Alamut (24 page)

The sultan paused. Aidan had already forgotten what they were speaking of. He was on his feet, prowling among the sleepers, hardly aware that he had moved at all. Saladin watched him as people always did, as they would watch a leopard pace its cage. As a leopard would, he met the sultan's stare.

Too late he remembered what this man of all men could see. Saladin's eyes widened as if of their own accord, the mind hardly aware yet that it had perceived anything amiss. He peered closer, but Aidan had lowered his lids, half turning to sit where he had been before, and would not look up. After a moment Saladin sighed, shook his head, decided that he had seen but a trick of the light.

“What do you think of our city?” he asked.

“It's very beautiful,” Aidan answered. “Like a city from a legend: old beyond measure, richer than kings. There's strong magic in it.”

“Do you think so?” The sultan was pleased, but his eyes were intent. “Was it for the magic that you came?”

Aidan smiled a sword's-edge smile. Still he would not raise his eyes. “I came because the road led me here. I stay while my caravan stays. The beauty of it, the excellence of its welcome, come as a surprise and a delight. I could wish that I had come in a happier time, to do the city justice.”

“If any of my people has done aught to offend you, I would know, that we may offer recompense.”

“Your people,” said Aidan, “have been the unfailing soul of courtesy.”

“Yet we have not eased your heart.”

“Only one man may do that, my lord, and that with his blood.”

The sultan sat for a while in silence, smoothing his beard along his jaw.

No; not his beard. The scar that ran into it, a thin livid line. “I have heard,” he said, “that that man is one whom I know.” And when Aidan said nothing: “You must forgive me that I do not name him. His terror is not easily forgotten.”

“Yet you laid siege to his castle,” Aidan said.

The sultan smiled, tight and small. “You know how panic is. Some, it causes to flee. Others, it drives full upon what they fear.”

“And the first are called cowards, but the rest are reckoned valiant.”

“Or mad.” The sultan was a little pale beneath the sun-stain of his skin. He touched the glint of mail at his throat. “This never left me, even when I bathed, from Ramadan to Ramadan, and half a year about it. For I had taken arms against Aleppo that is a Shi'a stronghold, and they are Shi'a, those of the Mountain and dagger; and their master paid well to remove my upstart presence. First before all my army, at the meal we shared in the camp, the servers turned on me and would have killed me, but that one of my emirs knew them and cried the warning. He died for it. They died, twelve and one of them, but I lived, and lived in terror. Every shadow must surely be my murderer; every man about me must owe fealty to the Master of the Knives. Asleep and awake I was on my guard. I trusted no one. I nearly died for nothing more than fear.

“And so I lived for a year and half a year, easing a little with time, until I had almost remembered the taste of peace; and he struck again.” His fingers trembled on the scar. “One of his slaves gave me this. Another pierced my mail but drew no blood. They died, all four, but one of my own men was dead, and they tell me that I had gone mad. I built a wall about my tent. I suffered none in my presence whom I did not know, nor spoke to any save those who had been with me from my youth. Then when I could bear it no longer, when I must act or break, I laid siege to Masyaf.”

Aidan leaned forward, rapt. The sultan sat with fists clenched on his knees, a sheen of sweat on his brow, eyes wide with memory. “I laid my siege. My men were starting at shadows, but they followed me. Maybe they loved me. Maybe they feared me a fraction more than they feared my enemy.

“But when I had established my camp, set up my engines and settled for the long game of waiting and testing, a man came to me. He passed all my guards and sentries but those about my tent, and of those he asked leave to approach me. They gave it to him. He was one man, alone, not young, and they ascertained that he carried no weapon; and I was within the company of my captains and my servants and my most trusted slaves.

“He came before us, and named himself with calm that was not even insolence, as the very enemy we had come to destroy. My guards closed in on him, but I did not bid them seize him. He smiled at me and said, ‘We have somewhat to say to one another, I think. Will it please you to speak with me alone?'

“‘There is nothing you can say which my captains cannot hear,' I answered him.

“His smile never faltered. ‘Are you, perhaps, afraid?'

“If he had sneered, I could have defied him. But he was gentle; he was compassionate. He maddened me. I dismissed my emirs, ill though it pleased them. But my servants, I kept.

“‘Alone,' said the Old Man of the Mountain, gentle and inexorable.

“I sent away my servants, all but two mamluks. ‘These are as my right hand and my left,' I said. ‘They have been at my side since they were children. They are part of me; they do not leave me.'

“My enemy inclined his head. He addressed my mamluks, gentle as ever, without heat, without mockery. ‘Isa; Buri. If I said the word, would you slay him?'

“And their daggers were in their hands, one at my throat, one at my heart, and they wore no expression at all. They were his. My very hands were not my own; I was all betrayed.

“‘Let be,' bade my enemy, gently, gently. And they obeyed him; but he took no notice of them. ‘Your power is great, O sultan, and shall grow greater still. I confess that I erred in seeking to put an end to it. I shall not serve you who would raise the banner of the Sunni heresy over the House of Islam, but while you make our world one, while you pursue the Holy War as it is written that you should pursue it, let there be truce between us. I shall not again send my faithful against you, if you will undertake to withdraw from my lands, and to restore what your armies have pillaged and burned.'

“I gaped like a fool. One word only came to my mind. ‘Why?'

“‘I read what Allah has written. I see what you will do in our country. You are better for it than any who might take your place.'

“Blunt words enough, but I sensed the truth in them; or the truth as he chose to see it. I was not swift to yield, but in the end I accepted what he offered. He went away, and took my mamluks with him. In the morning I broke camp. Since then I have let him be, and he has made no move against me. I begin to believe he will keep his word.”

“Sinan is a man of his word,” Aidan said. “As am I. I have sworn to exact payment for a pair of murders; with his own hand he shall pay it.”

Saladin shook his head slowly. “You are as mad as I was.”

“He killed my sister's son. He cut down a child whose only crime was that he was born of a woman whom Sinan desired. He threatens her daughter, whose guard I am, insofar as I may be where men and women live so endlessly apart.”

“Has he threatened you?”

“Why would he? His feud is only against one certain woman and her blood. But one of that blood was kin to me in the degree which is sacred among my people; the other had made himself my own. Therefore he is my enemy.”

“I think,” said Saladin, “that you are an ill man to cross.” He did not smile as he said it. “Has your lady considered yielding, for her family's sake?”

“It is for her House's sake that she refuses. Would you have Sinan at the head of the House of Ibrahim?”

Saladin shivered in the heavy heat. “Allah have mercy on us all! Small wonder then that he withdrew his hand from the lord of Egypt and Syria. He had his eye on larger prey.”

“A Frank would never do that,” said Aidan: “pass by a kingdom for an empire of trade.”

“Assassination is hardly a Frankish weapon, either. When you kill your kings, you prefer to do so openly, in battle if you can. Sometimes I could envy you.”

“You wouldn't want to,” Aidan said. “You haven't lived in a Frankish castle.”

“I've...heard of them,” said Saladin. He grimaced. “No baths?”

“None. And only one wife at a time. Even the wine,” said Aidan, “is mostly horrible. As for the climate...”

“Ah,” said the sultan: “cold, endlessly. And wet. But green. Do you yearn for green, here where it is as rare as emeralds?”

“Not exactly here,” Aidan said in the whisper of leaves and the ripple of water; but over it the hammer of the sun. He rose again, stretching till it seemed that he could pluck the sun out of the sky. He faced the sultan. “I understand what you've been telling me. I never asked or expected that you help me against my enemy. I didn't ask it of my king in Jerusalem, either. He set me free to do what I must. Will it please your majesty to do the same?”

“What will you do?” asked Saladin, peering up at him, blinking, for he stood against the light.

“Whatever I must. Nothing that will harm you or your kingdom, unless need drives me.”

“Let me see your face,” said Saladin.

Aidan was slow to move. At last he sank to one knee, bringing them eye to eye as the ground bent. The sultan's breath caught. “You are — not — ”

Aidan smile with terrible gentleness. “My father was a king in the west of the world. My mother was — is — a daughter of sea and stone. My brother is the sea. I am flint that, struck with steel, breeds fire. Are you afraid of me?”

The sultan stiffened, stung to pride. “I am neither child nor fool, to be utterly without fear. You — I had not expected you. What are you?”

Aidan was suddenly very tired. “Half a man,” he said. “All a fool. But what I have sworn, I intend to fulfill. However I may. However I must.”

Now it was the sultan who stood, and Aidan who looked up at him, emptied of either pride or defiance. He could not even care that he was unmasked. “I must ponder this,” said Saladin. “And you.” He stretched out his hand. Aidan did not flinch from it, even when it gripped, sparking pain. “I shall summon you,” the sultan said.

16.

Aidan, who knew kings, did not wear himself out in waiting to be summoned either soon or urgently. Which was as well: it seemed that Saladin had forgotten, or elected to forget, his promise. If the caravan left before he remembered, Aidan intended to go with it.

It was close to leaving. Three days at most, Mustafa said. He seemed honestly regretful.

Aidan did not know what he felt. Relief, that he could advance at last out of this stalemate. Regret that he must leave a city so beautiful, and people in it who had become friends. And fear, certainly, leavened with eagerness. Sinan had not moved against Joanna in Saladin's city. The road would be a different matter. And Aleppo, that was in large part Sinan's.

Word came to him as he waited, with Ishak to bear it, both eager and proud. “Your sword is ready,” he said.

So soon; so miraculous. Aidan was halfway to the gate before Ishak caught him.

oOo

This time he was not offered the hospitality of Farouk's table. He did not care. Food and drink were common things, distractions. He had come to claim his sword.

Even the rite of washing feet and hands and face, of greeting and being greeted, of being courteous and receiving courtesy, tried his patience sorely. It was a measure of his acceptance into this world, that he could bear it at all.

He felt Ishak's amused understanding, Maimoun's sour dislike, Farouk's eagerness that was hardly less than his own though infinitely better hidden. They were like libertine monks gabbling the mass, all their minds fixed on the ale that waited in the refectory.

At last civilization was satisfied. Aidan was allowed past the outer courtyard; he was led to a room he had barely noticed before, except as an adjunct to the forge. There he was bidden to wait. Ishak stayed with him, silent for once, looking damnably pleased with himself. Aidan would have liked to hit him. Would have done it, if he had trusted himself not to break the boy's neck.

The silence lengthened. Aidan's back was taut. Soon now, God and the smith willing. His fingers itched for the feel of the hilt.

After an eternal while, Farouk came back, with his apprentice dour and silent behind. The master smith carried something wrapped in a cloth. Maimoun spread a carpet hardly wider than his body, hardly longer than a sword, woven of plain dark colors in a pattern as subtle as a hillside in winter. Farouk, kneeling, laid his burden down upon it. With loving care he folded back the cloth.

Aidan did not move, still less reach to touch. The sheath was a beautiful thing, black damascened with gold in the endless curving patterns which the Saracens loved. The hilt was plainer, a hilt made for use, of silver unadorned, but the guard was inlaid with gold, and the pommel was a ruby as Farouk had promised, a great glowing eye in the nest of cloth and carpet.

Aidan glance at Farouk. The smith inclined his head. Quietly, without haste, Aidan took up the sheathed sword. Its weight was sword-weight, lighter than some, longer than the blade he had brought from Rhiyana. He closed his right hand about the sheath, his left about the hilt. The silver was cool and quiet in his fingers. Slowly he drew the sword.

It shimmered as it drank the light. Its patterns were subtle, wave-patterns, flame-patterns, flowing from the hilt to the diamond-glitter of the point. Almost, as he turned it, they vanished; then they glimmered into clarity. Words flowed together with them.

Verily We created man of potter's clay of black mud altered,

And the Jinn did We create aforetime of essential fire.

Aidan's fingers convulsed upon the hilt. The sword leaped in his hand like a living thing. It knew him. It tasted his essence. It was his.

He gave it tribute of his own blood, a drop to sate its thirst when it had danced for him. Maimoun, unnoticed, had brought two things to test it: a billet of wood and a silken cushion. Aidan curled his lip at the wood. With the gentlest of strokes, he clove the cushion in two. The down within barely scattered. One feather rose, met the blade, parted.