Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (28 page)

       Kelly answered, and Nordhausen blurted out a
message without giving his friend a moment to say a single thing. He knew that
Kelly would be smart enough to locate him here by running a GPS trace on the
call. He had just enough time to get the phone back in Rasil’s pack and go
rummaging through his own for something to cover his ploy.

       By the time the Arab  returned, he was
fussing  with a tin of Earl Grey tea retrieved from the meager supplies in his
own satchel.

       “Ah, you’ve returned,” he said as Rasil
approached. “That was quick.”

       “I did not go far. The edge of the Nexus is
just beyond the end of the fissure,“ he pointed.

       “And your men?”

       “I sent them out into the desert. They will
camp tonight near the place where you have buried your cargo—What was it you
called the thing again?”

       “An Ammonite,” the professor repeated,
finally getting his breathing under control. “They were very prevalent in this
region. It was all just an ancient seabed once, you see. I suppose the city of
Amman takes its name from them, or perhaps the other way around. ”

       “A seabed? It seems that way even now,” said
Rasil. “Only the red sands of Wadi Rumm break round the towers of rock and
stone.” Rasil noticed what Robert was doing. “What is that you brew—Assassins
tea?”

       “I beg your pardon?”

       “Just an expression,” Rasil forced a smile.

       “I just thought we might be comfortable,”
said Nordhausen. “Who knows how long we will be here.” He was fishing, hoping
Rasil would slip out with more information about the likely consequences of
Paul’s mishap. “I mean, who knows where my friend has gone,” he continued, “or
what change he might work on the Meridian without even knowing it? Going
through with some end in mind is one thing. Falling through, without the
slightest idea that you have traveled in time at all, is quite another. He
could do things, say things, that might have real consequences, and never be
the wiser.”

       “Very true,” said Rasil. “Real
consequences.” He smiled, his face mirroring some inner irony he had taken from
the phrase. “Are there any other kind?”

23

There was fighting
in the gray halls of
Massiaf that night, and many men died. When the Kadi learned a headless message
had been planted in the inner courtyard, he knew the Sami would soon seek his
life. Thankfully, he kept a guard of twenty hardy men at hand, close by his
chambers. They were all initiates, and every man among them had passed the
fifth gate in the secret training of that place. They would not quail at the
sight of the head where it glowered from the haft of a deeply planted spear.
They would not shirk from the duty he must urge on them now. “The Sami is
misguided,” he told them. “His does not heed the judgment of this house, and
chooses to take matters into his own hands. It will be dark business tonight.
He will send men here to these chambers—undoubtedly the seven he holds closest.
Blood will stain these halls before the dawn.”

       The Kadi’s prediction  held true, and
Assassins came to the chamber of greeting in the night, moving like liquid
shadow as they slid along the stony walls. Yet when they crept close to their
intended victims, bright knives drawn for the work at hand, they found instead
only matted straw dressed in courtly robes and nestled in the sleeping room
where Paul had quartered. Even as the points of their blades clinked on the
hard flagstones in anger, stabbing again and again, black arrows streaked at
them from every side, and cut short their cries of surprise and pain.

       The alarm was never raised in the lower
levels of the castle. When the Sami swept down the long corridor to the council
chambers of the Kadi, he did so without the knowledge that the insurrection he
had conjured was already quashed. Two men burst through the heavy oaken door,
the hafts of their swords clanging harshly on the metal bindings. The Sami came
after them, with five more men following in his wake. He had come to ascend to
the council chair, and take upon himself the full mastery of the castle and all
its clan. To his surprise he found the Kadi seated squarely on the high seat of
authority, a scepter of discernment clutched tightly in his right fist. At his
feet were the bodies of the three Assassins sent this night to bring his death,
and behind him, flanking the dais to either side, were twenty men at arms,
brandishing bright scimitar swords and bows of burnished ash.

       The intruders gaped with surprise, and even
the Sami gave pause. His men clustered close about him to shield him from harm,
but the Kadi spoke a harsh command and seven poisoned arrows cut them down—all
except their master, where he stood amid the scattered corpses, his ice blue
eyes gleaming with ire and malice.

       A long tense silence fell over the room. The
armed men about the Kadi seemed to quail a bit in that interval, as though the
specter of the Sami, the Silent One they all had come to know and fear, would
suddenly transform itself into some monstrous shape, and wreak vengeance upon
them for their deeds. But the Kadi spoke first, his voice clear and steady, his
eyes bright with determination.

       “Shall I continue, or will you relent?”

       “Strike me, if you dare!” The Sami’s voice
was a dry rasp. “Show these assembled the full measure of your treachery!”

       “Treachery?” The Kadi stood up, his face a
mask of anger and resentment. “It was you who raised your hand against the
brethren—you, who claim the rightly guided way!”

       “Look about me,” the Sami gestured with a
long robed arm. “Who has slain the brethren? Surely not I. Why do you raise
arms against us? We come here at the bidding of the Sheikh himself! Yes, Sinan
has sent to me this night, and orders what now passes in the chambers below.”

       “That is a lie!” The Kadi drew out a rolled
scroll and flung it across the room to the Sami’s feet. “There is the written
hand of Sinan. Take it; read it. Show me where it says that the brothers were
to act as you have commanded. I have seen the severed head you planted below,
and so I took precaution. Yet that was but the crowing of the cock to name the
hour of your treachery. Sinan condemned you two days ago. He saw what you
intended, and gave instruction. The stranger was secreted away, and has not
been harmed. The men you sent to take his life lie as these do here, and they
will not see paradise, if you have promised such.”

       The Sami seemed to gather himself in, like a
billow of smoke spiraling about some unfathomable dark center. He spurned the
rolled scroll with his foot. “I do not believe you,” he said in a low voice.
“You say this only to win the hour before these men, who you press to murder at
your command. If Sinan draws nigh, and speaks his true mind on this, then I
shall stand corrected. Yet if this be proved a falsehood…” his voice resounded sharply
from the arched dome of the ceiling. “Then it is you who shall answer in the
Eyrie of Sinan for this misdeed, not I.”

       He stood in his wreathed silence, undaunted,
adamant in his opposition to the Kadi’s will. He would not suffer himself to be
shamed here before these men, and he showed no fear. If the Kadi wished his
death, the arrows would have struck his breast long ago.

       “Put down your arms,” he said. “Do you not
know me? I am Sami of the Seventh Gate. I have seen the portal of Eternity, and
sat at the feet of the Master of Time. I have heard him speak, and reveal unto
me the deepest of mysteries. You think to slay me here? Think hard! For I shall
return, again and again—in a thousand guises I shall be made anew, and the
price I exact for this insult will be dear, I assure you.”

       The guards about the Kadi looked at one
another with fearful glances, eyes white and wide when the Sami spoke. His
voice seemed a lash that coiled about their limbs and cut at their flesh until
it burned. His eyes seemed to brand them with the same cold blue fire that
scored their hearts when they first sat before him in the rite of initiation.
The Sami reminded them all of that day, seeming to know their thoughts as the
sweat of fear wet their brows and their hands closed tighter about the hilts of
their swords—not to ready a blow in anger, but to fend off the black wrath of
the Sami, a force that seemed to radiate out upon them like the heat of a great
fire.

       “Do not listen to him,” said the Kadi, yet
his voice seemed small and weak by comparison. Then he breathed heavily,
seating himself in the place of authority once more. “I hold the scepter of
discernment,” he said. “And I, too have passed the Seventh Gate and heard all
you have spoken of. This is a matter of equals, here, and we do not reach
accord with the edge of a blade.”

       “Oh? Then why do these men lie slain in your
chamber?”

       “Do no persist in this,” said the Kadi, a
weariness in his voice. The lines of his face were deeply drawn, and his gray
beard seemed a shade whiter. “Now, I must send these men away, and we may face
one another alone, for the news I have received this night is for your ears
only.”

       “News? More lies? More pretext for your
misdeeds?” The Sami continued to play out his strength. He could see the resolve
of the assembled guards beginning to melt, and even the Kadi seemed bent and
weary with the effort of his opposition.

       “News has come from afar,” said the Kadi.
“Fast riders carry the word to every quarter. Great peril is upon us, and now
we shall need all our strength to prevail. Even the loss of these men at your
feet may be cause for regret, though I can only believe their death forestalls
a far greater loss. Go!” He gave the command to his soldiers now. “Remove the
fallen and take up your posts outside these chambers. The Sami is not to be
harmed. He is a Walker of the Seventh Gate.”

       There was just the hint of rebuke in his
words, and the Sami watched sullenly while the guards approached him cautiously
to remove the dead, their eyes averted with fear. There was no room for remorse
in his heart, but anger swelled in his breast, tightly reined.

       When the soldiers departed the Kadi spoke.
“The Wolf is abroad, as you have warned. News came at the eleventh hour. He has
set himself upon the caravans making their way along the pilgrim’s road from
Egypt, many days ago. He sits like a spider in the fortress of Kerak, and  now
he preys on all the faithful who dare to pass his gates. We must confer.”

       “Did I not warn you of this? Arnat will not
rest until he sets his hand upon the
Ka’ba
itself; until he defiles
everything that is holy!”

       “For now he sets his hand upon the Pilgrims.
Only this time he has overreached himself. The caravan he plundered moved under
the banners of the Sultan himself, and the loss was dear. Even the sister of
Salah ad Din was taken, and now she rots in the hold of Kerak.”

       The Sami passed a moment of self-righteous
vindication, the look plain on his shrouded face as he took this news in. “I
would have killed this man by now were it not for your interference,” he
accused. “Now the quarrel between us over the coming of this stranger has set
my plans awry. The
Fedayeen
you so callously put to the arrows were all
to be set fast upon the track of the Wolf—and now we are without the deftly guided
knife when it is most needed.”

       “My actions may prove the wiser, in time,”
said the Kadi. “If you would have read the scroll you spurned for theatre’s
sake, you would know the mind of Sinan on this matter. Yes, the Old Man returns
to Massiaf, as you warn. Yet more things are moving in the night than you have
heard. Salah ad Din burns with anger over the doings of Arnat. He would have
all that was taken returned to him, especially his sister, but the Wolf is
adamant. You need not concern yourself with this any longer. Salah ad Din has
sworn to kill that man by his
own
hand. He musters the whole of his army
and plans to come to the Gate of the West, close by the Horns of Hattin. Even
Taki ad Din has been recalled from Aleppo, and he swells the Saracen host with
all the veteran cavalry at his command. It will need the might of all the
Christian Lords to oppose such an army. So leave the matter of Arnat to the
Sultan.”

       “Why do you say this? Still, he might be
slain by a single
Fedayeen
, if only you would cease your opposition.”

       “It is the will of Sinan that Arnat will not
be touched.”

       “What? Why should he stay his hand when we
might strike this man down and so gain great favor in the eyes of the Sultan?”

       “You may ask that question of Sinan,” said
the Kadi. “He comes to look fast, with two eyes, upon the stranger we have in
our keeping. Imagine his surprise if he arrived here and found the man
dead—found his appointed Kadi General lying on the flagstones of his council
chambers in a pool of poisoned blood. Imagine his wrath when he learns of our
quarrel. All Christendom may soon take the field of battle against us.”

       The Sami was stunned by these revelations,
though he did his best to remain composed. He had thought the stranger to be an
agent of the Order all along. “Perhaps we could have unraveled this riddle
sooner if you had used a hard hand on the stranger.” He continued to shift the
burden of blame from his shoulders.