A Wind in Cairo (31 page)

A magus did not need eyes to see or voice to speak. Clear in Khamsin's soul was the truth. He could do this. Or he could not. He had paid in full the price of his transgression. This was free choice.

The words were there, edged in anguish. This body was never made to contort itself in human speech. But it could speak. It could say anything it chose to say.

Reveal his name, his sin, his expiation. Cast himself upon his father's mercy.

Choose one of them for the sacrifice.

Say, “I am not a man. I do not know what love is. But I will die for her.”

It was not a human voice. It was the voice which one might expect of a stallion, hoarse and shrill at once, deep in the chest and high in the nose, and thin with the pain of it. Yet it was clear, and it rang in the silence.

His geas had said nothing of laughter, or he would have laughed at the circle of fallen jaws. They had all thought they knew what magic was. Until they saw it plain; and then it was plainly impossible. A horse speaking. In Arabic. With the accent of a Cairene prince.

The Hajji, who knew magic, spoke softly in the midst of it. “Do you know what you offer?”

Khamsin swallowed. The word-stones rolled, tearing. “I know.”

The Hajji's eyes probed deep, searching. Khamsin met them as best he could. He did not try to pretend that he was unafraid, or that he was glad, or that he wanted to die for dying's sake. It was the only thing he could do. She would grieve when she knew, if she woke to know, but she would heal. And no guilt would sear her, ever, that a man had died to give her life. A beast…that was fitting. Were not beasts made to serve mankind?

The Hajji sighed. Khamsin's mind roiled. Grief; relief; rage. He could not refuse. He must not.

Mirth flickered, small and mad. All of them felt exactly the same. They all saw the perfection of Khamsin's logic. The mingling of scents made him sneeze.

The thin old hand cupped his muzzle, stroking lightly, tenderly. “O my lord,” said the Hajji. “O valiant. You are no less an idiot than you ever were.”

“A better grade of idiot,” said Khamsin. “Perhaps. O my lord.”

“Perhaps,” said the Hajji. He smoothed the mane on Khamsin's neck. “I accept your sacrifice.”

The words were all gone, every one. He was all lost. Trapped, tricked, cozened; and too much a fool to be sorry that he had done it.

And he could not even tell the man to hasten.

The Hajji dragged it out interminably. First they all had to say the sunset prayer. Then they had to fetch the tools of the Hajji's magic. The sultan left, all unwilling, to be sultan. The lesser lords eyed one another and growled in their throats. They wanted to tie Khamsin. The Hajji, most cruelly kind, prevented them. If he had been tied, he would have had no choice. He would not have had to battle with every ounce of will and strength, the urge to turn and bolt.

None of them lingered near him. He was marked. With uncanniness; with sacrifice.

The magus made his preparations. They were odd, even for magic. He closed the makeshift tent within the circle arcane. He circled that circle with men puzzled and doubtful and frankly hostile: holy men all, skilled chanters of the Koran. They were, when bidden, to perform their office, turn and turn about, continuously, from the magic's beginning through dawn and day and dusk to dawn again.

Then the magus told the emirs what they must help him to do. Bolster the spell with prayer. See him blood the sacrifice. Aid him in flaying it; in burning the body on a pyre of rare and enchanted woods; in wrapping Zamaniyah in the hide, and raising over her a true tent with walls and sealed door, and leaving her there alone in the circle and chanting, while the magus wielded his power.

“This is mummery!” al-Zaman burst out in anger. “Give me my daughter's body. Let me bury it in dignity. Not in this mockery of magic.”

“Very well,” said the Hajji with perfect calm. “Take her.”

Al-Zaman stared at him, all his rage shrinking, failing, crumbling into shock. “But—”

“It was not I who demanded this. She is at peace. I am content to leave her in it.”

“But you promised—”

“I yielded to compulsion.”

The emir seized him with bruising force. “Bring her back.
Bring her back!”

“I think not,” said the Hajji.

“The horse is not enough,” said Ali Mousa heavily. “After all. What will you have, sir? My life? His? Both?”

“I am not a merchant,” the Hajji said.

Abd al-Rahim looked from one to another of them. His eyes were wide, incredulous. “With all due respect, venerable sage, this is absurd.”

“Indeed?” asked the Hajji. “To what do you refer? My spell? These gentlemen's assessment of it? The world itself?”

Abd al-Rahim glared terribly at his feet. His jaw clenched and unclenched, as if he did battle against words even more unwise.

The enemies looked at one another. For the first time since the world began, one thought dawned in both their minds. It shocked them. It repelled them. They fought it with all their great and seasoned strength. Yet it was stronger than they.

The sharif said it. “We regret that we have offended you. In recompense, we offer the one thing that is dearest to our hearts. We give you peace. We forswear our enmity for all the time that is left to us. Only deign, we beseech you, to restore this child to life.”

The Hajji flicked not an eyelash at that vow, though it rocked the earth on which they stood. “I cannot restore her save as I have prescribed. You must accept it. And,” he said, “you must hold by what you have sworn.”

Al-Zaman's lip curled. “We'd better take it, old enemy,” he said. “Before the price goes up again.”

Ali Mousa did not find it easy to speak to him as if he were a man like any other; but it was not too badly feigned, for a beginning. “Indeed, old enemy,” he said: “before he bids us couple truce with amity.”

“That may come,” said the Hajji, appalling them both. He drew the dagger that hung at his belt, turned to Khamsin.

Now at last it had come. Khamsin has been hoping, desperately, that the end would be easy. Or if not that, at least endurable. He had not lived well, when all was said. He wanted to die in something remotely like dignity.

As the blade approached him, his eyes rolled. He trembled and sweated. He shamed himself beyond shame. He voided in the circle.

“But,” said the Hajji, “you do not run.”

He could not. His knees, like his bowels, had turned to water.

The Hajji's hand settled once more between his eyes. He gasped, swayed. “Peace,” said the magus. “Peace be upon you.”

He closed his eyes. The air stank of his own terror. It was sweet, sweet. It was life.

It was his gift; his sacrifice.

His head came up. His fear swelled huge: too huge by far to hold. Its heart was quiet. Acceptance. Even, at the end of it all, peace.

The chanting had begun.

Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,

The Beneficent, the Merciful

Owner of the Day of Judgment

Thee alone we worship;

Thee alone we ask for help.

Yes,
thought Khamsin. Yes
, and yes, and yes.

There is no god but God;

and Muhammad is the Prophet of God.

Hands of power raised his head. The moon was full. Its light filled him; its beauty smote him to the heart. He drank it in joy. He poured out his soul.

There was no knife, no fear, no pain. Only light.

It had been a very long dream, and very strange. Some of it was terrible. Some was beautiful beyond enduring. Some was simply incomprehensible.

Zamaniyah burrowed into her blankets. People were chanting rather too close for comfort, intoning the Koran.

The Beneficent

Hath made known the Koran.

He hath created man.

He hath taught him utterance.

The sun and the moon are made punctual.

The stars and the trees adore.

And the sky He hath uplifted…

“God is great,” she murmured automatically, groping back toward sleep.

She sat bolt upright. She was sleeping through the prayer. “
Ya Allah
!” she said, appalled. Her eyes were full of sleep. She blinked hard. “Jaffar! Jaffar, how could you let me—”

Her voice died. This was not her tent. It was too large. It was too empty. There was nothing in it but herself and the heap of blankets and carpets on which she lay, and the lamp that flickered on its stand, and—

And.

She was pressed to the central pole, shaking, goggling like an idiot.

And a man. A very solid, very unconscious, very naked man.

Her memory floundered desperately. Battle. A battle. Jaffar—Jaffar dead.

Then—

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Jaffar could not be dead. She must have dreamed it. As surely she dreamed this.

A Frank. Surely. His skin was nigh as fair as Wiborada's. His hair was the color of cedarwood. There was a great deal of it. It tumbled over his shoulders, down his back, across the blankets. His beard was long, curling to his breast; it bore an oddity: a finger's width of white, just right of its center. He was not filthy as Franks were supposed to be, but wherever he bathed, it was not in a Muslim bath. He was entirely, and fascinatingly, as God had made him.

Her body had a will of its own. It knelt beside him. He was not dead as for a moment she had feared: he breathed slowly, but deeply. Under lids as fine as veined marble, his eyes flickered in dream. His lashes were thick and long.

A man grown who shaved his beard marred the perfection of his beauty. But surely there were limits. Was his face so uncomely that he must mask it in uncut thickets?

Or so comely?

She straightened with a snap. Her hand had almost touched him.

He was beautiful. Everywhere, beautiful. No Frankish face, that, for all its pallor: its bones were eagle's bones, the fine strong bones of Arabia. He had not the Frankish bulk. He would not be tall, standing: just at the middle height, perhaps, or a little more. He was made like a good horse, slender-limbed, lean-flanked, but deep of chest and shoulder, well and smoothly muscled under silken skin.

She snatched back her errant hand. Was she mad? Or had she died and gone to Paradise?

Her soul stilled. She had meant mockery. She had raised a scent of truth.

Battle. Ali Mousa unhorsed. A mace falling. She had flown. Or leaped. Then…

She looked at herself. She was in white, fine linen, long and loose. Her hair was free. Her feet were bare.

She peered under her gown. Her body was her own, with scars in all the proper places. And some that were new to her eyes but old in healing, pale: her shoulder, her arm, her side. She was still far short of storied beauty. She was too thin and hard. Her hips were barely wider than a boy's. Her rump was a scant handful. Her breasts were a little better, but they failed of their valor: they had too much to make up for.

She sighed a little. They were, at least, her own.

Her eyes wandered back to the carpets. The Prophet, God bless his name, had only mentioned the women of Paradise, though he had granted equality to every human soul. So, then: women too were given fair companions. Very fair. Very—very—

His eyes were large and dark. No, no Frank, this one. Eyes of Arabia, soft now with sleep; but there was fire in them. It kindled as they met hers.

He moved like an animal, all of a piece, with grace and power that made her think of stallions. He poised on his feet, eyes wide and rolling white; with a soft wordless sound he toppled.

She leaped. They fell together, clutching at all there was to clutch at, which was only one another.

Only,
she thought, lying tangled with him, struggling for breath.

Muscle by muscle he contracted, shrinking away from her.

She scrambled up. Bitterness was heavy in her center. Even the spirits of heaven could not bring themselves to want her.

They also, on the evidence of this one, could blush and fling blankets over their nakedness. He stared at what the blanket did not cover. Turned his hands; flexed his fingers. Ran them down his arm. Raked them through his hair, tugging at his beard. “Allah,” he said in perfectly good Arabic, with an Egyptian accent. “
Ya Allah
.” His eyes rose to her. Their expression was an astonishing tangle. Joy; grief; awe and wonder and delight; all leavened with a passion of despair. “I failed,” he said. “After all, I failed.”

She did not know what he was talking about.

He regarded himself again. His brows drew together. Very elegant brows, finely arched, a shade darker than his hair. He pinched himself hard; winced. “I don't feel dead,” he said.

“Nor do I.” Her robe was very palpable. So too the bruises she had won in falling with him. “Are you human, then?”

He nodded. Paused; caught his breath. Joy leaped in his eyes, high and bright and splendid, keen enough even at the tent's width to catch in her throat. “I am human. I
am.”

It was something to rejoice in, she supposed. She would be more inclined to exult that she was alive. “But if you're human,” she said, “and I'm human, and neither of us is dead, what are we doing here? Alone,” she added with a start of wonder, and of something that should have been dismay. It felt remarkably, and scandalously, like delight. “Who in the world would put us here alone—and—”

He could not say it, either. He pulled his blanket higher. His blush had fled. “A magus,” he said.

It took her a moment to realize that he had answered her. “A magus?” she echoed stupidly.

“A magus.” His voice was sharp, though he smoothed it with admirable swiftness. “A trickster in a green turban. High magic, indeed. Sacrifice—” He snorted. “Oh, your father had the right of it. It was all mummery. Every bit of it. Except…”