Aidan bowed over the hilt of the iron sword. "I defer to the master's judgment." He paused-for a breath, two. "Will you make me a sword?"

"I will make you a sword," said Farouk.

15.

The message was brief and to the point. The prince from Rhiyana, if it pleased his highness, would accompany the Lord of Syria on a hunt.

"I like the way he puts it," said Aidan. "From Rhiyana. Is there no way in Arabic to say 'the Prince ofCaer Gwent'?"

"Not easily." Joanna ran her fingers through his hair. She could never get enough of its thickness or its fineness or its ravenwing sheen. "His messengers know something of your proper t.i.tle, at least. They do try to be courteous."

He turned his head in her lap, to meet her smile with a hard stare. "You had a hand in this."

"Do you object?"

His brows knit. "No." He did not say it quite as if he be- lieved it. "Mustafa is beside himself. An invitation from the sultan, all at once, and never a bribe sent or a chamberlain bought. What is the world coming to?"

"Women's rule." She traced the line of his cheek from brow to rigid jaw. "All I did was make friends with the Lady Ismat."

"And tell her about me."

"I hardly needed to. All the women know about you. If you were a woman and we men, you'd be a celebrated beauty."

146 His blush in the lamplight was as vivid as a banner. She let her finger continue its wandering way. He caught it. "Why do you let us even pretend to rule you?"

"Something has to occupy you while we contend with mat- ters of consequence."

He laughed unwillingly. "I wish I could scoff at you as any proper man would. That's a curse, you know: to perceive the truth."

"Poor love." She slid down into his embrace. There was no urgency in it, though he would be ready if she wanted him to be. As, now, she did not. His warmth was enough. "I wish I could go on the hunt," she said wistfully."You could wear boy's clothes."

"Who'd be deceived?" she said. "No; now's no time to shock the proprieties of Islam. I'll be good and wear my veil and keep the Lady Ismat company. She listens in on councils, you know.

There are rooms made for that, with rooms behind them, and hangings over the lattices between."

"And the sultan knows?"

"Of course. He asks his wife's advice. She's Syrian bom, and she's been in the palace since she was a child. There's little she doesn't know of how this kingdom is ruled."

He nodded slowly. "Logical. But strange. So strange . . ."

It took him a long while to understand why she laughed at him.

It was strange, Aidan insisted to himself as he joined the gathering at the westward gate of Damascus. No matter that he was not even a human man. He was half a Frank and all a foreigner, and dressed for it in this clear dawn, in the hunting gear of a knight in Outremer. The falcon that had come with the sultan's invitation rode hooded on his fist, calm in the tumult. Its falconer was an easygoing man, G.o.d and the sultan be thanked: he indulged a foreigner's eccentricity, and troubled neither bird nor prince with the intrusion of his presence.

"Sir Frank!"

Ishak's voice was unmistakable. After a jostling moment, its owner followed it, halting his desert pony beside Aidan's tall grey. He grinned up at the prince.

Aidan could not help but grin back. Since Earouk promised him a sword, Earouk's son had managed to spend as much time in Aidan's company as duty would allow. If not more, Aidan 147.

thought, replacing the grin with a frown. "Aren't you sup- posed to be waiting on your lord?"

"I am," said Ishak. "He sent me to look after you. It's not proper you should ride unattended."

Aidan's throat closed. The grey gelding ]ibbed; the falcon bated wildly, struggling against jesses and hood. Grimly Aidan set himself to calm them both. For long hours he could almost forget; then it would smite him to the heart. Gereint; Thibaut.

His own cruel folly.

The boy was beginning to be alarmed. Aidan made himself ease, though he could not smile. "I don't suppose you had anything to do with it," he said with creditable lightness.

"Well," Ishak admitted, "it was supposed to be Ali. I bought him off." He paused. "You never told me you were a prince.""You never asked."

"I suppose I should be more respectful."

"Why?"

"Your father was a king. Mine-"

"Yours is a king of smiths."

"I do," said Ishak carefully, "know the proper courtesies. For one of us. I want to be sure you know that. If I had known before ..."

"I'm glad you didn't." Aidan could smile again, rap Ishak lightly on the shoulder, startle a grin out of him. "There, now.

Shall we be equals?"

It was interesting to watch the boy's thoughts play across his face. Artisan's son and the son of a king. True believer and infidel Frank. "Equals," Ishak agreed without excessive reluc- tance.

There was more than a single boy in that company, and rather more than one greeting to acknowledge: a remarkable number, in truth, once Aidan was disposed to notice. No one seemed unduly angered by his presence or his very visible Frankishness. He was a guest; what he had been or what he would be, they did not for this moment choose to consider, Saracens did not know how to ride in ordered ranks. There were circles of precedence, centered on the emirs, that shifted and mingled apparently at will. A flurry marked the coming of the sultan. He rode with less attendance than any of his cap- tains: a kinsman or three, his huntsmen and his falconers with their charges, a handful of his guard in their sun-colored coats.

He himself was in black without mark of rank, his only disrinc- 148.

tion the golden inlay of his bridle, and the mare that wore it, a queen ofqueens of the line of Arabia.

His coming roused a cheer; the flash of his smile and the wave of his hand sent them all thundering through the gate.

The life's blood of Damascus was its river, the cool stream of the Barada that flowed down out of the mountains, and part- ing manifold fed the myriad wells and cisterns of the city. The hunt rode up its course, through the orchards heavy with fruit, past the pleasure houses of princes, round gardens awash in the fragrance of roses. The horses danced, fresh and eager in the rising morning; one of the riders burst into song, and others took it up. Even Aidan, once he was sure of it. He had been proud of his endurance in the city, that he could dwell there so long and never once break and run for the open sky; but now that he was set free, he was half mad with it. It was all he coulddo not to set heels to the gelding's sides and outrun them all.

Ishak anch.o.r.ed him. Ishak, whose every movement sparked memory of Thibaut. Ishak, who was no prey for an a.s.sa.s.sin's dagger, nor ever-before G.o.d-would be.

So anch.o.r.ed, Aidan rode well back in the company, singing when he was moved to sing, being princely pleasant to any who would speak to him. Most of the emirs, he knew. A Kurd of the sultan's nation; a Turk keeping well away from him; a Syr- ian or three. Two of them were almost princes: Masud, the Lady Ismat's brother, who looked little like his sister as Joanna had described her, a heavysct, ungraceful man afoot, but pure beauty ahorse; and Murhaf of Shaizar, the sultan's table com- panion, nigh as tall and nigh as narrow as Aidan, riding with a very old man to whom he offered a degree of respect astonish- ing in one so haughty. The old man rode well and easily, with the air of one who has spent his life in the saddle; his back was erect, his hand steady on the rein of his mare. Not only Murhaf treated him with deference: even the sultan, falling back once, greeted him as sheikh and father, and he seemed to accept both as his due.

They hunted rather differently here than in the west: with hawk and hound, yes, but also with cats, lean spotted cheetahs that rode to the hunt on the backs of iron-nerved horses.

Drummers rode before the hunters to flush the prey, whatever it might be-birds, rabbits and smaller beasts, a herd of gazelle that burst like winged things out of a thicket. Aidan barely remembered to fly his own falcon at first, for watching the.

149.

cheetahs. Delicate as they were, somnolent almost to insensi- bility, when they were let off their mounts they transformed into the swiftest and most deadly of hunters. Whatever they were loosed at, they brought down. Sometimes they had aid: the saker hawks that would fly at anything that drew breath.

The saker would strike the prey in the thickets; the prey would flee into the open; the cheetah would bring it down. Or the cheetah would spring upon it in the open s.p.a.ces, and it would escape, and the saker would pursue it into the reeds. Then the hawk would come back to the lure, the cheetah to its pillion; the hawk would wait in blood-red patience to be loosed again, the cheetah would return to the sleep which seemed to be its natural state.

Aidan's falcon, unhooded, screamed and struck at his gaunt- let. Hunt! it raged at him. Hunt!

He laughed and flung it into the air.

Chance and the pattern of the hunt divided the company, some cleaving to the river and its coverts, others venturing into the hills. Aidan found himself with Murhaf and the old man who must be his father, and Ishak, and their attendants andtheir falconers, and a hound or two. The drummers were all down by the river, likewise the cheetahs. It was quieter without them. The hounds led them away from the Barada, up the path of a streamlet that fed it: hardly more than a trickle in a stony bed, but the thickets about it were full of birds.

Aidan's bag filled quickly. His falcon was hardly tired; ap- peased but not sated by a mouthful of its last kill, it circled lazily, not hunting, simply riding the air. It was aware of Aidan, but not as it would be of a human man: as a power like wind and sun and the joy of the kill, riding with it, part of it.

Human speech came dim and strange. Words of stopping, resting, sharing water, apples from the orchards, a mouthful of bread.

Aidan wandered a little away from them, following his horse as it grazed. He drank from the stream, slaking the thirst that was his own, but the blunted edge of hunger was the falcon's.

He filled his eyes with sun and sky, his mind with the freedom of the air.

The falcon was tiring. Its temper, never sweet, had grown uncertain. It bethought itself of the widcncss of the world and the narrowness of its captivity, and remembered that no bond or creancc bound it, only the will of the one who flew it- 150 A dove burst out of cover below it, flaring fear. The falcon stooped upon it, drank its tenor with wicked delight, veered aside in the last hurtling instant. The idiot bird darted back into its tree, startling the whole flock into flight. The falcon chose at its royal leisure, sighted, plunged to the kill.

Aidan let it reed, bound lightly with it still, demanding noth- ing. The falcon quieted as it gorged; it yielded before it knew what it had done, raised its head to his approach, sprang to his fist. He gave it the gift of his pleasure, swifr and falcon-fierce.

The others had eaten and drunk and settled to rest. That it was for the old man's sake, they very well knew, and the old man as well as any. He did not, Aidan noticed, betray that he understood. That was wisdom. It was also kindness: Murhaf, no youth himself and contending with a wound gone bad and still barely healed, was in hardly better case than his father.

They greeted Aidan in their various ways, Ishak with guilt and a word about bread. Aidan shrugged it off. He sat in the s.p.a.ce they left for him, between Ishak and the old man. His falcon regarded them with a baleful eye. Their own birds waited in bound and hooded silence near the horses, with the falconers watching over them. Aidan stroked his falcon's back with a feather, gentling it. It settled; its eyes blinked shut.

Softly he shifted it to the perch that its falconer had set beside him. Unhoodcd, lightly jessed, content with its hunt and its full belly and his presence, it slid into a drowse.

"You are a falconer," the old man said.Aidan bowed his head. Murhaf, belated, a little irascible with his wound and his oversight, named them to one another. The old man was, indeed, his father: Usamah of the house of Munqidh in Shaizar. Usamah was hardly awed to greet a king's son of a country he had never heard of, although his courtesy allowed a modic.u.m of respect. It mattered rather more to him that Aidan knew how to hunt with falcons. "They know the art, then, in your country."

Which, his tone said, was as far away as the moon. Aidan swallowed a smile. "Vk have some small pretense to knowl- edge."

"Do you fly eagles?"

That was a test. Aidan's smite escaped its bonds. "Once.

When I was young and mad. I'd rather fly a good goshawk, or a gyrfalcon- The hunting's better, and the weight's less burden- some on the fist." 151.

"I used to hunt lions," said Usamah.

The others exchanged glances. The old man's mind was wan- dering, surety. Aidan, who knew better, said, "I went against a boar barehanded once."

"How long were you recovering?"

"A whole winter. The boar," said Aidan, "lived to a ripe age."

Usamah laughed. Age had thinned his voice, but it was still rich and deep. "No doubt you took revenge on the tribe of his sons."

"I tried," Aidan said. "Sometimes I succeeded."

"Ah," said Usamah: "we're all reckless in youth. I went after a serpent once, when it chose to make its nest in our house. In the inner court, mind you, amid the carvings of the portico: hardly a pleasure for anyone who walked beneath. It would sleep with its head hanging over the arch, looking like part of the carvings. When I had had enough of it, I went for a ladder and set it under the nest, with the snake watching every move I made, for though it was asleep its eyes were open, as serpents'

always are. Then, while my father watched and did his best not to upbraid me for a fool and so startle the beast, I went at its head with a little dagger. No room up there for a sword, you see, and I never thought of trying my archery. Its face was a bare elbow's length from my own, and as hideous as you may imagine. I sawed at the neck. The body whipped out and wrapped about my arm. And there we'were, swaying on the ladder, I sawing for my life, it coiling for its life, and just when I was sure that I would topple, head and body parted, and it was the snake who went down, and not I. It would have been fair justice had the ladder gone down with it and left me cling- ing to the carving, till the stone let go or my fingers did, and Ifell. But Allah was merciful. My father," said Usamah, "flayed me handsomely thereafter, for risking my neck in front of him."

"Would he have preferred that you do it out of his sight?"

Aidan inquired.

Usamah's eyes glinted. "I think he regretted that he had not thought of it first. I was a wild youth, but my father, given cause, could be wilder than I."

"Mine had trained himself out of it before I knew him, since he had to be king; but there were many who remembered what he had been before he was crowned. When I drove my tutors to distraction, they would console themselves with remember- 152 ing. 'Lathan was worse,' they would say. Until they learned not to do it in my hearing. I could never abide a rival in deviltry, even if it were my father."

"I should be stem," the old man said, "and speak of honor- ing one's elders."

"So you should, sir," said Aidan; "and I shall consider myself chastised."

"You are well-spoken," said Usamah.

"For a Frank," said Aidan.

"For a Frank," the old man conceded, "and for many a Mus- lim. I have had friends among your people. The best are as good as any man living. The worst are no worse than we, and sometimes less misguided. When I was in Jerusalem on an er- rand for my lords, I was suffered to do my devotions in the little mosque, the Father Mosque that lies in the shadow of the Dome of the Rock. A Frank who was new come from the west saw me praying south toward Mecca, and could not abide it; he lifted me bodily and flung me down with my face to the cast.

'7%v is how to pray,' he said to me, not at all with hostility but as if he wished to teach me the error of my ways- Nor would he hear aught in opposition, until my friends of the Temple came to escort him out. They were most apologetic, and most cour- teous."

"Templars?" Aidan was startled.

"Templars," said Usamah, much amused.

Aidan shook his head. "No one in my country would ever believe it. It's so very simple there. Enmity pure, without taint of expedience. Or of plain courtesy."

"So is it often here. I had occasion to leam otherwise. Men are men, in the end, whatever their iaith."

"Do you regret your battles, then?"Usamah's eyes were clouded with age, but the fire behind them was as fierce as a boy's. "I do not. War is the one great test of a man. Without it he is but a woman, or a woman's toy- And you, king's son? Are you a child of peace?"

Aidan laughed, full and free. He had to pause to breathe, to muster words. "Your pardon, sir. It is only . . . my people say that I am too well named. I'm the fire in the dry wood, the hawk of battle. For that there was no war at home, I came here seeking one."

"Have you found it?" 153.

Aidan lowered his lids over his eyes, lest the glamour fail and bare the wild green light. "I have found it."

"May G.o.d give you good fortune," said Usamah.

While they spoke, Aidan had been aware of hoofs on the stones of the watercourse, the ring of bit and bridle bell, the approach of a small party riding without haste. He looked up unsurprised as two men in golden coats came up side by side, and behind them one in black, with one lone falconer. The hounds leaped up baying; the huntsman whipped them down.