By the light of the crescent moon hanging over the Multicolored Palace, Tilia watched the Mameluke sultan raise his right hand to heaven. Tears ran down his jutting cheeks. Baibars's tears, she saw, ran as freely from his blind eye as from the eye that could see. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert Shea is co-author of the famous ILLUMINATUS! trilogy (Dell). His other works include SHIKE and ALL THINGS ARE LIGHTS. He lives in Glencoe, Illinois. A TIME OF UNCONSTRAINED PASSION, INCREDIBLE MAGIC, AND, ABOVE ALL, HEROES WITHOUT EQUAL IN THE CENTURIES TO COME.... Destiny will not wait. At last, the final confrontation between East and West, Saracen and Crusader, is about to take place. The awesome magic of one civilization will be pitted against the unslaked thirst for conquest of its rival. Daoud ibn Abdallah, the fair-haired spy and assassin known as the White Emir from the palaces of Cairo, will have his long-anticipated duel with Simon de Gobignon, the young French count entrusted with the guardianship of King and Pope. And Sophia, the beautiful courtesan richly trained in the arts of both love and treachery, must make her agonizing choice between the two warriors, a choice whose consequences will go dangerously beyond the hungers of the heart, or of life and death itself.... End of Project Gutenberg's The Saracen: The Holy War, by Robert Shea