Alamut (37 page)

Karim came toward him, as fussily elegant as ever, with his curled and perfumed beard and his towering turban. He looked unhappy, but that would be for appearance' sake, and in remembrance of Joanna. Under it, where Aidan's blunted power could just perceive, he was richly content. He had had an impossible task, he had fulfilled it, he was well rid of this disturbance in his household; and he had paid less for it than he had expected.

He regarded Aidan without hostility, if with no great liking. “I regret,” he said, “that we were unable to provide you with all that we had agreed upon. Guides, the full complement of baggage camels, doubled remounts...”

“No matter,” said Aidan. “I see two horses for every man, and camels enough. Guidance I do not need. I know where we go.”

“And do you know where it is safe, and where the tribes have forbidden passage?”

“God will guide me,” Aidan said.

No good Muslim could express doubt at such a sentiment. Karim, trapped in piety, escaped to duty. “I have told the chief of your mamluks what I know of the road and its dangers. You would do well to ride warily, even where the land seems most quiet. He whom you hunt is not above using the tribes as his weapons; and they are much given to raiding for the love of it.”

“Then I'll have to oblige them with a battle, won't I?”

“Youth,” said Karim, “is a wonderful thing.” A man could die in battle, his eyes said. And this one had dishonored his kinswoman and his House; and Allah was just as well as merciful. If it was a prayer, it was a very subtle one.

Aidan smiled at him. “It's hardly youth, sir. I was bred to oblige my enemies as my friends.”

“God help your friends.”

An unguarded utterance. Aidan saluted it, even as he turned to find his grey gelding waiting, Arslan at its head, somewhat owl-eyed but holding back hard on a grin. Others had not so much self-restraint. Under his eye the grins vanished, but there was no quelling the high fierce joy.

He knew it himself. It was black and scarlet, like fire in the dark. He swung lightly into the saddle. “I shall come back,” he said, “to see the end of our bargain.”

It did not cost Karim excessively much to murmur, “Allah grant.” Then, because he was an honorable man, and because he saw no profit in vindictiveness: “May God prosper your venture.”

Aidan bowed in the saddle. His hellions were waiting. He flung them into flight.

oOo

The city was closed up until dawn, but the House of Ibrahim had influence at a postern gate. Once that was past, none of them looked back at the bulk of shadow and starglimmer that was Aleppo. Part of Aidan's heart was in it, and most of his power, and some of his soul if he had any. But all of that, he bore with him in memory. His eyes were on the road ahead.

It was five days' journey to Hama on the Orontes, riding at a comfortable pace; three days then at lesser speed and with an eye toward ambush, to Masyaf. To Aidan on this first night, as the stars paled into dawn, it seemed as distant as the moon. He had come so far, for so long; he had lost the power to see an end to it.

The mamluks were Muslim to a man, and orthodox. Even Conrad with his fair Viking face bowed five times toward Mecca between each dawn and night: at first light, at sunrise, at noon, at sunset, before sleep. They were as regular as monks, and as persistent.

They were also expeditious. Aidan had to admit that. And sensible: they always took advantage of the opportunity to rest the horses.

After the sunrise prayer, the first day, they ate and rested. It was not properly a camp: they pitched no tents, but settled in a stony hollow not far from the road, where there was a little rough grazing for the camels. Most slept. Strong they might be, and hellions they certainly were, but they were young creatures, and they had had no sleep in the night.

Aidan, for whom sleep was more habit than necessity, wandered among the beasts. His gelding came unsummoned, to blow sweet breath in his hands and coax from him the bit of dried apple he carried in his sleeve. He laid his cheek against the warm smooth neck, rubbing the nape where horses always loved to be rubbed, empty for a little while of thought, sense, self.

A light step brought them flooding back. He turned, slowly enough as he thought, but the other started. It was Raihan, grey and haggard, wild-eyed as if he had remembered, all at once, what his master was.

Aidan tried to calm him with a smile. He never saw it. He was down in the dust, groveling as easterners were given to doing, babbling in no language Aidan could make sense of.

Slowly it came clear. “I saw your lady come, I greeted her, I stood guard until you came. When you were there, I watched by the rail. And when I remembered again, I lay there as if I had been asleep, and your chamber was empty, and all the word was that the Assassin had come and struck and gone. My fault, my lord, my grievous fault. I failed in my vigilance. I should die for it.”

Aidan dragged him up and shook him until he stopped babbling. “
You
should die? She was in my arms when she was struck. How would you have me pay for that?”

Raihan swallowed audibly. His hands worked, clenching and unclenching. “But, my lord. You were distracted.”

A bark of laughter escaped, for all that Aidan could do. “And why was I distracted? No, Raihan. I won't punish you. You were bespelled by a demon of great power and cunning. I was merely and unforgivably a fool.”

“My lord!” Raihan protested, outraged.

“Go and sleep,” Aidan said. “We've a long ride before us.”

Raihan drew a breath as if to object, but Aidan's eye was steady. He went away slowly, found his place, lay in it. His sigh was loud and much oppressed; but he seemed a very little less wretched than he had been.

His guilt would pass, if not swiftly. Aidan did not know that his own ever would.

oOo

When the day's heat had begun to abate, they took the road again. There were few travelers upon it. A shepherd crossing with his flock; a caravan wending its way to Aleppo. The land was quiet, bare brown desert with here and there a glimmer of green. Where green was, people were, villages huddled about a spring or a trickle of river.

They camped well after dark, under a waxing moon. Even the tireless Kipchaks were all but asleep in the saddle. Aidan saw them settled and a guard mounted. He took the first watch himself. They did not like it, but he had no use for sleep. His power was still an emptied cup, although the first trickle of its renewal brightened the edges of his mind. He watched with eyes and ears and nose, as any earthly beast could do. He prowled the edges of their circle. He waited for the slow hours to pass.

He could leave them all and go on alone. But they would follow; while he had no power for aught but gleaning the thoughts of one who stood within his arms' reach, he could neither fly beyond their compass nor defend them against the demon from Masyaf.

He snarled as he paced. That one. Morgiana. Monster of his own kind. Blind groping beast without heart or soul, only hate, and lust that she called love. Was that the essence of what he was? Without human raising, human taming, to be no more than a wolf or a panther. An animal. A killer without measure and without mercy.

And he had thought her beautiful. He had wanted her; dreamed of her. While she lied and laid traps for him, and lured him to destruction.

He spoke to the air. “Morgiana. Morgiana, hunter in the night. I know you now. I come to you.”

If she heard, he had no power to know. She did not answer.

There would be time and to spare for that. In Masyaf; or, if her steel was swifter than his wrath, in hell.

oOo

Aidan did not know when it dawned on him that he was off his reckoning. His mamluks seemed to find nothing amiss. The cup of his power, filling slowly, tried to persuade him that this road was the proper one, the road to Hama from which he must seek that to Masyaf. It was leading them south and west by sun and moon.

Yet beneath that surety was deep uneasiness. His mother's haunted Broceliande was just so, subtly treacherous, with a taste on the tongue and a quiver in the skin that spoke of magic. They were being led, and led astray.

He knew it surely on the day when, swiftly as they had traveled, they should have come to Hama. Where before them the wide barren plain should have opened to the winding of the Orontes, was naught but dust and sand and stones. The road stretched away into it, empty and mocking, with a dance of heat-shimmer on it.

They were not in difficulty, yet. They had avoided the larger towns, but in the last of many nameless villages they had filled their waterskins and watered their camels well. Aidan's prudence. The others had thought him a fool, close as they were to river and city, to prepare as if for the deep desert.

He bade his gelding halt. It ran the reins through his fingers, lowering its head to rub an itch in its foreleg.

Arslan rode up beside him. “Do you see something, my lord?”

“Nothing,” Aidan answered. “Nothing at all.”

Arslan raised a brow. He had taken to doing that of late. Aidan felt his own go up as he realized where the boy had learned it. “My lord?” Arslan inquired.

“I see nothing,” Aidan said. “I ought to see Hama, or at least its river.”

The others came up, drawing in as close as their horses would allow. Timur's mare, as always, squealed and kicked at his brother's beast, which, as always, had taken advantage of the halt to make overtures. That it was a gelding seemed never to have dawned on it.

Ilkhan slapped its neck. “Idiot,” he said to it. And to Aidan: “We can't see Hama. It's down in the river's furrow.”

“So, then: where is the river?”

None of them could answer that. Most seemed not to want to. “We've been slower than we thought,” said Dildirim.

“Or taken a wrong turning,” Conrad said.

Andronikos frowned. “Do these look to you like the hills near Hama?”

“What should they look like?” Arslan demanded. His voice was sharp.

He frowned down the road. His frown darkened to a scowl. He cursed in Turkish, short and foul. “Allah!” he answered himself. “Not like these. Where in God's name are we?”

“South of Aleppo,” said Timur.

Even he could quail before their massed glares.

“I would rather know why than where,” said Andronikos. And when the glares shifted to him: “If we know why we went astray, we can guess where we are.”

Greek logic. It made no sense at all to a Saracen. To a Frankish he-witch, it was eminently sensible. “As to why,” Aidan said, “I can tell you easily enough. We were bespelled.” He met their stares. “Yes, even I. I'm not invincible.”

They protested, loudly. He waited until they tired of out-shouting one another. Then he said, “We'd best search out a camping place. We'll need rest, and quiet, to think our way out of this.”

They found a place that would do well enough, a low hill topped with the ruins of a very old fortress. One wall rose still almost camel-high; the paving there was solid enough, and there was browse about the hill for the camels, although the well had long since gone dry. As always, Aidan's presence was proof against snakes and scorpions, and even the flies hesitated to come too close. He was not supposed to know, but his mamluks drew lots for the place closest to him; every night there was a different drowsing warmth at his back.

Tonight, it seemed, Andronikos had won the toss. As the last blaze of sunset faded from the sky, he sat on his heels before Aidan, sniffing the savory scents that rose from the cookpot, prodding the camel-dung fire with his scabbarded sword. Arslan, whose rank entitled him to a nightly place at Aidan's right hand, stirred the pot abstractedly. It was a deep trouble in him, that they — even they — had fallen prey to a spell. Aidan's arm about his shoulders hardly comforted him.

They ate in near-silence, with none of their wonted boisterousness. Their eyes kept coming back to Aidan. Clearly, if thinking was needed, it was his place to do it.

His appetite, never remarkable, died altogether. He choked down a last mouthful, and licked the grease from his fingers. He knew what he had to do. He did not know that his power was enough for it.

They all slowed to a halt, staring. He growled at them. They flinched, but they did not stop staring. “God's bones!” he burst out. “Was there ever such a pack of goggling idiots?”

“No,” someone muttered.

He laughed, sharp and short. “Come, then. It's not thinking that we need to do. Not quite yet.”

As he spoke, he drew back somewhat from the fire, smoothing dust and scattered stones from the pavement. Where the fire was, it sank into a hollow, but that before him was level and unbroken. He drew a long slow breath, contemplating it. The fire in him burned low, but it burned. His mamluks' intentness fed it. With great care, he gathered it, cupping it in his palms. It flickered; he breathed on it. It steadied. He set it on the pavement. It shone like a jewel made of light, ruby in its heart, moonstone about it. He spread his hands above it. It melted and flowed. His will shaped it and gave it substance; made it an image of the world. The east of it swelled and grew and filled the circle between himself and the fire.

There was Aleppo, bone-white city with the lofty jut of its citadel. There, Damascus, green jewel in the desert. And there, Jerusalem, heart of the world, the Dome of the Rock a minute golden spark. Lesser cities came clear one by one as he named them. Shaizar, Hama, Homs, down the meander of the Orontes. Antioch, Tortosa, Tripoli, westward and seaward. And between them in the mountains of Syria, Masyaf.

He swayed; his eyes dimmed. The image wavered as beneath a ripple of water. Its edges were clear. Slowly he traced the line between: the shape of the power which flowed out of Masyaf. Its limit followed roads where it could, feigned them where it must, leading his eye as it had led his body. South and west, yes, but wide of the mark, into the desert. Hama was a long day's journey west. The Orontes, they would come to, but south of Homs, on the shores of its lake. Then, if they would, into the mountains, but never to Masyaf; road and power would cast them up in Tripoli, among the Franks.