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“There are places inside of us,” I said, picking my words with care, “that are frightening, places no one should go. In Daršanga, I had to go to that place. And … Imri, it’s hard to find one’s way back. I’m trying. But it’s not easy. Can you understand?”

“Yes.” He swallowed and picked at the cloth of his breeches before looking up at me, his deep blue eyes brimming with pain. “Do you ever … do you ever miss it there?”

Ah, Elua! Answering tears stung my own eyes. Not trusting my voice, I nodded. Yes, I missed it. I woke in the night sometimes from dreams of blood and iron, sick with desire.

“I don’t,” he whispered. “Only … sometimes, it was easier, I think.”

“Yes,” I said, stroking his hair. “I know. But this is better. And it
will
get better, Imri. For all of us. Elua willing, for Joscelin and me, too.”

And I listened to Wali’s lusty singing, to Kaneka’s rich laughter, and willed myself to believe it was true.

Sixty-Six

HOUBA WAS the site of the last great temple of the Upper Nahar, a half-day’s sail from the caravanserai of Majibara. It is perched on a lush, green island in the broad river, graceful palms waving over its narrow columns, tamarisk clustered thick about the foundations.

We disembarked and joined a line of supplicants awaiting admission to the temple, which did a brisk trade. Outside, under the hot sun, Menekhetans and Jebeans alike mingled in respectful good spirits, sharing gossip and water-skins, glancing curiously at we D’Angelines, which is something so common all of us were used to it, even Imriel.

Inside it was as cool and airy as a place could be during early summer on the Nahar. I gazed at the frescos on the high walls, following the goddess’ quest to reunite the severed portions of her divine husband Osiris and restore him to eternal life.

At the far end of the temple stood the great effigy, winged arms outspread, her horn-crowned head lowered to her supplicants. I paid for an offering of incense and knelt before the altar, gazing up at the goddess as the blue smoke arose, reminded of Naamah, who had laid down with the King of Persis on Blessed Elua’s behalf, of gentle Eisheth, the healer, to whom I had prayed too seldom.

I prayed to them both, now, and to Isis, in whose lands I travelled. Merciful goddess, I prayed, restorer of life, make me whole. Make us all whole. Whether or not she heard and was minded to grant my prayer, I cannot say; I was a foreigner in her lands, and too far from my own. Nonetheless, my heart felt lighter when I left.

“You see?” Outside the temple, Kaneka smiled at me. “I told you you would like this better.”

That night we made camp not far from the outskirts of Majibara. Indeed, sounds of the city were carried on the night breezes-a skirling sound of pipes, a burst of uproarious laughter, faint and distant. Tomorrow, our numbers would dwindle further. Achara and Binudi, the two Nubians, would depart, continuing westward along the Nahar, while the rest of us would strike south for Meroë.

Safiya, who was a native of Meroë, told stories of her city’s glory and that of its regent, Queen Zanadakhete, who ruled over all of Jebe-Barkal. Her honor guard, she told us, was two thousand men, none shorter than six feet tall, all clad in splendid embroidered capes and bearing swords and spears and shields made of the patterned hide of the camelopard, tough and light-weight. I was not sure I could credit such stories, but Kaneka assured us they were true.

Thus passed our last night upon the river.

I would be sorry to leave it. It was a pleasant mode of travel, aside from the crocodiles. Wali moped the whole of the way, clearly hoping Kaneka would change her mind and choose to stay with him. As for Wali, I think if he had not loved his boat so much, he might have gone with her, but no craft can navigate the cataracts of the Nahar, which are narrow and strewn with rocks, broken here and there by sharp precipices.

Majibara was vast indeed, a city of yellow sandstone made even larger by the number of caravans camped on its outskirts. We sailed into the city itself and took lodgings at what Wali swore was a reputable inn, hiring porters to bear our goods.

Menekhetans, Jebeans and Umaiyyati dominated, for there is trade overland from the Ahram Sea. Of a surety, there were no other D’Angelines-but nor did I see Caerdicci or Hellenes, or any of the more familiar nations.

And our journey was scarce begun.

What we would have done without Kaneka, I cannot say. She was a shrewd negotiator and wise in the ways of Jebean travel. One camel looks much like another to me. They are odd, ungainly creatures with great, furred humps upon their backs and lambent eyes, with lashes like a woman’s. They can bear prodigious amounts of weight and go for many miles with neither food nor drink, traversing the desert sands on broad, splay-toed hooves.

They are also notoriously unpleasant and their shambling gait a torment, but that I learned later.

We spent the better part of a day arranging transport for Achara and Binudi, and that was accomplished in fine form, a train of donkey-porters hired and the transaction registered with Majibara’s Master of Caravans. The women were excited, which I was glad to see; I do not think, until then, they entirely believed they would be returning home. I prayed they would find the homecoming they deserved. If nothing else, they were laden with spoil, and greed may prevail where compassion falters.

What stories they would tell their families, I never asked.

Our own arrangements took considerably longer. It would require a forced march of some seven days to regain the river. While this would cut a month or better from our route, it would be grueling. There was only one watering-hole along the route, and that of salt water so bitter only the camels could drink it. The rest, we must carry ourselves. To that end, where we had spent lightly in Iskandria, trusting in the route’s rich provisions, we spent heavily in Majibara. Water-skins we bought in abundance, and two great casks to augment our supply; and sacks of sorghum for camel-fodder. For ourselves, we would carry a supply of dried meat cut in strips, dates and a crumbling white cheese made of goats’ milk, none of it especially appetizing. Jebeans are great hunters, and where they cannot get fresh game, they make do with scant provision.

Other items as well we purchased: skinning knives, soap, butter, a pair of lanterns, an aromatic unguent reputed to keep lice at bay, satchels, woolen blankets, needles and thread, and bits of hide and thong for patching boots and tack. Joscelin, who’d regretted the lack on the river, bought a set of fishing hooks and sturdy line, which made me laugh, bound as we were for the desert.

We hired four guides and twelve camels, and I cannot count how many Kaneka interviewed before she found a company that suited her exacting requirements. The marketplaces of Majibara are difficult to endure, spread beneath the baking sun and stinking of camel dung. I was glad when it was done and Joscelin measured out five links of chain, prying them loose and paying them unto the guide-master under Kaneka’s judicious eye.

“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 somewhat 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 comfortable 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 measures 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 sustain 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 scorching 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 perfectly 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 purpose. 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 camels, 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.