He was part of everything, and everything was part of him, and a great wave of happiness caught him up. Each of his senses was heightened. He heard as though with a sounding box. He saw as though he were looking through twin prisms cut from beautiful jewels. The taste of the smoke multiplied a thousandfold. Everything was intense. Color deepened. Yet everything was at the same time transparent. It was as though he could see through the world and there was nothing but a sweet vibration in resonance with the beat of the music from beyond the veil, and all that was somehow within his own brain.
There were visions.
The air crackled silently. He felt himself pushed by some transparent current of light into a slowly turning whirlpool of naked bodies, all female except his, and he dived in and was engulfed.
The light in the room changed, softened, tinted gold, then whispered away leaving only a fingering taste upon the curtain, then grew… like the erection in a dream…
The light on the curtain turned silver, burned. The curtain moved apart. A balcony was revealed. And upon it, coming out of lilac shadows, a woman clad in the flimsiest of orange veils, dancing, dancing, dancing. The beat of the music. Slowing. Rising. Slowing. Rising. Like intercourse. The woman began to pull off the veils. One by one. To the beat. The insistent, rising beat of the music, the heavy drums, the wailing flutes…
Completely naked, she danced on the very edge of the balcony, belly thrusting forward, thrusting… and the light was such that it was as though she were suspended in space, dancing in thin air, and Casca could no longer tell whether he was seeing a woman… or simply dreaming a fantasy.
At the very moment of climax the light was abruptly gone, the room completely dark except for the faint glow — as from tiny, red, luminous worms — of the hashish coals in the hookah tops.
Abruptly the music ceased.
The light came back, but this time it was only a faint golden wash in which robed figures moved, bringing flagons of some sweet, cool liquid which, once drunk, brought sleep and dreams, dreams forgotten as soon as they were dreamed, leaving only the teasing memory of some great ecstasy…
Afterwards, when he was back in the barracks with the other Novices, Casca became aware of the Change.
He was no longer Casca. He was no longer the Kasim he had been. He was a new Kasim, some new and purified creature who existed for only one purpose:
He was now an Assassin.
Some days later Hassan sent for one of his lieutenants, receiving him as usual on the parapet of the castle in the blood-red rays of the dying sun.
"The Frankish Novice, Kasim?"
"Ready, my lord."
"Then give him a golden dagger and send him to Jerusalem."
"Against whom, my lord?"
"The Frankish monk, Friar Dilorenzi, the infidel beast who eats the flesh of the followers of the Prophet — and boasts about it."
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was not known how the Friar Dilorenzi acquired his liking for human flesh. Certainly it was true that he hated the Turks. But so did most Christian pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, if for no other reason than that the Turks were infidels. But no Christian had eaten a Turk — until Dilorenzi.
Not only eaten one but bragged about "the sweet taste of the Turk," a phrase which soon got back to Europe and caused something of a seven-day sensation.
Friar Dilorenzi, however, was not the sensational type. Mostly he was a tub-of-lard bastard, a big, fat, greasy, dirty son of a bitch who was no credit either to Italy or to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the order to which he belonged. The order had been formed a couple of dozen years earlier "to succor and protect Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Sepulcher." At the moment Friar Dilorenzi was neither succoring nor protecting. He was getting ready to feed his face.
It happened to be a fairly dirty face, but so was the rest of the Friar Dilorenzi. The only thing close to being attractive about this wonderful representative of the Church was his habit — his clothes. He wore the dress of the order: a black robe and cowl with a white cross of eight points on the left breast. This particular uniform was brand-new. Friar Dilorenzi had worn it less than an hour. It was about to endure its first meal, after which the white cross would no doubt no longer be white.
Suddenly there was a shriek from the kitchen, from Friar Dilorenzi's young Greek slave. (Nothing in Church law permitted him to have slaves, but then if the Pope had known how Dilorenzi was going to turn out at the time of his conception, there might have been at least one exception to the Church's stand against birth control.)
At the second shriek, louder than the first, Dilorenzi waddled into the kitchen, his pudgy face red with anger.
The young Greek was standing as far away from the larder as possible, pointing at it, and babbling incoherently. Friar Dilorenzi looked in the open door. There was his haunch of Turk, which he had intended to eat tonight (particularly tasty since it was from a young one). And stuck into it was a gold-handled dagger.
"What…?"
Behind him came the voice of the cook: "The Assassins. The Hashishi. They have marked you. You are a dead man."
Friar Dilorenzi laughed. Stupid natives. Silly superstitions…
Casca's disguise was that of a Sufi. He knew little of this sect of Islam other than that the Whirling Dervishes might be Sufis, that Sufis were sometimes great poets, and that Sufis usually wore wool. The first two of these things meant nothing to him. The third did. The rough wool clothing of the Sufi made an excellent disguise. Hunkered down in the shadows of an alley in Jerusalem, watching the living quarters of Friar Dilorenzi in the twilight, he was as inconspicuous as it was possible to be.
It had been easy to plant the dagger. Now he was supposed to wait until such time as he thought it proper to kill Dilorenzi. Casca did not intend for there to be much of a delay. Cannibalism brought back memories of Jubala, the very thought of whom was enough to make the blood vessels stand out on Casca's neck and cause his hands to clench. Even though the Change had made Casca calm and outwardly mild, he no longer used the language of a Roman legionnaire. He could not ignore the memory of Jubala and transferred the hatred he had for him to Dilorenzi. In fact, in his mind he was killing Jubala all over again in the killing of Dilorenzi, and he looked forward to it with pleasure.
Now in the alley watching Dilorenzi's living quarters, he was ready. As the twilight turned the street red he made one last check of his objective. A second floor was being added to the building where Dilorenzi lived, and there was a heavy scaffolding covering the front. Good. There was even a ship's block fastened on a beam not far from the door. Unfortunately there was no rope in the sheave, but the bag beside Casca would take care of that. Fortunately, though, the friar's household servants were slovenly. All kinds of lumber lay piled up against the walls and the scaffolding, and since the kitchen was being added to, some of the stores were outside, in particular two big amphorae of oil. Casca could see their shapes, dark against the stone wall of the building, and he fingered the two small objects he had hidden under his robe — the jar and the vial of seawater a renegade Greek had sold him in the thieves' market that afternoon. Casca had his doubts about this Greek Fire, but if it didn't work, there would probably still be coals banked in the kitchen fire. Lazy as Dilorenzi's cook appeared to be, he was not likely to start a fresh fire each morning. Anyway, Casca didn't worry. For that matter, he hadn't worried about anything since the Change…