Alamut Part 26

He could not quarrel with that- But there was still his pride to think of. "I won't fulfill my vow for your gold. If I hesitate to do murder, it will be for honor's sake."

"Of course," she said. "You are honorable above all. The gold, if you fulfill the bargain, will be our gift of thanks. Surely you can accept a gift in return for a mighty service."

He looked hard at her. He could discern no laughter, nomockery of knightly scruples.

After a long moment he said, "As a gift, yes, I can accept it.

If I am able to do all as you would wish. That, I cannot prom- ise you."

"I understand," said Khadijah. "It is a bargain; it is wit- nessed. Allah's blessing be upon it."

20.

Sayyida stifled a yawn. Hasan was asleep at last on his blanket beside the fountain, flushed with the fever that had kept him awake and fractious through the night; but morning and quiet and the song of falling water had lulled him. She rubbed the breast that he had bitten in his temper, not wanting to touch him and chance waking him again.

She was refusing to listen to fear. How fragile his life was; how many children died in infancy; how easily, how hideously easily, a fever could rise to b.u.m the soul away. Eahimah had wound him with her own blue necklace and its amulets against 201.

evil. Mother had prayed. Laila had promised to pray, later, when she was properly purified after her night with Farouk.

None of them had shared the flight's vigil. Fahimah had tried, but she was not as young as she had been, and Sayyida had not had the heart to wake her when she fell asleep.

Sayyida's yawn escaped at last, wide enough to crack her Jaw, deep enough to feign for a blessed moment the relief of sleep.

She opened her eyes ftom it, to meet Morgiana's.

The ifritah sat cross-legged next to Hasan, looking like a young man of Damascus; slender and beardless, a eunuch, and not one who accepted meekly his condition. The illusion was startling. Maybe there was magic in it; maybe it was only Mor- giana in man's clothing, being Morgiana. "He has a fever," she said of Hasan.

Sayyida nodded wearily. "I was up all night with him. He's a little better now, I think."

Morgiana ran a light hand down his back. Sayyida swallowed the swift protest. He neither moved nor woke. Maybe his frown eased a little.

"I can't heal sickness," said Morgiana. "It's too subtle. All the myriad tiny demons . . ." She paused; she seemed to sense Sayyida's incomprehension. She shrugged. "No matter. He was sicker, earlier; I felt it. He's mending now."

Sayyida almost fell over. It was one thing to hope. To know -it was too much, all at once.

Morgiana's strong hand held her up. She leaned against it,glad of it. After a little while she straightened, took a breath.

"It's silly. But I was so scared. I love him so much; he's so close still to not being at all."

"Not silly," said Morgiana. "Never silly, Sayyida."

Something in her tone made Sayyida stop and stare. She was different. Not gentler, exactly. She was fiercer, if anything.

Woman-fierceness.

She did not look like a eunuch any longer, even in the tur- ban, with daggers. She propped her chin on her fists and glared at the fountain's fall. "Why is it," she demanded, "just why is it that Allah makes us love what we can only lose?"

Sayyida blinked. She was too tired to be profound. She could only say, "We love it because we know we'll lose it; and we see Allah in it."

"That is not an answer. That is a circle."

"I'm sorry," said Sayyida. "I can't think. I keep wanting to fall asleep."

202 "Sleep, then. Ill watch the baby."

"No," Sayyida said, though she yearned to accept the gift.

"Keep talking to me. What's troubling you? Is it the Frank?"

Morgiana bared her sharp white teeth. "Am I that obvious?"

"I don't know. Maybe not. I noticed how you looked at him, the day Ishak brought him to dinner. Maimoun warned to throw out every dish we had, and buy new ones. Mother talked him out of it."

Morgiana snorted. It was almost laughter. "What would Maimoun have said if he had known all of what the Frank was?"

"What, a king's son? Ishak told me that. I'm not surprised.

He looked n.o.ble, for an infidel."

"He's a little more than that," Morgiana said. "Did you no- tice how white he is, here where the sun stains every man black?"

Sayyida was puzzled, but she could answer, "Yes. I noticed. I wondered how he does it. To stay so perfectly pale. Like-"

Morgiana's face was still, waiting for Sayyida to see what a blind man could see. How white it was. At long last, compre- hension pierced the fogs other brain. "Then-he's-"

"His name means fire," Morgiana said, dry and deceptively calm. "He is one of two. Two such faces in the world; imagine it. The other is mage and king. He is mage and knight-emir, we would say. He is, for one of our kind, very young. Hethinks himself quite old, and wise enough. He knows that he is beautiful. He thinks-I-"

Almost, she broke. She caught herself. "He thinks that I am good to look at. He will not love me carnally. He doesn't know me, he says. And if he knew me-" Her eyes squeezed shut; her fists came up. "0 Allah! If he knew me he would hate me beyond any hope of healing."

"Not if he's like you," Sayyida said, "and knows you as I know you. He can't be innocent of blood himself, if he's the warrior he looks to be."

Morgiana laughed. It was horrible, because it was so light and sweet, and so empty of hope. "But you see, it's what blood I'm guilty of. Do you remember the Frank I killed? That was his sister's son. He has sworn to destroy me and the master who sent me. And he thinks ... he thinks I may help him find the murderer. He thinks that none of us can harm his own kind."

"You didn't know," said Sayyida. 203.

"Do you think that can matter to a vow sworn? When he knows what I am and what I have done, he will raise all his power against me. He will blast me with his hate."

Sayyida was silent, hunting for words- All the Franks that infested the world, and this should be the one whose kin Mor-- giana's master had forced her to kill. An ifrit-a Christian ifrit.

She spoke carefully, trying not to be too unkind. He could not help it that he was an infidel. "He'd be a fool to hate you.

You only did as you were commanded, under your oath. Surely he's capable of understanding that."

"Does it matter? I did it. The first-1 could talk my way out of that. The second was a child. The third, whom my master has this morning commanded me to take, is a woman. I re- fused. Bur my oath is strong, and it tears at me. I don't know how long I can hold against it." She held out her hands.

Steady as they had always been, unerring with a dagger, now they shook. "He will ask again. And again. Until I do it, or I break."

Sayyida clasped those trembling hands and held them as tightly as she could. "You won't. You'll be strong. h.e.l.l learn to see it, your Prankish ifrit. Doesn't his G.o.d teach forgiveness?"

"His mother was a pagan. Sometimes it pleases him to re- member it."

"Morgiana," said Sayyida. "Morgiana, stop it. You've talked to him, haven't you? What has he said to you?"

"Nothing. Air and wind. I," she said, "have shamed myself utterly. I told him that I loved him."Sayyida sucked in a breath. "That was . . . very brave."

Forward, she almost said.

Morgiana heard it. "Yes, I was presumptuous. I couldn't help myself. He was there, and looking at me, and beginning- beginning-to incline toward me. 1 fell like a pigeon with an arrow through its heart."

Sayyida tried to understand. It was all like a story, or a song.

She had thought that real people were less pa.s.sionate than song-people; more sensible. There was always dinner to think of, or the chance of a baby. Though in the middle of it, babies and dinner tended rather to get themselves forgotten.

Morgiana did not look like a princess in a poem. Those were all dark-eyed languid beauties with queenly haunches. But her pa.s.sion and her despair-those were larger than any life Sayyida had known.

204 "Does it always strike you so?" Sayyida's tongue asked before she could stop it.

"No!" Morgiana looked less angry than simply wild. "I've never-" She was blus.h.i.+ng like any fool of a girl. "I never wanted a man before."

"Never? Never at all?"

The turbaned head shook, short and sharp. "Of course you don't believe me. Who would? I always belonged to the Master ofAlamut; since he is always male, and I female . . ." She laughed again, raw and unlovely, like a raven's cry. "What man can touch such a creature as I am, unless I will it? And I never have. I was always-I was cold. Yes. Cold fire, one of them said of me. I was a dagger and a mission, and when the mission failed me, an oath. I was never anything that a man could touch."

"Until you saw the Frank."

"Until I saw one who was like me. Who moved in magic.

Who was beauty bare. Then I knew what all the singing meant.

"And he was born to be my enemy."

Sayyida was still holding Morgiana's hands. She kissed them, to stop their bitter, bone-deep trembling. "Sister," she said.

"Sister, trust in G.o.d. If He brought him to you, surely He will show him the truth. Are you any less oathbound than he?"

Morgiana pulled free. "Oh, to be so wise! I who am as old as hills, I who walk arm in arm with the Angel of Death, I know nothing of love, except that it is pain."

"Not always," said Sayyida. "Even for you."

"Then pray for me, child. I have no prayer left."She was never one to linger for farewells. Sayyida stared at the emptied air, and sighed.

As if Morgiana's going had broken a spell, Hasan woke and began to fret. Sayyida gathered him up. For a miracle, he qui- eted, sucking his fist with an angry ferocity that was like noth- ing so much as Morgiana's own. Sayyida kissed his hair. It was damp, but his brow beneath them was cool.

Her heart leaped. He was cool. She clasped him close, until he squawked in protest. "Oh, love!" she sang to him. "Oh.

light of my eyes! Thanks be to Allah!"

It seemed all a part of her joy that she should look up to see Maimoun standing by the wall, staring at her. She scrambled up with Hasan in her arms. "Maimoun! He had a fever, it was so fierce, I was so scared, but now, look, it's gone."

Maimoun said nothing. Something in his face made her 205.

. stop. Hasan's weight dragged at her. She s.h.i.+fted him to her hip. "What is it? Is there trouble? Is it-is it Father? Or Ishak?

Or-"

"No." He said it coldly, more to silence her, it seemed, than to case her fears.

Maimoun was never cold. Sullen, yes, sometimes. Dour when he encountered someone, or something, whom he did not approve of; because he had been trained, rigorously, to be polite, and politeness was not his native condition. Maimoun always wanted to say exactly what he thought.

It was frightening to see him so still, not even frowning; looking at her as if she had no honest place in his world. "I thought." he said, "that she was lying. Because of Hasan."

"What-" Sayyida was baffled. And, more than ever, afraid.

-Who-"

"She envies you," said Maimoun reflectively. "I think she hates you, at least a little. You have a son. She has none."

Hasan began to struggle on Sayyida's hip. She held him more rightly, hardly aware of him, intent on his father. "Are you talking about Laila?"

"Or maybe," he went on as if she were not there, "it honestly is concern for me, and for the family's honor. Even she might be moved to think of such things, under sufficient provoca- tion- Such as"-and now he was nor so cold; his breath came faster, his cheeks flushed in hectic patches, as in a fever-"such as that my wife disports herself in our own garden with- with-"

Sayyida heard him in growing horror. But more than that,in anger. Neither was something she was used to. She was- yes, on the whole, she was a placid person, happy with the gifts that Allah gave her, not inclined to rebel against the life He ordained for her, except once in a great while, when Morgi- ana- She heard herself say with perfect calm, "Disporting myself, Maimoun? With whom? Or what?"

Maimoun choked on it. "With what, indeed. A man, Sayyida -a man, I could almost endure. But that-"

"Are you telling me," she asked carefully, "that I am not to entertain friends in my father's garden?"

He laughed. It tried to be light and wild. It sounded merely strangled. "Friends. Oh, friends, indeed. Did they leave him anything when they cut him? Is he better at it than I?"

She drew herself up, heedless of Hasan who had begun to 206 wail. "He?" she asked. "Him? No man but you or Father or Ishak has ever entered our garden; at least, to talk to me."

"No man, no."

"Ah," she said, letting herself understand at last. "You thought-yes, it would look like that, wouldn't it? Especially if your mind was prepared." She shook her head. "You know Laila. You shouldn't let her chaff you."

"Was it charring that set you here, locked in pa.s.sionate em- brace with Bahram the eunuch?"

The wilder he was, the colder she became. "So; that's what she calls herself. I never thought to ask."

"Then you don't deny it?"

"What's to deny? Except the embrace. I was only holding her up; and even at that, Hasan was between us."