... and she found herself kneeling, at the very spot where she'd stood accepting the boy's gift, and her hand was again on the child's head, fingers in his hair, but now he lay cold and still with death. Around them in the bandit hideaway, the night was rent with screams and flames consumed the tents and walkways.
Her eyes turned skyward, to ask the gods why, and a full moon blazed mutely back at her. She turned her gaze to the camp around her, where men, women and children lay sprawled in death, blood everywhere. Nearby, the horse thief lay with his eyes wide in death, his small torso twisted.
At the pounding of hoofbeats, she turned as Memnon himself rode straight for her, red-turbaned warriors on his either side, their brethren rampaging through the camp, killing anything that breathed.
And the warlord glared at her, furious with his sorceress, yet intent on her capture—racing toward her, to retrieve his oracle. She recoiled as he reached down from his galloping steed to snatch her up into his arms, and she turned away in horror ... ... and was back in the camp, where the only fires were cooking food or providing warmth, and the only shrieks were of laughter. The little boy looked up at her strangely, afraid now—her trance had spooked him, and he backed away.
On quick but unsure feet, she found her way to the tent, perched by a campfire among some rocks, and went in and sat on the ground, looking up through the open flap at the moon ... the almost full moon....
Sometime later, Mathayus entered and sensed her discomfort, asking, 'Is something wrong?'
She did not look at him, her eyes on the moon. 'Memnon knows I'm here ... or at least, he will— soon.' She pointed to the sky. 'The moon is entering the House of Scorpio. Tomorrow is the night when what I saw in my vision will come to pass ... Memnon will release his armies, and they will ride into the heart of this camp . .. and rip it out.'
Mathayus knelt beside her. 'The moon is just... the moon. And Memnon will die, at these hands, prophecy be damned.'
She turned her gaze upon him, admiring his bravery, but knowing his disbelief in the spiritual was foolish; without her magic, after all, he would not be alive....
'I must know,' she said.
'Know what?'
And she lay her fingers gently against his cheek, closing her eyes, summoning a vision that, in a flash of white, filled her mind ...
... Memnon stood atop an altar, erected in the elevated courtyard of his palace, the city of Gomorrah spread out before him like a banquet; his hands were raised to the night sky, where a huge moon. .. a full moon, ringed in silver... glowed so intensely, the sun was not its rival.
'Great gods above,' Memnon cried, his voice ringing out above his city, 'look down upon me!. .. And make me one with you.'
Behind the warlord, Mathayus silently crept across the courtyard, sword in hand, approaching the steps that led up to the altar where Memnon, his back to the Akkadian, stood.
Cassandra shuddered, as the vision continued, but shifted, as now ...
. .. a red-turbaned soldier, bow in hand, quiver of arrows on his back, ran through a palace hallway, lined with leaping flames, to burst out a doorway onto the courtyard, stepping on a small yellow flower, growing up between stones in the floor. The archer could see Mathayus, coming up behind the warlord, sword raised.
The archer notched an arrow, and let fly. ..
..'. and the arrow found purchase in the Akkadian's back! As Mathayus fell to the palace floor, Cassandra screamed, 'No!'
In the moonlight filtering through the tent flap, the Akkadian held the woman by her arms, but the sorceress turned away, eyes squeezed shut, a single jewel of tear trickling down her smooth cheek.
'What did you see?' the Akkadian demanded.
Swallowing, trembling, refusing to look at him, she said, 'If you go up against Memnon ... you will fail. You will die. That, Akkadian, is your destiny.'
He spoke her name, and turned her to him, cupping her chin, lifting her face to his, her eyes tortured, her lashes pearled with tears.
'Hear me,' he said, and despite the dire
