Beyond the kitchen the three men entered another great hall, so brightly lit that Daoud's eyes hurt for a moment. The afternoon sun streamed through arched windows of white glass set, as in the Hall of Mars, high in the walls. The walls were lined with shelves loaded with books and compartments filled with scrolls. Walkways at three levels ran around the walls, and ladders were spaced along them. Men in long gray tunics browsed at the shelves or sat at tables in the center of the room reading books and scrolls and making notes on parchment. A servant opened a wrought-iron grill in the shortest wall of the library, and the three men stepped out under the sky into an octagonal space filled with trees and plants, enclosed on all sides by a colonnaded gallery. In the center of the garden a small fountain played, topped by a small bronze statue of a naked woman straddling a dolphin, the water spurting from the dolphin's mouth. Daoud was momentarily shocked. The most powerful and corrupt emir in Egypt would not dare to have such a statue where strangers might see it. Manfred beckoned, and Daoud followed him down a pebble path to the basin of the fountain. Small dark green fish flickered through the water. The king seated himself on a marble bench, and the two men stood before him. At a gesture from Lorenzo, Scipio lay down in the sun beside a bush bearing dozens of dark-red roses. The sun gleamed on Manfred's pale hair. "What does your sultan want of me?" he asked. "I am ordered to speak openly only to you and your secretary Aziz," said Daoud, his glance shifting to Lorenzo. "Ah, you did not know, then, that Aziz is the name Lorenzo Celino uses when he writes to the Sultan of Cairo for me?" Lorenzo Celino--Aziz? Daoud turned to Celino and laughed with delighted surprise. "You write excellent Arabic. I would never have guessed that you were not one of us." Lorenzo accepted Daoud's compliment with a small bow. "One of _us_?" said Manfred. "And what are you, then, Messere? I see before me a strapping man, blond enough to be one of my Swabian knights, yet who claims to come from the Sultan of Cairo. You are no Arab or Turk." "Indeed not, Sire," said Daoud. "I am a Mameluke." "A blond Mameluke." Manfred nodded. "Where are you from, then, Russia or Circassia?" Without emotion Daoud told the king of his descent from crusaders and his capture by the Muslims. "What a strange world this is," said Manfred. "And when did this happen to you?" "Twenty years ago, Sire. For most of those years I have served my lord Baibars al-Bunduqdari, who is now Sultan of Cairo." "And you are a Muslim?" "Of course, Sire." Manfred stood up and came close to him. "Of course? You say that so firmly. Do you not remember the Christian teachings of your childhood?" The question made Daoud angry. _My soul is undivided. King or not, how dare this infidel question that!_ "God willed that I find the truth, Sire," he said simply.