Splinter Of The Mind's Eye

Chapter One

Making of a Messiah

T he caravan crept across a stony wadi and meandered upward into the hills. The camels boredly tramped out their graceless steps, defining the milemarks of their lives. Twelve tired beasts and six weary men made up the small, exhausted caravan.

They were nearing the end of their route. After a rest at El Aquila they would recross the Sahel for more salt.

Nine watchers awaited them.

The camels now carried the sweet dates, emeralds of Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni, and imperial relics coveted by the traders of Hellin Daimiel. The traders would purchase them with salt recovered from the distant western sea.

An elderly merchant named Sidi al Rhami mastered the caravan. He was captain of a family enterprise. His companions were brothers and cousins and sons. His youngest boy, Micah, just twelve, was making his first transit of the family route.

The watchers didn't care who they were.

Their captain assigned victims. His men stirred uncomfortably in the shimmering heat. The sun's full might blasted down upon them. It was the hottest day in the hottest summer in living memory.

The camels plodded into the deathtrap defile.

The bandits leapt from the rocks. They howled like jackals.

Micah fell instantly, his skull cracked. His ears moaned with the force of the blow. He hardly had time to realize what was happening.

Everywhere the caravan had traveled men had remarked that it was a summer of evil. Never had the sun been so blistering, nor the oases so dry.

It was a summer of evil indeed when men sank to robbing salt merchants. Ancient law and custom decreed them free even of the predations of tax collectors, those bandits legitimized by stealing for the king.

Micah recovered consciousness several hours later. He immediately wished that he had died too. The pain he could endure. He was a child of Hammad al Nakir. The children of the Desert of Death hardened in a fiery furnace.

Plain impotence brought the death wish upon him.

He could not intimidate the vultures. He was too weak. He sat and wept while they and the jackals tore the flesh of his kinsmen and squabbled over delicacies.

Nine men and a camel had perished. The boy was a damned poor bet. His vision doubled and his ears rang whenever he moved. Sometimes he thought he heard voices calling. He ignored everything and stubbornly stumbled toward El Aquila in exhausting little odysseys of a hundred yards.

He kept passing out.

The fifth or sixth time he wakened in a low cave that stank of fox. Pain lanced from temple to temple. He had suffered headaches all his life, but never one as unremitting as this. He moaned. It became a plaintive whine.

"Ah. You're awake. Good. Here. Drink this."

Something that might have been a small, very old man crouched in a deep shadow. A wrinkled hand proffered a tin cup. Its bottom was barely wet with some dark, fragrant liquid.

Micah drained it. Oblivion returned.

Yet he heard a distant voice droning endlessly of faith, God, and the manifest destiny of the children of Hammad al Nakir.

The angel nurtured him for weeks. And droned unceasing litanies of jihad. Sometimes, on moonless nights, he took Micah aboard his winged horse and showed him the wide earth. Argon. Itaskia. Hellin Daimiel. Gog-Ahlan, the fallen. Dunno Scuttari. Necremnos. Throyes. Freyland. Hammad al Nakir itself, the Lesser Kingdoms, and so much more. And the angel repeatedly told him that these lands must again bend the knee to God, as they had done in the day of Empire. God, the eternal, was patient. God was just. God was understanding. And God was distressed by the backsliding of his Chosen. They were no longer bearing the Truth to the nations.

The angel would answer no questions. He merely castigated the children of Hammad al Nakir for having allowed the minions of the Dark One to blunt their will to carry the Truth.

Four centuries before the birth of Micah al Rhami there was a city, Ilkazar, which established dominion over all the west. But its kings were cruel, and too often swayed by the whims of sorcerers interested only in advancing themselves.

An ancient prophecy haunted the wizards of Ilkazar. It declared that the Empire's doom would find it through the agency of a woman. So those grim necromancers persecuted women of Power without mercy.

In the reign of Vilis, the final Emperor, a woman named Smyrena was burned.

She left a son. He persecutors overlooked the child.

That son migrated to Shinsan. He studied with the Tervola and Princes Thaumaturge of the Dread Empire. And then he returned, embittered with the bile of vengeance.

He was a mighty wizard now. He rallied the Empire's foes to his standard. The war was the cruelest that earth remembered. The wizards of Ilkazar were mighty too. The Empire's captains and soldiers were faithful, hardened men. Sorceries stalked the endless nights and devoured nations entire.

The heart of the Empire, then, was rich and fertile. The war left the land a vast, stony plain. The beds of great rivers became channels of lifeless sand. The land earned the name Hammad al Nakir, Desert of Death. The descendants of kings became petty hetmen of tattered bands which perpetrated bloody little butcheries upon one another over mudhole excuses for oases.

One family, the Quesani, established a nominal suzerainty over the desert, bringing an uneasy, oft broken peace. Semi-pacified, the tribes began raising small settlements and refurbishing old shrines.

They were a religious people, the Children of Hammad al Nakir. Only faith that their trials were the will of God gave them the endurance to weather the desert and the savagery of their cousins. Only an unshakable conviction that God would someday relent and restore them to their rightful place among the nations kept them battling.

But the religion of their Imperial forebears was sedentary, a faith for farmers and city dwellers. The theological hierarchies did not fall with the temporal. As generations passed and the Lord did not relent, common folk drifted ever farther from a priesthood unable to shed historical inertia, unable to adapt dogma to the circumstances of a people gone wholly nomadic and grown accustomed to weighing everything in the balance scale of death.

The summer had been the hardest since those immediately following the Fall. Autumn promised no relief. Oases were drying up. Order had begun to evade the grasp of Crown and priesthood. Chaos threatened as desperate men resorted to raid and counterraid and younger priests split with their elders over the meaning of the drought. Undisciplined anger stalked the barren hills and dunes. Dissatisfaction lurked in every shadow.

The land was harkening for the whisper of a new wind. One old man heard a sound. His response would damn and saint him.

Ridyah Imam al Assad's best days were far behind him. He was nearly blind now, after more than fifty years in the priesthood. There was little he could do to serve the Lord any longer. Now the Lord's own must care for him.

Nevertheless, they had given him a sword and set him to guard this slope. He had neither the strength nor the will to employ the weapon. If one of the el Habib came this way, to steal water from the springs and cisterns of Al Ghabha, he would do nothing. He had his weak sight to plead before his superiors.

The old man was true to his faith. He believed that he was but one brother in the Land of Peace and that such good fortune as came his way should be shared with those whom the Lord had called him to guide.

The Al Ghabha Shrine had water. El Aquila had none. He did not understand why his superiors were willing to bare steel to maintain that unnatural balance.

El Aquila lay to his left, a mile away. The squalid village was the headquarters of the el Habib tribe. The Shrine and the monastery where al Assad lived rose two hundred yards behind him. The monastery was the retirement home of the priests of the western desert.

The source of the noise lay somewhere down the rocky slope he was supposed to guard.

Al Assad tottered forward, trusting his ears far more than his cataracted eyes. The sound reached him again. It sounded like the muttering of a man dying on the rack.

He found the boy lying in the shadow of a boulder.

His "Who are you?" and "Do you need help?" elicited no response. He knelt. With his fingers more than his eyes he determined that he had found a victim of the desert.

He shuddered as he felt cracked, scabby, sunburned skin. "A child," he murmured. "And not of El Aquila."

Little remained of the youth. The sun had baked most of the life out of him, desiccating his spirit as well as his body.

"Come, my son. Rise up. You're safe now. You've come to Al Ghabha."

The youth did not respond. Al Assad tried to pull him to his feet. The boy neither helped nor hindered him. The imam could do nothing with him. His will to live had departed. His only response was a muttered incoherency which sounded surprisingly like, "I have walked with the Angel of the Lord. I have seen the ramparts of Paradise." He then lapsed into complete unconsciousness. Al Assad could not rouse him again.

The old man made the long and painful journey back to the monastery, pausing each fifty yards to offer the Lord a prayer that his life be spared till he had carried word of the child's need to his abbot.

His heart had begun skipping beats again. He knew that it would not be long before Death took him into Her arms.

Al Assad no longer feared the Dark Lady. Indeed, his aches and blindness made him look forward to the pain-ease he would find in Her embrace. But he begged an indulgence, that he be allowed to perform this one final righteous deed.

The Lord had laid a charge upon him, and upon the Shrine, by guiding this victim of the desert to him and Shrine land.

Death heard and stayed Her hand. Perhaps She foresaw richer harvests later.

The abbot did not believe him at first, and castigated him for having abandoned his post. "It's an el Habib trick. They're out there stealing water right now." But al Assad convinced the man. And that left the abbot no happier. "The last thing we need is more mouths."

" ‘Have you bread and your brother naught to eat? Have you water and your brother naught to drink? Then I say this unto you... ' "

"Spare me the quotations, Brother Ridyah. He'll be cared for." The abbot shook his head. He got little thrills of anticipation when he thought of the Dark Lady claiming al Assad. The old man was one too sincere pain in the neck. "See. They're bringing him in now."

The brothers dropped the litter before the abbot, who examined the tormented child. He could not conceal his revulsion. "This is Micah, the son of the salt merchant al Rhami." He was awed.

"But it's been a month since the el Habib found their caravan!" one brother protested. "Nobody could survive the desert that long."

"He spoke of being tended by an angel," al Assad said. "He spoke of seeing the ramparts of Paradise."

The abbot frowned at him.

"The old man is right," one of the brothers said. "He started talking on the way up. About seeing the golden banners on the towers of Paradise. He said that an angel had showed him the wide earth. He says he has been told by the Lord to bring the Chosen back to the Truth."

A shadow crossed the abbot's face. That kind of talk distressed him.

"Maybe he did see an angel," someone suggested.

"Don't be silly," the abbot countered.

"He's alive," al Assad reminded him. "Against all the odds."

"He's been with the bandits."

"The bandits fled across the Sahel. The el Habib tracked them."

"Someone else, then."

"An angel. You don't believe in angels, Brother?"

"Of course I do," the abbot replied hastily. "I just don't think they reveal themselves to salt merchants' sons. It's the desert madness talking through him. He'll forget it when he recovers." The abbot looked around. He was not pleased. The whole Shrine was gathering over the boy, and in too many faces there was a desire to believe. "Achmed. Bring me Mustaf el Habib. No. Wait. Ridyah, you found the boy. You go to the village."

"But why?"

A technicality had occurred to the abbot. It looked like the perfect exit from the difficulties the boy was generating.

"We can't nurse him here. He hasn't been consecrated. And he would have to be well before we could do that."

Al Assad glowered at his superior. Then, with anger to banish his aches and weariness, he set off for the village of El Aquila.

The hetman of the el Habib tribe was no more excited than the abbot. "So you found a kid in the desert? What do you want me to do about it? He's not my problem."

"The unfortunate are all our problems," al Assad replied. "The abbot would speak with you of this one."

The abbot opened with a similar remark in response to a similar statement. He quoted some scripture. Mustaf countered with the quote al Assad had used earlier. The abbot kept his temper with difficulty.

"He's not consecrated."

"Consecrate him. That's your job."

"We can't do that till he recovers his faculties."

"He's nothing to me. And you're even less."

There were hard feelings. It had been but two days since Mustaf had petitioned the abbot for permission to draw water from the Shrine's spring. The abbot had denied him.

Al Assad, cunningly, had brought the chieftain up by way of the Shrine's gardens, where lush flowerbeds in careful arrangements glorified God. Mustaf was in no mood to be charitable.

The abbot was in the jaws of a merciless trap. The laws of good works were the high laws of the Shrine. He dared not abrogate them before his brothers. Not if he wished to retain his post. But neither was he ready to allow this boy to mutter his heretical insanities where they could upset the thinking of his charges.

"My friend, we had hard words over a matter we discussed recently. Perhaps I reached my decision a bit hastily."

Mustaf smiled a predatory smile. "Perhaps."

"Two score barrels of water?" the abbot suggested.

Mustaf started toward the doorway.

Al Assad shook his head sadly. They were going to dicker like merchants while a boy lay dying. He departed in disgust, taking himself to his cell.

Within the hour he surrendered to the embrace of the Dark Lady.

Micah wakened suddenly, rational, intuiting that a long time had passed. His last clear memory was of walking beside his father as their caravan began the last league to El Aquila. Shouts... a blow... pain... reminiscences of madness. There had been an ambush. Where was he now? Why wasn't he dead? An angel... There had been an angel.

Snatches returned. He had been returned to life, to become a missionary to the Chosen. A disciple.

He rose from his pallet. His legs betrayed him immediately. He lay panting for several minutes before finding the strength to crawl to a flapway.

The el Habib had confined him to a tent. They had quarantined him. His words had made Mustaf tremble. The chieftain could sense the blood and pain beyond such mad perspectives.

Micah yanked the flap.

The afternoon sun slapped his face. He threw an arm across his eyes and cried out. That devil orb was trying to murder him again.

"You idiot!" a voice snarled as someone pushed him back inside. "You want to blind yourself?"

The hands that guided him to his pallet became tender. The afterimages faded. He discovered his companion to be a girl.

She was about his own age. She wore no veil.

He shrank away. What was this? Some temptation of the Evil One? Her father would kill him... .

"What happened, Meryem? I heard him yell." A youth of about sixteen slipped inside. Micah retreated in earnest.

Then he remembered who and what he was. The hand of the Lord had touched him. He was the Disciple. No one could question his righteousness.

"Our foundling got himself an eyeful of sun." The girl touched Micah's shoulder. He flinched away.

"Back off, Meryem. Save the games for when he can handle them." To Micah he said, "She's father's favorite. The last born. He spoils her. She gets away with murder. Meryem. Please? The veil?"

"Where am I?" Micah asked.

"El Aquila," the youth replied. "In a tent behind the hut of Mustaf abd-Racim ibn Farid el Habib. The Al Ghabha priests found you. You were almost dead. They turned you over to my father. I'm Nassef. The brat is my sister Meryem." He sat down cross-legged facing Micah. "We're supposed to take care of you."

He did not sound enthusiastic.

"You were too much bother for them," the girl said. "That's why they gave you to Father." She sounded bitter.

"What?"

"Our oasis is drying up. The one at the Shrine is still wet, but the abbot won't share his water rights. The holy gardens flourish while the el Habib thirst."

Neither mentioned their sire's pragmatic deal.

"Did you really see an angel?" Meryem asked.

"Yes. I did. He bore me up among the stars and showed me the lands of the earth. He came to me in the hour of my despair and gave me two priceless gifts: my life, and the Truth. And he bade me take the Truth to the Chosen, that they might be freed of the bondage of the past and in turn carry the Word to the infidel."

Nassef flashed a sarcastic look in his sister's direction. Micah saw it plainly.

"You too shall know the Truth, friend Nassef. You shall see the flowering of the Kingdom of Peace. The Lord has returned me to the living with the mission of creating his Kingdom on earth."

In ages to come there would be countless bitter words spilled over El Murid's returned-to-life remarks. Did he mean a symbolic rebirth, or a literal return from the dead? He would never clarify himself.

Nassef closed his eyes. He was four years older than this naive boy. Those years were an unbridgeable gulf of experience.

He did have the manners to refrain from laughing. "Open the flap a crack, Meryem. Let the sun in little by little, till he can face it."

She did so, and said, "We should bring him something to eat. He hasn't had any solid food yet."

"Nothing heavy. His stomach isn't ready." Nassef had seen victims of the desert before.

"Help me bring it."

"All right. Rest easy, foundling. We'll be right back. Think up an appetite." He followed his sister from the tent.

Meryem paused twenty feet away. Softly, she asked, "He really believes it, doesn't he?"

"About the angel? He's crazy."

"I believe it, too, Nassef. In a way. Because I want to. What he says... I think a lot of people want to hear that kind of thing. I think the abbot sent him down here because he was afraid to listen. And that's why Father won't have him in the house."

"Meryem—"

"What if a lot of people start listening and believing, Nassef?"

Nassef paused thoughtfully. "It's something to think about, isn't it?"

"Yes. Come on. Let's get him something."

El Murid, who was still very much the boy Micah al Rhami, lay staring at the tent above him. He let the leak of sunshine tease his eyes. A compulsion to be on his way, to begin preaching, rose within him. He fought it down. He knew he had to recover completely before he began his ministry.

But he was so impatient!

He knew the wayward habits of the Chosen, now that the angel had opened his eyes. It was imperative that he bring them the Truth as soon as possible. Every life the Dark Lady harvested now meant one more soul lost to the Evil One.

He would begin with El Aquila and Al Ghabha. When these people had been saved he would send them to minister to their neighbors. He himself would travel among the tribes and villages along his father's caravan route. If he could find some way to bring them salt...

"Here we are," Meryem announced. There was a musical note in her voice Micah found strange in one so young.

"Soup again, but this time I brought some bread. You can soak it. Sit up. You'll have to feed yourself this time. Don't eat too fast. You'll make yourself sick. Not too much, either."

"You're kind, Meryem."

"No. Nassef is right. I'm a brat."

"The Lord loves you even so." He began talking softly, persuasively, between bites. Meryem listened in apparent rapture.

He spoke for the first time in the shade of the palms surrounding the el Habib oasis. Little but mud remained of that once reliable waterhole, and that had begun to dry and crack. He made of the oasis a parable paralleling the drying up of the waters of faith in the Lord.

His audience was small. He sat with them as a teacher with students, reasoning with them and instructing them in the faith. Some were men four times his age. They were amazed by his knowledge and clarity of thought.

They threw fine points of dogma into his path like surprise pitfalls, baiting him. He shattered their arguments like a barbarian horde destroying lightly defended cities.

He had been more carefully schooled than he knew.

He made no converts. He had not expected to do so. He wanted to start them gossiping behind his back, unwittingly creating a climate for the sort of speeches that would win converts.

The older men went away afraid. They sensed in his words the first spark of a flame that could consume the Children of Hammad al Nakir.

Afterward, El Murid visited Mustaf. "My father's caravan? What became of it?" he asked the chieftain. Mustaf was taken aback, for he did it as an equal, not a child to an elder.

"Ambushed. All wiped out. It was a sad hour in the history of Hammad al Nakir. That I should have lived to see the day wherein men turned upon a salt caravan!"

There was something a little evasive in the way Mustaf had spoken. His eyes had become shifty.

"I have heard that the men of el Habib found the caravan. I have heard that they pursued the bandits."

"This is true. The bandits crossed the Sahel to the country of the western infidel."

Mustaf had become nervous. Micah thought he knew why. The hetman was essentially honorable. He had sent his own people to extract justice for the al Rhami family. But there was a little of the brigand in all the Children of Hammad al Nakir. "Yet there is a camel outside which answers to the name Big Jamal. And another which responds to Cactus. Could it be sheer coincidence that these beasts bear names identical to those of camels which belonged to my father? Is it coincidence that they bear identical markings?"

Mustaf said nothing for nearly a minute. Coals of anger burned briefly in his eyes. No man was pleased to be called to account by a child.

"You are observant, son of al Rhami," he finally replied. "It is true. They were your father's animals. When news came of what had happened, we saddled our best horses and rode swift and hard upon the trail. A crime so hideous could not go unpunished. Though your father's people were not of the el Habib, they were of the Chosen. They were saltmen. The laws shielding them are older than the Empire."

"And there was booty to be had."

"And there was booty, though your father was not a wealthy man. His entire fortune could scarcely repay the cost we paid in horses and lives."

Micah smiled. Mustaf had revealed his bargaining strategy. "You avenged my family?"

"Though our pursuit carried beyond the Sahel. We caught them before the very palisades of the heathen traders. Only two passed the infidels' gates. We were gentlemen. We did not burn their wooden walls. We did not slay the men and enslave the women. We treated with their council of factors, who knew your family of old. We presented our proofs. They took council, then delivered the bandits into our mercy. We were not merciful. They took many days dying, as an example to others who would break laws older than the desert. Perhaps the vultures still pick their bones."

"For that I must thank you, Mustaf. What of my patrimony?"

"We treated with the factors. Perhaps they cheated us. We were but ignorant devils of the sands. Perhaps not. We bore scimitars still stained with the blood of those who had wronged us."

"I doubt that they cheated, Mustaf. It's not their way. And, as you say, they would have been frightened."

"There is a small amount in gold and silver. And the camels did not interest them."

"What were your losses?"

"One man. And my son Nassef was wounded. That boy! You should have seen him! He was a lion! My pride knows no bounds. That such a son should have sprung from my loins! A lion of the desert, my Nassef. He will be a mighty warrior. If he outlives youth's impetuosity. He slew three of them himself." The chieftain glowed in his pride.

"And horses? You mentioned horses."

"Three. Three of our best. We rode hard and swift. And there was a messenger, that we sent to find your father's people, that they might know and make claims. He has not yet returned."

"He has a long journey. It's yours, Mustaf. All yours. I ask but a horse and a small amount of coin with which to begin my ministry."

Mustaf was surprised. "Micah—"

"I am El Murid now. Micah al Rhami is no more. He was a boy who died in the desert. I have returned from the fiery forge as the Disciple."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

El Murid was surprised that there could be any doubt.

"For the sake of the friendship I bore your father, hear me now. Do not pursue this path. It can be naught but a way of tears and sorrow."

"I must, Mustaf. The Lord himself has commanded me."

"I should restrain you. I will not. May the ghost of your father forgive me. I will choose a horse."

"A white horse, if you have one."

"I have one."

Next morning El Murid again taught beneath the palms. He spoke with passion, of the scarcely restrained wrath of God losing all patience with his Chosen's neglect of their duties. The argument of the empty oasis was hard to refute. The fiery summer could not be discounted. Several of his younger listeners remained for a more scholarly question and answer session.

Three days later Nassef whispered from beyond El Murid's tent flap. "Micah? May I come in?"

"Come. Nassef? El Murid?"

"Sorry. Of course." The youth settled himself opposite El Murid. "Father and I have had an argument. About you."

"I'm sorry to hear that. It isn't a good thing."

"He ordered me to stay away from you. Meryem too. The other parents are going to do the same. They're getting angry. You're calling too many ideas into question. They tolerated you when they thought it was the desert madness talking. But now they're calling you a heretic."

El Murid was stunned. "Me? The Disciple? They accuse me of heresy? How can that be?" Had he not been chosen by the Lord?

"You challenge old ways. Their ways. You accuse them. You accuse the priests of Al Ghabha. They are set in their ways. You can't expect them to say, ‘Yes, we are guilty.' "

He had not foreseen that the Evil One would be so cunning as to deflect his own arguments against him. He had underestimated his Enemy. "Thank you, Nassef. You're a true friend to warn me. I will remember. Nassef, I hadn't anticipated this."

"I thought not."

"Go, then. Do not give your father cause for a grievance. I will speak to you later."

Nassef rose and departed, a small, thin smile on his lips.

El Murid prayed for hours. He retreated deep into his young mind. At last the will of the Lord became clear to him.

He looked up the long, stony slope at Al Ghabha. The low hill was barren, as if the darkness up there might creep down to devour any goodness surrounding it.

It was there that his first and most important victory had to be won. What point to winning the el Habib if their traditional spiritual shepherds guided them back to the paths of wrongdoing the moment he traveled on?

"I'm going to the Shrine," he told one of the men of the village, who had come to see what he was doing. "I'm going to preach a sermon there. I shall show them the Truth. Then let them name me heretic to my face, and risk the wrath of the Lord."

"Will that be wise?"

"It must be done. They must declare themselves righteous, or tools of the Evil One."

"I'll tell the others."

El Murid began walking.

The desert religion had contained no real devil figure till El Murid named him. Evil had been the province of a host of demons, ghosts, and fell spirits without leadership. And the paternalistic God of Hammad al Nakir had been but the paterfamilias of a family of gods suspiciously resembling the extended families of the Imperial and desert tribes. The Lord's problems had tended to come from a black-sheep brother who meddled and politicked for the pleasure of causing discord. The religion had retained traces of animism, belief in reincarnation, and ancestor worship.

The scholars at the Rebsamen University in Hellin Daimiel believed the desert gods to be vague echoes of a family that had united the original Seven Tribes and had guided their migration into the land that would one day become the Empire, and later Hammad al Nakir.

El Murid's teachings banished animism, ancestor worship, and reincarnation. They elevated the family chieftain to the position of an omnipotent One True God. His brothers and wives and children became mere angels.

And the meddlesome brother became the Evil One, the master of djinn and ifrits and the patron of all sorcerers. El Murid railed against the practice of witchcraft with a vehemence his listeners found incomprehensible. His principal argument was that it had been sorcery that had brought on the doom of the Empire. The glory of Ilkazar, and a hope for its return, was a theme running through all his teaching.

The primary point of contention at El Aquila was a proscription against praying to the lesser gods. El Murid's listeners were accustomed to petitioning specialists. They were accustomed, especially, to approaching Muhrain, the patron of the region, to whom the Al Ghabha Shrines were dedicated.

The boy's path led him not to Al Ghabha but to the site where the imam, Ridyah, had found him. He did not at first know what drew him thither. Then he thought that he was looking for something.

He had left something there, something that he had forgotten. Something that he had hidden in his last moment of rationality. Something that had been given him by his angel.

Visions of an amulet came in snatches. A potent wrist amulet bearing a living stone. It would be, his angel had told him, the proof he needed to convince unbelievers.

But he could not remember where he had concealed it.

He scrabbled round the sides of the wadi that had prevented him from reaching El Aquila on his own.

"What in the world are you doing?" Nassef asked from above.

"You startled me, Nassef."

"What're you doing?"

"Looking for something. I hid it here. They didn't find it, did they? Did they find anything?"

"Who? The priests? Only a ragged, desert-worn saltman's son. What did you hide?"

"I remember now. A rock that looks like a tortoiseshell. Where is it?"

"There's one over here."

The rock was just a yard from where al Assad had found him. He tried lifting the stone. He did not have the strength.

"Here. Let me help." Nassef nudged him aside. In the process he tore his sleeve on a thorn of a scraggly desert bush. "Oh. Mother's going to brain me."

"Help me."

"Father too, if he finds out I was here."

"Nassef!"

"All right! I'm here." He heaved on the rock. "How did you move it before?"

"I don't know."

Together they heaved the stone onto its back. Nassef asked, "Ah, what is it?"

El Murid gently extracted the amulet from the rocky soil, brushing dirt from its delicate golden wristlet. The stone glowed even in the brilliant morning sun.

"The angel gave it to me. To be my proof to the doubtful."

Nassef was impressed, though he seemed more troubled than elated. In a moment, nervously, he suggested, "You'd better come on. The whole village is going to be at the Shrine."

"They expect to be entertained?"

Noncommittally, Nassef replied, "They think it's going to be interesting."

El Murid had noticed this evasiveness before. Nassef refused to be pinned down. About anything.

They strolled up to Al Ghabha, Nassef gradually lagging. El Murid accepted it. He understood. Nassef had to get along with Mustaf.

Everybody was there, from El Aquila and Al Ghabha alike. The gardens of the Shrines had assumed a carnival air. But he received very few friendly smiles there.

Behind the merriment was a strong current of malice. They had come to see someone hurt.

He had thought that he could teach them, that he could debate the abbot and so expose the folly inherent in the old dogma and old ways. But the mood here was passion. It demanded a passionate response, an emotional demonstration.

He acted without thinking. For the next few minutes he was just another spectator watching El Murid perform.

He threw his arms up and cried, "The Power of the Lord is upon me! The Spirit of God moves me! Witness, you idolaters, you wallowers in sin and weak faith! The hours of the enemies of the Lord are numbered! There is but one God, and I am His Disciple! Follow me or burn in Hell forever!"

He hurled his right fist at the earth. The stone in his amulet blazed furiously.

A lightning bolt flung down from a sky that had not seen a cloud in months. It blasted a ragged scar across the gardens of the Shrine. Singed petals fluttered through the air.

Thunder rolled across the blue. Women screamed. Men clutched their ears. Six more bolts hurtled down like the swift stabbing of a short spear. The lovely flowerbeds were ripped and burned.

In silence El Murid stalked from the grounds, his strides long and purposeful. At that moment he was no child, no man, but a force as terrible as a cyclone. He descended on El Aquila.

The crowd surged after him, terrified, yet irresistibly drawn. The brothers of the Shrine came too, and they almost never left Al Ghabha.

El Murid marched to the dry oasis. He halted where once sweet waters had lapped at the toes of date palms. "I am the Disciple!" he shrieked. "I am the Instrument of the Lord! I am the Glory, and the Power, incarnate!" He seized up a stone that weighed more than a hundred pounds, hoisted it over his head effortlessly. He heaved it out onto the dried mud.

Thunders tortured the cloudless sky. Lightnings pounded the desert. Women shrieked. Men hid their eyes. And moisture began to darken the hard baked mud.

El Murid wheeled on Mustaf and the abbot. "Do you label me fool and heretic, then? Speak, Hell serf. Show me the power within you."

The handful of converts he had earlier won gathered to one side. Their faces glowed with awe and something akin to worship.

Nassef hovered in the gap between groups. He had not yet decided which party was truly his.

The abbot refused to be impressed. His defiant stance proclaimed that no demonstration would reach him. He growled, "It's mummery. The power of this Evil One you preach... you've done nothing no skilled sorcerer couldn't have done."

A forbidden word had been hurled into El Murid's face like a gauntlet. A strong, irrational hatred of wizardry had underlain all the youth's teachings so far. It was that part of his doctrine which most confused his audiences, because it seemed to bear little relationship to his other teachings.

El Murid shook with rage. "How dare you?"

"Infidel!" someone shrieked. Others took it up. "Heretic!"

El Murid whirled. Did they mock him?

His converts were shouting at the abbot.

One threw a stone. It opened the priest's forehead, sending him to his knees. A barrage followed. Most of the villagers fled. The abbot's personal attendants, a pair of retarded brothers younger than most of the priests, seized his arms and dragged him away. El Murid's converts went after them, flinging stones.

Mustaf rallied a handful of men and intercepted them.

Angry words filled the air. Fists flew. Knives leapt into angry hands.

"Stop it!" El Murid shrieked.

It was the first of the riots which were to follow him like a disease throughout the years. Only his intercession kept lives from being lost.

"Stop!" he thundered, raising his right hand to the sky. His amulet flared, searing faces with its golden glow. "Put up your blades and go home," he told his followers.

The power was still upon him. He was no child. The command in his voice could not be refused. His followers sheathed their blades and backed away. He considered them. They were all young. Some were younger than he. "I did not come among you to have you spill one another's blood." He turned to the chieftain of the el Habib. "Mustaf, I offer my apologies. I did not intend this."

"You preach war. Holy war."

"Against the unbeliever. The heathen nations that rebelled against the Empire. Not brother against brother. Not Chosen against Chosen." He glanced at the young people. He was startled to see several girls among them. "Nor sister against brother, nor son against father. I have come to reunite the Holy Empire in the strength of the Lord, that once again the Chosen might take their rightful place among the nations, secure in the love of the one true God, whom they shall worship as befits the Chosen."

Mustaf shook his head. "I suspect you mean well. But riots and discord will follow wherever you go, Micah al Rhami."

"El Murid. I am the Disciple."

"Contention will be your traveling companion, Micah. And your travels have begun. I will not have this among the el Habib. I take no harsher action than banish you forever from el Habib lands because I consider your family, and your trials in the desert." And—unspoken—because he feared El Murid's amulet.

"I am El Murid!"

"I don't care. Not who you are, or what. I won't have you fomenting violence in my territories. I'll give you the horse and coin you asked, and whatever you need to travel. You'll leave El Aquila this afternoon. I, Mustaf abd-Racim ibn Farid el Habib, have spoken. Do not defy me."

"Father, you can't—"

"Be silent, Meryem. What were you doing with that rabble? Why aren't you with your mother?"

The girl began to argue. Mustaf cut her short. "I've been a fool. You're starting to think you're a man. That is ended, Meryem. From this moment forward you will remain with the women, and do the work of women."

"Father!"

"You heard me. Micah. You heard me too. Start moving."

His converts were ready to resume scuffling. He disappointed them.

"No," he said. "It's not yet time for the Kingdom of Peace to challenge the unrighteous controlling temporal powers, corrupt as they may be. Endure. Our hour will come."

Mustaf reddened. "Boy, don't push me."

El Murid turned. He faced the chieftain of the el Habib. He clasped his hands before him, right over left. The jewel in his amulet blazed at Mustaf. He met the chieftain's gaze without flinching or speaking.

Mustaf yielded first, his eyes going to the amulet. He swallowed and started toward the village.

El Murid followed at a slower pace. His acolytes orbited him, their mouths full of soothing promises. He ignored most of them. His attention was on Nassef, who again was drifting aimlessly between parties, drawn both ways.

Intuition told him that he needed Nassef. The youth could become the cornerstone of his future. He had to win Nassef over before he left.

El Murid was as ambivalent about Nassef as Mustaf's son was about El Murid. Nassef was bright, fearless, hard, and competent. But he had a dark streak in him that frightened the Disciple. Mustaf's son contained as much potential for evil as he did for good.

"No, I won't defy Mustaf," he told his imploring companions. "I've recovered from my debility. It's time I started my travels. I'll return in time. Carry on my work while I'm gone. Show me a model village when I return."

He began one of his gentle teaching sessions, trying to give them the tools they would need to become effective missionaries.

He did not glance back as he rode out of El Aquila. He had only one regret: he had had no opportunity to present Nassef with further arguments. El Aquila had been a beginning.

Not nearly as good a beginning as he had hoped, though. He had not been able to sway anyone important. Priests and temporal leaders simply refused to listen. He would have to find some way to open their ears and minds.

He took the trail that reversed the road his father's caravan had been traveling. He wanted to pause at the place where his family had died.

His angel had told him his work would be hard, that he would be resisted by those who had an investment in the old ways. He had not believed. How could they refuse the Truth? It was so obvious and beautiful that it overwhelmed one.

He was two miles east of El Aquila when he heard hoofbeats. He glanced back. Two riders were overtaking him. He did not immediately recognize them. He had noticed them only momentarily, when they had helped the stoned abbot flee the oasis. What were they doing? He turned his face eastward and tried to ignore them.

His worry would not leave him. It quickly became obvious that they were trailing him. When he looked again he found that they were just a dozen yards behind. Naked steel appeared in their hands.

He kicked his mount's flanks. The white stallion surged forward, almost toppling him. He flung himself forward and clung to the animal's neck with no thought of regaining control.

The riders came after him.

He now knew the fear he had had no time for in the ambush of his father's caravan. He could not believe that the Evil One would have become so desperate so soon.

His flight led him into and through the defile where his family had died. He swept round a mass of bizarrely weathered boulders.

Riders awaited him. His mount sank to its haunches to avoid a collision. El Murid tumbled off. He rolled across the hard earth and scrambled for cover.

He had no weapon. He had trusted in the protection of the Lord... . He began praying.

Hooves thundered down the defile. Men shouted. Steel rang on steel. Someone moaned. Then it ended.

"Come out, Micah," someone shouted into the ensuing silence.

He peeped between boulders. He saw two riderless horses and two bodies lying on the stony earth.

Nassef loomed over them on a big black stallion. His right hand held a bloody blade. Behind him were another three youths from El Aquila, and Meryem and another girl.

El Murid crept out. "Where did you come from?"

"We decided to come with you." Nassef swung down. Contemptuously, he wiped his blade on the chest of one of the dead men. "Priests. They send halfwits to do murder."

The brothers had not been priests themselves, only wards of the Shrine who had been cared for by the abbot in return for doing the donkey work around the monastery.

"But how did you get here?" El Murid demanded.

"Meryem saw them start after you. Some of us were arguing about what to do. That decided us. There's an antelope trail that goes over the hills instead of around. I took that, riding hard. I was sure they would let you get this far, then try to make it look like you'd run foul of bandits again."

El Murid stood over the dead brothers. Tears came to his eyes. They had been but tools of the Evil One, poor things. He knelt and said prayers for their souls, though he had little hope that the Lord would show them any mercy. His was a jealous, vengeful God.

When he had finished, he asked, "What are you going to tell your father?"

"Nothing. We're going with you."

"But... "

"You need somebody, Micah. Hasn't that just been proven?"

El Murid paused thoughtfully, then threw his arms around Nassef. "I'm glad you came, Nassef. I was worried for you."

Nassef reddened. The Children of Hammad al Nakir were often demonstrative, but seldom in the tenderer emotions. "Let's get going," he said. "We've got a long way to travel if we're not going to spend the night in the desert."

El Murid hugged him again. "Thank you, Nassef. I wish you knew how much this means to me." Then he went round clasping the hands of the others, and kissing the hands of the girls.

"I don't rate a hug, eh?" Meryem teased. "Do you love Nassef more?"

Now he was embarrassed. Meryem would not cease playing her games.

He called her bluff. "Come down here."

She did so, so he hugged her. It aggravated Nassef and completely flustered the girl.

El Murid laughed.

One of the youths brought his horse. "Thank you."

So there were seven who began the long trail, the trail of years. El Murid thought it an auspicious number, but the number gave no luck. He would suffer countless nights of frustration and depression before his ministry bore fruit. Too many of the Children of Hammad al Nakir refused him, or were just plain Truth-blind.

But he persisted. And each time he preached he won a heart or two. His following grew, and they too preached.