The Sami glared at him, his anger diffused around the news that was still circling in his mind. “So be it,” he said at last. “We will wait, like helpless children for the coming of Sinan. I will stay my hand, but I do not forget what happened here this night.”
“Nor I,” said the Kadi. “Nor I.”
The Sami turned about as suddenly as he had entered and strode to the bolted door. He struck hard upon the riveted metal plates, and it was opened to him. Then he vanished through the portal, and none of the guards beyond the door dared look upon him as he went.
24
Paul felt as though he had been dealt a physical blow. The surface of his personality wanted to immediately reject what Jabr had told him as another ploy; another element of this strange charade these people were playing out with him. Yet, something deep down began to murmur in his head that Jabr’s words were true. He began to retrace his experience, piecing together memories from the moment of that awful fall into the chasm at Wadi Rumm. He vaguely remembered the lights spinning about him, as though the walls of the sink were illuminated in vibrant hues of color. The lights, the numbing cold, the unaccountable nausea and strange disorientation he experienced when he awoke, all augured the one conclusion he felt rising in his chest with a surge of anxiety.
“Eleven eighty-seven?” He repeated the date Jabr had given him, hoping for some obvious error in the calculation. “Come now,” he said. “We’re missing nearly a thousand years there, aren’t we?” A thin smile faded as he scanned Jabr’s face. The man looked at him from the deep brown wells of his eyes, wholly sincere and without any semblance of pretense.
“There is argument over the counting of years,” said Jabr, “even among Christians, but that is as close to the reckoning as I can come for you. Eleven eighty-seven; late in the sixth month.”
Now one clue after another began to coalesce in Paul’s mind. The near perfect preservation of the castle he had been in, the dress and manner of everyone he had seen, the horses, weapons, scrolls and maps; the lanterns —all archaic and wholly consistent for the late twelfth century, but not the twenty first! Then the opposite end of his observations voiced itself. The absence of anything even remotely associated with his own modern world was just as convincing. There were no cars, none of the guards carried guns; he had not seen a wire or even the ghost of an electric light. Nothing moved in the night sky but the moon and stars: no jet contrails in the air, and this strange hush upon the land. The world he had come from was always abuzz with the hum of noise, yet here it was so quiet. A stillness and tranquility lay upon the earth that he could only recall experiencing when he was alone in the wilderness of Alaska, many years ago. Why hadn’t he noticed all this before? Perhaps he was just too distracted by all that had happened. Maybe he had noticed the clues, but simply chose to explain them all away with the thought that these men were renegade terrorists. Then he thought of something that would put the issue to one final test. The night sky!
“Jabr,” he asked. “May I go out and look at the stars for a moment?
“Why do you wish to see the stars? It is still dangerous, Do-Rahlan. We could have been spotted leaving the castle, and the Sami’s men may have followed us here. Yes, Aziz is strong and brave, yet he is but one man. I am a thinker; not a fighter.”
“I understand, but I’ll just be a moment. Please, this is very important to me.”
Jabr sighed. “As you wish, but I will come as well.”
They stood up and Jabr led the way back to the narrow access passage and the cleft that formed the opening of the hidden cave. He whispered to Aziz as they approached, saying something in Arabic. The guard answered with an expression Paul took to mean that ‘the coast was clear.’
Once outside Paul breathed deeply, taking in the sweet cool air and adding it to the growing mound of evidence in his mind. Not the slightest hint of pollution, he thought. The air is so completely fresh here. Then he looked up, his eyes scanning the horizon and the vault of stars above for familiar constellations. He spied the formation he was looking for, but something was missing.
“My God,” he said aloud. “It’s not there!”
Jabr heard him invoke the name of Allah, in his own way, and squinted to see what he was looking at. Paul had followed its construction over the long decade or more that it took to build—until it was so large that it gleamed like a new star in the heavens each night. He knew he should be able to see it now, in this quiet hour before the dawn, but it was not there. The International Space Station was gone.
He passed a moment of uncertainty, wondering if the station could simply be somewhere else in its orbit. But he had seen it each morning for the last three weeks, from his Hotel in Amman. It was as regular as clockwork, and it should be there—right now. A feeling of enormous consequence fell upon him and he was finally forced to admit that the world he was standing in now was not the one he had come to Wadi Rumm in. He was in another time; another place even!
How could this be? Was it some strange after effect left over from their first mission? Could it be that he had not completely rejoined the present, and that time was jealously clutching at his heels, dragging him back into the past where he had dared to violate her? Was he slipping, his substance and reality unable to maintain itself in the present he had known? They were just neophytes, tampering with primal forces that they were only barely beginning to understand. What had he done? What was happening to him? Or was this all some drug induced dream he had sipped from the porcelain cup Samirah had brought him each night?
“Not there?” Jabr kept searching the sky. “You mean the moon? It has long since set, Do-Rahlan.”
Paul looked at him, a blank expression on his face. Then he seized on Jabr’s own explanation and handed it back to him. “Yes,” he said haltingly. “The moon is down. I had lost track of the time in the cave, I suppose.”
There was a dry hiss, and Aziz edged around the screening shrubbery, a warning in his eyes. He pointed off down the long slope of the ridge, his arm extending to the shadowed valley below. Jabr exchanged words with him and turned to Paul.
“Riders,” he whispered. “We must go back inside.”
Paul suddenly felt a low vibration in the distance, a quiet rumble growing with each passing moment. He had never heard anything like it—except in the movies. Then he caught sight of something below, a glimmer of light in the distance that became more pronounced with each passing moment. “Look there,” he pointed, seeing a long winding ribbon of glowing light below, a river of torchlight snaking its way into the valley. The sound grew louder and louder, and Aziz crouched low.
Jabr took Paul’s arm, somewhat protectively, but his own curiosity had gotten the better of his caution, and he too stared at the ever-broadening stream of liquid torchlight flowing over the purple veiled landforms below.
“Taki ad Din,” he whispered. “He comes from the north where he has vied with Joscelin in Edessa and Aleppo. He comes heeding the call of his master, Salah ad Din. And with him come the pride of our horsemen, twenty thousand strong, veteran Faris cavalry. Listen to the fierce beat of their hooves upon the ground! I’m afraid the Sultan’s wrath will soon fall upon all these lands, Do-Rahlan. Taki ad Din is a stern master, cold and furious in battle. War is coming to greet the quiet dawn. War and the thunder of change.”