asked if he could see them. Jebel said he didn’t think the um Hamata would mind, and the pair hurried off to climb the cliff.
There was silence in the tent behind them. Then Qasr Bint appeared and studied Jebel and Tel Hesani as they climbed. He lifted his gaze, squinted at the top of the cliff, then went back inside the tent, where the debate began again, only now the Um Biyara were even quieter and more secretive than before.
That night Qasr Bint announced their departure. “We’ve spent too long here,” he told Khaz Ali. “Your people clearly won’t convert, so it’s time to move on. We will leave in the morning.”
“We’ll be sad to see you go,” Khaz Ali said. “If you ever wish to return, there will always be a welcome for you in Hamata.”
“Thank you,” Qasr Bint said. “Before we depart, we wondered if we might share one last meal together, to celebrate our friendship.”
“Of course — we’ll have a feast!” Khaz Ali boomed. “We’ll even kill a couple of goats in your honor, so there will be meat to enjoy too.”
Jebel was sad to be leaving and worried about what would happen once they were back on the road, under the thumb of the Um Biyara. He thought about trying to hide in a cave and asking the um Hamata to protect him. But it would be wrong to involve the peaceful cave dwellers in his predicament. His enslavement was his own concern, nobody else’s, and it would be selfish to put his new friends at risk. If he and Tel Hesani escaped later, perhaps they could track back here and seek shelter.
The um Hamata laid on the finest food and drink that they could muster. There were dancing, singing, and storytelling. The cave dwellers couldn’t ferment wine or ale, but they had a barrel of whiskey that they’d fished from the river some weeks back. They cracked it open, and many toasts followed. The Um Biyara responded warmly and seemed to drink as much as their hosts. But they were secretly pouring their whiskey into the earth, keeping clear heads for the work to come.
When most of the um Hamata were swaying on their feet, Qasr Bint proposed a toast of his own. Jebel had been playing with Samerat, leaping over drunken um Hamata, but they stopped to hear what the shaven-headed leader of the Um Biyara had to say.
“My poor, sinful, misguided friends,” Qasr Bint began. The um Hamata cheered, misinterpreting it as a joke. “My children and I came here to reveal great truths to you and to guide you into the arms of the gods. We thought we could win everlasting life for your spirits. We believed we were dealing with honest, decent people, but we now see that we were mistaken. We have learned of your devious rock spirits and the sacrifices that you make. You worship false gods and are thus unworthy of salvation. Your spirits deserve to flicker out once you die, and the sooner you are wiped from the face of Makhras, the better.”
The laughter died away as drunken frowns replaced smiles. Far to Qasr Bint’s right, Tel Hesani sensed trouble, but it was too late to act.
“Brother Bint,” Khaz Ali said, getting to his feet, “you should not say such—”
“You are foul!” Qasr Bint screamed with unexpected venom, pointing a furious finger at Khaz Ali. “You cavort with demons. You turn your back on all that is holy. You are beyond redemption. And so you must…
He roared the last words, and they became an order. The Um Biyara leapt to their feet, drew swords and other weapons, and fell upon the unsuspecting um Hamata.
It was plain, bloody slaughter. The um Hamata never had a chance to defend themselves. A dozen were butchered in the first few seconds. As the rest stumbled to their feet, senses and reactions dulled by the whiskey, the Um Biyara mowed them down like stalks of fleshy corn.
Jebel screamed as Khaz Ali was hacked at by Qasr Bint. He watched, head spinning, as Samerat ran to his father’s aid, only to be caught by a pair of women, who stuck knives into the boy and shrieked like harpies.
One of the children near Jebel ran for the safety of the caves. He’d just started to climb when he was picked off the cliff by a laughing Um Biyara, who swung him around and cracked his head open on the rocks.
Jebel snapped. Still screaming, he looked for a weapon, found a knife that somebody had dropped, picked it up, and ran at the Um Biyara, intent on killing or being killed. He got no more than six steps before he was wrestled to the ground. His assailant knocked the knife away and pinned him. Jebel struggled, spat at the man, then stopped when he saw the face of his captor — Tel Hesani.
“Let me up!” Jebel shouted as the bloodshed continued.
“No,” Tel Hesani said. “They’ll kill you if you fight.”
“I don’t care,” Jebel yelled. “They’re monsters. We have to stop them. They’ll murder everybody if we don’t —”
“They’ll kill them anyway,” Tel Hesani cut in. “We can’t prevent it, Jebel.”
“But Khaz Ali! Samerat!”
“Dead.” Tel Hesani sighed. “We can’t save them.”
“Then let’s join them!” Jebel howled. “Let’s die with them!”
“No,” Tel Hesani said. “That would be a waste of life. You’ll realize that later, when you calm down.”
Jebel cursed the Um Kheshabah, calling him a worthless slave, a son of a mongrel, and a whole lot worse. Tel Hesani accepted the insults and watched the savagery unfold around them, sticking to his task with miserable determination.
Barely four minutes after the first blow had been struck, the last um Hamata was dispatched, and their butchers strolled around, sticking swords through the fallen, making sure that nobody was faking death. As Qasr Bint prepared to spear Khaz Ali, the dying cave dweller raised his head and snarled.
“No good will come… of this,” he gasped. “All the luck… of Makhras… will be against you now. You’ll die horribly… like the scum you are… and burn in the fires of… whatever world lies beyond.”
“Shhh,” Qasr Bint snickered. “Dead men shouldn’t make so much noise.” Then he slowly drove his sword into Khaz Ali’s chest, relishing the um Hamata’s death screams.
“What about these two?” one of the zealots shouted, pointing at Jebel and Tel Hesani. “They’ll never convert. I say we kill them now and—”
“No!” Qasr Bint snapped. “We wouldn’t have known of the evil spirits if not for the boy. They’re bound to us by fate. They’ll convert in the end, I’m sure of it.”
The Um Biyara looked disappointed, but he wasn’t fool enough to disobey his leader. Shrugging, he fell in with the others, who were working quickly and efficiently. They placed all of the bodies together and cut up several of them, salting the strips of flesh. There was plenty of other food that they could have taken, but they’d developed a taste for human meat. Flesh was what they craved now, even more than converts.
Later that night, their work complete, the Um Biyara broke camp and moved on. Jebel and Tel Hesani marched in the middle, hemmed in by the others, hands tied behind their backs. They were almost out of sight of the cliff when Jebel remembered the baby.
“We’ve got to go back!” he yelled. “There’s a baby. We have to rescue it.”
“A baby?” Qasr Bint frowned.
“A few months old. It hasn’t done any harm. You can rear it as an Um Biyara.”
Qasr Bint scratched his chin, then sniffed. “We have no time for babies.” He motioned his people forward. Jebel kicked and screamed as hard as he could, but his protests were ignored, and they marched off into the darkness, leaving behind the cooling corpses of the um Hamata and the echoing cries of a young child who was doomed to die alone in the confines of the gloomy, death-riddled caves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jebel wouldn’t talk to Tel Hesani for a few days, hating the slave for holding him back when he would have preferred to die. He marched in silence, despising his companions, Makhras, life, everything. But then, as they passed through a forest one evening, he saw a squirrel crawl out of a hole in a tree and pause, as if checking the weather. At that moment a ball of snow dropped from a branch and plopped onto the squirrel’s head. The animal
