Khatib gathered the gifts, his face grave. The humor was gone from his eyes. "Master, think well of what you do. There is a saying among my people that the deer may forget the snare, but the snare does not forget the deer."
"I shall not forget, Khatib."
"He is a fool who will descend into a well on another man's rope."
The gifts were magnificent, yet I looked upon them as did Khatib, with suspicion. They were too splendid for an unknown scholar. Was their purpose to make me forget my doubts? Did someone actually want me to come to Alamut? Did they think it safer to have me inside the castle, a prisoner, than possibly stirring trouble on the outside? Or did they think of me at all, except as a wandering scholar?
Yet, what choice had I? Behind the walls of Alamut my father was held prisoner, a slave. If he was ever to be free, it lay in my hands. "In all honor, Khatib, I must go. But do you remain here, for the future is uncertain, and I go into great trouble."
"Were there no wind, would the leaves tremble? There is reason for fear, Master. When the Old Man of the Mountains sends gifts, prepare your shroud ... a knife follows."
He paused. "But go with you I shall. How many lands have I seen, Master? How many seas? How many cities? But I have not seen the inside of Alamut."
For the moment we had forgotten our beauty from Hind, but she had not forgotten us.
Her slave stood before us, bowing. "O Eminence! My lady begs forgiveness that she was not aware of the presence of such distinguished company. She requests you to join her at her table, my lady, Sundari Devi!"
My hesitation was only brief enough as not to seem precipitate. I arose.
"Khatib, see to my presents, and see to the horses, also. It is said that in Qazvin they make most excellent bows and arrows; see that I am supplied. We shall soon," I suggested, "be crossing a desert where there are bandits. "Also"—my voice lowered—"see that hidden within our packs there is a length of rope, strong enough to hold a climber." An instant I hesitated, then added, "I think you had best secure these items." I handed him a slip of paper. "This"—indicating an item—"you had best collect yourself from the walls of old stables or the manure of animals. Do get me a supply of this. If there is curiosity, simply say your master is an alchemist who tests all things. He is crazy, of course, but what can you do?"
Crossing the room, I stopped before her table. "I am ibn-Ibrahim."
She gestured to a place at the corner of the table to her right. "I had no idea we were in the presence of so renowned a scholar."
Bowing again, I said, "My shadow is small before the sun of your beauty."
"You are a physician?"
"That, too. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a reader of the stars ... many things."
She looked into my eyes and asked, "Ibn-Ibrahim, what do you read in the stars for me?"
And out of me in a voice that scarcely seemed my own, I said, and was surprised by it, "That you shall someday be my wife."
There was a moment, a moment when neither of us moved or spoke, but simply stared at one another, mutually astonished by the words. It was a moment when time seemed arrested, and then she spoke quietly, "You must look again at your stars, Wanderer, for I fear they have misled you."
"You go now to Hind?"
"To Anhilwara, to my home."
"You are a Rajput?"
"My father was, my mother is Persian. Lately, I have visited with her family in Isfahan. Now I return."
Abruptly, she changed the subject. "Did I not hear you were going to the Castle of Alamut? Is it not a fortress of the Assassins?"
"They have many castles." I gestured toward the north. "There are others in those mountains. Yes, I go at the invitation of Rashid Ad-din Sinan. We shall have much to discuss, I believe."
"Is it not true that only an Assassin may enter or leave? Are you then an Isma'ili?"
"I am many things; but I take no part in religious disagreements. The technicalities of religion have no place in the mind of Allah. It is the spirit, I think, that is important."
Pausing briefly, I added, "When I return from Alamut I shall come to Hind, to Anhilwara."
"Do you know my city?"
"Until you spoke of it, I had never heard of it."
Her eyes fell to the table while the servants filled our glasses. Did they speak Persian? "You must not come."
"But if I wish to see you again?"
"The Moslems who have come to my city have come as enemies."
"Then I would be considered an enemy? If necessary, I could come as a Christian, a Hindu, a fire worshiper, or simply a worshiper."
"It would not do."
"What can the will do when the heart commands?" Across the room musicians began on the qitara and the kimanja, and the soft music lingered in the room. "The music of your beauty," I said, "stirs among the leaves of my heart."
She lifted her eyes to mine. "But I am slender, Scholar, and no such plump beauty as the Turks prefer."
"But I am not a Turk, Sundari, nor even a Persian."
"So what kind of beauty do you prefer? That of ... what was her name? Valaba? Suzanne?"
"A man who has not known many women cannot appreciate the value of one."
Her eyes sparkled with laughter. "You do not seem so ... helpless. When you spoke with your servant I was distressed for you. All those girls taking advantage of you! Are you not afraid I will do the same?"
"I tremble ... with anticipation." She laughed. "Ibn-Ibrahim, you go to Alamut, and I to Anhilwara. It is an end. We shall not meet again."
"But there is tonight?"
She looked into my eyes again as if surprised by the thought.
"Tonight I sleep; tomorrow we travel."
"And tonight," I said, "I shall walk in the garden, walk under the trees watching the fireflies scattering sparks in the night. Yet I shall not be alone, for I shall have my thoughts of you."
She arose gracefully, and looked back at me, her eyes pools of darkness where beauty lived. How like a flower were her lips! How soft her cheek! How delicate her skin!
"Good night, Scholar. Look again at your stars."
"Their message is clearer when read by two."
She started to turn away as I arose, but pausing, she said, "I go to Anhilwara, and thence to Kannauj, and in Kannauj I shall be married to a friend of the king."
So ... Before me lay a black gulf of desolation and emptiness.
"Tonight," I repeated, "I shall walk in the garden."
51
MOONLIGHT'S PALE HAND caressed the garden gate, and where shadows lay among the trees a nightingale sang, but my heart was a cavern of loneliness down which echoed the voice of Sundari.
Alone, cloaked in a mantle of shadow, I walked where jasmine filled the air. A leaf rustled, then was still. Where was Sundari?
Now I, who had been invulnerable, was so no longer, for now I knew what love was, and knew too late. That sound! A sound like the beat of the walking drum, that was my heart beating out sadness from the emptiness within me.
Alamut waited with moonlight on its hardback peaks, but here was a season of grief. Here within the space of a single night I had found and lost what I most desired. Sadness lay upon me, but no sword could cut the thread of love, no dagger pierce the disaster that lay upon me.
Would Sundari come? Would she come to me in the moonlight when the nightingales sang? Were the Rajput soldiers her protectors or her guards? And if they found her with me ... ?
How like years are minutes when waiting for one you love! Where was Sundari ... where?
At each ghostly sound I swiftly turned, my arms ready to welcome, lips to kiss, but only the leaves stirred, only leaves brushing their pale green palms, brushing their pale lips.
I was a fool! She would not come. Why should she come to greet me? She was Sundari Devi, a Rajput of the royal line! A girl who could marry a king or the friend of a king!
Who was I? A scholar some called me, but only I knew the true depths of my ignorance. I, a phys
ician, mountebank, merchant, vagabond ... a landless man with a sword. Who was I to expect her to love me on the instant as I loved her? I was a fool, a paltry fool, a miserable fool, a fool who marched to the sound of an empty drum he called destiny.
I, who dared think of rescuing a slave from the walls of Alamut, I had made a slave of myself to dark eyes and long dark lashes, to a slim waist and graceful hands!
Yet, why not? If slave a man must be, why not, then, be a slave to these? Who can be called a slave who holds a sword? Should I let her be taken away to India? Or take her from her Rajput guards?
Twenty of them? Or twice twenty? The prize was worth the blood! Yet, a cool breath of sanity entered my fevered brain. If I knew anything, I knew fighting men, and those Rajputs were such. I need be a fool indeed to attempt such a thing.
A sound? A distant sound ... was it a closing door? Or something dropping from a tree in a distant court? Alone in the shadows, breathless, I waited. Would she come? Or was she somewhere inside preparing for bed, laughing to think of me waiting in the garden? Did her eyes promise what her heart feared to give? Or had the promise I read in her eyes existed only in my own mind?
A nighthawk swooped low; somewhere in the orchard a piece of fruit dropped from a tree. Irritably, I paced. What a fool I was to wait! She would not come. Perhaps she had forgotten me within the moment. Or if she wished to come, how could she evade those who guarded her?
The soft wind made a shadow of movement among the leaves. How long had I waited? Should I leave now? Bidding the dream good-bye?
The night told its beads with stars. What was I, a boy with his first love? The moon was low, the garden paths no longer lay white from the moon, and tomorrow I must ride to the mountains, every sense alert, I must ride through the hills to the fortress of Alamut, perhaps even to my death. Enough! Enough of this!
Yet I did not go. I waited, and suddenly she came. She came!
Wearing a black cloak, she came like a floating shadow, a movement of darkness from the deeper darkness, and she came to me. "Oh? You are here! I was afraid ... I was so ... !"
She came into my arms, and I held her, kissing her tenderly on the lips, for she was frightened now, frightened that she had come at all. "Must you marry him?"
"Yes"—she lifted her eyes to mine—"I must. If I do not marry him, he will come among us with his armies, and my father will be killed, his kingdom taken. Yet it is not only me he wants, he wants what we have and thinks to win it through me."
"Do you know him?"
"I have seen him. He stands at the right hand of the ruler of Kannauj."
What could I say to that? I loved her, but had I a kingdom to offer? Or wealth? Or armies to rescue her father? Had I anything but the precarious existence of a scholar and a warrior, a landless, homeless man?
A little I knew of her people's history, and the Rajputs were proud. Thirty-six noble lines had carried their swords into battle for hundreds of years before any European emblazoned heraldry upon a shield.
Had she been less than she was, or I more, I would that night have carried her away, but to what? To wait in a hovel while I went into the fortress of Alamut from which I might never return? A man must be a greater fool than I to ask any girl to risk such a thing. "I love you, Sundari, more than life itself, but my father is held a slave in the fortress of Alamut, and I have taken a vow to free him.
"This much I can tell you. Tomorrow I go there, and there is a chance, perhaps more than a chance, that they know why I come. Sinan has spies everywhere, even in Europe.
"If I return alive, I shall come to Hind. I shall come to Anhilwara or Kannauj or wherever you are, and I shall find a way to make you my wife. This I promise.
"Delay. Delay your marriage. Wait for me. If I come safely from Alamut, I shall ride to Hind, and to you."
"You can do nothing," she said, "nothing. And you must not come. They would only kill you. If you came with an army, you could do no better. Do you realize what forces the ruler of Kannauj can field? Eight hundred fighting elephants I have heard, and eighty thousand cavalry, all armored men ... I do not know what else."
"I shall come," I insisted stubbornly, "and if there were three times the number of elephants and thrice the armored men, I would come."
"You must not."
Again I kissed her tenderly, and we clung to each other. How had this come upon us? From which of destiny's trees had blown this leaf?
"I shall come," I repeated, "for today he who rides before an army may tomorrow lie in its dust. I have only a sword, but a strong man need wish for no more than this: a sword in the hand, a horse between his knees, and the woman he loves at the battle's end."
"Nobly spoken."
The voice was behind me, and I turned swiftly, my hand on my sword. "There is no need for that." He who stepped from the shadows was a Rajput, the one who captained her guard.
He was a tall, powerfully built man, every inch a fighting man. He walked toward us. "Spoken like a Rajput."
"Rachendra! You followed me!"
"That I did, and could I do less? Although believe me, I like it as little as you. But your father has given me the duty of protecting you, and I only do as ordered."
He turned to me. "I am sorry for you and for her, also, but there is no other way. I have the feeling you are twice the man she is to marry.
"Now go your way, and do not come to Hind, for you could bring nothing but trouble."
"If I live, I shall come."
He turned his head to look at me again, a powerful man with a strong face and cold eyes. "If you do, I may have to kill you myself. This is Sundari Devi, our princess, not to be spoken of in the same breath with a wandering soldier, scholar, or whatever you call yourself. Nor with any Moslem."
Ignoring him, I said to Sundari, "Delay ... I shall not fail."
Turning to Rachendra, I added, "As you know, I shall come, and I like you, so stay out of my way. I should not like to put a foot of steel into your belly."
He chuckled. "If I had not the Princess to care for and a long, dangerous journey before us, I would measure blades with you. But go to Alamut. You will find trouble enough."
He turned toward the caravanserai, but Sundari came to me. She put her hands on my arms and kissed me on the lips.
"Come then," she said, "and I shall wait for you if I have to put a dagger into him during our marriage." She turned to Rachendra. "You have been like an uncle to me, but if you fight him, and he fails to kill you, I shall!"
Turning abruptly, she walked past him toward the caravanserai, and the startled Rajput watched her go. "By the Gods"—he spoke softly—"there goes a woman!"
We faced each other, measuring ourselves against the future. He was a man of about fifty years, built not unlike my father, and like him in temperament. "You stand well," he said, "and I have no doubt you can fight, but heed this: Stay away from Sundari. Her future is written in the stars."
"In the stars? Or her father's plans?"
His features were grim. "Not her father's plans but those he dare not refuse! Stay away. I have warned you."
His face grew more kind. "I have said to stay away, but if you do stay away, you are a fool." Then he repeated what I said, " 'A sword in the hand, a horse between the knees, and the woman he loves at the battle's end.' By the Gods, that was well spoken!"
He strode away, following Sundari, and I faced away from the caravanserai and looked to the mountains. Beyond them lay Alamut. The Talaghan Range and the Alamut Rud—the Alamut River—and nearby the Rock of Alamut and the valleys of the Assassins. Tomorrow I would ride into those hills to fulfill my destiny.
The day broke in a crimson flood upon the storm-shattered hills, massive shoulders of granite thrown out from the fires of the earth's beginning.
"I shall go in alone, Khatib, but do you wait for me, wait with three horses saddled, for I shall come. Be it a day, a week, or ten years, I shall come!"
"Place no faith in the words of men, Kerbouchard, f
or all are liars when it suits their purpose. Those on the Rock are loyal to none but their own. Go prepared to die; if so, you may live."
The trail we took was a trail Khatib knew, for in the depths of his ancient mind there were memories that seemed to reach beyond any experience of his. "It was about here," he mused, "the tree is gone, but it was already old, we should find a canyon where none should be and a trail where no trail could be. Ah, we have found it!"
A trail indeed! It was but an impression of a trail, a shadow trail that turned my stomach hollow to see it. "No tracks, so perhaps even the Assassins do not know it. There is a high valley hidden among the peaks. There I shall wait, and from there I can watch the fortress, and from the fortress there is a way ... I will show you."
Our Arabs picked their way with dainty hooves and arched necks, blowing a little in astonishment that they could actually walk where they did. No plow had turned the rocks of these mountains, no seeds sprouted upon this barren soil. It was a brutal land, hard-shouldered against the sky. The night left a dripping of shadows in the canyons, but we mounted, higher and ever higher, pausing only to let our horses catch their wind, to recover our courage for going further. The air of morning was cool at these heights, startlingly clear, with far-off vistas of other peaks, other castles.
"Lie to them, cheat them, draw their blood!" Khatib muttered. "You are young, and honor rides with you, but honor is important only when dealing with honorable men."
"Are these not honorable men?"
"Yes," he said grudgingly, "and good men too, often enough, Sinan among them, but they are realists. They mean to win, not one battle, but all battles.
"I think of al-Zawila. Him I do not know, but lately I heard gossip of him. He came meekly to this place but with power has become a tyrant. There is evil in him.
"Many a small man is considered good while he remains small, but let power come to him, and he becomes a raging fury. So beware of al-Zawila."
"My old Greek, who was my teacher when I was a boy in my own country," I said, "taught me this. It was a Somali saying, I believe: 'Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for the trickster and catch him at the first attempt, but beware of an honest man.' "
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