The Love Slave (26 page)

“Of course,” Zaynab said generously. “If I cannot care for myself for an evening, then I have grown too soft with this good living. I do not expect to see you before morning, Oma,” she concluded with a twinkle in her eye. “I hope you will obey me in this matter.”

Oma giggled happily, leading her mistress into the courtyard, where Karim awaited her, mounted upon the handsome white stallion that he was taking to Cordoba. He bid her come to him.

“My lord?” She stood by his foot, puzzled.

Reaching down, he lifted her into the saddle before him and encouraged his mount forward. “Are you comfortable?” he asked her. “We have a ride of several miles ahead of us.”

“Where are we going, my lord?” She was very comfortable upon the horse, cradled in his arms. He was garbed all in white, a small white turban with a veil atop his head. She nestled against his chest, inhaling the masculine fragrance of him, and sighed with pleasure.

He smiled, thinking how free she was with her feelings. There was no guile in her. What a refreshing change she would be to the caliph, he thought, and his smile faded. In a few weeks’ time she would belong to the caliph, but for now she was his. “We are going to a small house I own,” he told her. “It is in the hills upon a lake.”

Zaynab said nothing more. Her fair head rested against his shoulder as she curiously watched the countryside about her pass by. She had seen virtually nothing of Malina but the road between Karim’s villa and the city itself. The mountains at the edge of the plain were snow-topped. The broad fields were newly green with the recently sprouted grain. They passed by vineyards, the vines leafy with early growth. The almond orchards were in bloom, and the silvery leaves of the olive groves were ruffled by the light breeze.

“Is all of this yours?” Zaynab asked him.

“Yes,” he answered her, smiling.

“You must be very rich,” she considered, and he laughed. “In Alba they would think they were in paradise to have such land. Our lands were rocky. The soil there did not easily give up a crop, but here the bounty seems to spring graciously from the earth for you.”

“Malina is a special place,” he agreed “The land is fertile, and the climate temperate.”

“In Alba,” she told him, “it is always cold, and usually gray. Sometimes we would get a few warm weeks from midsummer into the early autumn, when the men hunted the grouse, but that was all. And it rains a great deal in Alba. I love the sun of this land!”

They rode on and she noticed that gradually the landscape gave way to gently rolling hills that were covered with red anemones. Finally, he turned their mount off onto a side road that led down a hillock into a small wood, and before her was a small teardrop of a blue lake that she could have never imagined would be there. On the lakeshore was a little marble building set in the center of a garden now in bloom with yellow, white, and blue flowers. Karim pulled the horse to a
stop before the building and dismounted, turning about to lift his companion down.

“I call this place ‘Escape.’ It is where I come when I wish to be alone. I found the lake years ago as a boy when I came hunting in these hills. My father gave me this land when I returned from Samarkand. I built my first villa within sight of the sea, but Escape here, where no one else would be likely to find it.” He took her hand, and together they walked across a portico into the building.

She found herself in a single large chamber on the far side of which was another pillared portico upon which were jardinieres of pink rose trees. In one corner of the room was a small fountain of black marble from which sprang a little golden spout drizzling clear, cool water. In the center of the room, upon a dais, was a bed with a feather mattress covered in black silk and heaped with matching pillows striped in cloth-of-gold. Next to the dais was a low round table upon which had been placed a tray with a roast chicken, a dish of rice pilaf, and a bowl of pomegranates and bananas. There was also a crystal decanter of wine. Upon the floor of the room were thick wool carpets in rich crimsons and blues. There was nothing else.

He poured them each a small silver goblet of wine and handed her one.

“The imam says that wine is forbidden,” Zaynab said.

“Allah has created the earth, the grapes, and therefore the wine. There can be nothing wrong with what Allah has made. It is a display of drunkenness that is wrong, my flower. You will find wine at the caliph’s court in Cordoba. Drink up.” He lifted the goblet to his lips and drank his wine down. Then he poured himself another draught, swiftly drinking it down as well, before slamming the goblet back onto the table.

Zaynab looked at him, amazed. Such behavior was totally unlike Karim al Malina. Then she said, “Why have we come here, my lord?” She had not yet touched her wine.

“Tell me that you love me, Zaynab,” he said suddenly. “I want to hear the words from your own sweet lips.” His eyes bored into hers, pleading.

“My lord, you are mad!” she exclaimed. Her heart was
beating far too quickly. She attempted to turn away from him, lest he see the truth in her eyes.

He would not permit it, pulling her about, forcing her face up so he might look down into it, but she lowered her lashes to protect herself from his look. “Fate has decreed that we fall in love and then be separated forever,” he said. “I love you, Zaynab, and you love me. Why will you not admit it?”

“Have you not taught me that a Love Slave does not become entangled emotionally with her master, my lord? The wine, I fear, has gone to your head Come, and let us eat something,” she begged him. Why was he doing this to her? Was it some sort of test? She must remain calm.

In answer Karim drew her tightly against him and said in a harsh voice, “
I love you, Zaynab
. I have not the right, and I should not be such a fool, but when has the heart ever been rational or prudent, my love?” His hand caressed her shining hair. “Allah has finally punished me. It is arrogant of any man to believe he might train another human creature in the arts of love.”

“You have not trained me to love, my lord, you have taught me to give pleasure,” she answered him quietly.

“Tell me you love me,” he pleaded his voice ragged with emotion.

“There is no future in such a love,” she replied coldly. “Have you not made it clear from the beginning that I belong to the Caliph of Cordoba? I cannot be his Love Slave and be in love with you, Karim.”

“And yet you are,” he insisted caressing her cheek.

“Do not do this to us,” she begged him. His touch had wrecked her resolve. “If I love you, how can I bear to leave you in a month’s time? If I love you, how can I live the rest of my life without you? If I love you, how can I belong to another man, Karim, my lord?” He was not drunk on the wine, and she knew it.

“Your body will belong to that man, but your heart will always belong to me,” he responded. “I do not jest, nor do I test you, Zaynab, my beloved. I speak from the heart words I have no right to say. Words that I should have never uttered to you,
yet I cannot help myself. My love for you has rendered me helpless to my own moves. I love you, and I shall love you through eternity itself.”

She pulled angrily away from him. “And what good will this love you have for me do, Karim al Malina? I am not yours! I can never be yours! How dare you break my heart like this? Ohh, you are cruel! Cruel! I shall never forgive you!”

“
Then you do love me!
” he cried, triumphant.

She looked at him bleakly. Tears ran down her beautiful face. “Yes, damn you, I love you! Are you pleased? Is your vanity satisfied, my lord? I swore to myself that I should never say those words to you, but you have forced them from me. How can I now go to the caliph, knowing that I love you, and that you love me? What have you done to us, Karim? We will surely bring dishonor upon those who trusted us.”

He drew her back into the circle of his embrace. “Nay, we will not,” he told her. “We will do what we must. You will go to the caliph, and I will marry a little Berber girl named Hatiba; but before that happens, we will spend a month together here at Escape, just you and I. Whatever our fates after that, we will have a lifetime of love to remember and be comforted by, my beautiful Zaynab of the golden tresses. How could I let you go without knowing the truth? Without ever knowing love?”

“Perhaps it would have been easier if you had,” she said low. “I do not know if I can be as noble and as brave as you, Karim. I am a simple girl from a primitive land. We Celts of Alba know but passion and vengeance in our lives. I thought there was little else, yet you have shown me beauty, and light, Karim al Malina, and a family that loves one another. If God would grant me but one thing, I should wish to belong to you for the rest of my days. To bear your sons and daughters. To become as your mother has become, content with my lot. But you would tell me that you love me, and force the same sentiments from me. Now I shall never be content, my lord. If my fate is to suffer the knowledge of your love, then yours must be to live with the knowledge that I shall never be happy once I have been parted from you. I might have been, Karim, but not now.”

“You cannot be happy knowing my heart goes with you?” he said.

She shook her head. “I shall never be happy away from you.”

“Ahh, Zaynab, what have I done to us!” he cried.

“For all my anger, Karim, I do not care,” she replied “I love you, and we have so little time left. Let us not spend it in recriminations. You have broken my heart, but I still adore you!” She wrapped her arms about his neck and kissed him passionately. “I will always adore you, through eternity itself!”

Lifting her up, he laid her upon the bed and gently undressed her. Then removing his own clothing, he lay by her side. Their hands touched fingers intertwining. They stayed that way, silent, for some time, until finally raising himself up on one elbow, he bent his head to kiss her mouth. Her jewel-like eyes regarded him gravely, then they closed as she gave herself over to the sweetness of the moment His hands touched her as they never had before, with an incredible and unbearable tenderness that left her aching for more.

He kissed each tear from her face, and cradled that face in his hand his lips touching her lips, her cheeks, her shadowed eyelids.

Reaching up, she caressed the strong, handsome face, her fingers memorizing each curve, each line, each bit of him. What had she done that such joy and such pain should be given to her? Love was but a terrible misery. She would be glad when he brought her to Cordoba. Glad to be rid of this pain. Surely it would leave her in time, and she would concentrate on all she had been taught She would be the most famed Love Slave ever known. It would be all she would have.

“I love you, my flower,” he murmured in her ear, his breath warm and tickly. He nibbled upon the fleshy lobe.

Turning to face him, she melted and it seemed as if the heart within her cracked. It wasn’t fair! “And I love you, Karim al Malina,” she told him. “Love me, my darling! Ohh, make love to me!”

He answered her cry, filling her with his passion until they
both collapsed, entwined, and the new moon rose to lightly silver the lake outside their love bower, while a night bird sang its painfully sweet song.

Part III
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A.D. 945

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