Alamut (2 page)

“I was her only child. She raised me in two worlds; and my father allowed it. He was an odd man, my father. Much older than his lady, and a rough soldier to look at, a famous fighter, and yet he had been a monk. Not even a fighting monk; a Cluniac, a cloistered ascetic. He left, none of us ever knew why; came Crusading; served the King of Jerusalem, won his demesne, took a wife from the House of Ibrahim. People said he had gone infidel. I think it was only that, at heart, he was a civilized man.” She looked at her guest, new come from the wildest west, and shook her head once, sharply, as if to clear it. When she began again, she seemed to be speaking of something else altogether. “What do you know of the
Hashishayun?”

She said the word calmly, without the hiss of hate and fear that Aidan had always heard in it. As if it were only a name.

It was sublimer than contempt. Aidan gave it what tribute he could muster. “They are the Assassins. Madmen, drugged or possessed, trained to kill in utmost silence and with utmost dispatch. They believe that murder is their path to Paradise. They obey a mad king, or kings. There is some doubt that they are human.”

“They are quite human,” said Margaret with only the barest hint of irony. “They are schismatics, heretics as Christians would say, fanatic followers of one whom they call the Lost Imam. Their heart and center is in Aluh Amut, Alamut, the Nest of Eagles in Persia; but they are strong through the lands of Islam. They are very strong in Aleppo, where is the House of Ibrahim. And they are strongest in Masyaf in Syria, so that some are calling that fortress Alamut the lesser, or simply Alamut.

“Their faith is simple enough. They wait for the return of their Imam who was lost long ago. They live by strictest laws. All other faiths are false, and false believers are their prey. They work their will through terror; murder is, indeed, their road to salvation. They have slain caliphs and sultans, lords of Islam and of Christendom, priests and mullahs and ascetics: any who has set himself against their mission or their lord.

“The greatest of their chieftains in Syria is the lord of Masyaf. Sinan is his name. Sinan ibn Salman ibn Muhammad, who calls himself Rashid al-Din; whom others call Sheikh al-Jabal, the Old Man of the Mountain. He professes loyalty to the lord in Alamut, and yet it is an open secret that he serves himself foremost. The Assassins of Syria pay lip service to Alamut and do the bidding of Masyaf. In Aleppo they do not even trouble to bow to Alamut.

“You know what power is,” said Margaret. “Never too sweet, and never enough. Sinan bids fair to command all his sect, and through it to sway most of Syria and Outremer to his will. But
most
is not
all
. He would have more. In order to win it, he needs eyes and ears in every city; he needs allies, servants, slaves. He thinks,” said Margaret, “that he needs the House of Ibrahim.”

While Margaret spoke, Aidan left his chair and began to prowl. It was his way; he could sit still, if he must, but stillness robbed him of his wits. In the silence he spun on his heel, facing the lady, waiting.

She smiled very faintly at a memory. Gereint, warning her: “He can never sit for long, except in the saddle. He can't help it. He was born restless. God's mistake. His brother got all the quiet; he got all the fire.”

“That's not strictly true,” Aidan said. Suddenly he grinned. “But true enough.” His head tilted. “Sinan wants a web of loyal spies. I can understand that. Why precisely your mother's family?”

“It is the greatest,” Margaret answered. “And it has something which he wants.” She met his eyes. Sea-grey, Gereint had said, like his own: northern seas and northern stone. They put her in mind of fine steel. When he shifted, the strangeness flared at her, cat-green. “I was a widow when Gereint came here,” she said, “a ruling lady with two young children, and men enough to defend me, and Aqua Bella mine by right. My husband had been a vassal of the Prince of Antioch; he left other sons than Thibaut to inherit his lands. It had not mattered to me. I had Aqua Bella. And I had my share in the House of Ibrahim.

“Sinan asked for me. For me, not for one of my cousins, because I was both Frank and Saracen. My Christianity was no impediment. I am, after all, a woman, and a woman is what her man commands her to be. He wanted my House and my place in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Perhaps, a little, he wanted me. I was not so ill to look at when I was young.

“I refused him,” she said. “He persisted. He could not understand that I was my own woman. I had taken one husband for duty and to please my father. I chose the other to please myself. Then, I thought, Sinan would let me be; and I wedded my daughter to a baron in Acre, lest he turn his mind to her.

“But Sinan is of the people of Alamut. He accepts no will but the will of his master, and since he reckons himself master, that will is solely his own. He granted me some little peace. Then he commanded me. I would set aside my Frankish boy; I would accept his suit. My answer had no words. Only laughter. I was proud of it. I was a very perfect idiot.

“I grew more perfect with time's passing. Sinan, having commanded, turned to threats. He slew my best hunting hound; he slew the mare I had raised from a foal. I gave him only defiance. Then he let me be. I thought that I had won. I lowered my guard. And when the new message came, I defied it.
Yield,
it said,
or truly I resort to force.

“I defied it,” she said, “and for a long while again no blow fell. I was wise, I thought. I took great care to guard myself. I thought that he would abduct me; I took every precaution against it.

“But he is an Assassin. His force is deadly force. He did not take me. He took my lord.”

Aidan was still. A quivering stillness, like a flame where there is no wind.

“So you see,” said Margaret, “it is all my doing. I will not surrender the House of Ibrahim into that man's hands.”

“Indeed you shall not.”

His face and his voice between them brought her to her feet. “You have no part in this.”

“Your enemy has made certain that I do.”

“Then you had best slay me, for I have been your kinsman's death.”

Aidan considered the logic of it. He could do that, even in the white heat of rage. His teeth bared. It was not meant to be a smile. “You know what your folly has won you. That is revenge enough. No, my lady; your suitor owes me a blood debt. He will pay it in his own person, if I have to pull down Alamut stone by stone.”

“Masyaf,” she corrected him, cool and fearless.

“Masyaf, and Alamut, and every hut and hovel which owes fealty to the
Hashishayun
, if need commands it.”

“All for a single human life?”

“He was my sister's son.”

She touched him as if she thought that he would burn. Her hand was cool and steady. He caught it. It did not try to escape, even when his grip woke pain. “So strong,” she said. Observing only, interested. “Do you truly mourn for him? Or are you glad to have found so mighty a battle?”

He could kill her. Easily. One effortless blow. Or he could break her mind. She was a mortal woman. She was nothing before his power.

She knew it. She cared not at all. She could do naught but what she did; she would yield for no man, nor ever for a white he-witch whom grief had driven to folly.

He let her go. “I will do what I will do,” he said.

She bowed. It was not submission. “Will you see your kinsman laid in his tomb?”

“I have time,” he answered her.

“Indeed,” she said, “you do.” She sat again, called for her women.

He was dismissed. That was novel enough, and he was bemused enough, that he let her have her will. Later she would pay his price. If he chose to ask it.

2.

The baby was teething, and fretful with it. Whatever he wanted, it was not what anyone could give. When his grandmother rocked him, he wailed for a sugar tit; when the aunts tempted him with a sugar tit, he howled for his mother's breast; when she gave him the breast he struck it hard enough to bruise, and screamed in earnest. His mother was tempted to scream with him, if only to drown him out.

“A proper little prince he is,” said Laila, who resented him. She had been the most junior wife until he was born, but at least she had had Sayyida to be superior to: a mere daughter of the house, youngest and last to be married, and that to a fatherless nobody. But Sayyida had done what Laila had never been able to do. Given her husband a son, and so become a person of note within the limits of their world.

“A prince,” Laila repeated, hands pressed prettily to her ears. “His whim is our law. Why, I've hardly slept since — ”

Sayyida set her teeth before she said something regrettable. Her breast throbbed. She ventured to dance Hasan on her knee. His screams modulated to a hiccoughing roar.

“Here,” said someone new. “What is this?” She swept Hasan into her arms.

The silence was so abrupt that Sayyida reeled. For a long moment she simply sat and luxuriated in it. Then she opened her eyes and stared.

Hasan had met his match. His fists were tangled in the most wonderful hair in the world. He had, improbably, begun to laugh.

Laila loosed a little shriek. Stout comfortable Fahimah had the wits to go in search of food and drink as the laws of hospitality demanded, but she would not look directly at their guest. Mother — to Sayyida she was always and irrevocably that — sat very erect and very still. She would not go so far as to express dislike, but her disapproval was cold enough to burn.

Sayyida did not care for any of them. “Morgiana!” She flung herself upon her guest, baby and all. Hasan did not even frown. He was quietly and blissfully fascinated. “Morgiana!” his mother cried. “O miraculous! Would you care to adopt a son?”

Morgiana smiled and shook her head. She was as indulgent with Sayyida's exuberance as with Hasan's tugging at her hair. “Peace be with you,” she said, “and with all this house.”

That put Sayyida in mind of her manners. She bowed as politely as she could when she wanted to dance with delight. “May the peace of Allah be with you, with your coming and your going; and may that going be late and blessed.” She sucked in her breath. “
Morgiana!
When did you come? Where have you been? How long can you stay? Did you know about Hasan? Have you — ”

Morgiana laughed. “In order, O impetuous: I came just now, I have been where I have been, I can stay until the evening prayer, and yes, I knew both about Maimoun and about this handsome son of his.”

Laila made a sign against the evil eye. It was not directly entirely at Morgiana's boldness in trumpeting Hasan's virtues to every demon that could hear. “This worthless girlchild,” she said, “has been driving us to distraction.”

Morgiana hardly glanced at her. Sayyida swallowed a grin. Laila not only knew that she was pretty; she made sure that one else remained unaware of it. But beside Morgiana that shrank to insignificance. Morgiana was wonderfully, outrageously, exhilaratingly beautiful. Her skin was ivory. Her eyes were the clear green of emeralds; or, Laila had said more than once, spitefully, a cat's. Her hair was rich enough to kill for: beautiful, improbable, the color of the dark sweet wine which no good Muslim would touch, pouring to her knees. She glowed as she sat on a cushion in the worn familiar room, amid the clutter of four women and a baby; even in plain respectable clothes, she looked as if she belonged in gold and silk.

Fahimah came back with the maid and a small feast. Mother disapproved in silence. Laila sniffed, and frowned. “
Zirbajah?
Fahimah, we were saving it for — ”

Mother looked at her. It sufficed. She sulked, but she was silent.

Morgiana nibbled bread, salt, a little halwah; she dipped a fingerful from the bowl of
zirbajah
, savoring the rice with its pungency of garlic and spices. Hasan snatched, greedy. She placated him with halwah, with which he was well content.

A miracle. No, Sayyida thought. Morgiana. The others, even Laila, were wary of her, almost afraid. She was the family legend, and the family secret. A very solid secret, savoring
zirbajah
, sipping thick sweet kaffé from the silver cup that only came out for a guest of high note.

When she had tasted everything and complimented it duly — gaining from Fahimah the name of the new pastry cook in the bazaar, who had apprenticed in the sultan's own kitchens — she settled to an age of uncomfortable chatter.

Sayyida had trained herself to see the necessity. She had never been able to train herself to be patient. Morgiana never told her best tales in front of the older women. To them she was an infamous eccentric, endured because their lord and master had bidden them endure her, and accorded hospitality because the Prophet enjoined it upon them. To Sayyida she was simply and most complexly Morgiana. And that was wonder and splendor, and tales that had no equal, because they were the truth.

But she did not tell them to everyone, nor would she cut short the rites of courtesy. Sayyida sat at her feet and tried to remember a matron's dignity, and struggled not to fidget. Surely Mother knew. She followed Morgiana on every step of every furlong of the pilgrimage to Mecca; questioned her minutely regarding her every companion; counted every stone of every holy place in that holiest of cities.

Laila, of all people, came to the rescue of Sayyida's sanity. She yawned delicately, like a kitten, and stretched in the manner best suited to the multiplicity of her curves. “I beg our guest's gracious pardon,” she said, “but my lord husband is coming to me tonight, and I must rest, or I shall hardly be fit to please him.”

Sayyida bit her lip. Mother was above jealousy. Fahimah was oblivious to it. But they were reminded of duties that could not wait. Morgiana would not have them abandon necessity for her sake; no more would she spoil it by naming Sayyida's name. “I am quite content,” she said, “to wait upon the little prince. If his mother should wish for an hour's respite...”