; older; less human than he could ever be.

He had never had to contemplate such a thing. They had always been human, all his enemies. His own kind were his own kind. They did not turn on one another. That was a mortal madness.

Memory quivered. The Saracen, the cat-eyed beauty, Morgiana. If he could find her — if she knew what was in Masyaf — perhaps —

Would she aid a Frank? Others had, Ishak not least of all; but Aidan would never presume on Saracen charity. Perhaps she would not even know what demon answered the call of the Master of the Assassins.

If he ever saw her again, he could but ask.

He turned back to Joanna. She reined in her fear, but it was rising, draining the blood from her face, the light from her eyes. He drew her up and kissed her. “I'll defend you,” he said.

She clung as briefly as Ishak had. But she knew more of him than the boy had been allowed to see. She let herself believe him.

18.

Aleppo was white. White as chalk, white as bone, white as the blindness of sun on snow. The rock of its citadel loomed up to heaven, dazzling in the glare of noon; the green of poplar and cypress blurred to a shadow beneath it.

This was a starker beauty than Damascus. Its people were less languidly graceful, its orchards less inviting. The flow of its speech was deeper, harsher, closer to the stone on which it stood.

Even its lordship was different. Saladin was not sultan here. The child al-Salih Ismail, whose father had been sultan in Damascus before his death brought the upstart out of Egypt, ruled with his regent, Gumushtekin. That he ruled by Saladin's sufferance, mattered little to a city which had weathered years of siege against the interloper. Which had, above all, set the Assassins on him, until he made his own peace with them.