Max Allan Collins

proph­ecy, no fear was in his face—only a faint smile that seemed to challenge any vision that might try to master him. 'I make my own destiny.'

She winced at the words, shaking her head slowly—it was if he spoke a foreign language. How could he think such a thing, much less say the words? She had spent her life in the company of men who paid her prophecies the strictest heed— who feared her words, and everything they might portend.

Yet to this man, this special man, the words of the gods were subservient to his will—the future something that could be molded. Was he right? she wondered. Could a person . .. a mortal. . . change the course of destiny?

'Haven't you had enough of visions?' he asked her, that small smile still on his lips, something else—something fervent—in his tone.

'What... what do you mean?'

The Akkadian swept her into his arms and kissed her, deeply, passionately ... and she responded, clutching him desperately, returning his kisses with the same hunger. As they embraced, he lowered her to the sandy floor and, as firelight jumped and danced, as if in celebration, their souls, and much more, entwined.

As they lay in each other's arm, Cassandra watched this brave, foolish man as he slept, his slumber deep; for him to have battled Balthazar, in the wake of nearly dying the night before, was a feat few men could survive. All it seemed to mean for Mathayus, however, was the need for a good night's sleep.

She could not risk kissing him, not even his fore­head or his cheek, for he might wake; instead, her heart aching and yet so full, she slipped from his slumbering embrace and out into the moonlight.

She felt different—more a woman, perhaps less a mystic. Still, she believed in the world beyond this one, and walked out to the edge of a precipice, where, washed in the moon's ivory, she lighted a candle, in ceremony, kneeling to place it on a rock. Supine before the flickering flame, she whispered a silent prayer.

This man, she told the almost full moon, believes that the future you have shown me can be changed. Guide me, mother— though your daughter is a woman now. Guide me, still, and tell me what to do.

She listened, and—within her mind—thoughts grew, whether from a mystic mother or herself, who can say? Yet she did pledge herself to a course of action, dictated by those thoughts, perilous though that might be, since she hoped now to change the future by her own means.

Cassandra blew out the candle, and smiled.

Before long she had found her way to the corral where the bandits kept their horses and camels. She of course went to the white beast, and stood beside Hanna, stroking the camel's snout, gently.

'You love him, too, don't you?' she asked the animal.

The camel shook its head—perhaps a reflex, or an answer.

'Then,' the sorceress whispered into the camel's ear, 'you must help me save him.'

And, in an action heretofore reserved for Matha­yus alone, Hanna bent down—any cantankerousness

gone, only the most docile response—and Cassandra climbed aboard.

Soon, the white camel—her lovely rider looking albino herself in the rays of the almost-full moon— was galloping away from the oasis, toward Gom-morah.

And the man she despised as much she loved the Akkadian.

                  _{The Oracle's Return}

B

althazar—snoring in a kingly cot the size of a boat, his arms around one of the two beautiful wenches with whom he slept—had trained himself to be stirred from his slumber, no matter how deep, by the slightest suspicious sound, no matter how small. At dawn, a rustling around a campfire, well across the amphitheater-like hideaway, was all it took to rouse the sleeping giant.

From a precipice near his tent, hands on his hips, the Nubian loomed over his camp, surveying the tranquil, unwoken world of the coalition of tribes, this