She regarded him solemnly, longing to console him. "My uncle in London is a doctor," she answered truthfully, "and I sometimes visited him at his hospital. I saw countless victims of smallpox there, many whose faces were disfigured worse than yours."
"Worse? Did they not frighten you, either?"
"At first, perhaps, but I grew accustomed to seeing them."
"I did not think it possible to grow accustomed to such ugliness."
The note of quiet despair in the young Berber's voice tore at her heart. And oddly, it made her think of Jafar. But there was a similarity between them, she realized. Mahmoud was much like Jafar must have been as a boy, his soul branded by bitterness and hatred. His scars were more visible, that was all.
Swallowing the tightness in her throat, she chose her words carefully. "There are more important things than appearance, Mahmoud. Your scars don't make you a better or worse person. It is who you are inside that matters. Courage and compassion, kindness—those are a test of man's worth, not how attractive he is."
Mahmoud gazed at her wide-eyed for a moment, then ducked his head. "But with my face, I will never find a bride. No female would wish to marry a man who looks as I do."
"I don't agree in the least," Alysson said, trying to keep her tone light. "Why, your scar might even prove to be an advantage. When your bride marries you, you can be sure it is because she loves you for yourself, not for any other reason. Trust me, I know about such things. All my life I've had to beware of suitors who only wanted me for my fortune. You won't have to deal with that uncertainty at least.'' She paused, reaching out to touch his hand gently. "Someday you will find a woman worthy of you, Mahmoud. I'm sure of it."
The boy looked away then, coloring with sudden embarrassment. Out of consideration, Alysson changed the subject and resumed the language lesson, but she knew she had comforted him, at least to a small degree. She wished she could do more.
Mahmoud's concerns momentarily made Alysson forget the magnitude of her own problems, but they shortly came back to her in a rush. She was not invited to dine at the banquet, but to her surprise, she was asked beforehand—or rather, ordered politely—to the khalifa's tent.
It was apparently an important occasion, for Tahar not only interrupted her many duties to help Alysson dress, but insisted that she wear the finest garment in her wardrobe, a caftan of rich forest-green brocade, with a haik of ivory silk to cover her hair.
Jafar was already present when she arrived at the large, ceremonial tent, but his enigmatic expression told her nothing. Flustered more by his cool look than by his illustrious companion's formal reception, Alysson did her best to ignore Jafar entirely. When Ben Hamadi Honoréd her by offering her a cup of the sweet mint tea, she accepted with a gracious smile.
She had hoped she might question the general about his reasons for coming here, but he evaded all her leading queries with the skill of an experienced diplomat and proceeded in his far-from-perfect French to tell her about the Sultan of the Arabs, Abdel Kader.
"It has been fifteen years, Miss Vickery, since Abdel Kader was proclaimed Commander of the Believers. There was no one better suited to champion Islam against the infidels. His family were sherifs, descendants of Mohammed. His father, a marabout—a holy man. In only a short time, Abdel Kader rallied to his standard all the tribes of the kingdom."
Alysson murmured some polite reply, remembering the first time she had heard of Abdel Kader. The valiant Berber chieftain had been viewed then with awe and admiration in the salons of Paris. But that was before the Armee d'Afrique had nearly gone down in defeat. Before whole divisions of French troops had been annihilated by the fierce Berbers and Arabs. Afterward society hostesses no longer had raved about the handsome, dashing, romantic sheik.
But she didn't want to hear about Abdel Kader. She wanted to know what military strategy Jafar and Ben Hamadi were planning to use against Gervase.
Unable to help herself, Alysson gazed across the low table at Jafar, aware that her anguish was written on her face for him to see. Jafar, in turn, was uncomfortably aware that her large, lustrous, troubled eyes were turned upon him.
"We pray Allah to smooth and prosper our affairs," Ben Hamadi droned on. "Just as you Christians pray to the prophet Aissa . . . Christ, as you call him . . ."
Not listening, Alysson gave a start when Ben Hamadi interrupted her thoughts.
"I trust I have not bored you, Miss Vickery," the khalif said solemnly. "To have discomfited so lovely a young lady would be a shame to my beard."
Dragging her gaze away from Jafar, Alysson managed a faint smile. "Forgive me, Excellency. I am Honoréd that you would share your confidences with me. It has been a long day, though, and I find I am exceedingly weary. If you will please excuse me, I will seek my bed."
She suspected she had violated proper etiquette by asking to be excused, but with the throbbing headache that had developed behind her eyes, she couldn't bear to listen a moment longer to the khalif's effusive exultation of his sultan.
Fortunately he did not take offense, but instead nodded his dismissal. Not looking at Jafar, Alysson escaped into the cool night air with a feeling of relief.
As usual, Saful escorted her back to her tent, then settled himself at the entrance. Alysson wandered around the tent disconsolately, a black depression weighing her down, along with a desperation near panic. She had to act soon, but what could she do? The only way to protect Gervase and her uncle HononS was to escape in time to warn them of the treachery Jafar planned. But all her attempts at escape had been inept and disastrously unsuccessful. She was guarded day and night, and after her last aborted effort, Jafar probably would keep her bound in future, as well. If she did manage to leave the tent and find a horse, there would be a dozen pairs of eyes watching her—
Except now. Now, when most of the camp was at the banquet. Now, when her nemesis Berber captor Jafar was occupied.
Her hopeful gaze flew to where Saful sat just outside the tent. He had his back to her as he carved on a piece of wood. At the moment, he was the only one who would prevent her from leaving. If she could render him senseless . . .
Slipping into the bedchamber, Alysson changed her clothing as quickly as she could, donning pantaloons, blouse, long-sleeved bolero, and her riding boots. She was shaking with anxiety and hope, she realized. Willing her heart to stop pounding so erratically, she retrieved the earthenware wash pitcher and hid it behind her back as she cautiously approached Saful.
She didn't want to hurt him, for he had been kind to her in his way. Yet she had to do it. Never would she have a better opportunity. She raised the pitcher high above his head.
Some sound must have alerted him at the last moment, for he started to turn. Closing her eyes and biting her lip, Alysson brought the pitcher down on his head, flinching at the dull, sickening thud the weapon made. Saful collapsed without a sound.
She stared down at him for a startled moment, her stomach roiling. Slowly, forcibly, she bent down to check on him. She hadn't killed him, Alysson realized with a ragged sense of relief. He was still breathing.
Making herself back away, she collected a hooded black burnous from the bedchamber. In the darkness perhaps she could pass for a Berber woman. Now she had to find water and food for her journey. In the next tent, she came upon a full goatskin bag of that precious liquid. Several tents over, her search revealed both bread and fruit, which she wrapped in a cloth. What she thought would be the hardest task, however, proved the easiest. Tethered in front of the very next tent, she found a small, friendly mare who wore a halter of hemp.
Trying the water bag and cloth filled with food together, Alysson draped the bundle over the mare's back like a saddlebag. Then, untethering the horse, she led it quietly from the camp. She wouldn't dare risk trying to mount just now.
She could hear sounds of music and revelry behind her, yet her heartbeat seemed incredibly loud in her ears. Any instant now she expected to hear the cry that would alert the camp to her escape.<
br />
None came.
Tensely, with bated breath, she kept going, struggling to keep her footing in the deep sand, her short prayer for deliverance a litany, please, please, please . . .
When she had covered the distance of several hundred yards, she brought the mare to a halt. Slowly, carefully, murmuring soothing and meaningless sounds, Alysson hauled herself up on the mare's back.
Gathering the lead rope like reins, she nudged the animal forward. Then heading north and east, her way lit by a sliver of moon, she set out across the desert.
Chapter 12
Alysson traveled through the night, across the lonely wastes made lonelier by the eerie cries of the jackals, never stopping. Stars blazed like diamonds overhead in the heavens, while the endless sands stretched before her, pale, mysterious, infinite.
It was the most solitary place of all, the desert. The vast emptiness made her feel insignificant, and yet strangely a part of it. The silence was so deep she could hear the beating of her heart in concert with the soft, rhythmic plodding of the horse's hooves.
The air was clear and cold, the shadowed darkness soothing. For long moments at a time she could almost forget her anxiety, her desperate need to escape. Then fear would return, and she would glance over her shoulder, expecting to see Jafar pursuing her on his powerful black Barb, his burnous streaming in the wind.
The silent hours wore on, enveloping her in weariness. She jerked herself awake whenever she started to nod off, counting the stars and reciting proverbs and childhood poems to keep herself alert. Occasionally she was required to discipline the mare, who wanted to unseat its unfamiliar rider and return to camp.
Near dawn, the mare suddenly swerved and reared, spooked by some unseen phantom. The next instant found Alysson sprawled in the sand, gasping for the breath that had been jolted from her body.
The return of her senses brought a staggering awareness of her new plight. With acute dismay, she listened to the sound of retreating hoofbeats as the mare galloped off into the darkness, back in the direction of the camp. She had no horse. Here, in this arid wilderness, where life depended on the stamina of a man's mount and the availability of water.
Water.
The thought sent her frantically groping for the goatskin bag. Ragged relief flooded through her when her fingers touched the soft leather. At least she still had that.
Her gaze lifted to the eastern horizon that was beginning to lighten over a great, golden stretch of sand. She had no choice but to press on across the desert flats. She couldn't, wouldn't return to her savage captor.
Pushing herself up, Alysson slung the water bag and sack of food over her shoulder and struck out. The sand was no longer so deep and shifting as it had been, but it was coarse and gritty—and rough beneath her palms when sometimes she stumbled and fell. Shortly the sun rose to a great sphere of flame in the sky, the early-morning glare and the heat a portent of the difficulties to come. Though sweltering beneath her layers of clothing, Alysson was grateful for the protection of her burnous. She drew the hood close around her face to screen her skin from the harsh sun and windblown grit, and plodded on.
Against her will, she had to be careful to ration her water. Perishing of thirst would be a painful way to die, so she could allow herself only a trickle every half hour or so. If she were lucky enough to find a well or a spring, then she could drink her fill.
There was no well in sight. There was only vacant sky, empty sand, and the pitiless sea of the desert. She met no one, saw nothing but scurrying lizards.
Soon sand gave way to clay, broom to thorn and scrub. The cruel white haze blinded her, and heat drugged the air she took into her lungs, leaving her light-headed and fighting a terrible thirst. Each minute became an eternity as she struggled to stay on her feet, to keep going.
By early afternoon, the foolishness of her endeavor became apparent. She was utterly alone in this desolate emptiness, her water nearly gone, while the savage sun beat down mercilessly.
Her lips were caked, her tongue swollen, her throat on fire. A threatening blackness reeled before her eyes. And when she glanced up, she could see the scavenging birds already beginning to wheel high above her head, searching the flat, scrub-covered plain for prey. For her.
As the burning day dragged on, she lost all sense of time or distance, everything except the desperate need to drive on. In her weakest moments, she thought she might have welcomed death.
The mirage shimmering in the distance brought a sob from her throat. Water! The lake she had seen when Jafar had first brought her to this godforsaken end of the world.
She tried to run toward the precious, life-giving liquid, but she staggered and fell. Yet hope gave her new energy. Pushing herself up, Alysson forced her feet to move. She wouldn't be defeated. She would survive.
That was how Jafar found her—weaving between clumps of camel-thorn and Jericho rose, cursing the lake that never seemed to come closer.
"Blessed Allah . . . Alysson!"
She froze, praying she had dreamed the harsh shout, that she had imagined the galloping hoofbeats of his black stallion.
But she hadn't imagined it. The stallion was real, Jafar was real, and the ragged note of relief in his voice had been real.
When Jafar reached her, he brought the horse to a plunging halt. For the span of several heartbeats, he simply sat there, gazing down at her dazed, sunburned face, drinking in the sight. Half his tribe was out combing the desert in search of her, but they'd been forced to wait until dawn to begin. In the daylight the mare's hoofprints had been easy to track, but then they had abruptly ended. Realizing Alysson had lost her mount, Jafar had to fight to control the fear that rioted within him. The odds of her survival were slim, the odds of locating her before she perished from heat and thirst almost nonexistent.
Praying to his god and hers, Jafar had followed the footprints Alysson had left in the sand, footprints that later had disappeared on the hard earth. Only a miracle or the will of Allah had led him to her. That, and the dark flecks overhead that dipped and swung—the birds of prey tracking her.
Now that he had found her alive, his heart's erratic
pounding settled back to something resembling normalcy; the coil of fear twisting in his gut slowly unraveled.
Urging the stallion close to her, Jafar tried to take Alysson up with him on his horse, but she backed away.
"No! Keep away from me!" The words croaked from her parched throat. She was too weak to continue standing, yet too proud to collapse, too stubborn to admit defeat.
Jafar glared at her. She would have died had he not discovered her. The stark relief that hed felt upon finding her splintered into slow-burning rage that she had endangered herself this way—and guilt that he had driven her to make the attempt.
But when she turned away to continue her toiling march, he didn't stop her. He would allow her this measure of pride. She would have to admit defeat soon. She couldn't go on much further.
Jafar followed slowly on his horse, riding alongside her. In only a few moments, however, his exasperation got the better of him. "It is foolish to be so stubborn, Ehuresh. You will die of thirst if you don't allow me to help you."
Alysson's chin came up as she forced a reply in a cracking voice, "Not . . . if I reach . . . the lake."
Jafar's gaze rose to the shimmering waves of heat on the horizon. He knew what she meant, what she hoped for. The burning sunlight reflecting from the blue-green shrub and giant patch of mud frosted with salt gave the appearance of a lake—but it was not.
"I am reluctant to disappoint you, chérie, but Chott al Hodna is not a true lake. It is a salt pan. It only appears that way from a distance. At this season, you will find water in the very center, but that is not for miles and miles."
Alysson stumbled to a halt, dismay stabbing her, making the heat and weariness too great to bear. Hopeless tears began to seep from her eyes. She caught one of them with her tongue, but it did nothing to quench her terrible thirst; it
only teased her cruelly.
She staggered forward, but the hard ground grabbed at her, tripping her and yanking her down. The fall knocked the breath from her. For a moment she just lay there, dazed, defeated, surrounded by her fractured pride and an overwhelming hopelessness.
Venting a low oath, Jafar started to dismount in order to help her, but just then Alysson gave a sharp cry. Jafar caught a glimpse of a small crablike animal with a forked tail as it scurried away from her.
Dread filled him. The scorpion was not the harmless variety that inhabited the coastal plains. This had been larger and much darker—the deadly species that lived in the Sa- haran sands.
"Alysson!" The word was a hoarse whisper as he flung himself from the stallion's back and ran to her side. "Were you stung?"
Gasping in pain, she clutched her right leg as he knelt beside her. "Y-yes . . . on my . . . thigh."
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