Astrolabe

The two boys must cross the desert in defiance of the evil creature following them.

Photo by Jan Kuppens on Unsplash

The twins first met the accursed buata at dusk.

It was in jackal form when they first saw it. Its bloody muzzle dug into a slain villager lying amongst stone buildings arranged beside a creek which flowed through a splendid grove of apricots. Blossoms of pink and white fell in the gentle breeze. The fading light cast the world in tranquil blues and the creek spoke of cool succour in that desert wilderness.

The jackal saw them approaching from two-hundred feet away. It lowered itself and began to shuffle upon the ground unnaturally. Bones and muscles rearranged within its baggy skin.

When it rose again it was a man. The fur was gone and he was naked and completely hairless. Not even eyebrows. His face was like a Mutalqi or Medean — high, sharp cheekbones, deep-set eyes, pronounced eyebrow ridge — but his skin was hideously pale. Paler than the Fikaroon invaders. Paler than the desert scorpion that glows under the moon. Paler than a maggot.

Blood still painted his mouth. He wiped it and called out to the twins in their own tongue: “Those yaks you ride on… they look thirsty. Let them drink!”

The twins — eleven-year-old boys with ebony skin — stared in terror until the first one shouted: “In Arruh’s name, we rebuke you!”

The buata smiled. One of its eyes glowed a jaundiced yellow.

“Don’t look at him!” said the second one. “He’ll mark us!”

“You think your prayers to Arruh will protect you from me?” the buata called. “Look there: those are prayer rugs! I found this village at prayer!”

The second twin was weeping and shuddering, but the first flicked his halter and his yak turned to leave whither they’d come. The other followed.

The buata’s topaz eye glowed brighter. One finger rose and pointed as though recognizing a friend across a crowd. “Menabo!”

The first, Menabo, jumped as though shot with an arrow.

“You are Menabo! And you are his brother, Zeyem! I see you now!”

The second, Zeyem, clutched something at his chest. “I’m scared, Menabo.”

“Just pray. Arruh will protect us!”

The yaks were heading for the road, but now the buata was following.

“Ah, and I see what you’re carrying, Zeyem! You think that will get you all the way to the markets of Wasit?” He trotted after them like a stray dog. “I can see what will happen, children! Only one of you will make it to Wasit, and when you get there…”

The twins stopped.

“No,” said the buata, “I shouldn’t say… I shouldn’t say.”

He lowered to the ground again, and in a welter of skin and flesh he rose again as a jackal and stole away across the orchard.

***

“We should turn back,” said Zeyem.

They stood upon a small rise overlooking an arid land of low hills in the pink morning light. Menabo stopped and looked at his brother. “Turn back?”

“The buata… he said only one of us would make it to Wasit…”

Menabo finished unrolling his prayer rug. “The buata is deceitful.”

“Yes, but what if this one’s true?”

“Then who will save Father if we don’t?”

“I don’t know, but… you’re not afraid?”

Menabo forced a smile. “Time to pray.”

They knelt on their rugs, rubbed dust on their cheeks. The ablution seemed to dispel some of the buata’s taint, and they sighed and together put their foreheads to the ground. “Arruh is mightiest,” Menabo led.

“Arruh is mightiest,” Zeyem echoed.

Twice more they repeated it.

They kissed the dry soil, then mounted their yaks.

Zeyem took out his astrolabe, oriented the dials toward the rising sun, and found their heading.

Dry hills and boulders, sharp trees and shrubs, mountains along the horizon that noontide mirages would soon erase. Zeyem worked his astrolabe as he always did. “If we continue this way, we could be in Wasit in two days, well before Il’Ghasaq.”

“But we can’t. The yaks need water.”

Before noon they found a droving road, and followed the direction of recent hoofprints. It took them to the foot of a mountain that seemed to protrude straight out of the wastes, fashioned of dun stones with their grains combed up into the blue sky. In one of its stony crooks they at last found a well, but as they got closer they found it assailed by a horde of noisy camels.

“The Sof is watering his herd of five-thousand and thirty,” said a corpulent Mutalquy officer atop a lithe and spindle-legged horse. “It will take time. You’ll have to wait.”

“There will be no water left!” Menabo argued. “This is not the Sof’s well. Let us through!”

The camels’ musk was overpowering. The officer’s hand swung before his face dispelling a pestilence of flies. He looked over at Zeyem and his chin rose. “That object you’ve got,” he said of the astrolabe, “if you give it to me, I could let you get to the well.”

Zeyem shrank back. “We’re not selling it.”

“Why? Did you steal it?”

The brothers left quickly.

“We have to get to the other side of this mountain,” said Zeyem. “Mayhap there will be another well on the other side?”

But the mountain was deceptively large. Even after two hours of walking the view of its face had hardly changed. In early afternoon they met a veiled Medean woman sitting alone atop a rocky protrusion waiting for her caravan to return from somewhere. She looked like some desert spirit up there. “That well you passed gets its water from the cisterns in the mountains,” she told them. “There is a wadi a few hours up into the mountain’s cradle, and in it is a pool where you can safely find water. Your yaks can drink there too, but mind the crocodiles.”

“But we’re trying to go around the mountain. That will take too long.”

Her eyes flashed at each of them. Green irises, darkened lids, precious gems glimmering in stone. When she pointed, the hoops on her wrist danced and jangled. Captivating beauty. “If you continue past the pool, it will take you out the other side. I went that way many times as a young girl. You will be safe.”

***

They followed the path she described. Wrinkled arches and mighty columns rose on either side like gateways to another world. “Look,” said Zeyem, “there’s the smooth track in the rocks, just like the Medean woman said.”

“And look there,” Menabo pointed down.

Other hoofprints headed in the same direction.

They followed another two hours. The dirt and gravel gave way to solid rock beneath the yaks’ hooves. They dismounted and led them by the halters. The sun was fading.

A bark echoed from somewhere in the wastes. Just one. A jackal.

“We should stop to pray soon,” said Zeyem, but they pressed on. A white froth was forming at the corners of the yaks’ black lips.

The stone walls narrowed around them into a shallow canyon — the wadi of which the Medean had spoken. Last light glowed bright and bloody on the wall’s peaks. Desiccated vegetation clung to grikes awaiting fabled rainfall. It was here the twins found the effects of the strangers, the ones who had left the hoofprints. Saddlebags and effects had been strewn about the wadi’s shaped stone floor.

“But no horses,” muttered Menabo.

Another bark. Neither would acknowledge it. Both prayed silently.

The wadi carved lower just yonder. The yaks smelled water and grumbled, but the twins sensed danger. They tied off their yaks, crept toward the rim, and looked down.

A depression, and at its base a turbid pool, and all along its sandy bank lay discarded bodies of men. White clothes stained red from wounds. Only one survivor remained: a young man sitting with his back to the basin’s stone lip. His scalp was split and bloody and so was his abdomen. He was trying to reload a pistol and watching with horror as the pool’s water came alive.

Crocodiles. Dozens upon dozens of crocodiles. Like lungfish flailing in a puddle. They emerged from the water and fell upon the corpses. Clothes tearing. Limbs ripping and popping. Corpses hauled into the water. Jaws snapping like wet beams clapping together.

The young man completed his reload, but two crocodiles were now lumbering toward him. With only one shot, despair overshadowed him.

“Oh… oh, Arruh forgive me! Arruh is only! Arruh is mightiest!...”

He repeated the final phrase over and over as the pistol turned upward in his grip until its muzzle sat between his teeth…

“Ya, sir!” shouted someone just above him.

The young man looked up the rock. Menabo and Zeyem had run along the depression’s lip and now stood over him reaching down.

“Grab here! We’ll pull you up!”

The muzzle was still in the young man’s mouth. Its steel tasted of cool nothing.

“Hurry!”

He dropped the pistol and put his arms up. Each boy grabbed a wrist and they hauled, but as they did so the wound in the man’s gored midriff ripped wider and he wailed.

Several more crocodiles swung toward the noise. Now at least five more approached.

Something was barking. From the top of the wadi’s wall a jackal looked down. One eye glowed yellow.

“The buata!” cried Zeyem. “The buata’s watching us!”

Menabo saw it and grew afraid. And because he grew afraid he let go. And leaped down.

“Menabo, no!”

Menabo landed between the wounded man and the beasts like an intruder into an arena. From the ground he snatched up a torn cloth, then whipped it up and down and swept the sand like a cattle driver.

The crocodiles hesitated. Their snouts turned and they froze and hissed, jaws opening, teeth bared, soft pink tongues speckled with black.

“Pull him up!” Menabo cried.

“I can’t! He’s too heavy!”

The buata barked — as if in response to an order, a crocodile charged.

Hiss and clap. The whole wadi echoed the discharge of the man’s pistol. Pool and bank erupted with movement as the crocodiles were put to frenzied thrashing. Only one remained motionless with its head raised and mouth ajar as though touched by the hand of Arruh. A bullet hole smoked slightly in its scaly head. No blood.

Menabo ran to the soldier and lifted him. “Hurry, Zeyem! Pull him up! Pull him up!”

***

“Have you any water? I’m dreadfully thirsty.”

The twins pursed their lips, but gave him one of their last gourds. Then they watched that precious water dribble straight out the wound in the man’s gut and wet the stones beneath him like urine. He seemed not to notice, but finished and asked if they had more. They said no.

“Arruh damn those ambushers! We’d no time to react! I was knocked unconscious. They must have thought I was dead and fed me to the crocodiles with—”

“Ambushers?” Menabo asked.

“Sooth, ambushers.”

“This wasn’t caused by the buata?”

“No… what buata? This was the feud! The feud between Sof Jibr and Sof Niquum. Are you truly unaware of this?!”

The twins looked at one another — they truly were.

The man wagged his head in the dark. Was he weeping? “I’m sorry. You’ve saved my life. Praise Arruh you came when you did. Tell me your names. Where are you from?”

At first they hesitated. Menabo answered in terse facts. Then Zeyem interjected here and there, and soon their brief account turned into an epic. It began when their father fell ill, and over the months became listless, then comatose. They said a healer skilled in making antidotes lived in Wasit, but the family had no money. The twins made a plan to sell two of their yaks during the Festival of Il’Ghasaq, for on that day yaks would be ritually slaughtered at Wasit’s temple.

“Your mother let you take this journey?”

She had not. They had snuck away.

“But… I am afraid to say it, children… Sof Jibr and Sof Niquum have arrayed their armies between here and Wasit. To get there, you’ll have to pass them.”

“We’re not afraid. Arruh watches over us.”

“But how can you navigate?”

Then Zeyem took out the astrolabe, which he’d been waiting to show. Its concentric plates, robust mechanisms, and fine graduations seemed to glow in Zeyem’s two hands beneath the budding starlight. “Generations ago, a king passed through our village,” he explained. “He gave this to our great-great-grandfather. Watch: see that star?” He gestured to the firmament and splayed his fingers at arm’s length, then walked them across the velvety field like a surveyor’s compass, whispering reverence and wonder as if the glowing specks were celestial beings he wished not to frighten off. “From Jabbah to Lesath… then three more stretches… and there’s the star, Il’Haggue. And since it’s an hour past dark… Wasit is that way!” He smiled, and was about to speak about the order that Arruh had inscribed in the universe, from the motions of the stars to the ordinances of every life…

But when he looked back, the young man’s eyes were shut and his head was slumped.

***

He didn’t wake in the morning, nor would he rouse. They checked his breathing — still alive, for now. Then they argued in whispers for nearly a half-hour about whether to leave him their last gourd. In the end, they did — it’s what Arruh would have wanted.

They considered sneaking back to the bloodsoaked pool for water, but were too afraid so agreed that it was now contaminated and unfit to drink. They continued out the other side of the wadi, and as the Medean woman had said it led them out the mountain and into a land of flat regs and rippling dunes.

***

By early afternoon, they were enveloped in a sandstorm.

They’d been warned about its approach by another traveler — a father with two small boys peeking out of his cart stopped by the path. “Wait out the storm with us. Sof Niquum’s army is also somewhere ahead,” he told them. But the twins looked to the sand-sullied horizon and thought they’d have time.

By the afternoon that dry, rolling tide was nearly upon them. They could feel the gentle disturbances in the air at its advent.

“Menabo, hurry!”

“I am!” his brother shouted, taking one last astrolabe reading before the cloud swallowed them.

The yaks cried. The sand cut across the land and chafed the twin’s skin and the land lost its light and color and was remade into browns. Both boys pulled cloths across their faces and covered their beasts’ eyes.

“Zeyem!”

“That way! That way!”

The yaks went on uncertainly as the dissolved world scurried around them. The wind and sand deafened and the sun shone only darkly. Zeyem took out the astrolabe but could not read it.

“Look!” cried Menabo. “Someone’s ahead!”

A set of figures appeared standing atop a nearby dune. With the whistling sand obscuring the twin’s vision, the strangers on that dune appeared to be floating high above them.

One stood apart from the others. His body was bone pale and his one eye gleamed like topaz.

“Zeyem…” said Menabo. “Zeyem, look—!”

Another figure raised its shoulders and a tiny spark was born.

The bullet passed between the twins with an electric crackle. The yaks became terrified and ran, carrying the boys away.

Menabo yanked the halters and shouted and screamed but the beast would not hear him. On and on it carried him into the disintegrating world of scrapes and screams until Menabo leaped off and grabbed the beast by the head, commanding it to cease in the name of Arruh.

“Menabo!” cried Zeyem, riding up behind him.

“I can’t see anything, Zeyem! Which way do we go?”

“I don’t know!”

“Use the astrolabe!”

“I need the time!”

“Just guess!”

“Wait… look there!”

An uncertain object lay a little ahead. A tent or small structure.

But as they approached, they saw it was a cart. The same cart that had belonged to the father they’d spoken to. The father was dead in the back, using his body to shield his two children, who were also dead. Slain with a sword. Brown, dirty blood, screaming sand. Lifeless bodies.

The storm raged all day. They drank the remainder of the jugs in the dead family’s wagon and waited and prayed, then at nightfall set out again beneath a waning sliver of moon like fugitives hunted by the sun. A jackal followed at some distance, barking at the world.

***

Menabo sat against the stone wall of an inn with other travelers. The yaks and other herd beasts drank at a muddy watering hole not far away. Acacia trees set all around — in the shafts of morning light their branches looked like a temple’s colored windows or a proverb rendered in string figures, but Menabo was too exhausted to notice. The other travelers chatted in a foreign tongue and drank tea. When they finished a cup they would raise it to a hole in the wall along with a coin and woman’s hand would reach out, take it, and replace it with a full one. In that land, tea was a drink only for men and heads of households. The foreigners must have drunk a dozen cups by now.

Zeyem approached, the astrolabe in his two hands. He sat by his twin and briefly turned the device upside down. A trickle of yesterday’s sand grains ran out. “I calculated our bearing: that way.” He pointed without interest or mirth.

Flies buzzed in the air.

“Menabo… why do you think Arruh let that man and his children die?”

The afterimages from the previous day still lingered in their minds. Swallows flew beneath the acacia boughs.

“Menabo,” Zeyem continued, turning another astrolabe dial and frowning, “do you think the man we saved from the wadi crocodiles is still alive?”

Menabo was watching their yaks dip and raise their dripping snouts into and out of the water, and was quietly considering a question of his own.

“Menabo… why do you think Arruh let Father fall sick?”

“Zeyem, I think you should stay here.”

Zeyem stopped. “What?”

“Stay here, at this inn. It’s safest.”

“No! You can’t make it alone!”

“Il’Ghasaq begins tomorrow. If we don’t travel through the night we won’t make it.”

“Yes! That’s why I need to come!”

“The buata said only one of us would make it there. And… if something happened to you…”

Zeyem looked betrayed. “You said Arruh would protect us.”

“I know… and He will… He will! But—”

“No!” Zeyem leaped up and now the foreigners looked at them. “You were protected from the crocodiles, weren’t you? The buata was looking down at us, but Arruh protected you! And what about the sandstorm, and the shooter?”

“Yes, but if—”

“No! Nothing will happen! Arruh protects those whom He loves and who love Him! Now it’s time to trust him!” He stormed off toward the yaks. “I’m packing up.”

***

Having quenched their thirst, they made wonderful progress throughout that day. Occasionally they saw camelriders on the hot and vaporous horizon, but those would soon vanish and the desert would be theirs again. They even found a stream in the afternoon, refilled their gourds, and supplemented their victual with acacia pods. When nighttime came they had passed beyond the orchards and open fields and stopped at dusk for prayer and thanksgiving, but their gratitude was premature.

No moon blessed them that night. Rigid stars hung above the desert’s black ocean. Occasionally a lone light would twinkle somewhere out in the dark and move in unnatural motions relative to their course. They kept to the astrolabe and journeyed on.

The yaks were afeared and kept snorting and dancing away from the shrubs that grazed their legs, and the boys would hold on tightly and shout for the beast to settle. Menabo whispered prayers. Zeyem brought his astrolabe up to his nose to see the dials to find their heading again. And neither admitted they should stop, or gave voice to their looming fear.

They encountered a dried out creek bed and had to dismount and lead the yaks a great distance around until they found a suitable crossing. Then they heard a creature hiss in the night and Zeyem’s yak ran off with him for nearly a half-mile.

Around midnight the land finally grew tame and all the obstructions mysteriously disappeared. So relieved were they to be on flat and steady ground, they should have known something was wrong.

“Get away!” roared a voice emanating out of the dark some fifty yards away.

Both boys froze. They could see naught.

“I said get away! This is my land! You will not graze here!”

“Menabo, over there!” Zeyem pointed at an indistinct figure standing at a distance.

“We’re sorry!” shouted Menabo. “We’re lost! We’re try to get to Wasit and—”

A quick and quiet hiss, then a thunk.

Menabo fell from his yak.

“Menabo!” Zeyem shouted. “Menabo!”

He was on the ground, wheezing.

“I-I-I didn’t mean to shoot!” cried the figure.

Zeyem slid from his yak and found his brother. A stick the width of a reed was protruding just beneath his right clavicle. Zeyem could feel air entering and escaping thence. “Menabo!” he began to bawl. “Menabo!”

“You made me shoot!” cried the figure. “You took your camels onto my land! The judges at Wasit will defend me! Now leave, or I’ll loose another!”

Zeyem got his brother onto his yak. He had nowhere to go but roughly toward Wasit. The second yak followed naturally and the figure continued to shout justifications as they left.

The astrolabe was unreadable through Zeyem’s tears. Menabo was cradled in his arms coughing warm discharge and quivering. “Pray, Menabo! Pray!” Zeyem exhorted.

Menabo could not. He could only cough.

On and on he rode until someone shouted. “Stop! Stop!”

“Don’t shoot!” Zeyem desperately screamed. “Don’t shoot!”

A man with a candle exited a house Zeyem had not seen. The yak halted at the sight of the signalbearer, and stood huffing. The second came up behind.

The signalbearer stepped forward, an old man in a hemp slip, and as the light passed over them Zeyem saw for the first time the arrow and the bloody pink foam.

He screamed.

***

The old man and his wife carried Menabo inside. They laid him in their own bed despite the blood. When the boy breathed only half his chest moved. Pink liquid frothed at the wound. Zeyem made to touch the arrow but the old man put out a hand and shook his head, then immediately left.

Menabo could not speak, but kept trying to sit up. They propped him against some baskets. Zeyem poured out their story entire, talking and talking and talking, sifting through the events, posing questions, asking for prayers. This village didn’t even speak his language.

The old man returned with four other men, one of whom appeared to be a physician. The physician carefully removed the arrow and smeared the bubbling wound with grease that smelled of butter and garlic. He turned away to his own candle and spoke to the man next to him.

“It’s alright, Menabo,” Zeyem shuddered, but held his brother’s hand. “Arruh will protect us. Arruh is mightiest. Say it with me. Say it with me, Menabo!”

The old man gently peeled Zeyem away from his brother and he and the old woman held him. Zeyem didn’t understand what was happening until the physician turned back toward Menabo holding an iron billet that glowed slightly at its end. And when he pressed that end against the wound the flesh hissed like a viper and Menabo thrashed as the men held him down like an exorcism.

***

The physician left. The other men left with him. Zeyem did not sleep at all. In his right hand he held his brother’s, and in his left, the astrolabe.

At first light the old man and his wife woke to pray, and only then did Zeyem leave his brother and unroll his prayer rug outside alongside them. By dawn’s glow he could see other farms across the basin for miles and the families bowed in prayer.

Arruh is mightiest.

They finished. Zeyem remained outside staring past the cold mountains at the oncoming sun. The ablution dust remained on his cheeks, light against his dark skin.

The old man came out a moment later carrying two teacups and set one next to Zeyem. Then through so many repeated sounds and hand-motions expressed that he understood their goal. He pointed to the yaks, then the mountains. “Il’Gharaq. Wasit. Wasit.”

I can’t leave my brother, Zeyem articulated back.

But the old man insisted. Through that pass where the mountains decline. Wasit is through there. Miles… he held up six or seven fingers.

Zeyem reached for his astrolabe, but the old man gently pushed it down.

No, no. That way. Six or seven. We will care for your brother. Leave soon.

***

He’d never seen a city like Wasit. The walls rose sheer and magnificently colored. The thoroughfares were packed with people of all types and a thousand scents of unknown foods and spices. People wearing fine and vibrant clothes in intricate patterns and fabrics, others in rags.

Zeyem looked down at his own rough costume. Never had he felt so out of place. So poor. So alone.

A guard shouted at him to dismount. He did and walked the yaks the rest of the way.

The narrower streets had ropes running between the buildings from which hung beautiful rugs. Merchants haggled in the streets and harangued every passerby, including Zeyem. He found himself running down many of the streets to avoid them. Fortunately he only needed to find the temple.

The street opened into a paved square lying before a magnificent building flanked by slender minarets. Bricks of blue and gold. The wide square was now corralled and filled with yaks ready for the evening’s ritual with workers bringing hay and cleaning manure. At the corral’s gate was a table where a big man sat eating peanuts. He saw Zeyem and lazily waved him over.

“I have yaks,” the boy said.

“Sooth, I see that.” He cracked a peanut and flicked away the empty shell. “To donate?”

“No, to sell.”

“They won’t sell for much.”

“What? Why not?!”

“Most of the sacrifices were made yesterday.”

“Yesterday? But today is Il’Ghasaq!”

“Yes, and then the Sofs went to war and chose Il’Ghasaq as their day to negotiate. The ritual was moved to yesterday to seek blessing for their council. And by Arruh, look at your beasts! They look ragged! How far did you walk with them?”

“But… but this has to be for Il’Ghasaq! I need forty derims for Father’s medicine!”

“I can’t give you forty derims for this. I can’t even give you half that sum.”

“Please! We crossed the whole desert! I’ll do anything! Here…” in desperation he drew and proffered his astrolabe.

The man picked up a monocle from the table and leaned forward. “Now where did you get this?”

Zeyem was covering his face. “Just tell me it’s worth forty derims.”

“It’s worth that. It’s worth more than that. Here, Ajib!” He called to one of the dark-skinned workers who came running. “Ajib, you were a sailor. Look at this.”

Ajib the sailor held up the astrolabe in appraisal and began to move the dials. “Ah, now this is a fine device!”

Zeyem stared at Ajib. Something about him looked familiar.

“Well then,” said the big man, “I’m not a jeweler, but I could buy that from you! What would—”

“Wait, no,” said Ajib. “I spoke too soon. It’s bent.”

“Bent?”

“Bent. It’s all wrong.”

Zeyem blinked. “No it isn’t. No it isn’t!”

“Look,” Ajib passed it back. “It’s noontide, so set the dials… and that minaret is exactly south of us. But see? It’s at least eleven degrees off. It’s bent.”

Zeyem could see he was correct, but chose not to accept it. “No! That’s wrong! Menabo and I… we crossed the whole desert using this!”

The two men looked at one another. “It’s a miracle you made it, then,” said Ajib, rubbing his pronounced eyebrow ridge and high, sharp cheekbones.

Zeyem looked at him again and now recognized the face. “Buata…”

The big man frowned. “What’s that boy?”

“Buata! He’s the buata! I see your face! I know what you are!”

Ajib looked bewildered and accused, but Zeyem recoiled and ran, leaving behind the yaks and clutching his broken, useless astrolabe.

***

He was sitting outside Wasit’s stone gate leaning against the blue bricks watching the mud red sun melt on the horizon when someone called to him: “Menabo!”

Zeyem looked over.

A young man was clumsily descending from a coach and swatting away attendants. He limped over to where Zeyem sat, in pain but clearly excited. “Menabo!”

Zeyem blinked at him and finally recognized him: the young man they’d rescued from crocodiles. He pointed at himself: “Zeyem.”

“Zeyem! Forgive me, but… I’m so pleased! You made it to Wasit! Where is your…” the young man saw his eyes. “Oh no…”

Zeyem felt the tears coming. He looked down at his astrolabe.

“Zeyem… please tell me Menabo lives.”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is he? Here in Wasit? A nearby village?”

“That way. I don’t know.”

“If he needs medicine, I can buy it! I would be happy to after what you’ve done for me! Can we reach him in time?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Zeyem snatched up the astrolabe and threw it as far as he could.

The young man watched it bounce through the dust, then made to retrieve it. His attendants watched him uneasily.

“Don’t bother,” said Zeyem. “It’s broken.”

The young man winced his way to the disk, reached down and lifted it, and wiped the dust from its face. “I didn’t tell you in the wadi, but I am the son of Sof Jibr. I spent all day today in the palace overseeing negotiations between my father and Sof Niquum. It… seems this war will not end so easily. In the past I might have despaired, but a few days ago I was rescued from a pit by twin boys, complete strangers to me. Given my plight, I’m convinced they were sent by Arruh himself.” He looked up at the lowering sun and the long shadows stretching from every man, rock, and shrub, the whole world’s darkness bent in genuflection. “The Medeans have a saying: ‘When the Fiend speaks loudly, Arruh speaks softly.’ Have you heard Arruh’s voice, Zeyem?”

“No.”

“Maybe the Fiend has been loud indeed,” here he looked at the astrolabe, “or maybe you’ve been listening to the wrong instruments.”

Zeyem looked pensively down at the ground. The young man shuffled back toward him.

“I have been thinking… since the wadi. They teach us that Arruh made this world a place of order and justice. Sometimes — like today — I cannot see that order at all. But if that justice is truly missing… then perhaps that too is Arruh’s voice. Perhaps that is His way of gently telling us… that it’s time to make our own.”

“I don’t know how to ‘make’ justice.”

“You say that, but I am certain you do, for I have seen it myself.” He reached Zeyem and proffered the astrolabe. “Now, it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to find your brother, see if he lives and if we can help him. Time to locate your yaks. Time to do what you came to Wasit for. But the sun is setting, so first it is time to pray.”

***

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