Her eyes turned skyward, to ask the gods why, and a full moon blazed mutely back at her. She turned her gaze to the camp around her, where men, women and children lay sprawled in death, blood everywhere. Nearby, the horse thief lay with his eyes wide in death, his small torso twisted.
At the pounding of hoofbeats, she turned as Memnon himself rode straight for her, red-turbaned warriors on his either side, their brethren rampaging through the camp, killing anything that breathed.
And the warlord glared at her, furious with his sorceress, yet intent on her capture—racing toward her, to retrieve his oracle. She recoiled as he reached down from his galloping steed to snatch her up into his arms, and she turned away in horror ... ... and was back in the camp, where the only fires were cooking food or providing warmth, and the only shrieks were of laughter. The little boy looked up at her strangely, afraid now—her trance had spooked him, and he backed away.
On quick but unsure feet, she found her way to the tent, perched by a campfire among some rocks, and went in and sat on the ground, looking up through the open flap at the moon ... the almost full moon....
Sometime later, Mathayus entered and sensed her discomfort, asking, "Is something wrong?"
She did not look at him, her eyes on the moon. "Memnon knows I'm here ... or at least, he will— soon." She pointed to the sky. 'The moon is entering the House of Scorpio. Tomorrow is the night when what I saw in my vision will come to pass ... Memnon will release his armies, and they will ride into the heart of this camp . .. and rip it out."
Mathayus knelt beside her. "The moon is just... the moon. And Memnon will die, at these hands, prophecy be damned."
She turned her gaze upon him, admiring his bravery, but knowing his disbelief in the spiritual was foolish; without her magic, after all, he would not be alive....
"I must know," she said.
"Know what?"
And she lay her fingers gently against his cheek, closing her eyes, summoning a vision that, in a flash of white, filled her mind ...
... Memnon stood atop an altar, erected in the elevated courtyard of his palace, the city of Gomorrah spread out before him like a banquet; his hands were raised to the night sky, where a huge moon. .. a full moon, ringed in silver... glowed so intensely, the sun was not its rival.
"Great gods above," Memnon cried, his voice ringing out above his city, "look down upon me!. .. And make me one with you."
Behind the warlord, Mathayus silently crept across the courtyard, sword in hand, approaching the steps that led up to the altar where Memnon, his back to the Akkadian, stood.
Cassandra shuddered, as the vision continued, but shifted, as now ...
. .. a red-turbaned soldier, bow in hand, quiver of arrows on his back, ran through a palace hallway, lined with leaping flames, to burst out a doorway onto the courtyard, stepping on a small yellow flower, growing up between stones in the floor. The archer could see Mathayus, coming up behind the warlord, sword raised.
The archer notched an arrow, and let fly. ..
..'. and the arrow found purchase in the Akkadian's back! As Mathayus fell to the palace floor, Cassandra screamed, "No!"
In the moonlight filtering through the tent flap, the Akkadian held the woman by her arms, but the sorceress turned away, eyes squeezed shut, a single jewel of tear trickling down her smooth cheek.
"What did you see?" the Akkadian demanded.
Swallowing, trembling, refusing to look at him, she said, "If you go up against Memnon ... you will fail. You will die. That, Akkadian, is your destiny."
He spoke her name, and turned her to him, cupping her chin, lifting her face to his, her eyes tortured, her lashes pearled with tears.
"Hear me," he said, and despite the dire prophecy, no fear was in his face—only a faint smile that seemed to challenge any vision that might try to master him. "I make my own destiny."
She winced at the words, shaking her head slowly—it was if he spoke a foreign language. How could he think such a thing, much less say the words? She had spent her life in the company of men who paid her prophecies the strictest heed— who feared her words, and everything they might portend.
Yet to this man, this special man, the words of the gods were subservient to his will—the future something that could be molded. Was he right? she wondered. Could a person . .. a mortal. . . change the course of destiny?
"Haven't you had enough of visions?" he asked her, that small smile still on his lips, something else—something fervent—in his tone.
"What... what do you mean?"
The Akkadian swept her into his arms and kissed her, deeply, passionately ... and she responded, clutching him desperately, returning his kisses with the same hunger. As they embraced, he lowered her to the sandy floor and, as firelight jumped and danced, as if in celebration, their souls, and much more, entwined.
As they lay in each other's arm, Cassandra watched this brave, foolish man as he slept, his slumber deep; for him to have battled Balthazar, in the wake of nearly dying the night before, was a feat few men could survive. All it seemed to mean for Mathayus, however, was the need for a good night's sleep.
She could not risk kissing him, not even his forehead or his cheek, for he might wake; instead, her heart aching and yet so full, she slipped from his slumbering embrace and out into the moonlight.
She felt different—more a woman, perhaps less a mystic. Still, she believed in the world beyond this one, and walked out to the edge of a precipice, where, washed in the moon's ivory, she lighted a candle, in ceremony, kneeling to place it on a rock. Supine before the flickering flame, she whispered a silent prayer.
This man, she told the almost full moon, believes that the future you have shown me can be changed. Guide me, mother—though your daughter is a woman now. Guide me, still, and tell me what to do.
She listened, and—within her mind—thoughts grew, whether from a mystic mother or herself, who can say? Yet she did pledge herself to a course of action, dictated by those thoughts, perilous though that might be, since she hoped now to change the future by her own means.
Cassandra blew out the candle, and smiled.
Before long she had found her way to the corral where the bandits kept their horses and camels. She of course went to the white beast, and stood beside Hanna, stroking the camel's snout, gently.
"You love him, too, don't you?" she asked the animal.
The camel shook its head—perhaps a reflex, or an answer.
"Then," the sorceress whispered into the camel's ear, "you must help me save him."
And, in an action heretofore reserved for Mathayus alone, Hanna bent down—any cantankerousness
gone, only the most docile response—and Cassandra climbed aboard.
Soon, the white camel—her lovely rider looking albino herself in the rays of the almost-full moon— was galloping away from the oasis, toward Gom-morah.
And the man she despised as much she loved the Akkadian.
The Oracle's Return
B
althazar—snoring in a kingly cot the size of a boat, his arms around one of the two beautiful wenches with whom he slept—had trained himself to be stirred from his slumber, no matter how deep, by the slightest suspicious sound, no matter how small. At dawn, a rustling around a campfire, well across the amphitheater-like hideaway, was all it took to rouse the sleeping giant.