Sandstorm

The hodja nodded the child forward. “Go, Yaqut.”

The child turned and shuffled forward down the tunnel. Yaqut was Arabic for “ruby.” It was the first time she had heard a name spoken here.

She stared at the hodja at her side. “What is your name?”

The old woman finally glanced at her. Green eyes flashed brightly in the lamp’s flame. “I am called many names, but my given name is Lu’lu. I believe in your language that means ‘pearl.’ ”

Kara nodded. “Are all your women named after jewels?”

There was no answer as they continued walking behind the child in silence, but Kara sensed the woman’s acknowledgment. In Arabic tradition, such jeweled names were given to only one caste of folk.

Slaves.

Why did these women pick such names? They certainly seemed freer than most Arab women.

The child turned off the tunnel into a limestone chamber. It was cold, the walls damp, scintillating in the lamplight. A prayer rug lay on the cave’s floor, cushioned by a bed of straw. Beyond it stood a low altar of black stone.

Kara felt a thrill of fear ice through her. Why had they brought her here?

Yaqut walked to the altar, circled behind it, and bent out of sight.

Suddenly flames crackled brighter behind the stone. Yaqut had used her oil lamp to light a small stack of wood. Kara smelled incense and kerosene from the pile, scented and oiled for easy lighting. The kerosene burned away quickly, leaving only the sweet fragrance of frankincense.

As the flames licked higher, Kara saw her mistake. The dark altar was not opaque but crystalline, like a chunk of black obsidian, only more translucent. The glow of the flames shone through the stone.

“Come,” Lu’lu intoned, and led Kara to the prayer rug. “Kneel.”

Kara, exhausted from lack of sleep and shaky from the drain of adrenaline from her system, both naturally and artificially induced, gratefully sank to the soft rug.

The hodja stood behind her. “This is what you have come so far and searched so long to find.” She pointed her stick toward the altar.

Kara stared at the block of translucent stone. Her eyes widened as the stack of wood blazed behind the altar, shining through it.

Not opaque stone…raw glass.

Flames lit the interior, illuminating the heart of the glass block. Inside, embedded like a fly in amber, rested a figure, plainly human, blackened to bone, legs curled fetally but arms out in agony. Kara had seen a similar stricken figure. In the ruins of Pompeii. A form turned to stone, buried and petrified under hot ash from the ancient eruption of Vesuvius. The same posture of tortured death.

But worst of all, Kara knew why she had been brought here, shown this.

Answers to her life.

She collapsed to her hands on the rug, her body suddenly too heavy. No… Tears burst to her eyes. She knew who lay buried in the heart of the glass, preserved in agony.

A cry escaped her, wrenching everything from her body: strength, sight, hope, even the will to live, leaving her empty.

“Papa…”

3:12 A.M.

S AFIA WOKE to music and warmth. She lay on a soft blanket, instantly awake, but she languished in the moment. She listened to the soft stringed cords from a lute, accompanied by the soft piping from a reed instrument, haunting and lonely. Firelight danced across the roof overhead, limning the drapes of vines and flowers. The tinkling water added counterpoint to the music.

She knew where she was. There was no slow waking back to the present, only a vague muzzy-headedness from the codeine she had ingested. She heard voices speaking softly, occasional dazzling flashes of laughter, a child playing.

She slowly sat up, earning a grumpy complaint from her shoulder. But the pain was dull, more a deep ache than a sharp twinge. She felt inordinately rested. She checked her watch. She had been asleep only a little more than an hour, but she felt as if she had slept for days. Relaxed and rested.

A young woman stepped toward her, kneeling down, a mug warmed between her hands. “The hodja wishes you to drink this.”

Safia accepted the tea with her good arm. The other lay in a sling across her belly. She sipped gratefully and noticed a conspicuous absence. “Kara? My friend?”

“When you finish your tea, I’m to take you to the hodja. She waits with your sister.”

Safia nodded. She sipped her tea as quickly as its steaming heat would allow. The sweet tea warmed through her. She placed the mug on the ground and crawled to her feet.

Her escort offered a hand to help, but Safia declined, feeling steady enough.

“This way.”

Safia was led to the far side of the sinkhole cavern and down another tunnel. With a lantern in one hand, her guide walked her assuredly through the maze of passages.

Safia addressed her guide. “Who are you all?”

“We are the Rahim,” she answered stiffly.

Safia translated. Rahim was the Arabic word for “womb” Were they some bedouin tribe of women, Amazons of the desert? She pondered the name. It also held an undercurrent of divinity, of rebirth and continuity.

Who were these women?

Ahead a light appeared, glowing from a side cavern.

Her escort stopped a few steps away and nodded Safia forward.

She continued, feeling for the first time since waking a tingle of unease. The air seemed to grow thicker, harder to breathe. She concentrated on inhaling and exhaling, riding through the moment of anxiety. As she stepped nearer, she heard sobbing, heart-deep, broken.

Kara…

Safia pushed aside her fears and hurried to the cavern. She found Kara collapsed on a rug in the cavern. The elder hodja knelt at her side, cradling Kara. The old woman’s green eyes met Safia’s.

Safia rushed over. “Kara, what’s wrong?”

Kara lifted her face, eyes swollen, damp-cheeked. She was beyond words. She pointed an arm toward a large stone with a fire behind it. Safia recognized the chunk as slag glass, molten sand that had hardened. She had found such pieces around lightning strikes. They were revered by ancient peoples, used as jewelry, sacred objects, prayer stones.

She didn’t understand until she spotted the figure in the glass. “Oh, no…”

Kara croaked, “It’s…it’s my father.”

“Oh, Kara.” Tears welled up in Safia’s eyes. She knelt on Kara’s other side. Reginald Kensington had been like a father to Safia, too. She understood her friend’s grief, but confusion shattered through. “How? Why…?”

Kara glanced at the old woman, too overwhelmed to speak.

The hodja patted Kara’s hand. “As I’ve already explained to your friend, Lord Kensington is not unknown to our people. His story leads here as much as the story of you two. He had entered sands forbidden on the day he died. He had been warned, but chose to dismiss it. And it was not chance that brought him to those sands. He sought Ubar, like his daughter. He knew those same sands were near its heart and could not stay away.”