CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The silence stretched. The sky shifted and flowed, shimmering with myriad lights and colors. Somewhere nearby, water fell softly, drop by drop.

Ahmad’s eyes followed the sound of it. A spring welled up from the not-quite-grass, trickled down a slight slope, and gathered in a basin. The basin was silver, reflecting the too-strong green of the grass.

Ahmad approached the basin. It was half-full of water, and should have mirrored the colors of the sky. Instead he looked down into a hall of stone. The arches, the tiles, the high peaked windows, were of the east, but the court that stood in it was unmistakably Frankish. Priests were thick there, hung with crosses, and knights of Temple and Hospital, and smooth-shaven courtiers in the latest fashions from France.

She stood in the midst of them in a plain linen shift, with her black hair tumbling loose and wild down her back. Her wrists were manacled; chains bound her ankles. She was thinner than he remembered, and paler; her eyes were enormous in the delicate oval of her face. Yet she did not seem frail at all. Her shoulders were square, her back erect. She looked straight into the face of the marquis as he sat enthroned on the dais.

It was indeed a throne, that high carved chair, although he did not yet affect the crown that should go with it. His mantle was the true deep purple of Tyre, and his collar was of heavy and gleaming gold. He did not have the stature or the beauty to carry it off, not as Guy his rival did, but his bearing almost made up for the lack.

It was not given to Ahmad to hear the words of that trial, but he could see the faces of those who were there. They made him think of hungry wolves. She was no meek lamb, but she was prey; they would devour her.

“She’ll be condemned to death,” Ahmad said.

“Most likely,” said Sinan directly behind him.

He neither started nor turned. “There will of course be consequences, and likely a war. That would suit the marquis very well.”

“She is in no honest danger,” said Sinan, “nor do you need my help to spirit her away. What is it you want of me, then? Revenge?”

Ahmad set his lips together.

“There is a price,” said Sinan.

Still Ahmad said nothing.

Sinan was smiling, and not pleasantly: Ahmad heard it in his voice. “I will do as you are so subtly refraining from asking. When the price is paid, you will know.”

“You will not touch her,” Ahmad said. “She is not yours, not now, not ever.”

“I lay no claim on her,” said the Master of Assassins. “Not now, not ever.”

Ahmad kept his back erect, though he wanted to fall bonelessly to his knees. “So be it,” he said.

 

He had no recollection of closing his eyes or letting down his guard, and no memory of leaving that garden. Yet between one moment and the next, he passed from standing on a greensward to sitting in his too-familiar saddle. The road down which the mare plodded was nowhere near Masyaf, and yet he recognized it. The sea heaved and sighed alongside it. Some distance ahead, he saw the loom of a rock, and the battlements of the citadel of Tyre.

He felt for a moment the brush of wings, dark and soft, and a ripple of cold laughter. He was a mage and not a weak one, but the Master of Assassins was considerably more than that.

He had sold his soul for a woman. Somehow, even setting it in words could not make him regret it. Even knowing that Sinan had seen clearly. If Ahmad had only wanted to free her, he would have done it. He would have had no need for the journey to Masyaf, or for that conversation in the garden.

There had been need. Conrad had trespassed where he had no right or authority to go—both in laying hand on Ahmad’s beloved, and in laying the blame on the Master of the Assassins. For that he would pay.

The mare halted with her face toward Tyre. Sinan had a nasty turn of humor: he had sent Ahmad where he meant eventually to go, but not until he had made certain preparations elsewhere. If he turned back, time would be wasting. She was safe for this night, perhaps, or as safe as a condemned murderer could be, but the dawn would see her death.

Strict wisdom would have led him to turn back, to carry out the plan he had conceived on the journey to Masyaf. But there was Tyre, and she was in it, with the shadow of death hanging over her.

This was a temptation, and more of Sinan’s mockery. Even knowing that, Ahmad could not choose the course of wisdom. Maybe this was the price: to become a fool for love, as if he had been a headstrong boy and not a man of full and seasoned years.

If that was so, then he would pay it. He stripped the mare of saddle and bridle and set a wishing on her, and turned her loose. She meandered off in search of grass. Much sooner than the road’s curve warranted, she turned a corner and disappeared.

Ahmad stood alone between the sea and the sky. At that thought, he laughed. He was all alone—but for the myriad spirits that, sensing his power, had come flocking to stare and marvel. They swirled as thick as about the walls of Masyaf, but there was no darkness here.

As he looked up at them, he knew that God had sent them, and laid them like a weapon in his hand. His heart sent thanks to the Merciful and Compassionate, even as he called upon these armies of the air. He laid no compulsion on them, but spoke to them as if they had been men of his own nation. “If you are so minded,” he said, “you can help me greatly.”

Most of them did not respond, but a few swirled in closer. They were jinn and afarit, spirits of wit and grace, who could choose good and evil as men could. He bowed in respect. They bowed in return.

“Do you compel us?” asked the foremost of them, a great shining shape of wings and claws and horns, with a voice like the roar of waves beneath the sea. “Do you invoke us by the seal of the one who bound us and enslaved us to mortal will?”

“I do not,” said Ahmad. “I ask it of your free will, to prevent a great injustice, and to protect an innocent.”

“No child of Adam is altogether innocent,” said the great jinni.

“This is a pure soul,” Ahmad said. “Do you doubt me? Come and see.”

“Are you tempting me? Or challenging me?”

“Why, both,” said Ahmad.

“If your claim is false,” said the jinni, “then you are ours for a year and a day, to do with as we will.”

Ahmad’s teeth clicked together. This venture was threatening to cost him a great deal. “And if my claim is true?”

“We will bow at her feet and offer her our devoted service.”

“For a year and a day?”

“For as long as it pleases her to command us.”

“That could be a lifetime,” said Ahmad.

“Your people live but a moment. We live thousands of years. To look on one of you who is the pure essence of divine fire—that would be worth a score or two of years. Because we choose it, you see. Because no compulsion lies on us, except our own will.”

“That is a great gift,” said Ahmad.

“So it is,” said the jinni, “if she is that most unlikely of creatures: both human and pure.”

His companions murmured assent, a mingling of unearthly voices. There were not so few of them after all; others had come as they spoke, until Ahmad stood at the center of an army of spirits. Sioned would be a mighty general if Ahmad won this wager.

They were waiting with the patience of beings who did not age or die. He scraped his wits together and surveyed his forces. The sun was sinking, staining them all as if with blood. So much the better: night would increase the power and terror of this army of air.

He gave them their orders. They had discipline—better than men, because they were wiser. Some took wing in the air, others plunged into the sea. The great jinni lifted him up and sprang aloft on wings as vast as the sky.

He was safe within the curve of those talons, and comfortable enough once he had recovered from the shock of the sudden leap. The sea below was awash with light. The rock of Tyre was a loom of black at the end of its causeway. Lights flickered there: torches along the walls, and late passers within, making their way toward their houses. They would not be aware of what passed above them, unless they had magic.

The army of the jinn drifted lazily on the wind, waiting for the fall of dark. The sky above Ahmad’s head was obscured by the jinni’s wings, but he could see far out over land and sea. He watched the sunset fade and the stars come out.

When the night was fully fallen, the jinni began to spiral up and up. Just when Ahmad was certain that the great creature meant to dash him on the rocks below, it folded its wings and stooped like a falcon, straight upon the darkened city.

Ahmad’s heart was in his throat as the battlements rushed toward him. The jinni’s laughter boomed in his ear. In the very instant when they would have struck the stones, its wings shot out, braking its fall. Softly, lightly, with the delicacy of a butterfly’s landing, the jinni set Ahmad on the roof of the citadel.

He was dizzy, reeling with speed and shock, but the warrior’s instincts rose quickly. The air was full of wings and eyes. The army of the air had fallen on Tyre.

He could not stop to gape at it. Time was short; the guards would be distracted, but not forever. He ran toward the tower that rose on the seaward side. There was a door in it, and a guardroom—blessedly deserted—and a stair leading downward.

At the top of the stair he paused. It sounded as if the city had been attacked with grapples and siege-engines. Voices cried out, weapons clashed. There was even, far away, the boom of a ram.

For an instant he wondered wildly if Richard had come after all, or if another army had invaded Tyre. But the land about the city had been utterly silent as he flew over it, and there had been no hint or intimation of mortal assault. These were the jinn carrying out his orders, and their uproar was most convincing.

The castle boiled like an anthill—but all downward toward the army of shadows. Never upward, where the true invasion was.

He waited at the base of the tower, wrapped in darkness, while the citadel emptied of fighting men. It seemed an endless while, but he kept a tight grip on his patience. He could sense her not far away—not in a dungeon, then, or imprisoned in the city. She was awake, alert, but she had raised no powers. There was no taste of fear about her.

There were guards. Two of them—there had been more, but those had gone to fend off the apparent invasion. He gathered certain forces and called to him the words of a particular spell. When he had come down through deserted corridors to the one over which they stood guard, he sent the enchantment of sleep ahead of him.

The guards rocked, swayed, and slid down the wall in a grating of mail. He laid a hand on the brow of each as he passed, and filled their sleep with dreams of sated desire.

The door was bolted from without, but there was no lock and no need for a key. He slid the bolt as softly as he might.

The room within was soft-lit, but there was no lamp burning. It was her own light, a gentle moonlit glow. She sat up clasping her knees, still in the shift that he had seen reflected in Sinan’s scrying-basin, with her hair loose about her shoulders, black as the night beyond the walls. Her eyes in that light were dark and deep, meeting his with a soft intensity.

He gasped as if she had struck him. His heart had leaped and begun to pound.

He needed his wits about him, and he must master his magic if they were to escape this place before the Franks understood that their sudden enemy was a thing of air and darkness. He summoned every scrap of discipline that he had learned, and calmed the beating of his heart, then focused his mind on what he was about to do.

He reached to draw her to her feet. She did not rise to meet him. Her arms remained clasped about her knees. Her brows had drawn together. “So the diversion is yours,” she said. “Are you mad?”

“Are you so eager to die?”

She shrugged off his flash of temper. “I’m not going to die.”

“You haven’t been condemned to death?”

“Of course I have,” she said. “What, you don’t think I have enough magic to escape?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. “I know you have enough magic. It’s only—”

“You came galloping to rescue me. How did you find out? Did you come to meet me, and find rumor instead? The city’s been buzzing with it.”

“The Berber came to me,” said Ahmad: “Mustafa.”

Her brows rose. “To you? Not to my brother?”

Ahmad nodded.

“But why—” She broke off. “Of course. Magic. Richard doesn’t have it and won’t use it, and Conrad would make sure I was dead—or he would try to make sure—before my brother could come with force of arms. Conrad wants a war with my brother. Couldn’t you have credited me with the wits to prevent it?”

“You are very welcome,” said Ahmad. “Your gratitude moves me deeply. Your—”

She launched herself from the bed into his arms, bearing him backward bruisingly into the wall. She pinned him there with her weight and glared into his eyes. “You didn’t need to do this!”

“I could do no other,” he said.

“You are mad.”

“They do say love is madness,” he said. “Time is flying, lady. Will you waste a perfectly good diversion and a rather costly bargain, or will you rein in your pride and come with me?”

“Are you accusing me of pride?”

She had drawn back a bit when she bridled at him. He got a grip on her and heaved her over his shoulder, and let the force of the movement carry him through and out the door.

She amazed him by not putting up a struggle, though she cursed him steadily in her mother’s language. The sound of it made him think of water running over sharp and jagged stones. It was a grand language for curses, she had told him once: better even than Arabic.

As long as none of her curses came bound to a spell, he cared little. He could not run under her not insubstantial weight, but he could walk swiftly back the way he had come.

The stair was more than he could face at speed and under such a burden. He set her on her feet, not particularly gently, and cut across her stream of invective. “Will you walk, or shall I drag you?”

Her teeth snapped together. “Don’t tell me we’re flying out of here.”

For answer he gripped her wrist and began to climb. She had to follow or be dragged.

At least she did follow, and she left off her cursing. She needed all her breath for climbing. He set a punishing pace, though his legs ached and his lungs burned.

Part of it was pique, but part was honest urgency. The sounds of ghostly battle were dying down. The jinn were growing bored, or reckoned that they had amused themselves enough. They were not like men, to take pleasure in looting and killing, though it was a great entertainment to watch mortals shriek and run from monstrous apparitions.

The stair was far longer than he had remembered, but at last it came to an end. The night air was a great relief after the closeness of the tower.

Somewhere on the climb, his grip on her wrist had shifted until their fingers were intertwined. She stood shoulder to shoulder with him, looking up, as the great jinni came down from the sky. Her expression was as fearless as ever; she was grinning in unalloyed delight.

The jinni touched the stone of the roof with taloned feet. Its wings spread from end to end of the citadel. They drew in and mantled as it went down, bowing on its face at Sioned’s feet.

“Pure spirit,” it said. “Child of fire.”

The laughter that welled in Ahmad had an edge of hysteria. He bit it back.

Others had come behind the great jinni to bow likewise, making deep reverence before a mortal whose spirit was pure. Their lord rose upright, towering to the stars, and said, “We are yours, lady of light. We offer ourselves to your will.”

She was clearly baffled, but equally clearly she could see the need of the moment. “Can you take us away from here?” she asked.

The jinni bowed its great horned head. “Your wish is our command.”

“You have my gratitude,” she said with a pointed glance at Ahmad.

The jinni laughed, a soft rumble. It took them up together, cradling them like a pair of birds, and carried them away from her captivity.