Alamut Part 39

With great care he turned on his side. She was there: the a.s.sa.s.sin. Staring- He gave her an ample eyeful. She blushed; her eyes flicked away. He sprang.

For a blackly joyous instant he had her. But she was air and water; she flowed out of his hands. And she laughed. Soft, light, infinitely mocking. It drove him mad.

30.

Sayyida added a pinch of cardamom to the pot and stirred it, frowning slightly. It needed something still, but she could not think what. She reached with absent competence to pluck Hasan out of the rice bin. He came up screeching, abruptly cut off as he caught sight of something over her shoulder.

Morgiana was gone again, as she often was-fetching some- thing new, no doubt. Now, it seemed, she had come back.

Sayyida turned to see what she had brought.

New. Indeed. And a great deal of him, too: that was clear to see. Morgiana was ruffled, and there was a bruise coming out on her cheekbone, but she was smuing. He was deeply and limply unconscious, cradled in her arms Tike a vastly overgrown infant.Part of Sayyida stood back appalled. Part-the part that ruled her body-set Hasan down and ran to help the ifritah.

Between them they laid him in the mound of cushions and coverlets that served Morgiana for her bed, the divan being too small to hold him. Sayyida could not help noticing how well- formed all those inches were, and how surprisingly light. She was almost sorry to cover him decently with drawers from Mor- giana's store, and a thick soft blanket.

He seemed to be fighting the spell-for it was that, Sayyida was sure. He stirred; his brows knit; he tried to speak. Morgi- ana touched his forehead. He stilled.

She sat on her heels, watching him. Sayyida sat and watched her. Yes, she had a new bruise, and her hair was tangled, and there was a rent in her coat. "Did he do all that?" Sayyida asked.

Morgiana shook herself. "He? Do?" She seemed to come to 292 Judith Ta/rr her senses, a little, but she did not take her eyes from his face.

"Yes- Yes, he fought. So simple, so cleanly mad."

Sayyida caught her breath. "Mad? And you brought him here?"

"Where else?"

"But," Sayyida said. "He's dangerous."

"I can control him."

Sayyida looked at the last fading marks on her throat; at the new one on her face.

Morgiana flushed faintly. "My misjudgments, both. He's a surprisingly gentle creature when he's not p.r.i.c.ked to madness.

And he has reason, as he sees it, to hate me. I'll tame him slowly."

"If he doesn't tear you apart first."

"He is not a wild beast."

Sayyida shut her mouth tight. The Rank lay between them, oblivious. His face in sleep was no more human than Morgi- ana's. She could not imagine why she had thought him pretty, or even handsome. He was too starkly alien to be either.

"Magic," Morgiana said. "When he is with humans, he pre- tends to be like them; he puts on a mask, a glamour. But he squandered his power. He has none, now, but what makes him inescapably himself."

"None? No magic ar all?"

"It will come back. If he lets it. It's like a spring that flowsinto a pool. He drank the pool dry; it needs rime to fill again."

This was altogether out of Sayyida's reckoning. She took refuge in Hasan, who advanced on the Frank with clear and present purpose. She caught him and held him, over his objec- tions; but he agreed, on reflection, to sit in her lap and stare.

Morgiana stood over them. Her hand rested lightly, briefly, on Sayyida's hair. "Don't be afraid," she said. "He'd never harm you. Why do you think he hates me? I killed a human child, and tried to kill a human woman, and sundered him from his servants."

Her voice was frightening, because it was so calm, telling the truth without adornment. It was a very little bitter, a very little sad. But it refused to despair- "111 teach him the truth of me," she said. "Watch and see."

Aidan swam up through deep water to a dream of remarkable simplicity. A savor of cooking; a woman's voice singing, clear and light and tuneful. For a piercing instant he was a child 293.

again, a small half-wild thing in the house of a forest witch, with no knowledge or understanding of courts and palaces; nor even that he had a father, still less a father who was a king.

Almost he reached for the other half of him, the brother who had slept twined with him in the womb.

His hand knew that it would find only emptiness. His body remembered itself. It was warm, in comfort. Except for the lively weight on its chest.

He opened his eyes. Brown eyes stared down, set in a very young face. "Kha," said their owner. "Lid." The child bounced, grinning. "Khalid!"

Aidan struggled to reclaim the breath that had been pum- mcled out of him. It was a real weight, and a very real infant- manchild, he could see: it wore a string of blue beads about its neck, and nothing else. "Khalid!" it cried jubilantly. "Khalid!"

It swooped upward. His lungs, freed, gulped air. A young woman stared down at him. She had the child's round brown eyes, though not his round brown face. Hers was thinner, al- most sharp. She blushed suddenly and covered it with a comer other headcloth.

He had already deduced that she was a Saracen. He could sec - that he was not in his cell in Masyaf. Not at all. That Morgiana had something to do with it, he could guess. "Did she kidnap you, too?" he inquired.

Veiled, the girl was bolder. She shifted the baby to her hip, whence he regarded Aidan with joyful intentness. "She's my friend," the girl said.

Aidan was speechless.The girl scowled. "It is possible, you know. That she could have a friend. What do you know other?"

"That she kills," he said.

"Are your hands clean of blood, then?"

He sat up. His cheeks were hot. It seemed to be his curse, to be put in his place by veiled and proper Muslim women.

This one recoiled a little as he moved, setting her body be- tween himself and her baby. She was afraid of him. Mad, she was thinking. Dangerous. And a Frank.

His power was coming back.

He sat srill. She cased slowly. "I'm sorry Hasan woke you up," she said.

"I can think of worse things to wake to."

Her eyes warmed into a smile-slow, at first; unwilling; but irresistible. "My name is Sayyida."

294 Judith Tour He inclined his head. "Aidan," he said.

"Arc you hungry?"

He was. It surprised him.

She did not trust him, not yet: she took; Hasan with her, and came back balancing him on her hip and a platter on her head.

He barely paused to admire the feat. Her veil was secure now, but he saw the blush beneath it as he rose to take the platter.

He could not help smiling, which made her blush the fiercer.

She would not cat with him. A woman should not, and he was an infidel. But Hasan knew no such compunction. She had to let him go to wait on Aidan, and he dove straight for Aidan's lap. She dove after him, but halted.

"I won't hurt him," Aidan said gently.

She looked down. She was angry, a little, but not at him.

"She said you wouldn't."

His teeth clenched. "And youll take her word for it."

"I've known her since I was as young as Hasan."

"And me, you don't know at all." He made himself relax, reach for a loaf of the flat eastern bread, dip it in the pot.

Hasan eyed it hungrily. He divided it, fed half to the child, who took it as no more than his due. He nibbled his own half.

This is good."

She laughed as if she could not help herself. Tcs, I cancook! But don't tell my husband. He thinks that's beneath a woman of good family." She stopped; she seemed to realize what she had said. She rose abruptly and strode through the vaulted hall that was, he saw now, a cavern.

He did not follow her. Hasan wanted more bread. Aidan gave it to him, wanting to laugh, not quite sure he dared. Here he sat in a cave decked like a sultan's harem, brought hence by magic, with a baby in his lap, and its mother suffering the most common of woman's afflictions: a husband with whom she was at odds. He wondered if he was expected to console her.

That was unworthy of either of them. He ate to quiet his hunger, sharing with Hasan. By the time they had finished, she was back, daring him to ask why she had been crying. He asked, "Am I allowed to explore?"

She was tensed to cast his curiosity in his teeth. She had to stop, breathe deep, shift her mind in this unexpected direction.

"I don't think I can stop you." She paused. "Are you up to it yet?"

"I don't think I've ever felt better." And it was true. He was 295.

fresh; he was strong. His power was the barest trickle yet, but it was swelling.

She did not believe him, but she was sensible: she did not try to quarrel with him. She did insist that he dress-cover him- self, as she put it. The clothes she brought were robes of the desert.

His own, cleaned and skillfully mended. But not his weap- ons. Of course: he would not be allowed those.

There were three linked caverns: the great hall; the small chimneyed chamber which served as a kitchen; the wonder of Jeweled walls and flowering stone, with its gently steaming pool. He barely lingered even there. His mind turned outward.

It was morning; his bones knew it. Night's bitter cold was all but gone; the heat of the day had barely begun. All about was desert: sand and stones and sky.

And power- He traced with his own the circle of the ban. It was smaller than that about Masyaf, and stronger to measure.

Its meaning was perfectly distinct. Tfes, he might explore: for a fair distance, in human paces. But escape, he could not. Not even upward. A more perfect prison for one of his kind, he could not have imagined.

He scaled the crag above the narrow mouth of the cave, welcoming the effort, the toll it took on hands still torn from Ac crawl to Masyaf. At the summit he dropped down, arms about his knees. The sky was impossibly wide. Away below stretched a ruin of tumbled stones. Earth-had covered it, time beat it down, but it was still visibly a work of men's hands."That was a city once," the a.s.sa.s.sin said behind him.

He did not leap. He did not even mm. "Persepolis?"

"No. This, Sikandar never burned; he built. They say he made it for his hound, because it died here."

"Alexander was mad."

"Surely." Her shadow touched him; he shuddered away from it. "You are hardly being reasonable, my lord Khalid."

"Is there any reason in murder?"

That drove her away. He waited a long while; she did not come back. He descended slowly.

The caves were empty of her. Sayyida did something peaceful and womanly in a corner. Hasan wanted to be entertained.

Aidan obliged him.

For all her courage and her forthright tongue, Sayyida was Ay. Maybe if he had been a woman she would have opened to 296 Judith Tan- him sooner. As it was, she went veiled, and she slept in the kitchen, which she had not been doing before he came. He could not persuade her to share the hall with him, even with its length between them. "It's not decent." she said.

But she did not shun him in daylight, and she talked to him freely enough.

"You're the swordsmith's daughter?" he cried when it came together into sense. "Ishak's sister?"

She nodded. She was amused.

It was logical, in its own fashion. Morgiana's friend would bear some relation to cold steel.

"Then it was you who watched us, that day when I was your father's guest."

She nodded again. "I saw you on the street, too."

"I thought your husband didn't let you go out."

"He didn't."

Aidan said nothing to that. It was delicacy, and prudence.

She did not carry it on then, but later she did: talking of the young smith with no family, whom her father had made his apprentice, and to whom he had given his youngest daughter.

"Not," she said, "that he left me out of it. I could have refused.

But I liked Maimoun well enough, and I admired his artistry. I thought he'd make a good father for my children."There was more to it than that; or there had come to be.

"He should trust me," she said. "He should let me make my own choices."