Alamut Part 13

And yec, for all the hideousness of the night, in some strange way it had cleansed her. She rose both calm and sane. Saner than she had been since before Aimery was bom. She knew herself again. Grief was no less, guilt, shame, even anger, but she was Joanna; she could bear it..

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Even Aidan in his Bedu robes that might have been made for his wild beauty: even him, she could bear. Flus.h.i.+ng, she could not help it, but offering a smile. Which he accepted, and re- turned in good measure. "It gladdens me to see you glad," hesaid.

Such a pretty way with words, he had. She played the lady for him, all gracious condescension, which made him laugh.

He laughed wonderfully, with all of him. It infected her- it filled her with a crazy delight. "What!" she cried. "Mock me will you? Is that a knightly deed?"

"No," he admitted, "my lady."

"So, then. You shall pay for it. You call me your lady. Be my knight. Serve me in all humility."

His eyes glinted, catching a little on the humility. "Shall I sing for you, too, and be your troubadour?"

She clapped her hands, forgetting to be the lady. "Oh, will you?"

But he did not forget to be the knight. "Afa llama, your every wish is my command."

She checked for the merest breath of an instant. This was dangerous. He knew it, she could see it clearly. He thrived on it. And she?

It was morning, her spirit was scoured clean, and his eyes were dancing on her. She offered, him her hand in her most queenly fas.h.i.+on, not even a giggle to betray her. He took it as a true knight must, and set a kiss in the palm, and folded her fingers over it. He seemed a little surprised at what he did. For a moment, as his eyes met hers, he seemed almost-frightened?

Not he. He had been a troubadour since the world was young. She held his kiss to her heart and lifted her chin. "Now then, my knight. Ride with me."

He knew where it was going, and he made no slightest move to stop it. She thought that she had mastered it. Brave child.

There had been fairer ladies than she, but never one so valiant.

He could admit it, in the dark that was the center of himself.

He had fallen in love with her.

No matter the catalogue of her many imperfections. She had no beauty as humans saw it. She was too young, too un- schooled in graces, too d.a.m.nably mortal- She had a husband, whom Aidan could not, even for his life's sake, dislike; who was cursed to be most inept where he loved most. She had a mother of whom even Aidan could stand in awe. She had been 104 JwUth Tarr a daughter to Gcrcint, of whom even these mute thoughts were a betrayal.

No matter. He looked at her strong-boned. stubborn- chinned, inarguably ftankish face, and lost all will and wit.

"It's her spirit," he told his horse as he tended it in theevening. "Her high heart. Her adamant refusal to either bend or break. Grief only makes her stronger. And yet," he said, "that's not all of it. Her mother is the same; but the Lady Margaret is sufficient unto herself. One can admire her; respect her; serve her. But love her . . . no. Not I. Her circle is com- plete. There's no place in it for me."

The gelding was mercifully removed from such follies. He lipped up the last sweet grain of baricy, and c.o.c.ked an ear.

Would there, perhaps, be more?

"Gluttony is a cardinal sin," said Aidan severely. He leaned against the accommodating shoulder, working a tangle out of the pale mane. "Yes, my friend, it's a fool I am, and too well I know it. She sees this d.a.m.nable face and this d.a.m.nable reputa- tion of mine, and of course she thinks that she loves me. I who am thrice her age, I who have years and rank and power enough to grant me wisdom nine times "Jvcr, I should know better. Dear G.o.d, I've oaths enough on my head, vengeance to take, a king to come back to or be forsworn; and I pine for a fair young body. Is it senility, do you think? Am I, after all, about to fall into my dotage?"

The gelding was hardly the one to answer that. He rubbed an itch out of his cheek and sighed. Aidan laid his own cheek against the warm satin neck, sighing his own deep sigh. They camped tonight on a stony level, having found the caravanserai full but no rumor of robbers near about. No one else hung about the horselines. They had all gone to feed themselves, as he should do soon, for his body's sake.

He felt the eyes upon him. He knew what they were. Clear green cat-eyes, his soul's shape cast in flesh. He bore it as long as he might, until he must turn or run wild. Running seemed, for a moment, the wiser course.

He turned.

She was beautiful in the dusk, more real than real itself, more solidly there than the horse at his side. Her head came Just to his chin.

She saw that he had changed his manner of dress. He felt her surprise as his own, and her pleasure- How not? She was his dream..

105.

Her Ups curved in the beginning of a smile. It could not be something she did often; she seemed to pause, searching out the way of it. It touched her eyes and sparked in them.

It smote him with such force that he staggered. "Ifou are,"

he said- "Tfou are.tf He darted. She was solid in his hands, supple, inhumanly strong.

All at once, she ceased her struggle. She was rigid, her eyes wide and wild- He laid his hand on her cheek. She trembleddeep within. Her scent flooded him. Sweet, impossibly sweet: scent of his own people, that was like nothing else under the moon.

Her arms locked about his neck. Oh, she was strong; won- derfully, splendidly strong- His head bent down and down.

Her eyes were all his world. A moment more, and he would drown in them.

They closed against him. She let him go, thrusting him away. "G.o.d," she said. Her voice was hauntingly sweet, and heavy with despair. "G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d."

Allah, Allah, Allah.

Arabic.

He fitted mind and tongue to the way of it, aware of his gift as he almost never was. "Tell me, lady. Who are you?"

Step by step she backed away. He caught her hands. She tensed but did not resist.

"Lady." The words came faster now. "Lady, stay. Tell me your name. How did you come here? Where do you go? How did you find me?"

Her lips set- Her head shook, tossing.

"Please, my lady. Your name. Only rhat."

She twisted free, spun. The word escaped, flung over her shoulder. "Morgiana."

The air was empty. His heart cried its abandonment.

Morgiana.

She was a living creature. She was no dream, nor ever a midnight fancy. And yet, that power others, to be there, and then to be gone . . .

Aidan spoke her name in the night's silence. "Morgiana."

Saracen name, Saracen face beneath the cast of his people. He yearned for her, and yet, deep in his soul, he feared her. There was a wildness in her, a power both old and strong. He was half a mortal man. She was nothing that had ever been human.

His mother had been mad, but even she had not been as 106 mad as this. Was this the old true blood? Half mad, half de- mon: spirit of air and fire.

All the questing of his power found no trace other. She was gone as if she had never been. Power, that, and stronger far than his own.

He s.h.i.+vered on his mat before Joanna's tent, and not alone with the cold of night in the desert. He had thought himself as fine a witch as ever raised the power. Beside this he was themerest child, a feeble halfling thing who only played at magery.

As she played with him, feigning shyness, letting him think her a dream. Surely she laughed at him now. They were cold, the afarit, and treacherous. Their honor was demons' honor.

But ah, she was beautiful.

He starred. A shape stood over him. For an instant he hoped, feared- No. Its scent was human, sharp and pungent. Always, be- neath it, lay a hint of corruption, the promise of mortality; but seldom strong enough to be sure of. Tonight it caught at his throat.

Joanna squatted beside him, her face a blur without beauty, her hair straggling out of her hood. She was utterly human, utterly mortal. "I couldn't sleep," she said. Rough, barely musi- cal, blessedly human voice. "Did I wake you?"

"No."

"Good." She rocked on her heels. Her bones creaked, she laughed, little more than a cough, and sat more st.u.r.dily on the edge of his mat. "Do I look appallingly clumsy to you?"

"No," he said. Truth. It was not appalling; it was endearing.

Like a foal, or a wolfhound pup.

"I'm not a delicate lady. I'm a great Frankish cow."

He raised himself on his elbow. "Who says that?"

"I do." She pushed her hair out other face. "It's true. Thi- baut got all the pretty. I got the Norman reiver. I should have been a man."

"I for one am glad you're not."

"Ifou don't have to be polite tonight. I can bear the truth."

"That is the truth." He paused. "My inclination is not to- ward men. Or even pretty boys."

"I should hope not."

She could not have read his face in the darkness, but hers was as clear to his eyes as in the first fading of dusk. What he saw there made him reach for her. There was no volition in it. 107.

No more in her, who came as if to haven. She was warm and solid, an ample armful, nigh as tall as he and fully as broad. A fine figure of a woman, they would say in Rhiyana.

They lay together like children, content with simple pres- ence, with the warmth of body and body. She stroked his beard, playing with it, taking pleasure in the feel of it againsther palm. It s.h.i.+vered in him, that pleasure, even more than the touch of her hand upon his cheek- She laughed into his shoulder. "You're purring!"

"I am." He was surprised. "I didn't know I could."

Nor could he, once he was aware of it. She settled again, the long lush curve of her fitted to his curvclessncss. It was a won- der, how they were made, male and female wrought perfectly for one another.

But not he for she. He knew it very well. She was RanulFs in the eyes of G.o.d and man.

It was hard to care, here in the mantling night. She would have been astonished to know how close he was to innocent; how seldom he had wanted a woman enough to do what men and women did. They kindled slowly, his kind. But once they had begun . . .

"We should," he tried to say. "We should not-"

Her eyes, wide blue-grey mortal eyes, drank his words and left him dry. They were on their feet. He had no memory of rising.

She set a kiss on his check where her hand had been, chaste as a sister's. He watched, mute, as she turned and left him.

Wise lady.

Wiser than he. He could not stand erect in her tent. She could, just barely.

Her maid was not there. Design? Accident?

He doubted that Joanna knew, either. "This is mad," he said.

She nodded. She let her cloak fall, stood in her s.h.i.+ft.

A fine figure of a woman. Not a maid, not any longer. Her body had ripened; what it lost in firmness, it gained in sweet- ness. None of his kind could ever be as she was, full mortal summer, with spring in it still, and the shadow of a shadow of winter.

She s.h.i.+vered. He brought his warmth to her. Her heart was beating hard. She pulled away; she clung. "Here," she said, "d.a.m.n it. WeVe got to-stop- Hold me!"

He was her knight. He could do no other than obey her.

108 JwUth Tar "I don't care," she whispered fiercely. "I don't am." She threw her head back, glaring into his face. "Do you despise me?" *

"I-" He swallowed painfully. "I think I love you."

She froze. All but her tongue. "Don't mock me. At least spare me thai.""I don't lie. Ever. Or mock. Not where I love."

"But you can't-I'm not even pretty!"

"That should matter?"

"You," she said with trembling control, "are beautiful be- yond any measure of mortal kind. Whereas I-"

"I am simply as I was made. You are yourself and no other, and I have loved you since first I saw you, ruffled and scowling like a wounded eagle. Your spirit is a white light, my lady, and mine beside it is a dim and faltering thing."

"You could charm the birds out of the trees." Her voice both mocked him and caressed him. Her hands had found the fas- tenings of his robes. She wanted to sec. Just to see. Truly.

It was worth seeing. He knew chat; he had never been able to be ashamed of it. Humility was a monk's vice. He was royal bom, and no mortal man.

He was more alien when there was all of him to see, and more beautiful. His pallor glowed in the lamplight, whiteness less like living flesh than stone enchanted to life: moonstone, alabaster, marble. As white as that, and as smooth, no rough human pelt to mar it. Flesh like satin over steel, smoother than a man's, yet never like a child's. Oh, no. No child, this.

He was not a man, but he was male enough. Not appallingly so, for all the legends of the afarit. He was cut to human measure; he warmed in human wise. She watched in fascina- tion. Ranulf had never given her time to see. To look, and wonder, and try to understand this mystery that was the other half of what she was.

Her eyes squeezed shut. Her checks were afire. Dear G.o.d, what was she doing? And he was letting her.

"Not letting," he said, soft and beautifully deep. "Wanting."

Bitterness flooded her. "Wanting. Anything female, yes?

Anything at all."