f devil are you?"

Daoud tried to smile kindly. "You call me a devil after I have sent you
to paradise?"

The old bravo sighed, and his eyes closed. "I did not know that my body
was capable of feeling so much pleasure. Even when I was twenty and at
my best, I never knew such delight. It shook me to the very root of my
soul."

"I know," said Daoud. He was thinking back to his own initiation. Given
sanctuary in Egypt, the Hashishiyya had built a tent-palace of wood and
silk west of El Kahira, at the foot of the pyramids. Over a series of
moonlit nights, Daoud had drunk the Old Man of the Mountain's brew. He
had entered hell in the bowels of the Great Pyramid and then had
ascended into paradise, where the houris promised by the Prophet had
ministered to him for what seemed an eternity. Yes, he knew very well
what spirit-freezing delights Sordello had experienced.

"What are you, then?" Sordello growled, his eyes flashing open. "Some
kind of stregone? What was that witches' potion you made me drink?"

"Do you wish to return to paradise?"

"You _are_ a devil, Maestro. You want my soul."

The man was quick, Daoud thought. For all that he was a flawed man, he
had a strong mind. He remembered being made to drink the preparation of
wine and hashish. And he already realized why Daoud had done this to
him.

_So delicate, this part._

Now the bond must be forged. As a succession of Old Men of the Mountain
had forged it between themselves and their disciples in Alamut, in
Masyaf, in all those mountain strongholds across Persia and Syria from
which terror had gone forth for more than a hundred and fifty years.

"I am but a man like you, Sordello. I do not want your soul. I want your
loyalty."

"You want my treachery, you mean. You want me to betray my master, the
Count de Gobignon."

There was more than quickness here, Daoud thought. There was that
foolhardiness he had seen in Sordello before. A man of sense, knowing
that he was in the power of a force beyond his control, even beyond his
understanding, would do nothing to antagonize that force. Yet Sordello
persisted in challenging Daoud.

At the mention of Simon de Gobignon's name, Daoud's concentration
wavered. When de Gobignon found his knight dead outside Ugolini's
mansion, what would he do? There would be trouble over this, surely
there would be trouble. Daoud cursed himself for leaving Tilia's house
and going back to the cardinal's mansion.

He forced his min