Alamut (17 page)

No one else suspected. Joanna was sure of that. She knew better than to court discovery with glances and smiles and brushings of hand on hand. There was no need. She could think love at him, and know that he knew. Though sometimes she would smile behind her veil, simply because she was happy; because she had been sick unto death, and he had healed her.

“I never believed it could be like this,” she said to him the night before they came to Damascus.

It was late and they were short of sleep, but she was wide awake. He had been singing among the men; they had been slow to let him go. He was learning the eastern songs, high and wailing as they were, too subtle for western ears. It was their secret that he had sung for her.

He smiled now and stroked her hair where a curl of it circled her breast. Sometimes she could forget how imperfect her body was, how slack and heavy it had become; though, to be honest, it was thinning and hardening again with long riding. He made her feel beautiful. When he looked at her, she was all that she needed to be: herself, and beloved.

“Why?” she asked. “Why me?”

“Why anyone in the world? Maybe…” He pondered, or pretended to. “Maybe it's the way you sit a horse. Or the way you turn your head when you're startled, light and quick, like a well-bred mare. Or your temper. Yes, I think it must be your temper. It fascinates me. How you can be so gentle, then in a moment, like a storm in the desert, so fiercely angry. We can understand that, my temper and I. It makes us want to tame it. Or,” he added, “to match it.

“I shouldn't think you'd find that hard.”

He laughed in his throat. “See how the clouds gather?”

She thrust herself up, out of his embrace. “Is that all I am to you? A pet? A filly to be ridden until she submits?”

“You know you're not.” He was perfectly calm, but his amusement had died.

A demon had found its way to her tongue. “I can't ever be your equal, can I? I'm only human. I'm a diversion, a trick to while away the time until the Assassin comes. It's convenient, isn't it? You can pleasure me while you guard me.”

“Convenient,” he said, “yes.” He sat up, shaking back his hair. He moved like a cat, always; a little more now, the only visible sign that she had pricked him. Like a cat, when he was up, he tended his vanity: combed his hair with his fingers, smoothed his beard.

Laughter welled up, putting the demon to flight. She fell on him, bore him back and down, held him prisoner beneath her. His eyes strayed from her face to the heavy sway of her breasts. “Damn you,” she said. “I can never stay angry with you. Is it a spell?”

“If it is, it's none of mine.”

She swooped down for a kiss. He was more than willing. She let it go on for a delightful while. He arched his back, warming below as above. But she paused. “Tell me the truth. What am I to you? Am I only human?”

It was hard for a man to talk sense when he held a woman so, but he was somewhat more than a man. He shook his head. “You are Joanna. No mortal woman has ever been what you are to me.”

oOo

She was satisfied with that. When he had given her all that he knew how to give, she fell asleep, her long legs tangled with his own.

He should rise soon and find his own place, before dawn melted the image that seemed to sleep there. But he could not, yet, gather the will to move.

He had told her the truth. It was not supposed to be possible, what they had. Not with humankind. She had a gift; she could open herself as few mortals could and give him fully of herself, without stinting. And the more she gave, the more there was to give. Her joy sang in him like the note of a harp.

And yet she could doubt. She could ask what she had asked. She never forgot, no more than he, that they were not of the same kind.

What his mother had with his father…it was different. They had not cared that he was mortal and she was not. Even at the end, he had kept his pride, his certainty that they were not lady and servant but mate and mate.

As for Aidan and Joanna—were they? He thought of her as a child, more often than not. And she knew it. she had seen how he indulged her temper.

Well then. She was a woman.

He grimaced. He knew perfectly well what his mother would have said to that. She had not been sane, but she had been strong, and firm in what she taught.

Human, then. Weaker than he. Under his guardianship, and sorely in need of it. But beloved—before god, she was that. It was not mere bodily lust which brought him to her in the night, and kept him there perilously close to the edge of prudence. He had tested himself. He had cast his eye on women at the well in a village through which they had passed a day or two ago. Robes and veils were no obstacle to his eyes. He had tried to make himself desire the bodies beneath; and very fair one or two of them had been. He could as easily have raised his staff for one of the mares. They were not his kind. They were not, above all, Joanna.

She stirred in his arms and murmured. Her dream brushed past him. Aimery was in it, warm against her breast. And Ranulf. Ranulf saying, with as much courage as if he faced an army of infidels, “I love you. God be my witness, I do.”

With utmost care Aidan slid away from her. She groped, bereft, but did not wake. He dressed swiftly but without haste. He paused, bending over her, as if to kiss her, but straightened abruptly and shook his head. That was a human revenge, that claiming.

His fetch lay on the mat outside her door, dimming already though it was not yet cockcrow. It frayed and melted as he sat where it had been. He clasped his knees and rocked, and frowned into the dark. He needed to relieve himself, but something kept him there, some sense that touched the edge of his wards.

He greeted Morgiana with hardly more than a widening of the eyes. He was not aware until he had done it, that he had set his back firmly against the door. It was not guilt that moved in him. No, not guilt. Even though, looking at her, he knew that if he let it, his body would kindle for her. “Good morning,” he said. “Is it light enough yet for your prayer?”

She shook her head. She was in white as always; he could see that it was a man's garb. Even, now, to the turban. Her hair hung below it in three long braids. It was hardly a disguise. She looked no less female, and no less feral. He could not help noticing that she wore a belt, and a dagger in a damascened sheath.

“Will you sit?” he asked her, being gracious. “I regret that I have neither food nor drink to offer you.”

Her eyes were briefly wild, but she sat as he bade her, as far out of his reach as the width of the passage would allow.

“My name is Aidan,” he said.

“Aidan.” It rolled strangely off her tongue. “So easily you give it me?”

“You gave me yours.”

Her shoulder lifted, an odd half-shrug. “It pleased my fancy.”

“I come from Rhiyana, far in the west, between Francia and the sea. You?”

Her eyes had lowered under the long lids, but he felt them on him. “Desert,” she said, “and empty places. It was Persepolis, once. Sikandar burned it.”

“Sikandar? Alexander?”

“Sikandar.”

His mouth had fallen open, he realized dimly. He willed it shut. “You remember Alexander?”

“I think…” She frowned at her knotted fingers: in that, so like, so damnably like Joanna. “I think…not. I am not so old. No. The land remembers. And the ruins, like ancient bones thrusting out of the earth.”

“Persepolis,” he said. “Persia.” Was that the shape of her face, beneath the strangeness that was witchkind? Sharp, yes, narrow-chinned, eyes too large for human comfort under the slant of brows; but smoother than his own, a gentler oval, skin closer to ivory than alabaster. Though perhaps a human eye would barely see it.

She raised her eyes to stare at him as frankly as he stared at her. Amusement sparked in them; unwilling, he might have thought. “You could almost be an Arab,” she said.

“So I'm told.” He was rubbing his eagle's beak of a nose; he lowered his hand. She bit down on a smile. she was no dainty snubnosed lass herself; that was a fine high arch, and all of Persia in it. “Why are you dressed like a Turk?” he asked her.

“I am not—” She fixed him with a hard bright stare. “How should I dress?”

“Any way you like.”

That pleased her. “I like you in the
djellaba.
It's more fitting. Even if you are a Frank.”

“Rhiyanan,” he said.

“Frank.” It was beyond argument. “Al-Khalid,” she said, “outlander, what do you do in our country? Are you a spy?”

“What would you do if I were?”

“Kill you.” There was no hesitation in that at all. He shivered lightly. Old and cold and wild: oh, yes. She was perilous.

He leaned back against the door and folded his arms and smiled his whitest smile. “I'm not a spy. I'm guarding a caravan. May I ask what you were doing in Jerusalem?”

“Admiring your fine white body.”

Bolder words he had never heard, and she seemed to know it. The faintest of flushes stained her cheek. It was, in spite of everything, enchanting.

His blush was fiercer than hers. It took all the strength he had not to leap at her; to say coolly, “I trust you found it to your liking.”

Her teeth flashed, white and sharp as his own. “It serves its purpose. How is it that you grow your beard? Franks of your…prettiness…most often do not.”

His hand went to it. “You don't like it?”

“Allah!” She was laughing. “Franks! We of the civilized world maintain that a man's beauty is only fulfilled when he grants it its fullest expression.”

He had not known that. He rubbed his chin. Somehow, at the moment, it did not feel quite so roughly unkempt.

“You are vain,” said the Saracen, more amused than not, “for a hired soldier.”

He stiffened. “Madam, in my own country I am the son of a king.”

“I don't doubt it.” Nor did she sound as if she cared. “Here, you are a foreigner who tries unskillfully to ape Muslim manners. Will you be advised, al-Khalid? Tell the truth where you can. Where you cannot, do as you see Muslims do. And never,” she said, “never let them see what lies between your navel and your knees.”

He stared, uncomprehending.

She hissed with impatience. She sounded like an angry cat. “Modesty,” she snapped. And when he did not respond quickly enough: “You are not circumcised!”

That, he could understand. His cheeks were flaming. She had seen altogether too much. Unless she was guessing. She must be. She would know the tales. Saracens called Franks the Uncircumcised.

Her cat-eyes were bright with malice. “And, if I may advise you further, you might do well to consider your accent. You look like a prince of the desert. You speak Arabic like a camel driver from Aleppo.”

He shifted it to that of a she-demon from Persepolis. “Would this better please my lady?”

She laughed, not at all dismayed. “Better, yes.” Her head lifted. He heard it as clearly as she. The wailing cry of the muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer. But, much closer, the murmur of waking voices. Without so much as a glance of farewell, she vanished.

He had felt it. Perhaps. A flicker of power. But how, or why, or where it had taken her, he could not begin to tell.

It maddened him, like a name not quite remembered. For all his trying, he gained nothing but an aching head.

And a swelling certainty. The next time, he would follow her. He would learn who she was, and where she went, and why she came. Though perhaps the last was not so hard. She came for him. Because she knew what he was.

Once he had tracked her to her lair, what then? She was as dangerous as a lioness with cubs. What if she had cubs indeed? And with them, a mate?

He did not like that thought at all. No; not in the least.

The door opened at his back, nearly casting him into the room. Joanna frowned down at him, but with a smile somewhere under it, and warmth as strong as an embrace. “What is it? Were you talking to someone?”

“No,” his tongue said for him. “No. No one at all.”

He was beginning to see the virtue in the Muslims' philosophy of love; and the diamond edge of irony. A score of years without so much as a spark of desire, and suddenly his body yearned not for one woman, but for two.

No; not exactly. Joanna, he loved for all that she was. With Morgiana, it was simpler. It was the plain call of beast to beast. Not love, there. Mating.

And yet it was Joanna whose body he knew in its every detail; from whose bed he had come, and to whose bed, God willing, he would go. She would never understand why he seized her then and there, where anyone might see, and kissed her thoroughly, and left her gasping and tousled and beginning, astonished, to laugh.

12.

Damascus grew like a mirage across the northern horizon. Mountains walled it, desert besieged it, yet in itself it was a vision of the Muslims' Paradise. The caravan had been lost for an age, it seemed, in the bleak bare desert, taking refuge in the rare patch of grudging green, prey to wind and sun and hordes of stinging flies. Here was peace. A city of orchards and gardens, alive with the song of water; walls and minarets, domes and towers mantled in greenery, pale gold stone seeming to grow out of the earth. No city in the world was older, no place more blessed. The roads of gold and silk and spices came together here; kings had made it their dwelling place, and princes taken their ease among its gardens. Here, blinded by the light on Kaukab that looked upon the city, Paul had begun his preaching; here Abel died at his brother's hand; here, if legend were true, had been the Garden of Eden.

It was human enough as one rode close to it, a babel of clamor and stenches. But beautiful still; and the green smell was all about it, the scent of living things. It was utterly foreign. Yet, for a moment, to Aidan it recalled nothing so much as the deep places of his own forest of Broceliande.