Free Nine White Horses by Judith Tarr

clapped its mighty wings and roared.
It swelled; it smoldered; it burst in an appalling stench.
    The silence was thunderous. Kehailan’s hand stung. He
gripped the broken hilt of his sword, and it was as hot as if he had held it in
a fire. He dropped it with an exclamation.
    The woman, bound still, beseeched him with her eyes. She was
even more beautiful than he. He would have fallen upon her as she was and had
his will of her, but the splendor of her gaze made him pause.
    He bent to unbind her. If his hand escaped his will and
ventured a caress, it was no fault of his; nor did she seem to take it amiss.
    As the last cruel shackle fell away, her arms rose and
coiled about his neck. Her lips seized his. Her eyes laughed and beckoned and
were irresistible. She drew him down into her garden of delights.
    o0o
    Kehailan left it late and reluctantly, with many a
backward glance. But the gate had closed against him. His flesh, feeble
creature, was glad of it. It lay all spent, and sang of sleep. Only her fingers
held him back from it, wandering in the downy thickets of his beard. “My heart,”
she said, and her voice was musk and honey, “and my conqueror. I owe you more
than my life.”
    He stared at her, dazed and blinking. He was in love, he
knew it surely. He had forgotten every graceful word he ever knew. “Come,” he
stammered. “Come with me. I love you. I must have you.”
    Her finger silenced him, a moth-wing brush upon his lips,
more potent than any blow. Her eyes were dark with regret. “Alas,” she mourned,
“I may not.”
    “Who? Who is he? I will kill him!”
    His passion made her smile. “You are my heart’s beloved. It is
only . . .” She broke off as if she would veil a secret. She
kissed him until his every muscle had loosed, and withdrew, holding him down
with one slender hennaed hand. “No, my dear lord. Truly I cannot. And yet, for
the horror from which you freed me, and for the delights with which you have
bound me, I would give you one small gift.”
    Hope sang in his heart. “You?”
    She shook her head, all sadness. “I am not my own to give. But
of the rest that the world may offer, I grant you your heart’s desire.”
    “You are my heart’s desire.”
    He drowned in the sweet sorrow of her smile. When he had come
to life again, she was gone. He stood in a green solitude upon a broken
pavement, and in his hand a hilt without a blade. Her voice filled his ears. “Utter
the words of faith, and it is yours, whatever you wish most to possess or to
be.” And even her voice was gone, and he was alone.
    The silence shattered. Horns rang, bounds bayed, men shouted
aloud, hot upon a scent. The hunt burst out of the wood, his own guards
foremost, and leading them all, crying his name, Khalid.
    A great rage surged up in him. That she was gone, and they
were not. That he could never be free of them. Free as the beast of his name:
child of wind and fire, swiftness made flesh, unvexed, untrammeled,
untormented.
    His head tossed. His heart swelled, bursting, crying aloud
its deepest desire. To escape them all. To be free. “There is no god but God,”
cried Kehailan, “and Muhammad is His Prophet!”
    The hunt parted to swirl about him. None of it vanished.
Khalid sprang down, unslain and untransformed, even his pricking tongue intact;
reaching to embrace, and to bind, and to beg pardon in his fashion that had
ever been too haughty for a slave’s.
    Kehailan thrust away from him, cursing the falsity of women.
He had nothing that he wanted, and least of all the freedom he had prayed for.
From Khalid, from guilt, and from the iron bonds of duty.
    Something was strange. Like an itch, but an itch deep
within. Like pain that was close to pleasure. His eyes were growing dim. But
his ears unfolded wonders. And his nose…
    “Allah!” Khalid’s shock was sharp in his nostrils. “Kehailan. Kehailan!”
    Kehailan threw up his head. His blood had turned all to
fire. But it was not pain. It was a wonder