Nexus Point

22

Nordhausen sat in the mouth of the cave, staring at the russet colors of sun and shadow painting the canyon walls of Wadi Rumm. He was still trying to fathom the incredible revelation in Rasil’s words. The man had come here with the intention of making a time jump through a hidden Arch that was powered by the natural nuclear chain reaction in the guts of a bacterial colony. What genius! How many of these sites did they have secreted around the globe? Where did they all lead? Rasil seemed to indicate that this well, as he called it, was a one way journey, but he would not say where it led. Poor Paul. Was he lost in some distant past or flung forward into the future? How would he ever know?

I’m responsible, he thought. If I hadn’t dragged him out here… But that led him nowhere. Paul’s fate was the smallest part of the dilemma he now confronted. The prospect of a Time war was terrifying. Who knows how long it had been underway, or how vast was the scope of its influence.

Nordhausen realized that he had already become an unwitting soldier in that war, recruited and pressed into service by the appearance of Mr. Graves. A good name for the man. The Professor wondered how many graves he was responsible for unearthing and how many lives he had reanimated by their little stumbling sojourn to the Jordanian desert in 1917? The inverse of that equation was painfully apparent to him now. It was pressed into the weary features of this man Rasil. He had seen millions of lives extinguished in an instant from the safe, yet tortured vantage point of a Nexus.

Now the two of them sat in another bubble of uncertainty on the shifting eddies of Time. What would be left of the world he now knew when it finally burst? Rasil’s comment about the dogs having their bones before the night ran its course still bothered him. He could not help thinking of how both Graves and Kelly had vanished during that last mission. Was his life, his very reality at stake now?

Rasil sighed heavily. “I must take care of something,” he said. “I won’t be long. The men I have with me here are not initiates. They cannot be permitted to ride out the Nexus to the world now waiting to be born. So I will send them out into the desert, beyond the sphere of influence, and I must do so quickly. Otherwise the madness will take them, and their dreams will never be whole again. They are from this time and place. It is the least I can do for them to reward their service.”

“I understand,” said Nordhausen, though he hadn’t the slightest idea of what the man was talking about. Unless… he remembered Paul and Kelly discussing the Arch bubble one night over dinner. Without grasping all the physics involved, it seemed the operation of the Arch created a calm spot in the eye of time’s storm when an operation was underway, and it was limited in physical range.

“Wait here,” said Rasil. “I need not warn you of the danger should you leave the sanctuary of the Nexus. I will not be far. And do not try to follow your friend. You would only fall to certain death.”

“Indeed,” said Nordhausen, convinced that his hunch had been correct.

Rasil stood up, calling to the men in Arabic as he slipped out of the mouth of the cave. The three men started down the rocky slope, to make their way back through the winding crevasse to the valley. Nordhausen strained to watch them go. Rasil gave him a single backward glance, and then they hastened away into the gloaming of the dusk.

Trusting soul, thought Nordhausen, wishing he had the Glock pistol somewhere at hand. Was it in one of the satchels they brought with them, or did Paul have it? What would I do with the damn thing, he mused, hold this Rasil at gunpoint until he talks? Something told him Rasil would die first. He called himself the messenger. I suppose he’s on some courier mission to another time. But why?

Nordhausen looked around, his eyes widening when they fell upon a hiking pack that his Arab captors had been carrying when they arrived here. “Hello,” he said aloud to himself. “Now I wonder what I might find in there!”

He craned his neck, squinting into the gathering dusk for any sign of Rasil’s return. The land was empty and forlorn, and only the sigh of the wind through the winding fissure of sculpted rock gave any hint of life or movement. He crept toward the hiking pack.

A moment later he had loosened the straps and opened the main pouch. There were obvious things inside: a two liter canteen of water, something that looked like hardtack biscuits, and… he rummaged to grasp at a dark metal tube in the bottom of the pack, something like a map case, he thought.

He had it out and opened the simple twist-on metal lid at one end, pleased to see that there was a rolled document inside. He drew it out, surprised at the soft texture and the unweathered condition of the paper. No, this was made of something else, more like a papyrus scroll. His curiosity was piqued and he slowly rolled it open, amazed to see a series of odd pictograms that he immediately recognized as Egyptian hieroglyphics. The two dimensional graphics were drawn in neat rows down the page and he quickly set his mind on deciphering them.

He had always taken a great interest in Egyptian writing, and had many notebooks of the curious script moldering away in his office from his graduate student days. He had studied the language for years, teaching himself to read and write the script at one time—though it had been many years since he worked with it. He looked about for an obvious starting point in the document. The language had evolved over time, and there were five different phases stretching from Old Egyptian through the Middle and New periods, and then on through the Demotic and Coptic texts. This writing looked very ancient, probably from an early period.

He scanned the scroll, noting the direction the little ideograms were oriented to find an obvious starting point. The convention was such that the pictures always faced toward the beginning of the text. There were larger drawings here and there, and he knew that anything purportedly spoken by a figure or god they represented would also have all its pictograms oriented in the direction that figure was facing. One figure dominated, and he began to read, working his finger along the line of ideograms, which indicated objects and actions, and phonograms standing for phonetic sounds. It was not long before he was able to construct the text in his mind.

“Here follows the word of the Lord of Time…” That was the dominant figure in the script. All the other symbols were oriented the same way. He noted how miniature duplicates of the figure he took to be this Lord appeared here and there throughout the text. He struggled with his memory, trying to distinguish the one letter signs from common single word elements. “At the time of great struggle… travail… eternity at rest in… darkness of the beast.” What was this bit here? He rephrased the line in his mind, recognizing the icon of the beast. “Eternity lies in the shadow of the Wolf…”

Very odd, he thought. So Rasil was a messenger. Could this be his charge? Why would he be carrying an old Egyptian scroll? The style of the writing would make this over 5000 years old, and yet… The papyrus was weathered but not nearly that ancient. It could never have survived in this condition all that time. Perhaps this man was moving from one place to another in time, just as he and Paul had jumped forward from the KT boundary to reach their target coordinates in 1917. Yet what was he bearing this for? Did it have some hidden meaning or was he merely retrieving a little souvenir from one of his missions, even as I slipped away to recover Lawrence’s lost manuscript of The Seven Pillars?

He knew he did not have much time to solve the riddle. Rasil could return at any moment. He scanned the document again, taking up where he left off and trying to gain some sense of what was written. The word for time was depicted by a small circle next to a scarab figure that gave it connotation. The circle was the sun, time making it’s daily passage through the heavens. Later he noted squiggly lines that could also indicate the passage of hours in the day—another way to indicate time when paired with some other symbol. This particular icon had been had been grouped in an unaccountable cartouche, which mated it with the symbol for the lordly figure in the center of the script. He took this to mean “The Lord of Time.” Then there was more about this beast…

“The Wolf shall go forward and prey upon the bounty of the lord… If…” He reached for the meaning. “Yet if he be slain for his misdeed…” For his sin, perhaps, he thought. “Then all will be overthrown.”

Humm. He mulled over the meaning of the words, his eye drawn to two lines that seemed to be given great prominence. An ochre line was drawn, as if to indicate ‘therefore,’ and then the darkly traced pictograms seemed to speak some judgment or instruction.

He fleshed out the line in his mind, reading it as: “When the Old Man returns, the Lord’s Army shall come to the Gate of the West.”

Again he struggled to read some greater meaning into the pictograms. “The priest of the hour-temple,” he said aloud. “Could that mean the Temple Priest of Time? Yes… The Temple Priest of Time proceeds with two eyes to the Lord of Eternity.” The two eyes were a caution, and injunction to proceed very carefully, only after examining the issue at hand with two eyes, as it were. Yet, even as he reached this conclusion another, more obvious meaning came to him as well. The symbol he interpreted as ‘proceeds’ could also simply mean to go forth. Seeing with two eyes could just as easily mean a face-to-face meeting—seeing someone with your own two eyes. In that case he had: “The Priest of Time shall go forth and see the Lord of Eternity.”

How odd, he thought. How very odd. The strange mention of Time and Eternity gave him a chill, for this was a message borne by Rasil. Where he was going with it, and what it intended, god only knew. Then he remembered his friend. “Perhaps Paul will know soon enough as well,” he said, the bitterness returning.

Then caution prevailed and he carefully rolled the scroll up and returned it to Rasil’s pack as he had found it. As he did so he spied something that sent his pulse quickening—a phone! He seized upon it, his mind racing as he realized it was a satellite phone. He could reach practically any number on earth with this, but who should he call? Was it possible to use the phone while he was here in a Nexus? He decided to try, and passed a fitful moment struggling to recall Kelly’s cell phone number. He dialed, holding his breath while the phone rang and hoping against hope that Kelly would answer. He caught sight of Rasil, returning up the slope to the mouth of the cave. There was not much time.

Kelly answered, and Nordhausen blurted out a message without giving his friend a moment to say a single thing. He knew that Kelly would be smart enough to locate him here by running a GPS trace on the call. He had just enough time to get the phone back in Rasil’s pack and go rummaging through his own for something to cover his ploy.

By the time the Arab returned, he was fussing with a tin of Earl Grey tea retrieved from the meager supplies in his own satchel.

“Ah, you’ve returned,” he said as Rasil approached. “That was quick.”

“I did not go far. The edge of the Nexus is just beyond the end of the fissure,“ he pointed.

“And your men?”

“I sent them out into the desert. They will camp tonight near the place where you have buried your cargo—What was it you called the thing again?”

“An Ammonite,” the professor repeated, finally getting his breathing under control. “They were very prevalent in this region. It was all just an ancient seabed once, you see. I suppose the city of Amman takes its name from them, or perhaps the other way around. ”

“A seabed? It seems that way even now,” said Rasil. “Only the red sands of Wadi Rumm break round the towers of rock and stone.” Rasil noticed what Robert was doing. “What is that you brew—Assassins tea?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just an expression,” Rasil forced a smile.

“I just thought we might be comfortable,” said Nordhausen. “Who knows how long we will be here.” He was fishing, hoping Rasil would slip out with more information about the likely consequences of Paul’s mishap. “I mean, who knows where my friend has gone,” he continued, “or what change he might work on the Meridian without even knowing it? Going through with some end in mind is one thing. Falling through, without the slightest idea that you have traveled in time at all, is quite another. He could do things, say things, that might have real consequences, and never be the wiser.”

“Very true,” said Rasil. “Real consequences.” He smiled, his face mirroring some inner irony he had taken from the phrase. “Are there any other kind?”

23

There was fighting in the gray halls of Massiaf that night, and many men died. When the Kadi learned a headless message had been planted in the inner courtyard, he knew the Sami would soon seek his life. Thankfully, he kept a guard of twenty hardy men at hand, close by his chambers. They were all initiates, and every man among them had passed the fifth gate in the secret training of that place. They would not quail at the sight of the head where it glowered from the haft of a deeply planted spear. They would not shirk from the duty he must urge on them now. “The Sami is misguided,” he told them. “His does not heed the judgment of this house, and chooses to take matters into his own hands. It will be dark business tonight. He will send men here to these chambers—undoubtedly the seven he holds closest. Blood will stain these halls before the dawn.”

The Kadi’s prediction held true, and Assassins came to the chamber of greeting in the night, moving like liquid shadow as they slid along the stony walls. Yet when they crept close to their intended victims, bright knives drawn for the work at hand, they found instead only matted straw dressed in courtly robes and nestled in the sleeping room where Paul had quartered. Even as the points of their blades clinked on the hard flagstones in anger, stabbing again and again, black arrows streaked at them from every side, and cut short their cries of surprise and pain.

The alarm was never raised in the lower levels of the castle. When the Sami swept down the long corridor to the council chambers of the Kadi, he did so without the knowledge that the insurrection he had conjured was already quashed. Two men burst through the heavy oaken door, the hafts of their swords clanging harshly on the metal bindings. The Sami came after them, with five more men following in his wake. He had come to ascend to the council chair, and take upon himself the full mastery of the castle and all its clan. To his surprise he found the Kadi seated squarely on the high seat of authority, a scepter of discernment clutched tightly in his right fist. At his feet were the bodies of the three Assassins sent this night to bring his death, and behind him, flanking the dais to either side, were twenty men at arms, brandishing bright scimitar swords and bows of burnished ash.

The intruders gaped with surprise, and even the Sami gave pause. His men clustered close about him to shield him from harm, but the Kadi spoke a harsh command and seven poisoned arrows cut them down—all except their master, where he stood amid the scattered corpses, his ice blue eyes gleaming with ire and malice.

A long tense silence fell over the room. The armed men about the Kadi seemed to quail a bit in that interval, as though the specter of the Sami, the Silent One they all had come to know and fear, would suddenly transform itself into some monstrous shape, and wreak vengeance upon them for their deeds. But the Kadi spoke first, his voice clear and steady, his eyes bright with determination.

“Shall I continue, or will you relent?”

“Strike me, if you dare!” The Sami’s voice was a dry rasp. “Show these assembled the full measure of your treachery!”

“Treachery?” The Kadi stood up, his face a mask of anger and resentment. “It was you who raised your hand against the brethren—you, who claim the rightly guided way!”

“Look about me,” the Sami gestured with a long robed arm. “Who has slain the brethren? Surely not I. Why do you raise arms against us? We come here at the bidding of the Sheikh himself! Yes, Sinan has sent to me this night, and orders what now passes in the chambers below.”

“That is a lie!” The Kadi drew out a rolled scroll and flung it across the room to the Sami’s feet. “There is the written hand of Sinan. Take it; read it. Show me where it says that the brothers were to act as you have commanded. I have seen the severed head you planted below, and so I took precaution. Yet that was but the crowing of the cock to name the hour of your treachery. Sinan condemned you two days ago. He saw what you intended, and gave instruction. The stranger was secreted away, and has not been harmed. The men you sent to take his life lie as these do here, and they will not see paradise, if you have promised such.”

The Sami seemed to gather himself in, like a billow of smoke spiraling about some unfathomable dark center. He spurned the rolled scroll with his foot. “I do not believe you,” he said in a low voice. “You say this only to win the hour before these men, who you press to murder at your command. If Sinan draws nigh, and speaks his true mind on this, then I shall stand corrected. Yet if this be proved a falsehood…” his voice resounded sharply from the arched dome of the ceiling. “Then it is you who shall answer in the Eyrie of Sinan for this misdeed, not I.”

He stood in his wreathed silence, undaunted, adamant in his opposition to the Kadi’s will. He would not suffer himself to be shamed here before these men, and he showed no fear. If the Kadi wished his death, the arrows would have struck his breast long ago.

“Put down your arms,” he said. “Do you not know me? I am Sami of the Seventh Gate. I have seen the portal of Eternity, and sat at the feet of the Master of Time. I have heard him speak, and reveal unto me the deepest of mysteries. You think to slay me here? Think hard! For I shall return, again and again—in a thousand guises I shall be made anew, and the price I exact for this insult will be dear, I assure you.”

The guards about the Kadi looked at one another with fearful glances, eyes white and wide when the Sami spoke. His voice seemed a lash that coiled about their limbs and cut at their flesh until it burned. His eyes seemed to brand them with the same cold blue fire that scored their hearts when they first sat before him in the rite of initiation. The Sami reminded them all of that day, seeming to know their thoughts as the sweat of fear wet their brows and their hands closed tighter about the hilts of their swords—not to ready a blow in anger, but to fend off the black wrath of the Sami, a force that seemed to radiate out upon them like the heat of a great fire.

“Do not listen to him,” said the Kadi, yet his voice seemed small and weak by comparison. Then he breathed heavily, seating himself in the place of authority once more. “I hold the scepter of discernment,” he said. “And I, too have passed the Seventh Gate and heard all you have spoken of. This is a matter of equals, here, and we do not reach accord with the edge of a blade.”

“Oh? Then why do these men lie slain in your chamber?”

“Do no persist in this,” said the Kadi, a weariness in his voice. The lines of his face were deeply drawn, and his gray beard seemed a shade whiter. “Now, I must send these men away, and we may face one another alone, for the news I have received this night is for your ears only.”

“News? More lies? More pretext for your misdeeds?” The Sami continued to play out his strength. He could see the resolve of the assembled guards beginning to melt, and even the Kadi seemed bent and weary with the effort of his opposition.

“News has come from afar,” said the Kadi. “Fast riders carry the word to every quarter. Great peril is upon us, and now we shall need all our strength to prevail. Even the loss of these men at your feet may be cause for regret, though I can only believe their death forestalls a far greater loss. Go!” He gave the command to his soldiers now. “Remove the fallen and take up your posts outside these chambers. The Sami is not to be harmed. He is a Walker of the Seventh Gate.”

There was just the hint of rebuke in his words, and the Sami watched sullenly while the guards approached him cautiously to remove the dead, their eyes averted with fear. There was no room for remorse in his heart, but anger swelled in his breast, tightly reined.

When the soldiers departed the Kadi spoke. “The Wolf is abroad, as you have warned. News came at the eleventh hour. He has set himself upon the caravans making their way along the pilgrim’s road from Egypt, many days ago. He sits like a spider in the fortress of Kerak, and now he preys on all the faithful who dare to pass his gates. We must confer.”

“Did I not warn you of this? Arnat will not rest until he sets his hand upon the Ka’ba itself; until he defiles everything that is holy!”

“For now he sets his hand upon the Pilgrims. Only this time he has overreached himself. The caravan he plundered moved under the banners of the Sultan himself, and the loss was dear. Even the sister of Salah ad Din was taken, and now she rots in the hold of Kerak.”

The Sami passed a moment of self-righteous vindication, the look plain on his shrouded face as he took this news in. “I would have killed this man by now were it not for your interference,” he accused. “Now the quarrel between us over the coming of this stranger has set my plans awry. The Fedayeen you so callously put to the arrows were all to be set fast upon the track of the Wolf—and now we are without the deftly guided knife when it is most needed.”

“My actions may prove the wiser, in time,” said the Kadi. “If you would have read the scroll you spurned for theatre’s sake, you would know the mind of Sinan on this matter. Yes, the Old Man returns to Massiaf, as you warn. Yet more things are moving in the night than you have heard. Salah ad Din burns with anger over the doings of Arnat. He would have all that was taken returned to him, especially his sister, but the Wolf is adamant. You need not concern yourself with this any longer. Salah ad Din has sworn to kill that man by his own hand. He musters the whole of his army and plans to come to the Gate of the West, close by the Horns of Hattin. Even Taki ad Din has been recalled from Aleppo, and he swells the Saracen host with all the veteran cavalry at his command. It will need the might of all the Christian Lords to oppose such an army. So leave the matter of Arnat to the Sultan.”

“Why do you say this? Still, he might be slain by a single Fedayeen, if only you would cease your opposition.”

“It is the will of Sinan that Arnat will not be touched.”

“What? Why should he stay his hand when we might strike this man down and so gain great favor in the eyes of the Sultan?”

“You may ask that question of Sinan,” said the Kadi. “He comes to look fast, with two eyes, upon the stranger we have in our keeping. Imagine his surprise if he arrived here and found the man dead—found his appointed Kadi General lying on the flagstones of his council chambers in a pool of poisoned blood. Imagine his wrath when he learns of our quarrel. All Christendom may soon take the field of battle against us.”

The Sami was stunned by these revelations, though he did his best to remain composed. He had thought the stranger to be an agent of the Order all along. “Perhaps we could have unraveled this riddle sooner if you had used a hard hand on the stranger.” He continued to shift the burden of blame from his shoulders.

“Perhaps,” said the Kadi. “I choose other means. Samirah would have melted his resolve in time. See that she is not harmed by any of your men—understood? And you underestimate the skills of the Mukasir. Jabr Ali S’ad was well chosen in this matter. He was taken from us for just such an occasion, and trained in the ways of the stranger’s speech. Clearly others have seen things that you have been blind to. It is not given for us to know all things, but this man replaced the courier we expected from Egypt—that much we do know. Whether he did this by foul means, or by chance as he claims, is yet to be discerned. No matter. Sinan believes he has seen the heart of this, and we must accede to his demands. Neither the stranger, not the Wolf are to be harmed. Give me your word on this and you may go. Refuse the decree of Sinan and I must set you in irons—yes, even you, the Sami of the Seventh Gate.”

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.”

Paul gaped at the spectacle below. If there had been any last shred of doubt in his mind about the circumstances of his fate, it was quickly crushed under the thrumming beat of those riders. On and on they came, filling the valley below. Aziz and Jabr had lost their fear and crept down a ways to the lee of a stark outcropping of rock, elated at the sight of the vast horde below. Now Paul could hear the chink and rattle of metal and the muted twist of leather saddles. He started toward the others, but his foot stumbled on a shadowy rock and he fell, tumbling down the hillside for some twenty feet.

His fall was broken by a stand of heavy shrubbery, and he righted himself, hoping the riders below had not taken notice. He rubbed his left arm, where a stone had bruised him as he slid down the slope, but otherwise he was safe and unharmed. As he struggled up, he suddenly heard a low growl behind him that raised his hackles with a severe chill. He turned, the fear of the unknown winning out over the primal instinct to flee the feral sound, but now his eyes confirmed and magnified his fright with the leering visage of a lupine creature—a gray wolf, large and fierce, with burning red eyes. It was crouching low, as though ready to leap upon Paul at any moment, the matted fur of its muscular shoulders and broad neck raised with hostility, its dark lips stretched to reveal the white gleam of sharp teeth. Paul staggered back, feeling the bloom of the animal’s scent and an unaccountable chill. Its breath seemed heavy with frost, and the low, threatening growl lowered, as though the animal was poised in the moment of instinctual doubt, ready to leap and tear, or to bolt away to safety. Their eyes met in that suspended moment of fear, and Paul felt a queasy feeling shake his frame. It was almost as if…

The wolf slavered, its growl becoming a vicious snarl. Then, just as it seemed ready to strike, Aziz came barreling down the slope, bright sword in hand. Paul turned and saw that Jabr had fitted a dark shafted arrow to a bow and was drawing a bead on the creature. He did not know why, but something in him could not bear the death of a single living thing because of his own foolish stumbles into the mists of time. He cried out, raising a hand to ward Jabr off, even as Aziz reached him. The wolf gave back, surprised by this new disturbance, and then leapt away with a powerful spring of his lean hind legs. Paul fell backward, steadying himself on the side of the slope. Aziz reached him, and stepped beyond, his sword held before him, he looked at Paul, and the fear in his eyes was palpable. He moved his hand about before him, and Paul saw how it quavered. His breath was a cold misty fog.

“Do-Rahlan!” Jabr’s whisper from above was laden with urgency. Then he spoke to Aziz, and the brawny man seemed to take hold of himself and moved. He helped Paul up and the two of them ascended the steep slope, using the thick shrubbery for hand holds along the way.

“We must hide ourselves in the cave,” whispered Jabr. “I do not think the riders below could see or hear us this far up, but there may be scouts on the flanks of their march. Come. Are you harmed?”

“I’m fine,” said Paul, though he was still quite shaken by his experience.

They sipped back through the entrance to the cave and the relative warmth of the hidden library calmed his jangled nerves. Paul slumped down on the carpeted floor, his breath still fast with fright and the exertion of the climb. Jabr spoke with Aziz briefly, and then came to Paul’s side.

“That was very close,” he said. “Why did you stay my hand? I could have felled the creature where it stood. My aim is very true.”

“I’m sorry,” Paul explained. “I wanted to see the riders, and I lost my footing on the slope. I must have fallen upon the creature while it hunted, and I did not think it right to kill for my mistake.”

“It was my fault,” said Jabr. “I should have been wiser. I trust you were not harmed? You are certain? Come, remove those soiled robes and I will see to your wounds. We have fresh gowns here, fine cotton. I will risk a fire in the furnace niche and boil water. There are oils and balms in the next chamber. Then we will drink tea and eat.”

“Coffee,” said Paul, still fighting off an inner chill.

“Yes, kahwa,” said Jabr. “Dark, rich kahwa for the dawn.”