"Is that a saying of one of your Muslim philosophers?"
"Yes," said Daoud, allowing himself the faintest of smiles. "The
Princess Sheherazade."
* * * * *
The sun had set by the time Daoud left Cardinal Ugolini, and the
third-floor corridor was nearly dark. Servants had placed small candles
on tables at each end of the corridor. Daoud had allowed himself a cup
of wine with the cardinal because there was nothing else to drink, and
now his face felt slightly numb.
A large figure walked slowly toward him from the opposite end of the
corridor as he approached his room. With the candlelight behind him, the
man's face was in darkness, and Daoud tensed himself.
"Messer David, it is Riccardo."
Now they stood face-to-face, Daoud having to look up a little.
"I searched everywhere. Questioned everyone I know. I would stake my
life that Sordello is not in Orvieto. He went out the Perugia gate after
talking to Madonna Sophia. I do not think he ever came back."
Dismissing Riccardo, Daoud went into his room to think and to pray. He
felt baffled. He would have staked _his_ life that no man bound by the
powers of the Hashishiyya would ever turn against the one who showed him
the delights of paradise.
_But I did threaten him with death, and he saw that I wanted to kill
him. That might have been enough to break the bond._
_And I did wonder, even when I initiated him, whether there might not be
some part of him that remained free._
Daoud bolted the door of his room. He needed to be alone, to think and
to refresh his mind.
He faced the charcoal-marked spot on his wall that marked the direction
of Mecca and, with care and thought, went through the sequence of the
salat, standing, bowing, kneeling, striking his head on the floor again
and again until he was done. He asked God, as he did every night, to
favor his efforts here in Italy with success, out of His love for the
people of Islam.
_I place all in Your hands._
After he was finished praying, he unlocked his traveling chest and began
to take things from it. First came a small grinder box he had bought
from an Orvieto ironsmith, a grinder such as women used to make small
amounts of flour. Next, from a cotton bag he took two handfuls of
roasted kaviyeh beans given him by Ugolini and put them in the top of
the grinder box. He ran the beans through the grinder, rapidly turning
the crank on the box until they were a coarse powder.
He took his old pack out of the chest and found in it the brick of
hashish wrapped in oiled parchment. It nestled in the palm of his hand,
and he weighed it, wondering whether he deserved this pleasure. For that
matter, did he deserve Sophia? His attempt to kill the Tartars had
failed, and now they might be slipping out of his grasp.
With money and the threat of a French invasion, Lorenzo should be able
to persuade the Ghibellino leaders of Siena to follow their natural
inclination and send an army against Orvieto. But that army would not be
enough to counter the forces the pope could gather around himself at
Perugia.
_I must get Manfred to march._
With Manfred's help he could capture the pope and kill the Tartars. And
he saw an even larger vision. Under Manfred, Italy could become a
bulwark against the crusaders from northern Europe. Manfred was not just
friendly to Egypt. He had Muslim officials and soldiers and was not far
from being a Muslim himself.
There was so much to be done. Daoud wanted to go to Siena to hasten the
Ghibellino attack on Orvieto. He wanted to ride to Manfred and urge him
to invade the Papal States. But he had to remain here as long as the
Tartars were here. Were it not for Sophia, these months of inactivity
since that night at the Monaldeschi palace would be driving him mad.
He held the black hashish cake over the grinder, using his dagger to
shave small, coiling peels into the ground kaviyeh beans. Then he filled
a small iron pot from his water jar. He poured the mixture of water,
kaviyeh, and hashish into the pot and set it to boil on a rack over the
flame of short, fat candle.
He smiled and inhaled deeply as the rich, burnt smell filled the room.
Just the smell of kaviyeh could give him visions, making him think of
the gaily lighted streets of El Kahira, of the dome of the Gray Mosque,
of the white arms of Blossoming Reed.
When his brew was ready he poured it into an Orvieto porcelain cup
painted with bright flowers. He carried the cup to his window and pulled
the window open. Even though Orvieto was atop a great rock, the starry
sky seemed much farther away here than when he lay on his back and
looked up at the stars in the desert. He wondered how far it was to the
crystalline sphere in which the stars were set, like jewels. Was it
farther than the distance between Orvieto and El Kahira?
He recited to himself the invocation, _In the name of the Voice comes
the Light_.
Standing at the window, he drank his hashish-laced kaviyeh in slow sips.
When he knew, by a peculiar intensity in the starlight, that the magic
horse had begun its flight to paradise, he started to walk to his bed. A
sudden impulse took him, and he went to his pack again.
Folded inside a square of blue silk he found the silver locket
Blossoming Reed had given him. Since he had started lying with Sophia he
had stopped wearing it. He remembered the suggestion he had planted in
Sordello's mind, that at the sight of the locket he would kill Simon de
Gobignon. With Sordello and Simon both gone, the locket was useless for
that purpose.
As he held it in his hands, he remembered what Baibars's daughter had
said to him:
_I will always know if you are well or ill, alive or dead, and how you
fare and what you feel. And if you would know how it is with me, seek me
in this._
He lay in bed propped up on one elbow and turned the tiny screw that
held the locket closed. He had meant to think about Manfred and Sophia,
to try to catch some glimpse of the future. It troubled him that he had
taken this bypath. He remembered now how troubled he had been when last
he looked into the locket. He had not meant to use it again.
Now, though, it was somehow too late for him to stop. He seemed to have
no will of his own. He raised the lid of the locket and looked down into
it, at the design incised on rock crystal that looked like an
interweaving of Arabic letters with circles and triangles. He waited to
see what visions the locket would give him tonight.
_The knowledge you run from is the most precious of all._
He gasped.
A pool of darkness opened in the center of the design. The network of
straight and curved lines seemed to crumble into it as the pool spread.
And it began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster. He was looking
into a whirlpool of blackness.
It drew him in. He felt as if his eyes were spinning, then his head;
then he fell into the whirlpool and it sucked him down. He could not
breathe. He was drowning in blackness.
At the last moment, when he thought he would die, suffocated, the black
pool released him and flung him back on his bed, contemptuously
rejecting him.
He lay there, gasping, terrified.
_Take as many women as you like. But love always and only me. For if you
do love another, I promise you that your love will destroy both her and
you._
Had he truly heard the voice of Blossoming Reed, burning and cruel in
his mind, coming from as far off as the stars? The locket fell to the
floor with a crash that seemed to shake the stone building in which he
lay. He remained motionless, paralyzed with dread.