Daoud's tired eyes burned. He shut them, as he entered his bedchamber,
against the bright light coming through the white window glass. But,
tired as he was, sleep did not come. Perhaps he was too tired.
He had missed the proper time for morning prayer, but he poured water
into a basin and washed his hands and face, then turned toward the risen
sun and humbly addressed God, first bowing, then kneeling, then striking
his forehead on the carpet.
_When I pray, I am at home no matter where I am._
After praying, he pushed open the iron casement with its diamond-shaped
glass panels to let in air and then pulled the green velvet curtains
across the window to shut out light.
He moved now in a cool dimness, as if underwater. He must rest, to be
strong for the next battle.
Crossing the room to his sleeping mattress, which lay on the floor
Egyptian-fashion, he stripped off his sweat-soaked tunic and threw it
down. He unbuckled his belt and laid it carefully on the mattress. Then
he kicked off his boots and dropped his hose and his loincloth. He
splashed water over his body and felt cleaner and cooler.
There was another way to be home. He had been waiting for the first time
he could feel he had triumphed. He knew all too well what that way could
do to a man in the aftermath of defeat--sharpen his misery till he could
ease the pain only by destroying himself.
But last night he had unmasked the Tartars before all the great ones of
Orvieto, and he had survived a street encounter with bravos who intended
to kill him. And so this morning he could allow himself this.
He had brought a cup of kaviyeh from Ugolini's room. He set it on the
black marble table beside his sleeping mattress. Then from his traveling
chest he took the dark brown leather pack that had accompanied him here
from Lucera. He felt for the small packet and drew it out. Unwrapping
the oily parchment, he looked at the small black cake, a square about
half the length of his finger on a side. He drew his dagger out of its
sheath--the dagger that would have been poor protection for him earlier
if he had had to fight those Filippeschi men. Carefully he shaved
peelings from the cake to the polished black marble. With the sharp edge
of the dagger he chopped at the peelings until he had a coarse powder.
He held the cup of cooling black liquid below the edge of the table and
scraped the powder into it. He stirred the kaviyeh with the dagger's
point.
Holding the cup up before him as if he were offering a toast, he spoke
the Hashishiyya invocation: "In the name of the Voice comes Brightness."
He put the cup to his lips and sipped it slowly. The lukewarm kaviyeh
masked the other taste, but he knew it would begin to work as soon as it
reached his stomach. He peered into the bottom of the cup to make sure
he had missed no precious grains, then set it down.
_The magic horse that flies to paradise_, so the Hashishiyya called it.
From Sheikh Saadi he had learned how to resist the power of drugs. From
Imam Fayum, the Old Man of the Mountain, he learned how to use them,
when he chose.
Naked, Daoud lay back on his mattress with a sigh that sounded like a
roar in his ears. If the Filippeschi came upon him to kill him now, he
would greet them with a smile and open arms. Lying on his back, his head
resting on a feather-filled cushion, he let his senses expand to fill
the world around him. His eyes traced the intricate red-on-red floral
pattern of a damask wall hanging. The humming of a large black fly that
had blundered in through the open casement and the closed curtains
resounded in his ears like a dervish chorus chanting themselves into an
ecstasy.
Odors swept in through the open window--clean mountain air with the
scent of pines in it, but from nearby the swampy foul reek of every kind
of filth produced by thousands of human beings living too close to one
another. It had rained last night, but not enough to clean the streets,
and the scavenging pigs--Daoud's heightened senses could hear and smell
them, too--could not keep up with the garbage and sewage produced by the
overcrowded people of Orvieto.
But he need not remain in Orvieto. He raised his head and lifted the
chain that held the silver locket about his neck. Turning the little
screw that fastened the lid of the locket, he let it fall open. It
covered most of the palm of his right hand. Holding the crystal disk
backed by silver close to his eyes, he saw his face reflected back at
him from the convex surface. His image was broken up by a pattern etched
into the transparency, a five-part webwork of interlocking angles and
boxes, spirals and concentric circles. The pattern formed a maze too
complex for the eye to grasp. He believed that the man who used a
stylus, doubtless diamond-pointed, to cut the design into the crystal
must have gone blind in the course of his work. No mosque bore a more
intricate--or more beautiful--pattern on its walls.
His eyes, as they always did when he looked into the locket, tried to
follow the pattern and became lost in it. As the drug extended its
empire within him, it seemed that he could actually see his eyes,
coalesced into a single eye, staring back at him from the net of lines
and whorls that entrapped it.
_The captive eye means that the locket now controls what I see._
He saw the face of Sophia Karaiannides. Her dark lips, luscious as red
grapes, were parted slightly, showing even, white teeth. Her
thick-lashed eyelids were half lowered over burning eyes. Her hair hung
unbound in brunette waves on either side of her face. She had splashed
water on her face, and the droplets gleamed on her cheeks and brow like
jewels.
Daoud had no doubt that he was seeing her exactly as she was at this
moment, somewhere else in the cardinal's mansion. The locket had that
property.
_But I do not want to see Sophia. I want Blossoming Reed._