"And they have goods in kind?" Ras Lijasu asked. "Such as are worth our while?"

I thought of how gold was held cheaply in Saba, of the abundance of natural resources. "Yes, my lord.

Of a surety."

"And no steel." His handsome face took on a speculative cast. "Their army would be ill-equipped, against ours, if it came to it."

"My lord." My mouth had gone dry. I was conscious of my heart beating within my breast, of the Name of God sounding in the blood that throbbed in my veins. "Do you know the old stories of the Melehakim?

How their mouths would fill with great cries on the battlefield that struck fear into the hearts of their enemies?"

The Ras nodded slowly.

"Then do not mistake Saba for easy prey." He regarded me for a long time without speaking. "Tifari and Bizan said you were touched by the gods, lady dream-spirit. I will heed your warning. But remember it is Saba that took arms against Meroe so long ago. I merely think to protect my people."

"So did Khemosh the Accursed," his sister said tartly. "Do not fear, my friends. Queen Zanadakhete is wiser than her impulsive grandson. For so long as Saba is content to let the ancient quarrel rest, so is Jebe-Barkal. There will be no aggression."

"Ah!" Lijasu threw his hands in the air. "Must a man be reviled for thinking? I never proposed war, but only considered the outcome of it. Muni, fill my cup; I am beleaguered by beautiful women."

Thus the moment passed, and my heart beat easier within me. We spoke longer of Saba and other things, and the Ras invited us to remain in Meroe. When we demurred, he insisted on arranging our transport to Majibara. I was grateful for his offer, for in truth, our funds were running short and, too, we would be bereft of Kaneka's expertise in hiring a caravan. It was a pleasant day, all told. Before we left, Nathifa led us to the inner courtyard for a final audience with Queen Zanadakhete.

The rains had begun, lighter than before. We knelt before the curtained alcove, while servants stood at the sides holding parasols of waxed cotton above us.

"Grandmother," Nathifa called. "The D'Angelines wish to give their thanks."

The curtains twitched and I beheld once more a sliver of face, a bright, dark eye peering. On my knees, I bowed low from the waist, hearing the gold and ivory bracelets clatter as I did. Imriel shifted his new belt-sheath as he bowed, and the ruff of Joscelin's lion's-mane collar brushed the moist tiles.

"Please accept our gratitude, your majesty," I said.

"You have done us a service," said the voice of Zanadakhete of Meroe. "Pray, do us another." One hand emerged from the curtains to beckon to Nathifa, who came forward and bowed, accepting a coffer like the one the Ras had given me, only finer. "My grandson tells me you return to your own land. Give this to your Queen, with my greetings. Tell her we would welcome an embassy in Meroe, if she wished to send one."

"I will do that, your majesty," I said, bowing again and taking the coffer.

"It is good. You may go, with my blessing." The curtains fell closed, concealing the veiled figure. We all bowed again, and rose to follow Nathifa. Behind us, I heard a soft voice murmur to an unseen attendant, "It is as I thought. The tall one looks well in a warrior's mane."

"So," Nathifa said to us within the royal palace. "Here are some old friends, to escort you to your lodgings." With a gesture, she indicated Tifari Amu and Bizan, both resplendent in their full soldiers'

regalia. "You will want to have a care with that gift."

"What is it?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Look and see."

I opened the coffer and beheld a glittering necklace wrought of gold and gems. The pendant bore an image of the kneeling Isis, her winged arms outspread, a massive emerald between the prongs of thehorns that crowned her.

Bizan let out a low whistle.

I closed the coffer. "You want us to carry this two thousand miles to Queen Ysandre?"

"From a Queen, fit for a Queen. Why not?" Nathifa smiled and touched my brow with one finger. "You are carrying something more valuable in here, are you not?"

"Yes." I held her gaze.

"This . . ." Nathifa tapped the coffer. "This is only rocks and metal, wrought in a pleasing form. If you can carry the other, this should be no trouble."

"We will try," I told her.

"I know," she said, and smiled again. "Do not fear for Saba, lady. My brother thinks like a man, but he can charm the birds from the sky when he chooses. We have kept the Covenant of Wisdom, here. We will see that it is his charm he wields, and not a sword." "The gods grant it may be so," I said. "It shall be," Nathifa promised. Joscelin, the lion's mane tickling his nose, sneezed mightily.

EIGHTY-TWO.

THAT EVENING, we said our farewells to Tifari and Bizan.

"Have a care with Kaneka," I said to our highland guide after embracing him. "She is a strong woman, with a strong will."

"I know." He favored me with one of his rare smiles. "It is what draws me to her."

"She is also very handy with an axe," I warned him.

He nodded. He was a handsome man, Tifari Amu, with his cinnamon skin and his dark, patient eyes. "I heard the story, my lady Phedre. I listened to what was said, and to what was not. I understand a little bit of her courage. I hold it in all honor."

"Good," I said, gripping his upper arms. "I am glad of it."

Bizan made Imriel a gift of his fire-striking kit upon parting, a curved bit of iron and a chunk of flint shaped to fit one's hand, sealed in a watertight pouch with a compartment for tinder. "You were a good companion. You remember how I taught you to lay a fire?"

Imriel nodded, wide-eyed, clutching the pouch to him. "Thank you, Bizan."

"Here, it ties on your fine new belt, like so." Bizan suited actions to words, then ruffled Imriel's hair. Imri not only endured it, but flushed with pride. "There. A proper soldier of the Queen's Guard you'd make, boy."

They refused all gifts in kind, swearing the Ras' commission forbade it. I do not know if it was true, butit was courteously done. Bizan offered to facilitate the sale of our Umaiyyati mounts and the donkeys, his cousin being a horse-trader, and that offer I accepted with gratitude. I daresay he got his cut, but the price was far better than we would have gotten on our own.

Between Bizan's aid and Ras Lijasu's generosity, we were only another day in Meroe, making ready to depart. Once more, as so many times before, we packed our things, items of luxury going at the bottom of our trunks, items of necessity atop. I hid the coffer with Queen Zanadakhete's necklace at the very bottom of mine.

"What am I to do with this?" Joscelin complained, holding up the lion's-mane collar.

"You could wear it," I said, straight-faced. "The Jebeans think it becomes you."

"And you?" He eyed me.

"Truly?" I tilted my head to regard him. "Joscelin Verreuil, missing part of an ear or no, you are one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen. But you look a little foolish with a lion's mane about your neck."

It went into his trunk, rather to Imriel's chagrin.

We departed as we had arrived, crossing the suspension bridge on a long line of camels. Mek Gamal was our caravan-leader's name, and he was a taciturn man, reputed to be one of the best in the business.

He took his charge from the Ras with great seriousness, and if he was not the most garrulous of companions, he was assuredly among the most competent.

Perched atop my swaying camel, I turned many times to watch Meroe fall behind us as we followed the Nahar River's course, until only the tips of the burial pyramids were visible. Another parting, another journey.

Another step toward home.

This time, we found the desert in blossom, following hard on the heels of the rains. And if there was anything stranger and more fantastic than that blighted landscape, it was seeing it bedecked with unexpected flowers. How could it be, I marveled, that anything could grow in such a place? And yet it did. On the outskirts, we encountered mimosa in full bloom, shrubs laden with yellow flowers, bright under the hot sun.

Even in the interior, there was life. In the shadow of a jutting basalt formation, we encountered melons growing in the desert, ripening on the vine with unimaginable speed. Mek Gamal called a halt, then, and we ate melons, their fruit faintly astringent, but blessedly moist. Following the Jebeans' lead, we spat the seeds back into the sand.

Truly, the rains had ceased, and at night, the stars were as bright and crowded as I remembered them. I knew them better, now. If no one fetched me to sleep, I would sit for hours, gazing at them, recalling the names Morit had painstakingly taught me. To this day, there are constellations I can name only in Habiru.

Hour after hour, they wheeled through the sky in their slow dance. I watched them, and thought about the Name of God.

It was hot, yes; oven-hot, as searing as before. My mouth grew no less parched, my skin no less dry.

The endless swaying of the camels was no more comfortable than before. But in the desert, one can observe the dance of the stars, the steady course of the sun across the sky, and the play of light as itcrosses the desiccated land. The air was clear, so sharp it cut like a blade. It was in such a place, I thought, stripped to the bare bones of existence, that the Sacred Name was first spoken.

We reached the bitter well that marked the halfway point, and it seemed almost sudden.

I sat on a rock in the baking valley, watching the camels drink their fill, conscious of the heat but paying it scant heed. What a marvel it was, that creatures existed which could endure such conditions! How strange, that we humans needed salt to live, yet would die of its excess. Salt preserves flesh, and yet kills it, too. In saltwater are we nurtured in the womb, and salt runs in the red blood of our veins.

"Phedre." Joscelin's voice was hoarse as he thrust the water-skin at me. "You need to drink."

I did, tasting the water flat and warm in my mouth, feeling it moisten my tissues, thinking how odd that it should sustain life, and yet death was necessary for us to carry it, the cured leather hide holding portable life within it. How intricate, the working of our world!

"Mek Gamal is waiting," Joscelin informed me. "And you're making Imriel worry."

I got back on my camel, then, and our journey resumed. We entered the sea of grey stone, where the wind had sculpted the landscape into fabulous formations. No winds blew this time, and the only sound for a hundred miles was the rattle of pebbles displaced by our camels' broad hoof-pads. No wonder the Habiru prophets had escaped into the desert to think! I did, on that journey. I thought about Ras Lijasu and his merry good nature, his readiness to consider war a possibility. Was it something intrinsic to mortal kind, that we must always think of killing one another? I prayed it was not so. I had seen too much of death, too much of cruelty.

And yet it is what we do, again and again. And I ... I was complicit in it, for had I not brought word to Ysandre of the Skaldic invasion, so many years ago? Had I not travelled to Alba, beseeching them to war?

What is our purpose, if not to kill and die? Love as thou wilt.

'Tis all well and good, if one is a god; not so easy for those of us of mortal kind. Would that there were only that in the world. Were it so, my lord Delaunay would still be alive, and I ... Elua knows where I would be. Were love enough, if my mother and father could have lived upon it like Blessed Elua, would they have kept me? I hoped it were so.

But even Blessed Elua had his Companions. Where would he be, if Naamah had not given herself to the King of Persis for his freedom, had not laid down in the stews of Bhodistan with strangers so he might be fed? Where would he be, if Camael's sword had not afforded him protection? What of Terre d'Ange, without Azza's pride that staked our boundaries, without Shemhazai's cleverness, that built our cities?

Where would we be, without Eisheth's healing skills, without Anael's husbandry? How could we atone, without KushiePs mercy?

How would Elua have answered the One God, if Cassiel had not handed him his dagger?

We are all these things, I thought, while the sun blazed in the sky and the ochre sands reflected its heat.

Pride, desire, compassion, cleverness, belligerence, fruitfulness, loyalty . . . and guilt. But above it all stands love. And if we desire to be more than human, that is the star by which we must set our sights.

It is all we can do to try. It is enough. Such were the things I thought in the desert, and the journey passed quicker than I believed possible. It was only when we reached Majibara and the vast silences of open spaces gave way to the clamor of the marketplace and the babble of a half-dozen tongues, situated beside the broad expanse of the rain-swollen Nahar that I reckoned the cost of it, and knew myself to be exhausted and half-fevered with thirst, feeling gaunt, scorched to the bone and somehow purged by our desert crossing.

We had reached Menekhet.

"You worry even me, sometimes," Joscelin said to me that night as we lay abed at the inn, listening to distant music from the caravans. "I half thought you might wander off and leave us, if I didn't watch you."

"No." I wound a length of his hair about my finger. "I was thinking, that's all."

"Across a week's worth of desert?" He smiled a little. "About what?"

"Life," I said. "Death, war, love . . . the nature of humanity."

"Did you come to any conclusions?" he asked.

"No," I said, and lifted my head to kiss him. "None I didn't already know." And with that I told them to him, not in words, but in the language of the flesh, of lips and tongue and hands, of quickening breath and the leap of blood in the veins, the salt-slickness of desire. It is the same questions we ask of our existence, and the answer is always the same. The mystery lies not in the question nor the answer, but in the asking and answering themselves, over and over again, and the end is engendered in the beginning.

That much, I had learned.

We had scant difficulty in hiring a felucca to take us to Iskandria. The flood-tides were receding, and trade was brisk all up and down the Nahar. We spent a half-day in the harbor, hiring a vessel, a sturdy craft piloted by a good-natured Menekhetan sailor by the name of Inherit, who spoke a smattering of Jeb'ez and a few words of Hellene. It was nothing fancy, but it would suffice.

After so many farewells, it seemed almost strange to leave Majibara, where we knew no one and had no ties. Our leavetaking of Mek Gamal had been a businesslike affair, the caravan-leader owing allegiance only to Ras Lijasu, pleased at a crossing safely made, eager to strike a deal for a profitable return.

At dawn, we ventured to the harbor, paying bearers to carry our trunks and load them into the hold of the sturdy felucca. The rising sun turned the lake-sized harbor of the river to an expanse of hammered gold. We waited patient on the docks while Inherit offered prayers to the gods of Menekhet and most especially Sebek, the crocodile-god of the Nahar.

Once he had finished, he beckoned us aboard, smiling cheerfully. We situated ourselves about the vessel as he raised the lateen sail. On the docks, a pair of loitering sailors aided him, untying the lines and tossing them aboard. Down the river, the burgeoning green banks of tamarisk and papyrus awaited us.

We were on our way.

EIGHTY-THREE.

OUR RETURN to Iskandria was swifter than our departure, for we travelled with the current and, although the Upper Nahar was calm, it flowed strongly after the rains. Inherit canted his sail hither and thither to catch the fitful breeze, but whether he succeeded or no, the steady current bore us onward.

When the sail's belly did swell with wind, the felucca swooped like a swallow on the broad breast of the river, causing Imriel to shout with glee.

We passed the island temple of Houba, where I had offered a prayer to Isis.

We passed countless plantations, greening in the bright sun, dotted with Menekhetans working hurriedly to make the most of the growing season.

We passed crocodiles and hippopotami, and the many birds we had seen before. On that journey, Kaneka had taught us the names in Jeb'ez. This time, Inherit taught us in Menekhetan, pointing and naming as we went. Imriel played the game along with me, his facile mind quick to grasp new words; Joscelin merely rolled his eyes and took out his fishing gear, trailing a line in the water, catching little in the swiftness of our passage over the waters. In the evenings we made camp on the outskirts of villages, and traded with the villagers for our meals as we had done before.

It was after we had stopped to pay homage at the temple of Sebek- at Inherit's insistence, for I would gladly have foregone the pleasure a second time-that we realized how swiftly indeed this leg of our journey would come to an end.

"Phedre." In the prow of the felucca, Joscelin set down his neatly wound fishing line. "What happens when we reach Iskandria?"

I glanced toward the stern, where Inherit was teaching Imriel to steer the vessel, both of them absorbed with the tiller. "We present ourselves to Ambassador de Penfars, I suppose. If we're not seized on arrival."