Devil's Bargain

by Judith Tarr

It was a potent temptation. She knelt in the empty mosque, in the fading daylight, and all about her the spirits gathered: jinn and afarit, wrought of essential fire. They were no more purely of dark or light than any human creature. They too had that gift and curse: they could choose which power they would serve.

  They swarmed above her, thick as a migration of swallows. They darted, swooped, wheeled. Some of them sang in eerie voices. When there were words that she could understand, those were words in Arabic, verses of the Koran and praises of the All-Merciful. Of course these would be good Muslim spirits, since this was a Muslim place, however faded and forgotten.

  Laughter bubbled up in her, sudden and altogether unexpected. It had an edge to it, the cut of irony, but it was honest enough. In the giddy swirl of the spirits’ dance, she had found, not peace, not exactly—but a degree of sanity. She was still angry, but with some vestige of measure and restraint. For the first time in a long while, her mind was clear. She could think. She could make a choice.

  Not the darkness now. Later, who knew? For the moment she remained in the light, though the shadows were a fraction deeper than they had been before.

  She remained there into the night, resting her spirit in the dance of the afarit. When she left them, they sang a long, rippling note: bidding farewell for a while, but not for always. She sang it back to them as best she could. Those that were nearest to solid form and substance bowed before her, not entirely in mockery, and one or two followed her through the midnight blackness of Jaffa, seeing her safe to her room in Master Judah’s hospital.

  PART TWO

  ASCALON AND TYRE

  January–April 1192

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The rain that had begun in the month of October continued almost without interruption for the whole of that winter: month upon month of raw damp and bone-numbing cold. The season of Advent gave way to a wet and shivering Christmas—and few enough of Richard’s men had any shelter as dry or warm as the Lord Christ’s manger in a stable.

  At the New Year, Richard marched on Jerusalem. But Jerusalem would have none of him. At Beit Nuba within sight of the holy city, he could go no farther. There the rain turned to sleet and then to a blinding blast of snow. The men could not march; the horses, those that had not fallen to cold or sickness or Turkish arrows, were never enough to carry an army.

  “Face it, sire,” said the Grand Master of the Hospitallers. “We’ll get no farther this winter. The men have had enough. Their armor is a mass of rust, their shirts are rotting off their backs, they’re eating more mold and weevils than bread. Even if they’ll follow you to Jerusalem, what can they do when they get there? They’re too weak to storm the walls, and too few to hold the city even if by a miracle they should take it.”

  The king’s council had gathered in Richard’s tent, which if not exactly warm and not exactly dry, was warmer and drier than the storm without. Even as the Hospitaller paused, a blast of wind smote it, rocking it on its moorings; the sides groaned in protest. But the tent was made in this country, and it was well anchored. It held.

  They all drew a sigh of relief. Only the king had taken no notice. His eyes were fixed on the Hospitaller’s face. “Are you saying we should give up?”

  “I am saying, sire,” said the Hospitaller, “that there is excellent reason why the infidels send their armies home in the dark of the year.”

  “That’s why I kept mine on the march,” Richard shot back. “Because there’s no more than a garrison to defend Jerusalem. We can take it. We’re still stronger than a few hundred Turks and Kurds.”

  “Are we, sire? Listen to the wind! It’s blowing straight from the walls of Jerusalem. The harder we fight it, the more powerfully it drives us back. We can fight men—but can we fight the wind?”

  “Wind stops,” Richard said. “Storms end. We’ll wait this one out, and march before the next one hits.”

  “Men must eat, sire,” the Hospitaller said. He was as stubborn as Richard, and he was no coward, either. “Our supply lines are dangerously thin as it is. If we go any farther away from the sea, we’ll starve.”

  Richard’s expression was alarming. Some of his lords looked as if they would have preferred to brave the storm than face the king’s wrath. But the Templars were as bold as any Hospitaller. Their Master scowled at the Hospitaller, but he said, “He’s right, sire. As little as I like to agree with him—he’s telling the truth. We can’t wage a war under these conditions. If we go back toward the sea, toward Acre or Jaffa or Ascalon, we’ll be warm, dry, fed—and we’ll keep our troops until spring. They’re dying here. They’re not an army now, sire. They’re a mob of invalids.”

  “That is true.” The voice was not one that spoke often in the king’s councils, but the ring of authority silenced any protest. Master Judah did not either rise or come forward; he sat still until all their eyes were on him. Then he spoke again. “My physicians and surgeons are working night and day, and they can’t keep up with the number of the sick or wounded. We’ve used up most of our medicines; men steal the bandages to wrap their feet or hands against the cold. If even half your men are up to fighting strength, I’ll be astonished.”

  Richard shook his head obstinately. “I can take Jerusalem now. I have enough men for that.”

  “You do not,” Master Judah said. “Even the hotheads of the Temple are telling you so. Will you listen?”

  “Give me a map,” said Richard, biting off the words.

  One of his clerks had one to hand. Richard snatched it with little grace, sweeping wine cups and bits of bread and moldy cheese off the table that stood in the center of the tent. He spread the map there, glowering at it, muttering as his finger traced the lines of road and hill, wall and gate.

  His eyes flashed up. “We have to go on,” he said. “Don’t you understand that? If we turn back now in sight of victory, we lose it all—and I take the blame.”

  “If you go on,” said the Hospitaller, “you will lose. You can live with a bit of blame now in return for a chorus of praise later. And consider this, sire—I hear the men talking as I walk through the camp. They are convinced that once they come to the Holy Sepulcher, their service is over. They can lay down the cross; they can leave. There will be no one to hold the city once you’ve taken it, and no hope of keeping it past the first blush of spring. The Saracen will come back, and he will destroy you. Jerusalem will lie in unholy hands once again; all your Crusade will be for naught.”

  “That won’t change,” Richard snarled, “whether it happens now or half a year from now.”

  “Maybe not,” said the Hospitaller. “Or maybe, once spring comes, new forces will arrive from the west, and the forces that are here will remember their strength and devote themselves fully to the defense of the Holy Sepulcher. The air itself resists them now. In spring, when winter’s cold is forgotten and summer’s heat is no more than a promise, they’ll learn again how to fight for their faith.”

  “Stirring words,” Richard said, glaring at the map, which told him exactly how far he had to go through a cruel winter, without water or provisions, to take an impregnable city. “I’ll hold you to them, damn you. And damn you again, for making too bloody much sense. We’ll wait out the storm. When it lets up, we’ll march.”

  The Hospitaller bowed his head in respect. “Where shall we march, sire?”

  Richard rolled up the map and flung it at his clerk. “Ascalon. We’ll build it up again. That will keep the men warm, and give them something to think about besides running for home.”

  “And,” said the Hospitaller, “the ships can come in with provisions from Cyprus and the west, and our men will be fed and dry for the first time since we left Jaffa.”

  “Dry feet,” someone sighed. “Ah, God! A dream of bliss.”

  Great wit it was not, but it struck them to a ripple of mirth, an easing of tension that had gripped them all. Only Richard did not join in the jest. He stood stiff and still as they took their leave, not flinching from the lash of
wind and snow through the open tent flap. The Hospitaller was the last to go; he looked as if he might have paused, but the snow was deepening inside the tent. He thrust forward into it, turning to wrestle the flap back into place.

  The wind had blown out the lamps. Richard turned in the dimness, moving toward the nearest, but Mustafa was there already, striking a spark from the flint off the steel of his dagger.

  Richard started a little. “You! Where did you come from?”

  “I was here, lord,” Mustafa said. He lit the other lamps from the flame of the first, taking his time about it. Lamp oil at least they had enough of: one of the quartermasters had intercepted a caravan to the holy city, and its chief cargo had been oil for eating and for burning in lamps.

  “You’re as quiet as a cat.” Richard flung himself onto his cot, arm over his eyes, groaning aloud. “Damned bloody cowards! Every pox-infested one of them.”

  Mustafa held his tongue. The brazier needed feeding; he fed it with care, until the coals were burning steadily, sending off a blessed wave of heat.

  Richard sat up abruptly. “You’ve been out, haven’t you? What have you found?”

  “That the Master of the Hospital is right, sire,” Mustafa said. “And that this storm will grow worse before it dies down.”

  “You don’t think it’s—”

  Richard would never speak directly of magic if he could avoid it: strange, considering what his mother was, but perhaps not inexplicable. The son of so strong a mother might prefer to resist her rather than to give way to her.

  In any event, Mustafa could answer him honestly. “If it has been . . . assisted, it’s still a natural storm. This is the land itself raising walls against you.” He paused. “Maybe, sire, it does this to give you time. If you take your army back to the sea, and let it rest and recover, in the spring it will be much stronger and more willing to fight.”

  “Are you the council’s tame ape, to mimic all that they say?” But Richard’s rancor lacked its usual ferocity. “Do you know where the singer is?”

  Mustafa rebuked his heart for sinking. “I saw him with the men from Aviègne,” he said. “They had a fancy for a song or two.”

  “So do I,” said Richard. “Go and fetch him, will you? Then find a dry place and rest. Whenever this storm of hell stops, we’re marching—even if it’s the dead of night.”

  For Richard, that was kindness. Mustafa braced himself against the cold and the cut of the sleet, wrapped his mantle close about him and the end of his turban about his face, and set hand to the tent flap.

  He paused. Richard was lying flat again, eyes shut, sulking mightily. It was no ill Mustafa could cure. But Blondel, however waspish his temper, had his lute and his sweet voice. He was the medicine that the king must have. Wise Richard, to know the physic for his own sickness.

  Mustafa found Blondel still singing for the French soldiers. They objected not at all to surrendering their entertainment to the king. Their mood in fact was remarkably light, for warriors of Crusade who were about to withdraw just short of the Holy Sepulcher. They were all singing paeans to the great dream of the army that winter: warm hands and dry feet.

  Almost Mustafa followed Blondel back to the king, but a faint glimmer of wisdom restrained him. He sought another sanctuary instead, a small tent, empty just then, but sharing the warmth of the greater tent beside it. He curled like a cat in the corner, and like a cat, seized the opportunity to sleep.

  Sioned was weary to the bone. The flush of satisfaction she had felt since she attached herself to the army yet again without a word of objection from her brother was long gone. Victory over Richard’s will was no small accomplishment, but this was as wretched a campaign as even the most seasoned soldier could remember. She actually found herself envying the ladies in their cushioned prison in Acre. It would have been a stupefyingly long winter of gossip and embroidery and court intrigue, but it would have been warmer than this.

  The storm had begun in the dark before dawn. Now it was almost dawn again, and the wind showed no sign of slackening. Snow heaped against the sides of tents; those whose occupants were not diligent in keeping the tents clear had collapsed, with much cursing and struggling to get them back up again.

  She had been tending frostbite and physicking winter rheums since before the storm began. There was not a tent in the camp that was free of a chorus of coughing. When a man began coughing up blood, he came in search of the physicians. Sometimes he found them before it was too late. Sometimes he died on the way.

  Too many men had died today. Richard’s retreat came none too soon. Later there would be carping and blame. Now there was only relief.

  She stumbled to her little bit of tent to snatch an hour’s rest. The shape curled in the corner aroused no alarm. Mustafa came here as often as not; he said it comforted him to sleep in the light of her magic. Sometimes if there was time or if she had strength left, he taught her to sing in his Berber tongue, or to dance with knives the way his people did—the women, he said, even more fiercely and flamboyantly than the men.

  There would be no dancing or singing tonight. She fell onto her cot as if into deep water; sleep took her before she touched the blanket.

  She had dreamed of Saphadin often enough that winter, and dreamed that her lessons with his wife continued, night after night. The dreams of him were only dreams; those of Safiyah, she was less sure of. She remembered every word of them when she woke, and as often as not, the magic in her was different; it had grown, changed, become something other than it was when she went to sleep.

  There were no lessons in this early dawn. Her dream was full of snow, but it was not cold; it had no edges that cut. It was like a cloud of feathers, white and soft, suffused with a silver light.

  She had a dagger in her hand, but its blade was silver rather than steel. The hilt was in the shape of a silver swan, its eye a ruby, red as blood. Because this was a dream, the eye was alive, alert with intelligence. It sparkled at her as she turned the dagger in her fingers.

  The veil of snow parted. She looked through it into a room dim with lamplight. It was a beautiful room, with walls of many-colored tiles in patterns of leaves and flowering branches, and a floor heaped thick with carpets. A golden lamp hung from the ceiling, shedding soft light on the curtains of a bed. It was not an extravagant bed despite the beauty of the room; there were few cushions, and the coverlets were almost plain. They were wool and cotton, not silk; yet they seemed warm.

  He was asleep within those coverlets. She had not seen him before without his turban; he looked more ordinary so, a slender man, fine-featured, with short-cropped black hair barely touched with grey, and a neat beard.

  No one shared his bed, nor was there any memory of a woman in that room. If he did his duty by his wives, he did it elsewhere. This was his own place, his sanctuary. There was a great air of peace in it, and of warded protection.

  She could feel the wards about her, sliding like water over her body, but they did not drive her away. Indeed they welcomed her; they guarded her as they did him, within walls of air and light.

  She drifted down beside him. He smiled faintly in his sleep—not at her presence, surely, but at some pleasant dream. She remembered that she was angry, and she remembered why, but without the flesh to feed the anger, it seemed dim and rather distant. In this place she was simply glad to see his face, to know that he was well—and yes, to see him alone.

  They had not spoken since Jaffa. She had no craving to hear his voice now, but neither was she in great haste to leave him. She sat at the foot of his bed and tucked up her feet, and watched over him for what was left of the night.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The hope that roused Richard’s army to march away from Beit Nuba turned quickly to rancor. The roads were abominable and the weather worse. Storm after storm battered the land and the sea. There were no supply lines from the ports: the ships had to put far out to sea or be dashed to pieces on the shore.

  One morning not far from As
calon, after a grueling march through a morass of mud and icy water, the army woke to find itself reduced by half. Duke Hugh and the French had packed up in secret, gathered their belongings and the loot that they had won, and left in the night.

  Some said they had gone to Acre, others to Tyre. “Either way,” Richard said with as much good cheer as anyone could muster, “that’s all the fewer mouths to feed. Up, and march! The sun’s out, for once; we’ll make good time today. Maybe we’ll even dry out by sundown.”

  Mustafa heard that as he came back from scouting the road to Ascalon. The sun was a pleasant change, to be sure, though it was not what he would have called warm. If anything it was colder than the storms had been before. There was a thin film of ice over the mud of the road, and his breath was a cloud of frost.

  He was not eager to bring Richard the news that he had gone to fetch, but soonest done was soonest over. His little mare was a bony shadow of herself, but she had a spark in her yet. She consented to carry him along the columns as they dragged themselves into place, and to fall in behind Richard’s squires.

  Richard would come when he came. He was seeing the sick and the wounded into the carts himself, and giving them such comfort as they would take.

  The army lurched into motion with a now-familiar step and drag, accompanied by the sucking sound of feet or hooves in mud, and the groaning of wagon axles as the wheels strained to turn. The oxen lowed in protest, and the mules brayed harshly; the drovers cracked their whips and cursed. The men marched in grim silence. No one laughed or sang.

  They would have even less occasion for mirth when they heard what Mustafa had to say to Richard. It was midmorning before the king came to the center. His golden stallion was as bony as the rest of the horses, and the beast’s winter coat was like a filthy fleece, but he had enough strength even yet to arch his neck and offer improprieties to Mustafa’s mare. She flattened her ears and snapped. He was barely chastened.