The wagon ruts were more difficult to follow as they passed over ribbons of stone extruding from the earth. Someone not intentionally looking for them might miss them altogether. But it struck me as odd that anyone would travel out here. There was no known road from Julah heading this way, the area skirted Vashni territory, and there was no known destination. Or if there were, it was a Vashni place; they had named the chimney decades be-
fore. In fact, I recalled being told they'd brought Del's brother to Beit al'Shahar, and when'he'd returned he could speak again despite missing a tongue. Some kind of holy place, maybe. Except Vashni didn't use wagons, so the tracks didn't belong to them.We rode on a little farther, and then the trail made a wide sweeping turn to the left around an elbow of mountain flank. The stud abruptly pricked up his ears, head lifting. I reined in. He stood at attention, almost vibrating with focus. He nickered deep in his throat, then let it burst free as a high, piercing whinny.
In the distance, echoing oddly, a horse answered him.
Del, halted behind me, voiced it. "There is someone ahead."
"A horse, at least," I agreed. "Possibly two, or maybe a team of four; the wagon ruts got here somehow."
"Who would be out here?" Del asked. "There's nothing."
I shook my head. "It's a bit more than a day's ride from here to Julah on horseback; it would take longer with a wagon and team. Someone built that lean-to as a stop-over, a place to spend the night."
Nayyib brought his horse in closer. "So you're saying someone did settle out here."
"It's a guess," I said. "But we can find out." I brushed heels to the stud's sides and went on, more attentive now than I had been.
The trail took us down and around another tight turn, then leveled out. We were hemmed in by mountain walls. Then those walls fell away as if bowing us into a palace. And palace it was; I pulled up abruptly. Del fell in beside me, while Nayyib ended up on her far side.
"But—it wasn't like this . . ." Del said, astonished.
"Nothing like this," I agreed. Something had happened. Something that had riven the mountains apart, shaping out of existing stone and soil a long, narrow canyon. It wasn't terribly deep, nor was it huge. A compact slot cut between mountains and rock formations, opening up into a flat valley floor.
"Water," Nayyib said, pointing.
There hadn't been before. Now, bubbling up from a pile of tumbled boulders and fallen mountain, was a natural spring. It flowed outward into the canyon, finding its way through scattered rocks, then carved a fairly substantial streambed through the canyon floor.
I looked left, following the line of fallen hillside. And found the chimney.
Beit al'Shahar.
It had collapsed, breaking apart into sections. You could still see the suggestion of the columnar formation here and there, but it no longer existed as a true chimney. Del and I had not left it that way. Something more had happened.
Something powerful enough to open the way for an underground spring.
I tapped the stud back into motion and rode on. We passed the tumbled pile of slab-sided rock sections that gave birth to the stream, still following wagon ruts. Here we traded stony ground for soil, the first sparse scatterings of grass. Ahead, vegetation sprang up along the stream's meandering sides: reeds, shrubbery, thick mossy growths. Grass increased. The canyon widened. Thin, infant trees stood no higher than my knees.Oasis. Sheltered by canyon walls, with access to water, it was cooler here, shaded, with grazing and fertile soil.
"It was nothing like this," Del murmured.
Nayyib raised his voice. "Someone's farming here."
Indeed, someone was. The spring fed narrow, manmade ditches dug to water patches of fields and gardens, set apart from one another by low walls built of stones no doubt hacked out of the soil. We left behind wilderness and entered a private paradise.
"There," Nayyib said.
There, indeed. A scattering of flimsy pens held sheep and goats. A small pole corral contained a handful of horses. They had already smelled our mounts; now that we were in sight, all came trotting over to the fence rails to offer interested greetings. The stud stuck his head high in the air and commenced snorts of elaborate superiority, stiffened tail swishing viciously.
Behind me, Del's gelding pealed out a whinny.
"Look," she called. "They've built houses against the walls."
Low, squared, small houses built of adobe brick, surfaces hand-smoothed, with poles laid side-by-side and lashed together for roofs, chinked with mud to keep the rain and wind out. Un-painted, the dwellings were the color of the clay mud from which they were built: rich tan with an undertone of red. They blended into the canyon walls.
Faces appeared in wide-silled windows. Then the bodies took residence in the open doorways. Wagon ruts continued along the stream, fronting the dooryards of mudbrick homes standing cheek-by-jowl. Chickens had free run of the place, pecking in the dirt around the houses, pens, and corral.
"Sandtiger! Sandtiger!" A man emerged from one of the little houses. He came pelting down the ruts, brown burnous flapping, turban bouncing on his head.
"Mehmet!" Del exclaimed.
I grinned. "And his aketni."
"Sandtiger! May the sun shine on your head!" Mehmet arrived, dark eyes alight. At once he dropped to his knees, bowed his head, slapped the earth with the flat of his hand, then drew a smudged stripe across his Desert-dark forehead.
"Oh, stop that," I said. "You know how I hate it."
He sat back on his heels, enthusiasm undimmed. "Jhihadi," he breathed. And then he sprang up and began shouting in a dialect spilling so quickly from his mouth that I could only catch a third of what he said.
"Jhihadi?" Nayyib asked dubiously.
I arched supercilious brows. "Didn't you know? I've been declared a messiah. I'm even worshiped by—" I paused. "—however many people remain in Mehmet's aketni."
"Aketni?"
"His little tribe. An offshoot of his original tribe. Apparently not everyone wants to worship me."
"And the Vashni," Del put in. "Remember?"
Nayyib's expression was odd. "This is a joke."
I sighed. "No, actually, it's not. Though it certainly feels like one to me."
"You're a messiah?"
"I'm not a messiah. They just think I'm a messiah."
"My brother said you were," Del remarked.
Nayyib was totally lost. "Your brother said Tiger was a messiah?"
"It's complicated," I explained.
"A messiah?" he repeated.
I made a dismissive gesture. "Don't worry, it's not true."
"You're a legendary sword-dancer, the grandson of a wealthy Skandic matriarch, a mage—and a messiah?"
"A man of many parts," Del told him. "That's what the prophecy says."
I knew she was taking great joy in this, despite her bland expression. I shot her a quelling look. "Look, I have no control over what people say or think. Or that my grandmother is wealthy and powerful, or that I'm stuck with whatever this magic is inside me. What I know is that I'm a sword-dancer. That's good enough for me."
Neesha's expression was indescribable. Del took pity on him.
"We rescued them," she explained. "They'd been led into nowhere by unscrupulous guides, robbed, and left to die. Tiger and I found them, helped them."
Neesha's brows rode high on his forehead. "So they declared Tiger a messiah?"