The widow shook her head. “Unfortunately, I have no spells that can restore the oasis,” she said. “But I do have one that might deceive the Zhentarim into thinking a small attack was a large one.”
“What good would that do?” Sa’ar asked, frowning.
“Given the opportunity, the Zhentarim would surely destroy us, would they not?” Ruha asked.
All of the sheikhs nodded their heads in agreement, but it was Lander who picked up on the widow’s plan. “Are you suggesting that we turn Yhekal’s trap against him?”
Ruha nodded. “We will take two khowwans and attack as the Zhentarim want us to,” she said, smiling beneath her veil. “My spell will make it look like all of our tribes are assaulting. The battle will go against us, and we will have to flee. Yhekal will no doubt send his men to pursue, anxious to destroy us while we are vulnerable.”
“And the routed khowwans will lead the Zhentarim into an ambush manned by the other twelve tribes,” Lander added. “A brilliant plan!”
“And after we finish with the Zhentarim, we will destroy the asabis in their burrows,” Sa’ar added enthusiastically. He gave the widow a conniving smile. “You think like a camel thief, Ruha.”
The other sheikhs gave their approval to the plan. As they worked out the details, Ruha forced her camel to kneel, then dismounted and removed Qoha’dar’s spellbook from her djebiras. Each night the young widow memorized the spells she thought might be useful the next day, but she wanted to look over the spell with which she intended to fool the Zhentarim.
“Do you have everything you need?” Lander asked, stepping to her side.
Ruha nodded, then said, “And a few things I don’t need.”
Lander frowned in concern. “Like what?”
“Trembling knees, uneasy stomach, shaky hands.”
The Harper took her hand in his. “Relax. You survived the Battle of the Chasm. This one won’t be any worse.”
“I’m not worried about dying,” the widow said, squeezing Lander’s fingers. “I just hope my plan works.”
Utaiba rode his camel to the pair, scowling at their clasped hands. “You will come with Sa’ar and me, Ruha. The Mahwa and the Raz’hadi will serve as the decoys,” the wiry sheikh said. Looking to Lander, he added, “We thought it would be best if you stayed with the others.”
The Harper frowned. “I’ll go with Ruha. She’ll need protection if the Zhentarim see her casting spells.”
“There are others who can protect her,” Utaiba said, his expression firm and stubborn. “But you are the only one who knows the Zhentarim well, so you should be safe. The other sheikhs have agreed to respect your advice in preparing the ambush. More importantly, if something goes wrong, your knowledge may make the difference between victory and disaster.”
Realizing that the sheikhs had made up their minds on this matter, Ruha mounted her camel and prodded it back to its feet. “I’ll be fine,” she said, smiling down at Lander. “You make sure the ambush works.”
The Harper nodded, but Ruha could see that he was far from happy about being left behind. “It’ll work. You make sure you come back alive.”
“I’ll make sure of that,” Utaiba said, urging his camel toward the place where the Mahwa and Raz’hadi had gathered.
After Ruha and Utaiba joined the two tribes, Sa’ar gave the order to ride. The war party crossed the dried lake bed quickly, moving toward a point well south of their final destination to prevent anyone watching from the mountains from getting a good look at them. The rest of the tribes would not follow for another two hours, when the Mahwa and the Raz’hadi had had ample time to drive enemy observers away from the edge of the mountains.
Once they reached the base of the mountains, Sa’ar stopped the column and looked to Ruha. “After you cast your spell, how long will it disguise our true number?”
“An hour or so,” the widow replied. “Not much longer.”
“We’d better send some scouts ahead to chase away the enemy sentries right away,” Sa’ar said. “We don’t want them to get a good look at us before you create your mirage.”
The sheikh sent two dozen men forward to act as a vanguard, then waited fifteen minutes before allowing the column to continue. The two tribes moved along the base of the mountains for an hour, then turned up a winding, rocky canyon. Craggy brown cliffs immediately flanked the riders and rose more than a hundred feet to either side. They were laced with wide fissures.
Sa’ar sent some men forward to check random crevices for hidden sentries, but the gesture did little to make Ruha feel more secure. The column was moving too fast to check every crevice, and the widow did not put it past the Zhentarim to hide assassins there. Uncomfortably aware of the conspicuousness of her veiled presence among the long line of keffiyehs proceeding up the canyon, Ruha did her best to ride between Utaiba and Sa’ar. From her previous encounters with Yhekal, it seemed likely to her that he had deduced she was a magic-user. In that case, the lone woman among a column of warriors would no doubt be a prime target for enemy arrows.
The sheikhs allowed themselves to fall back to the middle of the column and tried to stay in the center of the canyon, as aware of Ruha’s prominence as she was. Unfortunately, it was not an easy task, for the gulch was no more than fifty yards wide in many places, and a good man’s arrow was accurate at twice that range.
Thirty minutes of careful riding passed, and no one had fired at Ruha or anybody else. The scouts returned to the main body of the column, reporting that they had approached to within a hundred yards of the enemy camp without encountering a single sentry. It appeared that all the Zhentarim were asleep, for there was no other sign of the invaders in the canyon other than their sealed tents.
Utaiba furrowed his brow, “I do not like this. The Zhentarim are not fools. They would not leave themselves so exposed.”
“Perhaps not,” Sa’ar agreed, drawing his sword. “But what choice do we have? Even if they have prepared an ambush for us, we must attack in order to lure them into our own trap.”
Utaiba considered this for a moment, then said, “You are right. Let us hope that Eldath, not N’asr, is with us today.” He also drew his scimitar, then looked toward Ruha. “Now is the time for your spell.”
The young witch took a deep breath, then nodded and said, “We’ll need to be at the head of the column.”
The two sheikhs glanced at each other with concern, but Sa’ar nodded. “Whatever you say.”
They urged their camels closer to hers and moved to the head of the long line of warriors. Ahead of them, the canyon climbed through a stretch of steep boulder-strewn ground, then turned sharply to the left and disappeared into a maze of brown rock laced by deep, man-sized fissures. After that, the scouts had reported, it twisted back to the right and opened into a sandy dale that must have been a pool when there was water in the canyon. It was there that the tents of the Zhentarim were pitched.
Ruha took a small quartz crystal from her pocket. As it caught At’ar’s rays, she faced the long column of warriors and manipulated the crystal in her hand until she could see their wavy image in the clear quartz. She selected a brawny warrior at the head of the column and focused on the jambiya in his belt.
When she uttered her spell, Sa’ar gasped. “Incredible!”
Ruha opened her eyes and saw that the spell had worked. Beyond the brawny warrior whose dagger she had selected as a focus, a sheet of wavering heat filled the canyon from wall to wall, obscuring the Bedine behind it. It was impossible to see anything beyond that single warrior clearly, for the images were all distorted. However, it did appear that there were about eight times as many men in the canyon than were really there.