The Codex Lacrimae (4 page)

A sudden stillness about the other man made Farbauti glance at Morpeth.

“Morpeth?”

The armored warrior motioned Farbauti to silence.

Morpeth had continued to watch Ibn-Khaldun when Farbauti fell silent, but he also carefully looked about the Krak for any other defensive capabilities he might have overlooked on his initial survey. Something under the southwest tower caught his eye.

“Farbauti, look to that tower. The defensive slots. What do you see? I mean,
See
?”

His companion moved his horse closer to Morpeth's own and leaned forward, peering carefully at the indicated tower.

“Modgud's Grin!” Farbauti cursed. “What are they doing here? Odin
cannot
know. We've been too careful!” As he spoke, two bits of darkness detached themselves from the shadows under the ramparts and rose high into the clear blue morning sky.

“It's the Codex Lacrimae, Farbauti. Of course he's aware of it. Santini must be there — the ravens wouldn't be here otherwise! They're merely curious to get a look at him. The Codex is
not
awake. It's not. We would know!”

Morpeth watched as the two flying shadows resolved themselves into gigantic black ravens, both of which were streaking their way. With one hand he reached quickly for the bow that was slung on his shoulder. Morpeth's other hand deftly fingered the feathered fletching of one of the arrows in the quiver hanging from his saddle.

“Morpeth, no — those ravens are Hugin and Munin!” Farbauti exclaimed. He raised his hand to Morpeth's forearm, attempting to stay the man's bowshot.

“
Ja
,
but they are far from Odin's high seat of Hlidskjalf, Farbauti. Now, leave me be!” Morpeth wrenched his aiming arm from his partner's grasp and fired.

The great birds were no longer there, however, and Morpeth's arrow arced with deadly gracefulness through the empty sky.

“What was
that
,
Farbauti?” Morpeth hissed angrily. “You know how difficult it is to even catch sight of them, let alone get an opportunity to strike!”

“Enough, Morpeth. This is the Hunt, and we're near the end of it.” Farbauti tugged on the reins of his horse, his anger coldly apparent. “I've no bow. A Huntsman might be able to down the first of Odin's ravens, but even Mogthrasir's Speed wouldn't get you a chance at the second.”

“Fimbulvetr's coming, Farbauti,” Morpeth warned, referring to a snow-filled winter that was three years' long. “It might be to our benefit if even one of the All-Father's ‘flying eyes' was blinded.”

Morpeth's words were hot, but he knew Farbauti's cool assessment to be correct. He'd acted in haste.

“It'll come, but let's stave off Odin's anger a bit longer, eh?”

Farbauti yanked on the rein and faced Saladin's approaching army.

“Come. Let's return to these wretched people and begin the end of this. With his damnable birds alerting Odin, we've even less time than we thought. All we need is Thor or Heimdall catching wind of this. We've plans to make for the assault, and Fafnir has to be notified.” Farbauti nodded toward the fortress. “Ibn-Khaldun will wait, as will Santini.”

Eyes smoldering, Morpeth waited until he saw the white-garbed man that was Ibn-Khaldun and his miserable little caravan pass through the front gate.

Murder in their hearts, the young men yanked on the reins of their mounts, spurring the stallions into gallops that moved the huntsmen toward Saladin's army like a demonic wind.

******

Ibn-Khaldun and the caravan reached the plateau before the Krak's front gate. The elderly scholar nickered his camel, and brought the animal about to survey the valley. Jacob and Ghannen joined him.

He frowned and looked to the east, confirming that his senses hadn't deserted him here at the last stage of his journey.

Another cloud hovered above the eastern horizon.

It seemed impossible to the scholar that
two
armies of considerable size should coincidentally be nearing from
both
the south and east just as he arrived! This was a coordinated attack, and Ibn-Khaldun didn't have to see his two western pursuers to identify their handiwork.He suddenly felt very old, tremblingly close to breaking.

“Two armies,” Ghannen said thoughtfully. “We could, indeed, be here awhile, Master Khaldun.”

“Let's get inside,” Ibn-Khaldun ordered coldly. “We'll get to the gate first, eh?”

The three camels responded to their masters' goads and soon came before an enormous wooden gate.

“If you come in peace, blessed be your path, and may you find comfort at the journey's end,” a teenaged voice said, its cracking tone arising from a stone hole beside the double-doored gate.

“Peace is in my heart, and hospitality at journey's end is a blessing,” the Muslim scholar replied. “Pellion, is that you? No one can take you seriously with a voice like that! Enough of these pleasantries — open the door!”

The eyes in the aperture stared widely in surprise.

“Master Khajen!” The guard exclaimed, with another adolescent break in his voice. A shifting of wood and rattling of metal could be heard as a crossbar raised. “Master! It's good to see you again,” the young apprentice exclaimed as a few servants pushed open the gate.

“And you,” Ibn-Khaldun replied, “although I'll have to speak with Father Arcadian about his choice of gate keepers. We've enough blunt blades for this kind of work. Your mind should be staying sharp in the scriptorium with Ríg and Jeremiah. What are you doing here?”

“That's a story in itself, Master,” Pellion said as the old man passed.

Ibn-Khaldun swung his arm wide to encompass the wagons and camels behind him. “These are fellow travelers who wouldn't like to be caught outside the walls. Ghannen, Jacob, allow me to introduce a student of mine: Pellion.”

The squire bowed slightly. “Welcome – these are difficult times, but you and your people will have shelter, food, and safety here for as long as you need.” The words were slightly rushed because midway through speaking them it seemed as if Pellion remembered something of urgency. “Master Khajen,” he said, turning from the entering travelers. “We're about to be attacked by an enemy from the east!”

“I know nothing about the identity of the eastern army, Pellion,” Ibn-Khaldun answered, “but I'm more concerned with the nearness of the southern one!”

“What? A southern army?” The young guard's features grew panicked.

A creaking from the gate behind him returned his attention to the fortress. Three more Hospitallers were suddenly standing there, hands on sword hilts.

Pellion inhaled deeply, calming himself and recalling his position. He gave a slight bow from the waist and said, “Master Khajen ibn-Khaldun ibn-Khalid al-HārÅ«n, I apologize. You and your companions are welcome in the Krak des Chevaliers.”

The Hospitaller knights straightened into respectful stances, and Pellion motioned for the weary travelers to enter.

Chapter 3

An Aspect of Fate

A month before Ibn-Khaldun arrived at the Krak des Chevaliers, Clarinda Trevisan ignored Genevieve Stratioticus's elbow as it nudged deeply into her side.

She shoved her friend back and cast her gaze upward to the vast dome of Hagia Sophia, a great basilican church in Constantinople. In a golden gloaming through the windows of the upper galleries, the late afternoon sun shifted from a cloudless cyan sky into the dusky indigo color of evening.

“Clare!” Genevieve hissed.

Clarinda continued to disregard Genie, caught up in looking upward, even if her neck ached because of the golden Egyptian collar that topped the green silk dress she'd borrowed for this evening's mass. Clarinda's friend, Genevieve Stratioticus, had chosen it, assuring her that the garment was in keeping with current fashion of the upper classes.

As a sailing merchant's daughter of seventeen, Clarinda gave little regard to what anyone thought of her personal fashion tastes. She preferred the home-sewn, loose linen tunic and trousers that she wore while aboard her father's ship. Even if this heavy plate was the kind of collar that Genevieve called “very fashionable,” the metallic curves that covered her shoulders and breasts were simply too heavy and hot to bear in these closing weeks of August!

“Clare!” Genevieve again prodded her, her voice an urgent whisper. “For once, could you please just look at the priest?”

Clarinda acquiesced, clasping her hands dramatically together in a steeple beneath her chin. The pious action allowed her to give attention again to the dome. Thousands of oil lamps rested upon flat silver disks above the assembled
crowd, their flickering flames glinting off gossamer wires that descended from the roof like dew-laden spider-strands.

When combined with the sunlight reflecting off the gold-gilt mosaics on the dome's interior, the sight became hypnotic.

Dio omnipotente
,
she thought, the workmanship that wrought this place!

Her thoughts strayed to other glorious sights she'd seen while sailing with her father — the pyramids in Egypt and the Acropolis at Athens both vivid in her memory.

At thought of her father, Clarinda's mind turned to the sea, and tears flooded her eyes at his uncertain fate.

“Clarinda, please! I'm
serious
.
You're now officially embarrassing me!” the teenaged girl next to her hissed, giving another nudge.

“Forget them. What about God?” Clarinda shot back, finally irritated enough to speak. Sometimes her friend didn't know when to shut up. “Do you think God cares if I'm watching a priest or looking at candles?”

“God isn't what this is all about, you mule!” Genevieve's expression was tortured.

“We're in a
basilica
,
Genie,” Clarinda whispered. “I think God might have something to do with it.”

“Only if He's going to come down and dine with those who are here tonight. I
know
some of these people, Clarinda, and we can get invited to the best dinner parties
if
the person I bring can be trusted
not
to gawk at every beautiful thing like...a...a…commoner! I swear, sometimes….”

Clarinda let her friend's words become a meaningless hum and returned to looking up at the ceiling.

Padre
.

The tears came back at the thought of him.

In her blurred vision the entire domed area became the celestial heavens that had hovered protectively over her family's ship, the
Maritina
,
for the thousand nights that she'd been aboard the vessel. Where in this moment of sea yearning could she make out the North Star among the burning oil lamps? Where could she find the guidance to learn what had happened to her father?

Clarinda and her father, Angelo Trevisan, had arrived a fortnight ago in Constantinople. They'd departed Venice a month prior, with stops along the Adriatic and Aegean coasts for some minor trading, sailing into the Harbor of the Golden Horn late in the afternoon with the five ships that belonged to their family in Venice.

Various goods from the West were on board the ships that her father wanted to trade in Constantinople, the Holy Land, and a couple large consignments bound through Russian lands for the overland route to Scandinavia.

Clarinda thought the cargoes in the ships were generally unremarkable, typical freight that the Trevisans had traded during the two centuries of family involvement in mercantile endeavor.

The ships carried salt, bolts of finished Flemish cloth, silver, amber, and furs to the Levant, with an expectation that the Trevisans would return from the eastern Mediterranean with loads of ivory, silks, dyestuffs, glue, pepper, wax, and medicinal and herbal spices. She'd heard her father's navigator, Pasquale, promise Angelo that he'd take care of the two consignment ships by way of a contact in Constantinople so, as far as the teenaged girl was concerned, this voyage was business as usual.

The only exceptional parts of this particular cargo were two crates her father had kept in his spacious compartment on the lead ship.

Most likely, they were probably new chests that Angelo Trevisan bought in Milan for holding his considerable wardrobe — that is, they could be for clothes, if they hadn't reminded Clarinda of coffins!

When Clarinda had inquired about the contents of the crates, her father had stared silently at her, and then covered the wooden containers with a broad blanket from his bunk.

“
Perché non si può dire ciò che è in loro, Padre
?” Clarinda had asked incredulously, wondering at her father's reluctance to tell her the crates' contents. “Really — I could just open them. Why won't you tell me what's in them, Father?”

An awkward silence greeted her question, broken only by the creak of boots on the deck overhead as crewmembers continued to load the cargo. She'd been leaning over the wide chart of the Mediterranean Sea, concentrating on the area in the easternmost sector to the south of Anatolia where there'd recently been increased pirate activity.