CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ahmad entrusted the Berber to his own personal servants, who were instructed to treat him as if he were a prince of the Faith. The boy was properly grateful, which showed the excellence of his upbringing, but he could not help but betray his deeper feelings. He wanted to be part of what Ahmad did. He wanted to share in the saving of her.

“You’ve already done your share and more,” Ahmad told him. “Now let me do mine—and rest. We’ll call on you later, have no fear. Then you’ll need your strength.”

That reconciled him, somewhat. Ahmad drew him into a quick embrace, as if they were brothers. “Be at ease,” he said. “I’ll bring her out of that place.”

Mustafa nodded. His eyes were rebellious still, and his back was stiff, but his face was pale; he was swaying on his feet. Rashid and Maimoun took him in hand before he fell over, and carried him off into the inner regions of Ahmad’s tent, to be bathed and fed and put to bed.

Ahmad drew a long, steadying breath. Alone, without the need to be strong, he could yield for a moment to the shock of the news that Mustafa had brought. He had had no sign—no inkling. Not even a shiver in the spine. Which might prove that there was no magic in this plot, but it troubled him nevertheless.

She was not dead. If she had died, there would be a gaping wound where his heart had been, and a great span of emptiness at the core of his magic. She had become that much to him, nor had he known it until he heard that she might be put to death for a murder she was incapable, to the very soul, of committing.

That she could kill—he did believe that. But she would kill in battle or in defense of someone or something that she loved. Not at random, with calculated cruelty, to spite an enemy.

Mustafa was well taken care of. Ahmad called to him the captain of his personal troops and gave him instructions that he would follow to the letter. He did not like them; his face darkened as he listened. But he was obedient.

Then Ahmad could put on a plain coat in which was sewn a coat of mail, and fill a satchel with certain articles from a locked and hidden chest, and mount the horse that waited for him. She was not a horse of heaven, but she was hardy and she was wise, and most of all she was steadfast. She would stand firm and keep her rider on her back, even if the world went mad.

“My lord, will you go alone?”

He looked down from the saddle into his servant’s face. “Allah is with me,” he said.

“But, lord,” said Hasan, “Allah loves best those who help Him to perform His will.”

Ahmad smiled in honest affection. “Dear friend,” he said, “the boy in my tent is much loved by one whom I love as my very self. Tend him for me; guard him and protect him. Keep him safe until I come back.”

Hasan bowed to the ground. He was weeping, poor man, but Ahmad would not shame him by remarking on it. “Allah’s blessing on you,” he said, and touched his mare’s side with a heel.

 

She went forward willingly, at ease, although the tilt of her ears told him that she knew there would be dangers ahead. He ran a hand down her neck—grimacing, then laughing briefly at the handful of red-brown hair that came away with it. Truly it was spring: the mare was letting go her winter coat.

For this journey he could not simply close the space between a place that was his—his house, his tent, his garden—and another on which he had set the seal of his magic. Even if he had not been traveling into the hands of enemies, he could not spare as much power as it would take to create and maintain the working. Instead he must travel by mages’ roads, which Sioned called straight tracks. Her mother’s country, she had said, was full of them. So too was this one, with its heritage of ancient magic.

He found the first road not far from his camp. It seemed a goat track, but it ran too straight for that, up over a long hill and out of the world that mortals knew. The seasons changed strangely there. Sometimes the land through which he rode was green with spring, and sometimes it was locked in winter. Sometimes there was no telling what season it was or what world he had entered; it was too strange to understand.

In all the worlds through which the road passed, he rode north and somewhat east. With each passage out of his own world, he traversed a whole day’s journey in an hour’s time. He paused for the hours of prayer, praying with all his heart, as Mustafa had done, that it was not too late.

As he drew nearer his destination, the passages became more difficult. The power that held this land was inimical, if not to all that he was, then to the particulars of his name and race and allegiance. But he must go on, if he was to do what he had set out to do.

At the gate of the last passage, which had the semblance of a stone arch opening into a valley of shimmering stones, Safiyah sat waiting for him. She seemed a stone herself, hunched and shapeless, clad in dusty black, but the power in her was like a cry of exultation.

He bowed to her as to the queen of mages that she was. The hand that he raised to his lips was frail; the flesh was burning away from the spirit within. “Lady,” he said. “You had no need.”

“I had every need,” she said. “What were you thinking, to come here all alone?”

He could not say to her what he had said to Hasan. It would be presumptuous. Her, he gave the truth. “I couldn’t ask anyone else to run this risk.”

“Could not?” she inquired. “Or would not?”

He flushed. She had always had the power to reduce him to a stumbling boy. But often, as now, she softened it with a smile. “It was noble of you, and wise in its way. Where you go, an army would never be enough, but a man alone might win the prize. Will you let me give you a gift?”

“Your gifts are beyond price,” he said.

She inclined her head to the truth of it, then drew his head down to hers, touching brow to brow. “Have strength,” she said. “Have courage. But in the moment of extremity, if all is lost—turn to mist and water. Become one with the air. Melt and vanish away.”

The words were like a wash of cold fire. He shivered at the touch of them, and gasped as they came to rest in his heart. They were a spell of dissolution; yet also a blessing, and an escape if he would take it.

She kissed his eyelids and brushed her fingers across his cheek, soft as the touch of a spider’s web. “God go with you,” she said.

The way was open. She was gone from the gate. He knew a moment’s profound loneliness, cold as a wind in the wasteland; then the warmth of her blessing washed over him. He was smiling as he passed through the portal and rode down through the valley of stones.

 

The gate out of the valley, like the gate into it, was occupied. But this was no friend to Ahmad or any of his kin. It was a shape in white, the color of mourning and of death. Its face was shrouded, its eyes hidden in whiteness. In its white-swathed hand was a dagger with a blade like a sliver of night.

Ahmad faced it without either stealth or fear. He made no move to draw weapon, but his hands knew where to find each one of them. “Take me to your master,” he said.

The guardian spirit regarded him with unseen eyes. He had laid no compulsion on it, apart from the expectation that he would be obeyed. Spirits respected strength; they scorned bluster and empty show.

He waited in patience, sitting very still on the back of the most steadfast of his horses. The mare let one hip drop and let her head sink, seizing the opportunity for a nap.

Was that amusement in the tilt of the shrouded head? The spirit whipped about abruptly, dissolving into a whirlwind, and spun through the gate.

Where had been a vision of nothingness was a harsh and inhospitable landscape, a wilderness of stony crags. It was bleak and barren, but it was his own living earth, lit by a familiar sun and inhabited by a swirl of earthly spirits. They gathered always in places of power, even places of such terror as that which loomed on the crag above him.

Masyaf. Ahmad knew it well enough. When he was much younger, he had ridden with his brother to attack it; they had failed, and its Master had only grown stronger in the years since.

He could feel the great magic throbbing in his bones, drawn up from deep wells of the earth. Here was a center, a foregathering of powers. The crags were as thick with spirits as a hive with bees, swirling and swarming in the air and among the stones.

It had not been so twenty years ago. There had been spirits, yes, and Sinan had been a sorcerer of some repute, but all too obviously he had spent the years between increasing his power beyond anything that Ahmad could muster against him.

Ahmad’s heart quailed. He called up the memory of her face and the thought of the world without her, and his strength flooded back. It was the strength of desperation, but it was all the greater for that.

His mare clambered patiently up the steep and narrow track. She did not care that arrows could fall from above, or a rain of boiling oil. That was a concern for men. She had hopes of a stable to rest in and cut fodder to eat, and a handful of grain if her hosts were generous.

Her equine practicality was a bulwark against fear. Focused on his own stomach, thinking of bread and meat, fruit and spices, sweet cakes and cups of steaming kaffé, Ahmad passed through the clouds of spirits as if he had been invisible. He was too purely of earth for them, his magic too thoroughly concealed.

They were simple spirits, most of them, but the higher he ascended, the more alarming they became. Their faces altered from fantastical to grotesque; they bristled with fangs and talons.

But worse were the battles among them. Spirits in their right minds, or such minds as they had, coexisted in an airy amity. These were as contentious as a pack of starving dogs. The more power they fed on, the greedier they became; they could never be sated. These in their turn fed the power in the castle atop the crag.

He fought his way through it as through a storm of wind—but this was no wind of earth. It buffeted his heart; it tore at his spirit. It tempted him almost beyond bearing, to fling himself into the cloud of living essences, to become a blind and mindless part of them. To surrender, to give way; to serve the Master on the rock and be served by him, feed and be fed, until there was nothing left of him, not even a whisper of fading breath.

He was no longer guiding the mare. She carried him of her own will, up and ever upward, with steadfast persistence. He clung to the saddle out of sheer bodily refusal to fall.

He must master himself; must win back the sight of eyes and mind. He must gather the tatters of his magic. He must be strong.

He found that strength in the stubbornness that was one of his less endearing faults; in the memory of her. Even her face was gone from his sight, so full was it with the swirl of warring spirits, but he remembered her scent and the softness of her hair, and the taste of her lips on his.

Her eyes. He could see her eyes. Violet, she called them, for the flower of her native country: a deep and dreaming color, like shadows in twilight. They were large and wide-set under a strong arch of brows; they met his stare directly, with a clear intelligence.

He felt her hands clasp his. She drew him up the track. With each step, the world became clearer. He saw the stones under the mare’s hooves, and the steepness of the slope, and looking up, he saw the castle now unexpectedly close.

It seemed deserted. He saw and sensed no archers on the walls, arrow nocked to string, ready to shoot him down. The battlements were empty of guards. The gate was shut.

That was the last of the defenses: darkness and silence and the vision of emptiness. He rode up to the gate and stood with his head back, measuring the loom of it. Calmly then, with the power that had remained coiled in him through all the buffets of this journey, he smote the gate.

It rocked as if struck by a ram, and its iron hinges cracked. The mare shook her head at the sudden blast of sound. He sat quietly on her back and waited.

The sun had been low when he struck the gate. It nearly touched the horizon when at last the glamour faded from the castle. The gate was still cracked; with the passing of the enchantment, it groaned and sagged on its weakened hinges.

Slowly and somewhat gingerly, a smaller gate opened in the greater one. A man in white peered out. He was unquestionably mortal; he was old, if hale, and his face was deeply seamed with age.

Ahmad dismounted and led his mare toward the gatekeeper. The old man looked hard at him, as if he must remember Ahmad’s face. He offered no gesture of respect. That was deliberate; he made sure Ahmad knew that. Ahmad smiled slightly and came on without pausing, so that the man had to draw back or be overrun.

 

There were lights within, lamps and torches, and men in white going about their varied business. One of them took the mare, after Ahmad had retrieved the light pack which she carried behind her saddle. Another took Ahmad in charge, leading him up a stone stair to a small but perfectly appointed bath, and rooms beyond it of remarkable warmth and luxury. Dainties of food and drink were waiting there, and a demure creature in a drift of veils that hinted at marvels beneath.

The bath was neither poisoned nor lined with knives. The cakes and kaffé were as innocent as if his own most trusted servant had made them. The elegant robe which the woman offered him was only a robe; no spells were woven in its fabric.

He declined her further services. She withdrew with grace that spoke of opportunities lost and delights forgone.

He could not bring himself to regret them. He ate one of the cakes. It bore little resemblance to the deadly gift that an Assassin left on his victim’s breast. This was notably more pleasant: rich with sugar and almonds, laced with a tang of citron. The kaffé was hot and rich and just sweet enough to be satisfying.

It was expected that he rest; he did so, rather gratefully, and with care to keep a part of himself on guard. He was aware of watchers as he slept, eyes both mortal and otherwise, and voices murmuring words that he did not catch. They were surprised, he thought. They had not expected to see him in this place.

They should have, if their spies were as skilled as repute made them.

He woke as a warrior learned to do, all at once, ready for battle. The sky beyond the window was grey with dawn. Fresh kaffé was waiting, and a bowl of dates in honey, and a loaf of bread still warm from the baking.

He was hungry, but first he must pray. He performed the dawn prayers without haste, offering Allah his truest devotion. His prayers were all for her and none for himself. Today was a day of reckoning. Far away from here, in the city of Tyre, she was rousing from her own bed, preparing for her trial.

For a moment he wore that garment of flesh, knew the thoughts that ran within it, tasted the sweetness of her unmistakable self. Parting from it was a physical pain. He gasped as he straightened from the final prostration, and looked up at a man who stood looking down.

It was the man from the gate, the old man in white. He was taller than Ahmad remembered, and stronger; he stood erect, with a young man’s carriage, although his face was as ancient as before.

Ahmad sat on his heels and laid his hands quietly on his thighs. “My lord of Masyaf,” he said.

“My lord of many realms,” said Sinan. “How unexpected to see you here.”

“Your hospitality is beyond reproach,” Ahmad said.

“Yet you have not availed yourself of all that was offered.”

“I accepted everything that I could accept,” said Ahmad.

“Ah,” said Sinan. “A vow, then?”

“A binding of the heart,” said Ahmad.

“Very touching,” Sinan said. “Break your fast, my lord, and take your ease. When you are ready, I shall send a guide. Then we will talk.”

Ahmad inclined his head. He would be calm; he would be his best-known and most noble self, the man the Franks called the great knight of Islam, the sultan’s wise and sublimely politic brother. But the self that was inside, the eager boy who loved a woman, was desperate to settle it now, before another moment passed.

He quelled that part of his soul, and looked without surprise at the empty space where Sinan had been.

The bread was still warm, the kaffé steaming hot. He partook of them as a warrior does before battle, for the sustenance that they offered. They comforted him; the warmth in his belly somewhat assuaged the coldness in his heart.

Just as he set down half the loaf uneaten, a small spirit glimmered into being above his head. It was a faintly gleaming pale-blue thing like a corpse-light, bound by a cord of compulsion that drew it out and away from the room. Ahmad followed at the pace it set, which was not overly swift.

It led him through the castle, keeping to uncrowded passages but not avoiding places where men were, and even a few women: guardrooms, kitchens, gathering halls, places of prayer. It was a populous castle, with an air about it of high and holy purpose.

The holiness surprised him. The darkness that was in the earth and the air and all about this place was not plainly evident within these walls. They were shielded; protected. The men were bound as the spirit was, but it was a willing servitude. They were devout Muslims, true servants of Allah, confirmed in their faith and certain of their place in Paradise. They never knew what it truly was that they served.

The spirit brought him at last up a long and winding stair, not to the tower that he would have expected, but to a green and fragrant garden. Ahmad paused at the entrance of it, steadying his heart, gathering his forces. So: it was true. This was the Garden of the Assassins, that was said to be a corner of Paradise.

It was not the otherworldly Paradise in which dwelt the blessed of God. It was not the earth that men knew, either. Its flowers were too large, too luminous, too beautifully strange. Its grass was not exactly grass. The sky that arched overhead was the color of light under sea: shimmering blue and silver and green.

The Master of the Assassins sat in the midst of his garden. His chair grew out of the earth, a broad, gnarled stump of dark wood polished to the sheen of stone. His white garments glowed against it. His face had the same depth and quality as the chair, as if it too had grown out of this other-earth.

Ahmad looked into his eyes and saw the dark behind the stars. The thing to which he had given himself, the power he worshipped in return for power, was not Allah. Yet he gave it that name, and proclaimed it to the people who followed him. They believed it. Only he knew the truth.

Ahmad knew. Yet he had not come here to destroy it. He had come to invoke it.

He did not offer obeisance. The hate between them was too deep and the war too long. But for the life and love of a woman, he said, “I am not here in my brother’s name or by his knowledge. He plays no part in what passes between us.”

“I do know,” said Sinan softly, “that you are your own man, my lord. If you speak for him, you do so out of the conviction of your heart.”

“This is no matter of his,” Ahmad said, “but it does concern you. Have you had word from Tyre?”

“Tyre?” said Sinan. His brow arched. “Why, no.”

“Nor had I,” said Ahmad, “until a messenger reached me yesterday morning. He brought news of a thing that I found to be altogether improbable. There was a killing, he said: a woman slain in the marquis’ own bed, with a cake of a certain baking left on her body.”

Sinan frowned. “A woman? In Tyre?”

“Indeed,” said Ahmad. “The murderer was seen in the act. Witnesses swear that it was a guest of the marquis who committed the murder, a lady from the English king’s following, his own sister.”

“We do not count women among the martyrs of the Faith,” Sinan said, “and certainly not women from the far ends of the world.”

“That I know,” said Ahmad, “as should anyone with any knowledge of your doctrine. But Franks care little for the finer points of our belief. They see the cake, they see the dagger, they cry Assassin—regardless of the truth of the matter.”

“Indeed,” said Sinan. “It is the easiest of accusations. This woman—tell me of her.”

Ahmad’s heart shaped her in the stanzas of a love poem. His wiser self said flatly enough, “She is the daughter of the late English king and a royal concubine. The king favors her; the queen of Sicily has had her in her train, although since they came to this country the king has kept her close by him. She has considerable gifts as a physician.”

“He trusts her,” Sinan observed.

“He does,” said Ahmad. “He sent her with an embassy to Tyre to smooth matters with the marquis, if that could be done, and to win back the French to the king’s cause. She succeeded in winning a good number of them, and in attracting the marquis’ notice. That gained her nothing but sorrow. Now she is accused of murder, and there are witnesses to swear that they saw her commit the act. And yet that cannot possibly be.”

“You have reason to know this,” said Sinan.

Ahmad kept his gaze steady. “Excellent reason. She was, at the time, with me.”

Sinan nodded blandly. “I can see that that might present a difficulty. Since you were known to be in the vicinity of Jaffa, and she was seen in the citadel of Tyre.”

“She was seen wielding the knife. That condemns her irreparably.”

“It is a pity,” said Sinan, “and I see from your devotion and the reports of my own spies that she is a lady of remarkable attainments. Yet what would you have me do? It seems purely a Frankish plot.”

“I believe,” said Ahmad, “and the messenger who brought this word to me believes, that it was conceived by the marquis himself out of jealousy and hatred. It serves a manifold purpose: it destroys her, spites the English king, and casts the blame on you.”

“And you? What is the loss to you?”

“I lose her,” said Ahmad.

“Surely,” said Sinan, “a man of your accomplishments should find it simple enough to free her.”

“Surely,” Ahmad said. “Have you no care for the insult to you and your following?”

The dark eyes hooded. “Should we be insulted?” Sinan inquired.

“Perhaps not,” said Ahmad. “I have some curiosity, myself, as to how the lord of Tyre eluded our spies, contrived a deception, and laid the blame at your door, all without perceptible evidence of magic.”

“He is a very clever man,” Sinan said.

“Exceedingly clever,” said Ahmad.

There was a silence. Ahmad made no effort to break it. He had sown the seeds. It was Sinan’s choice whether they should lie fallow or burst into bloom.