Khadames reversed the knife, the hilt nestling into his palm.

He stabbed, twisting his body into the thrust, feeling the hot breath of the sorcerer on his cheek.

The flint blade met resistance, doughy and stiff, then something parted wetly, and the world inverted. The black sky was below, and the living stone cracked and shattered in the cold. An invisible fist slapped Khadames away like a siege engine's arm, and he felt stone crack against his back. There was rushing air and a shrieking wail. Then Khadames fell forward to sprawl on the stone floor of the room.

The sorcerer staggered back from the lip of the pit, wreathed in cold blue fire. Then he raised an arm, and fire crawled across his chest and upper arms to collect, pooling like mercury, in his open hand. He turned, his lean face lit by the glow. Khadames levered himself up, feeling every muscle and bone groaning in agony. The black knife jutted from the sorcerer's chest, a dark trail of blood seeping down his waist.

Dahak smiled and seemed to swell, filling the room.

"Oh, bravely done," the sorcerer cooed. "Now let us begin."

Nothing human remained in the burning yellow eyes, only an echo of the vast shape that had blotted out the stars.

But the stone door was shut.

The next day, the body that had lain on the slab in the cold room was carried to the height of Damawand, and priests anointed the corpse with oils and spices. Though their eyes had been put out, they labored diligently, laving the withered flesh with scented waters and daubing paint upon it. They worked in great haste, for the desire of their master was like a whip. Jagged stone surrounded the open space where the body lay, and the sky above was filled with troubled clouds. The sun rarely shone down upon the old mountain now, and the valley below was filled with dirty gray mist and smoke.

The Zam-Zam, Southern Arabia Felix

This is an abomination!"

Scowling, Mohammed pushed through the crowd, the hulking shapes of the Tanukh at his back. Hundreds of men and women crowded into the square, dressed in their holiday finest. Mohammed pressed on, though the crowd was getting thicker and thicker as he approached the gates of the shrine. Around him, turbaned men carried tall poles with offerings and painted cloths hanging from them. Women, dressed in heavy dark dresses, held plates of grain and salt over their heads. A constant noise rose from the crowd like the surf on the distant shore. A tight wedge of Tanukh in black robes, Jalal among them, flowed after their commander. Their swords, still sheathed, held back the crowd like a steel fence.

Within fifteen feet of the temple, all movement ceased, and Mohammed was forced to step back and stretch, looking over the heads of those in the press before him.

Two great doors rose above him, each three times the height of a man, set into a large square brick building. The bricks had been polished smooth and then painted; first black, and then with thousands of tiny white, yellow, and blue stars. Above the doors a great yellow-white disk had been painted- the eternal sun- to signify the center of the vault of heaven. From his youth, when he had spent much time to little end in the precincts of the temples, Mohammed knew that on the opposite side of the building, a moon was painted. At the side of each door, statues loomed, carved from the desert stone in the shape of the gods of distant Greece. Apollo stood on the left, holding a great sundisk, and Hermes on the right. The likeness was crude and stiff, nothing like the graceful marbles in Caesarea or Damascus, but that had not mattered to the artisans who had labored on them for years.

Jalal shouldered past his master and cracked the man in front of him on the head with the heavy iron pommel of his saber. The man slumped soundlessly to the ground, and Jalal stepped forward over the body. The other Tanukh pushed into the gap, shoving men and women aside. Mohammed opened his mouth to shout a command, but then a way cleared to the foot of the steps before the doors. He shut it with a snap and slid sideways into the gap.

At the top of the stairs, a phalanx of priests blocked passage into the temple itself. They were dour-looking men with long braided beards and heavy caps of black cloth sewn with topazes and garnets. Their long brocaded robes hung to their sandalled feet. Mohammed put his boot on the bottom step, and his eyes narrowed in anger. Some of these men had been acquaintances of his father, in the long-ago days when Abd of the Al'Quryash had served in the temples of the Zam-Zam. Now they held the door to the temple closed against his son, even on a day of worship.

"The Lord who made this world has no shape," he shouted at them as he advanced up the stairs. "You cannot give him a man's face! You are impious to confine him in a form of clay or wood!"

The priests glowered down at him, but did not answer. Mohammed stopped one step below them and put his hand on his saber hilt. Those nearest him flinched, but they did not move.

"You priests, hear me!" Mohammed's voice boomed off the metal doors and echoed across the throng packed into the courtyard. "The murderer of my daughter hides in your house of stone. I will have him, whether you will it or no. Stand aside!"

The priests did not move, and some in the rear ranks linked their arms. In the crowd behind him, Mohammed could hear a muttering rumble begin to rise among the people who had come to lay their offerings on the hundred altars within the sacred precincts. He could hear the Tanukh, too, spreading out on the steps behind him. He raised his arms and turned slowly, watching the crowd with an eagle eye. "Is this your god?" He jabbed a finger out, pointing up at the great weatherworn statue of Apollo. "This is a god of the Greeks, who live far away by the side of the green sea. Is this the god who watches over your flocks? Is this the god who breathes in the deep desert, raising the kamshin?"

The faces of the people in the crowd were confused or angry. It was hot in the noonday sun, and little wind made its way into the pillared courtyards of the temples. He caught Jalal's eye, and the burly mercenary shook his head minutely.

"I will show you the voice of the god who made the world!" Mohammed spun, drawing his saber in one quick movement, and it flashed in the midday sun as he clubbed the nearest priest on the side of the head with the pommel. The man's skull made a sharp cracking sound and he fell away, his arms and legs tangling with his fellows. The Tanukh gave a great shout and leapt up the stairs. The priests cried out and cowered away from the glittering blades. Some fell down the steps. Mohammed, sneering, pushed through them to the doors themselves. He put his shoulder to the right panel, feeling the heat of the sunwarmed metal burning through the cloth of his robes.

The door opened, slowly, creaking on ancient hinges. The close smell of incense and smoke and sweat flooded out. Mohammed stepped inside, his saber nosing forward to test the passage.

Around the cobblestoned square a great cluster of temples had grown up over the years. Domes and minarets sprouted from the decaying brick and stone buildings. Narrow passages wound between the temples of great gods and small, opening into unexpected courtyards and upon wilting gardens. Dim passages echoed with the chanting of priests and the stink of incense. All the Zam-Zam lay in a great bowl that had once housed a spring of medicinal repute. Now stone and brick buried the spring and the waters had been driven deep underground. Dozens of wells had tapped it dry, and only a bare trickle could be had. With the flight of the water, the gardens had withered. At the northern end of the maze of whitewashed plaster, facing the city walls of Mekkah some miles away, a great vaulted gate stood.