followed Tilia into the room.

"Goddesses!" whispered Lorenzo, staring.

Daoud, who had chosen them, agreed. Two of them, Tilia had told him,
were sisters whose specialty was working together with one man. They had
hair the color of honey, olive skin, and Grecian profiles. Each had a
gold fillet in her hair and wore a short tunic of pure white linen. Each
tunic left one delicate shoulder and one perfect breast exposed. On
Orenetta the uncovered side was the right, and on Caterina the left.

The third woman was tall, taller than most men, and her bare shoulders
were broad. But her body, tightly wrapped in a gown of black silk that
stopped just above her breasts, was magnificently female. Her long
unbound hair was lustrous and black as her gown, her skin pale as snow.
A gold collar that appeared to be woven of spiral strands encircled her
neck. Maiga, Tilia said, was from Hibernia, an island west of Britain,
and she spoke no Italian and did not need to.

Daoud felt a fluttering in his chest as the sight of the three women,
and the scent of the simmering wine brought back memories of his own
initiation at the hands of the Hashishiyya.

It had been the Tartars, indirectly, who had made it possible for him to
take that training. They had besieged and destroyed Alamut, the great
Persian fortress of the Sheikh al-Jebal, the Old Man of the Mountain,
and kicked him to death after he surrendered. The Old Man's surviving
followers scattered across the lands of Islam. It was inevitable that
some of the highest adepts came for protection to Sultan Qutuz of El
Kahira.

After they were settled, Baibars had gone to them with the proposal that
certain Mameluke emirs be initiated into the secrets of the sect. Fayum
al-Burz, the new Sheikh al-Jebal, saw an opportunity to infiltrate the
highest levels of the Mamelukes and was only too pleased to comply.

And so it had come about that Daoud, already trained by Saadi to resist
the power of hashish, passed through the gates of paradise and learned,
in time, how to administer the same experience to others.

Of course, Sordello, after he went through this, would be no adept. He
would learn no secrets. He would be the lowest of the low--a tool, like
the fedawi, the devoted killers who were the source of the Sheikh
al-Jebal's power.

"This is a lucky man," said Tilia, her big mouth splitting her face in a
lascivious grin. "He will experience delights here tonight that many of
my most di