Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/226

 given me the rank of manaps? Have you known me to lie, or to speak merely that I might hear the sound of my voice?" The Sayak who had interrupted him looked uncomfortable. "Bear witness, Sayaks," Donovan raised his low voice a little. "Was I not at the council since the shadows have changed (since noon)? After that, you know that I came here, and that I summoned you directly. Is this not so?"

Silence answered him, and Donovan's lips tightened. "In that time," he pointed out, "I could not have taken the white woman through the guards and returned. Aravang knows that I was here."

Mahmoud spoke mildly, without raising his eyes.

"The kul is lowborn, Dono-van Khan: his word we will not hear. Because of our trust in you, because you have aided Yakka Arik, and because your word is the word of Dono-van Khan, we will listen. Tell now how the woman came to depart from Yakka Arik." He paused, weighing his words. "It is well that you have spoken thus. For we knew that the woman was free of our guards. A watcher on one of the cliffs saw her ride hence, with several men who were not sayaks."

Donovan saw into the trap Mahmoud's subtle mind had set for him.

"You ask, O healer of the sick," he observed slowly, "that I tell how the khanum escaped. Nay, when I saw it not, nor had a share in what came to pass, what can I tell that you do not know? Only this I know. By force was the woman taken, not by her own will."

Having fought out his own battle and having kept his belief in Edith Rand, he could tell them this with assurance.