“Aleykum assalamu-and to you, peace,” he replied. He yawned and stretched and started to get to his feet. Niketas took him by the elbow and helped him rise. “Ah, thank you. You are generous to an old man, and one who is no friend of yours.”

“Christ teaches us to love our enemies.” Niketas shrugged. “I try to obey his teachings as best I can.”

Jalal ad-Din thought that teaching a stupid one- the thing to do with an enemy was to get rid of him. The Christians did not really believe what they said, either; he remembered how they’d fought at Constantinople, even after the walls breached. But the priest had just been kind-no point in churlishly arguing with him.

Instead, the Arab said, “Allah be praised, day after tomorrow the khan will make his choice known.” He cocked an eyebrow at Niketas. “Dragomir tells me you tried to learn his answer in advance.”

“Which can only mean you did the same.” Niketas laughed drily. “I suspect you learned no more than I did.”

“Only that Dragomir is fond of gold,” Jalal ad-Din admitted.

Niketas laughed again, then grew serious. “How strange, is it not, that the souls of a nation ride on the whim of a man both ignorant and barbarous. God grant that he choose wisely.”

“From God comes all things,” Jalal ad-Din said. The Christian nodded; that much they believed in common. Jalal ad-Din went on, “That shows, I believe, why Telerikh will decide for Islam.”

“No, you are wrong there,” Niketas answered. “He must choose Christ. Surely God will not allow those who worship Him correctly to be penned up in one far corner of the world, and bar them forever from access to whatever folk may lie north and east of Bulgaria.”

Jalal ad-Din started to answer, then stopped and gave his rival a respectful look. As he had already noticed, Niketas’ thought had formidable depth to it. However clever he was, though, the priest who might have been Emperor had to deal with his weakness in the real world. Jalal ad-Din drove that weakness home: “If God loves you so well, why has he permitted us Muslims dominion over so many of you, and why has he let us drive you back and back, even giving over Constantinople, your imperial city, into our hands?”

“Not for your own sake, I’m certain,” Niketas snapped.

“No? Why then?” Jalal ad-Din refused to be nettled by the priest’s tone.

“Because of the multitude of our own sins, I’m sure. Not only was-is-Christendom sadly riddled with heresies and false beliefs, even those who believe what is true all too often lead sinful lives. Thus your eruption from the desert, to serve as God’s flail and as punishment for our errors.”

“You have answers to everything-everything but God’s true will. He will show that day after tomorrow, through Telerikh.”

“That He will.” With a stiff little bow, Niketas took his leave. Jalal ad-Din watched him go, wondering if hiring a knifeman would be worthwhile in spite of Telerikh’s warnings. Reluctantly, he decided against it; not here in Pliska, he thought. In Damascus he could have arranged it and never been traced, but he lacked those sorts of connections here. Too bad.

Only when he was almost back to the khan’s palace to give the pleasure girl the trinket did he stop to wonder whether Niketas was thinking about sticking a knife in him. Christian priests were supposed to be above such things, but Niketas himself had pointed out what sinners Christians were these days.

Telerikh’s servants summoned Jalal ad-Din and the other Arabs to the audience chamber just before the time for midafternoon prayers. Jalal ad-Din did not like having to put off the ritual; it struck him as a bad omen. He tried to stay serene. Voicing the inauspicious thought aloud would only give it power.

The Christians were already in the chamber when the Arabs entered. Jalal ad-Din did not like that, either. Catching his eye, Niketas sent him a chilly nod. Theodore only scowled, as he did whenever he had anything to do with Muslims. The monk Paul, though, smiled at Jalal ad-Din as if at a dear friend. That only made him worry more.

Telerikh waited until both delegations stood before him. “I have decided,” he said abruptly. Jalal ad-Din drew in a sudden, sharp breath. From the number of boyars who echoed him, he guessed that not even the khan’s nobles knew his will. Dragomir had not lied, then.

The khan rose from his carved throne and stepped down between the rival embassies. The boyars muttered among themselves; this was not common procedure. Jalal ad-Din’s nails bit into his palms. His heart pounded in his chest till he wondered how long it could endure.

Telerikh turned to face southeast. For a moment Jalal ad-Din was too keyed up to notice or care. Then the khan sank to his knees, his face turned toward Mecca, toward the Holy City. Again Jalal ad-Din’s heart threatened to burst, this time with joy.

“La illaha illa’llah: Muhammadun rasulu’llah,” Telerikh said in a loud, firm voice. “There is no God but Allah; Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.” He repeated the shahada twice more, then rose to his feet and bowed to Jalal ad-Din.

“It is accomplished,” the Arab said, fighting back tears. “You are a Muslim now, a fellow in submission to the will of God.”

“Not I alone. We shall all worship the one God and his prophet.” Telerikh turned to his boyars and shouted in the Bulgar tongue. A couple of nobles shouted back. Telerikh jerked his arm toward the doorway, a peremptory gesture of dismissal. The stubborn boyars glumly tramped out. The rest turned toward Mecca and knelt. Telerikh led them in the shahada once, twice, three times. The khan faced Jalal ad-Din once more. “Now we are all Muslims here.”

“God is most great,” the Arab breathed. “Soon, magnificent khan, I vow, many teachers will come from Damascus to instruct you and your people fully in all details of the faith, though what you and your nobles have proclaimed will suffice for your souls until such time as the ulama-those learned in religion-may arrive.”

“It is very well,” Telerikh said. Then he seemed to remember that Theodore, Niketas, and Paul were still standing close by him, suddenly alone in a chamber full of the enemies of their faith. He turned to them. “Go back to your Pope in peace, Christian priests. I could not choose your religion, not with heaven as you say it is-and not with the caliph’s armies all along my southern border. Perhaps if Constantinople had not fallen so long ago, my folk would in the end have become Christian. Who can say? But in this world, as it is now, Muslims we must be, and Muslims we shall be.”

“I will pray for you, excellent khan, and for God’s forgiveness of the mistake you make this day,” Paul said gently. Theodore, on the other hand, looked as if he were consigning Telerikh to the hottest pits of hell.

Niketas caught Jalal ad-Din’s eye. The Arab nodded slightly to his defeated foe. More than anyone else in the chamber, the two of them understood how much bigger than Bulgaria was the issue decided here today. Islam would grow and grow, Christendom continue to shrink. Jalal ad-Din had heard that Ethiopia, far to the south of Egypt, had Christian rulers yet. What of it? Ethiopia was so far from the center of affairs as hardly to matter. And the same fate would now befall the isolated Christian countries in the far northwest of the world.

Let them be islands in the Muslim sea, he thought, if that was what their stubbornness dictated. One day, inshallah, that sea would wash over every island, and they would read the Qu’ran in Rome itself.

He had done his share and more to make that dream real, as a youth by helping to capture Constantinople and now in his old age by bringing Bulgaria the true faith. He could return once more to his peaceful retirement in Damascus.

He wondered if Telerikh would let him take along that fair-skinned pleasure girl. He turned to the khan. It couldn’t hurt to ask.