"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."