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  Murad ate alone on his dais, listening to the strains of a mehterân playing outside. When the chorus sang of a young soldier being martyred somewhere in Dar al-Harb, Murad became sad and his shoulders drooped.

  “You’ve granted many people favors lately, Father,” Aladdin said when the savory dishes gave place to sweets. “Even my brother got a big wish fulfilled. Yet you’ve shown me no largesse.” He spoke in a jocular manner and threw Mehmed a conspiratorial look.

  Murad showed readiness to take Aladdin’s bait. “One difference between you and those who’ve received my favors,” Murad said with a serious mien, but laughing eyes, “is that they’ve asked for them.”

  “And another difference?” Aladdin said.

  “They’ve done something to earn my favors.”

  Aladdin laughed, mischievous, as if that was exactly what he’d hoped his father would say. “Would excelling My Sultan in a qabaq contest earn me the right to a favor?”

  Murad jumped to his feet with the agility of a youngster. “Get your bow and horse, boy,” he shouted with childish glee. Then he called out to Tirendaz. “You’ll be our judge.”

  Both Murad and Aladdin wore heavy, brocaded caftans over long-sleeved silk tunics, formal outfits not designed for an archery contest on horseback. Yet neither seemed disposed to waste time changing into something more appropriate. Their horses had already been saddled by the time they reached the open field, and they mounted them unassisted by their grooms.

  “I’ll give you five tries to beat me,” Murad said, then took off at a canter toward the far end of the field.

  Aladdin followed.

  In the middle of the hippodrome was a tall pole on which a qabaq, gourd, could be hoisted at different heights to serve as a target for mounted archers. At the foot of the pole, a pile of shattered gourds had accumulated from earlier contests that day.

  A hippodrome attendant attached a fresh gourd to the end of a rope dangling from the pole and hoisted it about forty feet off the ground. The first to take the shots at the qabaq was Murad. He set his horse to a gallop in the direction of the pole, sitting straight in the saddle, a bow in his left hand, an arrow in his right. Moments before he reached the pole, Murad nocked the arrow onto the bowstring, leaned deep over the left side of the horse, and twisted his body so his chest faced the sky. He wasn’t yet past the pole when he loosed his arrow and hit the qabaq.

  Cheers broke out from the thousands of soldiers lined along three sides of the hippodrome. On the side with the tent, the guests were just beginning to pour into the open, drawn by the hubbub in the field.

  When Murad successfully completed his five attempts, Aladdin took his turn. Time after time he too hit the target. The cheers he received were louder, betraying the soldiers’ partiality to their leader.

  “It’s a tie,” Tirendaz shouted.

  Mehmed frowned.

  Aladdin hadn’t excelled Murad in the five attempts he’d been given, so Vlad expected he’d forfeit his chance for a favor from Murad. But the two contestants and their arbiter met in the middle of the field and decided to continue the contest.

  “There will be three more attempts,” Tirendaz announced. “This time two arrows are to be shot on each pass, and Aladdin will go first.”

  The attendant installed a fresh qabaq, and the contest resumed.

  Aladdin’s arrows left his bow in such a rapid succession they appeared as a single long shaft when they pierced the gourd. Pointing at the six arrows bristling out of the target, Aladdin rode his horse around the hippodrome, soaking in the admiration of his soldiers.

  Murad took a bit longer than Aladdin to nock his arrows. With his horse galloping past the pole, that meant a greater distance to the gourd by the time he loosed his second arrow; and a greater chance to miss.

  Although Murad hit the target with every shot, his sixth arrow only grazed the qabaq.

  “I concede,” he said to Tirendaz, red in the face with exertion and excitement.

  Tirendaz signaled to Aladdin the contest was over. But Aladdin, watching from the far end of the field, signaled back he wanted to continue.

  “He’s giving Father another chance only to make himself appear generous,” Mehmed said.

  Murad, Aladdin, and Tirendaz met again at midfield to discuss the next step.

  “Father would be wise to quit now and deny Aladdin his favor,” Mehmed said with a tart look. “Instead, he’s going to lose and appear weak in front of everyone.”

  “There will be a single pass with three arrows this time,” Tirendaz announced. “If there is a tie, His Majesty will be the winner.”

  Of Murad’s three arrows two found their mark. The third one planted itself in the pole.

  Aladdin’s first arrow flew through the qabaq, and fell among the spectators. His second one split the qabaq in two. Finally, his third arrow hit the falling half of the gourd before it reached the ground.

  His soldiers went wild with cheers.

  “Three years from now it will be your turn to beat me at this game,” Murad said to Mehmed when he dismounted in front of his son, sweaty and panting.

  “You’ve let Aladdin beat you on purpose,” Mehmed said, “to make him look good in front of his people. See how he’s prancing?”

  “He does like to show off a bit, doesn’t he?” Murad said with a smirk. As he wiped his brow with a cotton kerchief, his eyes searched for Aladdin. “If you apply yourself to archery the way you’ve done to memorizing the Qur’an, you’ll become a kemankeş by age fourteen, like your brother.” He threw his arm around Mehmed’s shoulder. “Let’s hear what favor Aladdin wishes to coerce out of me, by taking advantage of my declining skills.”

  Just then Aladdin’s galloping horse made a sudden stop in front of them, raising a cloud of dust and spraying pebbles onto the people nearby. Aladdin vaulted out of the saddle and landed on one knee in front of Murad.

  “Now that I’ve defeated you fairly, My Sultan,” he said without gloating, “please hear my request. I beg you to appoint Mehmed as your peace ambassador to Karaman.”

  “What kind of favor’s that?” Murad said, incredulous.

  “You’ve placed no limits on what I might ask for,” Aladdin said with an endearing grin. “I want my brother to have something he’s set his heart on.”

  30

  KARAMAN

  March 1443, Lake Beyşehir, Karaman

  To pass the time remaining until his departure, Mehmed decided to conduct military exercises with the two hundred riders of the Household Cavalry Murad had assigned him for the trip. Vlad went along and was surprised at Mehmed’s harsh assertiveness with the officers. At times, the nature of his orders bordered on abuse against both people and animals. Vlad noted the men displayed none of the affection toward Mehmed that was evident whenever Aladdin engaged with the military.

  Then they were off to Karaman, with a baggage train of twenty camels and thirty-five mules, laden with supplies and gifts for İbrahim Bey. Pages, grooms, camel drivers, muleteers, cooks, and scullery slaves, eighty men in all, trudged along on foot.

  Gruya begged to be left in Bursa, where, he claimed, a number of obligations undertaken on behalf of “those in need” kept him busy day and night.

  “Keep an eye on him in my absence,” Vlad ordered Lash. “If he falls afoul of the Sharia, I won’t be able to save him from some cruel punishment.”

  Once on the road, Mehmed forgot his resentment toward Aladdin and became buoyant. He banished Hamza and Yunus to the rear of the convoy and had Vlad’s company all to himself. He joked ceaselessly, laughed, and rode his horse wildly, showing impressive horsemanship.

  Vlad kept pace with him, delighting in the effortless way his own mare negotiated steep slopes with its unshod hoofs. The ease of his bonding with Samur gave him a tinge of guilt for having almost forgotten Timur, his Wallachian horse.

  When Vlad questioned Mehmed about his improved mood, the boy became serious and took a long time to answer. “With this mission I sha
ll become the youngest diplomat the empire has ever had. Those who thought of me as a child until now, will surely have a change of heart.”

  Two days into the trip, Zaganos had his scouts fan out in all directions over a twenty-mile radius. Then he ordered the vanguard to ride no more than two hours ahead of the convoy, and the rearguard to trail it by the same distance. Zaganos himself assumed command of the remaining riders and kept them on full alert at all hours.

  “What’s your lala afraid of?” Vlad said. “We’re in the middle of the region you govern, not on the banks of the Danube.”

  “Some Karamanids aren’t keen on the idea of peace,” Mehmed said. “That’s why we won’t be venturing all the way to Konya. Instead we’ll meet İbrahim just inside the Karaman border, on Lake Beyşehir. Even so, we must be vigilant. Our spies have reported that İbrahim’s grandson, Kasim, is planning to ambush us before we reach the meeting point.”

  “Is that the same Kasim who was your father’s hostage and escaped from the Macedon Tower last summer?” Vlad tried to appear detached, but the unexpected mention of the young Karamanid unsettled him. What happens if Kasim attends the peace parley and recognizes me?

  “Father should’ve blinded Kasim like he has King Brankovich’s sons,” Mehmed said. “Then he wouldn’t have run away to cause us trouble now.”

  “Ah, those ungrateful hostages,” Vlad said. “You give them all possible courtesies, and all they can think of is running away.”

  Mehmed didn’t register Vlad’s sarcasm.

  “You, at least, aren’t like the others,” Mehmed said with conviction. “You’re practically one of us.”

  They reached Kütahya on the sixth day and spent hours refreshing themselves in a hamam. Afterward, Mehmed held court with the local dignitaries and settled a number of land disputes. He also sentenced to death a local kadı who proved to be corrupt.

  Whenever Zaganos came into contact with Vlad he was cordial, almost friendly. It was clear Mehmed’s warning that Vlad was under his protection had stuck with the Third Vizier.

  “My lala’s gotten over the upset we caused him in Constantinople,” Mehmed said when Vlad mentioned Zaganos’s changed behavior. “To prove he has nothing against you, he insists you sit with us at the peace parley. He thinks you’d enjoy seeing me in action.”

  Vlad tried to puzzle out Zaganos’s intention when making such an unusual request. That Zaganos should have any interest in what Vlad might enjoy was out of the question. It took Vlad a long time and a tragic turn of events before he finally figured out the Third Vizier’s devious plan.

  The trip from Kütahya to Lake Beyşehir lasted seven uneventful days, spent traveling among ochre-colored hills covered in scrub. The only people they met were nomadic Turkomans dwelling in black felt tents, tending to herds of goats and sheep.

  When they crossed into the Karaman territory, one day before their arrival at the lake, the relief changed. The hills gave way to craggy mountains, gray and menacing in their dearth of vegetation.

  Zaganos redoubled his alertness. At night he pulled back both the vanguard and rear guard, to have all resources at hand in case of an attack. Then he ordered a ring of bonfires set around the camp at the distance of an average arrow shot. Slaves, in teams of two or three, attended the fires under a death threat to keep them blazing all night.

  Fortunately, Zaganos’s precautions weren’t put to the test; no intruder disturbed the peace of the camp.

  For the last stretch of the trip the road followed the right bank of a tributary that meandered its way toward Lake Beyşehir through a canyon. At first, the riverbank was wide enough for several horses to walk abreast. Then gradually the road turned into a narrow path, forcing the convoy to advance in single file. Soon the ground began to rise. By the noon prayer, the river appeared on their left, hundreds of feet below, as only a scintillating ribbon. On their right, the canyon rose vertical, a forbidding stone wall.

  “Tradition says this road was carved by Alexander the Great,” Mehmed said. “He did it to fall onto Darius’s rear, instead of showing up where the Persian King was expecting him.”

  “It’s not a road I’d take if I thought Kasim might be planning to ambush me.”

  Mehmed chuckled. “You don’t know much about warfare, do you? Ambush isn’t possible on a narrow path like this. How would the Karamanids deploy their riders with few feet of clearance between the wall and the precipice?”

  At the summit of the slope, a bulge in the canyon wall forced a kink in the path, sending it over a rocky shelf.

  A page was awaiting Mehmed at that place.

  “The locals call this spot İğnesinin Gözü, The Eye of the Needle,” the page said. “Zaganos Pasha wants you and your friend to cross this place on foot. I’ll lead your horses to the other side.”

  When Vlad reached the narrowest section of the pass, where the shelf was only four feet wide, he glanced to his left and suffered a sharp pain in his groin. There was nothing below him but air.

  Once past İğnesinin Gözü the path opened up enough for three horses to walk abreast. They saw Lake Beyşehir ahead, shimmering in the afternoon sun, a broad swath of blue against the brown of the surrounding landscape. The road descended gradually and an hour later it reached the bottom of the canyon, where it resumed its course along the riverbank.

  They arrived at the lake in time to make their Salah al-Maghrib ablution in its frigid waters.

  “Tonight Lala Zaganos wants to rehearse with me every last detail of what I’m supposed to say and do tomorrow,” Mehmed said. “He believes a single misspoken word, or an ambiguous gesture, might cause İbrahim to walk out on us. It seems the old bey is a slave to pride.”

  Vlad was glad when, following the prayer, he finally found himself without company for the first time in two weeks. He wanted to digest alone the sweet thought that peace with Karaman was only hours away. With that, the Pope’s ill-advised crusade would be abandoned, and the threat to Vlad’s life would be averted.

  For now.

  Help Mehmed succeed tomorrow, God, Vlad prayed. Then knowing the boy was only his lala’s mouthpiece, he added, And help Zaganos obtain what he came here for.

  31

  İBRAHIM BEY

  March 1443, Lake Beyşehir, Karaman

  Mehmed and his entourage were received in a large felt tent İbrahim had erected at the midpoint between his camp and that of the Ottomans. By prior agreement, both parties were to attend the meeting unarmed, but could bring along a reasonable number of advisors and servants.

  Zaganos, whom İbrahim had met on a prior occasion, introduced Mehmed. In turn, Mehmed introduced Yunus as his secretary and Vlad as his musahib.

  İbrahim was a small, wiry man in his fifties, whose brown, leathery face and chapped lips testified to a life spent outdoors. He fastened his vivacious bird-of-prey eyes upon his guests with the insistence of a mind reader. Then he sat erect on the carpet, flanked on his left by three brutish-looking men in their thirties. At his right sat a restless teenager who eyed Mehmed with undisguised hostility.

  A handful of elderly men with henna-dyed beards sat in a row a few feet behind İbrahim, fingering prayer beads. They had a scholarly appearance, and Vlad assumed they were representatives of the Karamanid ulema.

  İbrahim pointed to his left with his elbow and said, “My sons, Prince Mehmed.” Then casting a proud look at his right, he added, “You already know my grandson. Kasim speaks often of the time he spent at your father’s court.”

  Vlad didn’t recognize Kasim, whom he’d seen only once in passing, as a rag-clad, dirty prisoner in the Macedon Tower. The cursory glance Kasim threw him didn’t show any sign of recognition either.

  “My father’s still disconsolate over your grandson’s precipitous departure,” Mehmed said. “Kasim was like a son to him.”

  Kasim’s face reddened, and his hand flew to the place on his sash where a dagger would normally hang. İbrahim gripped the youth’s knee in a brusque move that commande
d calm.

  The tense atmosphere that surrounded the introductions softened when the gift exchange began.

  İbrahim’s gift to Murad was presented in a wooden chest that two slaves placed on the ground in front of Mehmed. When they threw the lid open, Vlad detected the musty odor he associated with old books. Indeed, the chest appeared to be stuffed to the brim with loose vellum leaves.

  “The sultan’s passion for binding ancient manuscripts is known throughout Dar al-Islam,” İbrahim said.

  Mehmed lifted a handful of leaves and regarded them, dumbfounded, as if suspecting a prank. When he tried to pass them on to Zaganos, the Third Vizier sneered and kept his hands laced on his lap.

  An awkward silence settled in the tent.

  İbrahim tugged at his beard, uneasy, and his eyes darted from Mehmed to Zaganos and back. “The sultan will surely find joy in binding this copy of Shahnameh. It’s the masterpiece of Yaqoot Mosta’sami, the Master of Seven Masters, who created it two hundred years ago.”

  The unexpected mention of the book that had been Vlad’s constant companion through the years Gunther taught him Persian, made his heart pucker with longing for home. He took the leaves from Mehmed and examined them in the light of a nearby lamp. The gift might’ve been meant to subtly ridicule Murad’s non-ghazi-like interests, but its value to a book lover like the sultan was undeniable.

  “The calligraphy is exquisite and the illustrations peerless, İbrahim Bey,” he said. Then he returned the stack of leaves to Mehmed with the reverence owed a precious object. “I’m certain only Sultan Murad’s bookbinding skills can do justice to a rare manuscript like this.”

  The red beards nodded and mumbled their approval.

  İbrahim seemed delighted. “My musahib has assured me this gift is worthy of a great khan like my brother-in-law.”

  Mehmed sighed and gave Vlad a look charged with both admiration and gratitude.

  İbrahim raised two fingers, and a slave rushed over with an oblong ivory casket he placed in Mehmed’s lap.