"You had better be right about the Zhentarim," Sheikh Sa'ar commented, studying the black basin of emptiness lying beyond his tribes' campsite. "I would not like to think I made my people abandon their khreimas for nothing."

"I'm right."

Lander's answer was confident, but even he was beginning to doubt the Zhentarim would attack. Already, Mystra's Star Circle was touching the western horizon, and by the constellation's position, Lander knew dawn would come in less than three hours.

The Harper and the sheikh had been sitting in the ravine since nightfall, when the Mahwa had silently snuck out of their camps, leaving their khreimas standing behind them. Under the cover of the moonless night, the tribe had ridden for the far side of the caldera. Behind them, they had left only two sentries and a half-dozen warriors to tend the campfires so that it would appear that the camp remained occupied.

Tethering their camels two miles away, about a quarter of the way around the volcano's cone, Lander and Sa'ar had come to watch the Zhentarim overrun the empty camp. Sa'ar had justified the adventure by claiming he wanted to study his enemies, but Lander suspected that the sheikh was more interested in witnessing the Black Robes' reaction when they learned they had been duped.

Fortunately for Lander's nerves, they had to wait only twenty minutes longer. A familiar, shrill note wafted across the black emptiness, and then a tiny bolt of bright light flared in the distance.

"What was that?" Sa'ar demanded, rising to his feet.

"Lightning bolt," Lander explained.

"Magic?"

"Yes," the Harper replied, also standing.

The sheikh groaned. "My warriors won't like that."

"The Zhentarim try to eliminate the sentries, then overrun the camps quickly," Lander explained. "They won't tolerate survivors."

"With good reason," Sa'ar responded, pointing at Lander. "You, Ruha, and the boy have certainly caused them enough trouble. If you hadn't told me of their atrocities to the Mtair Dhafir, I might well have allied with them. From what Kadumi told me, the Mtair Dhafir would have also joined them-if you hadn't cut their envoy's throat."

"Kadumi told you that?" Lander asked, surprised.

The sheikh turned and watched the dark shapes of two warriors ride their camels out of camp. "No," he replied. "Kadumi claimed it was someone named Al'Aif, but I think you had more reasons than this Al'Aif."

Lander did not bother to deny the conclusion. At the moment, who had killed Zarud did not matter, and he did not wish to offend Sa'ar. Instead of arguing with the sheikh, the Harper reached for the tea pot. "May I?"

"Why do you have to ask?"

Lander filled his cup, then sipped the warm drink while they waited for the Zhentarim to reach the camp. The Harper barely finished his tea before dark shapes began skulking through the golden grass around the lakes.

"Weren't the sentries stationed at the edge of the basin?" Lander asked.

"They were supposed to be," the sheikh responded, already thinking along the same lines as Lander. "But that seems impossible. It should have taken the Zhentarim twice this long to reach the camp."

The two men watched silently as a long line of dark silhouettes appeared outside the camp. Though Lander guessed the line to be less than four hundred yards away, the shapes remained indistinct and small. For several minutes, the army held its ground, awaiting the resistance that would not come. After a time it began to creep silently, cautiously forward.

"All right," Sa'ar said. "Let us see what they think of our little ruse."

As Lander had expected, the first ranks entered the fire-lit camp scurrying on all fours. Even from two hundred yards, the Harper could see their distinctive shapes, with four limbs protruding from sinewy bodies at right angles and a serpentine tail twitching behind. As they stopped and stood on their two rear legs, about half of the reptilian mercenaries drew sabers. The others pulled crossbows off their backs.

"It is as I feared," Sa'ar whispered. "Asabis."

"What?" Lander asked, turning to the sheikh.

"Come," the sheikh said, grasping the Harper's shoulder. "We must leave here at once."

Lander did not move. "You know what those things are?"

Sa'ar nodded. "I suspected it when you and Ruha described what had happened to the Mtair Dhafir. My tribe and I are in your debt."

The sheikh started to leave, but Lander did not follow. "Why are you so frightened of them?"

"There's no time," Sa'ar said. "I'll explain after we rejoin the tribe… if we live that long."

Because Sa'ar was not the type to be easily frightened, Lander found the man's fear more than a little contagious. Still, the Harper was not ready to leave. He wanted to study the asabis for at least a few minutes. "I'll catch up to you later." Lander turned back toward the campsite, where the asabis had made torches and were setting khreimas afire. "I want to watch awhile. Maybe I'll learn something useful."

The sheikh sighed. "I cannot leave you here alone," he said. "Can we go after I tell you about them?"

Lander nodded, then picked up the tea pot and poured the last of the black drink into a bakia. "I suppose that would be fine." He handed the cup to the sheikh. To his embarrassment, he noticed that his hand was trembling.

The sheikh glanced at Lander's trembling hand, then chuckled and took the tea. "Very well," he said, his voice and manner now absolutely calm. "We'll stay until you are ready to go."

Sa'ar turned toward the campsite and squatted down on his haunches. "Once, after my brothers and cousins had raided too many other khowwans, my tribe was driven into the Quarter of Emptiness. Our enemies did not follow us, for they expected that our camels would starve and we would die of thirst."

The sheikh's eyes grew hard and his attention seemed focused on a distant land and time. "We would have perished, save that we stumbled across an ancient city. It was half-buried in a massive dune, but its walls were made of gray stone as thick as a camel is tall. Inside the walls, the buildings stood as they had stood a thousand years ago, and in the center of the city lay an abandoned fort as large as a mountain."

Sa'ar sipped his tea absently. "That fortress was both our salvation and our damnation. In its courtyard, there was an ancient well. When some of the warriors climbed down to clean it out, they claimed that it descended five hundred feet and that it opened into a great labyrinth of underground grottos filled with rivers of cool water.

"Of course, we thought they were exaggerating-at least until we began drawing water. It was sweet as honey and cool as the night, and the well's capacity seemed endless. We pulled hundreds of buckets of water, and the flow never slowed. Before dusk fell that day, the sheikh and the elders were already making plans to turn the fort into a secret oasis, to make it a stronghold from which to build our khowwan into the strongest tribe of Anauroch."

"What happened?" Lander asked, intrigued by the story of the lost city.

Sa'ar nodded toward the burning campsites below. "The asabis," he said. "They climbed from the well in the dead of the night, falling upon our warriors and our mothers in the tents. A few of us children, afraid of sleeping inside a city, had stayed outside with the herds. When we heard the screams of our parents, we went to investigate."

The sheikh paused. "You saw what the asabis did to the Mtair Dhafir, so I hardly need to describe what we found."

Recalling the sight of the corpse-filled wadi below Rahalat, Lander shook his head. "No. I can imagine."

"We went back to our camels and fled," Sa'ar began. "And that was when the horror truly began. The asabis heard our beasts roaring and came to the chase. We were already mounted and riding, but they ran across the sands on all fours. Though our mounts were strong and freshly watered, the asabis followed close behind, and our camels had to gallop to stay ahead.