A Wind in Cairo (30 page)

Wiborada cursed in Frankish, softly and at length.

That was not what Khamsin wanted to do. He wanted to howl like a dog.

Wiborada tried to bind the worst of it, to stop the blood, to straighten shattered bone. Her hands were deft, although her tears must have blinded her.

A cloak settled over the bared and helpless body. Wiborada regarded it without gratitude. She stroked the sweat-sodden hair, over and over, as if will and hand could mend what iron had broken.

People came, stared. Some spoke to Ali Mousa. Most went away. Khamsin barely noticed. He watched the white linen—Zamaniyah's own shirt, set to this last grim service—turn slowly scarlet. He felt the ebbing of her life. She was fighting, clinging against all hope, but her body was too badly broken. It could not house her.

After an age a doctor came, reluctant, muttering, sparking with outrage when he saw that she was a woman. “Why did you drag me here? There are men yonder who need me. This is beyond need of anything but a shroud.”

“She will not die,” said Ali Mousa.

Even that irascible small man could perceive the iron in the sharif's voice. It silenced his muttering. It brought him erect. “She cannot live.”

“She must. That wound was meant for me.”

“Sir,” said the doctor, “it was written that she should take it. It is certain that she will die of it.

“She is only a woman,” he pointed out, meaning comfort by it.

Ali Mousa stared him into silence. “She is a warrior, and valiant.” His voice rose a very little. “Go. Send me a man who knows some glimmer of healing. Send me a man who is not a fool!”

The doctor drew himself up. “A fool I may be, sir, but I know death. This woman is his. No mortal man can alter it, nor any lord's command.”

“No,” said Ali Mousa.

The doctor went away. Khamsin would have comforted his father if he could; but there was no comfort in him.

A shadow had taken up residence under the canopy. It had eyes, and those eyes were Jaffar's, implacable as death itself. Khamsin had no fear of him.
Yes, I did this. Yes, I killed her. There is no pain in hell to match this that I will upon myself.

A new shadow, eyeless, barred the sun. Mare-scent distracted dimly. A boy held her. A man stood staring at them all.

“No,” said the sultan.

The world had shrunk to a single word. The sultan bent as they all had, to see what they all could see. He spun upon Ali Mousa. “
What have you done to her?”

“Nothing.” Wiborada's voice was sharp and cold and sane. “There's nothing anyone can do. Except watch her die. Will you tarry with us, O my sultan? Maybe you can say a prayer for her.”

He was weeping openly, without shame. “Ah God! This was to be my victory. I wanted to tell her—I wanted to hear her say—”

Zamaniyah was past hearing him. Khamsin whose ears were bitterly keen could hear how her breathing faltered; how her heart battered itself against the walls of her body, desperate as a moth trapped within a lamp. His nose caught sparks of agony in endless, sour-sweet pain.

Pray God she did not wake and know it. Pray god—pray God she went gently into Paradise.

The sultan had fled. Wise man. Let him try to remember her as she had been. Not as she was now, shrunken, broken, mere crushed clay.

As the sun sank, her life sank with it. Wiborada tried to pour water into her, as if she were a flower that could rouse again for so simple a remedy. Ali Mousa sat and swayed gently and prayed in a soft and ceaseless murmur. He wept stone-faced as he did it. His mamluks hovered, helpless.

All helpless.

Khamsin flung up his head and screamed. They started like deer. Swords leaped into hands. He scorned them with tossing head, snapping teeth. He broke the bridle and cast it at their feet. He wheeled and bolted.

He hunted as the beast of prey hunts, by scent and sound and instinct. He was swifter than any but the swiftest; and his mind was a man's, fixed with human purpose, immovable. No shadow sped beside him. The eunuch's spirit has sworn to haunt him, but before him there had been Zamaniyah. When she died she would find him waiting, faithful as ever he had been.

Perhaps, dead, he could be a man for her. Allah was the Merciful, the Compassionate. Allah would reward such love as he had given her.

Khamsin shook himself even in his running. His own recompense would, and must, be only sorrow.

The camp swirled about him. The sultan's tent was an eddy in it. The sultan was there, newly come, harried by his servants. At sight of Khamsin he forgot them. His cry of grief rose sudden and piercing.

Khamsin snorted at it. He had not come for the sultan. He had come for the one with whom the sultan spoke; to whom the sultan spoke the name of Zamaniyah.

Cold horror congealed in Khamsin's heart. Only for Zamaniyah could he have done this. Only for her.

He barely saw the Hajji. Green turban. Silvered beard. Great roaring flame of power, banked in mortal flesh. He bowed before it.

“Too late,” the sultan mourned. “Dear God, for my people I tarried; and for that—”

“Not yet, my lord,” said the Hajji. He laid his hand on Khamsin's brow. It burned; it froze him where he knelt. “Take me to her,” the Hajji said.

His weight was the weight of worlds. Khamsin bore it as if it had been air. He knew that he had escort, and it ran valiantly, but it struggled far behind. By himself he was swift, as swift as he was beautiful. Beneath the Hajji he outran the wind.

Thicker than death beneath the makeshift tent was the reek of hate. Al-Zaman at last had found his daughter, and his enemy. They both bore marks of struggle. Their mamluks were ruffled, baleful. Wiborada stood between them. “Yes,” she sneered at them. “Kill one another over her. She'll love you for it, I'm sure. She'll reckon her life well lost.”

One of them had struck her: she had a bruise rising. Khamsin would have wagered on al-Zaman. She was, after all, his chattel.

Khamsin would happily have trampled the man for daring it. He, blind and deaf in enmity, spat at Ali Mousa's feet. “Are you content, O my nemesis? Have you drunk your fill of my children's blood?”

Ali Mousa met hot hate with hate both cold and haughty. “How could such a swine have sired such a pearl?”

Al-Zaman lunged, snarling. His dagger glittered in his hand.

His mamluks were ready for him. And Khamsin. His teeth closed on the emir's wrist. Gently; but his jaws were strong. Al-Zaman struggled. Khamsin tightened his grip. If he must gnaw that hand from its mooring, by Allah he would.

The Hajji's hand seared his neck, slackened his jaws. “It is grief,” he said, soft and cool. And barely louder: “My lords. May I pass?”

Wise man, to pretend that they could stop him. They fell back before him. The sultan's swift coming absorbed them: they bowed, sundered by his presence, reduced to warring with glances.

The Hajji knelt by Zamaniyah. His hand was gentle on her brow. His face was ineffably sad.

It was Khamsin to whom he spoke. “She is dead,” he said.

The words fell like stones, empty of meaning. Of course she was not dead. Khamsin had brought the Hajji to make her whole again. She was supposed to be alive, so that he could mend her. How dared she die before he could begin?

“It is said,” said the sultan, “that in Ramadan, when the night has come, the angel of God passes over the earth, and whoever shall see him clearly may ask a boon of him; and if the seeker's heart be pure, it shall be granted. It is also said that if a mage has the strength and the courage, he may command the angel's will, and even raise the dead.

“It is Ramadan,” said the sultan with exquisite and royal logic. “Night is coming. You are a mage, and holy. Make this child live again.”

The green-turbaned head shook slowly. “Allah has written her death. I am not a black mage, to undo what God has ordained.”

“Indeed,” said the sultan. “Then they lied who told me of you. They said that you had done just that, to restore to a widow her only son.”

“This is his only daughter,” said Ali Mousa. Even al-Zaman stared, astonished.

“Would you have me call her back from Paradise?” the Hajji demanded of them.

Khamsin pawed the ground, snorting. Paradise, nothing. Will of Allah, nothing. Allah would allow what it pleased Him to allow; and He had given this player of games the power to conquer death. But he did not want to. Why should he trouble himself? She had never been aught to him.

“No,” the magus said, rough with pain. “Oh, no. I loved her.”

Then bring her back!
Khamsin cried with all his soul.

The Hajji drew himself erect. His deep eyes burned upon them all. “You ask that I work the mightiest of all the arts of magic. That I chance failure, if she will not come, or if Allah does not wish to let her go. And the price of my failure is my death.”

“Ah,” said the sultan. “You fear what you must conquer.”

“Certainly I fear that dread angel. He is strong and he is terrible, and his sword is pain. She knew, the young warrior. Now she knows the savor of his gift; and that is peace.”

“Wizard's games,” said al-Zaman. “You can do this. End your babble; do it.”

“So I would,” the Hajji said, “if my babble were to no purpose. I tell you what you ask of her: return to flesh and pain and mortal frailty. Of me you ask all my skill and power, and perhaps even my life. What, my lords, do you ask of yourselves? What price will you pay for this miracle?”

“All that I have,” said Ali Mousa. “Even my own life, if so it must be. She died for me.”

“I am her father,” said al-Zaman, swift and fierce, furious that his enemy should have offered before he could speak. “Whatever you ask of me, that I will pay.”

“I was her friend,” said the sultan. “Today, in full truth, I am a king. You may have this kingdom that I have won, if you will rule it well, and wage the Holy War as I had intended.”

Khamsin had nothing to match what they had: no wealth, no kinship, no kingdom. His body had been the Hajji's since he committed his great sin. All he had left was his life.

He shrank down, head low, trembling. He was not his father, to offer so freely all that was his. Ali Mousa was old; he would die soon enough. It was easier for him. Khamsin was young. His life had barely begun. How could anyone ask him to end it?

He had paid enough. He wore a beast's body. He was mute as a beast is mute. He had been soul's slave to a woman. A small, headstrong, forward-tongued snippet of a woman. She was not even pretty. She strode about like a boy. She had got herself killed doing what no woman should ever presume to do.

He did not love her. His soul was stunted. It could not stretch itself to anything so wide or so high.

Let these great lords pay. They were rich enough.

And they had duties; responsibilities. People who needed them. Lordships, kingdoms. Women. Kinsfolk; children.

Why was the Frank silent? Had she nothing to offer?

She had offered while he crouched and cowered. Everything. Freely. With all her heart.

The Hajji had choices enough. Perhaps he would take them all. He would bring Zamaniyah back. Then Khamsin would have her, and she him; and they would live out their lives in blessedness.

The Hajji sighed. His head shook more slowly even than before. “You all love her. And the price is love; but it must be perfect.”

“I am her father!” al-Zaman cried in naked pain.

“So you are,” said the Hajji. “But do you love her for her simple self, or for what your need has made her? Did you ever consider her wishes when you imposed your decrees upon her? You set her free; you gave her more than women in the House of Islam are ever given. Yet you never gave it for her sake. Only for your own.”

Khamsin would have savored the sight of al-Zaman smitten senseless by the truth. But someone else had come in all unasked and all unlooked for. Had stared dumbfounded at the one who lay in the midst of them. Had heard what they said; had wept and cried. “
I
love her truly. I love her with all that is in me.”

Khamsin's teeth ached to sink into that scented neck. But the Hajji was there and his presence was stillness. “Would you die for her?”

Abd al-Rahim never hesitated, not even for the fraction of an instant. “Yes,” he said. “Yes!”

Khamsin closed his eyes. This puppy's life for hers. How perfect. He could not have ordained it better himself.

And his heart had twisted, and his mind had whispered,
No.
He knew to the last stab of furious jealousy, how al-Zaman had felt when Ali Mousa offered his life for his enemy's child. So had this young idiot done; and done it with never a moment's pause.

Never a moment's worth of brain, either. He hung over Zamaniyah and sobbed, and spouted broken bits of poetry.

That, Khamsin's heart knew, was hardly fair. The boy was young; he was passionate; he was in love, and that was honest, and clear-sighted enough for all its extravagance. In among the poetry were bits of sense. He knew what he was grieving for.

She had not returned that passion. There had been no time. But something had been waking in her; something that could have been splendid, or could have died in its due and proper time. Not as now, cut off all untimely.

Her hand lay abandoned by her side. Its warmth was cooling. Her scent was fading, sinking into the dankness of death. He laid his nose in the stiffening palm.

A terrible ache closed jaws in his throat. He flung up his head, gulping air. His gullet spasmed. It was full of stones, and every one jagged, many-edged, grinding flesh to agony.

His heart thudded. Not stones. Words.

But he was mute.

Once. Once only might he speak. That was his geas.

The mage took no notice of him. They were all caught up in the young emir, in his great show of love and loss.