Alamut (5 page)

He did not want to be alone any longer. He smiled at the prince's black scowl, and knelt there in the sun on the broken tower. He laid his hands on Aidan's knees; he said the words that made him the liege man of the Prince of Caer Gwent. The Prince of Caer Gwent accepted them. He did it roughly, without pleasure, but he did it. “And on your head be it,” he said.

oOo

It was true, Thibaut saw to his own satisfaction. Aidan looked different when he was by himself, or with people who knew what he was. In hall, among strangers, he seemed remarkable still, but humanly remarkable: a tall young man with a strikingly handsome face. Even his pallor was dimmed, that that would never be anything but startling in a country where every man was burned either black or scarlet by the sun.

“He's as white as a maid,” someone said in Thibaut's hearing.

“God knows, he doesn't fight like one,” said someone else.

“Why, have you seen him?”

“Seen him? He's knocked me clean over the crupper.” The man sounded anything but ashamed to confess it. “Here, I forget — you've been mewed up in court. We had a bit of tourney in Acre, a sennight back. Nothing of consequence, merely a handful of challengers and a few wagers made. There's been the usual crop of tyros on the boat from Saint Mark, cocky as they always are, and stinking to high heaven. But that one was as fresh as a girl, and someone remarked on it as you did, and someone else took it up, and one way and another we were all hot to muss his pretty curls for him.

“We had pity on his innocence. We matched the weakest of us with him. You can imagine what happened.”

The other apparently could not. His eyes were on the slender figure in black, bending over a lady's hand, dwarfed beside her great blond-bearded consort.

“It was,” said the knight from Acre, “surprising, if not incontestable. Yet. It could have been blind luck. He was holding back, we found out soon enough. And he kept on doing it. I dared to think I had him, till I found myself flat on my back, staring at the sky.

“Then he lost his temper. I don't know precisely what set him off: I was still taking inventory of my bones. I think someone accused him of mocking us, and challenged him to show us what he could do.

“Now, mind, we were limping and groaning and sweating from the heat, but he was as fresh and cool as a flower in a lady's garden. He'd changed horses twice, taking offers of mounts more used to the climate than the one he'd brought from the west. They were good horses, not nags or rogues: we were fools, but we were honest fools. I remember, he had Riquier's big grey, and Riquier rides him on a bit-shank a span long, but our lad had the reins on the beast's neck and was guiding him with his shins. He rode down the lists with his lance in rest, and though he had his helm on we knew he was glaring at us. Then he lowered his lance at the one who'd armed to keep us company, but who'd never meant to fight, and no one was minded to challenge him.”

“Balian, of course,” said the other.

“Balian,” the knight agreed. “Of course. We've all done our share of listening to troubadours. So, obviously, had the boy from the west. Of course we tried to talk the young fool out of it. Balian is a man in his full strength, Balian is seasoned, Balian is the unconquered champion of Outremer.

“‘Therefore,' said the westerner, ‘I will fight with him.'

“He meant it. Lances first, then if neither would yield, swords, until one either yielded or was hurt too badly to go on. Balian was hardly willing. He's a gentle enough soul, when he's not breaking lances. But a challenge is a challenge, and Balian understands young men's hunger for honor. He could give that even with defeat.

“You know how it goes in any tourney. The knights take their places at the ends of the lists. The destriers champ and snort and shake the ground with their pawing. The world holds its breath. Then the lord raises his hand. The lances come down. The shields come up. The horses lumber into motion. It's dream-slow; then it's blurringly fast.

“Even before the lances met, we knew what we were seeing. God knows, there are no knights in the world to compare with ours in Outremer; and often we've seen it proven, with every ship that comes out of the west, and every sunstruck cockerel who fancies himself a champion.

“This one was cockerel enough, but he could ride a joust. He broke his lance on Balian's shield, and Balian broke his on the westerner's, and neither even swayed in the saddle. They'd been testing, we could see. Neither said a word that we could hear, but they stopped in the same instant, dismounted, and set to with swords.

“Now, Balian can ride, but it's with the sword that he excels, and it's with the sword that he's held his title so long. His arm is made of iron and his wind is unbreakable, and he has an eye like a Cairene cutpurse. There are men who'd swear that he sees a stroke coming before his opponent has even thought of it.

“And here he'd met his match. Soon enough they had their helms off, and they were grinning like boys on a lark, but going at it with all they had. Or Balian was. The other was still — still! — holding back. Till Balian saw, and his grin went wild, and he struck in grim earnest. Struck, if the other slipped the merest degree, to kill.

“And the other saw, and he smile never wavered, but I saw the glitter in his eye. He turned that stroke, and he sent the sword spinning out of Balian's hands, and he laid his point against Balian's throat, gentle as a mother's kiss. ‘You'll make a swordsman,' he said.”

There was a long pause, with breaths drawn sharply in it. Then: “By the Cross! Did Balian kill him for it?”

“Balian? Balian cursed him in three languages, and then asked him if he'd mind taking on a pupil.”

Thibaut grinned to himself. The tale had won an audience, and they were all trying not to goggle. No one was suggesting, Thibaut noticed, that the young cockerel was not as young as he seemed. Rhiyana was small and very far away, and played little part in western wars and none in those of the east. No one here knew what its king was. And as for his brother...

People would believe what they wanted to believe. That had always been Gereint's wisdom and his safety. His lineage was not a thing to speak of where a stranger could hear it. He had been a little afraid, sometimes, when he talked of his uncle's coming, though he laughed at himself. “He's older than I, and wiser, and he's long learned to seem, if not ordinary, at least human. And yet... he is what he is. He never lies about it. If someone asks him direct...”

So far, no one had. Thibaut intended to keep it so. Though it meant coming within reach of his mother's eye, he stationed himself in Aidan's shadow, armed with a bland stare and an air of squirely watchfulness.

oOo

They laid Gereint in his tomb under the chapel of Aqua Bella, and although he might have had a bishop to sing him to his rest, his lady would have none but her own humble chaplain. Old and all but blind, he still had a sweet voice, and his wits did not wander overmuch, although he forgot once and called Gereint by the name of Margaret's father.

It was as Gereint would have wished it.

“He was blessed in the end,” said Margaret when it was over. “He died without pain, in the prime of his life. He had nothing to regret.”

Hall and solar were full of people who would need, soon, to think that their presence comforted her. But for this little while, in the cool dimness of the crypt, they let her be. Thibaut did not want to be there, but he could not make himself go elsewhere. Under dust and incense and old stone, he thought he smelled death. Foolish. His grandfather's tomb held naught now but old bones, dry and clean under the effigy. Gereint was sealed tight in the niche that would have been Margaret's, embalmed in spices and wrapped in lead and laid under a slab that had needed four strong men-at-arms to shift it. Later his effigy would lie there, all in armor, with the cross of Crusade on its breast.

Aidan knelt by the niche. If he prayed, it was a warrior's prayer, a fierce intensity. A saint might look like that as he labored to raise the dead.

Thibaut shivered. That, he already knew, was beyond Aidan's power.

Margaret moved slowly through the crypt. Her shadow was huge in the light of the lamp over her father's tomb. She paused by Gereint's, and laid her hand on its lid. A tremor rocked her. Thibaut looked at her in something very like horror. Margaret was the strongest person in the world. Margaret never lost her temper, or her composure, or her wits. Margaret never wept.

It was if the castle itself had begun to crumble and fall. Thibaut was frozen in shock, helpless. Aidan moved as if he had never been rapt in prayer, rising, touching her. And she let him. She came to him as to a haven. He sank down, cradling her as if she had been a child, rocking her, saying nothing. His face was deathly still. His cheeks were wet.

Thibaut did not know what he did until he had done it. He crept close to them, and huddled by them. There was room for him, and warmth and strength to spare. They held at bay the cold of death. They began, slowly, to heal him.

4.

For Aidan there would be no healing while Gereint's assassin lived unpunished. He worked, ate, spoke, even laughed, but the memory never left him, nor the grief.
Even an hour,
his heart mourned.
Even an hour sooner...

But beneath that, infinitely darker, infinitely more terrible:
I never knew. I in all my power, in my pride, in my certainty that the world was mine to do with as I chose — I was as blind as any mortal worm.

Gereint had died, and Aidan had had not the slightest suspicion. He had been all joy, looking to the road's end, knowing how Gereint would be when Aidan came: trying to be a man, to remember his dignity, but damning it all and whooping like a boy. He was dead before he knew it, gone, taken away where mortal men went; where Aidan could never go.

The hall of Aqua Bella saw a prince at the lady's table, eating little, but calm, composed. Behind the mask, he wept and raged.

The Assassin had left no trace, no memory of presence. The cake was gone, cast away in fear. Gereint was in his tomb.

But Aidan knew where to hunt. Masyaf had sent the murderer out; to Masyaf, inevitably, the murderer must return. Aidan would be waiting for him.

Aidan stopped pretending to eat. His kind needed little sustenance, and even that, now, was more than he could stomach. The guests were quiet as befit a funeral, but they seemed hungry enough, and thirsty for the wine that came out of Bethlehem. At the high table, Margaret ate and drank sparingly but calmly. Thibaut, who was young enough to find healing in tears and a strong embrace, was eating as if he had had nothing for days. Maybe he had not. He did not often glance at Aidan, but his awareness was palpable, like a hand on Aidan's shoulder.

Gereint had been like that. It was not adoration; nothing so foolish. It was kinship, deeper even than blood.

It was a gift. Aidan did not want it; it did not fill the place that was empty. Yet he could not more refuse it than he had refused Gereint.

The air was stifling. So many human bodies, so many human minds, pressing on him. He rose, not too ungracefully, murmuring something. The Lady Margaret inclined her head. Her eyes saw too clearly by far. She endured this because she must. So must he, if he could be courteous, but courtesy was beyond him. He bowed low to her and fled.

oOo

The garderobe was a brief refuge, but its air was too thick for his senses. He found a courtyard to pace in, not caring what it was, or where, or who saw. Only the thinnest veneer of sanity kept him from launching himself into the sky.

Watchers did not longer long. Perhaps he frightened them. But one stood in shade, as still as he was restless, and slowly the stillness touched him. A monk, he thought: a Benedictine, swathed in black. But under the habit was mail; on the breast was a cross, not large, of simple shape, stark white against the robe.

The Hospitaller. Gilles, his name was. He was not what Aidan had been led to expect. He was fastidiously clean, his hair cropped short around his tonsure, his beard long but well kept. It aged him, as perhaps he intended: under it he could not have been much past thirty.

His eyes widened a little as Aidan halted in front of him. The glamour had lost itself, baring the truth of what Aidan was; he cared neither to restore it nor to befuddle the man's mind, churchman or no. Gilles had Saracens enough to hunt. This one lone witch-man was no prey of his.

“So,” said the Hospitaller without greeting or pretense. “It's true, the tale I've heard.”

Aidan bared teeth longer and sharper than a man's. “What tale might that be, Brother?”

“I think you need not ask, my prince,” said the Hospitaller. He leaned against the wall and folded his arm, at ease, half smiling. “They say the king your brother is your very image, as like as man and mirror.”

“How not? We're twinborn. That's a power in itself, the old wives say.”

“Are you both left-handed?”

Aidan laughed, startled, beginning to like this soldier-monk. “Both of us. How did you know?”

The blue eyes glinted. “No magic, my lord. I watched you in hall. You should learn to eat with your right hand if you intend to go among the infidels. They take very unkindly to a man who does not.”

“Why is that?”

“A teaching of their Prophet. He ordained every smallest action. The right hand, he decreed, shall be for eating and for cleanly things. The left is for wiping oneself, and for giving the devil his due.”

“Do they all fight left-handed, then?”

“Oh, no,” said the Hospitaller. “War is holy, as holy as prayer. The blood of infidels is their Eucharist.”

“What makes you think that I should care for an infidel's mummery? I came to kill them, not to dine with them.”

The Hospitaller's eye rested on the cross that Aidan wore, blood-red on black: the Crusader's sign and seal. “A most devout sentiment. You'd make a fine Templar.”