Devil's Bargain (9 page)

That was her own doing. When she had given Richard the gift of healing, after Arsuf, part of her had gone with it. She had not thought of that when she did it, nor had it troubled her unduly since. But with knowledge of magic had come power, and with power had come sensitivity. What had been barely noticeable before was painfully obvious now. Saphadin’s presence made it immeasurably stronger.

The two of them were like words on papyrus, all their thoughts drawn as clear as if with brush and ink. Richard would have the other captured and held—with no animosity toward him, but in retaliation for the sultan’s trickery. “You were a diversion,” he said in a low growl, stopping and spinning to face the lord Saphadin. “You blinded me with pretty words while your brother wrought havoc.”

Mustafa’s voice was soft and characterless, rendering the French into Arabic. It did nothing to weaken the force of the king’s words.

Saphadin set down the cup, folded his hands, and said in the same doubled fashion, “If I truly had meant to blind you, I would have seen to it that no word of my brother’s actions reached you until the city was ground into the dust. Surely you expected something of the sort?”

Richard’s only answer was a snarl, which Mustafa forbore to interpret. People were standing about as they always did in the vicinity of kings, but none of them was doing anything useful. Either they simply stood and stared, or they gathered in clots and clusters, arguing ferociously. They all kept well away from the king.

All but one. Hugh of Burgundy was as close to a king as the French still had in Outremer. He left a knot of his countrymen, none of whom appeared to take notice of his absence, and approached Richard with care but without shrinking or flinching.

Richard rounded on him. He stood his ground. “Sire,” he said. “If you’re thinking of riding off to Ascalon—”

“Of course I’m thinking of it!” Richard snapped at him. “That’s one of the great port cities of this kingdom, and the infidel is pounding it into the sand.”

“Certainly he is, sire,” Hugh said, “and that keeps him busy while we fortify the rest of this country against him.”

“Are you saying we can afford to lose Ascalon?”

Hugh’s expression remained calm, but Sioned thought she saw a flicker of relief. “I am saying, sire, that if we let ourselves be lured out of Jaffa before it’s fully defended, he’ll likely come round behind us and drive us into the sea. From here we can
make the assault on Jerusalem; that should be our goal. We shouldn’t let him turn us aside from it.”

“We need the coast,” Richard said, but his growl was considerably muted. “We’ll need Egypt if we win Jerusalem—and Ascalon is the gate of Egypt. But—”

“But, sire,” said Hugh, “first we must win Jerusalem.”

“We do need Ascalon,” Richard said. “But he can’t stay there for long, can he? He has to try to defend the Holy City. We’ll let him do as he pleases with Ascalon, until we force him to face us in Jerusalem.”

All the while the duke and the king spoke, Sioned watched Saphadin. He was deliberately silent, watching their faces as Mustafa spoke the words in his own language, but offering no commentary.

Maybe it was true that he had done nothing to prevent Richard from discovering what Saladin was doing, but Sioned would not have wagered against his influencing the duke to play the voice of reason. Richard, it seemed, had the same thought: he turned abruptly, fixed a fierce blue glare on Mustafa, and said, “Out. Take him with you. Now.”

Mustafa bowed to the tiled floor. The lord Saphadin raised a brow but betrayed neither surprise nor offense. He bent his head to the duke and bowed to the king, and took his graceful leave.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

“N
o magic?”

The lord Saphadin was startled: he stiffened visibly, and his hand dropped to the hilt of his dagger. Sioned had followed him quietly out of the hall, then up to the top of the tower, where he stood for a long while, deep in thought.

Sioned knew a moment’s guilt for shocking him out of his reflections, but he was an infidel in an army of Christians. He should be on guard.

“You warned me to use no magic in the waging of war,” she said. “You said the laws of the Prophet forbade it. Have you decided to live by a different rule? Or do you call this waging peace?”

He did not try to pretend ignorance of what she meant. “I did nothing,” he said, “but encourage a man to say what was in his heart.”

“It served your purpose all too well,” she said.

“Naturally,” he said. “Can you fault me for helping my cause as I can?”

“Only if you allow me the same latitude.”

His brow rose. “So: was it you who saw to it that the news would come to your brother?”

He was baiting her. “You know I had nothing to do with that.”

He shrugged slightly. “We all do what we must. Your lessons—they go well?”

“It seems they do,” she said, though her lips were tight. “Are you trying to turn me against you? Is this your way of saying that you have to leave, and I have to stop?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I will go, yes, for a few days, a week—not much longer, I don’t think; just long enough for the king’s anger to cool. But that needn’t alter anything for you. If you go to the grove as always, you’ll find your teacher there, as always, no matter where in the world she may actually be.”

Sioned’s heart stopped, then began to beat hard. “Why?” she demanded. “Why give him a weapon against you?”

“Are you a weapon?” he asked her.

“I am if I must be.”

His smiled his sudden smile. “So you are. I haven’t forgotten our bargain. There will be time for you to keep your half of it, and I will continue, gladly, to keep mine. My lady Safiyah speaks very well of you. She’s seldom had a pupil so diligent, she says, or so talented.”

“She flatters me,” Sioned said.

“Safiyah never stoops to flattery,” said Saphadin.

“No,” Sioned admitted. “I don’t imagine she would.”

“Be at rest, then,” he said, “and have no fear: I’ll be back before you notice I’m gone. We’ll go on trying to avoid an open battle as we can, and I’ll be my brother’s voice in your brother’s camp.”

“Why?” she said. “Why do you keep your bargain? What profit do you gain from teaching me to use magic against you?”

“Is that what you’re learning?” he asked.

“The more I know, the more I can oppose you.”

“That is true,” he said without apparent anxiety, “but you’re a greater danger if you remain ignorant. Power needs discipline; magic requires knowledge. Talent festers if left untended.”

“I know,” she said, relaxing suddenly, letting go the prickles of her temper. “Gods help me, I do know.”

He leaned against the parapet, as if he too had released a deep knot of tension. “I think you see how it is here,” he said. “Many newcomers don’t, and some never do. Nothing is as simple as friend and enemy, Christian and Muslim, believer and unbeliever. The lines blur; the distinctions fade. Alliances form and re-form.”

Sioned stood very still. Did he know of Eleanor, then, and her pact with the Old Man of the Mountain?

If he did, he said nothing of it. He sighed and stretched, flexing a shoulder that moved a little more stiffly than the other. “For now we are allies, and I confess I’m glad of it. I hope we may never be such bitter enemies that we cannot take joy in the magic that we share.”

She bowed to that, to the grace of it, and the perceptible goodwill. He was a consummate diplomat, and maybe she was blinded by her own foolishness, but she thought—hoped—that he meant what he said.

He was gone for rather more than a week, but as he had promised, the path through the grove continued to lead to Safiyah’s tent and Sioned’s lessons. Sometimes Sioned heard odd sounds without, and had a strange sensation, as if she sat on both solid earth and the rocking, swaying bed of a wagon. Her stomach did not like that at all; but there was an exercise to settle it, a small magic that worked well and was simple to maintain.

“Living in several worlds at once,” Safiyah said, “can be disconcerting to say the least. But one grows accustomed to it. You already see with the eyes of men and spirits. Now you see how we lay world on world.”

“Not so much see,” Sioned said wryly, “as feel it in my rump. How many senses did you say there were?”

“Why, infinite numbers,” Safiyah said, “but for now, the mortal six will do well enough. Six senses, seven souls. You’ll master those. After that, we’ll see.”

She could be infuriatingly cryptic, but Sioned was learning to read her, a little, and to know when it was wise to be patient. She bent to the book that she had been reading, and willed the world to be steady beneath her. When she was done, she walked out of the tent into a grove of oranges outside of Jaffa.

Richard did not go to the rescue of Ascalon. Saladin continued to pull it down at his leisure, then went to Ramla and proceeded to do the same again. Richard sent scouts to spy on the sultan’s depredations, but himself stayed in Jaffa, fortifying it and plotting the campaign against Jerusalem.

The army, having rested and celebrated its victory, was growing bored. Pilgrims were flooding the port below the newly strengthened citadel, demanding to be fed and guided and entertained—and the ships that brought them proved irresistible temptation to homesick soldiers. A remarkable number reckoned that, having won Arsuf and taken Jaffa, they were done with their Crusade: “What’s Jerusalem to us? We fought a good war. We did our bit for God’s country. If we sail now, we’ll be home by winter, and well settled in by spring planting.”

Just when the trickle of deserters showed signs of swelling to a flood, a ship sailed in from Acre. It bore the usual cargo of foodstuffs, trade goods, and pilgrims, but it also carried a rare and deadly treasure: the king’s mother. She had his sister with her, and his queen, but they were dim and clouded stars to her great burning sun.

Richard, who had been out pursuing his favored pastime of hunting Turks, rode in at a headlong gallop with half a dozen heads jostling at his saddlebow. She had declined to set foot on shore until her son was there to offer her a proper greeting. He, who knew her well, brought his golden stallion to a rearing, clattering halt at the very end of the quay, vaulted from the saddle to the deck, and dropped to one knee in front of the queen.

A month in Acre had refreshed her remarkably. There was color in her cheeks and the faint curve of a smile on her lips, as
she stood looking down into her son’s face. “You look well,” she said.

“And you,” he said, grinning up at her. “You look splendid. When did you decide to come? Why didn’t you send a message? What—”

“All in good time,” she said, still smiling. “I hear you’ve rebuilt the citadel. Is there a place in it for me?”

“Always,” he said, taking her hands and kissing them. He sprang to his feet. “Come and see!”

He would have taken her on his horse if she would have allowed it, but between age and dignity she declined. He greeted his sister with a strong embrace and barely glanced at his queen, calling in a battlefield bellow for horses, litters, and escort for their majesties.

Sioned felt Eleanor’s coming like the approach of a fire, a searing heat on the boundaries of her magic. That great queen took in the prospects with a basilisk eye, had the clerks and the quartermasters summoned, and set to work contending with the army’s troubles.

Richard heaved a sigh—of relief, one could suppose. Sioned was considerably less glad. The desertions would stop and the army would find means to pay its troops; that went without saying. Eleanor’s iron will would make sure of that. But what else it might do—if she discovered what Sioned had been doing since she came to Jaffa . . .

For the moment the queen was thoroughly occupied with her son’s affairs. Sioned hoped to be as invisible as poor meek Berengaria—assisted by her duties in Master Judah’s service. But there was one meeting she had to see; one risk she had to take.

The lord Saphadin was gone nearer two weeks than one—time enough to see Eleanor arrive and settle in the city. He came back in no more or less state than he had been keeping since he became his brother’s particular envoy to Richard. His camp was pitched in the grove outside the walls, where
Richard’s men could watch him and his own men could mount their defenses. He raised his banner over his gold-tasseled tent, and came to Richard in the hour before the day’s meal, bringing with him a train of gifts for the queens as well as the king.

Sioned noticed those gifts. A pair of desert falcons for the king, and a pair of hunting hounds to match them, with gilded trappings. For Berengaria a bolt of silk embroidered with flowers. For Joanna a dozen golden pots in which grew roses from Damascus. And for Eleanor a necklace of gold and lapis and carnelian, hung with images that Sioned recognized. They were amulets of Egypt, charms against the evil eye, against demons, against curses and ill-wishings.

It was a beautiful thing, not vastly endowed with power, but he met the queen’s eyes as his servant presented it in its box of carved cedarwood. The fire of magic in him was heavily damped, so that if Sioned had not known better, she would have thought him a mortal man with a faint—a very faint—hint of power. Perhaps Eleanor suspected something: she searched his face as she accepted his gift, sitting in silence while the two queens and their ladies exclaimed over the pendant images of silver and gold and copper. He regarded her with a carefully bland expression, the expression of a seasoned diplomat, pleasant but opaque.

She lowered the lids over her eyes, bowed her head a degree, and said coolly, “I thank you for the gift, sir infidel.”

He bowed as a prince should to a queen. Richard, oblivious to the undertones, sprang up from the throne in which he had been holding audience. “My good friend! I’m glad to have you back again. Shall we give these gifts of yours a run before dinner, then? Come, let’s see if they’re as closely matched as you claim!”

He swept Saphadin away with him—with relief that was palpable, and grand good humor. Sioned had meant to efface herself as well, but curiosity held her there among the anonymous faces of the court. She was watching Eleanor.

The queen had moved to dismiss the page with the box, but in midmotion she paused. She beckoned instead, and took the
box into her lap, examining the charms and amulets one by one. The stones gleamed as she turned the necklace this way and that. There was something . . .

It was a message. The little sparks and flickers of magic strung together into a sense as clear as words. A warning:
Dare no dark magic here. Serve the light if you must serve any power. We are on guard against you.

Did she understand? That she understood something, Sioned could see. But she had not seen what Saphadin was—he had made sure of that.

She said nothing, gave no sign that would tell Sioned more. She beckoned to the page again and said, “Take this to the king’s treasury. Put it with the rest of his jewels.”

The boy obeyed her with alacrity, as pages learned to do under Eleanor’s tutelage. Sioned followed him, but not to retrieve the necklace. She had thinking to do, and questions that she meant to have answered. Richard would engage the lord Saphadin for the rest of that day, but Saphadin’s eldest wife would be where she always was when Sioned went seeking her. She would answer; that was her duty. Was she not a teacher?

Safiyah was not in the grove. The path that Sioned had walked every day led to a row of trees laden with ripening fruit. There was no sign that a tent had ever been pitched here.

Sioned refused to give way to frustration. The lord Saphadin’s camp was protected, which it had not been before. She could pass; she knew the spell that let her walk through without breaking the wards. They sang below the threshold of hearing; they would send word to the one who had cast them that she was in the camp.

There were no women here. Nor was there any message, any track that she could follow, to find her teacher.