"Yes." Having decided, or so he thought, Jedit said to Ruko. "I go with Johan. You return to the village."

Abruptly the two scouts whirled. Johan recalled that this race never said goodbye, thinking it bad luck. Winded, exhausted, he blurted, "Wait!"

The scouts whirled, amazingly fast, and for a second Johan thought they'd shed his spell, but he put out a hand and gingerly brushed the hafts of their stabbing spears. "I only wanted to say, your spears are impressive weapons. Fine workmanship. Lovely rich-grained wood. Now go."

Wrinkling noses at the odd comment, without further ado Ruko and the scout turned east. Immediately Johan jogged west.

Jedit trotted to catch up. "What's the hurry?"

"Uh, to gain the desert before dawn." Johan cursed, tired of fabricating lies for cretins. "We've a long way to go. To see your father."

"Oh, yes." Still squinting against the fog in his mind, Jedit loped alongside the barefoot mage.

Meanwhile, Ruko and the other scout had paced a hundred yards, eager to return to their village and-what? They couldn't remember their mission. A furious buzzing filled their heads, but Ruko marked it down to fatigue. In the village they could rest. Except…

Ruko stopped short and snuffled his black nostrils. "I smell smoke."

"Queer," said the scout. "My spear feels-"

Fwash! With a whisper and whoop, their thick spears suddenly ignited. The tiger scouts dropped the burning shafts immediately, crying in pain and surprise, but the magical immolation had already spread. Flames surged up their arms, across their chests, down their bellies, and around their necks until their shaggy heads were wreathed in flames. Acrid smoke spiraled from their fur, sizzling so hot leaves on bushes shriveled and caught fire. The tigers howled as hair and flesh charred. Yowling, they dropped to the forest floor and thrashed and kicked, but the flames would not be quenched. As their flesh blackened and split into raw seeping wounds, the tigers' wild scrambling stopped. Finally they lay still and died. Flames continued to flicker awhile, as leaves and dirt crackled and burned, then even those small fires extinguished.

Far off, Jedit pricked his rounded ears and asked, "Did you hear a yell?"

"No," said Johan, for once truthful. "Come, the desert awaits."

"Ah, yes, the desert. And my father."

Rather, his ghost, thought Johan. And yours, soon.

Without a sound, Jedit Ojanen collapsed facefirst on the desert sand.

His muzzle banged gravel so hard that blood jetted from his black nose. Even slumped, he struggled to keep his green-gold eyes open to ward off danger, but his senses had fled under the scorching sun. He lay full-length like a toppled tree and didn't stir except for shallow breathing with blood bubbling in one nostril.

Johan stifled a curse. He cast about, but rolling dunes of sand and pebbles and nothing else filled this portion of the Sukurvia. High up, nine Osai vultures rode the air currents. Squinting against the searing sun, Johan mused on these wastes. A dead land, thought the dictator, and another barrier to his conquest of Jamuraa, for ordinary mortals couldn't cross it, unless he found some way for men to fly like vultures.

Grinding his teeth, Johan chafed at delay. He needed no rest. Hundreds of years old, sustained by arcane magics, Johan seldom slept or ate, having transcended bodily needs. Looking at the helpless tiger, with no way of moving him, Johan pondered slitting Jedit's throat and ripping off his skin or carving his skull from his hide, so later he might commune with his essence. If the cat man couldn't serve Johan alive, he'd serve dead.

"Cat warriors. Tigerfolk." Johan talked to the still desert air, venting his spleen. "Why do the gods punish me with these half-man half-cat bastards? Why must I endure when they buzz around like horseflies, distracting my purposes and contributing nothing?"

Johan knew why, if indeed any man could correctly interpret the whims of the gods. Because of None, One, and Two. Too many times in his campaign of conquest had Johan stubbed his toes on this prophecy. "When None and One clash, only Two shall remain to usher in a new age." The tigress shaman had unknowingly added a snippet to Johan's tiny understanding. Piffle, he thought, but he feared it rang true. He'd heard this ancient wisdom or curse before. It was as common as moonlight, spilling from Citanul Druids, from desert nomads, from Palmyran spies, from advisors, from tortured prisoners, from a dying cat man. Whispers from the past swirled around Johan and ensnared his schemes like spider webs. He had to grasp the prophecy's import like a handful of nettles. He had no choice.

Yet who was None? What was One? Which Two would survive and prosper? At first, Johan had taken the prophecy literally. None could be anything. One might be Tirras, his homeland, or himself. Two remaining might be his homeland and his empire ushering in a new age, the dynasty of Johan the First. Or None could be a cat man, a two-in-one creature, neither one race nor another. Yet half a tiger and half a man might make One. None, if they were freaks of nature not part of any grand scheme, too far outside humanity to affect its history. Yet shouldn't Johan be One, triumphant, inviolate?

"The eternal problem of prophecy," growled Johan. "What does it mean, and how do I bend it to my will?"

Who knew? Maybe None was this accursed desert, a not-land for no living thing. One cat man had clashed with it and collapsed. Predictably. Tigers were like humans in the desert. A jungle suited only if they could bathe in water during the sun's peak. This young idiot had lost his first battle. Johan should spike his spine and feed the vultures.

Yet even an emperor had to accept what the gods dished out, and they'd dumped this tiger in his lap. Somehow tigers were his personal demons. He must conquer them to conquer Jamuraa, or so he guessed. Johan damned the gods and himself and his own superstition. He would obey, for now, and someday push the very gods off their celestial thrones.

"Get up!" snarled the mage.

Jedit gasped.

"Get up, or I'll leave you for wurms!"

So far they'd seen no wurms. Jedit had guessed they simply walked softly and stretched their luck. Johan knew better. A magical combination of shielding aura and a deluding glyph that displaced their trail four feet in the air let them safely plod across the endless sands.

We should have brought water, thought Johan, and robes against the sun. Now, after six days with only a sip of water from a rain puddle, Jedit had crumpled like an empty water-skin. Johan admired his stamina and wondered how his father Jaeger had crossed the desert without sorcery.

Fascinated by the question, Johan cast about the pebbly dunes. Eventually he'd need some way for his army to cross the desert. Legends spoke of mages who could shift themselves and any load across myriad planes and mystic realms, but Johan had not yet attained such a lofty level, nor had any mage in Jamuraa, to his knowledge. Right now, he just needed a way to get this half-cooked cat out of the desert.

For hours Johan searched in man-killing heat for a way out. He still wore his traveling disguise, appearing a bony, bald, tanned man in a brown robe. Once he'd adopted a disguise, it was easier to keep it rather than drop it momentarily and risk detection. In the shade of a curling dune like an ocean wave he found what he was looking for-a patch of sand smooth as if broomed. Gingerly Johan approached. A dozen feet away, he ran and jumped square on the patch.

Sand geysered in a cloud as the living patch rebelled. Wings curled at two corners as the creature fought to rise, but Johan pinned it to the ground with a spell. Helpless, the desert beast flailed and flopped but went nowhere, kicking off its sand covering. Cousins to manta rays of southern seas, desert rays not only skimmed the sands but could instantly burrow underneath, either to rest or to await prey. Big as a collapsed tent, the ray was a mottled tan that, even as Johan watched, changed hue to a dark rust-red. Perhaps the color startled predators.