Free Alamut by Judith Tarr Page A

what he was.
    Still she would not look at him, except in glances. He wore all black now, for Gereint. But he was clever: he kept a little scarlet still, in the cross sewn on the shoulder of his cotte. No doubt he knew what the starkness did to his pallor. He looked no more canny than the cat that purred and wove about his ankles.
    He gathered it up, meeting its steady, predator’s stare. They had the same eyes.
    â€œYour familiar?” she asked. It was easy, if she did not look at him.
    â€œMy distant kin,” he answered, lightly, taking no offense that she could perceive.
    â€œShe wants you to bewitch a fish into her claws.”
    â€œSo she does,” he said. “But not these. I’m not one to betray a trust.”
    The cat yawned its opinion of honor among two-legged folk, but it went on purring, content to be held and stroked and promised other, more licit prey. Joanna watched the long white fingers trace that sleek, striped length. She had never seen fingers so long, so delicate and yet so strong. They looked cold. How warm they were, she well remembered.
    â€œJoanna!”
    She looked up, startled; and angry. It was an old trick. And she a fool, for falling to it.
    She had known what would happen. Once she looked, she lost all power to look away.
    Sometimes a man was too beautiful. It was absurd; it was faintly repellent. It made the eye dart, hunting for flaws.
    This went beyond it. There was nothing pretty in it. Nothing comforting, to sneer at. Nothing human.
    He had been smiling. He was no longer.
    â€œYou shouldn’t have done that,” she said, light now and heedless, because she had lost her battle.
    His lips thinned. She needed no magic to know what he was thinking. Mortals were always easy prey for his kind. Too easy. It was the beauty and the strangeness, and the spark of fear.
    She looked straight into his eyes, not caring if she drowned there. They were clear grey, with no blue on them; level, a little blank, like a cat’s, and a green flare in the back of them. They would hunt best by night, his kind. Like Assassins.
    â€œThe sun is no friend to you,” she said.
    His head shook, a flicker, barely to be seen. “We have an accommodation. It lets me be. I accord it due respect.”
    â€œThat could be your downfall, here. You should cast a deeper glamour.”
    He was not surprised that she knew. She wondered if he was ever truly surprised at anything. “I choose not to,” he answered her.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I choose.”
    Stubbornness. She could understand that. And vanity. There was another glamour he could cast, that would spare him insult and suspicion and deadly certainty; but that would raddle his beauty and grey his hair, and give him the proper count of his years.
    â€œWould you like that?” he asked, reading her without shame.
    â€œWhat you do if I said I would?”
    She gasped. He laughed aloud, out of the face he should have worn. Even mortal, even lined and greyed, he would never have lost his wickedness.
    Or his beauty.
    â€œWell?” He had changed even his voice. It was thicker; it had lost its edge of clarity. “Shall I stay so?”
    â€œWould you?”
    He turned his hands, knotted as they were, gnarled, seamed with old scars. There was another on his cheek, under the iron-grey beard. “Goddess. I had forgotten those.” He did not seem to notice what he had sworn by, he with the cross on his shoulder. He flexed it; winced.
    â€œIt’s as complete as that?”
    â€œTo convince, I must convince myself.”
    â€œThen, if it went on long enough, would you... die?”
    The word was as hard to hear as to say, but he seemed unmoved, preoccupied. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Which would mean, when I go beyond the mortal span — ” He shivered. “Do you remember Tithonus?”
    Joanna nodded, shivering herself. “The pagan. He had immortality, but forgot to ask