Free The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr

his
head.

PART TWO
JERUSALEM
May 1187

5.
    Jerusalem was a city of domes and towers, set upon the
heights, blazing white in the pitiless sun of Outremer. No green betrayed
itself, no garden within those walls, unless it were a garden of stone, and its
own sun blazing out of it: the Dome of the Rock in the west of the city, roofed
with pure gold.
    From the Mount of Olives, above the grey-green terraces,
across the bleak dun ravine of Kidron, the pilgrims from Rhiyana looked down
upon the Holy City. Some of them wept. Some prayed on their knees.
    Gwydion stood silent. His eyes drank it in: the city that
was there for human eyes to see, and the city that was beyond the mortal city.
Holy, high Jerusalem. The city of peace, for which men had warred for years out
of count.
    A tremor rocked him. It came upon him so, not often,
sometimes not for years together; but when it came, there was no stopping it.
He could only brace for the storm, and endure until it passed.
    Blood and fire. Armies innumerable, inexorable as the sea,
shrilling their war-cry. Allah-il-Allah! Allahu akbar! The walls fell
before them. No army stood against them. A pitiful few of knights rode out,
made what stand they might, were swept away. The muezzin’s voice wailed over
the dome of the Holy Sepulcher.
    He gasped, shuddering. The sun blinded him. Christian voices
babbled about him; somewhere, someone was chanting a psalm. Deliver me, O
Lord, from evil men, preserve me from violent men...
    His brother’s shoulder braced him; his brother’s voice
sounded in his ear, soft and blessedly calm. “Peace; it’s past.”
    The humans had not seen, or else had taken it for simple
excess of emotion. His own folk stood round him like guards, his brother
closest, Morgiana at his back, Akiva in front of him with Ysabel. None of them
had thought; they had simply chosen their places. They moved apart as the
moment passed, with no word spoken, no thought exchanged.
    There was something in that, something potent. There had
never been so many of them together, in such a place. Almost without willing it,
he could reach, draw them together, make of them—
    They scattered. The world burst upon him. People waited,
human and otherwise, because he was king, and where he went, they must follow.
For a moment he could not. Would not.
    But that passed. Years and training rose up in him and
mastered him. He led them down from the Mount.
    o0o
    The entry of the King of Rhiyana into Jerusalem was not the
quiet passage he might have wished for. His knights, his squires, his
men-at-arms, his servants, the pilgrims afoot and on muleback, the priests and
the monks and the pope’s legate, Aidan’s small army of Saracens and his
Christian soldiers and servants, the whole tribe of Mortmain: they were a royal
procession, and they received a royal welcome.
    Aidan had a house near the Dome of the Rock; so near that
the great golden dome cast light upon it after the sun had left the rest of the
city. From its roof and from some of the upper chambers, one could look down
into the jeweled beauty of the courtyard and see the Knights of the Temple in
their white robes and red crosses, going about their duties.
    “We’ve given his majesty something to think of,” Aidan said
with considerable pleasure as he sat with his brother on the roof, watching the
sun go down. The house hummed below them, full to bursting with all the people
they had brought to it; and that not even all of them. The Mortmains had their
own house near the Holy Sepulcher, and the priests had lodgings in the
Patriarch’s quarter.
    Gwydion turned an orange in his hands. He was quieter even
than usual, had been since he left the Mount of Olives. His mood did not
lighten to match Aidan’s. He said somberly, “Yes, his majesty will think. So
will his less contented barons. There is another king in the kingdom; another
stallion in the herd. And I wait to greet him. I choose the company of my kin,
and make no haste to seek a palace