Devil's Bargain (28 page)

That good man had meant him no harm; he had proved unshakably loyal, the best of servants. This man was neither good nor harmless. He fixed Richard with a basilisk stare, cold and
unblinking. “Go, majesty,” he said. “Be king. Your people are waiting for you.”

“I’m not king because of you,” Richard said. The words burst out before he could stop them.

“Not in England, majesty,” the old man said. He bowed low, even to the carpets that softened the stony ground: and that was mockery but also, in its way, a promise.

Richard reached to grasp him, to shake at least a name out of him, but he was gone. The only evidence of his presence was the kingly finery in which he had dressed Richard, and the coronet still cold on Richard’s brow.

He began to suspect who had come here—not that he wanted to believe it, but he had heard all the stories. None of them had said that the Old Man himself came to his victims; but then none of the Old Man’s victims had been an anointed king.

The chill that ran down Richard’s spine was not exactly fear. It was excitement, and a flash of anger. Whoever had let this interloper in would pay for it, and dearly.

But not immediately. Richard had thinking to do. He would see Sinan again; that, the Old Man had promised. Meanwhile he would strengthen his guard and take measures against such powers as the Old Man wielded. He should have done so long ago, and at least since Conrad was killed. But he hated to live in fear, whether it was his own or that of his guards.

He settled the coronet more firmly on his head, against the instinct that would have ripped it away and flung it as far as it would go, and stiffened his spine, and went out to be king to his people.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

S
ioned was awake when Richard’s page came to fetch her. It was not quite midnight; most of the camp was asleep. But lamps burned in Richard’s tent, and he was pacing in it, measuring its confines over and over.

She knew how that felt. She had been upbraiding herself viciously for letting Ahmad go without so much as a word of greeting. He could die before she saw him again, and she would have refused to see him because she had been too cowardly to face him.

She sat in a corner and waited for Richard to pace himself out. He did that eventually, stopping short, spinning on his heel, glaring down at her. She stared calmly up.

“Something’s got you in a fair fret,” she observed. “Why don’t you tell me what it is, and give yourself a little peace?”

“I don’t know if I’ll have peace again,” Richard muttered. “Not as long as that one is alive.”

“And who of many would that be? Your brother? Has he escaped from Rouen?”

“Not while my mother is alive,” Richard said. “And no, it’s not dear Cousin Philip, either, or anyone else beyond the sea.”

“Saladin?” she asked.

“Ah,” said Richard. “He’s a fair and honorable enemy. It’s a privilege to fight him.”

“Then you had better tell me who it is,” she said, “and why you need me.”

“Who wears white and carries a black dagger, and toys with the lives of kings?”

The skin tightened between her shoulder blades. “
He
came here?”

“Into this very tent,” Richard said. “He played the servant and tormented me with riddles; then he vanished.”

“He didn’t threaten you? Harm you?”

“No more than veiled hints and coy half-promises,” said Richard.

“I can protect you,” she said, “if you’ll allow. There are arts, expedients—I can—”

“I don’t need those mummeries,” he said. “He wants me alive and fighting fit, or I’m no judge of men or devils.”

“Then what—”

“You’re clever,” said Richard, “and you’ve studied arts that I prefer not to think about. You know more languages than the whole pack of my interpreters. I want you to find a way to destroy him.”

She opened her mouth. No words came out. Richard, always direct to the point, had leaped past every possible preliminary. Even she who knew him had not expected this. “You want me to—”

“Why are you so shocked?” he demanded. “I’m not blind, little sister, or deaf, either. I know what you’ve been up to when you haven’t been mixing potions for Master Judah. Your mother is a famous sorceress. You’re her daughter in all respects.”

“But how did you—you know you never—”

“Against that son of the Devil,” Richard said grimly, “I’ll use any weapon that comes to hand.
Any
weapon. Do you understand?”

Sioned nodded, speechless.

“Everyone’s in horror of him,” said Richard. “He’s devoted
his life to cultivating it, between the rumors and mystery of his cult and the occasional judicious murder. Not one person has ever dared to think of the natural solution.”

“A man can be killed,” she said. “But that one—I’m not sure he’s a man at all.”

“Whatever he is,” said Richard, “he’s cursed well guarded. That’s why I need you, sister. You’re the only one of your kind that I trust. Find a way to destroy him, any way in this world, and I’ll find someone to do it.”

“Why, so I won’t sully my lily-white hands?”

Richard snorted. “Considering some of the stains I’ve seen on them, that’s the least of my worries. I don’t want you killed. Master Judah would kill
me
.”

“So I’m to hunt down a devil, and then stand back while someone else takes the kill.”

“If that’s the way you want to put it,” Richard said, “yes. Will you do it?”

“Even if it involves magic?”

“Even then,” said Richard, though he grimaced. “God knows I’ve no use for wand-waving and spellcasting, but if that’s the weapon I need, that’s the weapon I’ll take. I want this country clean of him.”

“And if it’s not possible?”

“Try,” he said.

Richard never did ask for easy things. “I may need to ask for help,” she said. “If and when I do, you are not to question the source of it. That’s my condition. Will you abide by it?”

“What will you do? Go to the Devil himself?”

“If I have to,” she said.

He rolled his shoulders as if he stood in armor that galled him. “Do it,” he said. “Whatever you have to do. Give me that son of the Pit.”

“Certainly I will try,” she said.

When Sioned left Richard, she was in a rather remarkable state of mind. It was by no means unlike him to order the death of
an enemy, but for that of all men to be willing to resort to magic . . . Sinan must have shaken him badly.

Richard, shaken, was a dangerous beast. Sinan would have done far better to keep his distance, cultivate his alliance with Eleanor, and let Richard be.

Could it be, she thought, that the great sorcerer had made the mistake of underestimating his adversary? Had he had some falling-out with the queen? Or had he thought to play them both, one against the other, for some as yet unfathomed purpose of his own?

She would be running short on sleep for a good many nights after this. What to do, how to do it, how to ward herself against discovery, where even to begin—she shut herself in her tent and lit her lamp and sat in the soft dim glow.

The tent was tiny, but spirits paid little heed to the limitations of earthly space. The great jinni fit himself to the confines of those narrow walls, and yet she still saw him as a vast and puissant spirit; even hardly taller than a mortal child, he kept the fullness of his power.

He bowed before her as he always had, insisting that she was a pure spirit, and that he must serve her for the sheer astonishment of the fact. Sometimes his brother came with him, but tonight he was alone—insofar as a spirit, born of fire, could separate itself from the essence of his kin. “My brother has set me a task,” she said. “The sorcerer on the mountain—can he be destroyed?”

The jinni mantled like a falcon. His face had grown more human the longer he called himself her protector, but just now there was nothing human or comprehensible about it. “That one is beloved of Iblis,” he said. “He has paid a great price to be warded against all the perils of the earth.”

Sioned’s heart did not sink, exactly. She would have expected nothing else of so wily a sorcerer. But she had let herself hope that he was a more or less mortal enemy, who could be defeated by more or less mortal means.

“He is no longer mortal,” the jinni said.

“Is he invulnerable?” Sioned asked. “Really? Completely?”

The jinni did not answer directly. “He keeps the Seal of Suleiman. It not only binds the will of any living thing, it imbues its wielder with strength and protection.”

“Then if we can take it away from him—”

“No one, man or jinni, has succeeded in finding it,” the jinni said, “still less in stealing it.”

“Yet it can be found,” Sioned said. “It can be stolen. It can even be destroyed.”

“Maybe,” said the jinni.

“I need books,” she said. “I need to know all I can about him, the bargains he struck, the spells that guard him—everything. Can you bring me such books?”

The jinni bowed. “I will bring you books,” he said.

Already his substance was thinning and fading. She should let him go; the sooner he came back, the sooner she could begin. But she held him with her will. “Be careful,” she said.

Was that a smile on the barely substantial face? “I am always careful,” said the jinni, just as she released him. He winked out like a flame.

Sioned sat alone in the lamplight and acknowledged, not at all easily, that she had sent the jinni on a useful but hardly conclusive errand. She should have sent him not for books but for certain persons who had read and remembered all of those books.

She would perform that task herself. Now. Tonight.

The spell was simple. It needed no more than the clear light of the lamp, a word of blessing in the language of the Prophet, and a focusing and directing of the mind into the heart of the flame.

Safiyah seldom slept. It was an aspect of age, she had told Sioned once, that she almost welcomed; in its way it lengthened the time left to her. She was awake tonight in a brighter light than lamps alone could muster, absorbed in contemplation of a great and luminous crystal. The power of the stone washed over Sioned. It made her bones throb and her skin tingle; the small hairs on her body quivered and stood upright. It
was not unpleasant; it was the crackle of strong magic, unmistakable and by now familiar.

She waited courteously on the other side of the flame for Safiyah to finish her divination and acknowledge the watcher’s presence. In the way of magic, the time passed both quickly and slowly: quickly as the stars wheeled, slowly as she waited in the thrum of the crystal’s power. It refreshed her as if she had slept the night through: wonderful and unexpected, and profoundly welcome.

Safiyah raised her eyes at last and smiled. The warmth of her welcome outshone the lamp’s flame. “Well met again, dear friend,” she said.

Sioned found herself blushing. “Maybe not so well,” she said, “as sorely as I’ve neglected you.”

“I’ve felt the brush of your thought,” Safiyah said, “and the love that warms it, too. It’s more than enough.”

That made Sioned blush all the more hotly. “I’m still remiss. I only come to you when I can use you. Maybe, when the war is over—”

“It will be soon,” Safiyah said. “Then we may be to one another what God and fate have decreed. Until then, what do you need of me?”

“Help,” Sioned said baldly. She told Safiyah the whole of it—Richard’s command, Eleanor’s bargain, all that concerned the Old Man of the Mountain. She did not mention the thing that concerned Ahmad.

Safiyah heard her in silence, asking no questions. Sioned suspected that she knew most or all of what she heard; that the crystal had shown her everything. Its glow had held steady while Sioned spoke, but when she finished, it swelled to the brightness of the moon.

Safiyah gazed into it unflinching, though it filled her eyes with light. She spoke slowly, softly, weighing each word. “There are tales of sorcerers who hid their hearts away, and so made themselves invulnerable. The hiding place is always a mountain of glass or a tower of adamant—a great gaudy place where none
but a fool would think to hide a treasure. I would expect that one to be more clever.”

“It’s not a heart he keeps,” Sioned said, “but a Seal. He must keep it about his person; he’d be mad to hide it anywhere else.”

“Maybe so,” said Safiyah. “There are spells of finding, which you may try; but some of them are dangerous, and may end in his finding you.”

“What else can I do?” Sioned asked her.

It was an honest question, and Safiyah answered it as such. “My husband has made a long study of this enemy. If anyone can help you find a way to destroy that one, he can.”

Sioned bit her lip. The taste of blood was sudden and iron-sweet. “This helps him,” she said mostly to herself: “it frees him from the pact he made. It helps his brother, who has been that one’s enemy from his youth. It frees us from terror; it removes temptation, and the lure of his devil’s bargains. It helps all of us.”

Safiyah inclined her head.

“Lady,” said Sioned, “for all our sake, then—would you ask him? Would you discover what he knows?”

“It would be better if you asked,” said Safiyah.

Of course it would. Sioned cursed her for seeing the obvious, and herself for being a fool.

Safiyah’s gaze on her was gentle, but it saw much that Sioned would have preferred to keep hidden. “Speak to him,” she said. “Trust him. Always trust him, even when the war comes between you.”

“I do trust him,” said Sioned.

“With your life? With your spirit?”

Sioned could not find words to answer that.

“Let him help you,” said Safiyah. “For your sake he will do it.”

And when he did it, Sioned thought, he would see what she was hiding. Everything would change.