Alamut

by Judith Tarr

  “And you? What do you believe?”

  “That Allah is a goodly name for one man’s avarice.”

  Sinan was unoffended. “So? What do you call your own?”

  “I have none. My sins are pride and wrath. I call them by their names.”

  “Proud,” said Sinan, “indeed.” He cupped a single blood-red petal in his palm, regarding it gravely. His eyes lifted. “What would you have of me?”

  Directness was an artifice, in a Saracen. Aidan showed him directness bare. “Surrender.”

  A lesser man would lave burst into laughter. Sinan said,”Is there perhaps some doubt as to who is in whose power?” He gestured: a flick of the fingers. Out of the coverts and shadows of the garden and round its corners stepped men in white. Every one bore a strung bow, every arrow fixed unwaveringly on its target.

  Aidan smiled. “Oh,no,” he said. “No doubt at all. You asked what I would have. My heart’s desire would be your life, but that would not bring back my kin. I would rest content with your surrender; with your solemn oath that you will cease to torment the Lady Margaret, and the payment of reparation for the lives which you have taken.”

  The Master of Masyaf looked at him with the beginning of respect. “Ah, sir. I see that you are a civilized man.”

  “Hardly,” Aidan said. “The price I set will not be low. And you must abandon forever any hope of gaining power in the House of Ibrahim.”

  “There are other houses.”

  “Merchant houses. And merchants have no love for would-be kinsmen who resort to the crudity of murder. No,” said Aidan. “With your tactics in this battle, you have lost the war.”

  “That supposes that I intend to surrender. What if I should simply seize the lady and compel her?”

  “She’d die first,” Aidan said. “And you might find that I am a larger obstacle than I look.”

  “Large enough,” said Sinan, measuring his inches, “and strong, certainly. Yet Allah has made your kind subject to certain compulsions.” He took from his coat a small thing: a circle of iron on a chain, engraved with a star of six points, written about in Arabic and in what must surely be Hebrew. With a small shock of recognition, Aidan recalled the carving n the lintel of his cell.

  “The Seal of Suieiman,” said Sinan, “with which he bound he races of the jinn. I have set your name in it.”

  “But,” Aidan said, “I am not a Muslim.”

  “Nor was Suleiman.”

  Aidan plucked the Seal out of Sinan’s hand. The archers tensed, but none loosed an arrow. He turned the thing in his fingers. There was no power in it but the cold stillness of iron and the heat of human wishing.

  He weighed it in his hand. Weighing pretense; weighing the usefulness of the truth. Sinan did not know that he had, for the moment, no more power than any mortal. Until it had restored itself, Aidan had nothing but his wits and his bodily strength to sustain him. That, and the fear his kind roused in human men.

  To let Sinan think that this bauble and not Aidan’s own weakness bound him...

  Aidan dropped the Seal in Sinan’s lap and sighed. “So. You have me. Are you going to bargain with me?”

  “Perhaps. A slave is useful, but a free man who works for his wages has greater will to do well. Suppose that you, in yourself, could turn my mind away from the House of Ibrahim. Would you do it?”

  “I won’t kill for you.”

  Sinan smiled faintly. “Do you think that that is all I could wish of you?”

  “What more is there?”

  “How can I know that, until I know more of you?”

  “What is there to know, save that I am what I am?”

  “But that,” said Sinan, “is hardly simple; and, open secret though it may be, it remains a secret. All that is known of you is rumor and whisper only, save what any mortal man may claim: rank, wealth, prowess in the field. I need none of those. From pride and wrath I might profit, if they were turned to my purposes.” He stroked his beard slowly, reflectively. “It is early yet for bargains, or for the trust which must seal them. Yet I tell you this. If you would give yourself to me wholly, for a term which I shall set, then I would consider the granting of your demands.”

  “Only consider them?”

  “I should have to know that I may trust you.”

  Aidan stiffened.

  “We know Frankish faith,” said the Assassin. “An oath sworn to an infidel is no oath.”

  Aidan did not spring. Nor was it the archers who restrained him. Pride, indeed; and wrath. But if he was a young demon, he was old in the ways of humankind; he knew baiting when he suffered it. He bared his teeth in a fanged smile. “That may be. But the oath I swore to win recompense, I swore to my sufficiently Christian self.”

  “You will be given ample space for proof.” Sinan raised a hand. Two of the archers lowered their bows and came forward. Big men, those; giants among the Saracens. One was taller than Aidan, and easily thrice as broad.

  “You will wish to rest,” their master said, “and to reflect on what we have spoken of.” He nodded to the guards; they took station by the prince, one on either side.

  Aidan looked from one to the other. Neither would meet his glance. He raised one shoulder in a shrug, turned on his heel. They wavered transparently between dragging him back and letting him go.

  He walked calmly toward the gate. Sinan did not move to call him back. The guards hastened in his wake.

  oOo

  The choice should have been easier than it was. Either Aidan would surrender himself for his oath, or he would defy Sinan and win his vengeance by another path. He could kill if he must, and though he die for it. Certainly he would have the life of Sinan’s instrument, the liar, the traitor to her kind.

  It should have been simple. Better defiance and death than servitude. Yet he could not make the certain and inevitable choice. His mind kept wanting to be subtle. To enter the Assassin’s service; to make himself indispensable; to displace the she-devil. And then, when she was well out of favor and he deep in it, but with his term of service drawing to its end, to destroy them both.

  He knew that it was not in him to be so subtle for so long. He was no intriguer, and he was no man’s slave. But the voice behind his eyes refused to be silenced. Defy him, and perhaps he strikes again at Joanna. Certainly he will move on her son. The lady will surrender then: even she cannot resist such persuasion. But if you seem to yield, if you win from him a promise to make no move while you prove your good faith, what have you lost but your impatience?

  “My self-respect,” he snapped, stalking the length of his prison and back again. “My life, when I break. As I must. Then he will be all the more implacable in persecuting my kin.”

  You may be stronger than you think.

  He snarled, flinging himself down on the mat. He was trapped. He could admit it. He had thought of nothing but reaching Masyaf. Now that he was here, he had no plan and no sensible purpose.

  He was captive, emptied of magic, robbed of his mamluks, stripped of his sword, all in the Assassin’s power. He was not even certain that he could play for time until his power came back. And if he could, what then? There would still be Sinan, and Sinan’s demon, and their debt of death.

  Perhaps he should kill them both, and let the consequences settle themselves. Killing was simple; it was final. It put an end to all one’s waverings.

  He cast off the garments that reeked of Assassins, and lay naked in cold that could not touch him as it touched a mortal man. He shivered once, in memory of his father’s blood. But the fire burned strong in him. He wanted Joanna, suddenly: not for lust, not so much, but to fill his arms; to be warm against him, and to love him, and to be woman to his man. He had left her in a madness of grief, abandoned her in her pain. What must she be thinking of him now?

  If she was wise, she would be hating him.

  He lay on his face. His eyes wept, independent of the rest of him. Only a little; only briefly. He sighed and lay still.

  His
back prickled. There were sounds enough without, from the keen of the wind to the distant echoes of human presence. Within, the silence was absolute.

  He was not alone.

  With great care he turned on his side. She was there: the Assassin. Staring. He gave her an ample eyeful. She blushed; her eyes flicked away. He sprang.

  For a blackly joyous instant he had her. But she was air and water; she flowed out of his hands. And she laughed. Soft, light, infinitely mocking. It drove him mad.

  30.

  Sayyida added a pinch of cardamom to the pot and stirred it, frowning slightly. It needed something still, but she could not think what. She reached with absent competence to pluck Hasan out of the rice bin. He came up screeching, abruptly cut off as he caught sight of something over her shoulder.

  Morgiana was gone again, as she often was — fetching something new, no doubt. Now, it seemed, she had come back. Sayyida turned to see what she had brought.

  New. Indeed. And a great deal of him, too: that was clear to see. Morgiana was ruffled, and there was a bruise coming out on her cheekbone, but she was smiling. He was deeply and limply unconscious, cradled in her arms like a vastly overgrown infant.

  Part of Sayyida stood back appalled. Part — the part that ruled her body — set Hasan down and ran to help the ifritah.

  Between them they laid him in the mound of cushions and coverlets that served Morgiana for her bed, the divan being too small to hold him. Sayyida could not help noticing how well-formed all those inches were, and how surprisingly light. She was almost sorry to cover him decently with drawers from Morgiana’s store, and a thick soft blanket.

  He seemed to be fighting the spell — for it was that, Sayyida was sure. He stirred; his brows knit; he tried to speak. Morgiana touched his forehead. He stilled.

  She sat on her heels, watching him. Sayyida sat and watched her. Yes, she had a new bruise, and her hair was tangled, and there was a rent in her coat. “Did he do all that?” Sayyida asked.

  Morgiana shook herself. “He? Do?” She seemed to come to her senses, a little, but she did not take her eyes from his face. “Yes. Yes, he fought. So simple; so cleanly mad.”

  Sayyida caught her breath. “Mad? And you brought him here?”

  “Where else?”

  “But,” Sayyida said. “He’s dangerous.”

  “I can control him.”

  Sayyida looked at the last fading marks on her throat; at the new one on her face.

  Morgiana flushed faintly. “My misjudgments, both. He’s a surprisingly gentle creature when he’s not pricked to madness. And he has reason, as he sees it, to hate me. I’ll tame him slowly.”

  “If he doesn’t tear you apart first.”

  “He is not a wild beast.”

  Sayyida shut her mouth tight. The Frank lay between them, oblivious. His face in sleep was no more human than Morgiana’s. She could not imagine why she had thought him pretty, or even handsome. He was too starkly alien to be either.

  “Magic,” Morgiana said. “When he is with humans, he pretends to be like them; he puts on a mask, a glamour. But he squandered his power. He has none, now, but what makes him inescapably himself.”

  “None? No magic at all?”

  “It will come back. If he lets it. It’s like a spring that flows into a pool. He drank the pool dry; it needs time to fill again.”

  This was altogether out of Sayyida’s reckoning. She took refuge in Hasan, who advanced on the Frank with clear and present purpose. She caught him and held him over his objections; but he agreed, on reflection, to sit in her lap and stare.

  Morgiana stood over them. Her hand rested lightly, briefly, on Sayyida’s hair. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “He’d never harm you. Why do you think he hates me? I killed a human child, and tried to kill a human woman, and sundered him from his servants.”

  Her voice was frightening, because it was so calm, telling the truth without adornment. It was a very little bitter, a very little sad. But it refused to despair.

  “I’ll teach him the truth of me,” she said. “Watch and see.”

  oOo

  Aidan swam up through deep water to a dream of remarkable simplicity. A savor of cooking; a woman’s voice singing, clear and light and tuneful. For a piercing instant he was a child again, a small half-wild thing in the house of a forest witch, with no knowledge or understanding of courts and palaces; nor even that he had a father, still less a father who was a king. Almost he reached for the other half of him, the brother who had slept twined with him in the womb.

  His hand knew that it would find only emptiness. His body remembered itself. It was warm, in comfort. Except for the lively weight on its chest.

  He opened his eyes. Brown eyes stared down, set in a very young face. “Kha,” said their owner. “Lid.” The child bounced, grinning. “Khalid!”

  Aidan struggled to reclaim the breath that had been pummeled out of him. It was a real weight, and a very real infant — manchild, he could see: it wore a string of blue beads about its neck, and nothing else. “Khalid!” it cried jubilantly. “Khalid!”

  It swooped upward. His lungs, freed, gulped air. A young woman stared down at him. She had the child’s round brown eyes, though not his round brown face. Hers was thinner, almost sharp. She blushed suddenly and covered it with a corner of her headcloth.

  He had already deduced that she was a Saracen. He could see that he was not in his cell in Masyaf. Not at all. That Morgiana had something to do with it, he could guess. “Did she kidnap you, too?” he inquired.

  Veiled, the girl was bolder. She shifted the baby to her hip, whence he regarded Aidan with joyful intentness. “She’s my friend,” the girl said.

  Aidan was speechless.

  The girl scowled. “It is possible, you know. That she could have a friend. What do you know of her?”

  “That she kills,” he said.

  “Are your hands clean of blood, then?”

  He sat up. His cheeks were hot. It seemed to be his curse, to be put in his place by veiled and proper Muslim women.

  This one recoiled a little as he moved, setting her body between himself and her baby. She was afraid of him. Mad, she was thinking. Dangerous. And a Frank.

  His power was coming back.

  He sat still. She eased slowly. “I’m sorry Hasan woke you up,” she said.

  “I can think of worse things to wake to.”

  Her eyes warmed into a smile — slow, at first; unwilling; but irresistible. “My name is Sayyida.”

  He inclined his head. “Aidan,” he said.

  “Are you hungry?”

  He was. It surprised him.

  She did not trust him, not yet: she took Hasan with her, and came back balancing him on her hip and a platter on her head. He barely paused to admire the feat. Her veil was secure now, but he saw the blush beneath it as he rose to take the platter. He could not help smiling, which made her blush the fiercer.

  She would not eat with him. A woman should not, and he was an infidel. But Hasan knew no such compunction. She had to let him go to wait on Aidan, and he dove straight for Aidan’s lap. She dove after him, but halted.

  “I won’t hurt him,” Aidan said gently.

  She looked down. She was angry, a little, but not at him. “She said you wouldn’t.”

  His teeth clenched. “And you’ll take her word for it.”

  “I’ve known her since I was as young as Hasan.”

  “And me, you don’t know at all.” He made himself relax, reach for a loaf of the flat eastern bread, dip it in the pot. Hasan eyed it hungrily. He divided it, fed half to the child, who took it as no more than his due. He nibbled his own half. “This is good.”

  She laughed as if she could not help herself. “Yes, I can cook! But don’t tell my husband. He thinks that’s beneath a woman of good family.” She stopped; she seemed to realize what she had said. She rose abruptly and strode through the vaulted hall that was, he saw now, a cavern.

  He did not follow
her. Hasan wanted more bread. Aidan gave it to him, wanting to laugh, not quite sure he dared. Here he sat in a cave decked like a sultan’s harem, brought hence by magic, with a baby in his lap, and its mother suffering the most common of woman’s afflictions: a husband with whom she was at odds. He wondered if he was expected to console her.

  That was unworthy of either of them. He ate to quiet his hunger, sharing with Hasan. By the time they had finished, she was back, daring him to ask why she had been crying. He asked, “Am I allowed to explore?”

  She was tensed to cast his curiosity in his teeth. She had to stop, breathe deep, shift her mind in this unexpected direction. “I don’t think I can stop you.” She paused. “Are you up to it yet?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever felt better.” And it was true. He was fresh; he was strong. His power was the barest trickle yet, but it was swelling.

  She did not believe him, but she was sensible: she did not try to quarrel with him. She did insist that he dress — cover himself, as she put it. The clothes she brought were robes of the desert.

  His own, cleaned and skillfully mended. But not his weapons. Of course: he would not be allowed those.

  There were three linked caverns: the great hall; the small chimneyed chamber which served as a kitchen; the wonder of jeweled walls and flowering stone, with its gently steaming pool. He barely lingered even there. His mind turned outward.

  It was morning; his bones knew it. Night’s bitter cold was all but gone; the heat of the day had barely begun. All about was desert: sand and stones and sky.

  And power. He traced with his own the circle of the ban. It was smaller than that about Masyaf, and stronger to measure. Its meaning was perfectly distinct. Yes, he might explore: for a fair distance, in human paces. But escape, he could not. Not even upward. A more perfect prison for one of his kind, he could not have imagined.

  He scaled the crag above the narrow mouth of the cave, welcoming the effort, the toll it took on hands still torn from the crawl to Masyaf. At the summit he dropped down, arms about his knees. The sky was impossibly wide. Away below stretched a ruin of tumbled stones. Earth had covered it, time beat it down, but it was still visibly a work of men’s hands.