bly in the main camp of Manfred's army, north of town, a trumpet
called.

He shivered, and closed the shutter against the winter wind.

Sophia had pushed the bed curtains aside and was sitting on the edge of
the bed with a blanket wrapped around her, watching him.

On the bedroom table, Husain had carefully laid out a pitcher and basin
and Daoud's underclothes. Daoud took the tawidh by its thong and tied it
around his neck. Next he picked up the silver locket and turned the
little screw that opened it.

The magic was still working.

But when he looked into the locket, he saw the same face that was
looking at him from across the room. A feeling of happy relief filled
him, driving out the foreboding that had darkened his mind earlier in
bed with Sophia.

He was sure now that whatever connection the locket had with Blossoming
Reed was lost. Love had changed the image. He had been testing it ever
since he arrived at Lucera, and it always showed him Sophia's face. He
could hope that whatever spell Blossoming Reed had placed upon it, when
she warned him, _your love will destroy both her and you_, was now
broken. He closed the locket and set it down on the table.

He had said good-bye in his heart to Blossoming Reed sometime during
these years in the land of the infidel. He had loved Blossoming Reed,
but he had never known love in all its fullness and completion until
Sophia. And, knowing that he had violated the one commandment Blossoming
Reed had laid upon him, and carrying her threat in the back of his mind,
his love for her had withered. She was still as vivid in his mind's eye
as she had been in the locket before Sophia supplanted her. But his
feeling for her now was one of sad renunciation. Whether or not he
survived this war, they must be forever parted.

He filled the earthenware basin with water from the wooden pitcher and
began a ritual washing, first his hands, then his face, then forearms
from wrists to elbows, then his feet up to the ankles.

"How can you stand the cold?" Sophia said.

Daoud shrugged. "I have to." He did not want to talk now. He wanted to
empty his mind for prayer. He tied the drawstring of his braies. Then he
pulled on red silk trousers, flaring below the knee and tight at the
ankles, and drew a cotton shirt over his head.

He went to the balcony again to check his directions. There was Venus.
That was east, then. He took a small rolled-up carpet out of his
traveling chest and laid i