Alamut Part 45

She rose from her prayer and smiled at him, wide and wicked, almost a grin. He had never thought before this night, that there could be mischief in her. She dived into the cushions and kissed him until he was like to drown.

She pulled back abruptly. He lay and tried to breathe. Her bright mood dimmed. She laid her hand over his heart as if to convince herself that it was there, bearing strongly where ahuman man's could not be. Her eyes took in his body, slowly, flinching from no pan of it. "So beautiful," she murmured.

She tugged him to his feet, thrust a bundle into his arms.

His clothes. While he dressed, she fetched food in which she forced him to take interest: the eternal bread and dates and cheese of the desert, and for him watered wine, for herself plain water from the spring. "You need your strength," she said, "to face Sinan.** 327.

He choked on a mouthful of wine. She did not notice. She ate like a soldier before a battle, grimly, scowling at the air.

"But," he said. "So soon-we've hardly-we can't do it now!"

"W: can."

It should have struck him long before it did- She was the Slave ofAlamut. For the keeping of a Frank's oath, she would break the vows which she had sworn to a hundred years of masters. No matter that she had gone willingly into servitude, and freed herself more than willingly from it. What this was to him after months of striving, to her was infinitely more.

"Never delude yourself," she said. "Long before I saw you, I wearied of my enslavement. You see merely the end of it, a rebellion to which I have been coming since I left Alamut."

"But," he said, "to do it for me, an infidel-"

"For a creature of my own kind, with whom I have made a bargain."

Cold, all of her, and hard. He set aside the emptied bowl, and stood.

She set something in his hands. A belt which he knew well, and a sword hung on it, and a pair of daggers. He donned them slowly- His finger brushed the hilt of the sword that, returned, was like a part of his body; and, less Joyfully, the dagger which he had taken out of Joanna's heart. "This is yours," he said.

Her head shook once. "No. You won'it. Let him see it and know that even I am not infallible."

Aidan's fist clenched about the dagger's hilt. He willed his fingers to unlock. Morgiana waited. He drew a deep breath and stepped to her side. Her hand caught his, not for tender- ness; but as his fingers laced with hers, for an instant her clasp tightened.

Her power unfolded. There was a flicker of will, a pause at the center; a step, a turn, a shift of flesh and spirit, round and inabout.

Almost before it was begun, it ended. He gasped and nearlyfell. Morgiana caught him, held him with effortless strength.

The Old Man of the Mountain sat in his barren garden, serene as if he had been waiting for them. His jula.s.s stood guard about him: an arc of youths in white with eyes thac saw onty Paradise; and the gate to it was death.

She granted him no obeisance, no mark of honor or respect.

328 He looked at her and, almost, smiled. "You did well," he said, "to keep my captive for me."

Aldan started forward, but her hand stopped him. He stood in ctenched-fist stillness. "He was mine," she said, "before he was yours."

"What is the servant's, is the master's property."

"I am not your servant."

"My slave, then. As you have long seen fit to call yourself."

"I abjure it. A Muslim may not enslave a Muslim."

"As I remember," he said, "you all bur compelled me to accept you."

"Such compulsion: I set all my power in your hands, and called you master, if you would wield me for the Mission as those in Alamut no longer knew how to do. They," she said, harsh with scorn, "were much too deeply engrossed in hailing the advent of the Millennium. In wine and coupling and mad- ness they did it, in mockery of all that our order should be."

"And have I so mocked what we hold sacred?"

"No," she said. "Not so openly. Not until you loosed me against the Prankish woman. That she had an ifrit of her own, you discovered soon enough; and he was so obliging as to come to you. I see your mind, Sinan ibn Salman. If I escape you, the other must remain, infidel to be sure, but male, and amenable to your persuasion."

"He has kin," said Sinan.

She clapped her hands. "Spoken like a true bandit! What will his ransom be?"

"His life in my service."

"Of course." She slanted a glance at Aidan. "You may not find him as useful a slave as I. His kind serve badly, if they will serve at all."

"As to the matter of his will, that has been seen to."

Aidan could keep silent no longer. "With words and iron?

Old man, that was never more than mummery."Sinan did not believe him. The Seal of Solomon gleamed in his hand. Aidan laughed and woke the fire in it.

Sinan cursed shockingly and cast away the smoldering thing.

It melted as it fell, spattering the earth with molten iron.

But he was never so easily defeated. "You have kin," he said again, through teeth clenched with pain. "Will you consider them?"

Aidan went cold..

329.

Morgiana spoke beside him. "Indeed, he has kin. What have you?"

"Your name in the Seal of power. This one is protected by his unfaith. You are not."

A second Seal lay in Sinan's lap. Aidan's power, tensed to destroy it, froze. She was in it, entwined with it: her oath her long years of slavery, the core of her belief. Morgiana1 had given it power. Now none but Morgiana could take it away.

And if it burned, so too would she.

Her brow was damp. Her eyes were too wide, too pale. He willed her to see what he saw. That the bonds were none but her own. That she could break them; that she had the will, and the strength. If only she would see. If only she would believe.

But to believe that, she must deny all that she had done and sworn and held to. She must sunder herself from herself. She must be other than Morgiana.

No, he thought at her. Morgwna is always Morgiana. Is the serpent less the serpent, because he sheds his outworn sfan?

She clenched against him; but she could not be free of him, Not any longer. He stood in the heart of her and showed her herself. Morgiana. Free and strong and glad. No slave to any mortal man, never again.

She wanted to see it. And yet she wanted to cling to what she knew, whatever its pain, whatever its cost to life and sanity.

Sinan spoke in their silence, softly, each word the link of a chain. "You are mine. Your will is my will, your life my life, unless I choose to let them go. Serve me, and I may set you free. Defy me, and I bind you for all eternity."

"Are you Allah Himself," she demanded of him, gasping it, struggling against bonds and oaths and geas, "that you should so compel me?"

"I am Allah's servant; I wield the power of Suleiman."Her body shook; her fists clenched convulsively. "I-do- defy you. I can." She sucked in her breath, battling. "I can. I can!"

Freer, each word; stronger. He saw it. "Can you," he asked her, "defend all that is dear to you, for every moment of every day, until you yield or they are all lost?"

She smiled. Not triumphant, not yet. But she had seen the chains about her, and they were chains of air. She was begin- ning to comprehend it; to believe it- "Can you," she asked her master, "hope to rule a realm under such persecution as I will visit upon it, if you touch anything that is mine?"

330 "You are powerless. You can only threaten."

She faltered. He was her master. His words tangled about her, dulled her wits, sapped her strength.

"No!" Aidan cried, not caring who heard. "It's he who is powerless; it's he who has nothing left but threats. Open your mind and your senses. Look at him'"

She looked. She saw power, terror.

Mortality.

Fear.

Fear?

"Fear!" Aidan said, loud in Sinan's silence. "He's afraid of you. He knows what you can do-what we can both do, if he presses us too far."

She was whiter than he had ever seen her, white as death.

She would die; she could die, if she willed it, if she clenched her power about her heart, like a fist, just so. Just- Will and body convulsed together. A sound escaped her, raw animal noise; but strength in it, and will, and-at last-under- standing. Her hand swept up, out.

Sinan sat uncomprehending; but slowly he saw what he must see. More slowly still, he began to understand it. His^&is were gone. All but one, who stood bewildered and alone. And Morgiana was smiling, a white wild smile, the joy of the falcon that flings itself free into the sky.

She turned that smile on the lone fidai; she beckoned. He came, eyes locked in hers. "Child," she purred, "are you a faith- ful follower of our way?"

He nodded vigorously.

"Do you see that man?" Her finger stabbed at Sinan.

The boy nodded again."He has betrayed our Mission. He l.u.s.ts after a woman of the infidels; he takes an infidel for his servant. Who is to say that he will not command us all to worship the three false G.o.ds of the Franks?"

The boy's lips drew back from his teeth.

"Just so," she said, all but crooning it. "Take him now^jidai, warrior of the Faith. Hold him until I bid you slay him."

Sinan struggled in a grip too strong to break. His captor wore an expression of perfect and implacable determination. It would not yield for any word of his, any threat or command or pleading.

"Now," said Morgiana, and her voice was deadly gentle.

"Are you prepared to hear us?" 331.

Sinan would not bend; he did not seem inclined to break.

He eased in the./&&M"s hands. "I will hear you," he said.

She nodded, eyes steady on him. She was half-drunk with freedom, with the first sweet taste of victory. That drunkcnness could be deadly; could lose them all that they had gained.

But her voice was as steady as her eyes, no hint in it of weakness. "I recall that you have wrought well for the Mission.

I expect that you will continue to do so. But that must be accomplished without the aid of either a Prankish baroness or an Aleppan merchant house. They gain nothing for the Mis- sion; they only feed your avarice."

"And my pride," he said calmly. "Be so kind as to remember that. But even I am wise enough to know when I have failed."

"Which wisdom did not wake in you until you saw a greater profit in yon captive Frank."

"That is no less than you have done yourself."

"I make no pretense of sanct.i.ty."

The black eyes glanced from Morgiana to Aidan and back again. They understood much too much. "He is of your race,"

said Sinan, as if he had only begun to perceive its meaning.

"Yet for him you would turn against us? For an infidel you would betray the Mission?"

Morgiana's eyes began to glitter. "I turn you back to the way of Hasan-i-Sabbah, on his name be peace, and remove the temptation to stray. In earnest of it, I ask more than your bare word. The blood-price of a baron and an heir to a barony, and the price for the wounding of a baroness-"

Sinan went pale. Now at last she had struck him, and struck deep."You will pay," said Morgiana, "as we decree."

He could not speak: the dagger p.r.i.c.ked too close. She sum- moned his servants. They came to her bidding. They heaped gold into the great chest which she bade them set at Aidan's feet; atop the gold they poured a glittering stream of jewels. It was pleasure, that warmth under his breastbone, under even the anger. It was honey-sweet to watch the Master of Masyaf bleed wealth that was more precious to him than blood, and to know that he knew all that he lost with it: his slave who was, his slave who might have been, his certainty that no man in the world was feared as greatly as he. He was master of Syria, more truly than the man who ruled in Damascus, but he could not master the Slave ofAlamut. He sat in his own garden, with the 332 dagger of his o-wnjUai at his throat, and paid as he was bidden to pay.

She knew to the last dirham how much he could spare, and how much would cause him pain. He had to see Aidan claim it, and their bargain written and signed and sealed with immortal fire.

When it was done, the dagger lowered from his throat. "So, then, sir Frank," he said. His voice was calm; his eyes were terrible. "Are you content?"

"No," Aidan said.

Sinan smiled. That was the power of the man: even defeated, even humiliated, to lose none of his faith in himself. "Slay me, then," he said. "Shed my blood as your heart longs to do. Rid the world of me."

It was mockery, and it was not. Sinan had no fear of death.

Life to him was sweet, with the savor of power in it, the web of spies and servants through whom he worked his will in the cast. But he would die content, knowing that his death had made his people stronger.

"Therefore," said Aidan, "I let you live."

"Cruel," said Sinan. "Just, in its fashion. You would have made a pa.s.sable fidai." He paused. "Would you, perhaps, con- sider . . . ?"

"No!" Too loud, too quick. Aidan struggled to recover him- self. "I am no man's tame murderer."

"A pity. You would be welcome here, your talents known and used to their fullest. Where you go, you may find that neither is so."