Alamut Part 46

"I have promises to keep."

"Indeed? And what wilf you receive in return? I am told,"

said Sinan, "that Jerusalem stops just short of denouncing you for the deaths of your kin; and that rumor credits you withworse."

"Then the sooner I keep my promises, the sooner I clear my name."

"Or b.u.m for it."

"I am a spirit of fire. What harm can I take in my element?"

"Even in the fires of h.e.l.l?"

"If I can know them, then I have a soul and can hope also for Paradise. If I have no soul, then death for me is only obliv- ion; and mortal fire cannot touch me."

"Ah," said Sinan, A theologian."

"A madman," said Morgiana. "He will not serve you, Sinan 333.

ibn Salman, nor can you lure him into your trap. Let him go; surrender him."

"As I am to surrender you?"

"Even so," she said.

He looked long at her. She stood still, enduring it. "What is there for you without us?" he asked her. "Will you turn infidel and run at this one's heel? Can you forsake all that you have been and done, and betray your faith and your given word, and rum against those whom you have served for so long? Wilt you not reconsider? Will you not come back to me? Free, now; freed from the order of the dagger, set above it as its com- mander, with no other above you, save only myself."

They were not empty words. He meant them. He was sub- tler than any serpent. Even truth was his to wield, to twist to his own ends.

"I did ill to keep you so long enslaved," he said. "Now I would amend it. Will you accept what I offer?"

She was silent. Her face was still. So quenched, it lost its vivid beauty; it was only alien.

When she spoke, she spoke slowly, as if to weigh each word before she let it go. "I who have been a slave in defiance of my will, do not trust easily any man's promises, still less those of the one who enslaved me. Yet that you are a man of honor, as you see it, I cannot deny. Is there a price on this freedom which you offer?"

"None but what you have already paid."

She drew a careful breath. "And this that we have settled here-the blood-price, the freeing of the Frank-is it to holdfirm?"

"Before Allah I swear it."

"So." She straightened, as if a great weight had fallen from her; the breath which she drew now was deep. Free. "No. No, I will not serve you. Even free; even in a place of power. I am done with servitude."

Even yet Sinan would not concede defeat. "Are you there- fore done with Islam? For what is that but perfect submission to G.o.d?"

"G.o.d," she said very gently, "is not Sinan ibn Salman." And as he stiffened, enraged: "There is no G.o.d but G.o.d. It is time I learned to serve Him alone, and not at the whim of a mortal man." She bowed, low and low, as a slave might; but it was never submission. "May G.o.d keep you, 0 my master who was, and may He grant you wisdom."

334 JwUth Tour "I should have taken what he offered," Morgiana said.

Aidan did not know where they were. The wealth of Masyaf was with them; the light was dim about them, wan and grey.

The air smelled strange. He saw sand and stone, the bulk of a tree, a glint of water. For all he knew, they were in the land of the jinn.

Suddenly he knew it. They were by the spring in Persia; the cave was behind them- Clouds lowered above them. The strangeness in the air was the scent of rain.

Morgiana swayed. He caught her. She was conscious, but grievously weak, and furious with it- "Too much," she said. "I stretched too far. I was no belter than you."

His lips twitched at that. "What did you do with thc/iatois?"

"I sent them all away. To a place I know, in a city far from any that they would have heard of. The women there are beau- tiful and wanton, and each has many husbands. My master's servants may decide for themselves whether to call it h.e.l.l or Paradise."

Aidan laughed. "And the old man never asked for them back."

"He, like them, believes them dead. He will not find it easy to fill their places."

"Or yours."

"Or mine." Her head rolled on his shoulder. "Allah! What a fool I am!"

"A splendid fool." He fumed toward the cavcmouth. She lay limp in his arms, fighting the dark, but losing the battle.Sayyida sprang out of the cave's shadow, wild with fear as she saw what Aidan carried. "She's alive," he said, little comfort as that was. "She pushed too hard, that's all, to win everything for both of us. She'll be well, once she's slept."

Sayyida wanted transparently to believe it. She watched Aidan lay Morgiana on the divan, was there in an instant with a blanket and a scowl. "How could you let her do this to her- self?"

"How could I stop her?"

"You should have tried," Sayyida said.

There was no sensible answer to that. Aidan hovered, but he was not wanted. He withdrew to the cavcmouth.

It had begun to rain. He had not felt rain on his face since he came to this sun-blasted country. Cold though it was, with an edge of sleet, he welcomed it. 335.

Morgiana was deep in sleep, Sayyida engrossed in fretting over her. He was free. Truly, finally free. Sinan had paid with his own hand for all that he had taken; and he had lost the most useful of his slaves. He would not recover quickly from that blow. Nor would he turn again upon the House of Ibrahim.

Aidan knew what taste was in his mouth. It was ashes. So long a hunt, so bitter a battle, and all that it came to was this.

A chest bound with iron, a grey rain falling, and a rending in the heart of him. To stay and be this woman's lover. To go and keep his promises: to Aleppo, to conclude his bargain with the Lady Khadijah; to find Joanna.

He did not even know how long he had been away. A month? He had never gone a day without thinking of her, and being soul-glad that she had not come with him. She would surely have died, and the baby with her.

Maybe she would forgive him for leaving her. Maybe she would even forgive what he had done to win his war with the a.s.sa.s.sins. They would find a way out of their coil. His child would not be branded a b.a.s.t.a.r.d; his lady would have the honor she descrvcd- And Morgiana?

She had what she wanted. He had older ties, and stronger.

Coward. The voice of his deep self.

He thrust it deeper and set his foot'bn it. What more could there be between a knight of the cross and a devout Muslim, but what there had been? It was over. They had their own worlds to live in, their own and separate destinies.

Still, the small, needling voice. Craven. HonwUssfool."What would you have me do?" he cried to the rain. "Turn apostate? Marry her?" He stopped. "Yes, why don't I go Mus- lim? Then I can have both of them."

The voice was silent.

He tossed his rain-wet head. "My way is chosen. My mother chose it the day she brought us to Caer Gwent and told our father that we were his."

Silence, still; silence that was reproach.

He went back into the cave that was more splendid than many a lord's hall in the west, and found nothing changed.

Morgiana looked like a child, asleep. He wanted to bend and kiss her. He wanted her, starkly and simply.

He firmed his will. It took more strength than he had ex- pected; almost more than he had- 336 Sayyida took no notice of him, except to rebuke him for dripping on the carpet. Hasan was asleep.

Signs enough, and farewell enough. He remembered the way ofMorgiana's magic, that she had given him after all, as if she wanted him to know it, to do what he did now; the fixing of the mind, the gathering of power, the indescribable inward turn and flex. He paused on the very edge of it, not quite afraid. No one moved. No one called him back. He let himself go-

35.

While Morgiana pursued her Frank, and after she had caught him, Sayyida had rime to think. Watching them was peculiarly painful: a dance of advance and retreat; a glitter on the edges of their meetings, like the flash of honed steel. They seemed barely to know how their bodies yearned toward one another-- even Morgiana, who knew that she wanted him, but went about winning him with the deadly simplicity of a child. When they were together, even quarreling as they mostly were, some- thing in the way they sat or stood or moved, was like the notes of the lute that underlie the song.

Sayyida had that with Maimoun. Not as these two did, all fire and pa.s.sion, but in their quiet, ordinary way, they went well together.

If only Maimoun could leam a little sense. A man who kept his wife in a cage, had only himself to blame if she tried to fly from it.

"A woman should always be humble," she said to Hasan when Morgiana had gone with Aidan to face the Old Man of the Mountain. Sayyida did not want to wear herself to rags in fretting over them; therefore she fretted over herself. "A woman should be conciliatory. A woman should never opposethe will of her man, whom Allah has set over her."

She was making bread, kneading it on the hearthstone. She set her teeth and attacked it until her arms cried protest.

"Never," she said, "except when she can be subtle, and suborn him, and play him into her hands. Which is almost always. 337.

Unless she is caught in the act. As I was." With each pause, she pummcled the yielding dough, bearing tenderness into it.

She looked at her thickly floured fists. Tears p.r.i.c.ked her eyes, laughter bubbled in her throat. "Oh, Hasan! I miss your fa- ther."

Morgiana came back half-dead, in Aldan's arms. He seemed unwomed; Sayyida supposed that he would know, being what he was. But he was a man, when it came down to it: a very large and very willful child, who, having dropped his burden in Sayyida's lap, went off and lefr her to it. She suspected that he might be sulking. Men hated it when women ignored them for other women.

She shook her head and sighed. It was not anger that stirred in her, not anymore: only a kind of fond exasperation. That was the way men were. The way Maimoun was.

Would he take her back?

She stopped. She could not go back. He had struck her; he had called her a liar. She could not forgive him.

Could not, or would not?

So, then. If she would go back, if she would have sense, and stop being a burden on her friend-would he take her?

He would have to. She would not let him do anything else.

Morgiana was a long time waking. Well before she did, Sayyida knew that the Frank was gone. 'He always came back for the sunset meal, and he always slept in the hall. Tonight, he did neither.

He had found a way out of his cage. She could hardly blame him for taking it. Or, she supposed, for abandoning Morgiana- That was what came of turning love into merchant's bargain.

Still, she was sorry. She had thought better of him than that.

She was ready when Morgiana woke, and braced for the storm. When it did not break at once, she was by no means comforted. "When did he go?" Morgiana asked quite calmly.

"Last night," Sayyida said. "As soon as he brought you back."

Morgiana closed her eyes. Her face wore no expression. Fora moment she seemed not to be there at all.

Her eyes opened. She was smiling. "So he did," she said.

And, more slowly, almost tenderly: "So he did."

"Morgiana," said Sayyida. "Don't do something youll re- gret."

338 "I already have." Morgiana sat up, frowning. "I didn*C win him at all. I bought him."

"You're not going to drag him back, arc you?"

"No," said Morgiana. "No, I'm not going to drag him back.

He gave me what I paid for." She paused. "As he sees it, I might have begged to differ."

Sayyida wondered at the power of a night's loving, to reduce Morgiana to mere and acquiescent womanhood.

Morgiana laughed, fierce and high. "Do you think so? Will I make a proper female after all?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know." Morgiana stood, took a moment to steady herself, walked in a slow circle. There were signs ofAidan here and there: a cus.h.i.+on he had liked, in the comer he had often retreated to; the cup he had used, beside the flagon of wine; the robe he looked so well in, folded at the foot of his bed.

The lute in its wrappings, silent now, bereft. She paused by none of these, barely glanced at them.

She came back to Sayyida. Something lay on the divan where she had been sleeping; as her shadow s.h.i.+fted, for an instant it caught the light. Sayyida reached for it, curious. It was a knife, simply but rather elegantly made, with a plain silver hilt.

"He made it," said Morgiana. "It's not bad, for 'prentice work."

She was a little too calm. Sayyida let her take the knife; saw the way her fingers tightened on it. "He left it for you."

"Idiot," said Morgiana. She did not say which of them she meant. The blade had cut her fingers lightly; she stared at the thin line of scarlet as if she had never seen blood before.

She drew herself up, thrust the dagger in her sash. "Did you save any breakfast for me?"

Her eyes warned Sayyida not to press. Sayyida made herself nod. "Ill fetch it."