Luke looked at the fine, dark beauty of this woman, no older than himself. She felt his eyes on her and turned her head to him. For a while no one spoke. Matthew looked from one to the other of them. ‘The assassins?’ he prompted.
‘The assassins, yes.’ She turned back to the fire. ‘Well, they were a cult. They were Shi’ite Muslims, which means they believed that the true line of the Prophet runs from his son-in-law Ali. Most of the Shi’ites live here in Persia.’
She looked around at the faces, tired from their long ride but alert and listening. ‘The assassins were founded by a man called Hasan-i Sabbah. He was born two centuries ago not far from here. He was a brilliant man: a mathematician, philosopher and alchemist. He converted to the Ismai’ili belief and gathered many disciples around him. He soon found himself on the run from the Sunni Seljuk Turks, who ruled at that time, and he came here to the Alburz Mountains where the people were Shi’ite and had long resisted the reach of the Seljuks. He saw Alamut and decided that it would be his base.’
‘He laid siege to it?’ asked Arcadius.
‘No, he infiltrated it with his followers and they took it from within. It took him two years. Then he started the assassins.’
‘What were they, these assassins?’ asked Nikolas. ‘What did they do?’
Shulen prodded the fire. ‘They were young men recruited for their strength and intelligence. They were indoctrinated with the Ismai’ili beliefs such that they were ready to sacrifice their own lives to murder anyone they were told to. Invariably they died in the attempt.’
‘Who did they kill?’
‘Usually Sunnis of power and prominence. The Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk was the first. They carried out their killings in public places to make their point.’
Luke pondered this. What would persuade a man to sacrifice his own life to kill another? Was that what he would do for his empire?
‘It is said’, she went on, ‘that Hasan-i Sabbah would drug the young fida’iyin with hashish and that, when they’d fallen asleep, would have them taken to a beautiful garden within the castle. There they would awake to find ravishing women and all that they could want. Then Sabbah would tell them that they were in paradise and that if they wished to return to it they would have to carry out the deed assigned to them.’
Matthew spoke. ‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What of them now?’
Shulen returned her gaze to the fire. ‘Now, only their ghosts remain.’ She rolled on to her back and looked up at the roof of the cave where their shadows danced. ‘They were destroyed in these mountains by the Mongols. Their castles were taken, one by one, and their people massacred. That’s why the valley is as it is. But there were assassins west of here by then, in Syria. They were recruited by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars to carry out killings on his behalf. It is said that the sultans in Cairo still use them, but it is only rumour.’
Shulen had moved because the smoke from the fire had begun to make her eyes sting. Now she rose. ‘I am going outside. I want some air.’
The Varangians exchanged glances. Luke nodded to Matthew. He picked up his sword and said: ‘I’ll come with you. It’s safer.’
They walked to the mouth of the cave and Luke patted Eskalon’s neck while Shulen lifted aside the branches. The horse turned to him and nuzzled his shoulder.
Then they were outside among the smells of juniper and pine. They lifted their faces and saw a moon straddled by passing clouds granting light and shade to the landscape around. They walked slowly down the slope, not talking, until they came to a mound of stones, levelled at the top.
‘An altar,’ said Shulen, reaching out to touch its uneven sides. ‘Perhaps a fire altar of Zoroaster. It’s ancient.’
Luke turned back to the mountain behind them. The moon had emerged to reveal the castle above, stark against the night sky and perched beyond the reach of man. He shivered.
Shulen had turned too. ‘Alamut,’ she murmured.
Luke was silent, thinking of a darkness enveloping the world, of the moon’s face hidden forever. He turned away from the castle and sat down, his back to the altar. An owl screeched and something wild grumbled from the woods deep in the ravine. Shulen sat next to him and took his hand.
‘Are you frightened?’ she asked softly.
He looked at her and all he saw were two eyes. ‘Aren’t you?’
The moon came back and he could see she was smiling.
‘Of course. Tamerlane is a monster who kills every man, woman and child that stands in his way, yet he spares artists to create beauty.’ She paused. ‘I want to meet him. It’s the waiting that’s hardest.’
Luke nodded. He knew what she meant. ‘You talked of Omar in the cave. How did he teach you?’
‘He’d come to the camp, pretending to visit the shaman. That would allow us to spend hours alone together. He taught me to read and write and be curious about the world. He left me books and I learnt more.’
‘And the shaman?’
‘He played along, as did his wife. They were kind but pretended otherwise when we left the tent. She taught me the power of plants and herbs to heal and I came to love her in a way. She died when I was nine.’
The moonlight disappeared and Luke shivered again.
Far above them sat an empty, ruined castle from whose shadows men, masked and dressed in the black of the night, had once emerged with one ambition: to kill another man.
*
Silent as cats, the four assassins came down the mountain on ropes, pushing out with their feet from rock to rock as they fell. They were invisible against the slope, swathed in black robes that left only their eyes uncovered, everything hidden but the swords strapped to their backs. Their descent was fluid and effortless and had the grace of night creatures whose survival depended on their stealth.
They dropped to the ground behind Shulen and Luke without making a sound and stayed crouched and perfectly still until the landscape had taken them in. Even their breathing was controlled.
But Luke felt them. ‘We are not alone,’ he said softly.
Shulen looked around. ‘We are alone,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the ghosts. Ibn Khaldun said we’d feel them. Tell me about Monemvasia.’
Luke rose and looked hard at the towering rock above. He could see nothing. He sat again. ‘Monemvasia? Well, it’s friendlier than this place. What would you like to know?’
‘How you met Anna there. She was the child of the Protostrator, you of a Varangian Guard. How did you meet?’
Luke smiled. ‘So, it’s not Monemvasia that you want to know about.’ He paused. ‘Shulen, have you never loved?’
She was holding her shins with her forearms, chin on her knees. She was rocking slowly backwards and forwards. ‘Gomil,’ she said. ‘But I was young and impressed by silly things. He was the chief’s son. He tried to have me and shunned me when I rejected him. He hated me after that. Then you came and helped me and he hated you instead.’ She turned to Luke. ‘I’m in your debt.’
Luke was shaking his head. ‘There’s no debt,’ he said quietly. ‘But you can tell me the truth. Why did Yakub send you to the tribe?’
He felt her shrug beside him. ‘Shame? Convenience? Who knows? Perhaps I was an embarrassment.’
The assassins remained motionless while the couple beneath them talked. Then they began to move forward at the crouch, an inch at a time, no part of their bodies making any sound. They moved when there was conversation and when the moon was hidden by cloud. When they were close enough to see that the couple’s hands were joined, two of them took pads of cotton from their sleeves. The other two, with infinite care, moved their swords to their laps.
Luke stopped what he was saying and lifted his head. ‘What’s that smell?’
Too late. The assassins were upon them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ALAMUT, SUMMER 1399
Luke awoke from the sweeping contours of sleep to the precision of shapes.
He was in the uppermost room of a tower whose circular walls rose into a
dome, painted black and dotted with the white stars of a celestial map, in places joined to form zodiacal signs. Into it was cut a narrow channel, open to the sky and displaying the vivid curve of morning blue. The channel’s sides were scored with minute calibrations etched in gold.
Below the dome, the walls were covered with bookcases and, between them, silk screens on which were written astronomical tables and the symbols of alchemy. There were empty sconces above the screens and congealed wax ran down their surfaces.
The floor was wooden and carpeted and supported a central round table on which stood instruments used for distillation. Against the walls were two beds, side by side, with a small table between. On one bed was Luke and on the other Shulen, both of them washed, brushed and dressed in fresh linen clothes. Luke’s sword and bow were propped up against the foot of his bed. Both of them bore the scent of anointed oils.
Luke had dreamt of the Goulas of Monemvasia, of eagles rising from nests that clung to its walls and of the narrow jumble of streets below. He’d dreamt of his mother and of kermes laid out on the balcony to dry. He awoke strangely calm and happy and beset with a raging thirst. He looked at the table to his side and saw water and cups; he drank. Beyond the table, he saw Shulen.
She was awake and watching him through waves of hair. It shone with a deep lustre that he’d not seen before and, for a moment, Luke couldn’t connect it to her face and neck. She was smiling.
‘Did you dream?’ she whispered.
‘Yes. Of strange things. And you?’
She nodded. ‘We were drugged. They must have put something on those cloths they held to our mouths. Hashish, I should think.’
Hashish. Assassins.
‘Were they assassins?’ he asked. ‘Did you see them?’
Shulen drank some water. She was lying on her side facing Luke and had her head propped up on her hand. ‘No, I didn’t see them. But if they were assassins, they were poor ones. We’re still alive and you smell better than you have for weeks.’
It was then that they saw that they were not alone. There was a sound from the other side of the room where a woman stood by a window with her back to them. She had straightened up but did not look round. Now she spoke.
‘Yes, they were assassins. And if they’d wanted to kill you, you would now be dead.’
The voice belonged to someone who had always been obeyed. There was no cadence of doubt or suggestion in it; there was just fact.
‘Where are our friends?’ asked Luke.
The woman did not turn. Beyond her spread the flawless sky and the tops of distant mountains. There was grass growing from the lintel outside and it moved slowly in the wind above her head. They were high up in a ruin.
‘Your friends are safe. They are below.’
Luke imagined Matthew and the others anointed with healing oils and smiled. He looked up from the woman’s back to the channel running through the apex of the dome, flanked by measurements like the tiny legs of a caterpillar.
‘It is a quadrant. For measuring the hour of sunrise or the moment of noon.’ She had turned and was looking straight at Luke and he knew immediately who she was.
‘Khan-zada,’ he whispered.
She gave the minutest of bows from a neck embraced by a high collar of intricate design. It was part of a simple white tunic that fell to her thighs, beneath which were black trousers of a tougher material. The tunic was frogged at its front and the trousers had leather patches on their inner sides for riding. She was wearing boots that came up to her knees.
‘Where are we?’ Shulen asked.
Khan-zada turned her face to the other bed and Luke was able to study it in half-profile. It was a small head which was set back on its long neck so that her nose and chin were tilted upwards. She had a wide, unlined forehead and eyebrows arched by paint above eyes that saw beyond frontiers. Her black hair was gathered in plaits upon her head and held there with enamel birds whose jewelled beaks and tails joined to encircle it in colour.
‘Aluh amu’t, the Eagle’s lair. In the observatory of Hasan-i Sabbah,’ she said and smiled with something near to warmth. ‘You know of him?’
Shulen nodded. She was staring at the woman with fascination.
‘Well, this was where he would come to measure the seasons or the distance between celestial bodies or the time of the next eclipse. The garden is still here but overgrown. And without its houris.’
Every movement this woman made was performed with care and grace and Luke saw that her head remained perfectly still when the rest of her body moved.
‘And when he wasn’t doing that,’ she continued, ‘he would be searching for the philosopher’s stone or the secret of aqua vitae. But he was less interested in the alchemy of base metals than the alchemy of souls: in the transmutation of the mortal into the immortal.’ Now she turned slowly back to Shulen and there was a question in her eyes. ‘That is more interesting, don’t you think?’
Shulen was transfixed. Her mouth slightly open, she was breathing quickly and there was colour in her cheeks. She said nothing.
Khan-zada had moved to the wall. ‘Here are the seven planetary metals and here the four elements.’ She was pointing at symbols. ‘The language of alchemy.’
‘And the books? Are these his books?’ asked Shulen.
Khan-zada walked over to one of the cases. She pulled down a leather-bound volume, scarred with age. ‘Some. And some are mine.’ She was stroking the book’s cover. ‘I come here to read. Ptolemy, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Ibn Sina … many of these books came from Baghdad and Bokhara, looted by men of my race who couldn’t read.’ She looked up slowly from the book. ‘I used to come here to dispute with scholars. Even Plethon and Omar have visited. Now I come to escape.’
‘Was it you who anointed us with the oils?’ asked Shulen.
‘Ayurvedic oils prepared by myself,’ replied Khan-zada. ‘But you too are a healer. In your baggage there are many compounds that I’ve not seen before.’
Shulen began to say something but then changed her mind. Instead she asked: ‘And the oils you gave us?’
‘They helped you to rest and now they will help you to ride.’
Ride?
Luke had sat up in the bed. He saw riding clothes laid out at its end. ‘To Sultaniya?’
‘No, not to Sultaniya. Away from Sultaniya. We ride to Samarcand.’ The uplifted head had moved its penetrating eyes on to Luke.
‘Why not to Sultaniya? We came to meet your husband.’
‘Then you are madder than he is,’ she said. ‘Your plans have changed.’
There was a knock on the door and two men entered. They were dressed in the loose black clothing of their kidnappers and they bowed low. They spoke from behind masked mouths in a language that Luke did not understand. Khan-zada listened to them, walked back to the window and looked out.
‘They are coming,’ she said quietly. ‘They are perhaps four hours away. The assassins will try to delay them and one will dress himself in my clothes to be seen from the battlements, but it will only give us a few hours. We cannot wait any longer.’
Luke wanted to know more but saw that Shulen was already preparing to leave.
‘Wait!’ he said, louder than he’d meant. ‘We were on our way to meet Prince Miran Shah in his capital and now you say we must not. I want to know why.’
Khan-zada turned slowly to look at him, mild irritation in the pellucid eyes. ‘My husband is not your best means of meeting the lord Temur,’ she said quietly. ‘I am.’ She paused. ‘My husband spends his time ingesting hashish and wine and fornicating with children of both sexes. And when he is not destroying them, he is destroying any building of beauty around him. He is eaten up with jealousy and with hatred for his own mediocrity. He is mad.’
She took a deep breath and looked from Luke to Shulen. ‘All of this I could put up with. For the sake of my children, I could bear it. But I learnt that he was plotting against Temur himself. Then I knew he was mad.’
‘But who is
coming?’ asked Luke.
The Princess raised her arched eyebrows further. ‘Still the questions? His creatures are coming. They are coming because my absence has been noticed and they will know that I have come here. They will spare me but they will kill you. So we must leave. Now.’
*
Khan-zada, Shulen and the four Varangians came down the mountain as the assassins had done, with ropes coiled around their midriffs fed out from above. They jumped their way past caves, ledges and birds until they reached the shallower slope in front of the cave where they’d been taken. There, looking up at them in the fresh morning air, were Eskalon and the other horses, all saddled, provisioned and ready to ride.
A single assassin stood with the horses, holding them by their reins and wearing a brown deel with a green stripe at its edge. Around his neck hung a rectangular piece of iron with three circles engraved on its face.
‘He will come with us,’ said the Princess, untying her rope and gesturing to the man. ‘He has a courier’s paizi around his neck and is dressed as one. He will take us to the first staging post where he will subdue the guard and then stop the courier sent by Miran Shah.’
Matthew had mounted and was adjusting his stirrups. ‘Why do we need to stop a courier?’ he asked.
‘Because’, she explained, ‘he will be carrying a message from Miran Shah to all staging posts telling them not to give us fresh horses on pain of death. We will need those horses if we are to escape the men who follow us.’
The assassin’s head was uncovered and Luke found himself looking at a man little older than himself. He was slight of build and delicate of feature. He did not look like a killer.
‘So which way do we go?’
The assassin answered in Greek. ‘We go due south through the mountains until we meet the royal road. Then you go east and I stay. It is four hundred miles to Mashhad and it will take you four days. Afterwards you will cross the Kara Kum desert and reach Bokhara. After that is Samarcand.’
‘Four days?’ Nikolas looked up from examining his crossbow. ‘How are we getting there, on eagles?’
The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Page 17
