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  "Eat well," she said when the deal was concluded, "drink your fill and visit the baths, for tomorrow we enter the desert. "

  There was music that night at the inn, a percussionist playing on goat-hide drums to the accompaniment of some wailing stringed instrument, like unto a harp but with only four strings and a looser tone. We sat up for a time and listened, lingering over cups of beer.

  "In the Cockerel," Joscelin said, smiling, "there would be dancing. ”

  "And wine. " I laughed. "Do you remember the headache I had?" "The day we set out for Landras? You looked the way I feel at

  sea.

  "We were toasting Hyacinthe," I remembered. "At least I was, and Emile. Imri, I never told you, but if it hadn't been for the Tsingani, we would never have found you. " I told him, then, about asking for Emile's aid and how Kristof, son of Oszkar, had brought his kumpania to find us at Verreuil.

  "Because of Hyacinthe?" he asked when I was done.

  "Yes," I said. "Because of Hyacinthe. "

  Imriel thought about it, frowning his Courcel frown. "Then it is right that I am here, trying to help him. Whether he knows it or not, I am in his debt. It is right and fair. "

  It would have been humorous, coming from anyone else his age.

  This boy could be dangerous. Or he could be something else.

  "Yes," I said. "It is right, and fair. "

  In the early morning, when the sky had lightened to a leaden grey, the stars still visible, we assembled our caravan and set out across the vast wasteland of the desert.

  It was my first experience at riding a camel, and I must own, for all I had boasted of my hard-won horsemanship skills, this was some what completely different. At the guide's command, my mount lowered itself to its knees, huffing prodigiously. With some apprehension, I clambered into the stiff, high-backed saddle and the camel rose, swaying. I felt very far above the ground, and in no way in control of the strange beast.

  "Very good!" said Mek Timmur, our Jebean caravan-guide. "Very good, lady!"

  I looked at Imriel, clinging to his saddle and grinning fit to split his face. On the other side of me, Joscelin sat at his ease, wearing a white burnoose with the hood lowered and looking for all the world like he'd ridden a hundred camels. Kaneka and Safiya were as com fortable as if they'd been lounging on couches. Well and good, I thought; if they could manage, so could I.

  After the first few miles, I ceased to worry about riding a camel.

  The challenge of the desert was overwhelming enough.

  For one who has not endured it, it is hard to describe. Words like "heat" and "sun" lose all meaning. The desert was a vast expanse of yellow sand, flat as a board, stretching in all directions. As the sun cleared the horizon and began to climb into the sky, the heat mounted, relentless as a hammer. When it was still, one prayed for a breeze; when the breeze came, it was like the breath of a furnace, hot and parching. I perched atop my shambling camel and withered, feeling my skin, my mouth, my very eyeballs sandy and desiccated.

  Here and there, we passed barren hills, pyramids of black basalt jutting forth from the flat sands. At midday, Mek Timmur declared a halt of two hours in the shadow of one such. The respite afforded by the shade was offset by the heat of the stone itself, radiant in the sun. I leaned against an outcropping of rock, fanning myself with my broad- brimmed hat and clutching the cool, sweating bulk of a water-skin.

  "You see?" Kaneka said cheerfully. "Safer than Nineveh. "

  I was too hot to do anything but nod.

  The rest of the day passed in much the same manner, and we pushed on into the night. When twilight fell, it was strangely beautiful, the purple shadows lengthening across the endless desert. Nowhere else in the world can one see how far light travels unimpeded, nor darkness. In the absence of the sun, the temperature dropped to bearable levels. Under a canopy of stars, we travelled onward, the spongy footfalls of the camels oddly silent on the desert floor, accompanied only by the rattle of our gear and our own soft breathing.

  At what hour I could not guess, Mek Timmur ordered camp made and in short order our tents were pitched, the camels staked for the night, kneeling under the stars and chewing meditatively on their mea sures of sorghum. I fell onto my own pallet and slept like the dead.

  And on the following day, we did it all over again.

  Terre d'Ange is a rich and fertile land. While I have travelled to many lands that made me long for home, never had I experienced any place so completely and utterly barren, lacking in all elements that sus tain life. If we had not carried our own water, of a surety, we would have died in the first days. The heat and dryness was such that it leeched all moisture from the flesh. On the third day, we entered a sea of grey stone, locked into impossible waves and sculpted by the wind. And here the simoom blew, the killing wind of the desert. It was fortunate that we were not in the sands, where we would have had no choice but to wait out the windstorm, crouched beside the bulk of our camels and praying they would shelter us from the suffocating sands. As it was, it was bad enough, but we persevered, wrapping our faces in turbans, reemerging into the airless sea of ochre sand.

  Among us all, I daresay Imriel bore it the best, enduring the scorch ing heat with all the resilience of youth. At the end of the day, he alone had breath left for chatter; even Joscelin, with his Cassiline endurance, looked haggard and weary.

  On the fourth day, we reached the watering-hole.

  I had expected—oh, I don't know, an oasis of sorts, shaded with palms, a small encampment surrounding it. 'Twas nothing of the sort, but a crater within the desert, flanked by tall cliffs and fantastically hot, lacking the least vegetation. The well was deep and plentiful, but 'twas true, the water was bitter and fit only for the camels, which drank it without harm. All about the floor of the valley, we saw the corpses of camels that had been pushed too hard and sickened and died in sight of water. I understood, then, a little better why Kaneka had been so particular in her choice of caravans. There are no scavengers in the desert—not even blowflies—and the skeletons of the camels were per fectly preserved, sand-colored hummocks, the hides parched and withered onto the bones.

  If the water was unsuitable for drinking, at least one could bathe in it, and this we did, filling a large copper basin brought for the pur pose. I washed the airborne grit from every crevice of my body, rinsing my sand-caked hair and feeling several pounds lighter for it. Such was the heat that the water evaporated from my skin within minutes of my bath, leaving me cleaner but no less dehydrated for it. My hair, drying nearly as quickly, fair crackled with electric heat.

  I remembered ruefully the counsel I'd given Pharaoh's wife, poor, simple Clytemne. Would that I'd had a salve of wool-fat on this journey!

  And then we were off again, boarding our lumbering, swaying cam els, emerging from the baking shadows of the valley into the blazing wasteland. My lips parched and cracked, and I wet them sparingly with small sips from my water-skin. Only the heaps of dried camel dung at our resting-points gave evidence that anyone else in the world had passed this way—that, and the occasional corpse, the desiccated mounds of fallen camels.

  "You are sure," I said to Kaneka at one point, my voice thin and cracking, "that this is the wisest route to Meroë?"

  "The wisest?" From under the shadow of her hood she looked at me, eyes dark and amused. "I never said it was the wisest, little one. But it is the shortest. "

  Yellow sand and basalt hills gave way to granite, grey plains and rugged hills laced with a vein of blue slate, an unexpected gift of color. It fed the imagination until one's mind conjured lakes, vast lakes, blue and shimmering in the distance. The first such vision excited me and I urged my camel onward over the desert floor, imagining the cool depths, plunging my whole head into the waters and drinking my fill, until my parched throat was slaked at last and my belly filled with water, as much water as it could hold.

  "No, lady. " Mek
Timmur held me back, grasping my camel's reins and shaking his head, looking sorrowful. "It is illusion. Only illusion. "

  I didn't believe him, not at first. After another hour's march, when the shimmering lake remained at the self-same distance, I began to believe. And then he adjusted our course, moving slightly to the east, and the "lake" faded, giving way to barren rock. Then, I believed.

  Onward and onward. Our water-skins ran dry, and we had to breach one of the casks, huddling around to share it out among us, lest a drop be spilled. At night, my mouth was so dry I could hardly chew the strips of dried meat. Our camels plodded through deep sand and scree, staggering on the loose pebbles. How long had it been? A week, Kaneka had estimated. It felt like far longer. Despite the best care of the guides—and they were good, if the stories I've heard were any indication—one of the camels foundered, wallowing on the desert floor. Imriel, angry and bitter, would have wept if he'd had the moisture for tears.

  And slowly, slowly, the signs of life reemerged.

  First were a few stunted mimosa trees, ragged shrubs struggling for life. We hailed them with shouts of joy. On the next to last day, we saw a pair of gazelles, startling and unlikely, bounding southward at our approach.

  On the last day, I could smell the river.

  One would not suppose, being odorless, that the scent of water could travel so far. In an arid land, believe me, it does. My lord Delaunay trained me to use my nose no less than any other sense, and it was I who scented it first, the sweet, life-giving presence of moisture carried on the air.

  We had regained the Nahar.

  It was different, far different, from the broad, gracious expanse on which we had sailed upon our feluccas. Here it was younger and swifter, nearer to its source, and there were fewer settlements upon its banks, which were not nearly so lush.

  Still, it was water, and life.

  We had crossed the desert.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  FROM THE banks of the Nahar, it was another several days' jour ney to Meroë, which lay at the juncture of two Great Rivers—the Nahar, which we had travelled, and the Tabara, which led further south. After the forced march across the desert, this leg of the journey was nearly leisurely. Day in and day out, we drank our fill of water. I never thought it would seem such a luxury. There were villages along the way, albeit small and struggling. Here we traded for flat-bread and milk, augmenting our diet. And there was game, at last. Mek Timmur and the others hunted, bringing in gazelle, which we ate half-cooked and bloody.