Lord of Desire (40 page)

She could hear sounds of music and revelry behind her, yet her heartbeat seemed incredibly loud in her ears. Any instant now she expected to hear the cry that would alert the camp to her escape.

None came.

Tensely, with bated breath, she kept going, struggling to keep her footing in the deep sand, her short prayer for deliverance a litany,
please, please, please . . .

When she had covered the distance of several hundred yards, she brought the mare to a halt. Slowly, carefully, murmuring soothing and meaningless sounds, Alysson hauled herself up on the mare's back.

Gathering the lead rope like reins, she nudged the animal forward. Then heading north and east, her way lit by a sliver of moon, she set out across the desert.

Chapter 12

A
lysson traveled through the night, across the lonely wastes made lonelier by the eerie cries of the jackals, never stopping. Stars blazed like diamonds overhead in the heavens, while the endless sands stretched before her, pale, mysterious, infinite.

It was the most solitary place of all, the desert. The vast emptiness made her feel insignificant, and yet strangely a part of it. The silence was so deep she could hear the beating of her heart in concert with the soft, rhythmic plodding of the horse's hooves.

The air was clear and cold, the shadowed darkness soothing. For long moments at a time she could almost forget her anxiety, her desperate need to escape. Then fear would return, and she would glance over her shoulder, expecting to see Jafar pursuing her on his powerful black Barb, his burnous streaming in the wind.

The silent hours wore on, enveloping her in weariness. She jerked herself awake whenever she started to nod off, counting the stars and reciting proverbs and childhood poems to keep
herself
alert. Occasionally she was required to discipline the mare, who wanted to unseat its unfamiliar rider and return to camp.

Near dawn, the mare suddenly swerved and reared, spooked by some unseen phantom.
The next instant found Alysson sprawled in the sand, gasping for the breath that had been jolted from her body.

The return of her senses brought a staggering awareness of her new plight. With acute dismay, she listened to the sound of retreating hoofbeats as the mare galloped off into the darkness, back in the direction of the camp.
She had no horse.
Here, in this arid wilderness, where life depended on the stamina of a man's mount and the availability of water.

Water.

The thought sent her frantically groping for the goatskin bag. Ragged relief flooded through her when her fingers touched the soft leather. At least she still had that.

Her gaze lifted to the eastern horizon that was beginning to lighten over a great, golden stretch of sand. She had no choice but to press on across the desert flats. She couldn't, wouldn't return to her savage captor.

Pushing herself up, Alysson slung the water bag and sack of food over her shoulder and struck out. The sand was no longer so deep and shifting as it had been, but it was coarse and gritty—and rough beneath her palms when sometimes she stumbled and fell. Shortly the sun rose to a great sphere of flame in the sky, the early-morning glare and the heat a portent of the difficulties to come. Though sweltering beneath her layers of clothing, Alysson was grateful for the protection of her burnous. She drew the hood close around her face to screen her skin from the harsh sun and windblown grit, and plodded on.

Against her will, she had to be careful to ration her water. Perishing of thirst would be a painful way to die, so she could allow herself only a trickle every half hour or so. If she were lucky enough to find a well or a spring, then she could drink her fill.

There was no well in sight. There was only vacant sky, empty sand, and the pitiless sea of the desert. She met no one, saw nothing but scurrying lizards.

Soon sand gave way to clay, broom to thorn and scrub. The cruel white haze blinded her, and heat drugged the air she took into her lungs, leaving her light-headed and fighting a terrible thirst. Each minute became an eternity as she struggled to stay on her feet, to keep going.

By early afternoon, the foolishness of her endeavor became apparent. She was utterly alone in this desolate emptiness, her water nearly gone, while the savage sun beat down mercilessly.

Her lips were caked, her tongue swollen, her throat on fire. A threatening blackness reeled before her eyes. And when she glanced up, she could see the scavenging birds
already beginning to wheel high above her head, searching the flat, scrub-covered plain for prey.
For her.

As the burning day dragged on, she lost all sense of time or distance, everything except the desperate need to drive on. In her weakest moments, she thought she might have welcomed death.

The mirage shimmering in the distance brought a sob from her throat. Water! The lake she had seen when Jafar had first brought her to this godforsaken end of the world.

She tried to run toward the precious, life-giving liquid, but she staggered and fell. Yet hope gave her new energy. Pushing herself up, Alysson forced her feet to move. She wouldn't be defeated. She
would
survive.

That was how Jafar found her—weaving between clumps of camel-thorn and Jericho rose, cursing the lake that never seemed to come closer.

"Blessed Allah . . . Alysson!"

She froze, praying she had dreamed the harsh shout, that she had imagined the galloping hoofbeats of his black stallion.

But she hadn't imagined it. The stallion was real, Jafar was real, and the ragged note of relief in his voice had been real.

When Jafar reached her, he brought the horse to a plunging halt. For the span of several heartbeats, he simply sat there, gazing down at her dazed, sunburned face, drinking in the sight. Half his tribe was out combing the desert in search of her, but they'd been forced to wait until dawn to begin. In the daylight the mare's hoofprints had been easy to track, but then they had abruptly ended. Realizing Alysson had lost her mount, Jafar had to fight to control the fear that rioted within him. The odds of her survival were slim, the odds of locating her before she perished from heat and thirst almost nonexistent.

Praying to his god and hers, Jafar had followed the footprints Alysson had left in the sand, footprints that later had disappeared on the hard earth. Only a miracle or the will of Allah had led him to her. That, and the dark flecks overhead that dipped and swung—the birds of prey tracking her.

Now that he had found her alive, his heart's erratic

pounding
settled back to something resembling normalcy; the coil of fear twisting in his gut slowly unraveled.

Urging the stallion close to her, Jafar tried to take Alysson up with him on his horse, but she backed away.

"No! Keep away from me!" The words croaked from her parched throat. She was too weak to continue standing, yet too proud to collapse, too stubborn to admit defeat.

Jafar glared at her. She would have died had he not discovered her. The stark relief that hed felt upon finding her splintered into slow-burning rage that she had endangered herself this way—and guilt that he had driven her to make the attempt.

But when she turned away to continue her toiling march, he didn't stop her. He would allow her this measure of pride. She would have to admit defeat soon. She couldn't go on much further.

Jafar followed slowly on his horse, riding alongside her. In only a few moments, however, his exasperation got the better of him. "It is foolish to be so stubborn,
Ehuresh.
You will die of thirst if you don't allow me to help you."

Alysson's chin came up as she forced a reply in a cracking voice, "Not . . . if I
reach . . .
the lake."

Jafar's gaze rose to the shimmering waves of heat on the horizon. He knew what she meant, what she hoped for. The burning sunlight reflecting from the blue-green shrub and giant patch of mud frosted with salt gave the appearance of a lake—but it was not.

"I am reluctant to disappoint you,
chérie,
but Chott al Hodna is not a true lake. It is a salt pan. It only appears that way from a distance. At this season, you will find water in the very center, but that is not for miles and miles."

Alysson stumbled to a halt, dismay stabbing her, making the heat and weariness too great to bear. Hopeless tears began to seep from her eyes. She caught one of them with her tongue, but it did nothing to quench her terrible thirst; it only teased her cruelly.

She staggered forward, but the hard ground grabbed at her, tripping her and yanking her down. The fall knocked the breath from her. For a moment she just lay there, dazed, defeated, surrounded by her fractured pride and an overwhelming hopelessness.

Venting a low oath, Jafar started to dismount in order to help her, but just then Alysson gave a sharp cry. Jafar caught a glimpse of a small crablike animal with a forked tail as it scurried away from her.

Dread filled him. The scorpion was not the harmless variety that inhabited the coastal plains. This had been larger and much darker—the deadly species that lived in the Sa-
haran
sands.

"Alysson!"
The word was a hoarse whisper as he flung himself from the stallion's back and ran to her side. "Were you stung?"

Gasping in pain, she clutched her right leg as he knelt beside her.
"Y-yes . . . on my . . . thigh."

She tried helplessly to rise, but he forced her to lie back. Rolling her over, Jafar ripped the material of her pantaloons to expose a red mark on her inner thigh that already was beginning to spread. His heart stopped beating. She would die unless he acted quickly.

Drawing his curved dagger from his waist-sash, Jafar ignored her gasp of alarm and issued a brusque order to her to be still. "This will cause you more pain, but I must suck out the venom."

"A . . . tourniquet first," she said through dry lips.
"Uncle
Cedric . . .
a doctor.
He would . . . prescribe a tourniquet . . . tie . . . above the wound."