Nine White Horses (13 page)

“Delusion,” said the sorcerer.

“Better that than the one which you prepared for me.” She
held out her hands. “Take me now. Do your will. I knew what I did, and I knew
how I would pay. I regret only that this child’s stupidity ended it so soon.”

Now at last Ghazalah saw anger in the sorcerer’s eyes. “A
fool and a fool are well matched. See, now, for what you squandered your honor
and your purity.” He wound his fingers in Shams’ hair, dragging him struggling
to his feet. A poor creature the boy looked, slender as he was, fair-skinned as
a girl, with a girl’s tumbled curls. But he was man enough to fling himself at
his captor, snarling in rage.

The man held him off with contemptuous ease. “A vicious
little cur. Has he teeth?” Shams snapped; the sorcerer laughed. “So, then! You
choose your destiny. By the angels of hell, so mote it be.” He smote his hands
together. Shams dwindled between them, darkened, and shrank. His snarling never
abated. He sank his teeth in the sorcerer’s foot.

The sorcerer cursed and kicked him loose. He lunged.

Melisende caught him before he could impale himself on the
sorcerer’s sword, and held him wriggling and struggling, half mad still with
rage. His snarling rose to a crescendo and died. He stilled, panting, lips
wrinkled over sharp white teeth.

He was a very pretty dog, for all of that. A pup still, but
well grown. His coat was glossy black, long and curling. His eyes were large
and brown and growing frightened as the truth sank through his temper.

“A definite improvement,” said the sorcerer, “and, I think,
an acceptable compromise. You may keep him if you choose. He should be rather
more faithful in this shape than in the other.”

Melisende’s face wore no expression at all. She set the pup
down with care, and drew back from him. “This is unspeakable,” she said.

“It is just.”

“Not to a Muslim.”

The sorcerer shrugged. “He chose it, not I. Do you want him?
Or shall I turn him out?”

Ghazalah poised to spring. Melisende struck the sorcerer
with all her force. While he reeled, astonished, she knelt in front of Shams. “I
refuse to pity you,” she said. “You earned it too well. But I would not see you
torn to pieces by the dogs of Cairo.” She gathered him up and rose. “Take us,”
she bade the sorcerer.

o0o

Ghazalah stumbled into the chamber. It was empty of aught
but air, and that air acrid with the stench of brimstone. Of her brother, of
his ladylove, of the Christian sorcerer, not even a shadow remained.

She circled slowly. Feet hardened to hooves. She stamped;
the floor rang. She cried her rage in a mare’s piercing scream.

“Lady,” said a voice. “Lady, what—”

She wheeled, half rearing.

The stranger bowed before her as a prince would, with grace
that touched her even in her madness. He was young, and he was larger by far
than men were wont to be in Egypt. His hair was dark but his skin was fair; his
face was more strong than delicate, and yet in its way it was very good to look
at. He looked the very image of a Frank.

He leaped from the path of her lunge. She veered, skidding,
and toppled down the stair.

Bruised, winded, and unwillingly human, she lay at the
bottom and struggled to gather her wits. The young man bent over her, deeply
concerned and not at all surprised. He did not mar his manly beauty as most
Franks did, by shaving his beard; it was cut becomingly short. His eyes were
grey as glass. “Lady,” he said, and his voice was a man’s, and yet she knew it.
“You frightened me.”

Painfully she sat up. His hands aided her; she suffered them.
“I thought you were one of them,” she said.

His head came up; his nostrils flared. Still, he laughed, if
not altogether in mirth. “My mother’s face is my blessing and my curse. Yet
surely I do not smell like a Frank.”

“You smell like a stallion.” With him to lean on, she could
rise. She had harmed nothing of consequence.

She knew of modesty; she had learned the uses of garments in
nocturnal wanderings. Now she began to understand what it was that made women
strive so endlessly to cover their bodies. His eyes made her think of Ramadan.
A bitter fast, a purging of the soul. And after it, all the sweeter for the
month’s denial, a feast.

Stallions never had enough of what they were created for.
Even stallions who were born to princedoms of the Jinn. She snatched the cloak
from about his shoulders and wrapped herself in it, and set foot again upon the
stair.

His hand stopped her. “Where are you going?”

“Back,” she said.

“To what? The sorcerer is gone. In his absence I am free to
wear my native shape. And you, O pearl of beauty . . .”

Had she been a mare, she would have kicked him. “You are a
fool. Where is the freedom which you so yearned for?”

“All about me,” he answered her. “The Seal of Suleiman ibn
Daoud—may he rest in peace eternal and far from any of the Jinn—is broken above
my stall, as clever as I was in tricking the stableboy to knock down the bat’s
nest behind it. There remains a little matter of revenge upon a sorcerer, but
that is nothing; he will wait until I please to take him. You, however, O light
of my heart—”

She seized him with force enough to stagger him. “You know?
You know where he is?”

His arms were delighted to find themselves about her. “How
not?” He bent his head to steal a kiss.

She bit him. “Where? Where is he?”

He licked the bright ichor from his lip and smiled, “O spirited!
What does he matter to you? He is but a dog of an infidel.”

She laid him flat. While he sprawled, astonished, she sat on
him and seized his beard. “Where is the sorcerer?”

“Such fire,” he sighed. Her fingers tightened; he winced. “Lady,
have pity on a poor lover! He is nowhere that can matter to you.” A twist won a
yelp, and taught him the beginning of wisdom. “He is in Syria, in the fortress
called Krak.”

She frowned. “Krak?”

“Krak des Chevaliers, they call it: Krak of the Knights of
the Hospital of Jerusalem. Did you not know? He wore the eight-pointed cross
often enough within these walls. He is a master of the darker arts, but he has
a master of his own; it was to that one that he went. He seemed most pleased,
despite the failure of his guardianship.” Barak did his best to look engaging,
even with her fist in his beard. “Can it be that you had a hand in it? Or,
perhaps, a hoof?”

She glared at him. “I am not an idiot. My brother, on the
other hand. . . .” It smote her with the fullness of its force. “O
Allah, our father will die of the shame!”

“Your—” He seemed, for once, surprised. “That poppet was your
brother?”

He howled. She hauled him up by his wounded chin and backed
him to the wall. “That poppet,” she spat at him, “is the creature I love best
in the world. Go, mount your mares, futter your doxies. I have battles to
fight.”

“Against every mage in Krak?”

“Against every mage who ever was, if so God wills it.” She
dropped his cloak and her humanity, and left him to his foolishness.

Hooves thundered behind her. She lashed out with heels and
teeth, but al-Barak had set himself well out of reach of either. “Lady!” he
cried. “Lady, will you wait?” She had no time, and being a mortal mare and no Jinniyah,
no voice to speak. She eyed the garden wall. High, even for her desperation.
Perhaps, after all, the gate . . .

He was there, barring it, dark in the dawn. “O beautiful,”
he said, “do you forget what I am? I have magics beyond the measure of men. I
lay them at your feet.”

Feet, indeed, since she needed human speech to curse him.

He shook her curses from his mane. “O pearl of my desire, I
mean no less than I say. My magics are yours. Speak, and I shall serve you.”

“At what price?”

“Price?” Even as a stallion, he could look exactly like a
merchant in the bazaar: the image of innocence impugned. “Did I speak of
prices? I love you. I desire only to give you joy.”

And to get his teeth into her nape, and another portion of
his anatomy into another part of her altogether. Her shoulders twitched at the
thought. “Only that, my lord?”

“With all my heart,” he said.

“All males are idiots,” she observed. He regarded her, unoffended,
all perfectly besotted. “A bargain, then, O prince of fools. Help me to win
back my brother. In return—” His ears pricked; his body yearned toward her. “In
return, you have your vengeance on the sorcerer, and my leave to seek my favor.”

He snorted; his ears flicked back. “Only to seek your favor?
Lady, you are cruel.”

“I do not haggle,” she said. “There is the bargain. Take it
or leave me. Time is passing.”

Slowly he bowed his head. “I will aid you, if through it I
may woo you, O heart of stone and fire.”

The voice that spoke the last was a man’s. He cast his robe
about her; he spoke a word of power. The world whirled away.

o0o

Even in dreams Ghazalah could not have conceived of Krak.
There had never been another fortress like it, nor would ever be again. It
reared from its bleak and barren crag, a mountain of stone raised as by the
hands of giants, vast beyond imagining. She looked up at its sheer walls and
despaired.

She turned on Barak. “Why are we here? Why are we not
within?”

He looked, when she paused to notice, rather paler than his
wont. He lay back against the rock of their concealment and essayed a smile.

Her glare quelled him. His eyes lowered; he bit his lip. For
all his size and his palpable power, he seemed suddenly very young.

“Well?” she snapped. “Out with it!”

He looked almost abashed. “It seems . . . I
am strong, my lady, have no doubt of that. It seems that these of the Hospital,
taken together, are stronger than I. There are walls of magic as well as of
stone; they rise to keep out any stroke of sorcery.”

She looked up again. The walls stared down, impregnable. “Of
course,” she said to them, “you would be guarded.” She considered herself, with
ample help from a pair of cloud-grey eyes. “You can, I hope,” she said to their
owner, “clothe me as befits a guest in a sorcerer’s hall.”

He stared at her, for once without desire. “In— Lady! Are
you mad?”

“I have to get in,” she said. “What better way than direct?”

“They will kill you.”

“Allah will defend me.” She rose, shaking out her tangled
hair. “Clothe me,” she commanded him.

His lips set. He rose unsteadily, drew a breath, stretched
out his hands. She tensed to slap them away, but paused. A breath of wind
caressed her, distant kin to the whirlwind that had brought them here. Warmth
followed it, the caress of silk, the touch of unseen hands upon her hair.

She looked down in wonder. He had clothed her like a queen, in
robes of sublimest splendor, sunset-colored, broidered with gold, sparked with
pearls and the fire of opal. She touched the pearl-woven coils of her hair; she
turned her wrist to marvel at the many bracelets of gold. She essayed a step,
and started. Bells tinkled as she moved. She spun.

The bells sang; silk billowed, whispering. She laughed for
pure delight.

Barak looked like a man smitten with a mace. His wits, however,
had not abandoned him entirely: the dark robes with which his magic clothed him
had melted into air. He wore the livery of a mamluk, a soldier-slave in mail
and sunset silk, and on his breast a stallion rampant.

He would do, if he could keep his eyes to himself. She tossed
her head, imperious. “Come,” she said.

She gave her heart no time to falter. She set foot upon the
steep and stone-paved road; she walked up it with all the pride of a queen and
all the lightness of an Arab mare.

The walls loomed above her, poised as if to fall. The sky was
pitiless. Only her courage sustained her; her courage, and the silent presence
at her back.

o0o

There were guards at the gate, men as large as Barak, larger
yet in mail and helms, blazoned with the cross of the infidels. The power that
breathed forth from them was cold and strange, like a wind from a tomb.

Ghazalah stumbled. Barak was there, catching her, lingering
even here, before the faceless helms. She withered him with a glance and strode
forward anew. The air seemed to cling, to drag her back, to tangle in her
laboring feet.

She set her teeth and persevered. Barak’s breath was loud behind
her. He felt it more than she, or bore it with less fortitude, but he uttered
no complaint, clinging grimly to his place.

The gate was open, the portcullis raised. She knew a trap
when it gaped to swallow her: a trap of her own choosing. She faced that maw
with its fangs of iron, and raised her voice. It was high, but it carried,
ringing in the cavern of the gate. “Peace be upon this house and all who dwell
in it!”

The guards did not move. The portcullis did not come crashing
down. Bravely, but with a twitching in the center of her back, Ghazalah entered
into Krak.

When mailed men closed in about her, she was almost glad.
They did not touch her, nor did they compel. They simply guided. Through court
and hall and court again, deeper and ever deeper into the stronghold’s heart.
No gardens grew here, no green, no hint of softness. It was all stone, all
silent but for the ring of mail-shod feet, and the sweet song of the bells
about her ankles, and far away a deep-voiced chanting.

Ghazalah was not afraid. She had gone beyond it. The sun had
set on a creature of sublime simplicity, a mare who on occasion could walk as a
woman. In one night all that simplicity was shattered. And here was she, in the
heart of the unbelievers’ magic, and at her back a Jinni prince.

Shams al-Din had a great deal to answer for. When she found
him again; if she could win him back to human form.

o0o

Fired with both love and temper, she pierced the heart of
Krak. There, perforce, she halted. A long cold hall, all stone. Rank on rank of
mailed men with crosses on their breasts. A weight of power and of enmity that
bore her down and down, crushing her to the earth.