by Oden, Scott
Assad’s destination overlooked the crumbling ruin of a Roman hippodrome—a caravanserai with a dilapidated façade of peeling plaster, fretted windows, and a keel-arched entryway nearly three stories high. Bearded faces peered down from the roof while inside muleteers and camel drovers sprawled in the shadow of a colonnaded arcade, some drinking wine and throwing dice while others dozed. Their charges, part of a caravan awaiting the arrival of a shipment of date wine, sat in the center of the courtyard beneath a cluster of palm trees, bellowing and braying, tails twitching in an effort to keep the flies at bay.
None moved to stop him as he plunged through an open door and up two flights of rickety stairs to the third floor. Guards walked the gallery, at times leaning over the balustrade to stare into the courtyard; hard-eyed men wearing turban-wrapped helmets and mail shirts beneath their robes, and who kept their hands well away from their sword hilts as the scar-faced Assassin passed.
“Farouk!” he called, throwing open the door to the caravan master’s suite of rooms. His voice echoed down a short entry hall that widened into a guest chamber. The place was sparse: faded cushions and a low table holding a water pipe, a cupboard topped with an oil lamp. Reed mats covered the floor, and over these lay carpets woven in shades of blue silk and cream-colored wool, ragged edged and dusty. “God curse you! Farouk!”
A man stepped through a curtain of wooden beads. He was Persian, his beard trimmed to a point, his round face hollow and etched with concern. A white skullcap shaded his bald pate; his embroidered kaftan bore stains of ink and wine. He glanced back the way he had come before hissing to Assad: “Where the devil have you been?”
“Protecting our interests.” Quickly, the Assassin relayed what had happened at the courtesan’s home. “It was a shame I had to kill the woman, but as consolation at least our old friend Husayn will trouble us no longer. My plans have changed, Farouk. I need a good horse and provisions enough to reach Baghdad.”
Farouk, like Assad, was a servant of al-Hashishiyya, though never had the Hidden Master called upon him to take a life or to unduly risk his own. Rather, his worth lay in his relative obscurity. As a fixture on the caravan route between Palmyra, Damascus, and Cairo, Farouk helped shepherd the flow of information to Alamut—from messages hidden in plain sight to missives penned in poetic code to cryptic phrases muttered among strangers. He was accustomed to dealing with the carriers of information, not with the men who utilized it. Lines of apprehension creased his forehead. “Wait, wait,” he said as Assad started to pace.
“A horse, Farouk. Send one of those sluggards in the courtyard—”
Gold flashed in the afternoon light as a gnarled hand parted the wooden beads of the curtain. Assad saw it and reacted; eyes blazing like slits of murderous fire, he clawed at the hilt of his salawar. His other hand tightened into an iron-hard fist. Farouk, who did not lack courage, caught Assad’s arm before his blade left its sheath.
“Allah confound you! Wait, I said! He’s here to see you!” The caravan master indicated the newcomer with a jerk of his head. “He says he has known you for many years.”
Surprised, Assad recognized the man who stepped through the curtain, a man whose threescore and ten years weighed heavily on his narrow shoulders. Eyebrows as silvery and sparse as his beard met over his thin nose in a vee of disapproval. “Were I your enemy,” the newcomer said, his voice like the scrape of sandstone on marble, “and younger, you should be waking up in hell, my young Emir.”
“Then praise be to God that you are not my enemy, Daoud ar-Rasul! As-salaam alaikum.” Assad sketched an elaborate bow, gracefully touching the fingertips of his right hand to his heart, lips, and forehead.
“Alaikum as-salaam,” the older man replied, smiling. “And praise be to God, indeed. It pleases me to see you again, Assad.” A head shorter than the tall Emir, Daoud ar-Rasul—lieutenant of Alamut and the voice of the Hidden Master—shuffled forward and embraced his protégé, kissing both cheeks.
“Why are you here, my friend?” Assad said. A faint smile could not hide his concern. “You should be someplace cool and agreeable, not sweltering in this godforsaken cauldron. Farouk, fetch our guest something cool to drink.”
Daoud held up his hand; gold winked again on his index finger—a signet ring, antique and massive, bearing as its seal a stylized eagle carved of lapis lazuli. “Good Farouk has already been a most excellent host. You and I must speak on matters of grave importance, my young Emir. A chair, if you please, Farouk, then give us a few moments.”
The caravan master nodded, fetched a straight-backed chair from an inner room, and then hustled out the door, leaving the two men alone in the guest chamber. Daoud settled himself, smoothing his gray khalat and his gold-buttoned undervest. Assad drew his sheathed salawar from his sash and settled onto a cushion at Daoud’s feet, the weapon balanced across his knees.
The old man scowled at the blade, at its leering pommel. “You still carry that abomination? Get it out of my sight!” He made the sign of the horns to ward off evil.
“As you wish,” Assad replied. He laid the salawar behind him, covering it with a spare cushion.
“If you had any sense you would cast that thing into the sea and take to carrying an honest blade again! I know of a smith in Mosul who could recast your father’s saber. Now that … that was a fine weapon.”
It was Assad’s turn to scowl. “What goes, Daoud? You didn’t travel all this way to berate me over my choice of tools.”
“No. No, I did not, though you would be wise to listen to me.” The older man cocked his head to the side. “You are Egyptian, are you not?”
“After a fashion,” Assad replied, his scowl deepening. “Born in Cairo, though I have not laid eyes on the Nile’s banks in a score of years—but you know this, my friend, even as you know why.”
The Lieutenant of Alamut nodded, stroking his beard as though recalling pieces of a long-forgotten tale. “Age cripples more than a man’s muscle and bone … it wreaks havoc with his memory. I pray you live long enough to understand.” Daoud lapsed into silence. A dozen heartbeats passed before he again stirred. “I was a boy when Ibn al-Sabbah—peace be upon his name—ascended to heaven, and I have lived to see four of his noble bloodline assume the mantle of Hidden Master. All have had their faults, but we excused them because they were the descendants of Ibn al-Sabbah—peace be upon his name. Our new master is no different.”
“He has ruled Alamut for less than a year,” Assad said. “What flaws could he have developed so soon?”
“Only one, and it is beyond his control—youth. Our new master is very young, Assad. Young and brimming with dreams and ideals not yet tarnished by disappointment or grown faint with age. But for all that we might hold him to blame for his boyish exuberance, he remains a scion of Ibn al-Sabbah—peace be upon his name—a cunning diplomat and a ferocious leader. He prides himself on recognizing a man’s strengths. Where his father looked at you and saw merely a weapon, he claims to see something more. A capable man, a man he believes he can trust with a delicate task.”
“Am I not already tasked with visiting his wrath upon that dog of a vizier in Baghdad?”
Daoud’s features twisted in a moue of distaste. “Our enemy in Baghdad deserves a slow death, true, but regretfully he has earned a reprieve for now. Your plans have well and truly changed, Assad. The Hidden Master wishes you to go to Cairo.”
“To Cairo? What the devil for?”
The older man’s eyebrows inched up. “Do not forget yourself, Emir. Do not forget what you are, or whom you serve.”
Assad looked away, nostrils flaring. He clenched his jaw to keep his anger in check. “I … I spoke without thinking. You chasten me, and properly so. But the question stands, Daoud: why does our Master wish me to journey to Cairo? And why now?”
“To forge an alliance. Did you know,” Daoud began, “that the Fatimid Caliph of Cairo and the Hidden Master are of a similar age? My spies tell me the Caliph reached his majority a year or so
before our Master. Thus, had it not been for a schism dating back to the days of Ibn al-Sabbah—peace be upon his name—these two young lions might well be allies today. Perhaps even brothers. Can you imagine, Assad, what power we would wield if Alamut and Cairo were as one? We could cast down the Sunni Caliph of Baghdad, drive the Turk back beyond the Black Sea, and reclaim Jerusalem from the Infidel!” As quickly as it appeared, excitement dissipated from the older man’s visage. He looked down at his gnarled hands, twisting his signet ring to stare at its engraved stone. “And so it would be, but for a decades-old squabble over succession. Our enemies unite while we revel in our division. Our Master, at least, has his freedom. The Caliph of Cairo is much beloved by the folk of that city, and yet he remains little more than a prisoner in his own palace, or so my spies tell me. Kept alive as a figurehead by overly ambitious men.”
“And what will my presence accomplish?” Assad grunted. “You know as well as I that if this young Caliph were a vigorous man then perhaps I could aid him in recovering his birthright by spilling the blood of his jailers. But it’s more likely that he’s a degenerate wretch like his forebears. No amount of diplomacy or bloodshed on my part will give such a man the spine he needs to rule. This is a lost cause wrapped in a fool’s errand, Daoud. Surely our Master must see it, too?”
Daoud leaned forward. “As I said: he is young, Assad, and often the young see things their elders cannot—or will not. He does not believe in lost causes or fool’s errands, but he does believe in you, my friend. He believes in the Emir of the Knife. Go to Cairo as Alamut’s emissary. Use your formidable skills to strengthen the Caliph’s position and dispose of any who would do him harm. But—and this is critical, Assad—the Caliph must know who it is that aids him. His enemies … let his enemies speculate. Sow fear among them as you will, but impress this upon the Caliph: say that Alamut stands ready to forgive our long-held grievances, to mend the rift that divides us.”
“And if the Caliph wishes no dealings with Alamut?”
Daoud shrugged. “What he wishes is irrelevant. Caliph Rashid al-Hasan and the Hidden Master will be reconciled. His survival—and ours—depends on it.”
Assad said nothing; his fingers tapped a staccato rhythm against his thigh. For over a year he’d done nothing but plot the demise of the vizier of Baghdad—an outspoken enemy of al-Hashishiyya who pressed his allies to call for a jihad against Alamut. Already, a score of fedayeen, the Faithful, had died in straightforward attempts on the vizier’s life, each failure revealing a little more of the palace’s elaborate defenses. Assad had used the fedayeen’s sacrifice to weave a trap as delicate as a spider’s web and no less venomous. And for what? To have his plans scuttled by a young man’s idealism? Assad sighed. Exactly so.
Despite his annoyance, the Assassin dredged his memory for recollections of Cairo, a city he had not seen in two and twenty years—its sights and smells, the cadence of its native speech, the sound of its myriad bazaars. This hazy picture created glaring difficulties from the outset: what route to Cairo and in what guise; what would he need to establish himself in the city; what sources of information could he rely upon. His face became a grim mask as the enormity of rescuing some Fatimid half-wit from his political betters sank in.
“Well, my young Emir?”
Assad glanced up. “These spies you mention,” he said. “I expect I’ll have need of them. Send Farouk, too. Likely I’ll hear no end to his complaints, but he’s a good man and he knows Cairo. And gold, enough to open doors and loosen tongues.”
“You will have all you require.”
“It will not be an easy journey. I should make ready and leave as soon as possible; perhaps as early as tomorrow, but by week’s end at the latest.” Assad retrieved his salawar and clambered to his feet, a thumb hooked in his sash. He towered over the frail Lieutenant of Alamut. “You are as a father to me, Daoud ar-Rasul, and thus I pray you realize how impossible this burden you’ve laid across my shoulders is.”
Daoud glanced up; his eyes glittered with a measure of their old fire. “Impossible? What one man deems impossible another might see as merely a challenge. Which are you, my son?”
“Ask me again on my return.”
The Second Surah
INTO THE CITY
OF TENTS
1
A crash echoed from beyond the bolted door, metal clattering as though someone had let fall a heavy blade. Startled, al-Hajj glanced from his cluttered worktable, the light from a pair of oil lamps glittering in his narrowed eyes. He cocked his head to the left, listening …
There it was again! Fainter this time, less strident—the scrape of metal on wood.
Corpse fingers stirred the hair at the base of al-Hajj’s neck as he clawed through the riot of books, scrolls, and loose scraps of paper strewn across the table, searching for the curved dagger he kept near. Finding it, he slipped the blade from its worn leather sheath. “Who goes?” al-Hajj bellowed.
No one answered.
Al-Hajj rose from his chair and crossed the darkened study, eyeing every chest, every cupboard, and every shuttered window as though it harbored murderous life. Thick carpets of patterned loomwork muffled his footfalls. Reaching the door, he drew back the iron bolt and flung it open. “Who goes, I said?”
In the latticed gallery outside al-Hajj’s apartments—on the fourth floor of a caravanserai owned by a consortium of cloth and silk merchants—a young Armenian slave in a long white shirt crouched on the polished hardwood. The gallery overlooked a garden courtyard where night lamps of gilded copper set amid the foliage gave off a dim, buttery glow; a cool breeze redolent of the Nile rustled the spiky fronds of date palms and set shadows to dancing.
At al-Hajj’s sudden appearance, knife in hand, the Armenian boy gave a bleat of terror and fell prostrate on the gallery floor. A silver platter etched and inlaid with enameled leaves lay by his elbow; near his hand were a matching goblet and an overturned bowl of dates. A sweet aroma rose from puddles of spilled pomegranate juice. Al-Hajj scowled, feeling the fool at this, the obvious source of the noises. “Why are you skulking around, boy? What devil’s work are you about?”
The slave—a eunuch, twelve years old and newly gelded—glanced up, tears sparkling on his long eyelashes. “M-master told … b-bring refreshments you,” he said, his Arabic barely comprehensible. “T-tray … slip…”
Al-Hajj stepped over the threshold and looked out into the gallery. The boy’s master, Ibn Zayid, lived on the floor above; he was a pinch-faced old gossip, a dealer in silks from distant Cathay, and as suspicious a man as any al-Hajj had ever met. Ibn Zayid’s current obsession was with the source of his neighbor’s wealth—he could not fathom how a lowly seller of trinkets and gimcracks who rubbed elbows with the beggars outside the ruined mosque of al-Hakim could afford to live under the same roof as he, a prosperous merchant. Al-Hajj sighed, shifted his gaze to the slave. Even pale with fear he was a handsome young thing, tall for his age and full lipped, his dark eyes smudged with kohl. Like the refreshments he carried, the boy was an offering.
Al-Hajj had no servants of his own, no slaves a would-be enemy might compel to betray his secrets; here, for the second time in half a year, Ibn Zayid—whom Allah had not graced with subtlety—was presenting him with one, a slave easily turned. Al-Hajj well recalled the merchant’s first attempt: a comely Hindu girl from the Malabar Coast, lithe as a dancer, her silken tresses scented with cinnamon and rose water. Not lightly did he refuse that gift, but refuse it he did—and in a fit of pique the old fool sold her off to a Syrian whoremonger who catered to the perverse. Nor, he reckoned, would the boy’s fate be any different, for Ibn Zayid was not a man accustomed to feeling the sting of defeat. A flash of rage reduced al-Hajj’s crinkled eyes to slits.
He knelt, gathered up platter and goblet, and placed them inside his door, his knife with them. The slave retrieved the dates and piled them back in their bowl. The older man winked; a smile softened the hard lines of his face. “I’ll take th
at. Go back to your master and thank him for his hospitality. Tell him it’s that very sort of kindness which makes living in such a fine establishment worthwhile. Do you understand?” Hesitant, the boy nodded. Al-Hajj rose. “Good. This last bit is most important: tell him, God willing, I shall repay him in kind. Off with you, now.” Al-Hajj retreated into his apartments, slammed the door, and shot the bolt.
Alone, al-Hajj’s anger turned cold. He sagged against the arabesqued doorjamb, shaking his head. That old fool will need to be dealt with and soon, before his suspicions become tittle-tattle in Cairo’s bazaars. For, in this instance, Ibn Zayid’s suspicions were well-founded. “Al-Hajj” was not his true name, nor did his supply of silver come from hawking trinkets along the Qasaba—though that’s how he spent the better part of his days. No, the man known as al-Hajj dealt in a far more precious commodity: the flow of information; the gathering of secrets.
A small part of him pitied Ibn Zayid. Those whose cause al-Hajj served did not suffer intrusions into their business lightly. Renowned for their patience, their cunning, his employers waged a war of terror against their oppressors—Moslem, Nazarene, or Jew; they were masters of disguise who could hide among their enemies for months if need be, watching and waiting for the perfect time to strike. They had many names—as many names as the sky had stars—but their most potent appellation was the one that struck fear in sultan and slave alike: al-Hashishiyya, the Assassins, that glorious sect whose princes ruled from the unassailable heights of Alamut.
Like his anger, al-Hajj’s pity faded, turned cold. He dropped the bowl on the carpet beside the platter, straightened, and returned to his worktable. The tools of his trade were spread across the age-worn teak: letters of introduction, of credit, and of personal business; inventory lists; ledgers showing expenses and sums; sealing wax and signets; blank sheets of fine Samarkand paper; an abacus. More than mere props, the items contained messages—some couched in superfluous gossip, others in a dizzying cipher of numbers. Ibn Zayid’s death sentence would travel across the city in the same manner, as a letter to a colleague bemoaning losses in the silk market followed by a column of sums that, when matched to corresponding letters in Arabic, spelled out the old man’s name. “A petty crime,” he would mournfully tell Ibn Zayid’s sons. And Allah protect the fools from their own curiosity.