"Impossible!" Kadumi objected.

"At least we know why they're so hungry," Ruha said, studying the cooking fires down in the camp. "The largest khowwan I've ever heard of numbers only three hundred. The invaders will never find enough grazing to keep all their camels in milk."

"Or enough game to fill their stewpots," Kadumi added.

"They don't need to," Lander replied. "The Zhentarim don't intend to be in the desert long. They're carrying all the food they need on their camels."

"You mean they'll go away in a few months?" Ruha asked, her voice growing hopeful.

Lander shook his head. "No. A few months are all the Zhentarim need to complete their task. They'll subdue a dozen khowwans, then use hostages, bribery, and violence to enslave the tribesmen. Once their powerbase is secure, they'll take their army away and use the tribes they control to overpower the others. Before the Bedine realize what's happened, the entire desert will belong to the Black Robes. The only way to stop them is to drive the Zhentarim from the desert."

"Then the Bedine are doomed," Kadumi said, pointing at the specks in the camp. "No tribe can stand against so many."

Lander frowned and pulled the boy's arm down. "Of course not. Any tribe that fights the Zhentarim alone will meet the same fate as the Mtair Dhafir and the Qahtan. We'll need a hundred tribes."

Ruha and Kadumi looked skeptical. "That's impossible," Kadumi said. "No tribe has that many allies."

Lander shook his head. "Kadumi, this isn't a matter of traditional alliances. Tribes that have never heard of each other must ride and fight under the same banner. They're all battling a common enemy."

"It will never-"

Ruha interrupted Kadumi's reply with an alarmed gasp. Pointing over Lander's back, she cried, "Look out!"

Lander reached for the jambiya at his waist with one hand and for his sword with the other. The effort made his wounded shoulder burn with agony. He clenched his teeth, then pulled the blades from their sheathes and spun around on his knees to meet the unseen attacker.

There was no one there. Fearing his enemy to be cloaked by invisibility, Lander jumped to his feet. He sliced through the air in front of him with the scimitar, then crossed the pattern with a slash from his dagger. Neither blade hit a target. Groaning with pain, Lander took one step backward and repeated the pattern first to his right and then to his left. Still nothing.

The Sembian backed away one more step. Kadumi moved next to him, scimitar drawn but held in a confused and tentative low guard.

"Where is it, Ruha?" Lander demanded.

There was no answer.

"Ruha, I can't see it," the Harper repeated.

When there was still no response, Lander hazarded a glance over his shoulder.

Ruha was staring at him as if he were ghost. Her eyes were glassy, and she had a confused, distant expression on her brow.

"Is something wrong?" the Harper asked, beginning to suspect that the cause for her alarm had not been an attacker. "Are you sick?"

The widow did not respond to the question. Instead, she looked him over from head to toe, then took the material of his filthy robe between her fingers. "Blessings to Rahalat," Ruha said. "You're alive."

"Of course he is," Kadumi said, scowling. "So am I. What made you think otherwise?"

Ruha shook her head, then said, "I saw a Black Robe behind Lander-or at least I thought I did. He had a dagger." She squinted toward the sun, then shook her head. "It must have been At'ar."

Kadumi sheathed his dagger and took his sister-in-law by the arm. "You're getting sun-sick again," he said. "Let's find some shade and get you a drink of water."

Ruha started to protest, then seemed to think better of it and allowed Kadumi to lead her off the ridge.

Lander crouched back down and peered over the rocky slope to the camp. To his relief, he saw no sign that the Zhentarim had not noticed their excitement. The flea-sized spots were still milling calmly about camp.

After assuring himself that they remained undetected, the Sembian found a hiding place on the shady side of a boulder. Gently rubbing his wounded shoulder, he drank down one of the healing potions Florin had given him, then followed it with a long swallow from his waterskin.

For the next few hours, Lander remained on watch while Kadumi tended Ruha. Nothing happened, save that a dozen vultures came to hover over the camp. With their red-rimmed eyes, nude heads, and snakelike necks, the birds normally appeared grotesque and repulsive to Lander. Watching them from above, as they circled a few yards below the ridge, was almost enough to change the Sembian's opinion. Their magnificent wingspan, gleaming black feathers, and keen ebony eyes gave a proud, almost noble streak to their character.

A vulture glanced up and fixed its dark stare on Lander's hiding place. A chill ran down his spine, for in the bird's look he saw the sable eyes of his mother. The expression seemed at once rapacious and dangerous, devoid of tenderness and demanding of veneration. The Harper's stomach knotted with an emotion somewhere between fear and anger. He felt his mother reaching out from Cyric's palace, imploring him to remember her face, to open his mind to her now as he had refused to open his spirit when she lived.

Lander forced himself to look away. The last thing he wished to do, now or ever, was contact his mother's spirit. She had chosen her new home, and to yield to her call would be to betray all that he had come to believe.

The Sembian kept his good eye closed, clearing his mind by concentrating on nothing but his breathing. His mother had reached out from her grave once before, after he had joined the Harpers, and he knew from that experience a bitter contest of wills would follow if he allowed her a hold in his thoughts.

At last Lander's stomach settled and his body relaxed. Sensing that his mother had retreated, the Sembian opened his eye. Once again the vulture was just a vulture, patiently circling the camp with its fellows. The Harper could not even tell which one had looked at him.

Lander kept a close eye on the approach to their ridge for the rest of the afternoon. If his mother had found him through a vulture, then Cyric might also know where he was. If what the Zhentarim were doing in Anauroch was important enough to the evil god, and if Lander posed a big enough threat to his plans, it did not seem unlikely that the Prince of Lies would try to communicate that information to his followers at the base of the mountain.

Twice Lander thought that a patrol was approaching the ridge, but each time the search party turned onto a different path. It appeared that either Cyric was not guiding the Zhentarim, or Rahalat had somehow turned them aside. Whatever the case, Lander was thankful. Fleeing during the heat of the day would have been hard on his wounded shoulder. If Ruha was sun-sick, he did not think it would do her any good either.

Periodically rotating search parties, the Zhentarim continued to feast and rest all day. Several times, Kadumi volunteered to change places, but Lander did not accept the offer. It made no difference to the Harper whether he spent the day watching the Zhentarim or sitting with Ruha, and he suspected that the youth knew more about preventing sun-sickness than he did.

When the sun dropped below the western horizon, both Kadumi and Ruha joined Lander. They all sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the birds of prey that nested on Rahalat's craggy slopes take wing with eerie silence. As the raptors spiraled down toward the spring, the cautious vultures widened their circle to give their ferocious cousins a wide berth.

"We should sneak away under cover of darkness," Kadumi said at last. "There is no telling how long the Zhentarim will rest at this oasis."