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Among the odds and ends I learned from the raïs during that nightmare caravan, one was: Stragglers were doomed. Travelers at the rear of the column, without realizing it, tended to lag behind. Little by little, the gap between them and the main body widened. The camels, when roped head to tail, plodded steadily forward; but the journeyers on foot, or on horseback, had to move faster and faster. In no time, the caravan could outdistance them. By then, it was too late. There was no way they could catch up. Separated, isolated from the group, for all practical purposes they were lost.

So I always kept an eye on Baksheesh. Salamon trudged as usual beside the donkey; Shira, with her mare. Baksheesh had stopped having anything to do with the pack animals. And I, as well as being the karwan-bushi, took up the profession of camel-puller.

Last time I had glanced back at him, Baksheesh was managing well enough on his own, limping along the soft shoulder of the trail. Now I turned and saw him sitting on the ground. Or so it seemed. First, I thought he had stopped to console his bunions. I was about to tell him to get a move on. Until I realized the lower half of him had disappeared.

At that moment, with Shira at his heels, Salamon went running past me. Baksheesh, meanwhile, was yelling at the top of his voice, waving his arms, and gradually sinking from view.

By the time I reached him, his shoulders already had vanished; his arms waved frantically in the air but they, too, looked about to submerge.

Salamon motioned me to keep away. He had taken the donkey’s rope halter and now trod cautiously, testing the ground at every step. Baksheesh puffed and snorted. Salamon tossed the rope at him.

“Take hold,” he called. “Stop flapping about; it will only make matters worse. And keep your mouth shut,” he added, for Baksheesh was spitting out gobs of what seemed to be a syrupy mess of wet dirt.

“Quicksand,” Shira said between her teeth. “Idiot. How did he get himself into it?”

If quicksand could be found anywhere in Keshavar, Baksheesh would be sure to step in it. I had heard only vaguely of quicksand: a harmless-looking patch of earth that would swallow an unwary traveler in the blink of an eye.

This is not altogether true. As I later learned from Salamon, drowning in quicksand takes a long time; in fact it’s close to impossible unless you set your mind on it.

The real danger, in this case, was that Baksheesh, like all of us, was exhausted and not much able to follow Salamon’s instructions. On top of that, the two of them were at cross purposes.

The more Salamon urged him to stay calm, the more the frantic Baksheesh flung himself about. He kept sinking deeper, then bobbing up again, snorting and choking. He did have enough of his wits left to seize the end of the rope and hang on to it.

“Excellent,” Salamon reassured him. “Now, lie back as if you were floating in a bathtub.”

“I should know bathtubs?” muttered Baksheesh between mouthfuls of sand.

He did, at last, float to the surface. Shira and I helped Salamon haul on the rope and dragged him clear. By this time, Baksheesh was so thoroughly soaked and covered with brownish wet sand that he looked like a loaf of gingerbread. Once on solid ground, he dropped in a heap, head between his hands. As soon as he got his breath back and regained some of his strength, he wailed as much as he had done while we were heaving him out.

“Accursed pit!” he blubbered. “Every evil imp in Keshavar had me by the heels. I was at the gates of Jehannum!”

“Oh, I very much doubt that,” Salamon said, by way of soothing him. “There’s more Jehannum here aboveground than below it.”

“That’s what you think,” Baksheesh retorted. “Then, old Spaghettini, answer me this: How did I come close to drowning in the middle of a desert?”

“There’s water all around us. Sometimes a little of it seeps up to the surface,” explained Salamon. “But there are great rivers and tributaries flowing beneath your feet. Like the veins and arteries under your skin.”

“Under yours, not mine,” Baksheesh said. “I know when I’ve been to Jehannum and back.”

“Ungrateful wretch,” I said, as Shira and I got him to his feet. “He saved your life and you don’t give him so much as a word of thanks?”

“None required,” put in Salamon. “Sooner or later he would have crawled out on his own.”

“Aha!” cried Baksheesh. “There you hear him. He says so himself. Thank him? I won’t. He insulted me when he called me softhearted. If anything, he owes me an apology.”

I would have taken Baksheesh by the scruff of his neck and shaken a little gratitude out of him; but I was too thirsty to worry about polite behavior. So I let it pass.

Apart from having been terrified out of his wits, and covered with mud rapidly drying on him like a brown shell, Baksheesh was none the worse for wear.

On the contrary: He talked about little else. His horrifying experience crowded out all his previous complaints. He even forgot about his bunions. Each time we halted, he trotted out some new detail he had neglected to mention. The pit, in his recollection, grew deeper and deeper, his struggles all the greater.

“I can tell you I never thought I’d see the light of day again,” he declared, for the fifth or sixth time. “I was stifling, suffocating, my lungs bursting while the dreadful mess closed around me.

“How did I find the strength to free myself?” he blathered on. “Only the thought that you, O Noble Benefactor, would be lost without my services, leaving you in hopeless confusion. That gave me new heart as, inch by inch, I fought my way to the surface.”

One thing had slipped his mind: Salamon, Shira, and I did not figure in his account. We might as well have not been there at all. I would have reminded him and taken him to task for it, but Shira motioned for me to let him ramble on.

Which he did. On the one hand, it passed the time and took our minds off our thirst. On the other—for an occasional fleeting moment and not in any serious way—I came close to wishing we had left him to fend for himself in the quicksand.

I blame those less-than-kindly thoughts on my own difficulties. Water flowed through my waking moments—and sleeping ones, such as they were. I had never imagined it in so many enticing forms. Rivers, cascades, bubbling brooks, the public fountain in Magenta. Water in brimming glassfuls, in rain barrels, pitchers, buckets, all of it clear and sparkling.

Once, I dreamed I had finally discovered the royal treasury and found its endless chambers crammed with enormous jars of—water.

In reality, what was left at the bottom of our water bags stank. We drank it anyway.

Midmorning of the next day, I saw the town.

I gave a glad cry, which came out sounding like a duck in distress. I dropped the camel’s rope and ran toward it. Shira put out a hand to hold me back. I pulled away and stumbled forward.

Shahryar-eh-Ghermezi was a sight to behold, more glorious than Cheshim had suggested. I stared breathless at sun-gilded towers, terraces of flowers, palm trees gently swaying in the breeze.

I noticed one unusual thing.

The town was floating in midair.