sighted and the blind.

* * * * *

Daoud stood beside a spiral pillar near the front of the audience hall
of the governor of Bilbeis. It was a small chamber, but an elegant one.
The floor was of mottled green marble, and pink columns lined the
approach from the front door to the massive gilded throne on its dais.

Merchants and small landholders, officials in red fezzes, Bedouin
sheikhs in black robes and burnooses, crowded the hall. Each man held a
petition scroll for the sultan.

Daoud carried no petition, but the sleeve of his left arm hid, strapped
to his wrist, a scabbard holding a twisting dagger--a flame dagger, the
weapon of the Hashishiyya.

He longed for Qutuz to come into the hall, for the dance of death he had
rehearsed a thousand times in his mind, to begin.

He had prayed this morning longer and with greater fervor than he had
for many years.

_When_ would Qutuz come?

At the doorways and around the edges of the room stood warriors of the
halkha, the sultan's bodyguard, their steel helmets and breastplates
inlaid with gold, their tunics bright yellow. What would they do when
they saw him strike at Qutuz? They were Mamelukes. They had seen Qutuz's
fear at the Well of Goliath and his pretensions afterward. But it was
their duty to protect him. Daoud could not guess what feelings would
move them.

Here and there around the room rose the spherical white turbans of the
Mameluke emirs who had been at the Well of Goliath. There was Kalawun,
called al-Elfi, the Thousander, because his first master had bought him
for the incredible price of a thousand gold dinars, there Bektout,
beside a blue-white pillar, another Kipchaq like Baibars. Six or so
others talked quietly under the pointed arch of the public entrance to
the audience chamber. None of the emirs paid attention to the
petitioners who streamed past them into the room.

In the corner of the room farthest from the dais, Baibars stood alone. A
head taller than anyone around him, he swung his white-turbaned head
from side to side so that he could survey the room with his one good
eye. His glance seemed to pass over Daoud without seeing him.

A side door to the throne room from the governor's private apartments
swung open, and two officers of the halkha strode through.

One of the officers drew himself up and shouted, "The Beloved of God,
the Victor of the Well of Goliath, El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz!"

The buzz of c