by Judith Tarr
They walled Aidan in spears. He hewed at them; they only grew the thicker. They pressed him close. They pricked him, hampering his sword-arm. He thrust the blade into its sheath and seized a spear, hurling its astonished wielder over his head.
Another kept his wits about him. Aidan froze. A spearpoint rested on the most tender of places. A white wolf-grin gleamed beyond it.
Aidan shattered that grin with the haft of the spear.
But the spearman had a dozen brothers, and each of them seemed to have a dozen more. None of whom would give Aidan a proper battle. Only prick, and prick, and prick, and circle, and sunder him from his mamluks.
Whom he could not find. Not one. Not with eye, not with mind.
Mind.
He forgot the spear in his hand and the spears that hemmed him in. He cast wide with voice and power. “Bitch! Murderer! Coward! Come out and face me!”
His tormentors fell back. He hardly saw. “Assassin! I know your stink. Come out of your lair!”
Nothing. No sight, no sign of her. He howled until the mountains rang. “Morgiana! Morgiana!”
The mountains came down, and the night with them.
oOo
The circle of Bedouin drew back, blinking in the grey dawn. Some of them were down. At least one was dead.
Morgiana spurned the dead man with her foot, and knelt by the one who had killed him. Very much alive, that one, but stunned: the butt of a spear had felled him even as he woke the echoes with her name. She spelled him deeper into darkness, only then daring to touch him, to lay her palm against his cheek. He was thinner than she remembered, the skin stretched tighter over the fine strong bones. “I shall teach you not to hate me,” she said to him.
Her wolves watched with edged fascination. She wheeled upon them. “Take him up. Bind him as I tell you.” And when they did not leap to obey: “Now!”
They moved quickly enough, once they had begun. Even their kind could be wary of trespassing in the Assassins’ domain; and they were deep in it. They bound the Frank with cords both soft and strong, and set him on the best of their camels. She rode behind him, steadying him. He was warm in her arms.
The Banu Nidal gathered the wounded and the dead, and swept the field clean. The greater part of them gathered their beasts and their booty and departed where Morgiana bade them, making all the speed that they might. A small company remained under her eye, but those were the best of them, their sheikh himself and the pack of his sons. Their way was the swifter and the more secret. They took it at racing pace, under a glamour that made of them a shadow and a shimmer.
The tribe camped on an oasis which was their secret, a green haven in circling mountains. The roads of trade and war ran closer to it than travelers knew, but the entry was narrow and hidden and most well guarded.
They rode down it in the last light of evening, stretching their weary mounts into a gallop, shrilling their victory. The guard of the pass let them through with a shout. In the field below, the tents emptied: women, children, a few sullen boys left behind to guard the camp. Old men, there were none. Men of the Banu Nidal lived only as long as they could fight.
Morgiana saw her prisoner laid in a tent beside the sheikh’s own, on the tribe’s best rugs and blankets. “This is mine,” she said, “and I will drink the blood of the tribe, if I come for him and he is gone.”
The sheikh nodded. “We can make sure of that,” he said. He knelt and thrust up the dusty robe, and drew his knife. “Hamstrung, he’ll do no running, but he’ll be sturdy enough for aught else you wish. Or a quick thrust, here, in the heel, and a cord through it — ”
She knocked him sprawling. “You shall answer to me with your own body for every drop of his blood you shed. That” — she slashed his bony chest with his own blade — ”is for the word of his maiming. Keep him close and keep him safe, and cherish him as you cherish yourself, for his life shall be as yours.” She held up a vial. “He will sleep for yet a while. When he wakes, dose him with this. But gently! If he sleeps too deep, or dies of it, I will see that you pay.”
The sheikh took the vial in a hand that would not stoop to tremble. He feared her: he was no fool. But it was a clean fear, the fear of the wolf for the rival who bests him. He bowed to her will, but he did not lower his eyes. “I will guard him as myself.”
She nodded, once, and turned her back on him. She paused to draw down Aidan’s robe, and to brush his cheek with her fingers. In the space between breath and breath, she was gone.
oOo
Aidan wandered in a dim strange dream. He saw the camp on the mountain, and it was all broken and scattered. His mamluks were gone out of his knowing; the horses, the camels, his beautiful sword, all gone. Beyond grief was rage and loss and bitter helplessness.
The dream blurred. He lay in a woman’s arms on a lofty,swaying bed. Her touch was gentle, her body warm and supple against him; her scent was wondrous sweet. Somewhere in the light, he knew that there should be hate. Here was only peace.
He clawed his way out of that peace, through a long dark and a longer twilight. His body was a shape limned in ache. Twilight shaped itself into mortal dimness: dark walls that shifted with the wind’s song, air heavy with manifold stinks, man and goat and camel and ancient smoke all mingled. He gagged on it, and gagging, knew that he was awake.
He lay on musty carpet in a tent woven of goat’s hair, bound hand and foot, with the throbbing of a blow in his head. Of the stroke he knew nothing. He had gone to sleep among his mamluks. He had — waked? Fought?
Yes. Fought. Now, too clearly, he was captive. But not in Masyaf. The wind’s song was a song of open places, with voices in it, and the blatting of goats, the clatter of hoofs on stone, the roar of a camel.
His power stretched stiffly, but it stretched. He knew a moment’s bitter amusement. So, then. He had had his night’s sleep, however ill his body had taken it. He touched minds; a mind, more open than others, because it was younger and somewhat simple. Desert, oasis, camp. Banu Nidal: Bedouin, deep-desert tribesfolk, bound in service to Allah and to a demon of the air. The men were out raiding — resentment, at that; one should go, one was old enough, one could string one’s father’s bow — but the strongest had come back with the demon, and a morsel for the demon’s dinner.
The morsel lay on his side in the tent, ascertaining that his bonds were cleverly tied. He could move with fair freedom, even sit up, but the knots were all out of his reach.
Sitting up was a mistake. His stomach, empty, did its best to heave itself out on the carpet.
The spasms passed too slowly, leaving him in a knot, shaking, running with cold sweat. For a long while he could do little more than breathe.
And, in spite of himself, think. Who the demon was, he could well guess. Time enough yet to wonder why she had brought him here and not to her master in Masyaf. Maybe they had had a falling-out. Or maybe she wanted to carve him into collops for her own, sole pleasure.
She was not here. That, he was reasonably sure of. He was being kept until she deigned to claim him.
The guard in front of his tent had heard his convulsions; but it was a bold man who meddled with the demon’s prey, and this one was no paladin. Soon enough, someone else came to the guard’s call, no bolder perhaps, but more mindful of the demon’s will. Unharmed, the newcomer’s mind jabbered. Unharmed, or she dines on my liver. Beneath it: If he dies while we leave him unmolested, how can she blame us? And, to that: Easily. Oh, easily.
Light stabbed him. A shadow blunted it. The reek of human and of goat nigh overwhelmed him. The mind babbled on. Awake. Iblis take him! Food — water — the vial, as she commanded- Inspiration struck; relief loomed huge. Woman’s work, that. Let a woman pay, if he takes ill.
“Yes,” Aidan said sweetly. “Let her.”
The man fled.
He was not so timid in ruling his women. But the one who came, came of her own will, brandishing her bruises like a banner. She was a strong man’s woman; she walked with pride, queenly erec
t even in the confines of the tent.
She wore no veil: strange after so long in Islam, to see a woman’s naked face. She was hardly a beauty, and the desert had aged her well before her time. No doubt her husband had thought of that in allowing her to play nursemaid to the demon’s prey.
She set down what she carried: a round of flat bread bearing a handful of dates and a bit of cheese, and a skin of what must surely be water, and a wooden cup. She was keenly aware of his beauty, but she was a damnably sensible woman. He was beautiful; Morgiana was terrible. It was a simple enough choice.
She helped him to sit up, this time with no worse consequence than a moment’s dizziness. He was not, it was clear, to be unbound, even to eat. She fed him with visible enjoyment, bite by bite until he would take no more, and held the cup to his lips.
His nose wrinkled. Ancient goatskin, salt and sulfur — water of the desert as it too often was. But beneath it, something else. Darkness, and sleep.
His throat burned, crying for water. His will hardened against it. He fell forward. The cup flew from her hand, scattering its burden of sleep. He lunged upon the waterskin.
She snatched it away. “Ah,” she said laughing, “a clever one! What would you give for it?”
“A smile,” he said.
Her head tilted. “I already have that.”
“If you already had a gold bezant, would you refuse another?”
“If I knew I could get something better.”
“What would that be?”
Her eyes danced upon him. She was not so old; nor must she have been so unlovely, when she was young. “My husband is a terrible man, but She is more terrible than he. If you kiss me, what can he do but rage?”
“He can beat you.”
She shrugged. “He hits me. I hit him back. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I let him win.” She dangled the waterskin, enticing. “Are you thirsty, O my gazelle?”
“For your kisses, O my fawn.”
She gave him both, with rich pleasure, and left him the waterskin: a gift more precious than gold. “Pretend,” she advised as she left him. “Sleep. Him, I doubt you can buy with kisses; and She is not to be bought at all.”
What she thought of Morgiana, he hardly needed power to see. She would reckon it a fair exchange, if she paid in pain to thwart the demon. But even she would not go so far as to set him free.
He lay where she had left him, flexing his wrists in their bonds. They were most well knotted.
No one, he noticed, had considered the most human consequence. Perhaps they expected him to soil himself. He was not ready to do that, yet.
Submission, he never thought of. The longer he lay, the more sure he was, that he was not watched by other than mortal means. He was supposed to be deep in drugged sleep, mindless and helpless until she came for him.
He had an oath to keep, and a debt to pay: greater now by the worth of a dozen mamluks. This captivity was no part of it.
His captors did not know what he was. She had not seen fit to tell them.
He began to smile.
28.
Sayyida burrowed in the depths of the clothes press, winnowing outright rags from clothes that could be mended from what needed no mending at all. Laila always relegated to rags what she was tired of, no matter its condition; Sayyida had already found a veil of peacock silk with gold thread in it, that would do very well for when she wanted to look pretty for Maimoun. She wrapped it about her neck and dug deeper.
“This would suit you,” someone said.
Sayyida erupted from the press. Morgiana held up a plum-colored gown. It clashed hideously with her hair.
By slow degrees Sayyida’s heart stopped hammering. She took the gown in fingers that still shook a little, and drew a long, steadying breath. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.
The ifritah laughed. Her throat was a patchwork of greening bruises, but her voice was her own again, only a little huskiness left. She looked as if she would have liked to dance.
No sooner thought than done. She swept Hasan out of the tangle of castoffs and whirled him about, to his manifest delight.
“You’re in good spirits,” Sayyida observed, a little sourly.
Morgiana’s grin was all mischief. “Oh,I am. I am!” She hugged Hasan to her and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks. “Do you know what I’ve done?”
“Something appalling,” said Sayyida.
“Oh, yes. It is that. I haven’t even killed anybody.” That sobered her a little. But her secret was too much for her. She held it yet a while, as if she could not bear to let it go. Then: “I have him now.”
“Him?”
“Him!” She bounced; there was no other word for it. “My Frank. I caught him before anyone knew what I did, and took him away. He’s safe now, till I’m ready to claim him.”
Morgiana acting like a silly chit of a girl was a revelation. Sayyida tried to bring a little reason into the proceedings. “Does he have an opinion? Or aren’t you letting him have one?”
“He will. When I’m ready.” She laughed again, almost — Allah help them all — a giggle. “Do you remember how you almost poisoned me? I borrowed the bottle. He’ll sleep till I want him to wake.”
Worse and worse. “And then?”
“He wakes.” She waited; Sayyida failed to extol her brilliance. “You don’t see. He wakes, in the place I’ve readied for him. He’ll be wild, I know that. But I’ll tame him. From hate to love is no distance at all; and we belong together. He’s a child, but he has the beginnings of sense. He’ll see what has to be.”
“You,” said Sayyida, “are stark raving mad.”
Even that could not touch Morgiana. “You are mortal,” she said. “You think in mortal ways. He and I — we are of the same kind. He will remember that. He will come to see as I see.”
“May Allah will it,” Sayyida said.
oOo
Sayyida wore the veil and the gown that night. Morgiana was delighted to help her: to wash her hair with a little of Laila’s henna and put it up with a clasp that Maimoun had made himself, silver set with turquoises; and paint for her eyes, and even a whisper of scent. She had not felt so close to beautiful since her wedding.
Maimoun was late in coming. That was nothing to fret over: he was dining with a friend or two, and they liked to pass the night in playing backgammon. Maimoun would stay a while, for decency: a man should not seem too eager for his wife.
She waited alone. Fahimah and Morgiana had Hasan. She thought of going to fetch him, for the company, but it would hardly do for Maimoun to come back while she did it. She wriggled in her unaccustomed splendor, and tried not to rub the kohl from her eyelids. If he did not come soon, she was going to stop feeling splendid and start feeling silly. What was she doing in paint and scent and hennaed curls? She was plain gawky Sayyida, no more a beauty than she was a sultan’s bride.
She knew his step: solid, like him, and a little self-important. It shook her out of her half-drowse, drew her up at the angle Morgiana had told her was her best, tensed her as it always did these days, since she had secrets to keep.
Outside the door, he hesitated. She held still. Sometimes his friends had wine, which she was not supposed to know about. But she always knew, because he moved more carefully and talked more freely, and his breath smelled of mint.
He came in slowly. His brows were knit. Her nose caught neither wine nor mint, but something sweeter. It reminded her of ...
She was wearing it. Laila’s perfume.
No. He would never do that. Not with his master’s wife.
His eyes fixed on her face. He never saw the veil at all, or the gown, or even the kohl that made her eyes almost beautiful. He said, “You’ve been hiding something from me.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again.
“I told you,” he said. “I told you not to see her.”
She could lie. She could deny. She could scream at him. She said calmly, “Who told you she was here?”
&n
bsp; “Laila.”
It was out before he thought. He flushed.
“That,” she said, “was treachery.”
His flush deepened to crimson. “You admit it?”
“I won’t lie.” Her hands shook; she knotted them. “I didn’t have any choice, Maimoun. She was hurt; she was sick. She had nowhere else to go.”
He advanced on her. “I forbade you. You defied me. How dared you? How dared you?”
Her back struck the wall. She did not even remember moving. She had never seen Maimoun like this. “Maimoun! Won’t you listen? She’s a friend. She came to me; she needed me. How could I cast her out?”
“I told you not to see her.”
He bulked over her. She tried to get up; he pushed her down. She would not cry — she would not. “Why? Why do you hate her so much?”
“She is a horror. She has killed more times than anyone can count.”
“Who told you that?”
He would not answer.
“It was Laila, wasn’t it? You know how little she loves me.”
“Sometimes she tells the truth.”
“You don’t even know the woman!”
“Woman? Woman, is it? I know whose slave she is. I know how she has cursed your family. I know it all, Sayyida. You thought you could keep it from me, didn’t you? All of you.” He sneered. “Bahram the eunuch. Bahram the unmanned, with a passion for silver-hilted daggers. You made a fool of me.”
She clutched his coat. “Maimoun! Stop. Please, stop.”
He tore her hands free. “No, I won’t stop. You wouldn’t stop harboring her, even when I expressly forbade you.”
Something snapped. She did not want it to. She tried to hold it together, to keep her voice from shaking. “She needed me. I’ve known her since I was a baby. I couldn’t turn her away.”
“She needs nothing and no one. You chose. You chose her, and you defied me. What else have you done? Where have you gone? Whom have you seen? Spoken to? Slept with? Is even my son my own?”
“Maimoun,” she said. “Don’t.”
He hauled her up. His spittle sprayed her face. “Don’t! You command me, woman? You laugh in my face? Go on. Tell me he truth. Tell me how you scorn me.”