"I cannot help it, O Sheik."
"In your place, I, too, would blanch. I felt the fluttering, coming and going, before midnight on the night of rain, and the pain smote me at sunrise, as you know. In some months, how many I know not, the warning will come again, and—and I will no longer be your protector and stand between you and the chains of iron. The word has gone forth from you and from me that you will return, and it is so written in the stars. But when the door of the Sepulcher of Wet Bones has closed behind you, then the bond is taken up, your debt to me and mine to my pasha have been paid, and if you find a way to break out—perhaps with help of friends from across the desert— I will lift my voice from my deep grave in thanks to Allah."
"What friends, O Sheik? I ask the question in my need."
"Timor is one. If ten or twelve, a number easy to spare from the herding, would follow him across the desert, much might be done. They would have to come in secret some months after you had been sent back, and be a different party from the other, so their faces would not be known. But my pasha is their pasha; to offend him is to offend Allah; the way is very long and the danger great and—I do not know." Suliman began to speak in the vernacular. "It comes to me that Izubahil will help you all she can, which may be more than we dare believe. When Mahound dies—the dog still lives, whining to Allah—she can resume her place among the Tuareg; or if she weds one of their chiefs or becomes the wife of a noble Arab, she'll have certain limited power. True, her people dwell a thousand miles across the Thirst—and no prisoner has ever made good his escape from the Sepulcher of Wet Bones. But remember, there's no desert that can't be crossed at last, no wall too strong to break down."
I longed to make some worthy answer, but my tongue stuck.
"One thing more. Tell only Timor—and if you like, the maiden Izubahil—of these tidings, for my great horsemen are also children in some things, and there would be no laughter or no singing for months on end, and no good talk at the fires. I want them to be happy to the hour of my departure, then when they have wept their fill, to be happy again. And I would you were one of them, Omar, to take Izubahil to wife, and to live out your days as a Bedouin, worshiping what God your soul decrees as long as you keep faith with the bread and salt, for I have learned to love you as a father loves his son."
He raised his hand in a kingly gesture, about to give me leave to go, but instead his eyes turned dark and he made a plea.
"Now leave me quickly, Omar, so you won't see my tears."
I saw Isabel's tears when I called her from the cooking-fires and told her the news. There was only a young moon, but it showed them welling in her eyes and on her brown cheeks. She asked me to meet her in an hour at the place we called the Stairway of the Jinns.
It lay about two miles from the encampment, and was an outcropping of some great rock-fold—as though it were a mountaintop rising out of a sea of sand. It towered about three hundred feet, and got its name from a series of receding ledges about ten feet apart, the first two easily gained by climbing broken rock at one side. When I arrived there, Isabel Gazelle had unsaddled her horse and was waiting for me on the bottom step.
"Bring your saddlecloth," she told me.
I did so, and found hers already spread on the fiat stone. Near by was a jug of water, and another that I guessed held fermented camel's milk, and a cluster of dates. She took my cloth and spread it on top of hers.
"Will you take your ease, my lord?" she asked.
"Yes."
I dropped down on the cloths and she crouched beside me.
"Omar, I've decided not to marry a youth of the Beni Kabir," she told me.
I nodded and waited.
"There's none of great enough name to be able to do what I want. Unless I've married a chief who can lead a bold and well-armed band to my people's tents—it need not be large, but it must speak for all the Beni Kabir—I'll lose izzat, my father Mabound may not repent the lie he told, and he may be able to hold my mother's followers, the Men of Spears, from coming with me on a journey. Ishmael ibn Abdul is good to look upon and is a sweet singer and the son of a malik, but how many would go with him to right the wrongs of his bride, once a princess of the Tuareg cast out by her sire, but now joined to a Bedouin?"
"His brothers and his young uncle. Not more."
"So I've decided to go with some caravan until I join a tribe of Tuareg other than the Kel Innek, perhaps even the Kel Allaghan (People of the Spears) if I can get to their star-far land, and marry a young chieftain. With him and his followers, I'll go back to the Kel Innek and take away my mother's followers, as well as my flocks and herds, and the men will go with me to the desert close by your prison, and with us working from without and you from within, you can break out and go with us on our fleet riding camels far beyond the sway of Yussuf Pasha."
She paused, her eyes fixed on mine. I nodded, but could not speak.
"Oh, don't you believe me, Omar?"
"I believe you, Isabel Gazelle, but it will take a long time. If it takes more than four and a half years from now—when I've spent twenty years in slavery—I'll not be able to go."
"I'll come before then. I swear it by Messiner, my God."
"There's no harm in that," I told her, smiling—yearning to see her smile.
"Omar, do you love me?"
"I do."
"Will you always love me and think of me with joy?"
"Yes, with great joy."
"Do you want me for your own? Your woman—your mate—your saki until we part forever? Then I'll be your widow whom a young Tuareg weds in pride. And a widow stands as high as a wife in Tuaregstan. . . ."
There was a strange stirring deep in my brain. It was like the ominous rustle of air before the wind sweeps down out of the clouds and lightning flashes. My heart stopped, it seemed, then hammered my side, and I heard my own voice.
"Isabel Gazelle?"
"What do you want? I thought you wanted to come to me, but you're a cold-eyed Frank with water in your veins—"
"I must ask you a question. You must hear me and answer. It's life or death to me."
Her gaze became slowly intent.
"Omar!"
"What if you returned to your people not as the wife of Ishmael the bard but as the widow of Suliman ibn Ali, Sheik of Beni Kabir?
Her arms slowly rose, her hands drawing in until they covered her face. The strength ran out of my sinews and I felt bitter cold. As we started down, I held out my hand to her, and it seemed I had never known a fear as great as this, but she took it in hers with a little gasp, her long, firm, strong hand with beautifully pointed fingers, but now cold with icy sweat; and tears filled my eyes. Farishti came trotting to her, whinnying, but the gelding made me chase him a short distance into the desert. When at last we were saddled, Isabel turned to me and answered my question.
"If I could go to my people as Suliman's widow, if only with an escort of two old men, Mahound's lie would be cast into his teeth, and I could take away my mother's followers and my flocks and herds."
"If he'll take you for his wife, will you take him for your husband?"
"Yes, until death parts us."
"Then I'll go to speak to the sheik, and I bid you come with me, for I'm a slave and you're a princess of the Tuareg."