of that will snicker behind my back. Well, let them. My tent is yours to share while the journey lasts.”
“God will reward you, where I cannot. Barikai in Paradise will intercede for your soul.”
Nebozabad shrugged. “I wonder how much good that will do, when it’s the escape of a confessed adulteress I’m aiding.”
Her mouth trembled. A tear ran down the sweat and grime dried on her cheeks. “It’s right, though,” he said in haste. “You told me what cruelties drove you from your wits.”
She caught his nearer hand in both hers and clung.
He cleared his throat. “Yet you must understand, Aliyat, I can do no more than this. In Tripolis I must leave you, with what few coins I can spare, and thereafter you are alone. Should I be charged with having helped you, I will deny all.”
“And I will deny I saw you. But fear not. I’ll vanish from sight.”
“Whither? How shall you live, forsaken?”
“I will. I have already seen ninety years. Look. Have they left any mark on me?”
He stared. “They have not,” he mumbled. “You are strange, strange.”
“Nonetheless—simply a woman. Nebozabad, I, I can do somewhat to repay a morsel of your kindness. The only things I have to offer are memories, but those you can bring home with you.”
He sat motionless.
She drew closer. “It is my wish,” she whispered. “They will be my memories too.”
17
And gladsome they are, she thought when afterward he lay sleeping. I could almost envy his wife.
Until he grew old, and she did. Unless first a sickness took one or the other off. Aliyat had never in her life been ill. Her flesh had forgotten the abuse of the day and the night that were past. A pleasant languor pervaded it, but if perchance he should awaken, she would instantly arouse to eagerness.
She smiled in the dark. Allow the man his rest. She would like to go out and walk about a while, under the moon and the high desert stars. No, too risky. Wait. Wait. She had learned how.
Paul twinged. Poor Bonnur. Poor Thirya. But if ever she let herself weep for any of the short-lived, there would be no end of weeping. Poor Tadmor. But a new city lay ahead, and beyond it all the world and time.
A woman who was ageless had one way, if none eke, to live onward hi freedom.
V. No Man Shuns His Doom
1
It is told in the saga of Olaf Tryggvason how Nornagest came to him when he was at Nidharos and abode some while in the king’s hall; for many and wonderful were the tales that Gest bore. Evening after lengthening evening as the year drew toward winter, men sat by the fires and hearkened. Tales they heard from lifetimes agone and the far ends of the world. Often he gave them staves as well, for he was a skald, and was apt to strum a harp underneath the words, in English wise. There were those who muttered he must be a liar, asking how any man could have fared so widely or been so old. But King Olaf bade these be still, and himself listened keenly.
“I was living on a farm in the Uplands,” Gest had said to him. “Now my last child yonder has died, and again I am weary of my dwelling—wearier than ever, lord. Word of you reached me, and I have come to see whether it is true.”
“What you have heard that is good, is true,” answered the priest Conor. “By God’s grace, he is bringing a new day to Norway.”
“But your day first broke very long ago, Gest, did it not?” murmured Olaf. “We have heard of you again and again. Everyone has—though none but your neighbors in the mountains have seen you for many years, and I supposed you must be dead.” When he looked at the newcomer he saw a man tall and lean, straight in the back, gray of hair and beard but with few lines across the strong bones of his face. “You are not really aged after all.”
Gest sighed. “I am older than I seem, lord.”
“Guest of the Noras. A strange and heathenish nick-name, that,” said the king slowly. “How did you come by it?”
“You may not want to hear.” And Gest turned the talk elsewhere.
Right well did he understand the craft of doing so. Over and over, Olaf urged him to take baptism and be saved. Yet the king did not make threats or order death, as he did with most who were stubborn about this. Gest’s tales were so gripping that he wanted to keep the wanderer here.
Conor pressed harder, seeking Gest out almost daily. The priest was eager in the holy work. He had come with Olaf when the latter sailed from Dublin to Norway, overthrew Hdkon Jarl, and won the land for himself. Now the king was calling in missionaries from England and Germany as well as Ireland, and maybe Conor felt a bit left out.
Gest gave him grave heed and soft answers. “I am no stranger to your Christ,” Gest said. “I have met him often, or at least his worshippers. Nor am I plighted to Odin and Thor.” His smile was rueful. “I have known too many different gods.”
“But this is the true and only God,” Conor replied. “Hang not back, or you will be lost. In just a few years a full thousand will have passed since his birth among men. Belike he will come back then, end the world, and raise the dead for judgment.”
Gest stared afar. “It would be good to believe I can meet my dead anew,” he whispered; and he let Conor talk on.
At eventide, however, after meat, when the trestle tables had been taken from the hall and women carried the drinking horns forth, he had other things to talk about, yarns to spin, verses to chant, questions to meet. Once a couple of guardsmen happened to speak of the great battle at Bravellir. “My forebear Grani from Bryndal was among the Icelanders who fought for King Sigurdh Ring,” one boasted. “He cut his way close enough to see King Harald War-Tooth fall. Starkadh himself had not strength to save the Danes that day.”
Gest stirred. “Forgive me,” he said. “There were no Icelanders at Bravellir. Norsemen hadjiot yet found that island.”
The warrior bristled. “Have you never heard the lay that Starkadh made?” he flung back. “It names all the worthies who came to the fray on either side.”
Gest shook his head. “I have heard, and I do not call you a liar, Eyvind. You passed on what you were told. But Starkadh never made any such lay. Another skald did, lifetimes afterward, and put it in his mouth. Bravellir was bloodied—“ He sat a few heartbeats thinking, while the fires in the trenches guttered and crackled. “Was it three hundred years ago? I have lost track.”
“Do you mean Starkadh was not there, and you were?” gibed the guardsman.
“Oh, he was,” said Gest, “though he was not much like the stories men tell of him now, nor lamed and half blind with age when at last he went to his death.”
Stillness fell anew. King Olaf peered through shifting shadows at the speaker before he asked low, “Did you, then, know him?”
Gest nodded. “I did. Indeed, it was right after Bravellir that we met.”
