V. Masyaf

24.

There were torches lit in the outer courtyard, horses stamping and fretting, even a roar of disgust from amid a huddle of laden camels. Aidan took it all in with mild surprise. That his mamluks would follow him, he had expected. He had not thought to find an expedition fitted out as if for a raid in the desert.

Karim came toward him, as fussily elegant as ever, with his curled and perfumed beard and his towering turban. He looked unhappy, but that would be for appearance’ sake, and in remembrance of Joanna. Under it, where Aidan’s blunted power could just perceive, he was richly content. He had had an impossible task, he had fulfilled it, he was well rid of this disturbance in his household; and he had paid less for it than he had expected.

He regarded Aidan without hostility, if with no great liking. “I regret,” he said, “that we were unable to provide you with all that we had agreed upon. Guides, the full complement of baggage camels, doubled remounts...”

“No matter,” said Aidan. “I see two horses for every man, and camels enough. Guidance I do not need. I know where we go.”

“And do you know where it is safe, and where the tribes have forbidden passage?”

“God will guide me,” Aidan said.

No good Muslim could express doubt at such a sentiment. Karim, trapped in piety, escaped to duty. “I have told the chief of your mamluks what I know of the road and its dangers. You would do well to ride warily, even where the land seems most quiet. He whom you hunt is not above using the tribes as his weapons; and they are much given to raiding for the love of it.”

“Then I’ll have to oblige them with a battle, won’t I?”

“Youth,” said Karim, “is a wonderful thing.” A man could die in battle, his eyes said. And this one had dishonored his kinswoman and his House; and Allah was just as well as merciful. If it was a prayer, it was a very subtle one.

Aidan smiled at him. “It’s hardly youth, sir. I was bred to oblige my enemies as my friends.”

“God help your friends.”

An unguarded utterance. Aidan saluted it, even as he turned to find his grey gelding waiting, Arslan at its head, somewhat owl-eyed but holding back hard on a grin. Others had not so much self-restraint. Under his eye the grins vanished, but there was no quelling the high fierce joy.

He knew it himself. It was black and scarlet, like fire in the dark. He swung lightly into the saddle. “I shall come back,” he said, “to see the end of our bargain.”

It did not cost Karim excessively much to murmur, “Allah grant.” Then, because he was an honorable man, and because he saw no profit in vindictiveness: “May God prosper your venture.”

Aidan bowed in the saddle. His hellions were waiting. He flung them into flight.

oOo

The city was closed up until dawn, but the House of Ibrahim had influence at a postern gate. Once that was past, none of them looked back at the bulk of shadow and starglimmer that was Aleppo. Part of Aidan’s heart was in it, and most of his power, and some of his soul if he had any. But all of that, he bore with him in memory. His eyes were on the road ahead.

It was five days’ journey to Hama on the Orontes, riding at a comfortable pace; three days then at lesser speed and with an eye toward ambush, to Masyaf. To Aidan on this first night, as the stars paled into dawn, it seemed as distant as the moon. He had come so far, for so long; he had lost the power to see an end to it.

The mamluks were Muslim to a man, and orthodox. Even Conrad with his fair Viking face bowed five times toward Mecca between each dawn and night: at first light, at sunrise, at noon, at sunset, before sleep. They were as regular as monks, and as persistent.

They were also expeditious. Aidan had to admit that. And sensible: they always took advantage of the opportunity to rest the horses.

After the sunrise prayer, the first day, they ate and rested. It was not properly a camp: they pitched no tents, but settled in a stony hollow not far from the road, where there was a little rough grazing for the camels. Most slept. Strong they might be, and hellions they certainly were, but they were young creatures, and they had had no sleep in the night.

Aidan, for whom sleep was more habit than necessity, wandered among the beasts. His gelding came unsummoned, to blow sweet breath in his hands and coax from him the bit of dried apple he carried in his sleeve. He laid his cheek against the warm smooth neck, rubbing the nape where horses always loved to be rubbed, empty for a little while of thought, sense, self.

A light step brought them flooding back. He turned, slowly enough as he thought, but the other started. It was Raihan, grey and haggard, wild-eyed as if he had remembered, all at once, what his master was.

Aidan tried to calm him with a smile. He never saw it. He was down in the dust, groveling as easterners were given to doing, babbling in no language Aidan could make sense of.

Slowly it came clear. “I saw your lady come, I greeted her, I stood guard until you came. When you were there, I watched by the rail. And when I remembered again, I lay there as if I had been asleep, and your chamber was empty, and all the word was that the Assassin had come and struck and gone. My fault, my lord, my grievous fault. I failed in my vigilance. I should die for it.”

Aidan dragged him up and shook him until he stopped babbling. “You should die? She was in my arms when she was struck. How would you have me pay for that?”

Raihan swallowed audibly. His hands worked, clenching and unclenching. “But, my lord. You were distracted.”

A bark of laughter escaped, for all that Aidan could do. “And why was I distracted? No, Raihan. I won’t punish you. You were bespelled by a demon of great power and cunning. I was merely and unforgivably a fool.”

“My lord!” Raihan protested, outraged.

“Go and sleep,” Aidan said. “We’ve a long ride before us.”

Raihan drew a breath as if to object, but Aidan’s eye was steady. He went away slowly, found his place, lay in it. His sigh was loud and much oppressed; but he seemed a very little less wretched than he had been.

His guilt would pass, if not swiftly. Aidan did not know that his own ever would.

oOo

When the day’s heat had begun to abate, they took the road again. There were few travelers upon it. A shepherd crossing with his flock; a caravan wending its way to Aleppo. The land was quiet, bare brown desert with here and there a glimmer of green. Where green was, people were, villages huddled about a spring or a trickle of river.

They camped well after dark, under a waxing moon. Even the tireless Kipchaks were all but asleep in the saddle. Aidan saw them settled and a guard mounted. He took the first watch himself. They did not like it, but he had no use for sleep. His power was still an emptied cup, although the first trickle of its renewal brightened the edges of his mind. He watched with eyes and ears and nose, as any earthly beast could do. He prowled the edges of their circle. He waited for the slow hours to pass.

He could leave them all and go on alone. But they would follow; while he had no power for aught but gleaning the thoughts of one who stood within his arms’ reach, he could neither fly beyond their compass nor defend them against the demon from Masyaf.

He snarled as he paced. That one. Morgiana. Monster of his own kind. Blind groping beast without heart or soul, only hate, and lust that she called love. Was that the essence of what he was? Without human raising, human taming, to be no more than a wolf or a panther. An animal. A killer without measure and without mercy.

And he had thought her beautiful. He had wanted her; dreamed of her. While she lied and laid traps for him, and lured him to destruction.

He spoke to the air. “Morgiana. Morgiana, hunter in the night. I know you now. I come to you.”

If she heard, he had no power to know. She did not answer.

There would be time and to spare for that. In Masyaf; or, if her steel was swifter than his wrath, in hell.

oOo

Aidan did not know when it dawned on him that he was off his reckoning. His mamluks seemed to find nothing amiss. The cup of his power, filling slowly, tried to persuade him that this road was the proper one, the road to Hama from which he must seek that to Masyaf. It was leading them south and west by sun and moon.

Yet beneath that surety was deep uneasiness. His mother’s haunted Broceliande was just so, subtly treacherous, with a taste on the tongue and a quiver in the skin that spoke of magic. They were being led, and led astray.

He knew it surely on the day when, swiftly as they had traveled, they should have come to Hama. Where before them the wide barren plain should have opened to the winding of the Orontes, was naught but dust and sand and stones. The road stretched away into it, empty and mocking, with a dance of heat-shimmer on it.

They were not in difficulty, yet. They had avoided the larger towns, but in the last of many nameless villages they had filled their waterskins and watered their camels well. Aidan’s prudence. The others had thought him a fool, close as they were to river and city, to prepare as if for the deep desert.

He bade his gelding halt. It ran the reins through his fingers, lowering its head to rub an itch in its foreleg.

Arslan rode up beside him. “Do you see something, my lord?”

“Nothing,” Aidan answered. “Nothing at all.”

Arslan raised a brow. He had taken to doing that of late. Aidan felt his own go up as he realized where the boy had learned it. “My lord?” Arslan inquired.

“I see nothing,” Aidan said. “I ought to see Hama, or at least its river.”

The others came up, drawing in as close as their horses would allow. Timur’s mare, as always, squealed and kicked at his brother’s beast, which, as always, had taken advantage of the halt to make overtures. That it was a gelding seemed never to have dawned on it.

Ilkhan slapped its neck. “Idiot,” he said to it. And to Aidan: “We can’t see Hama. It’s down in the river’s furrow.”

“So, then: where is the river?”

None of them could answer that. Most seemed not to want to. “We’ve been slower than we thought,” said Dildirim.

“Or taken a wrong turning,” Conrad said.

Andronikos frowned. “Do these look to you like the hills near Hama?”

“What should they look like?” Arslan demanded. His voice was sharp.

He frowned down the road. His frown darkened to a scowl. He cursed in Turkish, short and foul. “Allah!” he answered himself. “Not like these. Where in God’s name are we?”

“South of Aleppo,” said Timur.

Even he could quail before their massed glares.

“I would rather know why than where,” said Andronikos. And when the glares shifted to him: “If we know why we went astray, we can guess where we are.”

Greek logic. It made no sense at all to a Saracen. To a Frankish he-witch, it was eminently sensible. “As to why,” Aidan said, “I can tell you easily enough. We were bespelled.” He met their stares. “Yes, even I. I’m not invincible.”

They protested, loudly. He waited until they tired of out-shouting one another. Then he said, “We’d best search out a camping place. We’ll need rest, and quiet, to think our way out of this.”

They found a place that would do well enough, a low hill topped with the ruins of a very old fortress. One wall rose still almost camel-high; the paving there was solid enough, and there was browse about the hill for the camels, although the well had long since gone dry. As always, Aidan’s presence was proof against snakes and scorpions, and even the flies hesitated to come too close. He was not supposed to know, but his mamluks drew lots for the place closest to him; every night there was a different drowsing warmth at his back.

Tonight, it seemed, Andronikos had won the toss. As the last blaze of sunset faded from the sky, he sat on his heels before Aidan, sniffing the savory scents that rose from the cookpot, prodding the camel-dung fire with his scabbarded sword. Arslan, whose rank entitled him to a nightly place at Aidan’s right hand, stirred the pot abstractedly. It was a deep trouble in him, that they — even they — had fallen prey to a spell. Aidan’s arm about his shoulders hardly comforted him.

They ate in near-silence, with none of their wonted boisterousness. Their eyes kept coming back to Aidan. Clearly, if thinking was needed, it was his place to do it.

His appetite, never remarkable, died altogether. He choked down a last mouthful, and licked the grease from his fingers. He knew what he had to do. He did not know that his power was enough for it.

They all slowed to a halt, staring. He growled at them. They flinched, but they did not stop staring. “God’s bones!” he burst out. “Was there ever such a pack of goggling idiots?”

“No,” someone muttered.

He laughed, sharp and short. “Come, then. It’s not thinking that we need to do. Not quite yet.”

As he spoke, he drew back somewhat from the fire, smoothing dust and scattered stones from the pavement. Where the fire was, it sank into a hollow, but that before him was level and unbroken. He drew a long slow breath, contemplating it. The fire in him burned low, but it burned. His mamluks’ intentness fed it. With great care, he gathered it, cupping it in his palms. It flickered; he breathed on it. It steadied. He set it on the pavement. It shone like a jewel made of light, ruby in its heart, moonstone about it. He spread his hands above it. It melted and flowed. His will shaped it and gave it substance; made it an image of the world. The east of it swelled and grew and filled the circle between himself and the fire.

There was Aleppo, bone-white city with the lofty jut of its citadel. There, Damascus, green jewel in the desert. And there, Jerusalem, heart of the world, the Dome of the Rock a minute golden spark. Lesser cities came clear one by one as he named them. Shaizar, Hama, Homs, down the meander of the Orontes. Antioch, Tortosa, Tripoli, westward and seaward. And between them in the mountains of Syria, Masyaf.

He swayed; his eyes dimmed. The image wavered as beneath a ripple of water. Its edges were clear. Slowly he traced the line between: the shape of the power which flowed out of Masyaf. Its limit followed roads where it could, feigned them where it must, leading his eye as it had led his body. South and west, yes, but wide of the mark, into the desert. Hama was a long day’s journey west. The Orontes, they would come to, but south of Homs, on the shores of its lake. Then, if they would, into the mountains, but never to Masyaf; road and power would cast them up in Tripoli, among the Franks.

It was a gentle enough magic, subtle and marvelously skilled. It revealed him for what he was, a heedless child, wasteful of the power that was his; prodigal of it when he should be sparing, shutting it in walls when he should let it fly free.

He knew no better. His wars had always been human wars; power had been a game, a gift to use because he had it, never because he had deep need of it. He had never trained it as he would a horse or hound. He had let it train itself, as he needed it, or for his own pleasure.

It was very late to lament his folly. He was walled off from Masyaf; he had neither the strength nor the skill to break down the wall.

But he was oathsworn. He must go. He must break the wall.

Or skirt it.

Or burrow beneath it.

He blinked in surprise. He was lying on his side; he did not remember falling. The image was gone. But it was burned in his memory. He knew where they were, and where they could go. He tried to say it; he could not find the words in Arabic. All his senses were blunted as they had been when he poured his power into Joanna. He was empty, again. He should learn to be wiser.

Later.

Sleep, now. His mamluks wrapped him in blankets — their own,too; he could not speak to upbraid them for it. They heaped about him like puppies. Warmth spread through all of them, and sleep, and blissful certainty. He was their lord. Whatever he set out to do, he could not fail.

He could happily have throttled the lot of them.

25.

It was possible, Aidan discovered, to skirt the edges of the ban, pressing as close to it as its limits would allow. It was like a blankness on the right hand, an inborn incapacity to turn toward Masyaf. Sometimes he tried. He always found himself wandering far out of his way, waking slowly from the conviction that he was on the right road.

They rounded the Lake of Homs and forded the Orontes, and began to angle northward. Aidan’s power was waxing, as if the long days of feeling out the borders of the ban had honed and tempered it; he could not turn fully toward Masyaf, but he could edge closer to it.

They were in Frankish lands now, in the County of Tripoli. To Aidan it mattered little. Half of him centered on the grief and wrath that drove him; half, on walking the narrow line between the Assassins’ ban and the free earth. There was nothing left to care whether he ate or slept, rode or rested, trod land under Muslim sway or under the shield of Christendom. His mamluks were more in awe of him than ever; that, he could sense. They also thought him quite lost to reason.

As, truly, he was. Often his sight of the world faded, and he saw Joanna where the Assassin had cast her, and the land as his power had limned it, and the ban as a ring of fire. But he who himself was fire, had begun, by inches, to bend it.

On a day without number or name, under a sky as grey as his perception of all that was not the ring and the ban, he snapped erect in the saddle. His mount bucked to a halt. His escort tangled about him.

There was no living will behind the ban. It was wrought by living power, to be sure, but once wrought, it sustained itself: like the wards which he knew how to raise, but far greater. It was a pity, he could reflect, that such a master of power should be so vicious a beast.

But there was something he knew, which she well might not. Wards without constant living guard could be passed. Not easily, not simply, but it could be done. Once he had passed through, if he was skillful, and strong enough in power, the wall would rise again, but he would be within it.

He smiled slowly. He was terrifying his poor lads; but it was nothing that they would understand. He touched his nervous horse to a walk, soothing it with hand and voice.

They were going almost due north on a road that had been old when Rome was young; but Rome had leveled and paved it, and it had endured a thousand years. The ban wanted to nudge them westward; Aidan clenched his mind against it, turned his thoughts from the end of the hunt, focused them only on what was directly before him. The tautness eased. He eased with it, almost into a drowse.

Hoofs clattered on stone. Aidan tensed anew. Timur, who had ranged ahead, careened over the hill and skidded to a stop. He was all but dancing in the saddle. “Riders! A whole army of them. In armor. With lances.”

“Franks?” Aidan asked, although he knew.

“Franks,” said Timur.

The mamluks drew together. One or two drew swords. The Turks reached for their bows.

Aidan stopped them all. “No,” he said. “No fighting.”

It was slow, for some of them. They had forgotten what their master was.

He took the lead, with Arslan in the rear to ensure that swords stayed sheathed and bows unstrung. Not hastily, not slowly, they mounted the hill.

Riders, indeed. Riders in black, with white crosses on shields and shoulders. A pair of Knights Hospitaller with novice-squires and a company of men-at-arms. They had seen Timur: they were in marching order, the knights helmed for battle. At sight of Aidan, the knight who led raised a hand. The Franks halted, barring the road.

Aidan brought his own company to a halt, mildly startled and beginning, dangerously, to be amused. If his mamluks had forgotten that he was a Frank, so had he forgotten how he would seem to a knight of Outremer: a Saracen in a pack of Saracens, he in Bedu robes, they in their scarlet livery, as exotic as a flock of cock pheasants; and arrogant with it, to ride armed on the open road where the Frank was lord.

The Hospitaller called out in appalling Arabic, his voice booming in the still air. “Who are you? Why are you riding here?”

Aidan rode forward, waving his mamluks back. They obeyed, ready to leap at the slightest hint of threat. The Franks tensed. He kept his hands well away from his weapons, his face quiet, his laughter tight bound behind his eyes. He spoke in his most exquisite langue d’oc, as sweetly as ever he had wooed his lady in Carcassonne. “A good day to you, reverend brother, and to all your company.”

If the Hospitaller was shocked to find knightly courtesy in a wolf of the desert, he did not pause to indulge it. He shifted to his native tongue with evident relief. His accent was no purer than Aidan’s own. “A day is only as good as the man who lives it. Who are you, and what business have you in our lands?”

“I am,” said Aidan, “a middling fair Christian and a knight of the west who hopes to become one of Jerusalem, and if I trespass, I pray you forgive me, I had thought this road open to any who has need of it.”

“That depends on the nature of the need.”

Aidan smiled. “Have no fear,reverend brother. It’s nothing to do with you or yours.”

“You can hardly expect me to believe that.”

They were all, spokesman and silent company, glaring at Aidan’s escort, which glared back with fine fierceness.

He smiled wider. “Ah,” he said. “I see. Your pardon, sir. These will do you no harm. They are mine; they’ll do as I bid them.”

“Since when,” the Hospitaller asked acidly, “has a pack of Saracens done the bidding of a Christian knight?”

“Since the sultan in Damascus gave them to me,” Aidan answered.

A mutter ran through the ranks.

Aidan stiffened at the import of it. “Recreant, you think me? And have you yourselves never entered alliance with the House of Islam?”

You would,” said the Hospitaller, “do well to come with me, If you are indeed all that you say, then you may offer proof to those better fit to judge than I.”

And if not, it was clear, he would be dealt with as he deserved.

He glanced back. His mamluks watched, beast-taut, beast-wary. Only one or two of them could understand what had been said, but they all knew tones and faces, and they knew hostility when they felt it. The Hospitallers waited in patience that bade fair to break, and soon. Behind, where they would take him, was their castle.

It lay within the ban, near a road that ran nigh straight to Masyaf. Aidan considered the weight and number of human minds about him, and the power that was in them to veil his strangeness. It might, just possibly, be enough.

He sent a prayer of thanks to the good angel who had set the Hospitallers in his path, and said, “I would be pleased to accept your hospitality.”

They took it for irony. He lacked the will to enlighten them. He let them fall in about his smaller company, holding his hellions back from the edge of violence, ruling them with word and glance. Timur was bold enough to say what they all ought, fiercely, just above a whisper: “But we’re prisoners!”

“Guests,” said Aidan, princely certain, “and allies.”

None of them believed it. But they held their peace. They had not been disarmed, which they should have noticed. They were simply prevented from going anywhere but where the Hospitallers led.

And that was full upon the ban, blind to it, unmoved by it. Aidan, trapped in their midst, could not escape it. He was a straw in a millrace; and no matter that he willed to pass the wall. All the force of his power was not enough, even quelled, even buried deep in human minds, even damped almost to oblivion. He was not strong enough. He was not skilled enough. He would break. He would bolt. He would —

Just precisely when he knew that he could not endure it, when it seemed that his brain would boil in his skull and his blood turn molten in his veins, the wall stretched and wavered and, for the flicker of a moment, broke.

He was past it. He swayed heavily against the pommel of his saddle, and clung there for a long moment, dizzy and sick.

His warriors were staring, beginning to be afraid. He drew himself up with an effort, composed his face. Behind them all, the ban had restored itself. Nothing came hunting; no sign in earth or sky betrayed that the wielder of the wards had marked their breaking.

He laughed as much for defiance as for joy, and touched his gelding to a canter.

oOo

He would happily have shed his escort and taken the straight road to Masyaf, but some last remnant of circumspection kept him where he was. Night was coming; his horse was tired. As, for a very surety, was he. What matter if he rested in camp or in a Hospitaller stronghold?

To Arslan and his companions it was Hisn al-Akrad, Castle of the Kurds; but to the Franks who surrounded him, Krak des Chevaliers, Krak of the Knights, that warded the marches of Tripoli. It loomed on its crag, wall and tower, rampart and keep, vast and impregnable. Nothing in the west could match it; in the east, none that Aidan knew.

It was beautiful against the pitiless sky, beautiful and terrible. But Aidan could have no fear of it. It was not Masyaf.

His mamluks tried to imitate his calm. Even through the vast echoing gate. Even in the courtyard which could have swallowed a whole castle in Francia, where they must leave their horses and, at last, surrender their weapons. Aidan let a grim-faced sergeant disarm him and search him, saying with hard-won lightness, “Mind where you put these. I’ll be wanting them back.”

“That’s for the castellan to say,” the sergeant said. He handed Aidan’s daggers and his sword to a lay brother, and turned toward his commander. “He’s clean, sir.”

The knight nodded. His helm was off, his coif on his shoulders, baring a weathered, ageless face, greying hair cropped short round the tonsure, beard grown long after the custom of the warrior monks. Here in his own place, among his own people, he could ease a little, allow himself to wonder if perhaps, after all, this oddity of the road spoke the truth. “You’ll come with me,” he said, still giving no honor and no title, but offering no enmity, either.

Aidan did not move. “Alone?”

The knight frowned slightly. “One other, then.”

“And the rest?”

The frown deepened. “They’ll be looked after.”

“As guests?”

Aidan walked a thin and dangerous line, and he knew it. But it seemed that the Hospitaller saw no profit in anger, “As guests,” he said. “Until you are proven otherwise.”

Aidan inclined his head to courtesy. In Arabic, to his mamluks, he said, “I’m going with this man. You are guests; conduct yourselves as such, or you’ll answer to me. Raihan, you come.”

He was aware, as they were, that his words and their obedience were watched and weighed. For that, they bowed all together, with grace and pride and no little defiance, and went where Hospitaller servants led them. Raihan stayed, wanting to cry his unworthiness, but too proud to do it before so many Frankish faces. Aidan laid an arm about his shoulders and grinned at him. “Well, younger brother. Shall we show these people what we’re made of?”

That stiffened his back for him. He would never forget that he had failed of his guard when he was most needed, but he was learning to forgive himself. Aidan smiled, satisfied. He let the boy fall back to the guardsman’s place, a pace or two behind, and followed their guide into the inner places of the castle.

Eastern custom held even here, where God’s knights stood guard against the Saracen. Although the austerity of bare stone and dim-lit passages was all of the monastery and the west, there were signs of a gentler world: a carpet, a hanging, a chapel with an altar cloth of Byzantine silk. Aidan was offered a bath, food and drink, fresh garments. That they were a test, he well knew. He greeted the wine with heartfelt joy, warned Raihan from the pork roasted in spices, left him to choose bread and mutton and clean water. But Raihan had let the servant dress him as a Frank, taking a wicked pleasure in it, which he shared with his master. Aidan had seen young lords in Jerusalem who wore cotte and hose less convincingly than this, and with less grace.

When they had eaten, they began to test the limits of their freedom. They were not, it would seem, either prisoners or guarded, unless the silent and ubiquitous servant counted as such. Raihan tried the door; the servant watched him carefully, but made no move. Boldly then he strode into the passage. His steps receded, light but firm, and no hesitation in them.

He came back with escort. A Hospitaller knight, again, but not the one who had brought them to Krak. At first Aidan did not know him. It was a long black while since a knight of the Hospital had come to see Gereint laid in his tomb.

He paused just within the door, with Raihan ahead of him, black-browed and forbidding. Carefully, in Arabic, he said, “Lord prince. I thought it might be you.”

“Brother Gilles,” Aidan said, smiling in spite of himself. “You were expecting me?”

The Hospitaller eased visibly, and met smile with smile. “Not, perhaps, in such company.”

Aidan laughed aloud. “I’ll wager not! I was shocked that your order would treat with Saracens. And here am I, master of a pack of them.”

“That’s a story I’d be pleased to hear,” said Gilles, “if you were minded to tell it.”

“It’s simple enough,” Aidan said. “I learned the virtue of necessity. The Assassin has been my teacher; the sultan, my fel1ow scholar. He gave me what his own necessity forbade him to use. I was,” said Aidan, “taken aback, to say the least.”

“No more than I, when I heard that one had come who could only be yourself, but in the guise of a Saracen emir. That’s a long summer’s journey, even for the Prince of Caer Gwent.”

“It has been... very long.” Aidan had not meant to sound so deathly weary. “Thibaut is dead. Did you know that?”

Gilles nodded somberly.

“A little while ago, in Aleppo, his sister was struck and nearly killed. That she lives is no credit to my guardianship. But I have seen the face of the Assassin. I may even, however feebly, have left my mark on her.”

“Her?” Gilles wondered, visibly, if Arabic had failed one or both of them.

Aidan bared his teeth and spoke in the langue d’oc. “Yes, brother. A woman. A female, at least; a she-demon with a silver dagger. Haven’t you heard of the Slave of Alamut?”

“A legend,” said Gilles: “a terror of the night.”

“A very real one. I hold two lives to her account; the third, God willing, will be the death of her.”

Gilles said nothing.

“Yes,” said Aidan. “Yes, she is like me. My folly, that I would not believe; that I saw her,and knew her, and never dreamed that she would be the death that stalked me.” He was breathing hard; his hands were fists. Grimly he mastered himself. “She is older than I, and stronger. She guards her lair well; for long and long she has kept me from it. And yet, perhaps, God has remembered me. He sent your brother in the cross to find me, even as I contemplated battering down the walls of magic with which she barred the road to Masyaf. Alone I was never strong enough. In the company of your brothers, warded by their humanity, I passed the wall. Now I am within it, and the way is clear. I owe you and yours a mighty debt for that.”

Gilles took time to comprehend all of that: time which Aidan was glad to give, for it freed him to sink down, weary beyond desperation. At length the Hospitaller said, “There is no debt but what is God’s. I offered you what aid the order may give; it was offered freely, without price. Even, in the test, without our knowing that we gave it.”

“And yet it was given. I shall remember.” So he had said before, in the courtyard in Aqua Bella, ages ago in the soul’s time.

“You expect us to let you go,” said Gilles.

Aidan raised his head. The Hospitaller flinched from the light in his eyes. “Can you hold me?”

“Most likely not,” Gilles said. “Yet for your life’s sake, we might try.”

“No,” said Aidan. “You fear that, after all, I may kindle a spark that will sear even you in your castles on the marches of Islam. What surety can I give you, that in this I hazard myself alone?”

“Yourself, and twelve mamluks of the Syrian sultan.”

“They are part of me. I guard them as myself.”

Gilles drew a slow breath. “I am not the ranking officer here. Simply a brother of the order, who thought that he might know an answer to the riddle of the Frank who seemed a Saracen. The castellan is minded to keep you here under guard until you should prove yourself no threat to us or to our castle. I can speak for you, but I must tell the truth. I think that you go to your death.”

“That will be as God wills. I have no great desire to die, you may believe that. The death which I desire is another’s altogether.”

A knight of the Hospital could indeed believe that, and understand it. But Gilles, who was monk as well as warrior, said slowly, “Revenge is hardly a Christian sentiment.”

“Then my confessor shall hear of it when I am done.”

Gilles shook his head in wry surrender. “A very perfect prince, and Christian enough for the purpose. Have you quite corrupted your Saracens?”

“Not noticeably,” Aidan said.

They watched Raihan, who, forgotten, had begun his sunset prayer. After a moment Gilles said, “Will you hear vespers with us?”

Aidan bowed acquiescence.

oOo

He had not heard an office of his own faith since he crossed the Jordan, nor stood and knelt and prayed in the company of monks in time out of mind. They were all men here, all deep voices in the chanting. No women, ever; no boys. Those had no place on the sword’s edge.

This was an army in the midst of war. And yet the words were the same as they had ever been, words of rest and of peace.

Aidan took no comfort in them. He had gone too far; he had suffered too much. For him there would be no peace until the Assassin was dead.

The Hospitallers ended their worship and withdrew from the chapel. Aidan remained in the stall to which Gilles had guided him. Gilles had gone out with the rest. A young brother extinguished the candles one by one, all but the vigil lamp over the altar. Aidan, in the shadows, he seemed not to see. He bowed low to the altar, straightened, yawned audibly, and departed.

In a little while a shadow crept by inches through the door. A sneeze betrayed it: the shock of incense to unaccustomed senses. It slid along the wall, desperately uneasy in this alien holiness, but needing its master’s presence. On the edge of the stalls it hesitated. Aidan made no move. It darted, silent and sudden, and dropped panting at his feet. Raihan’s eyes stared up at him, startlingly pale in the dark face, and all but blind where Aidan’s eyes saw but dimmed daylight. He trembled against Aidan’s knees, hating this place, but determined to stay in it. “I went,” he whispered. “I went to see where the others are.”

“Are they well?” Aidan asked, not loudly but not particularly softly.

“They would be, if they could be with you. But they’re obedient. They wait for you to command them.”

“Soon,” Aidan said. He leaned back in the stall and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Gilles was there, and the knight of the road, and a third who was older than either: a lean, weathered whipcord of a man, whose black Hospitaller habit sat on him like well-worn mail. All soldier, this one, and yet all God’s; no gentle cloistered monk, but a warrior of the faith, as fixed and firm in it as any Muslim.

Aidan rose to accept the blessing of the castellan of Krak. He staggered a little, rising. The ban had taken greater toll of body and power than he wanted to know.

None but Raihan seemed to see: his shoulder was there, unobtrusive, bracing where it was needed. Aidan rested very lightly on it before he knelt for the blessing.

As the castellan gave it, he said, “You are welcome to Krak, lord prince.”

Aidan inclined his head. “Reverend father.”

“Gauthier de Tournai,” said Gilles.

Aidan’s head bent again.

The castellan looked up at him, measuring him against what had been said of him. “I see you haven’t gone completely infidel.”

“I’m not likely to,” Aidan said, “reverend father.”

The castellan nodded. “The king will be glad of you, if you live to serve him. You won’t reconsider?”

“Not until my vow is kept.”

“Even if it kills you?”

“Would you do any less?”

“No,” said the castellan. He drew himself up. “I have no authority to prevent you. If you were to ask my counsel, I would see you returned to Jerusalem and sworn to the king’s service. Since my brother here gives me to know how little I can hope for that, then I can do no more and no less than set you on your way.”

“My thanks,” Aidan said, meaning it: more than the castellan knew. But Gilles understood. He smiled behind his superior’s back, widely enough to encompass a battle hard fought but well won.

“You may stay,” said the castellan, “as long as it pleases you, and leave when you will. You are the guest of the Hospital; what aid we can give, you may have.”

“I ask only a night’s lodging for myself and my following, and your prayers.”

“You have both,” said the castellan.

Aidan swayed. It came on like that, sometimes: power taxed to its limit and then beyond it, turning his body traitor.

This time Raihan was not swift enough, or invisible enough. Gilles caught him through the mamluk’s glare. “You’re ill,” he said.

Aidan shook his head, too hard: he nearly fell. “Only need sleep,” he said. It sounded odd. He tried to say it again. “Sleep — need to — ”

oOo

They carried him to bed. He had no strength to fight them. Most of them went away, but Gilles lingered, frowning down at him. “If she is too strong for you already, how do you hope to face her in open battle?”

Aidan’s tongue at least was his own again, now that his body was at ease. “Do I have a choice?”

“Probably not.” Gilles sighed. “Will you be shriven, at least, before you go?”

“Have you the authority to do it?”

“I,no. I’ve taken only monk’s vows.”

Aidan closed his eyes. “Then I’ll live in sin for yet a while.”

“I should be scandalized,” Gilles said.

Aidan smiled in the dark behind his eyelids. “Brother, I am a scandal. Would you have me confess to a stranger, how very much of one I am?”

“Under the seal of the confessional, what harm can it do?”

“Enough,” Aidan said, “and little enough good. Let be, Brother. I am what I am. I do as I must. We’ll fight the infidel yet, you and I.”

“God willing,” said Gilles.

Aidan laughed, though he was fast falling into sleep. “You sound like a Saracen.”

“Sometimes even an infidel may perceive a little of the truth.”

“As God wills,” Aidan said, smiling still. “He will, Brother. Only wait, and see.”

26.

All of Sayyida’s men were fed and settled into the day: Father and Maimoun in the smithy, Hasan with Fahimah who was minded to spoil him for an hour. Sayyida, freed and oddly incomplete, went to tidy the room she shared with Maimoun. She smiled a little as she went. He had promised to come again tonight, and he had all but promised to let her go out to the bazaar in a day or two. Subtlety, that was what he needed. Allah knew, it had taken her long enough to discover it.

The tiny cell of a room was blind dark. She made her way deftly through it to fling open its window, and paused, savoring the warmth of sun on her cheeks.

A whisper of sound brought her about. Someone huddled on the mat: white and scarlet and sudden, astonishing crimson. Sayyida named it in surprise and pleasure. “Morgiana!” Then, less joyfully: “Morgiana. What in the world — ”

She was wound in a knot, trembling. Sayyida touched her shoulder. She knotted tighter. She was weeping. Sayyida gathered her in and held her.

She stilled; in shock, it might have been. Had she ever wept? Had anyone ever given her plain love, with no price on it?

Her body loosened from its knot. She raised a face that, even blurred with tears, was beautiful. It was a long moment before Sayyida comprehended what was beneath it. Her throat was livid, swelling almost as Sayyida stared. Her voice was a raw whisper. “I wasn’t supposed to come here.”

“Who told you that?”

Her head shook, tossing. She struggled upright. Her hair tangled in her face; she raked it back. Stopped. Stared at her hands. There was blood on them, not much, but enough; drying, beginning to crack. She shuddered. “Clean. Must be — clean — ”

There was water near, for washing in the morning, before the prayer. Sayyida brought the jar to the mat, and gently, persistently for Morgiana kept trying to recoil, sponged away the blood. It had a scent, faint yet potent, like earth and iron.

“Heart’s blood,” said the battered remnant of Morgiana’s voice. “But not... not lifeblood. I failed. I, who have never failed of a kill.” She tried to laugh; it was hideous to hear. “For once it was clean hate and not cold murder. For once, I truly wanted a life. And Allah took it from me.”

“It looks,” said Sayyida, “as if He had help.” With a clean cloth and the last of the water, she began to bathe the tortured throat. Those were brands on it: finger-wide, a little narrower than her own, but much longer.

Morgiana’s fists struck cloth and hand aside. “Let me be!”

Calmly Sayyida came back. “Don’t shout,” she said. “You’ll ruin your voice.”

Morgiana hissed, but when she spoke, it was in a whisper. “Allah had nothing to do with it. It was not even Iblis. It was a Frank of my blood, and I taught him to hate me.”

“A Frank?” Sayyida paused. “Your Frank?”

The ifritah’s lip curled. “Never mine. He belongs to a great cow of a giaour. A mortal woman, a Christian’s wife; but no wife of his.”

Sayyida needed a moment to make sense of that. “You found him in bed with someone else’s wife?”

“I found my master’s quarry dancing the old wicked dance with her guardsman, who is no more a mortal man than I am mortal woman. I struck as I have never struck, in hot hate, and it blinded me. I smote awry. And now he knows me, and he hates me, and he has flung all his heart and power into the saving of his doxy’s life.”

“He tried to kill you.”

She laughed again, choking on it. “Not — not kill. Nothing so merciful. He cast me out.” Tears streamed from her eyes, through the horrible, strangled laughter. “He hates me. But I — but I — I want him more than ever.”

“Some women are like that,” said Sayyida. “They need a man who can master them.”

Morgiana stiffened. “I am not — ”

“Don’t shout.”

She drew a shaking breath. Her eyes were cat-wild. “I — do — not — need a master. I need him. Do you think I’m glad of it? He wants my blood. He fancies himself man and prince. Infant. Child. This” — her fingers brushed her throat — ”this is a youngling’s trick. If he were a man, he would have finished it.”

“Thank Allah he didn’t, then.” Sayyida frowned. “You’re going to need more than water on this.”

“I need nothing.” Not all grown infants, Sayyida reflected, were male. “You stay here, and stay quiet. I’ll be back directly.”

oOo

For a miracle, Morgiana was still there when Sayyida came back, curled on the mat, white-faced and silent and exquisitely miserable. She submitted quietly to salves and compresses, and to the soft wrappings with which Sayyida bound them. She had emptied of rage. “He’s hunting me now,” she said. “He thinks I’ve laired in Masyaf. Wise fool. Shall I indulge him? Shall I go back, and let my master command me to kill him? I could, I think. An oath is a wonderful, terrible thing.”

“You’ll stay here,” said Sayyida, “and try not to think about killing. Here, I’ve brought you something cool to drink, and in a little while, when you want it, you can eat.”

Morgiana did not want the sherbet, but Sayyida coaxed it into her. She lay back after, a little less wretched, and beginning to nod. “I can’t stay,” she said in her rough whisper. “My master — I haven’t told him — ”

“Your master can wait. Sleep. You’re safe here.”

She laughed: a brief gust of breath. “Safe. Yes, I’m safe. Who can touch me? Who can slay the Angel of Death?”

“Hush,” said Sayyida, alarmed.

Morgiana shook her head and yawned, delicately, as a cat will; startling herself with it. “Don’t be afraid. We know one another well, he and I. Aren’t I the most faithful of his servants?”

“Not here,” Sayyida said.

“No. Pray Allah, never here.” Morgiana’s eyes squeezed shut. Tears welled from beneath the lids; she turned her face way, angrily.

She cried herself to sleep. Sayyida stayed with her, saying nothing, stroking her hair with a gentle hand.

When her breathing slowed and steadied at last, Sayyida drew back. She would sleep for a while: there had been a draught in the sherbet. It was a mark of Morgiana’s trouble that she had not tasted it.

Sayyida smoothed the coverlet over her and rose, sighing a little. She would never think of questioning Allah’s will, but this was a burden. She did not know that she would be able to bear it. Maimoun would be furious: just when she had begun to work him round to seeing sense.

Allah would provide. He would have to.

To be sure, He began it well. Fahimah was alone, at an hour when all the women usually gathered to ply their needles. Hasan slept, flushed and deeply content.

“Ah, the darling,” said Fahimah as Sayyida came to stand by them. “He played as hard as he could play, and then, out he went, as sweet as you please.”

“Someday I’ll understand how you do it,” Sayyida said. She reached toward the basket of mending, hesitated. “Where are the others?”

“Your mother has a headache,” said Fahimah. “Laila took Shahin to the bazaar. There’s a new caravan come in.”

Laila always knew when the caravans came. She seldom remembered to tell anyone else.

For once, Sayyida was glad. She dropped down in front of Fahimah and took the plump hands in hers, thread and needle and all. Fahimah smiled, startled and pleased. “Little mother,” Sayyida said. “Fahimah, can you help me?”

“You know I always try, child.”

Sayyida swallowed hard. This might not be a wise secret to share. But she could not keep it alone. It was too heavy. “Fahimah, Morgiana is here. Maimoun has forbidden me to see her. But how can I turn her away? She’s hurt; she needs me. I can’t cast her out.”

Fahimah wasted no time in trivialities. “Hurt? How?”

Sayyida bit her lip. “Someone tried to kill her. But it’s not that,” she said hastily. “That’s easy enough to mend. It’s ...she loves him, and he wants her dead.”

“Did she try to kill someone he loves?”

Sayyida gaped like an idiot.

Fahimah shook her head. She looked no more clever than she ever did: a round, comfortable, faintly silly woman, whom one went to when one wanted ease or comfort or unquestioning acceptance. She said, “Allah gives every woman the man he deserves. Even the Slave of Alamut.”

“You know?”

“Little one,” she said, “my wits aren’t the quickest in the world, but sometimes they don’t need to be. When I married your father, he gave me some of his secrets to keep. This was one of them.”

“Then you can help?”

“Let me see,” said Fahimah.

oOo

“Ah, the poor child,” she said, bending over the sleeping Assassin. Between them they had carried her to the room that was Fahimah’s, washed her and clothed her in Laila’s castoffs, and taken her bloodied garments to be burned. Asleep, with her astonishing hair tamed in a braid, she seemed all harmless, too young and slender by far to bear such a burden of death.

“Not so poor,” said Sayyida, “and not such a child.” Hasan yearned out of her arms; she yielded abruptly, and let him curl in the hollow of Morgiana’s body. He seemed to know what was expected of him: he was quiet, and although he could not resist the wine-red braid, he contented himself with nibbling on the end of it. “‘Giana,” he said distinctly. “‘Giana.”

Sayyida clapped hands to her mouth. Fahimah was less restrained. She swept him up. “His first word, Sayyida! His very first! Oh, the little prince!”

The little prince showed clear signs of his displeasure. “‘Giana!” he demanded peremptorily.

“‘Giana,” Sayyida sighed, as Fahimah returned him to the place he wanted. “His first word, and I can’t even tell his father.”

“There will be others,” Fahimah comforted her. “Come now, stay with him, and I’ll see to everything.”

“But-” Sayyida began.

A frown was so rare a sight on that gentle face, that it quelled Sayyida utterly. She bent her head; Fahimah nodded, satisfied, and went to do Sayyida’s duties as well as her own.

At least Sayyida could keep herself busy: she had brought the basket with her, and enough needlework in it to last out the month. She settled to it with the patience that every woman learned, if she was wise, long before she put on the veil.

oOo

Morgiana slept through the day and into the night. Sayyida worried, for she had not meant to give so large a dose, but it seemed a natural sleep. She breathed easily; her face was no paler than it ever was. Sometimes she stirred, to lie on her side or to shift a cramped limb. When Fahimah came to change the guard, she was calm about it. “She’ll wake when she’s ready to wake. Go to your husband, child.”

It seemed that Sayyida was always going or staying at someone’s bidding. She left Hasan, fed and drowsy, where he so obviously preferred to be, and arranged her expression for Maimoun.

He suspected nothing. He wanted to talk about an idea he had had, a new way to work a pattern in a dagger’s hilt. It was interesting, she granted that; she did her best to listen and make the proper noises. She even saw a way round a problem; he was lavish in his praises. She was glad when the flood of talk began to ebb. He was eager for her tonight, but he was trying: he went a little slower, the way she liked it, and a little gentler than his young male urgency might have called for.

For a little while, she let him carry her out of her troubles. But he was sated too soon, as he often was, and then he was asleep. And she was alone beside him, her body like a note half-sounded, her mind cravenly glad that it was over. She found herself wondering what it would be like to share a bed with an ifrit. He would know everything she felt, everything she wanted. Would he fall asleep as soon as he was satisfied, and leave her to lie awake?

She shook her head, annoyed at herself. There was another side to that coin: no solitude when one wanted it, and no secrets. She could never have hidden Morgiana from a demon * *

oOo

The second day was harder. Laila was home, and needed art to elude. Mother, recovered from her headache, wanted to be catered to. Hasan was fretful; Sayyida went in imminent dread that he would try his new word on someone injudicious.

Allah offered one small mercy, if mercy it was: when Morgiana regained her senses, Sayyida was there. She woke cursing the light and her pounding head; her voice was a croak. It must have been agony to swallow, let alone to speak. Somehow Sayyida got a cupful of coolness into her: plain water, this time, and after she spat the first mouthful in Sayyida’s face, she seemed to recognize it. She drank thirstily; when the cup was empty, she leaned back on Sayyida’s arm, glaring. “Never,” she whispered. “Never dose me again without telling me. I’m not like a human woman. You could have poisoned me.”

“But I didn’t,” Sayyida said.

“No thanks to your leechcraft. How long have I been asleep?”

“A day and a night,” Sayyida admitted.

Morgiana staggered up. She promptly fell down again, dragging Sayyida with her. The second time, she moved more slowly, and settled for sitting up, holding her head in her hands. With great care she let it go. It seemed to stay where she bade it; she drew a long breath. “Beard of the Prophet! Girl, if I loved you even a little less, I would have your hide for this.”

“Go ahead and take it. Maimoun can have the leavings.”

Morgiana seized her. Even weakened with sleep and the drug, her hands were cruelly strong. “Has he made you suffer for me? Tell me!”

“He doesn’t even know you’re here. Nor will he, until we’re most properly ready. Can you play an indigent cousin whose husband has set her aside? You’ll have to wear a veil when he’s likely to be near, and cover your hair.”

“What good will that do? The women will still know me.”

“They’ll get enough of the truth to keep them quiet. Fahimah already knows everything.”

Morgiana shook her head. “I have to go. My master is waiting. The hunt is up. It won’t touch Masyaf, I’ve long since made sure of that, but the Frank may be stronger than I think. I’ve dallied here more than long enough.”

“Can’t you do what you need to do from here? You told me about guard-magic. It’s nothing that calls on you to be in your master’s clutches.” Morgiana’s grip loosened; Sayyida took her hands. “Stay at least until your throat stops hurting.”

“I can’t.”

“A day, then. Or two. Hasan said a word yesterday. It was your name. Don’t you want to hear it for yourself?”

Morgiana knew blackmail when she heard it. She scowled, but she said, “A day. No more. To get over the poison you dosed me with.”

That would do, for a beginning.

“For an ending,” said Morgiana, snatching the thought from her head. “Now. Where is this eloquent son of yours?”

27.

Aidan left Krak in the early morning, rested if not entirely hale, and fixed on his course. Gilles rode with him as far as the border of the Hospitallers’ lands, as much for a surety should they meet with Hospitaller scouts, as for the company. The black robe and the white cross stood out oddly amid the mamluks’ scarlet, but he rode easily, trying his Arabic on Aidan’s hellions and winning them over with skill that even the prince could admire.

At the border between the Hospitallers’ lands and those of Masyaf, stood an ancient milestone, the name of a forgotten procurator carved on it, too dim and ageworn now to read. Gilles drew rein beside it. The others paused, spreading a little, watchful. “Lord prince,” said the Hospitaller. “Won’t you reconsider even yet? Yonder madman has done the Lady Margaret all the harm that he can do.”

“No, Brother,” Aidan said. “That, he has not. Her daughter has a son in fosterage near Acre.”

“But surely, an infant — ”

“He didn’t stop at a child or a woman. Why would he hesitate to kill a baby? Or worse. Take him; keep him. Raise him an Assassin.”

Gilles smote his thigh with an armored fist. “Devil take you, man! The Sultan of Syria with all his armies couldn’t even begin to break the power of Masyaf. And here are you, with a dozen half-grown boys and a string of skinny camels. He’ll eat you alive.”

“He might not,” Aidan said. “He might let me in, to see how amusing I can be.”

“And then?”

Aidan shrugged. “And then God will guide me. Or the devil, if you will. You forget what I am.”

“I remember what he has of his own.”

“She is flesh and blood, even as am I.” He flexed his fingers before the Hospitaller’s face. “These have left their brand on her already. Who’s to say that I won’t finish what I began?”

Gilles was silent for a long moment, eyes steady on Aidan’s face. At last he raised his hand and signed the cross. “God go with you, my friend, and bring you home again.”

Aidan bowed beneath the blessing. “God keep you,” he said, “my friend.”

He looked back once before the road bent, raising a spur of rock between. Gilles sat his patient horse by the milestone. His helm was on; he was a shape without a face, a knight of stone and steel. Aidan lifted his hand. The mailed arm went up in answer. Aidan turned away from it, toward the Assassins’ country.

oOo

It was not so very far from Krak to Masyaf. A horseman could ride it in a day, if the need were great enough. Aidan did not choose to. It was not wholly cowardice. He was less strong than he wanted to be, and more prudent than a good madman ought to be. The way grew steep as they advanced, a narrow mountain track, now passing between high walls, now careening on the edge of the cliff. He kept a careful pace, his power stretched as much as it would allow, to warn of ambush.

With the approach of evening, he called a halt. The track widened briefly, and leveled enough for a camp; there was little forage, but the camels could make do with what there was. They pitched a rough and fireless camp, with a guard posted on the summit above them: Dildirim, who had drawn the short straw. He took it in good part, and he had the spare blanket, for the wind was blowing cold. “But mind you don’t get too comfortable,” Arslan warned him. “If you sleep and we come to grief for it, I’ll dine on as much of your liver as the Assassin leaves behind.”

Aidan, out of human earshot, swallowed a smile. It ended in a grimace. He should have tarried longer in Krak. He could admit it here, to no one but himself. A day, only, would have restored his strength.

Another night’s sleep would do well enough. He rolled himself in cloak and blanket. The warmth against his back was Timur, the warmth at his feet Ilkhan. In a little while, Arslan came to warm the rest of him.

oOo

They were amply wary, for innocents. Morgiana, a shadow in the shadow of a stone, reckoned their disposition. He was in their center where a prudent commander should be, burning brighter in her eyes than the fire which they had been too wise to kindle, but dimmer than she remembered. So, then: the ban’s crossing had had its price.

It had brought her from Damascus at last, out of too long an idleness. Sayyida and Fahimah between them had hidden her from Sayyida’s pompous fool of a husband, whose only virtue was that Sayyida loved him. But for that, Morgiana would long since have taught him proper respect for his wife.

When this was done, she would begin his lessoning. Gently, if her temper held. There was, after all, Hasan. A boy should have a father, however sadly flawed.

A second shadow swelled her own. “All are ready,” it breathed in her ear.

She stayed it with her hand. Lean wolf-bones flexed under her fingers, stiff with fear of her. She smiled mirthlessly into the dark. Yes, let him be afraid. Only let him serve her, and do as she bade.

Her fingers tightened, sprang free. “Now,” she said.

oOo

Aidan started awake. It was deep dark: the dark before dawn. Even the wind was still, the stars burning cold in the vault of the sky. And yet, there was something ...

Arslan stirred against him. He laid a hand over the boy’s mouth; they lay still, eyes wide, ears straining.

It was too quiet.

The horses; the camels.

Gone.

Aidan eased his sword from its scabbard.

The night went mad.

oOo

They were not Assassins. Aidan did not know why, but he needed to be sure of that. They were Bedouin, wolves of the desert, abandoning stealth to shrill their wild war-cry. It flung the mamluks out of sleep and onto their weapons; it roused the camp to battle. No time to gather for defense, no space. Arslan struggled to set himself at Aidan’s back; the tide, relentless, swept him away.

They walled Aidan in spears. He hewed at them; they only grew the thicker. They pressed him close. They pricked him, hampering his sword-arm. He thrust the blade into its sheath and seized a spear, hurling its astonished wielder over his head.

Another kept his wits about him. Aidan froze. A spearpoint rested on the most tender of places. A white wolf-grin gleamed beyond it.

Aidan shattered that grin with the haft of the spear.

But the spearman had a dozen brothers, and each of them seemed to have a dozen more. None of whom would give Aidan a proper battle. Only prick, and prick, and prick, and circle, and sunder him from his mamluks.

Whom he could not find. Not one. Not with eye, not with mind.

Mind.

He forgot the spear in his hand and the spears that hemmed him in. He cast wide with voice and power. “Bitch! Murderer! Coward! Come out and face me!”

His tormentors fell back. He hardly saw. “Assassin! I know your stink. Come out of your lair!”

Nothing. No sight, no sign of her. He howled until the mountains rang. “Morgiana! Morgiana!”

The mountains came down, and the night with them.

oOo

The circle of Bedouin drew back, blinking in the grey dawn. Some of them were down. At least one was dead.

Morgiana spurned the dead man with her foot, and knelt by the one who had killed him. Very much alive, that one, but stunned: the butt of a spear had felled him even as he woke the echoes with her name. She spelled him deeper into darkness, only then daring to touch him, to lay her palm against his cheek. He was thinner than she remembered, the skin stretched tighter over the fine strong bones. “I shall teach you not to hate me,” she said to him.

Her wolves watched with edged fascination. She wheeled upon them. “Take him up. Bind him as I tell you.” And when they did not leap to obey: “Now!”

They moved quickly enough, once they had begun. Even their kind could be wary of trespassing in the Assassins’ domain; and they were deep in it. They bound the Frank with cords both soft and strong, and set him on the best of their camels. She rode behind him, steadying him. He was warm in her arms.

The Banu Nidal gathered the wounded and the dead, and swept the field clean. The greater part of them gathered their beasts and their booty and departed where Morgiana bade them, making all the speed that they might. A small company remained under her eye, but those were the best of them, their sheikh himself and the pack of his sons. Their way was the swifter and the more secret. They took it at racing pace, under a glamour that made of them a shadow and a shimmer.

The tribe camped on an oasis which was their secret, a green haven in circling mountains. The roads of trade and war ran closer to it than travelers knew, but the entry was narrow and hidden and most well guarded.

They rode down it in the last light of evening, stretching their weary mounts into a gallop, shrilling their victory. The guard of the pass let them through with a shout. In the field below, the tents emptied: women, children, a few sullen boys left behind to guard the camp. Old men, there were none. Men of the Banu Nidal lived only as long as they could fight.

Morgiana saw her prisoner laid in a tent beside the sheikh’s own, on the tribe’s best rugs and blankets. “This is mine,” she said, “and I will drink the blood of the tribe, if I come for him and he is gone.”

The sheikh nodded. “We can make sure of that,” he said. He knelt and thrust up the dusty robe, and drew his knife. “Hamstrung, he’ll do no running, but he’ll be sturdy enough for aught else you wish. Or a quick thrust, here, in the heel, and a cord through it — ”

She knocked him sprawling. “You shall answer to me with your own body for every drop of his blood you shed. That” — she slashed his bony chest with his own blade — ”is for the word of his maiming. Keep him close and keep him safe, and cherish him as you cherish yourself, for his life shall be as yours.” She held up a vial. “He will sleep for yet a while. When he wakes, dose him with this. But gently! If he sleeps too deep, or dies of it, I will see that you pay.”

The sheikh took the vial in a hand that would not stoop to tremble. He feared her: he was no fool. But it was a clean fear, the fear of the wolf for the rival who bests him. He bowed to her will, but he did not lower his eyes. “I will guard him as myself.”

She nodded, once, and turned her back on him. She paused to draw down Aidan’s robe, and to brush his cheek with her fingers. In the space between breath and breath, she was gone.

oOo

Aidan wandered in a dim strange dream. He saw the camp on the mountain, and it was all broken and scattered. His mamluks were gone out of his knowing; the horses, the camels, his beautiful sword, all gone. Beyond grief was rage and loss and bitter helplessness.

The dream blurred. He lay in a woman’s arms on a lofty,swaying bed. Her touch was gentle, her body warm and supple against him; her scent was wondrous sweet. Somewhere in the light, he knew that there should be hate. Here was only peace.

He clawed his way out of that peace, through a long dark and a longer twilight. His body was a shape limned in ache. Twilight shaped itself into mortal dimness: dark walls that shifted with the wind’s song, air heavy with manifold stinks, man and goat and camel and ancient smoke all mingled. He gagged on it, and gagging, knew that he was awake.

He lay on musty carpet in a tent woven of goat’s hair, bound hand and foot, with the throbbing of a blow in his head. Of the stroke he knew nothing. He had gone to sleep among his mamluks. He had — waked? Fought?

Yes. Fought. Now, too clearly, he was captive. But not in Masyaf. The wind’s song was a song of open places, with voices in it, and the blatting of goats, the clatter of hoofs on stone, the roar of a camel.

His power stretched stiffly, but it stretched. He knew a moment’s bitter amusement. So, then. He had had his night’s sleep, however ill his body had taken it. He touched minds; a mind, more open than others, because it was younger and somewhat simple. Desert, oasis, camp. Banu Nidal: Bedouin, deep-desert tribesfolk, bound in service to Allah and to a demon of the air. The men were out raiding — resentment, at that; one should go, one was old enough, one could string one’s father’s bow — but the strongest had come back with the demon, and a morsel for the demon’s dinner.

The morsel lay on his side in the tent, ascertaining that his bonds were cleverly tied. He could move with fair freedom, even sit up, but the knots were all out of his reach.

Sitting up was a mistake. His stomach, empty, did its best to heave itself out on the carpet.

The spasms passed too slowly, leaving him in a knot, shaking, running with cold sweat. For a long while he could do little more than breathe.

And, in spite of himself, think. Who the demon was, he could well guess. Time enough yet to wonder why she had brought him here and not to her master in Masyaf. Maybe they had had a falling-out. Or maybe she wanted to carve him into collops for her own, sole pleasure.

She was not here. That, he was reasonably sure of. He was being kept until she deigned to claim him.

The guard in front of his tent had heard his convulsions; but it was a bold man who meddled with the demon’s prey, and this one was no paladin. Soon enough, someone else came to the guard’s call, no bolder perhaps, but more mindful of the demon’s will. Unharmed, the newcomer’s mind jabbered. Unharmed, or she dines on my liver. Beneath it: If he dies while we leave him unmolested, how can she blame us? And, to that: Easily. Oh, easily.

Light stabbed him. A shadow blunted it. The reek of human and of goat nigh overwhelmed him. The mind babbled on. Awake. Iblis take him! Food — water — the vial, as she commanded- Inspiration struck; relief loomed huge. Woman’s work, that. Let a woman pay, if he takes ill.

“Yes,” Aidan said sweetly. “Let her.”

The man fled.

He was not so timid in ruling his women. But the one who came, came of her own will, brandishing her bruises like a banner. She was a strong man’s woman; she walked with pride, queenly erect even in the confines of the tent.

She wore no veil: strange after so long in Islam, to see a woman’s naked face. She was hardly a beauty, and the desert had aged her well before her time. No doubt her husband had thought of that in allowing her to play nursemaid to the demon’s prey.

She set down what she carried: a round of flat bread bearing a handful of dates and a bit of cheese, and a skin of what must surely be water, and a wooden cup. She was keenly aware of his beauty, but she was a damnably sensible woman. He was beautiful; Morgiana was terrible. It was a simple enough choice.

She helped him to sit up, this time with no worse consequence than a moment’s dizziness. He was not, it was clear, to be unbound, even to eat. She fed him with visible enjoyment, bite by bite until he would take no more, and held the cup to his lips.

His nose wrinkled. Ancient goatskin, salt and sulfur — water of the desert as it too often was. But beneath it, something else. Darkness, and sleep.

His throat burned, crying for water. His will hardened against it. He fell forward. The cup flew from her hand, scattering its burden of sleep. He lunged upon the waterskin.

She snatched it away. “Ah,” she said laughing, “a clever one! What would you give for it?”

“A smile,” he said.

Her head tilted. “I already have that.”

“If you already had a gold bezant, would you refuse another?”

“If I knew I could get something better.”

“What would that be?”

Her eyes danced upon him. She was not so old; nor must she have been so unlovely, when she was young. “My husband is a terrible man, but She is more terrible than he. If you kiss me, what can he do but rage?”

“He can beat you.”

She shrugged. “He hits me. I hit him back. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I let him win.” She dangled the waterskin, enticing. “Are you thirsty, O my gazelle?”

“For your kisses, O my fawn.”

She gave him both, with rich pleasure, and left him the waterskin: a gift more precious than gold. “Pretend,” she advised as she left him. “Sleep. Him, I doubt you can buy with kisses; and She is not to be bought at all.”

What she thought of Morgiana, he hardly needed power to see. She would reckon it a fair exchange, if she paid in pain to thwart the demon. But even she would not go so far as to set him free.

He lay where she had left him, flexing his wrists in their bonds. They were most well knotted.

No one, he noticed, had considered the most human consequence. Perhaps they expected him to soil himself. He was not ready to do that, yet.

Submission, he never thought of. The longer he lay, the more sure he was, that he was not watched by other than mortal means. He was supposed to be deep in drugged sleep, mindless and helpless until she came for him.

He had an oath to keep, and a debt to pay: greater now by the worth of a dozen mamluks. This captivity was no part of it.

His captors did not know what he was. She had not seen fit to tell them.

He began to smile.

28.

Sayyida burrowed in the depths of the clothes press, winnowing outright rags from clothes that could be mended from what needed no mending at all. Laila always relegated to rags what she was tired of, no matter its condition; Sayyida had already found a veil of peacock silk with gold thread in it, that would do very well for when she wanted to look pretty for Maimoun. She wrapped it about her neck and dug deeper.

“This would suit you,” someone said.

Sayyida erupted from the press. Morgiana held up a plum-colored gown. It clashed hideously with her hair.

By slow degrees Sayyida’s heart stopped hammering. She took the gown in fingers that still shook a little, and drew a long, steadying breath. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.

The ifritah laughed. Her throat was a patchwork of greening bruises, but her voice was her own again, only a little huskiness left. She looked as if she would have liked to dance.

No sooner thought than done. She swept Hasan out of the tangle of castoffs and whirled him about, to his manifest delight.

“You’re in good spirits,” Sayyida observed, a little sourly.

Morgiana’s grin was all mischief. “Oh,I am. I am!” She hugged Hasan to her and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks. “Do you know what I’ve done?”

“Something appalling,” said Sayyida.

“Oh, yes. It is that. I haven’t even killed anybody.” That sobered her a little. But her secret was too much for her. She held it yet a while, as if she could not bear to let it go. Then: “I have him now.”

“Him?”

“Him!” She bounced; there was no other word for it. “My Frank. I caught him before anyone knew what I did, and took him away. He’s safe now, till I’m ready to claim him.”

Morgiana acting like a silly chit of a girl was a revelation. Sayyida tried to bring a little reason into the proceedings. “Does he have an opinion? Or aren’t you letting him have one?”

“He will. When I’m ready.” She laughed again, almost — Allah help them all — a giggle. “Do you remember how you almost poisoned me? I borrowed the bottle. He’ll sleep till I want him to wake.”

Worse and worse. “And then?”

“He wakes.” She waited; Sayyida failed to extol her brilliance. “You don’t see. He wakes, in the place I’ve readied for him. He’ll be wild, I know that. But I’ll tame him. From hate to love is no distance at all; and we belong together. He’s a child, but he has the beginnings of sense. He’ll see what has to be.”

“You,” said Sayyida, “are stark raving mad.”

Even that could not touch Morgiana. “You are mortal,” she said. “You think in mortal ways. He and I — we are of the same kind. He will remember that. He will come to see as I see.”

“May Allah will it,” Sayyida said.

oOo

Sayyida wore the veil and the gown that night. Morgiana was delighted to help her: to wash her hair with a little of Laila’s henna and put it up with a clasp that Maimoun had made himself, silver set with turquoises; and paint for her eyes, and even a whisper of scent. She had not felt so close to beautiful since her wedding.

Maimoun was late in coming. That was nothing to fret over: he was dining with a friend or two, and they liked to pass the night in playing backgammon. Maimoun would stay a while, for decency: a man should not seem too eager for his wife.

She waited alone. Fahimah and Morgiana had Hasan. She thought of going to fetch him, for the company, but it would hardly do for Maimoun to come back while she did it. She wriggled in her unaccustomed splendor, and tried not to rub the kohl from her eyelids. If he did not come soon, she was going to stop feeling splendid and start feeling silly. What was she doing in paint and scent and hennaed curls? She was plain gawky Sayyida, no more a beauty than she was a sultan’s bride.

She knew his step: solid, like him, and a little self-important. It shook her out of her half-drowse, drew her up at the angle Morgiana had told her was her best, tensed her as it always did these days, since she had secrets to keep.

Outside the door, he hesitated. She held still. Sometimes his friends had wine, which she was not supposed to know about. But she always knew, because he moved more carefully and talked more freely, and his breath smelled of mint.

He came in slowly. His brows were knit. Her nose caught neither wine nor mint, but something sweeter. It reminded her of ...

She was wearing it. Laila’s perfume.

No. He would never do that. Not with his master’s wife.

His eyes fixed on her face. He never saw the veil at all, or the gown, or even the kohl that made her eyes almost beautiful. He said, “You’ve been hiding something from me.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again.

“I told you,” he said. “I told you not to see her.”

She could lie. She could deny. She could scream at him. She said calmly, “Who told you she was here?”

“Laila.”

It was out before he thought. He flushed.

“That,” she said, “was treachery.”

His flush deepened to crimson. “You admit it?”

“I won’t lie.” Her hands shook; she knotted them. “I didn’t have any choice, Maimoun. She was hurt; she was sick. She had nowhere else to go.”

He advanced on her. “I forbade you. You defied me. How dared you? How dared you?”

Her back struck the wall. She did not even remember moving. She had never seen Maimoun like this. “Maimoun! Won’t you listen? She’s a friend. She came to me; she needed me. How could I cast her out?”

“I told you not to see her.”

He bulked over her. She tried to get up; he pushed her down. She would not cry — she would not. “Why? Why do you hate her so much?”

“She is a horror. She has killed more times than anyone can count.”

“Who told you that?”

He would not answer.

“It was Laila, wasn’t it? You know how little she loves me.”

“Sometimes she tells the truth.”

“You don’t even know the woman!”

“Woman? Woman, is it? I know whose slave she is. I know how she has cursed your family. I know it all, Sayyida. You thought you could keep it from me, didn’t you? All of you.” He sneered. “Bahram the eunuch. Bahram the unmanned, with a passion for silver-hilted daggers. You made a fool of me.”

She clutched his coat. “Maimoun! Stop. Please, stop.”

He tore her hands free. “No, I won’t stop. You wouldn’t stop harboring her, even when I expressly forbade you.”

Something snapped. She did not want it to. She tried to hold it together, to keep her voice from shaking. “She needed me. I’ve known her since I was a baby. I couldn’t turn her away.”

“She needs nothing and no one. You chose. You chose her, and you defied me. What else have you done? Where have you gone? Whom have you seen? Spoken to? Slept with? Is even my son my own?”

“Maimoun,” she said. “Don’t.”

He hauled her up. His spittle sprayed her face. “Don’t! You command me, woman? You laugh in my face? Go on. Tell me he truth. Tell me how you scorn me.”

“I don’t.”

“Liar.”

Her breath caught: a sob. “Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll call you anything I please.”

She could not hold it in any longer. She was sorry. She did not want it. But it was too big; it was too strong. It was rage.

It came softly, softly. “You will not,” it said to him.

He shook her, rocking her head on her neck. “I will. Liar.” Shake. “Liar.” Shake. “Liar!”

Her hand tore free and smote him with all the force of rage and grief and betrayal.

He clubbed her down.

oOo

“That,” said a voice as soft as the voice of Sayyida’s rage, “was not wise.”

At first he seemed not to hear it. He gaped down at Sayyida, as if he could not understand how she had got there, sprawled at his feet. She stared up. What opened in her, she knew with cold certainty, was hate.

Morgiana stepped between them. She was in white. She looked like a flame before Maimoun’s dark solidity; there was nothing human in her. Hasan clung huge-eyed to her neck.

She took no notice of him at all. “Shall I kill him?” she asked.

Sayyida swallowed painfully. Her lip was split; she tasted blood. “No,” she said. “No, he’s not worth killing.” She paused. “You haven’t done anything to Laila, have you?”

The ifritah smiled with terrible contentment. “No. Nothing. Except...” Her voice trailed off.

“What did you do?”

Her apprehension made Morgiana laugh. “Nothing criminal, I trust. I simply laid a wishing on her. To her husband, she must speak the truth, and only the truth, as she thinks it, without embellishment. It was,” she said, “illuminating for all concerned.”

Sayyida could not laugh, She did not think that she would ever laugh again. But she mustered a smile. “I can imagine.”

Morgiana’s eyes sharpened; she leaned toward Sayyida. Her finger brushed the throbbing lip. She hissed. “He struck you.”

It was nothing, Sayyida was going to say. Not for love of Maimoun. Simply because she did not want any human creature to die on her account.

But he spoke first, blustering, blind to any good sense, seeing only that he was male and this, even this, was female. “Yes, I struck her. She is my wife. She is mine to do with as I please.”

“She is?” Gentle, that. Maiden-soft, maiden-sweet. Deadly dangerous.

He heard only the softness. His chest swelled. “She is.” He held out his hands. “Give me my son, and get out.”

Hasan’s face was buried in Morgiana’s shoulder. She looked from him to his father. Her nostrils flared. “What will you do if I refuse? Hit me?”

“A beating would do you good.”

“You think so?” She was all wide eyes and maidenly astonishment. “You really think so?”

Even he could hardly be as great a fool as to be taken in by that. He paused, eyes narrowing. She laid her cheek against Hasan’s curls. One arm cradled the child. The other settled about Sayyida’s shoulders.

His hands came up. One, a fist, wavered between the women. The other snatched at Hasan.

Morgiana recoiled. Sayyida leaped. Which of them she meant to defend, she never knew. His blow, too well begun, caught the side of her head and flung her against the ifritah. Morgiana cried out. Sayyida tried to. “No! Don’t kill. Don’t kill — ”

oOo

Silence.

Sayyida sat down hard. Her rump protested: it knew stone. Her head reeled, not only with the blow.

This was no room she knew.

She clutched. Yes, stone. A carpet over it, rich and jewel-beautiful. Lamps in a cluster; hangings of silk, flame-red, flame-blue, flame-gold.

Morgiana, white and crimson and fierce cat-green, with Hasan staring about in grave astonishment.

Sayyida held out her arms. He filled them; she held him tight and tried not to shake. Very, very soon, she was going to break into screaming hysterics. “Where,” she managed to ask. “Where are we?”

“Away.” Morgiana knelt in front of her. “This is my place, my secret.”

“Is it where you go, when you go away?”

“Sometimes.”

Sayyida clung to Hasan and rocked. She was cold; she was all bleak inside. More had broken tonight than her patience. “You didn’t — you didn’t kill him. Did you?”

“You told me not to.” Morgiana hesitated. She looked — of all things, she looked uncertain. “I left him goggling and yelling for you to come back.”

Sayyida’s heart clenched.

“I can take you,” said Morgiana. “If you want it.”

“No.” Sayyida had not meant to say it. But her tongue had a will of its own. “No. He called me a liar. He grants me no trust and no honor. He cages me. I won’t go back to that.”

“I won’t make you.”

Sayyida thrust words past the knot in her throat. “Will you let me stay here?”

“As long as you need,” Morgiana said.

Forever! Sayyida almost cried. But she was not as far gone as that, even yet. “For ... for a while,” she said. “Until I know what I want. If you don’t — ”

“How can I mind? I brought you here.”

Sayyida laughed, because if she did not, she would burst into tears. “It’s like a story. The princess in distress, swept away to the enchanter’s castle. Do all stories come down to as little as this?”

Morgiana touched the mark of Maimoun’s fist. “Not so little,” she said.

The tears came then, for all that Sayyida could do. Morgiana eased the whimpering Hasan out of her arms. She lay on her face and wept herself dry.

oOo

When Sayyida set her mind on something, she held to it, though it tore her to the heart. She would not hear of her family; she would not speak of what had happened. She settled in Morgiana’s lair, with the baby to keep her busy, and a thousand small tasks such as Morgiana would never think of, still less find worth doing. They did, Morgiana admitted, make a difference, albeit a subtle one. Sayyida claimed a corner of the hall for herself and Hasan, heaped rugs and cushions there, and tried to keep in it the toys and baubles that Morgiana brought for the baby. In the lesser cavern, where was an ancient and blackened hearthstone and where the roof made itself a chimney to the distant sky, she established her kitchen. The rest she kept clean and tidy; she exiled the lizards and the spiders to a quarter near the cavemouth, and the mice with them, since Morgiana would not hear of their expulsion.

Morgiana had no delusions about her prowess as a housewife, but before a master of the art, she felt keenly all that she lacked. It dismayed her a little. It amused her considerably. She was — yes, more than anything, she was pleased to have these interlopers here, living in her secret place, changing it to suit their pleasure.

She had, she realized, been lonely. She lay on her mounded cushions, with the wind blowing cold without and the lamps flickering warmly within, and watched Hasan play on the floor. His mother sat near him, her smooth dark head bent over the coat which she was making for him. There was always a darkness in her now, a hard cold knot of obstinacy, but her surface was placid, even content.

She looked up and smiled. Morgiana smiled back. Neither said anything. They did not need to. That was friendship, that silence.

Much later, Morgiana woke. Hasan slept peacefully. Sayyida seemed to, but beneath the stillness, the tears flowed soft and slow.

oOo

It was time, Morgiana knew, to wake again from being to doing. Sayyida was in as much comfort as she could be. When Morgiana left, she was in the innermost cave with Hasan, availing herself of its great treasure: the hot spring that welled into a pool side by side with one both cold and pure.

Morgiana smiled and stepped round and through, into another air altogether.

The Banu Nidal were in ferment. Half of them seemed to be trying to break camp; half, to be milling about aimlessly, wringing their hands. The sheikh stood in their midst, holding the rein of a spent and trembling camel.

He did not even start when Morgiana stepped out of the air, although his face went a little greyer. He nearly fell as he went down in obeisance.

She pulled him to his feet with rough mercy. There was, she noticed, a wide and silent circle around them, widening as the moments passed. People seemed unusually intent on making themselves scarce.

“I am to blame,” the sheikh said. “Mighty spirit, daughter of fire, the fault is entirely mine. Take me and welcome, but spare my people.”

She was slower than she should have been: she had only begun to understand. Her power darted, proving it. She seized him by the throat. “Where is he?”

He gasped, gagged. She loosened her fingers a fraction. “Great lady, we do not know. We have been hunting him. But nowhere — nowhere — ”

Someone thrust in between them: his senior wife, fiercely defiant. “You never told us that he was a son of Iblis!”

Morgiana drew back a step. It was not a retreat.

Nor did the woman read it as such; but it fed her courage.”You should have told us,” she said. “We guarded him exactly as you commanded, as the mortal man he seemed to be. How were we to know that he was no mortal at all?”

It was new, and strange: to be put to shame by a human woman. Morgiana was, for the moment, beyond anger. “Tell me,” she said.

She gained it in more than words. Evening; the sunset prayer past, the women bent over the fires, scents of the nightmeal hanging heavy in the air. The guard was vigilant by the prisoner’s tent, and prudence had tethered the bull camel behind where a clever captive might think to escape.

He strolled out past the stunned and helpless guard, dangling the cords in his hand. One of the sheikh’s sons leaped to seize him; he spoke a word, and the boy stood rooted, staring. He went straight to the sheikh and bowed, and thanked him graciously for his hospitality.

“And then,” said the sheikh’s wife, “he spread wings and flew away.”

Morgiana saw it as they had seen it. He was never so tall as they imagined, his face never so white a splendor, but the mantle of fire was power for a surety; and the wings that he spread, part shadow and part glamour, with a shimmer of red-gold fire.

The Banu Nidal wasted little time in gaping after him. They took to their camels and set out in pursuit; but he was too swift, and he left no earthly trail. She, who could have tracked him with power, did battle in Damascus on Sayyida’s behalf, and dallied thereafter, complacent in her lair.

The Banu Nidal waited in dread of her silence. They could not know how she flogged herself. He was young; he was a fool; he was certainly mad. But he was ifrit to her ifritah, and she had committed the worst of sins. She had underestimated him.

She whirled in a storm of wrath. The tribesfolk fell away from her. Their terror did not comfort her. She spread wings of blood and darkness, and hurtled into the sky.

29.

The warden of the gate of Masyaf looked out upon the morning. The mountains marched away before him, bleak and bare. Below lay the fields that fed the castle, fallow now with the harvest’s ending but bearing a memory and a promise of green. They had suffered in the sultan’s war; wind and the autumn rains had begun to blur the remnants of the siegeworks.

He would not come back. Allah, and Sinan, had seen to that. The warden murmured a prayer of thanks, secure in his faith and his righteousness. Was he not the guardian of the Gate of Allah? Was he not assured of Paradise?

A black bird flapped down amid the stubble of a field. It was very large and most ungainly, staggering and struggling as if it bore a wound. And yet there was no archer in the fields, nor lad any shot from the walls; and the bird flew alone.

It blurred and shifted in the watcher’s sight. Large, indeed. Man-high, and a tall man at that. Its wings shrank to tattered robes. It raised a white face, eyes enormous in it, black-shadowed; black hair in a wild tangle, black beard, nose curved fiercely and keenly enough but patently no bird’s.

Even yet, the warden hesitated to call it human. Human-shaped, certainly, and male beyond a doubt. But as it struggled toward the castle, it grew more strange and not less.

It — he — was quite evidently and quite starkly mad. The steepness of the slope drove him to his knees. As often as he fell, he dragged himself erect again, inching toward the gate. His robe was torn; blood glistened on it. His face was serene, even exalted.

The gate was shut. He swayed on the edge of the ditch, smiling. For an instant his eyes seemed to meet the warden’s, though that could not be: the warden was hidden in the shadow of the battlement. He raised his long white hands, still smiling, and smote them together. The gate rocked; stilled.

The faintest of frowns marred his brow. Had he expected the gate to fall? His eyes rolled up. Gently, with dreamlike slowness, he crumpled.

oOo

The warden would have left him to die, if he was capable of it, but the Master would not have it. They brought him in and tended him. He was filthy, battered, worn to a shadow; he desperately needed water and sleep. But he was in no imminent danger of death. They saw that he was no Muslim. They surmised that he was no mortal.

Sinan contemplated him with great interest and no little wonder. The physician offered him the proof: the eyelid lifted, the eye rolling senseless but, when the light struck it, performing its office. A grey-eyed man who was no human man.

The Master of the Assassins could not wait by a stranger’s bedside, however intriguing that stranger might be. He posted guards and bound them with his commands, and returned to duties more pressing, if never so intriguing.

oOo

Aidan woke in rare and perfect clarity. He knew where he was. He knew, and guessed, how he had come there. He knew that he was nothing approaching sane.

The bed was hard but the coverlets warm and soft. He was clean; his bruises ached, his cuts stung, but gently. Worse was the ache of his sore-taxed power. He had demanded all that it could give, and then as much again. And it had obeyed him.

It throbbed like a wound. Even to shield it was pain.

He did not care. He was in Masyaf.

He sat up gingerly. Muslim modesty had clothed him in shirt and drawers; they were plain but well sewn, and they fit not badly.

The chamber was small but not ascetic: walls of stone softened with silk, a good carpet, even a window. The door was barred, with a seal like a star set in the lintel. The window looked out upon a precipice.

There was a low table, and a jar, and in it clean water; beside it a plate of cakes, a cheese, a pomegranate. He remembered an old lesson among the monks, and smiled.

Under the window stood a chest of cedarwood, beautifully carved. There were garments in it: white and, like his shirt, plain but of excellent quality. Assassins’ garb. He put them on. The room was cold and he was mad, but he was no fool,to refuse warmth when it was offered.

He ate, drank. The cakes were Assassins’ cakes; they were good to the taste, without blood to taint them. The pomegranate spilled its jewels, staining his fingers scarlet.

He raised his eyes to the man who stood in the door. He did not know what he had expected. An old man, yes. Old and strong, worn thin with years of austerity. His beard was long and silver, his eyes dark and deep. Perhaps it was not beauty that he had, but it was a strong face, cleanly carved, a face out of old Persia. His kind had waged war against the west for twice a thousand years.

There was no softness in him. Mercy and compassion, his face said, were for Allah. He, mere mortal man, could not aspire to them.

He came unarmed and alone. Wise man. Guards, blades, violence, Aidan could have met in kind. This fierce harmlessness held him rooted.

“I have had your message,” said the Master of Masyaf.

Aidan had to pause to remember it. “And the messenger?” he asked.

“Dead,” said Sinan. Of course, his tone said.

Aidan could not prevent himself from regretting that. A little. His quarrel was with Sinan, and with Sinan’s tame demon. “A pity,” he said. “He was useful.”

“Not,” said Sinan, “once he was unmasked.” He regarded Aidan with the shadow of a smile. “Come,” he said. “Walk with me.”

He was not without fear. Aidan scented it, faint and acrid. But Sinan would be one who reveled in terror; whose greatest pleasure lay in defying it. He walked as a man walks who thinks to tame a leopard, not touching Aidan, not venturing so far, but walking well within his reach. He was a middling man for a Saracen, which was small for a Frank, and thin; Aidan could have snapped his neck with one hand.

They walked seemingly without destination, wandering through the castle. It was small after Krak, but the feel of it was much the same: a house of war, consecrated to God. Its people moved in the silence of those whose purpose is known, and firm. They greeted Sinan with deep reverence and his companion with brief incurious stares. One did not ask questions here, or think them; not before the Master. What they knew or guessed, they kept to themselves.

Sinan said little, and that to the purpose: the use of a chamber, the choice of a turning. We have no secrets, his manner said. See, it is all open, no hidden places, no shame kept chained in shadow.

Yes, Aidan thought. Sinan needed no secrets here. Those were all in the world without, among his spies and his servants.

The garden was fading toward winter, but in its sheltered places the roses bloomed still. Under a canopy of white and scarlet, Sinan sat to rest. “Is it true,” Aidan asked him, “that in Alamut the roses never fade?”

“Would you like it to be true?”

Aidan bared his teeth. “In my city there is such a garden. But she who tends it is no mortal’s slave.”

Did the Assassin tense? His face wore no expression. “No slave in Alamut has such a power.”

“And in Masyaf?”

The thin hand rose, plucked petals from a blown blossom, let them fall. “In Masyaf, death and life pass as Allah has ordained.”

“Or as you choose to command.”

“I but serve the will of Allah.”

“You believe that,” Aidan said. He was not surprised. A cynic, or a hypocrite, would have been less perilous.

“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.

“That was a city once,” the Assassin said behind him.

He did not leap. He did not even turn. “Persepolis?”

“No. This, Sikandar never burned; he built. They say he made it for his hound, because it died here.”

“Alexander was mad.”

“Surely.” Her shadow touched him; he shuddered away from it. “You are hardly being reasonable, my lord Khalid.”

“Is there any reason in murder?”

That drove her away. He waited a long while; she did not come back. He descended slowly.

The caves were empty of her. Sayyida did something peaceful and womanly in a corner. Hasan wanted to be entertained. Aidan obliged him.

oOo

For all her courage and her forthright tongue, Sayyida was shy. Maybe if he had been a woman she would have opened to him sooner. As it was, she went veiled, and she slept in the kitchen, which she had not been doing before he came. He could not persuade her to share the hall with him, even with its length between them. “It’s not decent,” she said.

But she did not shun him in daylight, and she talked to him freely enough.

“You’re the swordsmith’s daughter?” he cried when it came together into sense. “Ishak’s sister?”

She nodded. She was amused.

It was logical, in its own fashion. Morgiana’s friend would bear some relation to cold steel.

“Then it was you who watched us, that day when I was your father’s guest.”

She nodded again. “I saw you on the street, too.”

“I thought your husband didn’t let you go out.”

“He didn’t.”

Aidan said nothing to that. It was delicacy, and prudence.

She did not carry it on then, but later she did: talking of the young smith with no family, whom her father had made his apprentice, and to whom he had given his youngest daughter. “Not,” she said, “that he left me out of it. I could have refused. But I liked Maimoun well enough, and I admired his artistry. I thought he’d make a good father for my children.”

There was more to it than that; or there had come to be. “He should trust me,” she said. “He should let me make my own choices.”

“That’s hard for a young man,” Aidan said.

She eyed him sidelong. He grinned at her. He looked younger than Maimoun, and he knew it. She unbent into a nod. “Yes: you would know, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s arrogance, you see. To be a man at last, with all a man’s power and pride. What’s a woman’s will, to that?”

“Implacable.” And she sounded it.

“So he has to learn. It’s no easy lesson: that he’s a man, and strong, but he’s not invincible. That sometimes he has to yield.”

“He can learn it without me. I’ll not be beaten for his edification.”

“I’ll wager he’s sorry now.”

“I hope he is.” There was rare venom in her voice. She held grudges, did Sayyida.

oOo

A beast could go mad in a cage, even one as wide as this. A witch’s whelp, on the other hand, could go sane.

He did not want to. Sanity was perilous when one had a hate to nurse. It kept finding reasons for abominations, and excuses for the inexcusable. It made him forget grief and remember the warmth of a body against his own; a body that was made for him.

And it looked at Sayyida, and at her son, and could not reconcile the Morgiana they loved with the Morgiana he hated.

Sayyida was hardly blind to what Morgiana was. Better even than Aidan, she knew it. Yet she called the demon friend, and thought of her as a sister. Hasan adored her. In his mind she was a wonder and a marvel, a great shining creature with the most wonderful hair in the world. He thought of Aidan as a part of her. One as tall as the sky, who could sing by the hour, and who taught him new words to make his mother laugh and clap her hands and call him her little king. Who took him out in the wide world, and showed him birds and beasts and rooted things that grew valiantly in the waste; who, one glorious morning, flew with him up to the very summit of the ban.

Aidan came down to find Sayyida in a white fury. “Don’t,” she said, shaking with the effort of saying it quietly. “Don’t you ever — ever again — ”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

She snatched her son out of his arms. “No. You didn’t. Did you?”

“Sayyida, I didn’t think — ”

“Men never do.” Her scorn was absolute. She turned her back on him. He stood abandoned, in remorse and in growing indignation.

“Women never understand!” he shouted after her.

She stopped, spun. “Women understand too much!”

“Maybe they do!”

There was no door to slam, but she managed very well without. He flew to the top of the rock, to spite her, and crouched there, brooding on the unreasonableness of women. She was down below, brooding on the idiocy of males. They were carrying on, one of them thought — he was not even sure which — exactly like kin.

It did not appall her. He... he wanted to laugh, which was deadly to his dudgeon.

He turned his face to the sky. “Now I see,” he said. “You’ll soften me with this girlchild; you’ll seduce me with her baby. Then you’ll find me tamed and gentle, and ripe for your taking.

“But I won’t,” he said. “I won’t give in to you. You murdered my kin. God may forgive you. I,” he said, “will not.”

31.

When Morgiana came back from wherever she had been, she found a scene of striking domesticity. Sayyida sat on a cushion, plying her inevitable needle. Aidan was on the floor with Hasan. The baby wanted to walk, but he could not quite find his balance. And there were greater fascinations in his companion, whose hair, long uncut, hung down enticingly, and whose beard begged fingers to tangle in it. His mother rebuked him, but she was trying not to laugh. Aidan did not even try. He unraveled the impudent fingers and pretended to gnaw on them. Hasan whooped with mirth.