“And we go there now, in the middle of the night?” said Faber.
“Yes. We must go there now.”
“And please tell me why, again?” persisted Faber, sounding tired.
“To pray and think, Monsieur Faber. And wait for information that should be forthcoming.”
Woodgerd called back to them, “Move out. Stay quiet. We’ll hide in the ruins for the rest of the night and the day. Tomorrow at sunset we’ll start off again.”
Faber shook his head. “I do not understand this waste of time. . . .”
Sohkoor held up a hand. “You will, my friend. You will.”
***
The night was incredibly still and the moonlit landscape unnerving. Having entered the ruins along the Decumanus Maximus, as Sohkoor explained the main street, the group turned left onto another major thoroughfare and followed the scholar through the leveled remnants of the city to a structure he described as the forum and capitol, whose walls and columns were still relatively intact. There they settled into the shadows, hidden below the surrounding terrain within the crumbled foundation of a building next door. The troopers—in their jellabas Wake now thought of them as Arab warriors—were scattered among the other ruins, leaving Faber, the Americans and Sohkoor resting near an intricate mosaic on the floor of the capitol.
“Hmm. I’m wonderin’ jus’ what that might be?” whispered Rork, pointing at figures formed in the mosaic.
“A Roman myth, I suppose, but I don’t know which,” replied Wake, trying to remember his lessons on the classics from twenty years earlier. He had always considered them a waste of time. Oh, if only that headmaster could see me now, he thought.
“The trilogy of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva,” said Faber with a sigh as he lay out on the rocks. “One of the Romans’ major mythologies.”
Sohkoor looked bemused. “Quite correct, Mr. Ambassador. And quite possibly apropos of our current situation. But we must wait to find that out. And unfortunately, waiting is not a trait well practiced in European and American cultures.”
Faber rolled over, facing the royal scholar. “I am not impressed by you and this charade of a search, Sohkoor, and I am sick of this heartless hell of a place and its backward ways. By God, you need a civilized country to come in here and teach you how to live in the modern world!” Faber was snarling by then. “And you think you know everything, playing the scholar and spouting other people’s languages. You know absolutely nothing!”
Sohkoor, unfazed, tilted his head to study the Frenchman. In the silvered light, Wake could see the dark eyes hood over into slits and hear the tone descend into a slow graveled bass.
“Mr. Ambassador . . . you may be right . . . but I think not. And I do know some things, more exactly, what is going to happen to you . . . to your soul . . . on the evening of this coming Tuesday. You will become a better man.”
Rork and Wake exchanged glances as Faber rolled away from Sohkoor and grumbled, “Oh, go to hell, you pagan savage. . . .”
“Laa, ensha’llaah,” Sohkoor hissed, then with a smile translated for Wake and Rork, “No, God willing. . . .”
The cool air rustled up some dust for a moment, then a gentle wind sprang up, bringing a whiff of juniper. Within minutes it grew to a real breeze with no clouds in the sky, no storm on the horizon. It was a wind from nowhere.
Sohkoor stood up from the rubble, faced east, and spread his hands upward, raising a lilting chant to the sky, “Irifi! Bekheer, bekheer, lhamdoo llaah! Shukran bezzef ’llaah. A’llaah akbar! Aqmaar ’adHeem!”
He let out a huge sigh and sat again with a smile, nodding at Woodgerd, who cocked an eyebrow at Wake and shrugged. Wake couldn’t stand it and asked the scholar, “Sir, what was it you said just then?”
“That the dry wind has come and it is fine, praise God. Thank you so much, oh God. For God is great and the moon, it is marvelous.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t quite follow you, Sohkoor.”
The Arab reached out and touched Wake’s shoulder. In the cool air his fingers felt amazingly hot through the cloth. “We have been blessed tonight with two omens of success—the irifi wind of the Atlas that flows down from the mountains to the desert, and the moon that shines bright though it is only half full-grown. I thanked God for giving us these signs. We are on the right path.”
“Oh, I see,” said Wake, looking into those eyes that seemed so old yet so fierce.
“No, I think you cannot yet, my friend, but you will. You will see clearly soon.”
34
Fés
Just before dawn Wake shook Rork and spoke close to his ear. “Company arriving, Sean. Something’s happening.”
They watched as a bent figure in a dark woolen burnous met with Sohkoor and Woodgerd on the main street, the conversation animated with gestures. It went on for at least ten minutes, then each said farewell, the stranger hobbling down the old Roman road out of the ruined city.
“Everybody up. We leave now,” Woodgerd ordered. He pointed to the ridge a few miles to the east. “By sunrise I want us over there.”
Sohkoor looked pleased. “Good information.”
“Who was that man?” asked Wake.
“A mystical friend of mine. Known as a marabout—a holy man. He is one hundred and two years in age in your calendar, and very wise. He just told us where to go and what to look for. Tonight we shall be near Meknes and when the moon shines again, we shall see, then we shall hear, then we will know.”
It sounded like hokum to Wake, who was beginning to question if they were intentionally being led astray. “Ah, know exactly what, Sohkoor?”
“Where the
