The girl was skipping. His first impulse was to swat her for insolemnity before the fanes. But it had been an age since he had given her any attention.
Nassef remarked, “The child is a savage sometimes.”
“And when was laughter an abomination unto the Lord? Leave us.” He let her slide into his lap. “What is it, darling?” She was nearly twelve now.
Had it been that long? Life was whistling by, and he seemed little nearer fulfilling his destiny. That unholy Yousif. Nassef had had so many successes, but they had meant nothing as long as the Wahlig had kept the Movement bottled up in Sebil el Selib.
“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to see if you were done thinking yet.” She snuggled, moving in his lap.
He was shamed by the impulse the Evil One sent fluttering across his mind. Dark-winged vampire. Not with his own daughter.
She was on the precipice: womanhood was but a moment away. Soon her breasts would begin to swell, her hips to broaden. She would be marriageable. Already his followers were scandalized because he allowed her the run of Sebil el Selib, unveiled, and often permitted her to accompany Nassef on his safer journies.
He suspected Nassef wanted her himself.
And still she had no name.
“You know I don’t believe that, sweetheart. Something besides your grouchy old papa brought you here.” He was acutely aware of the disapproval of the priests tending the shrines.
“Well...”
“I can’t say yes or no till you tell me.”
In a staccato burst, “Fatima promised me she’d teach me to dance if you said it was okay. Please? Oh, please, Papa, can I? Please?”
“Slow down. Slow down.”
Fatima was Meryem’s body servant, and a successful piece of propaganda. A reformed prostitute, she was living proof that all who came seeking were found worthy in the eyes of El Murid’s Lord. Even women.
It was El Murid’s most radical departure from orthodox dogma, and he was having trouble selling it still.
Women had been doubly disadvantaged since the Fall. A woman had brought the nation to its present desperate plight. Now the most rigidly fundamentalist of men allowed their wives in their presence only for purposes of procreation. Even relative liberals like Yousif of el Aswad kept their women cloistered and on the extreme fringes of their lives. The daughters of the poor were sometimes strangled at birth, or sold to slavers who trained them for resale as prostitutes.
A prostitute, socially, was as far beneath a wife as a wife was beneath a husband.
Yet even in Hammad al Nakir Nature had her way with the young. “This is serious.” Little girls seldom became interested in dances unless also interested in interesting boys in girls. Then they were little girls no more. And the boys were no longer boys.
It was time to speak to Meryem about veils.
“Time, he rides a swift steed, little one.” He sighed. “So soon come and gone. Everything past in the wink of an eye.”
She began twisting her face into a pout, sure she was about to be refused.
“Let me think. Give me a few days, will you?”
“All right,” she said brightly. His asking for a delay was, inevitably, the prelude to his giving in. She kissed him, scooted off his lap, became all skinny, windmilling arms and legs as she ran away.
Disapproving priestly stares followed her passage.
“Hadj!” El Murid called to his chief bodyguard. “We’re going to make a journey. Prepare.”
Far south of Sebil el Selib, south of el Aswad, stood a mountain rising slightly separate from the mother range called Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni. It was called Jebal al Djinn, Mountain of Demons, or, sometimes, the Horned Mountain. When seen from the southwest it resembled a great horned head rising from the desert. It was there El Murid met his angel when he felt lost enough to require face to face advice. He’d never wondered why the Lord’s messenger had chosen a meeting place so remote and of such evil repute.
The Disciple’s faith in his angel was tried severely during a long, solitary ascent which left his body feeling tortured. Would the messenger even respond after all this time? El Murid had not come seeking him since before his ill-starred visit to Al Rhemish. But the angel had promised. On Jebal al Djinn, though, even the promises of angels seemed suspect. The mountain was not a good place. It was cursed. No one knew why any longer, but the evil inhabiting the stones and trees remained, palpably beating upon any intruder. Each visit more than the last, El Murid wished his mentor had chosen somewhere more benevolent.
He hardened his resolve. Evil had to be defied in its very fastnesses. How else could the righteous gain the strength to resist the Darkness when it came against their own strongholds?
His doubts grew as a night and most of a day creaked past and there was no response from his heavenly interlocutor. Another evening was gathering. His campfire was sending shadows playing tag over barren rock.
The emissary arrived in a display of thunder and lightning that could be seen for leagues around. He raced his winged steed three times around the horned peaks before alighting fifty yards from the Disciple’s fire. El Murid rose. He gazed at his own feet respectfully.
The angel, who persisted in assuming the shape of a small old man, limped toward him over the shattered basalt. Slung across his back was a cornucopia-shaped instrument which looked far too massive for his strength.
He swung his burden down, sat upon it. “I thought I would hear from you sooner.”
