He is Daoud ibn Abdallah. A warrior who is not afraid togo alone amid multitudes of enemies. The servant of a verygreat ruler. Though young, a wealthy and powerful manin his own land. A spy and a thief in the lands of others.
He is the man whom Sophia Karaiannides, accomplishedcourtesan and mistress to a king, is to serve withoutreservation.
The alliance has been struck. The adventure begins....
ILLUMINATUS! (With Robert Anton Wilson)
SHIKE
ALL THINGS ARE LIGHT*
*Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1989 by Robert Shea
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American CopyrightConventions. Published in the United States of America by BallantineBooks, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, andsimultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-92191
ISBN 0-345-33588-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: March 1989
TO MICHAEL ERIK SHEA
who helped me learn many things
about the art of storytelling
Anno Domini 1263-1264
Year of the Hegira 661-662
"Whoso fighteth in the way of God, be he slain or be he victorious, onhim We shall bestow a vast reward."
"Nothing is true. Everything is permissible."
In the mist-filled plains around Lucera, cocks crowed.
Daoud ibn Abdallah pushed himself slowly to his feet. After daysand nights of walking, his legs ached abominably.
Tired as he was, he looked around carefully, studying the othertravelers who rested near him on the road, peering at the city walla hundred paces away with its shut gate of iron-studded oak. In hisstomach he felt the hollow ball of dread that had not left him sincehe landed in Italy.
I am alone in the land of the infidel.
Dawn gave a pink tint to the pale yellow stones of the wall, abouttwice the height of a man. Above it in the distance, covering thesummit of the central hill, rose the citadel of Lucera, surroundedby its own huge wall set with more than a dozen many-sided towers.
Daoud's feet throbbed in his knee-high boots. For three days hehad walked along the carter's track from the port of Manfredoniaon the Adriatic coast into the hills around Lucera. Yesterday atdaybreak he had been able to see, from a great distance, the outlineof the fortress emerging from the cente