He had surrendered to the inevitable, reconciling himself to Selim's proximity by thinking of the boy as something like a dog, that must always have one paw in contact with its master. But with that light touch on him in his sleep, he dreamed of women with irksome and inconvenient frequency. He had looked forward to the extremity of the red sands, where he knew that physical hardship would taunt him with visions of water and food instead. Which it had, except that now he dreamed of water and food and women.

Six camel marches to Jubbeh, and four beyond that to Hayil, Bin Dirra said, Allah willing. The water was a problem. Bin Dirra thought they had just enough, if they were careful, even with evaporation and the drip. There were wells at Shakik, but that would mean a sidetrack of three days, and the water was two hundred feet down, requiring more rope than they had, unless they met some Bedu who could draw for them. In the winter, the tribes wandered on good grazing in the nefud, but there had been no rain for two years, and summer was upon them now, killing all it touched. To hope for Bedu at Shakik was to bet against long odds. Better to make straight for Hayil, and replenish the water at Jubbeh, where there was a village and wells worked by camels.

Six days. In the morning Arden rigged a bowl beneath the sweating water skin, to catch the drip, and Bin Dirra laughed in white-toothed delight. At the end of the day there was a mouthful of sand and dirty water in the bowl, smelling of camel. Arden offered it to Selim, who shook his head and went on unloading the other camel.

Bin Dirra refused it, too. "It is yours, O Father of Ten Shots! Drink!"

The Shammari stood grinning at him as Arden upended the bowl. The water tasted vile, but it was cool and wet. As he lowered the bowl, Bin Dirra grinned and took a step backward.

Selim cried out, and at the same moment Bin Dirra shrieked. The nomad looked down, and for an instant it seemed that Selim was attacking him viciously with a camel stick and dagger.

The Shammari stumbled back, screaming, and Arden saw the horned adder writhing at his feet, trying to slither away from the blows of the camel stick. He dropped the bowl and grabbed his pistol from the saddle.

"Yallah!" He flung Selim out of the way. At close range his shot took the head from the snake and left a twitching carcass.

Bin Dirra sat down in the sand, panting, holding his foot. Arden seized the length of cord he had used to tie the bowl and dropped to his knees beside the Shammari. He tightened it about the man's leg above the bite. It was not out of humanity that he scored the skin and bent to suck-it was because he knew now that if the Shammari died, their chances of survival shrank from a knife's edge to nothing.

He spat blood, and found the bowl shoved under his face, full of water. He rinsed his mouth and bent again, and again, praying that he had no open cut in his parched lips. He worked until the leg was swollen and Bin Dirra began to shudder and faint.

Arden raised his head. Selim held the Shammari up by the shoulders, staring at Arden with great frightened eyes. He lifted the bowl and rinsed his mouth again and again, not even sparing water, but still the revolting taste of blood and bitter venom seemed to stick on his tongue, nauseating him.

"Damn," he muttered. "Damn, damn, damn."

He had spoken in English, but Bin Dirra was in no case to notice. Selim said nothing. Arden stood up. He looked around at the desert, at endless, trackless waves of sand.

Five days now to Jubbeh. Five days, and if they missed it by one mile, there was nothing to save them.

Before he lost his senses, Bin Dirra had muttered that they must find the rocks of Ghota. When they could see the rocks, they could locate Jubbeh.

By firelight, Arden had slit the bottom of his shaving kit and unfolded the maps hidden there, but in all of them, as he had already known, the nefud was a blank. There was no location for Jubbeh or the rocks of Ghota. He had taken surreptitious compass readings as they traveled. He knew that Bin Dirra had trended south-southeast, but the guide's line had been so erratic and their pace so uneven that Arden could only guess at their present location.

Selim sat beside Bin Dirra, holding him as he thrashed in anguish, his leg swollen and discolored horribly. Finally, late in the night, the Shammari had fallen into a deathly stupor. Arden did not think he would be alive in the morning.

He refrained from drinking, to save the water, and looked on their dinner of bread and dates with loathing, unable to eat for thirst and the sickening aftertaste in his mouth. He tried to lie down and sleep, but he kept listening to Bin Dirra's labored breathing, expecting it to cease. Whenever Arden looked over toward the Shammari, he could see Selim sitting motionless beside the dying man.

Finally Arden gave up on sleep. He rose, walking out into the clear starlight beyond the camels.

He stood looking southeast. Continuous Desert of Pure Red Sand, the maps said laconically, and no more.

Stars, and the desert. Where the stars stopped, the black desert began. That was all he could see. He felt Selim come up behind him and stand silently.

"I can find the way," Arden said.

He turned. The boy's face was barely visible in the starlight. Arden thought it was full of doubt.

"I promised I would take you to England," he said. "And I will."

He thought the boy would say Inshallah, God willing, the Arab's devout remark on any future.

"I know that you will," the boy said quietly. "I brought you water."

Arden was so thirsty that he could have drunk the whole bowl in one breath. "Save it," he said. "We have to make it last."

"This is mine," Selim said, holding out the bowl. "I will drink camel's milk."

"No."

"It will be better if you listen to me in the matter of water and food, my lord. I have seen what the Europeans do. They deny themselves until they cannot bear it, and then they squander more than they need, because they cannot judge."

Arden hesitated. Then he took the bowl, and found that it contained only a few swallows. He drank, the musty camel-taste like ambrosia on his tongue, and then Selim offered him the bread and dates he had been too thirsty and nauseated to eat for dinner. They seemed somewhat more edible now.

They could not linger, though Bin Dirra lay in a coma all night. Before dawn, they tied him to the largest of the camels, laid his kuffiyah over his head to shade him, and set off as soon as there was light enough to read the compass.

Arden plotted their compass course, but it was Selim who ranged ahead and back, scouting the dunes for the easiest way, up along the crests of some, creeping around the foot of others, and finally, when there was no other choice, leading them in a toiling climb straight over.

On the first day, Arden began to think they would do well enough, as long as they did not miss Jubbeh. But by the second, the shape and outline of the sand began to require that they climb more and more often, or else go dangerously far out of his compass reckoning. Arden had to lead both camels, while Selim scouted-as the beasts grew weary, moaning and roaring, he labored to drive them on through the blasting heat. He reached the place that Selim finally chose for their camp with a shaking exhaustion inside him that he was loathe to admit.

Bin Dirra was still alive. His leg was blackened and swollen, his face mottled. As the night fell, the Bedui began to hallucinate, calling out wildly. Selim sat beside him, frying to make him drink. Arden rested, dutifully swallowing the food ration Selim gave him. It was like chewing wood. He was so tired that he fell asleep sitting up.

He dreamed that an angel came and hovered over him, singing. It was the loveliest sound he had ever heard in his life. Like a sweet, soaring hymn in a cathedral. He woke some time in the night, his cheek pressed to warm sand, and saw by the faint light of the coals that Selim was dribbling water into Bin Dirra's mouth.

The Shammari's half-conscious moans woke Arden at dawn. As he breakfasted on the musty dates and camel's milk that Selim gave him, he dug a vial of laudanum out of his kit and put three drops in the sick man's water.

Selim picked up a load to struggle with it to the camels, but Arden lifted the burden from the boy's arms. "Did you sleep at all?" he demanded harshly.

"Oh yes," the boy said. "I was accustomed to serve my mistress all night."

Selim seemed so at home in the desert, milking the camel and going barefoot in the scorching sand, that Arden had almost forgotten he was anything more than a thorough Bedouin. Lady Hester had been notorious for sitting up at all hours, making querulous demands on her servants. Arden thought of the nights he had sat up with her, drinking the tea and eating the food she ordered. He wondered suddenly if Selim had been one of those flitting, cringing servants who had bowed before him then.

The idea angered him. He determined that the boy should not have to shoulder so much of the work, and ordered him to sit down. Arden finished the loading himself. Selim sat obediently, drinking milk. Another realization struck Arden: he had not seen Selim eat bread or dates for two days.

The boy was living on camel's milk. It was perfectly healthy; in a bad year the Bedu survived all summer on their camels' yield, but in this heavy sand, without grazing, the lone female was only producing a pint or two a day, and Arden had drunk half that much himself for breakfast.

"God curse you," he shouted at Selim, "if you get any thinner, I'll leave your bones for the wind to pick!"

The boy looked at him with a stricken expression. "I'm sorry, el-Muhafeh," he said, as if he did not know what to be sorry for.

"Wretched little beast," Arden muttered with savage injustice. He was sharply aware that without Selim he would not have had a prayer of survival. He jerked a leather knot tight on the camel's load. His absurd irritation sustained him through the slogging torture of the morning, but by midday all emotion had been burned out of him, leaving nothing but the pounding of his heart in his ears as he battled the camels upward through knee-deep sand. He had worn a hole in the woolen sock, and each step brought a spike of pain at his heel. When the drug wore off, Bin Dirra began to moan endlessly, whispering garbled prayers.

The sand cascaded down, pooling around Arden's ankles, imprisoning him. He had to push the female, who was roaring and refusing to go on, while Selim dragged on her headrope. By the time they reached the crest, the camel stood trembling with exhaustion and Arden sank to his knees, fumbling with the compass.

Ahead, he could see nothing but more red sand, endless waves in an infinite horizon. Selim stood next to him. Arden tried to take a reading, but the compass face swam before his eyes. His ears rang. He leaned against Selim. Just for a moment, he thought, just rest for a moment. The boy stood patiently, bracing him. Arden could feel the quick panting rise and fall of Selim's breath.

He pushed himself upright and took the reading. "There-" he said hoarsely, pointing at the next great curved face of sand in an infinite array. "That heap of brush, do you see?"

Selim stared to the southeast. "My lord," he said, with a little rise in his voice. "There is another on the one beyond it."

Arden hardly understood him, but he caught the note of excitement and hauled himself to his feet, the dune crest crumbling under him.

"It is a marker! There is another!" Selim cried. "Do you see them? We have foundthe road!"Arden stared ahead of them. The dunes marched away, innumerable. But he could see the little pile of roots, and the one beyond, with heat waves rising around them.

If it was a road, he thought blearily, it was only in the imagination of some fiend outof hell.He dreamed that night of the angel again. He wanted to beg it for water, and tried so hard to speak that he woke himself.At first he thought he was yet asleep, because the angel vanished into the sensations of reality, his blanket beneath him, his empty belly and parched throat, but still heheard the singing.It was unearthly, so lovely and real that it almost frightened him. An English hymn- he even knew the words.He sat up abruptly, reaching instinctively for his rifle.The singing stopped. Selim's voice said sharply: "What is it, my lord?"Arden let go a long breath. He leaned back on his hands. "My God-is that you singing?"

There was a little silence. He could see the boy's black outline, sitting as alwaysbeside Bin Dirra."Yes, my lord," Selim said faintly.He wet his lips. The unreal aura of the song still seemed to cling to him, so that he hardly wanted to speak."Bin Dirra will not remember," the boy said. "It quiets him."Arden lay back down, staring at the sky."Do you dislike it?" Selim asked.He looked up at the huge well of stars that seemed to hang so close and shimmering he might fall upward into them, passing weightless into a dark mirror with lightreflected back on every side.

"It's beautiful," he whispered, his voice cracked by thirst and sleep. "Go on."The boy paused. And then he began to sing again, a small, clear voice in thestaggering silence.

* * * * *Arden thought the camels were dying. They trembled and hesitated, and every time the female lay down, he was afraid she would not get up again. He had to unload her,while Selim coaxed the male ahead with Bin Dirra lying weakly in the saddle.Arden bore the water, what was left, which was only a gallon. The five days had gone; the afternoon sun was searing, burning down on their eighth, and he was certain that they had missed Jubbeh and now made their way by tortuous inches into the inferno. He found that he hardly cared.

They had lost the brush-pile markers two nights past, by trying to travel in the moonlight. He hauled on the grieving camel's halter, urging her to rise. He fell down when she came immediately to her feet. He stared at the blazing sand beneath him, vaguely amazed that she would rise at all, and sure that he could not. The heat scorched his palms and baked his chest. Then he hefted the water skin and baggage onto his shoulders. He stood up, reeling and weak.

The distance between him and Selim seemed a long way, a great stretch of level ground. He did not look up, but put one foot in front of the other. Selim was always ahead of him, moving, the ruthless angel of exhaustion, and he had to follow.

"Come along, camel," he mumbled in English, having come to love and hate the soft-eyed beast. "Come along, come along, poor girl. Not far now. Not far, my poor pretty."

She groaned and stumbled, the voice of his soul. Together they moved by fits and starts and increments, until he reached Selim, who had stopped.

Arden thought in befuddlement that it was too soon to stop. He blinked at the boy.

Selim was weeping, shaking his head. Arden looked up beyond him, at a dune face that rose above and ran like a mammoth wall as far as he could see to the east and west.

Oh God, he thought. We are finished.

The boy gave a faint sob. Arden said, "Don't blubber. You're wasting water." He dropped the skins and baggage where he stood and stopped, lifting Selim up onto the female. The boy felt lighter than the water bags, hardly even a load for the beast. "Lead the other," he said, handing up the male's rope.

Arden drank deeply, lightening the skin still further, and then dragged the baggage onto his shoulders.

A foot at a time, he forced a way up the slope. He had learned what shape promised a little footing, and what would shear down under him, eating up two steps for every three. But he was dying. Halfway up the slope, the air was rasping in his throat, and dizziness pulled him down into a spinning well. His blood was going to burst in his head. He thought he heard church bells, and someone calling him.

"Stop," Selim was saying. "Stop, stop!" The boy had somehow gotten in front of him, off the camel, floundering in the sand. "Bin Dirra-" he panted. "Jubbeh!"

Arden held himself upright with a painful effort. He looked up at the Shammari.

"Where are you going?" the Bedui whispered. Arden could hardly hear above the laboring of his heart. Bin Dirra lifted his hand, gesturing weakly back along the trough of the dune. "There. I can see the rocks of Ghota. Why do you climb this?"

CHAPTER 6.

Selim sat sullenly in the light from the doorway, plaiting hair that hung down below his shoulders. Outside, the streets of Hayil were busy and quiet, with that eastern quiet of whitewash and mud walls where no wheels ever passed. Even the voices seemed distant, swallowed up by the desert air, unless some argument erupted nearby and assaulted the ear with a sudden tumult like a donkey's braying.

The boy was in a high state of persecution, because Arden had bid him paint kohl about his eyes, given him a new robe and a pure white kuffiyah with a gold fringe, and bright turquoise beads to braid into his two long side-locks. Such was manly adornment in the desert. Arden thought he made a very pretty bachelor, even if the rest of his head was a hopeless rat's tangle of dusty curls under the kuffiyah.

"Ay billah, you will be the talk of the harem," he said, kneeling to tie the last touch in place himself: a single large pearl to dangle down behind Selim's ear.

The boy scowled. "I do not wish to be the talk of the harem."

"Reluctance will only send them into raptures, I'm afraid. Perverse creatures, females."

Zenia gave him a piqued glance as he leaned over her. In the sands, the sun had burned him to a deep tawny gold.

"And I suppose you have a very great knowledge of females, ray lord?"

"A vast knowledge. Silly bores, the lot of them." Lord Winter tossed the drape of her kuffiyah back over her shoulder. His hand brushed her throat without ceremony as he parted a lock of her hair with his fingers. "But sweet as honey."

"What can be sweet about them, if they are so boring?" she demanded sulkily.

"Well, it isn't their tiresome prattle, I assure you. But they can't talk all the time, by God's mercy." The back of his fingers pressed against her skin while he tied the pendant. "Their bodies are their honey, wolf cub."

Zenia stared down at her lap, her cheeks growing hot. Since the nefud, she had new and painful feelings about Lord Winter. She was no longer afraid of him. She thought about him every moment, worry and misery and longing.

He grinned and gave her hair a light tug as he sat back on his heels. "You'll figure it out, little wolf. When the time is ripe."

She felt suffocated and resentful, because she liked the touch of his hands on her. Because if he knew the truth he would scorn her for her sex. Because she did not have a body sweet as honey. If she had, he would surely have noticed by now. But no man noticed. And of course she did not want Lord Winter to notice. Her whole welfare depended upon him not noticing. And yet she was perversely unhappy that he did not.

"Arab women are silly," she said. "Englishwomen are more interesting, I think."

"I beg your pardon," he murmured, lifting his black eyebrows. "I did not know youwere a connoisseur.""Englishwomen are more beautiful. Their skin is like silk."

"All women have skin like silk if you look in the right places, my cub.""Englishwomen have shoes," Zenia said, curling her legs under her. "Their feet aresoft."

"That is true," he said, amused."They wear prettier gowns.""More revealing, anyway." His mouth curled in a derisive smile. "One can at least get a look at the merchandise.""They are not silly, like the Bedouins' harem.""I'm afraid I must take issue with you there," he said. "Englishwomen are excessively silly."

She should have kept silent, but his easy disdain goaded her into saying, "You didnot think my mistress silly.""Ah, the old lioness. One among millions. Once I thought I could find-" He paused. His face hardened into dispas-sion. With cool venom, he said, "Once I was

very young. Women make fools of us all, I fear."Zenia looked at him warily. "I do not believe any woman could make a fool ofel-Muhafeh. How could a silly bore manage such a thing?"

"Oh, with the most perfect ease!" he said, a sudden savagery in his voice. "Deceit