Alamut Part 37

"Who told you that?"

He would not answer.

"It was Laila, wasn't it? ou know how little she loves me."

"Sometimes she tells the truth."

"Tfou 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. "Bahrain the eunuch. Bahram the unmanned, with a pa.s.sion for silver-hiked 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 c.u.m 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 the truth. Tell me how you scorn me."

"I don't."

"Liar."

Her breath caught: a sob. "Don't call me that."

"Ill call you anything I please."

She could not hold it in any longer. She was sony. 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!" 279.

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

He clubbed her down.

"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.

Maimoun's face had been crimson. It went as white as Mor- giana's coat.

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 Morgina laugh. "Nothing crimi- nal, I trust. I simply laid a wis.h.i.+ng 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 crea- ture to die on her account.

But he spoke first, bl.u.s.tering, blind to any good sense, see- ing 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." Heheld out his hands. "Give me my son, and get out."

Hasan's face was buried in Morgiana's shoulder. She looked 280 from him to his father. Her nostrils flared. "What will you do if I refuse? Hit me?"

"A bearing would do you good."

"You think so?" She was all wide eyes and maidenly astonish- ment. "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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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-"

Silence.

Sayyida sat down hard. Her rump protested: it knew stone.

Her head reeled, not only with the MOW.

This was no room she knew.

She clutched. Yes, stone. A carper over it, rich and jewel- beautiful. Lamps in a cl.u.s.ter; hangings of silk, flame-red, flame- blue, name-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 right and tried noc to shake. Very, very soon, she was going to break into screaming hysterics. "Where," she managed to ask.

"Where arc 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 yell-ing 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 281.

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 afl stories come down to as little as this?"

Morgiana touched the mark of Maimoun's fist. "Not so lit- tle," she said.

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

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 toJteep her busy, and a thou- sand 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 comer of the hall for herself and Hasan, heaped rugs and cus.h.i.+ons 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 chim- ney 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 house- wife, 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 cus.h.i.+ons, with the wind blowing cold without and the lamps 282 Judith Tan- 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 dark- ness in her now, a hard cold knot ofobsdnacy, 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 friends.h.i.+p, that silence.

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

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, avail- ing 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 an- other 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 pa.s.sed. 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. "Ifou never told us that he was a son oflblis!"

Morgiana drew back a step. It was not a retreat.Nor did the woman read it as such; but it fed her courage. 283.

"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, dan- gling 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 man- tle of fire was power for a surety; and the wings that he spread, part shadow and part glamour, with a s.h.i.+mmer 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 ift.i.t 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 ten-or did not comfort her. She spread wings of blood and darkness, and hurtled into the sky.

29.