"Brother, we feared that something had befallen you when you did not return with the caravan from Damascus."

"Something did," grated Mohammed, suddenly assailed by a stabbing sensation of guilt at the quiet words. "There has been a great war in the North, between Persia and Rome. The Persian armies under the command of their great general, Shahr-Baraz, attempted to capture Damascus. I became involved, and my return was greatly delayed."

"Involved?" Taiya's voice was quiet, but the anger in her voice was as bitter as spike-leaf tea. "With who? What was her name? Neither Rome nor Persia is any friend of the Quraysh. What is the business of our house to meddle in their affairs?"

Mohammed turned a little in the chair, facing Taiya squarely. "I met a man whom I would call my brother, if he were alive today. A true friend, for all that we met in a caravanserai in the foreigners' district of the Red City. He was driven to go north, to Damascus, and then to the City of Silk, Palmyra, and I followed him, for he needed my aid. How could I deny the brother of my heart?"

"You were gone too long," Hala said, her voice rising a little.

Mohammed nodded, still meeting her eyes. Tears threatened them, for Hala had loved her sister very much. Taiya, too, was on the verge of tears, but would fight to the end to keep this poor cousin from seeing them. "I know. There was a great battle at Palmyra, and we were besieged for many months. Flight was impossible. I barely escaped with my life."

Taiya suddenly stood up and paced across to the door and threw it open. She looked out into the passageway, saw nothing, and then slammed it closed again. "All the time she lay sick, Khadijah could think only of you," Taiya snapped as she returned to the window. "When she could no longer see, and the fever had settled into her bones, all she asked for was news of you- you, the wanderer! The husband who is never in his own house- who spent his brief time at home mewed up in a cave, sharing porridge with beggars and thieves!"

Hala stood and tried to take her sister by the arm. Taiya slapped her hand away, her voice rising still further. "You left her alone and she died! She trusted you when she trusted no one else- and you abandoned her! All she needed to live was your face, or your voice, and you denied her even this! At the end, she thought you had perished in the wasteland and then she died, sure that you would never come."

Mohammed stood, his face tremendously calm. Taiya flinched and shrank back from him, but he did not raise a hand. Instead, he pushed the chair away and knelt on the stone floor and bowed to the two sisters, placing his head on the woven sisal mat that lay across the center of the room. "I am sorry," he said. "Had I known, I would have done anything to be here."

He stood, and Hala stepped to his side, her hand smoothing his tunic, which had turned awry. Taiya just stared, her face a white mask behind the kohl around her eyes and the golden rings hanging from her ears.

"I know," Hala said, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, making long marks in the powder on her face. "It was an evil circumstance."

Mohammed's left eyelid flickered under the scar, and his face became a degree paler. "No: there is true evil in the world, but it is not circumstance. Do not say that this was evil; I have seen its face, and it did not pass this way."

"Evil?" Taiya whispered incredulously. "You know so much of evil that you can see it, touch it, feel it, declare its worth? Neglect is evil; indifference is evil!"

Mohammed's face darkened, and he seemed to grow larger in the room. " I have seen the face of true evil, sister of my wife. It is a dark shape that dims the sun, that shatters towers with its voice, which walks in the world in the form of man. Something that the jinn fear as they cower in the desert. Something that makes the world shake when it walks. It did not lay Khadijah low. I know, for I looked upon it from the rampart of Palmyra and saw my friend die at its hand. If it had come this way, there would be nothing left."

Hala's eyes widened, hearing an echo of fear and battle in his voice.

"Rubbish!" Taiya almost spit at him, but restrained herself at the last moment. "You do not care that my sister," she continued, "whom I loved best, is dead. Well, I do care and my family cares. You came late into our household, al-Quryash, and you will not be master here now that she is gone. I do not care that you were Khadijah's husbandI will take those portions of our father's inheritance that are mine for myself."

Hala turned on her sister, her eyes flashing. "That is not our way! Mohammed and Khadijah wed, and he is her heir. Our clan is rich and prosperous from her wisdom and skill. She chose this man to be at her side, to make us stronger, to be our eyes in the world beyond the desert. Now that she is gone, he will lead us."

Taiya sneered at her older sister, twitching her skirts away. " Foolish little weaver! What did you do all these years but sit at Khadijah's footstool, smiling prettily and knitting? My husband and I made as much as this boy in her service. Our father made us rich! He is the one who raised up this house and made it strong. Without him, there would be nothing here but a hut and scrawny goats!"

Hala stamped her foot, ringing a bracelet of tiny bells around her ankle. "Stupid cow! Father made us a house and the beginnings of wealth- but Khadijah's wisdom delivered us riches! Never was a woman wiser than she, even if she could not bear a living son, or married twice. See him? He is her choice- she who is your master and mine in forethought and care. In life, you took her advice above all others. Now that she lies dead in the house of white stones, you would say she is a liar?"

Taiya did not respond, but stormed out, golden bangles at her wrists tinkling in the sudden quiet. After a moment, there was the sound of another door crashing closed at the end of the hallway. Mohammed stared after her and then sat down, holding his head in his hands.

Hala looked away, then slowly went to her seat on the window ledge. " Will you stay this time?" Her voice was faint. "Tell me what happened in the north."

"No," Mohammed said, raising his head up and looking out the window at the bougainvillea and jasmine in the garden. "This house makes my heart sick."

The sound of crickets chirping echoed off broken gray rock. A boot made of tooled kid leather with small silver studs passed over the stones. A man of almost fifty climbed the side of the mountain under a blazing sun. He wore a long desert robe of tan and white, with a burnoose wrapped around his head. His features were strong- a fierce nose jutted over a thick bushy black beard. His hands, large and scarred with the artifacts of many battles, were a dark brown and grasped at the stones to pull himself up over a ledge. The man's face was bleak, for his heart was greatly troubled.

The peak rose at the side of a deep, broad valley. The summit was bare of trees, though covered with scattered gray shrubs and thorny bushes. Great boulders littered the face of the mountain, all showing deep cracks and crevices where the merciless sun and wind had broken them down. A perfectly clear blue sky rose above the mountain, anchored by the white disk of the sun. There was little wind to break the tremendous heat of the day. Gravel crunched under the man's foot, and the still, hot air was filled with the voices of bees and crickets.

The man passed underneath a cliff of stone, covered with small spiky plants bearing tiny white flowers. In the bare fragment of shade that the cliff endowed, a scrub bush with dark red bark was growing. Triangular waxy leaves covered the branches. The man pushed through the thicket at the base of the cliff and climbed up a narrow passage between the stones. At the top the rocks were hot with the radiance of the sun. Now he could see the summit of the mountain, a tilted pile of barren stone and cracked rock. The air was heavy and hot, like a mourning cloth.