Alamut (29 page)

oOo

In the corner of the wall, an almond tree shaded a space like a bower. He bent beneath the branches, and started, recoiling.

Morgiana tossed him an almond. He caught it, by instinct, as he dropped down under the arching green. She cracked a pale-brown shell and freed the meat, but did not eat it. Her expression was almost frightening in its stillness.

She wore a woman's dress, drab and voluminous black, with a veil over her hair. She would have been beautiful in sackcloth, which this very nearly was; its perfect propriety was more alluring than the man's garb in which he had seen her before.

The almond broke in the clenching of his fist. A jagged edge sank deep, drawing blood. He stared at it in surprise.

She took his hand in warm steady fingers and drew out the shard. The blood welled, dark and thick. She set her lips to it.

He could not move. She was only cleansing the wound by what means she could. Only that. She raised her head; she was as calm as ever. “You should take care,” she said. “You have more strength than a man.”

Temper burned away his astonishment. “Am I so much a child beside you?”

“Allah knows, you are not.” She was still holding his hand. “I've been waiting for you.”

He glanced about. “Here? Do you live here?”

She shook her head. “I saw you riding in. You were beautiful in your robe of honor. Almost civilized.”

“Almost?”

She laughed and kissed his palm, swiftly, as if there were nothing else one ought to do with a man's hand in one's own. “I should not like you to lose your wildness. It makes you fascinating.”

“You...” he said. “You could quickly drive me mad.”

He was half jesting. But even the half that was in earnest had not looked to drive her back against the tree-bole, green eyes wide, white face stricken.

His hand, that had known no pain of its wound, began to throb. He flexed it, staring at her. She looked ready, impossibly, to weep.

He gathered her to him. “Hush,” he said, though she had made no sound. “Hush. I meant no hurt.”

Her head shook, hard, against his shoulder. She was smaller than Joanna, lighter, slender-boned as a bird, but wonderfully, uncannily strong. Her fists knotted in his robe. Her voice came muffled but distinct. “I have no art; no skill. I know nothing of gentle things. I can only say what is in me to say. And that — and that — is all amiss.”

He drew a breath, two. “Are you telling me...that you...”

She thrust herself back. “Oh, you beautiful, innocent fool! I love you. I have loved you since I saw you in Jerusalem. I have followed you, watched you, waited for you, wanted you. If I shall drive you mad, what is it that you have done to me?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again. He could think of nothing to do, except to touch her. She was burning cold. “I don't,” he said, “I don't yet — ” He swallowed. “Yet. But when I see you, touch you...” He had her hands in his. He held them to his heart. He could not help the sudden smile. “If you would seduce a man, my lady, you had best begin by letting him see you as often as you see him.”

She stiffened, offended; but listening with fierce intensity.

He raised her hands and kissed them. “When I first saw you, I thought that I had dreamed you. You were all that I had ever yearned for in a woman.”

“And now?”

He met her eyes. “And now, you make my heart sing.”

Her arms locked about his neck. “Will you love me? Will you love me now?”

He checked, startled. She was shaking, and not with passion. As if she were going to die before the sun set, and once again, just once, she craved the body's pleasure. “Lady, why in the world — ”

She spun away from him. “No. Of course not.” Her voice was bitter. “You are Christian. I forget. You make a virtue of denial.”

Aidan laughed with his own fair share of bitterness. “That may be, but I was not born a Christian. No, lady. It's only...are you sure you want it? I hardly know you.”

“That is why,” she said. “That is why I want you now.”

He reached for her, but she had gone too far, almost out of the tree's shade. “Lady,” he said, “have mercy. I've seen you thrice before this; I know no more of you than your name. If you have a husband, children, kin — ”

Her laughter was like a cry of pain. “None! I have none. There is only I. Only — only — ”

He leaped. He was surprised that she was there, that she had not vanished. But no more, it seemed, than she. She had to tilt her head back to see his face; to reach high, to smooth the hair back from his brow. Her hand trembled. “I love you,” she said.

She was gone.

He dropped down, boneless. “God,” he said. As she had once. “God, God, God.”

Two wives, the astrologer had said. Had he meant this impossible tangle? Fretting into madness over one; driven truly mad by the other. And if one was jealous...

That would be Joanna. Muslim women knew how to share their men.

He tossed his aching head. What was he thinking? Joanna had no cause for jealousy. This was a madwoman, a demon-creature gone wild with age and loneliness. That he found her beautiful was proof only that he had eyes. The rest was pity and fascination and a little — more than a little — desire. Their bodies fit well together. Almost too well. The memory of her was strong on his skin, her absence an ache that mounted to pain.

He dragged himself to his feet. He had come to the garden for healing; it had dealt him a wound worse still.

God had not done mocking him. He could rest now. He could fall without effort into a sleep like death. Therefore he was not allowed it. A servant was waiting in his chamber with fresh clothing, a cup of sherbet, a cloying obsequiousness. Now that he had rested, he was informed, he would dine, then the masters of the house would rejoice in his company.

He contemplated a feast for a prince and a long evening's discourse on nothing in particular, and came deathly close to defying it all. But training held, and bone-weariness. He bowed to the inevitable.

19.

Joanna was well guarded. Too well by half. She and Dura shared a chamber with two of the cousins, light sleepers both, and one heavy with pregnancy and given to rising every hour at least to go to the privy. Samin the eunuch, who was well-nigh as vast as the Dome of the Rock and armed with a sword, slept across the door. An Assassin would have been hard put to enter the room, which had only one latticed window; and if he had found a way to walk through walls or the mountain of Samin, he would have had to unravel Joanna from the knot of her maid and her cousins.

A lover, even a lover who was Aidan, could not begin to approach her.

It was not as if she had been taken unawares. The House knew the danger she was in, for its sake; and the harem was crowded. The unmarried women, the women with child, the women whose husbands were elsewhere on the business of the House, had perforce to sleep in twos and threes.

She had not spent a night without Aidan since he first came to her tent. In that warm and airless room, filled to bursting with humanity, still she was cold. Alia's back against her side, Nahar's exuberant flesh crowding her, Samin's thunderous snores, all made her ache for one long lean body, and love made in silence for fear of discovery, and the scent of him that was like an oak copse in summer.

She tried, once, to slip away. Samin heaved himself up and followed her. He waited outside the privy, to which she had to go or be betrayed, and followed her back to the room. He had not followed Alia on any of her many excursions. He was, beyond any hope of doubt, set to guard Joanna.

It would have been easier if she could trust Aidan not to do something mad. Not tonight, maybe. He had that much sense. But if he was kept away from her every night, sooner or later he would break, and then there was no telling what he would do.

When this was over, she would go back to Outremer. Ranulf would try to claim her. She was his wife; there was no escape from that. She did not — God help her, she did not know if she wanted to escape from it. She did not want to be Aidan's wife, even if he would ask it, or expect it. A wife was too much like a servant. She had a duty to her husband's bed. Duty was no part of what was between her and the witch's son of Caer Gwent.

He could be all utterly like a man, warm flesh, swift desire, tears when he grieved, laughter when he was glad. He was as devout a Christian as any other nobleman, though sometimes he forgot and swore by the goddess of his mother. He was no devil, or monster, or creature beyond human ken.

But he was not human. He did not, when he let himself be himself, think like a man. Which was why she was knotted with more than wanting him. She feared him. For him. He was as dangerous as a beast of prey, and as unchancy. And men hunted beasts of prey; killed them, and called it justice, because their world allowed no predator but man.

Be human,
she willed him — prayed him.
Think. Remember the danger to me.
Since he would never care for his own.

Maybe he heard. He did not come.

He was wise; and she. But ah, she wanted him.

oOo

He had heard her. He saw what safeguards hedged her about. None of them could be proof against sorcery. And yet, was he? He did not even know what it was that he faced: whether demon or mortal magus, or nothing at all but fear in the night.

Nor could he know, unless he saw it. But to see it, he must lure it; and he would not — could not — use Joanna as the bait.

He sat bolt upright. Perhaps he would not need to. He had his own magic. It was by no means without its limits. But perhaps — perhaps — for this it would be enough.

He sank back with a groan. It needed time for the doing. Time he might not be given. He had dallied overlong as it was, letting the caravan carry him in Joanna's wake. This city that had opened like the jaws of a trap, this would be the place where the Assassin made his move; and it might be soon. Half Aleppo knew that the House of Ibrahim's southern caravan had come in. The word would reach Masyaf at winged speed. And then, out of the night, the stroke.

His senses leaped outward in fear. No danger met them. Joanna was guarded; nothing crept in upon her. In the city round about, no malice turned against her.

He did not linger to read what else was there to read, although some of it pricked at his awareness. It was not in him tonight to wander the mind-winds, long though it had been since he had ventured them. He set his strength in the wards and his will on sleep, and settled to endure the night.

oOo

After all his sleepless fretting, he slept well past sunrise. It was Arslan who roused him, looking well and grimly content, and saying as soon as Aidan had opened his eyes, “My lord would do well to rise quickly. He is summoned where he had best deign go.”

Aidan sat up scowling, raking his hair out of his face. “Would my servant deign to explain himself in plain Arabic?”

Arslan grinned, unrepentant. “You're blessed, my lord. The Lady Khadijah wants to speak with you. I don't think,” he said, “that she often grants audience this soon.”

Aidan knew that she did not. As lady of the House, she stood somewhat higher than a queen, and she knew it. He was up in an instant, into Arslan's capable hands. As the mamluk washed him, he said, “The last I knew, the whole pack of you had been herded into exile.”

“So we were.” Arslan wrung the cloth into the basin, laid both aside, began to dress his master. “We chose not to accept our banishment. It never came from you, after all. I shall be your body servant, at which I am somewhat more accomplished than the fool who claimed the office. The rest will guard you, taking turn and turn. May I grant them leave, when they are not guarding you, to go about the city?”

“Only if they — and you — promise the utmost of discretion. And leave your livery at home.”

Arslan dipped his head. “Yes, my lord.”

“Mark you,” said Aidan. “No spying; and no rabblerousing. If you see an Assassin, you let him be.”

“Even if he is murdering a citizen, my lord?”

Aidan's teeth clicked together. Arslan's politeness was beyond reproach, but his mind was rather too patently his own. “There will be no heroics while we are guests in this city. We would be worse than fools to betray our hand in assaults against slaves, while the master keeps to his own place, free and strong and all too aware of us.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Arslan.

He was a master of the opacity of servants, was that one. But Aidan had better eyes than most. “On your honor,” he said, “and on your soul, swear to it.”

So compelled, Arslan could not but obey. He was not happy, but his respect for his lord had gone up a notch or two.

Aidan was ready: washed, combed, royally if somberly clad. He did not go armed, although his side was sadly naked without his sword. Arslan followed him. Raihan and Conrad fell in behind.

None of them was admitted to the harem. That was law, and immutable. Aidan went in under the guardianship of a mountainous, soot-black eunuch, hideous as a devil out of an abbot's nightmare, armed with what could only be a captured Frankish sword. His lowering glances promised application of that blade to a salient portion of Aidan's anatomy, if Aidan ventured the slightest step out of the way ordained for him.

Aidan did not intent to stray; nor indeed could he have wandered far. He was taken only to the first court, to a chamber just within it, a dim cupboard of a room divided in half by an intricately carved screen. Foreign though it was with its tiles and its carpets and its shelf of silver vessels rimming the whitewashed ceiling, it reminded Aidan of nothing so much as the reception room of a nunnery. There was even a chaperone in black, heavily veiled, with gnarled and age-spotted fingers laced quietly in her lap.

And with her, near but not behind the screen, a figure whose veil might have been smoke for all it concealed of Joanna.