Alamut Part 44

he said. "Morgiana. I don't hate you." Her lips tightened; she tried to pull away. He held her. "I don't know . . . I'm afraid ... I think that I could love you."

She did escape him then; she seared him with her anger. "I told you not to lie. Even to comfort me. Especially to comfort me.

He shook his aching head. "I'm not lying. I wish I were."

He caught her again, by the hands. They were cold. "Don't you think it would be better for us all if I could come to this coldly, as a man to a marriage of state? Dear G.o.d* You are infidel and a.s.sa.s.sin, and I have taken the cross. Our faiths and our people are at war. Even Joanna with her husband and her 321.

kin and her inescapable mortality, is a better match for me than you."

"We do," she said, "agree on very little."

If there was irony in that, it was too subtle for his senses.

She drew a deep, shaking breath. "But it doesn't matter, does it? V/e^ve begun to live in one another's skin. I, and an infidel. A Frank. Enemy of enemies. You eat of unclean meats; you drink wine. You pray to three G.o.ds when there is only the One, You know nothing of holy Koran." She reached up to trace the sweep of the brow over his eye. "Barbarian. Unbe- liever. Wors.h.i.+pper of devils."

Her voice was tender. Her hand was light, unwontedly awk- ward. He sat still, barely breathing. Her beauty caught at his throat.

But she could have had none, and still been Morgiana. The feel of her hand on his brow was perfectly, ineffably right.

Those bones, that flesh against his bones and flesh; the fire of life and power within, meeting his own, matching it.

She lowered her hand, knotted it with the other in her lap.

"I don't know . . . how ..."

"May I reach you?"

The s.h.i.+vering came and went in her. She tried to laugh. "Do you think I can leam?"

"I think you hardly need to be taught."Her head shook hard. "You don''t understand. When I- when a feeling is too strong, my power masters me. I think-I think when I was born, the shock cast me from my mother's body, and sent me otherwhere. What if-"

That gave him pause. But he said, "If it happens, then you can simply come back. I'll be here. See, I'll open my mind, so, like a hand, to hold you."

Her own was like a hand, creeping out slowly, a bare touch at first, then clasping tight. It was as if he had been all his life without one of his senses, and he had never known it, until suddenly, wondrously, it was there.

They reeled. They caught at one another. Was his face as whitcly shocked as hers?

"You didn't know?"

Her voice, her incredulity. They were still separate enough for that. "It's nothing one can know," he said, "until it comes.

My brother said that. I thought that he was taunting me, be- cause he was chosen and I was not."

"Did you hit him?"

322 JwUth Tarr "Of course I did. He, the mooncalf, only smiled with nause- ating sweetness and drifted back to his bed."

"I can't imagine you drifting anywhere, for anything.'*

He laughed. "No. I'm not the sort of lover who drifts. Or smiles. Or warbles by moonlight."

"Good. I don't want to be warbled to. Though a song or two, a real song, with sparks in it . . ."

"Shall I sing for you?"

She paused, tempted, but shook her head. "Later. Maybe. I think-I want to begin my lessons now."

He knew how much courage she needed to say that. Slowly, carefully, he took her hand and kissed the palm, and closed her fingers over it. She looked from it to him. "To keep," he said, "for remembrance, and for a promise. It's not easy, the first time. There will be pain. There may not be overmuch pleasure.

But I will give you as much as I know to give."

"You've done this before."

"No," he said. "Not with a maiden."

She flushed. "I wish I had something of my own to give you.

Instead of this-this course of study in a madrasa. "

"Hardly there," he said, biting down on laughter. There wasa sweet, headlong joy in this, now that he had embarked on it; now that he could not, for pride, put a stop to it. "As for giving, you will see what you can give me. Come, now, your turban; and your hair-you should never hide it. It's too beau- tiful."

She stood frozen as he stroked it out of its plait, braced against the blind animal pleasure of his touch.

"Don't," he said softly. "Don't fight. Think of the dance.

how one gives oneself to it. This is the oldest of all dances, and by far the best of them."

She neither moved nor spoke. He kept on speaking, it little mattered what, letting the rhythm of his words now touch the edge of song, now pa.s.s over into it. He began, one by one and slowly, to loosen the garments that swathed her. So many of them, like armor. She suffered him, but she had no pleasure in it, no warming to his touch. She was stiff with terror.

When he came to her chemise and drawers, he paused. "It is usual," he said, "for the woman to undress the man."

She started, s.n.a.t.c.hed. For a moment her fingers convulsed in the fabric of his djeUaha. He felt the coiling of her power.

She thrust it down. Stiffly, as if by rote, she did as he had.

323.

done. At s.h.i.+rt and drawers she stopped, hands falling to her sides.

"The rest of it," he said.

She shook her head once, tightly.

He said it again, gentle but firm. "The rest of it." And when she would not: "It's not as if you haven't seen it before."

Her power lashed, fierce with temper. He was, quite abruptly and quire without her hands' touching him, naked.

Her eyes slid over and round and about, and locked on her feet.

"You stared hard enough," he said, "when I wasn't awake to know it."

Her glare leaped from her feet to his face. He smiled.

*' Lightly, quickly, he slipped off her chemise. Her hands sprang to cover her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He let them. While they were so occu- pied, he loosened the cord that held up her drawers. She clutched, too late.

She kept the custom of her people. She was all whitely' smooth, tike an image carved in ivory. He had been cool, cen- tered on his teaching; but his body remembered, all at once, *f why it was here.

The catch other breath was loud in the silence. She had, of course, seen it before. But not truly seen it, as anything that had to do with her.

She was perilously close to flignt. He took her hand, touched the palm. "Remember," he said.'

"I can't." She was not answering him. "I can't!"

"Beloved, you can."

She shuddered, and leaped. Not away. Full upon him, pressed as close as body could press, gripping him with bone- bruising strength. Her skin was cold to burning.

He struggled to breathe, to speak. "Gently, love. Gently."

She loosened her grip. Her hand moved, up his back to the flex of his shoulders, down to his b.u.t.tocks. She was just as tall as his shoulder. He was keenly, almost painfully aware of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his ribs.

She ripped her head back. She had no power to smile, but that was triumph, that light in her face. "Your skin is soft," she aid. "And your hair"-tangling her fingers in it. "I thought a man would be all rough."

"Some are."

"Not you." She found the pleasure-places in his back; she started at his s.h.i.+ver of delight, and came back slowly, halffasci- 324 natcd, half afraid. "You are all beautiful, every bit of you.** She was determined to prove it with her hands: bold now with desperation, growing bolder as she learned the shape and the size of him. Where he flexed and purred; where he flinched.

How the skin fit over muscle and bone. What sparked in him when she closed her hands about his center, gentle with it as with a captive bird.

She let go abruptly, stepped back. Her checks were scarlet.

He brushed them with a finger, "Ladylove, there's no shame here."

"Not shame," she muttered. "Not- Allah! All that to carry, and you can walk, too?"

He nodded stiffly, determined to be amused, struggling not to be indignant.

"By the Hundredth Name, how?""I manage."

She shook her head. "Incalculable are the ways of G.o.d."

"But wonderful. And in you, beautiful." He had her in his arms before she knew what he did, and laid her among the cus.h.i.+ons of the bed. She glowed against the silk. He traced the shape other with Ups and hands. She was all new, each spark of pleasure as fresh to her as to him, each secret a revelation to them both. He made her a gift of his wonder. Every lover was different, every night a new pleasure, but the rarest of rarities was this, to be the first who ever woke a maiden's body to the splendor that was in it.

She was losing her fear, warming and easing under his hands. There was fire in her. It kindled his own, almost too well. When she was fully a woman, her fears all put to flight, she would be a lover to make songs of.

All the more cause to go gently with her, although it cost him most of his strength to do it. What was desire with and for a human woman, was nigh a madness now.

Now, she willed him. Now!

There was pain, echoing and reechoing in him as in her, but through it, the fierce and utter rightness of it. He, and she, so.

Mind to mind and body to body; hearts beating to one mea- sure. For a long moment he wore a different flesh, knew a different turning of the dance. A deeper, inward pleasure; a subtler urgency.

She rode with him, borne at first on his strength, but find- ing strength of her own. The end was-improbably-laughter, a great, exultant shout of it. 325.

He dropped down beside her, laughing himself, helplessly.

She swept him onto his back and sat on him, covering his face with kisses. "My lord. Oh, my lord! Love me again."

He groaned. "Lady, have mercy! My flesh is immortal, but hardly infinite."

She ascertained as much for herself, to her great disappoint- ment. "That is not how it is in tales."

"Tales lie."

She made a most indelicate noise. But there was no denying the truth. She lay beside him, raised on her elbow, and smoothed the damp hair back from his face. He kissed her hand as it pa.s.sed. She smiled and laid it against his cheek, smoothing his beard. "The talcs also have men falling asleep directly, and leaving their poor lovers alone."

"Human men," he said."Ah." She arched her back, stretching like a cat. Desire stirred in him, faint as yet, but promising a resurrection.

Her own eagerness was fading. She ached, if pleasurably.

Her body, left to itself, eased into languor. He opened his arms- She came with only a moment's hesitation, and laid her head on his shoulder. She tensed as he folded his arms about her, but again, only for a moment. She s.h.i.+fted closer and sighed. "So," she said. "This is what it is."

"Yes."

She ran her hand idly down his side to his hip. Her pleasure was sharp in him. So different, so wonderful, no curve in it at all. But not so wonderful as what flowered where his legs met.

He s.h.i.+vered lightly under her touch, and gave her back what she had given. The marvel that was woman, and the marvel that was she, alone, of all the women in the world. The silk of her hair, royal crimson; the long subtle curve of her back; the swell of hip and thigh. The scent of her working in him like strong wine. The swift, flaring heat of desire returning fullfold.

She met it with startlement that swelled into pleasure.

34.

Morning found them tangled in the heaped cus.h.i.+ons. He had slid into a warm half-drowse; he woke as she moved, slipping out of his arms, rising for the dawn prayer. Although they had bathed all over only a little while before, she washed as her Prophet prescribed, and dressed fully, before she began her devotions.

He watched under lowered lids, as if he spied on a secret.

Both warmth and sleep Hed. She who all that night had been the half of his heart, was separate again, alien and infidel, with the dagger of an a.s.sa.s.sin at her side. Only her hair was stiU her own, tumbling over the shoulders of her coat, rippling down her back as she stood and knelt and bowed toward Mecca.

He could never be to her what her Allah was. It was pain, that knowledge. He had his G.o.d, but never so close to his center. That was full of what he loved. His brother; his kin; his lover in Aleppo; his far green country. And Morgiana.

He had given her what she wanted of him, and she was content. The edge of her obsession was blunted, the heat of her pa.s.sion cooled. But he who had been the lesser in desire, more the beloved than the lover, now paid for what was, after all, his sin. He looked at her and knew that hereafter, no mor- tal woman would be enough.