"How so?"

"In the context, I believe, of a similar stunt. Your children, you know, are even more primitive and literal-minded than the rest of you."

"Haroun? Is that true?"

"Huh?"

"Did you do the same thing to Sabbah i Hassan?"

Radetic smiled thinly as he watched the boy struggle with the lie trying to break out of the prison of his mouth. "Yes, Father."

Fuad returned to the tent. He seemed to have calmed down.

"Teacher?"

"Wahlig?"

"What the hell were they doing running the streets? They were supposed to be in class."

"Be serious, Yousif," Fuad interjected. "Don't tell me you're already too old to remember being young." The Wahlig was forty-one. "It's Disharhun. The woman wore no veil. You think the man is a miracle worker?"

Radetic was amazed. Fuad had made it plain that he thought any teacher who did not teach the use of weapons was superfluous. A warrior chieftain needed no other education. Scribes and accountants could be enslaved.

Moreover, he disliked Radetic personally.

What had put him into so good a mood? It worried Radetic.

"Haroun."

The boy approached his father reluctantly, took his spanking without crying. And without contrition.

Yousif was angry. He never punished his children before outsiders. And yet... Radetic suspected that his employer was not entirely displeased.

"Now go find your brothers. Tell them to get back here and stay out of trouble."

The boy ran out. Yousif looked at Fuad. "Bold little brat, isn't he?"

"His father's son, I think. You were the same."

Haroun was Yousif's favorite, though the Wahlig hid it well. Radetic suspected that he had been hired specifically for the benefit of the one boy. The others had been tossed into his classes in a vain hope that a patina of wisdom might stick.

Haroun would have preferred a scholarly life. When away from older brothers he showed the temperament. In fact, he had told Radetic that he wanted to be like him when he grew up. Megelin had been pleased and embarrassed.

For a six-year-old Haroun showed remarkable determination to pursue the mission decreed for him by an accident of birth. He acted twice his age. He was possessed of a stern, stolid fatalism seldom seen in anyone under thirty.

Megelin Radetic hurt a lot for the fated child.

Fuad bubbled over. "Yousif, this is the break we've been waiting for. This time he's given us a good, rock-hard excuse."

Radetic was startled when he suddenly realized that Fuad was talking about El Murid. It was a revelation. He had not suspected that powerful men were actually afraid of the Disciple. Afraid of a fifteen-year-old who, like themselves, had come to Al Rhemish for the rites of Disharhun, and to see his infant daughter christened before the Most Holy Mrazkin Shrines.

They had been lying to him. And to themselves, probably. Just plain old-fashioned whistling in the dark.

All this fuss over religious nonsense.

"Wahlig, this is ridiculous. Barbarous," Radetic grumbled. "Even pathetic. The boy is a madman. He crucifies himself every time he preaches. You don't have to trump up charges. Let him have his High Holy Week. Let him talk. They'll laugh him out of Al Rhemish."

"Let me boot this fish-faced pimp," Fuad growled.

Yousif raised a silencing hand. "Calm down. He has a right to an opinion. Even a wrong one."

Fuad shut up.

Yousif virtually owned his younger brother. Fuad seemed to have no imagination or aspirations of his own. He was a mirror of Yousif, the Wahlig's far-reaching right hand, a sledge used to hammer out another's dreams. Which was not to say that he always agreed. He and Yousif sometimes argued bitterly, especially when the latter was pushing an innovation. Sometimes Fuad won his point. But once a decision had been handed down he would support it to the death.

"Wahlig—"

"Be silent a moment, Megelin. Let me tell you where you're wrong." Yousif rearranged his cushions. "This is going to be long-winded. Get comfortable."

Radetic considered Yousif's tent to be furnished in garish, barbarous taste. The Children of Hammad al Nakir, when they could afford it, surrounded themselves with intense color. The reds, greens, yellows and blues around Yousif so clashed that Radetic could almost hear their conflict.

"Fuad, see if you can find some refreshments while I start to educate our educator. Megelin, you're wrong because you're too convinced of the correctness of your own viewpoint. When you look around here you don't see a culture. You see barbarians. You hear our religious arguments and can't believe we take them seriously because you can't. I grant you, a lot of my people don't either. But the majority do.

"As for El Murid and his henchman, you see only a deranged boy and a bandit. I see a huge problem. The boy is saying things everyone wants to hear. And believe. And Nassef just might have the genius to carve out El Murid's new Empire. The two together might have an overpowering attraction for our children. Our children, otherwise, have no other hope than to relive our yesterdays.

"You see Nassef as a bandit because he has raided caravans. What makes him remarkable and dangerous isn't the fact of his crimes, but the skill with which he committed them. If he ever rises above theft in God's name to making war in God's name, then God help us. Because he'll probably destroy us.

"Megelin, nobody is going to laugh if El Murid speaks. Nobody. And as a speaker he is as dangerous as Nassef is as a fighter. His speeches are creating the weapons Nassef needs to rise above banditry.

"The boy's movement is at a crossroads. And he knows it. That's why he came to Al Rhemish this year. After Disharhun he'll either be discredited and fade away, or he'll begin sweeping the desert like a sandstorm. If we have to trump up charges to stop that, we will."

Fuad returned with a lemonade-like drink. Megelin and Yousif accepted their portions. Fuad seated himself quietly, out of the way.

Radetic, squatting on a scarlet pillow, took a sip, then said, "And Fuad wonders why I think you a barbarous people."

"My brother has never visited Hellin Daimiel. I have. I can believe that your people would laugh a messiah out of business. You're all cynics. And you don't need that kind of leader.

"We do, Megelin. The heart of me craves an El Murid. He's telling me exactly what my heart wants to hear. I want to believe that we're the Chosen People. I want to believe that it's our destiny to master the world. I want something, anything, to make the centuries since the Fall worthwhile.

"I want to believe that the Fall itself was the work of an Evil One. Fuad wants to believe. My cousin the King would like to believe. Unfortunately, we're old enough to recognize gossamer on the wind. A deadly gossamer.

"Megelin, that boy is a death merchant. He's put it in pretty packages, but he's selling another Fall. If we turn to him, if we break out of Hammad al Nakir in order to convert the pagan and resurrect the Empire, we'll be destroyed. Those of us who have been across the Sahel realize that the world out there isn't the one conquered by Ilkazar.

"We don't have the numbers, the resources, the arms, or the discipline of the western kingdoms."

Radetic nodded. These people would be hopelessly overmatched in any war with the west. Warfare, like everything else, evolved. The style of the Children of Hammad al Nakir had evolved in a direction suited only to the desert.

"But his jihad doesn't terrify me yet. That's a long way off," Yousif continued. "The struggle here is what frightens me. He has to win his homeland first. And to do that he will have to tear the belly out of Hammad al Nakir. So. I want to draw his fangs now. By fair means or foul."

"You live by different rules," Radetic observed. It was becoming a favorite saying. "I have to go think about what you've said." He finished his drink, rose, nodded to Fuad, and departed. He seated himself outside the tent flap, in the position for meditation. He listened while Yousif instructed Fuad how to approach King Aboud with news of this opportunity. Embittered by the foolishness of it, the injustice of it, he sealed them out, contemplated his surroundings.