A Thousand Nights Read Free Page B

outside the home, and certainly not to other men. I was not a wife yet, but I was as good as wed, and
Lo-Melkhiin might be the kind of husband who expected a demure, retiring creature.
    “You are welcome,” the guard said, and there was no fear in his voice. He still did not look at me, and I knew it was because he pitied me. He pitied my death.
    Lo-Melkhiin swung back into his saddle, his heavy robe billowing behind him, and his light boots tucked against the belly of his horse. At that signal the other guards remounted. I shifted,
trying to find a place on my seat that did not feel bruised, but could not. I ground my teeth behind my veil, and we rode on.
    Time is an odd thing in the desert. They say that in the city, the Skeptics have found a way to measure time with water and glass, but in the desert, the sand goes on forever, and takes time
with it. You cannot tell how far you have come, or how far you have to go. The sand is what kills you, if you die in the desert, because the sand is everywhere, and it does not care if you get out.
So we rode for hours, but it felt as though we rode for days. We were not on a caravan route, so we passed no travelers or other villages. Had I to guess, I would have said that we were riding in a
straight line back to Lo-Melkhiin’s qasr, where other travelers would have followed the circuitous route made safe by the oases. But our direction, like our duration, was blown about with the
sand.
    As the sun drew near the horizon, and the sky turned from blasted blue to a dark and darker red, I saw a distortion in the distance, and knew that we were, finally, close. Lo-Melkhiin’s
father’s father’s father had built the qasr of white stone. Our father and brothers had told us of it, for they had seen it when they were out with the caravan, and now that my mother
and my sister’s mother no longer traveled, they liked to hear tales of the world. In the daytime it gleamed, gathering the sun’s rays into itself, heating slowly as the day progressed.
As night approached and the desert cooled, the heat came out of the walls and tried to find the sun again, but since the sun was setting, the heat moved in weaving lines, seen from a distance like
through a veil of the finest silk, blurred and indistinct. But it was no false vision, seen by one sunstroked and delusional. It was solid, and we were drawing near.
    The city was made of three parts. At the heart was the qasr, where Lo-Melkhiin lived, met petitioners, and where the temple stood. Around it were the crooked streets and pale houses, the dust
and dirty tents. And around that was the wall, high and strong. There had not been invaders in generations, but the wall was from a less peaceful time. We prospered under Lo-Melkhiin—or, men
did, and it was men who kept the accounts of everything, from grain and sheep to life and death.
    The city gates stood open, for Lo-Melkhiin was expected. I imagined that at one time the people had come to see Lo-Melkhiin’s bride to wish her well. In my village, we sang for prosperity
and long life when the bride went past. Those songs were not heard inside the qasr, not for me. There were people in the streets, come to see their momentary queen as I passed under the towers, but
they were quiet and did not sing. Most did not look at me for very long. Mothers pulled their children away, hiding them in doorways instead of behind tent flaps, though they looked and dressed the
way our mothers did. The guards rode close by me now, but Lo-Melkhiin rode by himself. He had no fear of his own people; most of them he did not rule harshly.
    The horses could sense that they were nearing home, and pranced through the streets. The guards sat up straight in their saddles, trying to look the part, though they were covered in dust. I
could only cling to the reins and pray that I did not fall. The city had roused me again, lights gleaming warmly. I had the false sense that I was home. The long hours in the