I had wandered out of sight of the camp when I discovered Isabel following on Farishti. She slipped off, and with the moonlight on her face, came up to me. That she was on a momentous mission I could not doubt.
"It was my fault, Omar, that you kissed me at the bivouac in the Tibesti foothills when the moon was new," she said.
"I think it was no one's fault," I answered.
"Many would say it was a great fault—when I'm a princess and you're a slave. Since then I've thought of it day and night. I ran away from you—and now I've returned—to find out something. It may be I'll run away again. If I do, if I get on my mare and ride, it's a sign we must part forever. Then tomorrow I'll go to Suliman and tell him I've chosen Ishmael ibn Abdul, for he sings songs that bring my tears, and he's good to look upon, and the son of a malik, second only to the sheik. But if I give you a sign, you'll know I can't part with you."
"For how long? I ask the question in my need."
"For one year—perhaps two years more. And if then you are set free--"
"There's no hope of that, Isabel Gazelle. You heard Ishmael's song and know it was a true song. Still, if we could be sweethearts even for a half a year, I'd be thankful all my life. Many of the days I spent in the slave pen would be paid for."
"It's those days in the slave pen that may part us now."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Hear me, Omar—and don't blame me for what I can't help. When I first saw you, it was on a night like this. The moon turned the desert into silver. Your face frightened me that night—I can't tell you how much—yet I came with you. Since then I've looked at it across a thousand thorn fires, but it still frightens me sometimes. The men say it turned to stone in your eight years in the Sepulcher —and you have other marks I've never seen."
"They told the truth."
"Are the marks ugly, Omar? If they are, I can't take you for my lover. I'm only a Tuareg woman! Forgive me."
"You shall see for yourself."
I slipped off my aba, baring my gaunt chest and gangling arms. Her eyes slowly widened.
"Omar, they're dreadful marks!"
"Look at them closely."
"The Daughters of the Spear would laugh to think of Izubahil accepting courtship from such a scarecrow."
"Then go quickly and get on your horse and fade away in the moonlight."
"Shall I?" she asked herself.
"Yes, if I'm ugly in your eyes and in your heart."
"I didn't say you were ugly in my heart. You put song into my heart. It will live there always. When you're gone across the desert, I'll hear it still."
"When I'm gone across the desert, I'll love you still."
"The love of a slave?" she asked in a low, wondering murmur.
"Yes. Can't you see?"
"I do see, Omar, and now I'll give you a sign."
Up from my back across my gaunt shoulder ran the black scar of the ox whip. Isabel stood on tiptoe and pressed it with her lips. If the wound were still raw upon my soul, it was instantly healed.
CHAPTER 14
The Sword of Kismet
In ensuing months my fellows noticed little change in Isabel Gazelle's and my dealings with each other. Her excursions with Timor and me caused no more comment than before—actually the tribespeople had always been pleased by her attachment to me, as a poetic outcome to my finding her on the desert. Quite possibly there was a bar across their minds against them suspecting a love affair. Ishmael ibn Abdul had told in song how I could never have her for my own, and a princess of the Tuareg would turn away from an ungainly slave, twenty years her senior. If sometimes we yielded to brief love play in the sudden lusts of solitude, that was a matter of course among the unwedded, and of no more moment than a little whirlwind rising and toppling far away on the desert.
They might have guessed the truth from the burning glances she sometimes gave me. A surer sign was shown when she and I had been separated many days by the exigencies of desert life—the women campbound to gather precious myrrh or dye, or for a great spinning and weaving of camel's hair, or the men venturing so far into the Thirst that no measure of food or water could be spared for Bringers of Delight, or entering regions harried by robber Bedouins. The hour that she was free to join me, she would saddle a riding camel and strike out, sometimes eighty miles across hissing sands.
Often she sang to me, fierce songs of the Tuareg warriors or tender lyrics of love, and told me many a thrilling tale handed down by mothers to daughters in her tribe. Once, as I lay with my head in her lap while she combed out my tangled hair with a thorn comb, she recounted an adventure of which she had personal knowledge, occurring only a few weeks before I met her. Its region was the northern part of the Bilad-es-Sudan (the Country of the Blacks), two long days' camel journey southeast of the Nile town of Atbara and east of the river of the same name. On his return journey from Mecca, twenty of Mahound's best riding camels were stolen by the Beni Amer—the dominant tribe—and tracked by a force of Tuareg.
In the course of the pursuit a servant of Isabel's mother, named Adem, had encountered a former clansman who had been captured in battle and sold into slavery. Now free and prosperous, he had entertained Adem at his kraal, and in the absence of the other Tuareg, had told him of a strange thing. Of this Adem did not speak to Mahound's men—they were not the Sons of Spears—but he had confided it to Isabel Gazelle.
"On the cliffs separating the desert from the plowed land, there had been a rockslide," my companion told me. "It had revealed a flight of steps leading up, a passage, and then another flight of steps under the cliff. The painting on the wall was like those a fellah had seen far to the north, and which showed it to be a tomb of a Pharaoh living long ago. But while those tombs had been robbed of their gold and silver furnishings, this tomb had not been robbed."
"I'll wager it didn't take long."
"You'd lose the wager, Omar. It's not yet been robbed. The tomb is guarded by spirits of the dead who kill all who go down the second flight of steps. A good many tried to go down in the first years after the steps were found, Adem's clansman told him. Those walking behind would see their torches flicker and go out. When they called, there was no answer, and none of the silent ones ever returned. At last the king of the Beni Amer decreed that no others should try, lest the evil spirits come forth from the passage and kill all the people, so he had many cartloads of rock brought to the place and dumped over the entranceway, closing it forever."
"How long ago was this?"
"Adem said that it had been closed for twenty years, and most folk had forgotten the steps were there."
"I didn't know that any Pharaohs were buried as far up the Nile as Atbara."
"I can't say as to that, Omar."
"Is the country rich in gold?"
"Not now, but long ago, much gold was found. The country was then known as Aphar, Adem told me."
Aphar was suggestive of Ophir, the gold-rich region of Biblical times. The story worked on my imagination and recurred again and again to my mind. That I should hear it from the lips of Isabel Gazelle, who had ridden across the desert into my life, smacked of fate.
"When you return to the Tuareg, will Adem become your servant?" I asked on a later occasion.
Her eyes filled with tears. "He fought for Mama when Mahound was about to kill her, and his body was riddled with spears."