Before striking at what, at whom? Once again he was at a loss to say. He could not remember. Perhaps it was the Khamsin which had stolen his memory, making his mind weary. And was it also the Khamsin, he wondered, which had driven her to invite him to her tent, whose husband he would be when the war was done? He hoped not. But in any case, the scorpion wind was gone now, flown down into the valley of the river to deposit its furnace heat in the lands of the enemy. And here he was in her tent, having crawled beneath its colored walls until he found the purple of her bedroom.
Ah, now he was remembering!
Her tent, yes, the tent of the woman whose bed he now lay upon.... But who was she? And why must he sneak like a thief in the night, who was a great general in the army of… whom? Slowly, he shook his head. He had only remembered her after hearing, tinkling from somewhere beyond many walls of linen, the voices of her handmaidens.
Handmaidens?
She was royal, then. And he was to be her husband. And she had bade him come, but not in at the door for that would be to shame her, whose pride was fierce.…
She must surely have finished with her bathing by now. What was she doing and why were they all laughing? Did she have a confidant among the girls, he wondered, who already knew that he was here? Did they all know? Well, what of it? He was who he was, and—
And who was he?
“Who am I?” he asked himself in a whisper, frowning. Before he could begin to seek for an answer, there came a flitting shadow, an outline seen in silhouette against a linen wall; then, the rustle of a bead curtain as a figure stepped through it into the room.
He had not known what to expect… but certainly it was not this. She was dressed—no, she had been dressed—in a sheet that wrapped her from head to toe; but now, on entering the bedroom and seeing him lying on her bed, she had discarded it, stepping from its folds naked as the day she was born. The purple of the walls and gold of the fire in the brazier were reflected from her skin, which shone with scented oil. Slippery as a fish she looked, sinuous as a snake. And like a snake’s, her half-shuttered eyes were hypnotic as she began to dance, hardly ever leaving his own eyes for all her body’s rapidly mounting gyrations and sensuous undulations.
Somewhere, as she danced, a drum seemed to take up the beat and now she matched its pulse. Perspiration began to mingle with the oil on her body until she gleamed with droplets of colored light like some queen of ancient magic. Spinning, her feet sent the white sand of the floor flying as she whirled round the heaped furs where he lay watching her. Her body was sweet and glistening, shapely and firm. A girl’s body, narrow-waisted and round in the hip, with breasts thrown out now by the speed of her spin and dark nipples erect in the passion of her dance. For this was a nuptial dance old as the nation itself, the dance a bride performs for her man before she gives herself to him on the bridal bed.
As she whirled closer, he reached for her, his pulse pounding with that of the unseen drum, catching her wrist and pulling her off balance. He could not hold her for every inch of her body was oiled; but even as she slipped from his grasp, she tripped and fell panting, breasts heaving from her exertions and round thighs agleam with oil so heavily applied that it stained the furs beneath her body. Fully roused, he kneeled over her, his skin pale by comparison, his now harsh breathing matching hers in its passion.
Suddenly, seeing him poised, panic or fear flashed in her eyes. Where the heat of the Khamsin had burned in her veins, now chill mountain streams ran, taking the fire from her blood. A cooling breeze, rising up from nowhere, set the walls billowing and caused the brazier to sputter and its flames to burn a little lower.
She made to swing her legs past him, but he caught her knees and moved in quickly between them. Arching her back for purchase, she tried to wriggle backwards across the furs. Cruelly, he gripped the soft flesh of her thighs, drawing her to him. She sobbed and beat at his face, her shoulders on the furs but her lower body held up by the strength of his arms. Now he threw an arm under her supple body, his other hand seeking her breasts. Lifting her higher, he lowered his head and kissed her belly, his tongue finding the hollow of her navel and tasting the oil gathered there.
And abruptly she stopped fighting him. Beneath the fingers of his free hand, he felt her nipples stiffen. He lifted his head from her belly and looked at her. Her own head had fallen back onto the furs, where her shoulders took the weight of her upper body; and gradually he felt her weight lift from his arm as, one at a time, she drew back her feet to tuck them under her thighs.
He leaned back momentarily, reached out both hands now to her breasts. Her breath came in harsh gasps as she began to move her head from side to side, faster and faster. And although the hot wind from hell was long gone, still the Khamsin seemed to have taken her back into its spell. His eyes went to her gleaming belly, to the dark, tightly-curled mass of hair where her legs came together. Like a strange, sentient orchid, slowly her body opened for him, moist, hot and inviting. He gave a choked cry to match her moaning, and—
—And started awake!
The alarm! The damned alarm’
His arm sought the clamoring, clattering alarm-clock, swept it from its position on the small table beside his bed, sent it flying across the room to bounce off the wall and fall, still ringing, to the floor. With the action, pain shot through his body and he felt again the brace that held his neck rigid. Sweat bathed him from head to foot and his bedclothes were a tumbled mound on the floor beside his bed, thrown there by his dreaming struggles.
And already his dream was receding, as it always did, fading into mists of subconscious mind. “No!” he cried out, then cursed and fell limply back onto his pillows. “Goddamn!”
Her name … if only he could remember her name! But no, he had not even known it in his dream, so how might he now hope to remember it in the waking world ? She was gone, and the dream too, returning to wherever it is that dreams are born.
Outside, the morning traffic rumbled in London’s streets, and the tent of Paul Arnott’s temptress was suddenly thousands of miles away. Thousands of miles and thousands of years away, lost in unknown abysses of space and time….
II
Paul Arnott of London
Wilfred Sommers made his way from the hospital reception and enquiry area through double swinging doors and down a corridor lined with children’s wards. He passed through a second set of doors out into the hospital gardens, where he followed a path between a landscaped clump of shrubs and a rock outcrop toward the gymnasium. The latter was the physiotherapy center where Paul Arnott, the man Sommers sought, was halfheartedly complying with his doctor’s orders that he help toward his own rehabilitation.
Sommers entered the gymnasium complex, made his way past a small pool where handicapped children swam under the careful guidance of specialist nurses, through one more door and into a room of wall-bars, weighted pulleys and all sorts of similar therapeutic apparatus. There, lying on his back on a rubber mat, Paul Arnott pumped small dumbbells, one in each hand, grimacing as his efforts put strain on his neck and back. His neck was braced front and rear by a sort of girdle affair which was laced up one side. It sat stiff and uncomfortable on his chest. Looking up at Sommers, Arnott nodded a painful welcome.
“Physiotherapy?” Sommers grinned.
“What?” Arnott grimaced again. “Good heavens, no—uh!—Wilf!” He slowly pumped his weights. “I’m—uh!—a masochist, didn’t you know? Anyway, what brings you here?”