by Judith Tarr
She clenched against him; but she could not be free of him. Not any longer. He stood in the heart of her and showed her herself. Morgiana. Free and strong and glad. No slave to any mortal man, never again.
She wanted to see it. And yet she wanted to cling to what she knew, whatever its pain, whatever its cost to life and sanity.
Sinan spoke in their silence, softly, each word the link of a chain. “You are mine. Your will is my will, your life my life, unless I choose to let them go. Serve me, and I may set you free. Defy me, and I bind you for all eternity.”
“Are you Allah Himself,” she demanded of him, gasping it, struggling against bonds and oaths and geas, “that you should so compel me?”
“I am Allah’s servant; I wield the power of Suleiman.”
Her body shook; her fists clenched convulsively. “I — do — defy you. I can.” She sucked in her breath, battling. “I can. I can!”
Freer, each word; stronger. He saw it. “Can you,” he asked her, “defend all that is dear to you, for every moment of every day, until you yield or they are all lost?”
She smiled. Not triumphant, not yet. But she had seen the chains about her, and they were chains of air, She was beginning to comprehend it; to believe it. “Can you,” she asked her master, “hope to rule a realm under such persecution as I will visit upon it, if you touch anything that is mine?”
“You are powerless. You can only threaten.”
She faltered. He was her master. His words tangled about her, dulled her wits, sapped her strength.
“No!” Aidan cried, not caring who heard. “It’s he who is powerless; it’s he who has nothing left but threats. Open your mind and your senses. Look at him!”
She looked. She saw power, terror.
Mortality.
Fear.
Fear?
“Fear!” Aidan said, loud in Sinan’s silence. “He’s afraid of you. He knows what you can do — what we can both do, if he presses us too far.”
She was whiter than he had ever seen her, white as death. She would die; she could die, if she willed it, if she clenched her power about her heart, like a fist, just so. Just —
Will and body convulsed together. A sound escaped her, raw animal noise; but strength in it, and will, and — at last — understanding. Her hand swept up, out.
Sinan sat uncomprehending; but slowly he saw what he must see. More slowly still, he began to understand it. His fidais were gone. All but one, who stood bewildered and alone. And Morgiana was smiling, a white wild smile, the joy of the falcon that flings itself free into the sky.
She turned that smile on the lone fidai; she beckoned. He came, eyes locked in hers. “Child,” she purred, “are you a faithful follower of our way?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Do you see that man?” Her finger stabbed at Sinan.
The boy nodded again.
“He has betrayed our Mission. He lusts after a woman of the infidels; he takes an infidel for his servant. Who is to say that he will not command us all to worship the three false gods of the Franks?”
The boy’s lips drew back from his teeth.
“Just so,” she said, all but crooning it. “Take him now, fidai, warrior of the Faith. Hold him until I bid you slay him.”
Sinan struggled in a grip too strong to break. His captor wore an expression of perfect and implacable determination. It would not yield for any word of his, any threat or command or pleading.
“Now,” said Morgiana, and her voice was deadly gentle. “Are you prepared to hear us?”
Sinan would not bend; he did not seem inclined to break. He eased in the fidai’s hands. “I will hear you,” he said.
She nodded, eyes steady on him. She was half-drunk with freedom, with the first sweet taste of victory. That drunkenness could be deadly; could lose them all that they had gained.
But her voice was as steady as her eyes, no hint in it of weakness. “I recall that you have wrought well for the Mission. I expect that you will continue to do so. But that must be accomplished without the aid of either a Frankish baroness or an Aleppan merchant house. They gain nothing for the Mission; they only feed your avarice.”
“And my pride,” he said calmly. “Be so kind as to remember that. But even I am wise enough to know when I have failed.”
“Which wisdom did not wake in you until you saw a greater profit in yon captive Frank.”
“That is no less than you have done yourself.”
“I make no pretense of sanctity.”
The black eyes glanced from Morgiana to Aidan and back again. They understood much too much. “He is of your race,” said Sinan, as if he had only begun to perceive its meaning. “Yet for him you would turn against us? For an infidel you would betray the Mission?”
Morgiana’s eyes began to glitter. “I turn you back to the way of Hasan-i-Sabbah, on his name be peace, and remove the temptation to stray. In earnest of it, I ask more than your bare word. The blood-price of a baron and an heir to a barony, and the price for the wounding of a baroness-”
Sinan went pale. Now at last she had struck him, and struck deep.
“You will pay,” said Morgiana, “as we decree.”
He could not speak: the dagger pricked too close. She summoned his servants. They came to her bidding. They heaped gold into the great chest which she bade them set at Aidan’s feet; atop the gold they poured a glittering stream of jewels. It was pleasure, that warmth under his breastbone, under even the anger. It was honey-sweet to watch the Master of Masyaf bleed wealth that was more precious to him than blood, and to know that he knew all that he lost with it: his slave who was, his slave who might have been, his certainty that no man in the world was feared as greatly as he. He was master of Syria, more truly than the man who ruled in Damascus, but he could not master the Slave of Alamut. He sat in his own garden, with the dagger of his own fidai at his throat, and paid as he was bidden to pay.
She knew to the last dirham how much he could spare, and how much would cause him pain. He had to see Aidan claim it, and their bargain written and signed and sealed with immortal fire.
When it was done, the dagger lowered from his throat. “So, then, sir Frank,” he said. His voice was calm; his eyes were terrible. “Are you content?”
“No,” Aidan said.
Sinan smiled. That was the power of the man: even defeated, even humiliated, to lose none of his faith in himself. “Slay me, then,” he said. “Shed my blood as your heart longs to do. Rid the world of me.”
It was mockery, and it was not. Sinan had no fear of death. Life to him was sweet, with the savor of power in it, the web of spies and servants through whom he worked his will in the east. But he would die content, knowing that his death had made his people stronger.
“Therefore,” said Aidan, “I let you live.”
“Cruel,” said Sinan. “Just, in its fashion. You would have made a passable fidai.” He paused. “Would you, perhaps, consider... ?”
“No!” Too loud, too quick. Aidan struggled to recover himself. “I am no man’s tame murderer.”
“A pity. You would be welcome here, your talents known and used to their fullest. Where you go, you may find that neither is so.”
“I have promises to keep.”
“Indeed? And what will you receive in return? I am told,” said Sinan, “that Jerusalem stops just short of denouncing you for the deaths of your kin; and that rumor credits you with worse.”
“Then the sooner I keep my promises, the sooner I clear my name.”
“Or burn for it.”
“I am a spirit of fire. What harm can I take in my element?”
“Even in the fires of hell?”
“If I can know them, then I have a soul and can hope also for Paradise. If I have no soul, then death for me is only oblivion; and mortal fire cannot touch me.”
“Ah,” said Sinan. “A theologian.”
“A madman,” said Morgiana. “He will not serve you, Sinan ibn Salman, nor can
you lure him into your trap. Let him go; surrender him.”
“As I am to surrender you?”
“Even so,” she said.
He looked long at her. She stood still, enduring it. “What is there for you without us?” he asked her. “Will you turn infidel and run at this one’s heel? Can you forsake all that you have been and done, and betray your faith and your given word, and turn against those whom you have served for so long? Will you not reconsider? Will you not come back to me? Free, now; freed from the order of the dagger, set above it as its commander, with no other above you, save only myself.”
They were not empty words. He meant them. He was subtler than any serpent. Even truth was his to wield, to twist to his own ends.
“I did ill to keep you so long enslaved,” he said. “Now I would amend it. Will you accept what I offer?”
She was silent. Her face was still. So quenched, it lost its vivid beauty; it was only alien.
When she spoke, she spoke slowly, as if to weigh each word before she let it go. “I who have been a slave in defiance of my will, do not trust easily any man’s promises, still less those of the one who enslaved me. Yet that you are a man of honor, as you see it, I cannot deny. Is there a price on this freedom which you offer?”
“None but what you have already paid.”
She drew a careful breath. “And this that we have settled here — the blood-price, the freeing of the Frank — is it to hold firm?”
“Before Allah I swear it.”
“So,” She straightened, as if a great weight had fallen from her; the breath which she drew now was deep. Free. “No. No, I will not serve you. Even free; even in a place of power. I am done with servitude.”
Even yet Sinan would not concede defeat. “Are you therefore done with Islam? For what is that but perfect submission to God?”
“God,” she said very gently, “is not Sinan ibn Salman,” And as he stiffened, enraged: “There is no god but God. It is time I learned to serve Him alone, and not at the whim of a mortal man.” She bowed, low and low, as a slave might; but it was never submission. “May God keep you, O my master who was, and may He grant you wisdom.”
oOo
“I should have taken what he offered,” Morgiana said.
Aidan did not know where they were. The wealth of Masyaf was with them; the light was dim about them, wan and grey, The air smelled strange. He saw sand and stone, the bulk of a tree, a glint of water. For all he knew, they were in the land of the jinn.
Suddenly he knew it. They were by the spring in Persia; the cave was behind them. Clouds lowered above them. The strangeness in the air was the scent of rain.
Morgiana swayed. He caught her. She was conscious, but grievously weak, and furious with it. “Too much,” she said. “I stretched too far. I was no better than you.”
His lips twitched at that. “What did you do with the fidais?”
“I sent them all away. To a place I know, in a city far from any that they would have heard of. The women there are beautiful and wanton, and each has many husbands. My master’s servants may decide for themselves whether to call it hell or Paradise.”
Aidan laughed. “And the old man never asked for them back.”
“He, like them, believes them dead. He will not find it easy to fill their places.”
“Or yours.”
“Or mine.” Her head rolled on his shoulder. “Allah! What a fool I am!”
“A splendid fool.” He turned toward the cavemouth. She lay limp in his arms, fighting the dark, but losing the battle.
$ayyida sprang out of the cave’s shadow, wild with fear as she saw what Aidan carried. “She’s alive,” he said, little comfort as that was. “She pushed too hard, that’s all, to win everything for both of us. She’ll be well, once she’s slept.”
Sayyida wanted transparently to believe it. She watched Aidan lay Morgiana on the divan, was there in an instant with a blanket and a scowl. “How could you let her do this to herself?”
“How could I stop her?”
“You should have tried,” Sayyida said.
There was no sensible answer to that. Aidan hovered, but he was not wanted. He withdrew to the cavemouth.
It had begun to rain. He had not felt rain on his face since he came to this sun-blasted country. Cold though it was, with an edge of sleet, he welcomed it.
Morgiana was deep in sleep, Sayyida engrossed in fretting over her. He was free. Truly, finally free. Sinan had paid with his own hand for all that he had taken; and he had lost the most useful of his slaves. He would not recover quickly from that blow. Nor would he turn again upon the House of Ibrahim.
Aidan knew what taste was in his mouth. It was ashes. So long a hunt, so bitter a battle, and all that it came to was this. A chest bound with iron, a grey rain falling, and a rending in the heart of him. To stay and be this woman’s lover. To go and keep his promises: to Aleppo, to conclude his bargain with the Lady Khadijah; to find Joanna.
He did not even know how long he had been away. A month? He had never gone a day without thinking of her, and being soul-glad that she had not come with him. She would surely have died, and the baby with her.
Maybe she would forgive him for leaving her. Maybe she would even forgive what he had done to win his war with the Assassins. They would find a way out of their coil. His child would not be branded a bastard; his lady would have the honor she deserved.
And Morgiana?
She had what she wanted. He had older ties, and stronger.
Coward. The voice of his deep self.
He thrust it deeper and set his foot on it. What more could there be between a knight of the cross and a devout Muslim, but what there had been? It was over. They had their own worlds to live in, their own and separate destinies.
Still, the small, needling voice. Craven. Honorless fool.
“What would you have me do?” he cried to the rain. “Turn apostate? Marry her?” He stopped. “Yes, why don’t I go Muslim? Then I can have both of them.”
The voice was silent.
He tossed his rain-wet head. “My way is chosen. My mother chose it the day she brought us to Caer Gwent and told our father that we were his.”
Silence, still; silence that was reproach.
He went back into the cave that was more splendid than many a lord’s hall in the west, and found nothing changed. Morgiana looked like a child, asleep. He wanted to bend and kiss her. He wanted her, starkly and simply.
He firmed his will. It took more strength than he had expected; almost more than he had.
Sayyida took no notice of him, except to rebuke him for dripping on the carpet. Hasan was asleep.
Signs enough, and farewell enough. He remembered the way of Morgiana’s magic, that she had given him after all, as if she wanted him to know it, to do what he did now: the fixing of the mind, the gathering of power, the indescribable inward turn and flex. He paused on the very edge of it, not quite afraid. No one moved. No one called him back. He let himself go.
35.
While Morgiana pursued her Frank, and after she had caught him, Sayyida had time to think. Watching them was peculiarly painful: a dance of advance and retreat; a glitter on the edges of their meetings, like the flash of honed steel. They seemed barely to know how their bodies yearned toward one another — even Morgiana, who knew that she wanted him, but went about winning him with the deadly simplicity of a child. When they were together, even quarreling as they mostly were, something in the way they sat or stood or moved, was like the notes of the lute that underlie the song.
Sayyida had that with Maimoun. Not as these two did, all fire and passion, but in their quiet, ordinary way, they went well together.
If only Maimoun could learn a little sense. A man who kept his wife in a cage, had only himself to blame if she tried to fly from it.
“A woman should always be humble,” she said to Hasan when Morgiana had gone with Aidan to face the Old Man of the Mountain. Sayyida did not want to wear herself to
rags in fretting over them; therefore she fretted over herself. “A woman should be conciliatory. A woman should never oppose the will of her man, whom Allah has set over her.”
She was making bread, kneading it on the hearthstone. She set her teeth and attacked it until her arms cried protest. “Never,” she said, “except when she can be subtle, and suborn him, and play him into her hands. Which is almost always. Unless she is caught in the act. As I was.” With each pause, she pummeled the yielding dough, beating tenderness into it.
She looked at her thickly floured fists. Tears pricked her eyes; laughter bubbled in her throat. “Oh, Hasan! I miss your father.”
oOo
Morgiana came back half-dead, in Aidan’s arms. He seemed unworried; Sayyida supposed that he would know, being what he was. But he was a man, when it came down to it: a very large and very willful child, who, having dropped his burden in Sayyida’s lap, went off and left her to it. She suspected that he might be sulking. Men hated it when women ignored them for other women.
She shook her head and sighed. It was not anger that stirred in her, not anymore: only a kind of fond exasperation. That was the way men were. The way Maimoun was.
Would he take her back?
She stopped. She could not go back. He had struck her; he had called her a liar. She could not forgive him.
Could not, or would not?
So, then. If she would go back, if she would have sense, and stop being a burden on her friend — would he take her?
He would have to. She would not let him do anything else.
oOo
Morgiana was a long time waking. Well before she did, Sayyida knew that the Frank was gone. He always came back for the sunset meal, and he always slept in the hall Tonight, he did neither.
He had found a way out of his cage. She could hardly blame him for taking it. Or, she supposed, for abandoning Morgiana. That was what came of turning love into merchant’s bargain.
Still, she was sorry. She had thought better of him than that.
She was ready when Morgiana woke, and braced for the storm. When it did not break at once, she was by no means comforted. “When did he go?” Morgiana asked quite calmly.