windows protected by iron grillwork. To his right, in a large grassy open field, a hundred or more Muslim guards in red and green were swinging their scimitars as an officer on a stone platform called out the count in Arabic. Daoud and his guard passed by a second yard, where still more Muslim soldiers were grooming their slender Arab horses.

A pungent smell of many beasts and fowl pent up close hung in the warm, damp air. Another row of buildings echoed with the shrieks of birds. Falconers in yellow-and-black tunics walked up and down holding wicker cages. As he peered into a doorway, Daoud saw the golden eyes of birds of prey gleaming at him out of the shadows.

The sun was high by the time they came to the gateway of the castello.

Well, so far they have taken me where I wanted to go, Daoud thought grimly.

The entry hall of the castello was a large, vaulted room, as Daoud had expected. He had studied the citadel of Lucera before leaving Egypt, as he had studied many other strongholds in Italy, memorizing building plans and talking at length with agents of the sultan who had been there.

A strange, almost dizzying sensation came over Daoud. He recognized the feeling, having had it several times before when, in disguise, he entered Christian fortresses. As he gazed around the shadowy stone hall, its gloom relieved by shafts of light streaming in through high, narrow windows, he seemed to be seeing everything through two pairs of eyes. One pair belonged to a Mameluke warrior, Daoud ibn Abdallah, scouting an enemy stronghold. The other eyes were those of a boy named David Langmuir, to whom a Christian castle had been home. And, as always on sensing that inner division, Daoud felt a crushing sadness.

Ahmad took Daoud through a series of small, low-ceilinged rooms in the base of the castle. He spoke briefly to an officer seated at a table, dressed like himself in red turban and green tunic. He gestured to a heavy-looking door reinforced with strips of iron.

"In there, Messer David."

Every muscle in Daoud's body screamed out in protest. As part of his initiation into the Hashishiyya, he had been locked in a tiny black chamber in the Great Pyramid for days, and, except for the deaths of his mother and father, it was the worst memory of his life. Now he ached to strike down Ahmad and the other Muslim soldier and flee.

Instead, he said quietly, "How long will I have to wait?"

Ahmad shrugged. "God alone knows." Ahmad's southern Italian dialect was as heavily accented as Daoud's own.

How surprised he would be if I were to address him in Arabic.

"Who is this man who orders me imprisoned?" Daoud demanded.

Ahmad and the other guard shrugged at the question. "He is Messer Lorenzo Celino of Sicily. He serves King Manfred."

"What does he do for King Manfred?"

"Whatever the king tells him to." Ahmad smiled at Daoud and gestured again at the ironbound door. "Thank you for making the work of guarding you easy. May God be kind to you."

Daoud bowed in thanks. Remembering the proper Christian farewell, he said, "Addio."

The other soldier unlocked the door with a large iron key, and Daoud walked reluctantly into a shadowy room. The door slammed shut behind him, and again he went rigid with his hatred of confinement.

The walls had recently been whitewashed, but the little room stank abominably. The odor, Daoud saw, came from a privy hole in one corner, where large black flies circled in a humming swarm. Half-light came in through a window covered with a black iron grill whose openings were barely wide enough to push a finger through. Noticing what appeared to be a bundle of bedding against a wall, Daoud approached it and squatted down for a closer look. He prodded it, feeling straw under a stained cotton sheet. At his probing, black dots, almost too small to see, began moving about rapidly over the sheet.

Daoud crossed the room, unslung his pack from his back, and dropped it to the floor. He sat down on the flagstones, as far from the bedding and the privy opening as he could get, his back against the wall, his knees drawn up, like a Bedouin in his tent.

I am helpless, Daoud thought, and terror and rage rose up in him like two djinns released from their jars, threatening to overwhelm him. He sat perfectly still. To bring himself under control, he began the contemplative exercise his Sufi teacher, Sheikh Saadi, called the Presence of God.

"God is everywhere, and most of all in man's heart," Saadi had said, his old eyes twinkling. "He cannot be seen or heard or touched or smelled or tasted. Therefore, make your mind as empty as the Great Desert, and you may converse with God, Whose name be praised."

Daoud touched the farewell present Saadi had given him when he left El Kahira to begin the journey to Italy. It was a leather case tied around his neck, and it contained a piece of paper called a tawidh, an invocation whose words were represented by Arabic numerals.

Like the locket, it would arouse curiosity if someone searching him found it. But it could be simply explained as one of those curious objects a traveler from distant places might have about his person. And, like the locket, it was simply too precious not to be worn.

Saadi said the tawidh would help wounds heal faster. Daoud refused to let himself think about wounds. He tried to make his mind a blank, and in the effort he forgot for a time where he was.

II

Messer Lorenzo Celino of Sicily strode into the cell. He held in his hands a large round slice of bread heaped with steaming slivers of meat that gave off an unfamiliar but succulent smell.

Daoud slowly climbed to his feet. The hound Scipio, trailing Celino, watched him, standing in the doorway, as if unwilling to enter the vile-smelling chamber.

Daoud measured Celino. The top of the Sicilian's head would come to Daoud's chin, but the shoulders under his violet tunic were broad and straight, and he moved with menacing grace. Daoud judged that, though Celino must be close to fifty, he would be quick and deadly with hands and feet, and a good swordsman as well.

"God's beard, man, I didn't mean to keep you sitting in this room all day without food or drink," Celino said. "The damned farmers and traders kept coming and coming. But you cannot eat in this stinking place. Come out."

Daoud emerged into the next room, and Lorenzo motioned him to sit at the guards' table. Even though Daoud felt deep relief at being out of the cell, he sensed he was in greater danger than before. His mouth went dry and the palms of his hands turned cold as his eyes scanned the room for weapons or an escape route.

Lorenzo set the trencher and its burden of meat down before Daoud.

"Just butchered. Here, eat in good health. And here is a beaker of our good red wine of Monte Vultura." Daoud heard a false note in Celino's present heartiness and liked it even less than his earlier gruff suspicion.

Wine. An abomination forbidden by the Prophet. As Celino set a pitcher and two cups down on the table, Daoud recalled the nights he had spent with Sheikh Saadi learning to master wine and other drugs.

God prohibits the drinking of wine and the eating of unclean foods, not for His good, for nothing can harm Him, but for our good. Therefore, when a man goes among the infidel as a spy, God permits him to eat and drink the forbidden things lest he be discovered and put to death. You must learn to separate your mind from your body so that what harms your body will not affect your mind.

Daoud raised the cup, wondering if he would have as much power over wine drunk in the land of the infidel as he did when he drank it with his teacher. He