A Wind in Cairo

by Judith Tarr

  “I—” This was battle. So many of them, listening. Her father mute, strangely subdued. As if his will were not unshakable. As if…

  “Perhaps,” said the Hajji, “my lord al-Zaman will explain why he has done what he has done.”

  Al-Zaman’s chin rose with his pride. “Is she not my daughter?”

  The Hajji said nothing, did nothing.

  Al-Zaman’s throat convulsed as he swallowed. His anger could not seem to rise high enough to content him. “Damn you, magus! Without you I would never have done it. You forced it on me. Telling me that she wanted to be a woman. Proving it with that defiler of virgins. All but commanding me to give her the choice: to be woman and wife, or to be as she has always been.”

  “But she refuses to choose. She buries her will in yours.” They all wheeled about. Khamsin faced them. His robe was silk; it shimmered, for he was trembling. “Tell them, O my mistress who was. Tell them why you do it.”

  The sight and sound of him were purest pain. His beauty; his fire. The scorn which she heard in his words, which smoldered in his eyes.

  She said what he defied her to say. “Yes. I am a coward. I always have been. I’m afraid of what I can be when I forget myself.”

  “And therefore you give yourself up. You bind your body in silk; you submit it to the will of a man. Do you hope that your soul will quench its fire, once you make yourself a slave?”

  She forgot that there was anyone else in the world. She screamed at him. “What else is there for me?”

  “Everything!” he shouted back.

  “Everything but you!”

  The silence was thunderous. A slow flush crept up her body. She saw eyes. Everywhere, eyes. And shocked faces. And Khamsin.

  They were face to face. It was most improper. And he was so proper now to look at. A perfect young gentleman. With his Arab face and his Turkish braid and his eyes that saw nothing but her. Nothing, ever, but her.

  She tried to push him away. Her hands knotted in silk. They remembered skin that was silk. “We can’t,” she said.

  Someone was angry, somewhere. “This is unspeakable!” he kept saying.

  It was. Khamsin had her face in his hands. He was going to kiss her. He was taking a very long time to get to it.

  “Do you want me?” he asked in the softest voice in the world.

  “We can’t,” she said again.

  “Do you?”

  She nodded between his palms. It was nothing of her doing. “But I can’t!” she cried desperately. “There’s too much hate. One of our fathers will kill the other, and mine will almost certainly kill you, and—”

  “And for what? They bought your life with the promise of a truce. If they break that promise, you are forfeit. And I won’t allow it.” He wheeled upon their fathers. “I won’t allow it! I’ll die first, or go back to the shape I wore when I was hers.”

  “Are you—” Al-Zaman choked on it. “Are you asking for my daughter?”

  “I ask for nothing,” said Khamsin, stiff and haughty and perfectly calculated to enrage al-Zaman. “This is a free woman. I will not have her used as a counter in your games.”

  “You will? You will not? What right have you even to touch the hem of her garment?”

  “I love her.”

  Al-Zaman snarled. It was the Hajji who caught him before he sprang. “I think,” the magus said, “that this has gone on long enough.”

  He waited, stern, until they had all sat down. Khamsin was as far from Zamaniyah as the circle, and the emirs, could contrive. Abd al-Rahim was close to her. Uncomfortably close. Nor could she move away: her father was there, rigid as a wall.

  The Hajji folded his arms and surveyed them all. At last he said, “This was not wholly of my contriving. Allah is greater by far than I, and subtler. Let us say that I hoped for such a consequence as this. That—yes—I knew how my magic would end, if it did not fail.”

  “Why?” Khamsin dared to ask, with more heat than courtesy.

  “I have a certain interest in the matter,” said the Hajji, which quelled Khamsin into white-faced silence. “And I am averse to enmity among princes; and I am my sultan’s servant, and he has need of you all.”

  Khamsin was upon him, but not before Zamaniyah was. Not touching. Simply facing, bristling, searing him with soul-deep anger. It was she who said it. “You have bespelled us. It is tidy. It is unforgivable.”

  “Tidy,” said the magus serenely, “yes. But there is no spell upon you beyond what won you from the black angel. Whatever is between you is yours alone.”

  “Swear to it,” said Khamsin.

  The Hajji raised his hands. “By the Hidden Name of God, it is so.”

  Her eyes slid. Khamsin’s eyes were sliding likewise. Suddenly she was excruciatingly shy.

  “I will not have it.”

  Both their fathers spoke. Both at once. Concurring in enmity, as never in a thousand years could they concur in amity.

  Laughter bubbled. Khamsin’s eyes had sparked, though he bit his lips until they bled. Her hand moved to meet his. It had been just so when he was enchanted. One will. Very nearly one body.

  It terrified her.

  He was trembling.

  “What can we do?” she cried.

  “Whatever you will,” said the sultan.

  “But I don’t know— What do you want of me? What does any of you want of me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the sultan said. “I said, whatever you will.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said.

  “Why?” Khamsin demanded. “What do you want to do?”

  Her teeth clenched. She wanted—she wished—

  She had always done as she was told.

  They were telling her to do what she wanted.

  What she wanted—was—

  Abd al-Rahim sat lost and stricken and stunned. She willed him to rise, speak, claim her. He never moved.

  None of them would move. Khamsin least of all.

  She spun to face the Hajji. “If I told you that I want my stallion back, would you do it?”

  Even that could not shake his calm. “The gentleman might object,” he said.

  “I don’t think,” said Khamsin slowly, “that I would.” He was steady under all their stares, even before his father’s sudden, piercing pain. “What am I fit for here? I know how to carry a rider in battle. I can dance the Greek dance, a little. That is all. Unless you count my mastery of tavern-crawling.”

  “You’re worth a little more than that,” said Zamaniyah. “I trained you once. I could train you again if I had to.”

  “You wouldn’t need to. I remember everything.”

  “Not as a horse, idiot. As a man.”

  She has shocked even herself. She had told him—a man—a prince—a sharif—

  He was the only one who did not seem taken aback. He nodded as if it made sense. As if it pleased him to contemplate her insolence.

  She forsook the last feeble remnant of her wits. She faced him. She let him see her exactly as she was: bare feet, borrowed cloak, hair loose and tangled and falling down her back. No beauty in it, and little enough dignity. She said, “I want you.” The light of him nearly felled her. She held up a hand that struggled not to shake. “If,” she said, “and only if, you want me as I am. I won’t take the veil. I won’t live in the harem. I won’t stop riding to war. I won’t ever be like other women.”

  His eyes had drifted past her. Despair settled leaden in her middle. Its claws were cold. Even he could not accept that she could not change.

  He seemed to be exchanging glances with someone. But there was no one there. Only shadow.

  His head bowed, rose. The corner of his mouth curved upward: a small, wry smile. It was certainly not for her. Was he mad, after all?

  His eyes found her again. She gasped with the force of them. With grace that she had only seen in dancers, he sank to his knees. It was not submission. It was high and royal pride that chose, of its free will, to lay itself in her hands. He
bowed; he kissed the carpet at her feet.

  If he became lord of the world, he would never honor her as greatly as he honored her now.

  She pulled him up. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said roughly. “You’ve got yourself a soldier, not a queen.” She faltered. “If anyone will let me soldier for him again.”

  “Let you!” cried the sultan. “With Syria to settle, and Egypt to see to, and a certain matter of Assassins, and a Holy War to wage? How could I let you go?”

  Her throat hurt. She had not known how much it mattered, until she thought that she had given it up.

  She faced her father and his enemy. But first she faced Abd al-Rahim. “I’m not the wife you need,” she said, “nor the one your heart is wanting. But I would be your friend, if you would have me.”

  She held out her hand. He stared at it. At the man for whom she had forsaken him. At the sultan whose servant he was.

  He was a nobleman. He bowed before he turned his back on her.

  Khamsin’s fingers laced with hers. It made the hurt a little less. It steeled her for the worst of it.

  His father seemed almost resigned. Hers…

  His eyes were fixed on their hands. His face was drawn as if with sickness; or with grief.

  Her heart twisted. She left Khamsin, whose presence was a bolster at her back. She went to al-Zaman. She did not bow. She dared not touch him.

  He breathed deep, shuddering. “I tried,” he said. “I tried to set you free.”

  “I am, Father. Free and glad.” His face had set. She stormed it with sweetness. “If the emir had had me, I would have vanished into his harem. Now you’ll never lose me.”

  “I lost you long ago,” he said.

  “Isn’t that a father’s lot? But all that he loses, he gains back tenfold.” She moved a step closer. “Father, I’m not asking you to love your enemy. Only to accept the war’s ending.”

  “I accept it,” said Ali Mousa. “I accept you, O my daughter. I give you my blessing.”

  Easy for him, al-Zaman’s glare said. He owed her his life. She had no such name as his son had, which al-Zaman must endure, and must accept, if he was to bless their coming together.

  Khamsin slid past her. He kissed the carpet between his hands. With deep humility he said, “My lord, I know what I have been. I have sworn never to forget; and never to return. Your daughter is my surety. I do not ask you to bless me. Will you, for the love she bears you, bless her?”

  Al-Zaman looked down at him. The silken coat; the ruddy braid. The price it cost his pride to bow until he was granted leave to rise.

  “I will never,” said al-Zaman, sweeping his hand toward Ali Mousa, “embrace that man as my brother.”

  “I do not ask it,” Khamsin said, still patiently, still humbly, though his hands had fisted on the carpet. “I am your daughter’s servant, my lord. She asks that I be her husband. She has trained me to obedience. Would you have me break that training?”

  “You would surrender your will into the hands of a woman? And you call yourself a man?”

  “Hardly yet, my lord. Through a mage’s art and a woman’s wisdom, one day I may become one.”

  Al-Zaman’s jaw flexed. “Get up,” he said.

  Khamsin obeyed. He did not conceal the glitter of his eyes.

  Yakhuz al-Zaman was anything but blind. He knew the difference between obedience and submission. He had learned it exactly as Zamaniyah had, from the Greek who ruled his stables.

  He bared his teeth. It was rather more smile than snarl. “I’ve never liked you,” he said. “Now I know why. God has chosen you to rob me of my daughter.”

  Her anger glared, sudden and fierce. “I said that he would not—”

  They both waved her to silence; which did nothing for her temper. They were doing it. Being men. Colluding in it. Shutting her out.

  One of them laughed. She could not even tell which one it was. “If you harm a hair on her head,” her father said with perfect amity, “I will have you shot.”

  Khamsin’s head inclined a royal degree. “Ah. The old bargain. I’ll hold to it. My lord.”

  “See that you do.” Al-Zaman raised a hand. “Within that binding, O prince of stallions, take my blessing.”

  Khamsin took it as he had been trained to take all great gifts, with grace and gratitude. But his eye rolled back to Zamaniyah, and that eye was pure Khamsin. Bright, wicked, and altogether unrepentant.

  Training, she thought. Indeed.

  It was going to be a very pleasant war.

  Author’s Note

  Saladin

  The facts which underlie this fantasy are both extensive and complex; I have taken liberties mainly in the direction of simplicity. The campaigns of Salah al-Din Yusuf (whom westerners call Saladin) in Syria in A.D. 1174-5 were rather less coherent than I have shown them to be, with much shifting about from fortress to fortress and from battle to battle. I have conflated the deaths of Ayyub and of Nur al-Din and the taking of Homs and Hama, and simplified the siege of Aleppo.

  The Assassins did indeed attack Saladin at the instigation of Aleppo, at the common meal as I have described, but I have set the date rather later in the year than it actually was. It was the Turkish emir, Khumartekin, who died in giving the alarm, and a second emir who prevented the attack on the sultan’s person. A second attack took place a year later, in 1176, when Saladin was again fighting against Aleppo. One of the Assassins succeeded in reaching the sultan, piercing his cuirass and wounding his cheek. Saladin, angered, marched on the Assassins’ stronghold of Masyaf, not far from Homs. The siege failed in considerable part because of the army’s fear of their enemy; and because of renewed threats to the sultan. He withdrew before his siege was well begun, and left the Assassins to their intrigues. They, in return, did not attack his person again.

  After the battle of the Horns of Hama, Saladin marched to Aleppo. He celebrated the Id al-Fitr, the feast of the end of Ramadan, outside the city; there he concluded a pact with his onetime enemies. Mosul agreed to a truce and a withdrawal. Prince al-Salih Ismail retained Aleppo and a portion of the north of Syria; he died in Aleppo, still resisting Saladin, in 1181. He was not yet twenty years old, and much beloved of his followers.

  Saladin, for his part, was now de facto lord of both Egypt and Syria, In 1176 he took to wife Ismat al-Din Khatun, the widow of Nur al-din. He spent the next decade securing his power and sparring with the Franks. At last, in 1187, he destroyed the massed chivalry of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the battle of the Horns of Hattin. Before the year was ended, he had captured Jerusalem. No Crusade thereafter succeeded in winning it back. The sultan died in Damascus in 1193, leaving his realm to his son al-Afdal.

  I should note here that Saladin did not actually take the title of sultan. He was al-Malik al-Nasir, the king, the protector. His biographers, however, including those who knew him, refer to him as the sultan. Since the title of king bears strong and perhaps misleading connotations, I have followed the biographers’ example.

  Of the voluminous literature on Saladin and on the Crusades, I am most indebted to M.C. Lyons and D.E.P. Jackson, Saladin: the Politics of the Holy War (Cambridge, 1982). For wealth of detail, for rigor of research, and for precision of presentation, no other single volume compares with it.

  The Art of Horsemanship

  There was not, to my knowledge, a hidden school of horsemanship in Greece or in any medieval country. There was, however, a very old tradition of equestrian training, exemplified by the treatise on the art of riding by the ancient Greek historian, Xenophon. His principles were revived in the riding schools of the European Renaissance and refined by later masters in the high and complex art which is called, aptly enough, classical dressage. Its most noted modern representatives are the Lipizzan stallions of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

  Although the tradition—as in this novel—is primarily oral, significant portions have been set down in writing in, for example, Colonel Alois Podhajsky’s The Complete Training of Horse
and Rider in the Principles of Classical Horsemanship (New York, 1967).

  There was, further, a Muslim tradition of equestrian art, oriented, as was classical dressage at its inception, toward the training of horses for war. The basic principles are remarkably similar. I have been interested to note that the snaffle bit, which Zamaniyah uses on Khamsin and which modern teachers favor for all but the most advanced horses, seems to have been in common use in the West in the very early Middle Ages; the more brutal curb bit—though not quite as brutal as the ancient Greek bit, which was a straightforward instrument of torture—was introduced from Asia, probably through Islam, for use on warhorses.

  The Arabian breed is renowned as the oldest continuously domesticated breed of horses. Its origins are shrouded in legend, but are said to go back at least to the second millennium B.C. The pedigree of a horse who is kehailan or asil, of the pure blood, will vanish into the desert, into the oral history of the Bedouin; it culminates in the Khamsa, the five mares chosen (some say by the Prophet, others by a much older authority) to be the foremothers of their breed. My saqla mare has no place in the legend, but one very like her gave her name to one of the nobler lines of Arabian horses, the lineage of the Saklawi Jedran Ibn Sudan. Judith Forbis, in The Classic Arabian Horse (New York, 1976), details concisely and completely both the legends and the facts of the breed, and most particularly of the breed as developed in Egypt. Forbis notes that the horses of the Pharaohs as depicted in ancient art often bear a remarkable resemblance to the animals bred in Egypt in this century. As, no doubt, to those of the time of Saladin.

  About The Author

  Judith Tarr is the author of three dozen novels in a number of genres including fantasy, historical fantasy, and mainstream historical. She holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College and Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale. She wrote A Wind in Cairo in memory of a very special horse, the Arabian gelding Sheik Nishan. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses. She also writes books about horses (including The Mountain's Call and the forthcoming House of the Star) under the name Caitlin Brennan.