"Karkur, there's a man named Al Jahez. He follows the Disciple, but he's a good man. Could you reward him? Could you tell Father I've come here safely?"
She thought, I'm talking to a lump of rock as though it really could do something. "Tell Al Jahez the severed head goes daft after it's separated."
The moon was great, full thing that inundated the wadi with silver light. She leaned back and stared.
Something startled her. Fool, she thought. You fell asleep. Her dagger filled her hand. She searched the shadows, saw nothing. She listened. Nothing. She sniffed the air. Again nothing.
She shivered. It was getting cold. Colder than she remembered the nights this time of year. She pulled her cloak tighter.
And realized that the cold radiated from one point. The amulet!
She snatched it out. Green! Glowing green. She searched the shadows. Had the shaghun come out to meet her?
The stone flared. It crackled. An emerald snake writhed between it and Karkur. A cold wind swirled around the Circle. Dead leaves pattered against her. She glanced up. No. The sky was clear. Stars winked in their myriads. The moon shone benevolently.
The emerald snake turned amber shot with veins of blood. Narriman gasped. That was the combination they mentioned when they talked about the Great Death.
The snake died. The stone grew less cold, became just a small, pale green piece of rock lying in her hand. She stared at Karkur.
"What have you done? What have you given me? Not the power of the Great Death?''
The image stared back, as silent as ever. She was tempted to rant. But Karkur gave short shift to ingrates. He was more a punitive than a helpful god. "But loyal to his people," she said. "Thank you, Karkur."
She hurried through the parting rituals and returned to camp. She fell asleep still astonished that Karkur had responded.
There were dreams. Vivid dreams. She rode into the Jebal, moving with an absolute certainty of her way. She knew exactly when to expect the first challenge.
The dream ended. The sun had wakened her. She felt fit and
rested. She recalled every detail of the dream. She looked down the wadi. A dumb stone god? She examined Al Jahez's stone. It looked no less ordinary this morning.
XII
The trails were faint, but she followed them confidently. Once she noted an overturned stone, darker on the exposed side. Someone had been this way recently. She shrugged. The amulet would warn her.
The mountains were silent. All the world was silent when you rode alone. The great erg had been filled with a stillness as vast as that of death. Here it seemed there should be some sound, if only the call of the red-tailed hawk on the wing. But the only sounds were those of a breeze in scrubby oaks, of water chuckling in one small stream.
She moved higher and higher. Sometimes she looked back across the hills where the wadi lay, to the plain beyond, a distance frosted with haze. The al Muburak might profit from such a view.
Night fell. She made a fireless camp. She drank water, ate smoked meat, turned in as the stars came out.
She wakened once, frightened, but her stone betrayed no danger. The mountains remained still, though the wind made an unfamiliar soughing through nearby pines. She counted more than a dozen meteors before drifting off.
Her dreams were vivid. In one her father told Al Jahez he was sure she had reached Wadi al Hamamah safely.
The mountains continued their rise. She rested more often. Come midday she entered terrain scoured by fire. That stark, black expanse was an alien landscape.
The trees changed. Oaks became scarcer, pines more numerous. The mountains became like nothing in her experience. Great looms of rock thrust out of their hips, the layering on end instead of horizontal. Even where soil and grass covered them she could discern the striations. Distant mountainsides looked zebra-striped in the right light.
Higher still. The oaks vanished. And then, in the bottom of one canyon, she encountered trees so huge a half dozen men could not have joined hands around their trunks. Narriman felt insignificant in their shadows.
She spent her fourth day riding up that canyon. Evening came early. She almost missed the landmarks warning her she was
approaching the first guardian. She considered the failing light. This was no time to hurry. She retreated and camped.
Something wakened her. She listened, sniffed, realized the alarming agent was no external. She had dreamed that she should circle the watchpost.
"Come, Faithful," she whispered. She wrapped the reins in her hand and led away.
She knew exactly where to go, and still it was bad. That mountainside was not meant for climbing. The brush was dense and the slope was steep. She advanced a few yards and listened.
The brush gave way to a barren area. The soil was loose and dry. She slipped several times. Then her mare went down, screaming and sliding. She held on stubbornly.
The slide ended. "Easy, girl. Easy. Stay still."
A glow appeared below. She was surprised. She had climbed higher than she had thought. The glow drifted along the canyon.
"I can't fail now. Not at the first hurdle."
Her heart hammered. She felt like screaming against clumsiness, stupidity, and the whim of fate.
The glow drifted down the canyon, climbed the far slope, came back. It crossed to Narriman's side and went down again. It repeated the patrol but never climbed far from the canyon floor. It never came close enough to make her amulet glow. It finally gave up. But Narriman did not trust it because it had disappeared. She waited fifteen minutes.
The sky was lightening before she felt comfortably past. She was exhausted. "Good girl, Faithful. Let's camp."
XIII
A horse's whinny wakened her. She darted to Faithful, clamped her hands over the mare's nostrils.
The sound of hooves on brookside stone came nearer. The amulet became a lump of ice. She saw flickers of black rider through the trees.
This one was stockier than her shaghun.
Her shaghun? Had he touched her that deeply? She looked inward, seeking the hatred of rider and love of son that had brought her to the Jebal. And it was there, the hatred untarnished by any positive feeling.
Then the rider was gone, headed down the canyon. Was he going to the guardian?
She had no dream memories of the canyon above the guardian. Why not? Couldn't Karkur reach into the realm of the Masters?
The uncertainty became too much. She dismounted and walked. No need to rush into trouble.
Minutes later she heard a rhythmic thumping ahead. Something rumbled and crashed and sent echoes tumbling down the canyon. She advanced more carefully, sliding from cover to cover.
She did not know where they came from. Suddenly, they were there, across the brook. They walked like men but were shaggy and dark and tall. There were four of them. The biggest growled.
"Damn!" She strung her bow as one giant bellowed and charged.