Jalal was shouting, trying to reach his chieftain's side. The wind held him back.

Mohammed staggered to his feet, standing at the center of the whirlwind. Beyond the rushing wall of air he could see the crowd surging back and forth. Many people had been knocked down and were being trampled. He felt faint, and the roaring sound in his ears was a sharp spike of pain. Enraged at the threat to the people in the plaza, his hand groped at his waist for his sword. It had fallen to the ground, torn from his belt.

He turned toward the blade, his shoulder against the rush of the wind.

A blow smashed into his back and threw him to the ground. Something flowed over him, and there was a scent of ancient dust and withered crops in his nostrils. He rolled, feeling the thick, muscular power that pressed against him. The skin of the thing, all unseen, was scaled and cold like a great serpent. A snarl of rage split his face, and Mohammed struggled, trying to pry the coils from his neck. Scales slid across his face, trying to crush his skull. His fingers clawed at it.

Hot breath washed across his face, stinking like the Pit. Mohammed cried out, feeling the air being crushed from his ribs. The sky cartwheeled above him, spinning, and a gray tunnel closed down his vision. The wind continued to roar, though he could feel his bones crack under the incredible pressure.

"O Lord of the World," he wept, feeling death close at hand. "Deliver your servant:"

Mocking laughter hissed in his ears, and then the pressure around his heart became too great.

Maslama was thrown down by the surge of panic. Men crashed into him, trying to flee the blast of wind that howled forth from the whirlwind. Rocks and small stones lashed the crowd, and they surged back. Maslama rolled under the feet of the stampeding people. Someone kicked him in the side of the head and then fell down, pinning him to the rough cobblestones. A roaring sound filled the air. People were screaming and shouting in fear all around. The young man, gritting his teeth against the pain that stabbed in his temple, surged up, trying to stand.

More men pushed against him, and he fell heavily on one knee. He threw up a mailed arm, fending off the elbows and arms of those running past.

Suddenly they were all gone. The wind buffeted him, and he bent his head against it. The desert robes shielded him from the worst, though his hands- bare and scraped bloody on the ground- were suddenly touched by a chill.

He looked up, one hand down to help him raise up, and saw the old stone house limned by crawling blue flame. A darkness covered the sky, and something titanic and foul was struggling at the center of the plaza. The Tanukh had scattered, leaving behind a drift of bodies. The crowd was pressed back against the walls of the temples, trying to force their way to safety. Beneath the coiling, rugose, tentacular limbs was a figure in a dirty white robe and battered armor, struggling on the ground.

Maslama crawled forward, his heart hammering in his chest.

Red shuddered at the heart of the thing and sparked across the stones of the plaza. A foul stench rolled off it like the odor from a freshly ruptured corpse. Maslama gagged, retching. Something squirmed across the stones toward him. He struggled to pull the sword from its sheath.

There were words- Maslama knew that he had heard them- but though he felt their shape and color and knew what they meant as they sounded, ringing clear and true and perfect in the air, he could put no name to them. With them, blooming like the sun suddenly breaking through the clouds on a day of heavy rain, came light. A pure white radiance flooded forth, and Maslama, squinting in the glare, could see that at their center was the figure of the man in the dirty robe.

The thing, the crawling leprous inchoate form that had loomed over the ancient ruin, shuddered and then turned sideways and folded itself up into nothingness. Maslama gaped, his mind shrieking at the impossibility of what it had- dimly- perceived, but then the light touched his face, feather-light, and all horror and pain and suffering was gone. The sword slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground.

All across the square the people- almost driven mad with fear and terror at the power that had protruded into their world- stopped. They turned, like flowers tracking the sun, and the light fell across them. Many cried out in joy, or fell to their knees, or fainted.

Only two men stood unmoved by the power that- briefly- flared into existence before the old house. One turned immediately and walked away into one of the streets of the city. The other raised himself up from the ground and brushed off his cloak. A brace of wain wrights had trampled him in their haste to flee. Outweighing him by five to one, they had won the argument.

The light faded, curling back into the shape of the man lying on the ground.

Khalid al'Walid looked about him, seeing the throng standing stunned in the wake of the efflorescence, and he rubbed his smooth-shaven chin.

"Well," he mused to himself, walking toward the old house and the supine form of the chieftain Mohammed. "This is the truth of the Lord. Let him who will, believe in it, and him who will, deny it."

High above, the sun moved in its courses in a bright blue sky.

The House D'Orelio, Roma

The little blond maid, Betia, moved around the room lighting oil lamps. The lamps were set into brass holders shaped like conch shells and painted a light pinkish white. As each lamp flared to life and then settled into a warm glow, the room shrugged off the night. At the end of the room, a pair of double doors opened onto a balcony. Below the balcony the secluded garden at the center of the house lay sleeping. On other nights, the ornamental paper lanterns in the trees would have been lit, but not tonight. Betia returned to the head of the long porphyry table that stood at the center of the room and replaced the candle she had used to light the lamps in its archaicstyle Greek candelabrum.

Nikos watched the little Gaul out of the corner of his eye. He was sitting by the window on a chair of painted wicker. The Khazars, despite the presence of couches and chairs, were sitting on the floor in the corner, throwing knucklebones and talking in low voices. Something about the slave had bothered him for some time, but he was just beginning to understand her place and purpose. The girl, who must have been no more than sixteen years old, was in constant attendance upon the Duchess. For all that- for all that he knew that she was an ever-present fixture- the Illyrian had begun to realize it was very difficult to mark her presence. It was more than the casual indifference of a citizen to a slave; that was a habit Nikos had never developed. In his profession it never paid to be unwary or to discount the inoffensive.

Smiling, Nikos realized the girl was very good. She was quiet and graceful. She did not drop things or bump into the edges of tables. She went barefoot nearly all the time and walked quietly.

That which does not draw attention is unseen. Thyatis' voice drifted in his memory.

Betia placed green enameled bowls of shelled nuts and cut fruit on the tabletop and then departed. Nikos watched her go in interest, suddenly seized by the desire to follow her in his own quiet way and see where she went. But there was no time for that, and he put the thought away for a later time.

She must be, he thought, from the island.

Rubbing the back of his head, feeling the bumps and knots in his skull and remembering each one and how he had gained it in the service of the Empire and then the Duchess, Nikos wondered if he ever dared broach the matter of the island with his employer. No one had ever talked of it directly, or spoken of it aloud in his presence, but Thyatis had been comfortable enough to mention that she had once been on the island. Nikos was sure, from watching the Duchess and her servants, and the masked women who came and went from the secret entrances of the house, that the island must be the fixture of a mystery cult. Nikos had considered poking about, just to see what he could see. He had not. Some things, he thought, were better left undisturbed.