Shakily I made my way out and stood blinking in the bright sunlight, still unable to see clearly through my sun-damaged eyes. Nasiq led me slowly to a small, thorny tree a few steps away, propping me against it as the world spun dizzily around me. This was the first time I had been out of the tent, and as I sluggishly examined my surroundings, I was surprised to see that Nasiq's tent was not the only such shelter, but rather formed part of a small nomadic village of perhaps twenty such structures, all of the same greasy hide, with small fires smoking in front of each. There were no signs of any other inhabitants, however, pig-people or otherwise.
Suddenly a man emerged into view from my side, a man familiar to me, yet oddly timorous and cringing. I recognized him as one of Cyrus' native interpreters, on whom we had relied heavily in recent days, since he was from this desert area and spoke the languages of several of its tribes. He stood apart from me and in rapid babbling sharply ordered Nasiq back from me as well, which she obeyed, reluctantly it seemed. He then addressed me, in broken Greek.
"Theo, Proxenus is here, we have found you. You come now?"
My jaw dropped. So that was Proxenus' voice I had heard a few minutes before, calling me. I looked at the interpreter in confusion.
"Where is he? I don't know if I can walk," I said with effort. "Ask Proxenus to come, or have the girl's father help me to go to him."
The interpreter looked at me wide-eyed, and began wringing his hands as he struggled for words. "Proxenus say you come, he not come, must not touch these people, these… sick people."
I painfully pushed myself to my feet, scraping my back up the rough bark of the tree, and staggered after the man. I glanced at the other tents, wondering vaguely why I saw no people, recalling the sounds of children's laughter and household chores outside Nasiq's tent during my days of convalescence. Rounding the last of the tents in the small compound, however, I stopped dead, swaying in my exhaustion. Every person in the village had been rounded up into a small, milling clump. Men, women and sobbing children stood in a tight circle, their faces contorted and their limbs in various stages of wrap. They were guarded by three Greek archers with their bows drawn and arrows aimed straight into the terrified group. Proxenus was overseeing the operation, while Nicarchus stood nervously nearby, holding the reins of several horses in his hand and impatiently glancing at the village from which I had made my painful shuffle.
"Theo, are you alive, or are you a shade?" Proxenus shouted, yet he did not run toward me in greeting as I would have expected, nor make any move to assist me in my progress. "Make your way around the lepers as quickly as you can, and go to that horse tied to the bush."
Lepers? I started in horror, wondering whom he could mean, and then with a growing sense of understanding, I looked more closely at the pig-people of the village, now clearly visible in the bright sunshine. Nasiq's grandmother stood in the front of the wretched knot of wailing women, she alone silent, almost defiant. As before, she refused to cover her face, challenging me to stare at her absent nose, the cracked and sloughing lips that refused to cover her teeth, the thin hair, missing in entire clumps from her scaling scalp. Looking straight at me, she raised her arm in a blessing or a curse, and I recoiled at the rounded stump of her forelimb, bereft of all fingers, the skin raw and bleeding.
"Move, Theo!" Proxenus shouted at me, startling me from where I had been rooted in my repulsion. I staggered to the horse Proxenus indicated, and one of the archers quickly ran over to me, ordered me out of my ragged blanket, and tossed me a clean loincloth from his own kit. I stepped out of the blanket and put on the new garment, as the entire population of the village, now silent, watched me. The soldier laboriously helped me climb onto the horse's back, to which he tied me in a prone position, my face resting against the back of the animal's neck to prevent me from slipping off in my weakness. He then walked back to the rest of the horses.
Proxenus gave an order, and the archers relaxed their guard, gesturing to the village people to return to their tents. I heard him gruffly tell the interpreter to thank Nasiq's father for his trouble and saw him flip the man a gold daric, which landed in the dust at his feet. Nasiq's father looked up at Proxenus on his horse, and then down at the coin in confusion, and I realized that he was unable to pick it up with his rag-wrapped stumps. He called to one of the boys who, like Nasiq, appeared not to be affected by the blight. The child came running over, and at the man's instructions solemnly picked up the coin and pocketed it. Both then turned without a further word or glance, and walked slowly, and with great dignity, back into the compound.
Only Nasiq remained standing, seemingly transfixed at the sight of the Greek soldiers, their horses, and my sudden departure. After warily appraising the archers while they packed their weapons and remounted, she walked calmly over to the horse on which I lay miserably blinking in the blinding sunlight, and took my large hand in her tiny one. She patted my limp paw as would a little girl comforting a doll, smiling gently and chatting to me in her language, confident that I understood her or that I someday would. As Nicarchus walked over to tether my horse to his own animal to lead me, Nasiq reached up to stroke my forehead once more. As she did so, however, I noticed for the first time the small white blotch on the otherwise flawless skin of her hand. I involuntarily shuddered and jerked my head away. Nasiq, following my gaze, instantly dropped her hand and thrust it into her robe, her eyes welling with tears. She stood watching motionless as my horse set off at a painful, bumpy trot. It took no more than two hours to ride back to the Greek camp, where my arrival in this degrading position was obscured by nightfall.
Among my people I recovered quickly. Cyrus sent a message congratulating me on my survival, and good-naturedly threatening to return me to my mule as this was the second of his horses I had lost. He also arranged for my recovery to be monitored by his personal physician, a Persian well versed in the ways of treating desert sicknesses. The physician once came to visit me accompanied by Asteria, who behind his back shook her head in silent contradiction of the learned doctor's diagnosis. As he was leaving my tent, she lingered and stealthily slipped me a small earthen jar of a bitter herbal substance with her own wax seal upon the cap, pouring me the first dosage administered in a large goblet of water, and indicating that I should ignore the physician's suggested remedy of daily bloodletting. In return, I presented her with a small ostrich plume I had come across in the desert on an earlier outing, which I had been saving for the appropriate occasion.
Since that time, not a day has gone by that I have not taken a quiet moment to ask the gods' blessing on gentle Nasiq, forever virgin Nasiq, and to request forgiveness for my treatment of her. As a libation, I offer a cup of pure, cleansing water, the most sacred substance known, savoring the sensation of its flavorless coolness, marveling at the notion of its somehow containing, in reduced or distilled form, the ancient elements from which the earth was formed, the holy rain from the heavens, perhaps even some vague essence of immortality.