But there was something he knew, which she well might not. Wards without constant living guard could be pa.s.sed. Not easily, not simply, but it could be done. Once he had pa.s.sed through, if he was skillftil, and strong enough in power, the wall would rise again, but he would be within it, and perhaps beyond the ken of the power that had raised it.

He smiled slowly. He was terrifying his poor lads; but it was nothing that they would understand. He touched his nervous horse to a walk, soothing it with hand and voice.

They were going almost due north on a road that had been old when Rome was young; but Rome had leveled and paved it, and it had endured a thousand years- The ban wanted to nudge them westward; Aidan clenched his mind against it, turned his thoughts from the end of the hunt, focused them only on what was directly before him. The cautness eased. He cased with it, almost into a drowse-""

Hoofs clattered on stone- Aidan tensed anew. Timur, who had ranged ahead, careened over the hill and skiddcd to a stop.

He was all but dancing in the saddle. "Riders' A whole army of them. In armor. With lances."

"Pranks?" Aidan asked, although he knew.

"Franks," said Timur.

The mamluks drew together. One or two drew swords. The Turks reached for their bows.

Aidan stopped them all. "No," he said. "No fighting."

It was slow, for some of them. They had forgotten what their master was.

He took the lead, with Arslan in the rear to ensure that swords stayed sheathed and bows unstrung. Not hastily, not slowly, they mounted the hill.

Riders, indeed. Riders in black, with white crosses on shields and shoulders. A pair of Knights Hospitaller with novice- squires and a company of men-at-arms. They had seen Timur: they were in marching order, the knights helmcd for battle. At 252 sight of Aidan, the knight who led raised a hand. The Franks halted, barring the road.

Aidan brought his own company to a halt, mildly startledand beginning, dangerously, to be amused. If his mamluks had forgotten that he was a Frank, so had he forgotten how he would seem to a knight of Outremer: a Saracen in a pack of Saracens, he in Bedu robes, they in their scarlet livery, as exotic as a flock of c.o.c.k pheasants; and arrogant with it, to ride armed on the open road where the Frank was lord.

The Hospitaller called out in appalling Arabic, his voice booming in the still air. "Who are you? Why are you riding here?"

Aidan rode forward, waving his mamluks back. They obeyed, ready to leap at the slightest hint of threat. The Franks tensed.

He kept his hands well away from his weapons, his face quiet, his laughter tight bound behind his eyes. He spoke in his most exquisite langue d'oc, as sweetly as ever he had wooed his lady in Carca.s.sonne. "A good day to you, reverend brother, and to all your company."

If the Hospitaller was shocked to find knightly courtesy in a wolf of the desert, he did not pause to indulge it. He shifted to his native tongue with evident relief. His accent was no purer than Aidan's own. "A day is only as good as the man who lives it. Who are you, and what business have you in our lands?"

"I am," said Aidan, "a middling fair Christian and a knight of the west who hopes to become one of Jerusalem, and if I trespa.s.s, I pray you forgive me. I had thought this road open to any who has need of it."

"That depends on the nature of the need."

Aidan smiled. "Have no fear, reverend brother. It's nothing to do with you or yours."

"You can hardly expect me to believe that."

They were all, spokesman and silent company, glaring at Aidan's escort, which glared back with fine fierceness.

He smiled wider. "Ah," he said. "I see. Your pardon, sir.

These will do you no harm. They are mine; they'll do as I bid them."

"Since when," the Hospitaller asked acidly, "has a pack of Saracens done the bidding of a Christian knight?"

"Since the sultan in Damascus gave them to me," Aidan an- swered.

A mutter ran through the ranks- Aidan stiffened at the import of it. "Recreant, you think me? 253.

And have you yourselves never entered alliance with the House of Islam?"

"You would," said the Hospitaller, "do well to come withme. If you are indeed all that you say, then you may offer proof to those better fit to judge than I."

And if not, it was clear, he would be dealt with as he de- served.

He glanced back. His mamluks watched, beast-taut, beast- wary. Only one or two of them could understand what had been said, but they all knew tones and faces, and they knew hostility when they felt it. The Hospitallers waited in patience that bade fair to break, and soon- Behind, where they would take him, was their castle.

It lay within the ban, near a road that ran nigh straight to Masyaf. Aidan considered the weight and number of human minds about him, and the power that was in them to veil his strangeness. It might, just possibly, be enough.

He sent a prayer of thanks to the good angel who had set the Hospitallers on his path, and said, "I would be pleased to ac- cept your hospitality."

They took it for irony. He lacked the will to enlighten them.

He let them fall in about his smaller company, holding his h.e.l.lions back from the edge of violence, ruling them with word and glance. Timur was bold enough to say what they all thought, fiercely, just above a whisper: "But we're prisoners!*'

"Guests," said Aidan, princely certain, "and allies."

None of them believed it. But they held their peace. They had not been disarmed, which they should have noticed- They were simply prevented from going anywhere but where the Hospitallers led.

And that was frill upon the ban, blind to it, unmoved by it.

Aidan, trapped in their midst, could not escape it. He was a straw in a millrace; and no matter that he willed to pa.s.s the wall. All the force of his power was not enough, even quelled, even buried deep in human minds, even damped almost to oblivion. He was not strong enough. He was not skilled enough. He would break. He would bolt. He would- Just precisely when he knew that he could not endure it, when it seemed that his brain would boil in his skull and his blood rum molten in his veins, the wall stretched and wavered and, for the flicker of a moment, broke.

He was past it. He swayed heavily against the pommel of his Saddle, and clung there for a long moment, dizzy and sick.

254 His warriors were staring, beginning to be afraid. He drew himself up with an effort, composed his face. Behind them all, the ban had restored itself. Nothing came hunting; no sign in earth or sky betrayed that the wielder of the wards had marked their breaking.

He laughed as much for defiance as for joy, and touched hisgelding to a canter.

He would happily have shed his escort and taken the straight road to Masyaf, but some last remnant of circ.u.mspection kept him where he was. Night was coming; his horse was tired. As, for a very surety, was he. What matter if he rested in camp or in a Hospitaller stronghold?

To Arslan and his companions it was Hisn al-Akrad, Castle of the Kurds; but to the Franks who surrounded him, Krak des Chevaliers, Krak of the Knights, that warded the marches of Tripoli. It loomed on its crag, wall and tower, rampart and keep, vast and impregnable. Nothing in the west could match it; in the east, none that Aidan knew.

It was beautiful against the pitiless sky, beautiful and terrible.

But Aidan could have no fear of it. It was not Masyaf.

His mamluks tried to imitate his calm. Even through the vast echoing gate. Even in the courtyard which could have swallowed a whole castle in Francia, where they must leave their horses and, at last, surrender their weapons. Aidan let a grim-faced sergeant disarm him and search him, saying with hard-won lightness, "Mind where you put these. I'll be want- ing them back."

"That's for the castellan to say," the sergeant said. He handed Aidan's daggers and his sword to a lay brother, and turned toward his commander. "He's clean, sir."

The knight nodded. His heim was off, his coif on his shoul- ders, baring a weathered, ageless face, greying hair cropped short round the tonsure, beard grown long after the custom of the warrior monks. Here in his own place, among his own people, he could ease a little, allow himself to wonder if per- haps, after all, this oddity of the road spoke the truth. "You'll come with me," he said, still giving no honor and no t.i.tle, but offering no enmity, either.

Aidan did not move. "Alone?"

The knight frowned slightly. "One other, then."

"And the rest?"

The frown deepened. "They'll be looked after." 255.

"As guests?"

Aidan walked a thin and dangerous line, and he knew it. But it seemed that the Hospitaller saw no profit in anger- "As guests," he said. "Until you are proven otherwise."

Aidan inclined his head to courtesy. In Arabic, to his mamluks, he said, "I'm going with this man. You are guests; conduct yourselves as such, or youll answer to me. Raihan, you come."He was aware, as they were, that his words and their obedi- ence were watched and weighed. For that, they bowed all to- gether, with grace and pride and no little defiance, and went where Hospitaller servants led them. Raihan stayed, wanting to cry his unworthiness, but too proud to do it before so many prankish faces. Aidan laid an arm about his shoulders and grinned at him. "Well, younger brother. Shall we show these people what we're made of?"

That stiffened his back for him. He would never forget that he had failed of his guard when he was most needed, but he was learning to forgive himself. Aidan smiled, satisfied. He let the boy fall back to the guardsman's place, a pace or two be- hind, and followed their guide into the inner places of the castle.

Eastern custom held even here, where G.o.d's knights stood guard against the Saracen. Although ihe austerity of bare stone and dim-lit pa.s.sages was all of the monastery and the west, there were signs of a gentler world: a carpet, a hanging, a chapel with an altar cloth of Byzantine silk. Aidan was offered a bath, food and drink, fresh garments. That they were a test, he well knew. He greeted the wine with heartfelt joy, warned Raihan from the pork roasted in spices, left him to choose bread and mutton and clean water. But Raihan had let the servant dress him as a Frank, taking a wicked pleasure in it, which he shared with his master. Aidan had seen young lords in Jerusalem who wore cone and hose less convincingly than this, and with less grace.

When they had eaten, they began to test the limits of their freedom. They were not, it would seem, either prisoners or guarded, unless the silent and ubiquitous servant counted as such. Raihan tried the door; the servant watched him carefully, but made no move. Boldly then he strode into the pa.s.sage. His steps receded, light but firm, and no hesitation in them.

He came back with escort. A Hospitaller knight, again, but not the one who had brought them to Krak. At first Aidan did 256 not know him. It was a long black while since a knight of the Hospital had come to see Gereint laid in his tomb.

He paused just within the door, with Raihan ahead of him, black-browed and forbidding. Carefully, in Arabic, he said, "Lord prince. I thought it might be you."

"Brother Gilles," Aidan said, smiling in spite of himself.

"You were expecting me?"

The Hospitaller eased visibly, and met smile with smile.

"Not, perhaps, in such company."

Aidan laughed aloud. "I'B wager not! I was shocked that your order would treat with Saracens. And here am I, master of a pack of them.""That's a story I'd be pleased to hear," said Gilles, "if you were minded to tell it."

"It's simple enough," Aidan said- "I learned the virtue of necessity. The a.s.sa.s.sin has been my teacher; the sultan, my fellow scholar. He gave me what his own necessity forbade him to use. I was," said Aidan, "taken aback, to say the least."

"No more than I, when I heard that one had come who could only be yourself, but in the guise of a Saracen emir.

That's a long summer's journey, even for the Prince of Caer Gwent."

"It has been . . . very long." Aidan had not meant to sound so deathly weary. "Thibaut is dead. Did you know that?"

Gilles nodded somberly.

"A little while ago, in Aleppo, his sister was struck and nearly killed. That she lives is no credit to my guardianship. But I have seen the face of the a.s.sa.s.sin. I may even, however feebly, have left my mark on her."

"Her?" Gilles wondered, visibly, if Arabic had failed one or both of them.

Aidan bared his teeth and spoke in the lanyw d'oc. "Yes, Brother. A woman. A female, at least; a she-demon with a silver dagger. Haven't you heard of the Slave of Alamut?"

"A legend," said Gilles: "a terror of the night."

"A very real one. I hold two lives to her account; the third, G.o.d willing, will be the death of her."

Gilles said nothing.

"Yes," said Aidan. "Yes, she is like me. My fotly, that I would not believe; that I saw her, and knew her, and never dreamed that she would be the death that stalked me." He was breath- ing hard; his hands were fists. Grimly he mastered himself.

"She is older than I, and stronger. She guards her lair well; for 257.

long and long she has kept me from it. And yet, perhaps. G.o.d has remembered me. He sent your brother in the cross to find me, even as I contemplated battering down the walls of magic with which she barred the road to Masyaf Alone I was never strong enough. In the company of your brothers, warded by their humanity, I pa.s.sed the wall. Now I am within it, and the way is clear. I owe you and yours a mighty debt for that."

Gilles took rime to comprehend all of that: rime which Aidan was glad to give, for it freed him to sink down, weary beyond desperation. At length the Hospitaller said, "There is no debt but what is G.o.d's. I offered you what aid the order may give; it was offered freely, without price. Even, in the test, without our knowing that we gave it.""And yet it was given. I shall remember." So he had said before, in the courtyard in Aqua Bella, ages ago in the soul's time.

"You expect us to let you go," said Gilles.

Aidan raised his head. The Hospitaller flinched from the tight in his eyes. "Can you hold me?"

"Mostly likely not," Gilles said. "Yet for your life's sake, we might try."

"No," said Aidan. "You fear that, after all, I may kindle a spark that will scar even you in your castles on the marches of Islam. What surety can I give you, that in this I hazard myself alone?"

"Yourself, and twelve mamluks of the Syrian sultan."

"They arc part of me. I guard them as myself."

Gilles drew a slow breath. "I am not the ranking officer here.

Simply a brother of the order, who thought that he might know an answer to the riddle of the Frank who seemed a Sara- cen. The castellan is minded to keep you here under guard until you should prove yourself no threat to us or to our castle.

I can speak for you, but I must tell the truth. I think that you go to your death."

"That will be as G.o.d wills. I have no great desire to die, you may believe that. The death which I desire is another's alto- gether."

A knight of the Hospital could indeed believe that, and un- derstand it. But Gilles, who was monk as well as warrior, said slowly, "Revenge is hardly a Christian sentiment."

"Then my confessor shall hear of it when I am done."

Gilles shook his head in wry surrender. "A very perfect 258 prince, and Christian enough for the purpose. Have you quire corrupted your Saracens?"

"Not noticeably," Aidan said.

They watched Raihan, who, forgotten, had begun his sunset prayer. After a moment Gilles said, "Will you hear vespers with us?"

Aidan bowed acquiescence.

He had not heard an office of his own faith since he crossed the Jordan, nor stood and knelt and prayed in the company of monks in rime out of mind. They were all men here, all deep voices in the chanting. No women, ever; no boys. Those had no place on the sword's edge.This was an army in the midst of war. And yet the words were the same as they had ever been, words of rest and of peace.

Aidan took no comfort in them. He had gone too far; he had suffered too much. For him there would be no peace until the a.s.sa.s.sin was dead.

The Hospitallers ended their worship and withdrew from the chapel. Aidan remained in the stall to which Gilles had guided him. Gilles had gone out with the rest. A young brother extinguished the candles one by one, all but the vigil lamp over the altar. Aidan, in the shadows, he seemed not to see. He bowed low to the altar, straightened, yawned audibly, and departed.