“Everything! For when the people of Merovence realized who had saved them, they rose in a body to demand that the last weak king of the decadent line abdicate his throne and yield it to the Hardy. Cortshank was nothing loath, and thereby became king.”
Quite a bit faster than Charles Martel and his son Pepin had managed it, but with the same result… though Charles Martel had never done so well in Spain. Matt nodded slowly. The parallels between the universes were unmistakable. The same historical forces seemed to open the way for the same kind of man to come riding in to greatness… and dominion. “Did Hardishane ever have to go into Ibile and help beat the Moors back inside their own borders?”
Alisande frowned. “Why should he? The knights of Ibile proved equal to the task. That first great surge of conquest was the worst the Moors ever tried. After that, they settled down to farm the lands they’d conquered, and study the arts of peace.”
More effectively than the Merovencians had, if Matt’s own Middle Ages were any guide. The Moors of his own universe had built universities and developed a far-ranging, cosmopolitan commerce while the Franks were still clearing forests and fighting each other at every chance. “The Moors never tried to conquer again?”
“Oh, there were raids,” Alisande said, “but the knights of Ibile held the border, and raided in revenge… so the Moors held their places until the first Gordogrosso came to power.”
“The first and only, as we know now,” Matt said, with a wry smile. “I take it they attacked the king?”
“No… he attacked them. The Moors were hard put to hold their province against him, and certainly never invaded Ibile again.”
“Ironic!” Matt said. “The evil that held Ibile in abasement was so bad that it kept the Moors from attacking!”
“Even so,” Alisande agreed. “They wanted no part of Gordogrosso or his wickedness.”
“Well, there’s your evidence that they were godly men, in their own way,” Matt told her, “if a devil-pawn like Gordogrosso was as much an enemy to them as he was to your own ancestors.”
“Godly!” Alisande cried, scandalized. “But they do not pray to the Christ!”
“True. But they worship God… “
“But their god is Allah!”
“That is their word for ‘God,’ ” Matt acknowledged. “They worship Him, and abhor Satan, whom they call ‘Shaitan,’ but it’s basically the same word. If Shaitan was their sworn enemy, so was Gordogrosso.”
“Do you say they were our unwitting allies?” Alisande asked slowly.
“Only by accident, dear.” Matt stood up and began to pace. “We had a common enemy. Now that Gordogrosso is gone, though, I think they’ve decided to get back to what they think was their true mission all along… conquering Europe so that everyone would have to worship Allah.”
“We cannot permit that!” Alisande was on her feet and, dressing gown or no, gave the impression of having a sword in her hand.
“I don’t think we should,” Matt agreed. “Personally, I have a very dim view of anybody conquering anybody else. It always involves killing people and making the survivors miserable, and I can’t believe God wants that.”
Alisande frowned. “But you have yourself slain men in war.”
“Yes, but I’ve left the civilians alone, which is more than I can say for the monarchs I’ve fought. They were true agents of evil, killing and torturing their own people even in peacetime, and generally doing their best to make everybody miserable. The only people they tried to make happy were themselves, so of course they failed.”
“But succeeded in bringing agony to everyone about them,” Alisande said bitterly. “Do you say that the Moors themselves are good, but whoever leads them in conquest is evil?”
“I wouldn’t even go that far,” Matt said. “It’s more likely that their leader is a good man who has been tricked into doing evil things.”
Alisande frowned. “But who has tricked him?”
“Ah!” Matt held up a forefinger. “That is what we have to find out.” He reached for his clothes. “Let’s go discuss this with the Witch Doctor.”
Chapter Five
“Let me get this straight,” Saul said, frowning. “You think some sorcerer has managed to con the emir of Aldocer into trying to conquer Ibile, then striking though the Pyrenees to conquer us, and that the same sorcerer has sent these genies to try to distract us?”
“Djinn, Saul, not genies.”
“Genies,” Saul said firmly. “I’ll take my djinn in a bottle, thank you.”
“Well, they are safer that way… “
“All right already! I don’t cotton to that ‘djinn,’ okay? Personally, I thought the genies were threatening to bring Bordestang and the castle down around our heads.”
“A threat as well as a distraction.” Matt nodded. “Comes to the same thing… keep Alisande from marching to help King Rinaldo, and soften up Merovence for invasion.”
Alisande looked surprised for a second, then nodded slowly. “That is quite true, husband. I must keep my army here to defend while my capital is under attack.”
“Not a bad strategy,” Saul said, “except that it warns us ahead of time.”
“Well, yes, but how could they know we knew about the Moorish Conquest?”
“You mean that King Rinaldo might well be under attack even now,” Alisande said, frowning. “Would not he have sent word?”
“Not if all his messengers were ambushed, and killed or captured,” Saul said grimly. “Rinaldo isn’t much of a wizard, from what you tell me.”
“No, more of a man of action,” Matt agreed. His heart was heavy for his friend. He turned to Alisande.
“We’ll send a magical messenger.”
“And a party of riders,” Alisande said grimly. “Might not these djinn waylay a magical messenger as easily as a mortal courier?”
“They might at that,” Matt said. “I really ought to go myself… “
“No!” Saul and Alisande snapped together, and Saul went on, “You really gotta do something about this martyr complex, man.”
“I cannot spare you, most of all.” Alisande took firm hold of his arm. “But tell me… what spells can we use to conquer this evil magic?”
“Hey, the Moors aren’t evil,” Saul objected. “They worship the same god as Merovence does, just in a different way.”
Alisande looked doubtful, but Matt said, “True, but if some sorcerer has conned them into attacking, there’s a very good chance that he’s evil. Certainly he’s using magic that predates Islam by at least a thousand years, if he’s compelling djinn and afrits to do his dirty work.”
“We haven’t seen any afrits yet,” Saul objected.
“No, and we don’t want to,” Matt assured him.
“What is an ‘afrit’?“ Alisande asked.
One of the things Matt loved about her… if she didn’t know something, she asked straight out, instead of trying to pretend she knew already. A lot of monarchs would have found that beneath their dignity.
“They’re sort of superdjinn… more powerful, and mean, very mean,” he summarized. “Some say they’re also very ugly, with features like fangs and boar’s tusks.”
“And I thought we only had to worry about Berber animism.” Saul hurried to explain before Alisande could look puzzled. “The Berbers are the people who lived in Morocco before the Arabs conquered them.”
“In Barbary,” Alisande corrected. “Yes, it makes sense that those who live there would be Berbers.”
“Sure, what’s a vowel shift between peoples?” Saul said airily.
“But what is ‘animism’?”
“Very primitive religion,” Matt explained, “where people believe that everything around them has a spirit … every rock, every tree, every brook.”