DECEMBER 4, 12:18 A.M.
DHOFAR MOUNTAINS
SAFIA WOKE from slumber, falling. She threw her arms out, panic racking her body, as familiar as her own breath. Agony speared her shoulder.
“Calm yourself, sister,” someone said near her ear. “I have you.”
The world swirled into focus, midnight dark. She was propped against a couched camel, who chewed its cud with indifference. A woman loomed at her side, an arm under her good shoulder, holding her up.
“Where…?” she mumbled, but her lips seemed glued together. She tried to find her legs, but failed. Memory slowly returned. The fight at the tomb. Gunfire filled her head. Flashes of images. One face. Painter. She shuddered in the woman’s arms. What had happened? Where was she?
She finally found enough strength to stand, leaning heavily on the camel. Safia noted that her wounded shoulder had been crudely bandaged, wrapped to slow the bleeding. It ached with every movement.
The woman at her side, shadowy in the gloom, appeared to be the one who had rescued her; only now she wore a desert cloak.
“Help comes,” the other whispered.
“Who are you?” she forced out, suddenly noting the cold of the night. She was in some jungle grotto. The rain had stopped, but drops still wept from the canopy overhead. Palm and tamarind trees rose all around her. Tangles of lianas and hanging gardens of jasmine draped everywhere, perfuming the air.
The woman remained silent. She pointed an arm.
A bit of fiery light pierced the jungle ahead, glowing brightly through the ropy vines. Someone was coming, bearing aloft a torch or lamp.
Safia had an urge to flee, but her body was too weak to obey.
The arm around her shoulder squeezed as if the woman had heard her heart, but it didn’t feel like she was attempting to hold Safia captive, only to reassure her.
In moments, Safia’s eyes acclimated to the gloom enough to recognize that the jungle immediately before her hid a rocky limestone cliff, thick with vines, creepers, and small bushes. The approaching light came from a tunnel in the face of the cliff. Such caverns and passages riddled the Dhofar Mountains, formed from the trickles of monsoon flows melting through the limestone.
As the light reached the tunnel entrance, Safia spotted three figures: an old woman, a child of perhaps twelve, and a second young woman who could’ve been the twin of the one beside her. All were identically dressed in desert cloaks, hoods thrown back.
Additionally, each bore an identical bit of decoration: a ruby tattoo at the outer corner of the left eye. A single teardrop.
Even the child who carried the glass oil lantern.
“She who was lost,” the woman at her side intoned.
“Has come home,” the elder said, leaning on a cane. Her hair was gray, tied in a braid, but her face, though lined, looked vital.
Safia found it hard to meet those eyes, but also impossible to turn away.
“Be welcome,” the elder said, speaking English, stepping aside.
Safia was assisted through the entrance, supported by the woman. Once she was through, the child led the way, lantern held high. The elderly woman kept behind them, thudding with a walking stick. The third woman left the tunnel and strode to the couched camel.
Safia was led onward.
No one spoke for several steps.
Safia, edgy with questions, could not hold her tongue. “Who are you? What do you want with me?” Her voice sounded petulant even to her own ears.
“Be at peace,” the elderly woman whispered behind her. “You are safe.”
For now, Safai added silently. She had noted the long dagger carried in the belt of the woman who had left the tunnel behind them.
“All answers will be given by our hodja.”
Safia startled. A hodja was a tribal shaman, always female. They were the keepers of knowledge, healers, oracles. Who were these people? As she continued, she noted a continual wisp of jasmine in the air. The scent calmed her, reminding her of home, of mother, of security.
Still, the pain in her wounded shoulder kept her focused. Blood had begun to flow anew, through the bandage and down her arm.
She heard a scuffing sound behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The third woman had returned. She bore two burdens, collected from the camel. In one hand, she carried the silver suitcase, battered now, that held the iron heart. And on her shoulder leaned the iron spear with its bust of the Queen of Sheba.
They had stolen the two artifacts from Cassandra.
Safia’s heart thudded louder, vision tightening.
Were they thieves? Had she been rescued or been kidnapped again?
The tunnel stretched ahead, continuing deep under the mountain. They had passed side tunnels and caves, angling this way and that. She was quickly lost. Where were they taking her?
Finally the air seemed to freshen, growing stronger, the scent of jasmine richer. The passage lightened ahead. She was led forward. A wind flowed down the throat of the tunnel, coming from up ahead.
As they rounded a bend, the tunnel dumped into a large cavern.
Safia stepped into it.
No, not a cavern, but a great bowl of an amphitheater, the roof of which, high overhead, bore a small opening to the sky. Water flowed through the hole in a long, trickling waterfall, draining into a small pond below. Five tiny campfires circled the pool, like the points of a star, illuminating the flowering vines that wreathed the room and hung in long tangles from the roof, some reaching the shallow bowl of the floor.
Safia recognized the geology. It was one of the countless sinkholes that peppered the region. Some of the deepest were found in Oman.
Safia gaped.
More cloaked figures moved or sat about the chamber. Some thirty or so. Faces turned toward her as the party entered. The illuminated cavern reminded Safia of the thieves’ cave from the story of Ali Baba.
Only these forty thieves were all women.
All ages.
Safia stumbled into the room, suddenly weak from the trek, blood running hot down one arm, the rest of her body shivering.
A figure rose by one of the fires. “Safia?”
She focused on the speaker. The woman was not dressed like the others. Safia could make no sense of her presence here. “Kara?”
1:02 A.M.
THUMRAIT AIR BASE, OMAN
CASSANDRA LEANED over the chart table in the captain’s office. Using a satellite map of the region, she had re-created the curator’s map. With a blue Sharpie marker, she had drawn a line from the tomb in Salalah to the one in the mountains, and with a red marker, a line from Job’s tomb to the open desert. She had circled their destination in red, the location of the lost city.
Her present position, Thumrait Air Base, lay only thirty miles away.
“How quickly can you have the supplies ready?” she asked.
The young captain licked his lips. He was the leader of the Harvest Falcon depot, the USAF’s source of supplies and war materials for its bases and troops throughout the region. He carried a clipboard and tapped items off with the tip of a ballpoint pen. “Tents, shelters, equipment, rations, fuel, water, medical supplies, and generators are already being loaded into transport helicopters. You’ll be supplied on-site at zero seven hundred as instructed.”
She nodded.
The man still wore a frown as he studied their place of deployment. “This is the middle of the desert. Refugees are funneling into the air base hourly. I don’t see how placing an advance camp out there will help.”
A gust of wind rattled the asphalt shingles atop the building.
“You have your orders, Captain Garrison.”
“Yes, sir.” But his eyes looked little settled, especially when he glanced out the window to the hundred men lounging on packs, checking weapons, wearing dun-colored sand fatigues, no insignia.
Cassandra let him have his doubts as she headed to the door. The captain had received his orders, passed through the chain of command from Washington. He was to aid her in outfitting her team. Guild command had orchestrated the cover story. Cassandra’s team was a search-and-rescue unit sent to help refugees fleeing the coming sandstorm and to aid in any rescue during the storm itself. They had five all-terrain trucks with giant sand tires, an eighteen-ton M4 high-speed desert tractor, a pair of transport Hueys, and six of the one-man VTOL copter sleds, each fitted and lashed to open-bed four-wheel-drive trucks. The overland team would leave within the half hour. She would be accompanying them.
Exiting the command depot for Harvest Falcon, Cassandra checked her watch. The sandstorm was due to slam into the region in another eight hours. Reports were coming in of winds gusting to eighty mph. Already the winds here, where the mountains met the desert, were kicking up.
And they were heading into the teeth of the storm. They had no choice. Word had come from Guild command, some hint that the source of the antimatter could be destabilizing, that it could self-destruct before it was discovered. That must not happen. Timetables had been accelerated.
Cassandra searched the dark airfield. She watched a lumbering British VC10 tanker touch ground off in the distance, illuminated by landing lights. Guild command had shipped in the men and additional equipment yesterday. The Minister had coordinated with her personally after the firefight last night. It was damn lucky she had learned the location of the lost city before losing Safia. With such a significant discovery, the Minister had been grudgingly satisfied with her performance.
She was not.
She pictured Painter crouched in the alley between the ruins and the tomb. The sharpness of his eyes, the crinkles of concentration, the way he moved so swiftly, pivoting on one leg, sweeping out his gun. She should have shot him in the back when she had the chance. She risked hitting Safia, but she had lost the woman anyway. Still, Cassandra hadn’t shot. Even when Painter swung on her, she had paused a fraction of a second, falling back instead of pushing forward.
She clenched a fist. She had hesitated. She cursed herself as much as she cursed Painter. She would not make that mistake a second time. She stared across the acres of tarmac and gravel.
Would he come?
She had noted that he had stolen her map during his escape, along with one of the vehicles, her own truck. They found it abandoned and stripped of gear, buried in the forest a few miles down the road.
But Painter had the map. He would definitely come.
Yet not before she was ready for him. She had plenty of manpower and firepower to hold off an army out there. Let him try.
She would not hesitate a second time.
A figure appeared from a small outbuilding near the parked trucks, her temporary command center. John Kane strode toward her, his left leg stiff in a splint. He scowled as he stomped to her side. The left side of his face was sealed with surgical glue, giving his features a bluish tint. Beneath the glue, claw marks slashed across his cheek and throat, blackened with iodine. His eyes glinted brighter than usual in the sodium lights. A slight morphine haze.
He refused to be left behind.
“Cleanup was completed an hour ago,” he said, tucking back his radio mike. “Assets have all been cleared out.”
She nodded. All evidence of their involvement with the firefight at the tomb had been removed: bodies, weapons, even the wreckage of the VTOL copter sled. “Any word on Crowe’s crew?”
“Vanished into the mountains. Scattered. There are side roads and camel trails throughout the mountains. And heavy patches of forest in all the deep valleys. He and those sand rats have tucked their tails and gone into hiding.”
Cassandra had expected as much. The firefight had left her team with limited manpower for a proper pursuit and search. They had to take care of their own wounded and clear the site before local authorities responded to the fiery attack. She had evacuated in the first airlift, radioing Guild command of the operation, playing down the chaos, highlighting their discovery of the true site of Ubar.
The information had bought her life.
And she knew to whom she was indebted for that.
“What about the museum curator?” she asked.
“I have men patrolling the mountains. Still no trace of her signal.”
Cassandra frowned. The microtransceiver she had implanted on the woman had a range of ten miles. How was it possible that they hadn’t picked up her signal? Maybe interference from the mountains. Maybe it was the storm system. Either way, she’d eventually expose herself. She’d be found.
Cassandra pictured the small pellet of C4 incorporated into the transceiver. Safia might have escaped…but she was dead already.
“Let’s move out,” she said.
1:32 A.M.
DHOFAR MOUNTAINS
GOOD GIRL, Saff,” Omaha mumbled.
Painter stirred from his post by the road. What had the man discovered? With his night-vision glasses, he had been watching the dirt track. The Volkswagen Eurovan stood parked under a stand of trees.
Omaha and the others gathered at the back of the van, the tailgate ajar. Omaha and Danny were bent over the map he had stolen from the tomb site.
Next to them, Coral had been inventorying their supplies, pilfered from the back of Cassandra’s SUV.
Downslope from the tomb, they had run into Clay and Danny, frantic about Kara’s disappearance. They had found her rifle in the road, but no sign of the woman herself. They had called and called for her, but no answer. And with Cassandra on their tail and helicopters in the air, they could not wait long. While Painter and Omaha searched for Kara, the others had hurriedly shoved all the supplies from the SUV into the Eurovan, then drove the SUV over a steep slope. Painter feared Cassandra would track them with its GPS feature, just as he had.
Additionally, the Eurovan was unknown to her. A small advantage.
So they had taken off, hoping Kara had kept her head low.
Painter paced the road now, less settled with his decision. They had found no body. Where had Kara gone? Did her disappearance have something to do with her withdrawal from the drug? He took a deep breath. Maybe it was best. Away from them, Kara might have a better chance of surviving. Still, Painter paced.
Off to the side, Barak shared a smoke with Clay, the two men a contrast in size, form, and philosophy bonded by the lure of tobacco. Barak knew the mountains and had led them through a series of rutted roads, well camouflaged. They ran with their lights off, going as fast as safety allowed, stopping at times whenever the sound of helicopters approached.
It was just six of them now: he and Coral, Omaha and Danny, Barak and Clay. The fate of Captain al-Haffi and Sharif remained unknown, scattered to the winds with the fleeing Bait Kathir. They could only hope for the best.
After three hours of harried driving, they had stopped to rest, regroup, plan what to do next. All they had to guide them from here were the inked marks on the map.
At the van, Omaha straightened a kink in his back with a pop that was heard all the way to the road. “She tricked the bitch.”
With the mountain valley quiet and dark, Painter walked back to join the others. “What are you talking about?”
Omaha waved him over. “Come see this.”
Painter joined him. At least, Omaha’s belligerence toward him had lessened. En route, Painter had related his story of the leopards, the firefight, the intervention of the strange woman. Omaha finally seemed to settle on the belief that as long as Safia was away from Cassandra, it was an improvement.
Omaha pointed to the map. “See these lines. The blue one clearly leads from the tomb in Salalah to Job’s tomb here in the mountains. Safia must’ve found some clue at the first tomb to lead to the second.”
Painter nodded. “Okay, what about the red line?”
“Safia found some clue at Job’s tomb, too.”
“The metal post with a bust on it?”
“I suppose. It doesn’t matter any longer. See here. She’s marked a circle along this red line. Out in the desert. Like this is where to go next.”
“The location of Ubar.” Painter felt a sick, sinking feeling. If Cassandra already knew where it was…
“No, it’s not the location,” Danny said.
Omaha nodded. “I measured it. The circle is marked sixty-nine miles from Job’s tomb, along this red line.”
Painter had debriefed them on all the details, including overhearing the tall man call out the number sixty-nine, measuring something along the pole.
“So it matches the number I heard,” Painter said.
“But they figured miles,” Omaha said. “Our miles.”
“So?”
Omaha gave him a look as if it were obvious. “If that artifact they found at Job’s tomb was dated the same as the iron heart—and why wouldn’t it be?—then it goes back to sometime around 200 B.C.”
“Okay,” Painter said, accepting the fact.
“Back then, a mile was defined by the Romans. A mile was calculated as five thousand Roman feet. And a Roman foot is only eleven and a half inches. Safia would know this! She let Cassandra believe it was modern miles. She sent the bitch on a wild-goose chase.”
“So what’s the real distance?” Painter asked, moving closer to the map.
At his side, Omaha chewed the edge of his thumb, clearly doing a calculation in his head. After a moment, he spoke. “Sixty-nine Roman miles is equivalent to just over sixty three modern miles.”
“He’s right,” Coral said. She had been doing her own calculation.
“So Safia sent Cassandra six miles past the true location.” Painter frowned. “That’s not too far.”
“In the desert,” Omaha countered, “six miles is more like six hundred.”
Painter didn’t squash the man’s pride in Safia, but he knew the ruse would not fool Cassandra for long. As soon as she realized that nothing was at that false site, she’d start consulting. Someone would solve the mystery. Painter estimated Safia’s ruse bought them a day or two at most.
“So where on the map is the true location?” Painter asked.
Omaha bobbed his head, excited. “Let’s find out.” He quickly adjusted his strings and pins, measuring and rechecking. A frown crinkled his brow. “That doesn’t make sense.” He stuck a pin in the map.
Painter leaned over and read the name pinned there. “Shisur.”
Omaha shook his head, dismay in his voice. “It’s been a goddamn wild-goose chase all along.”
“What do you mean?”
Omaha continued to frown at the map, as if it were to blame.
Danny answered for him. “Shisur is where the old ruins of Ubar were originally discovered. Back in 1992, by Nicolas Clapp and a few others.” Danny glanced to Painter. “There’s nothing there. All this running around just leads to a place that’s already been discovered and scoured.”
Painter could not accept that. “There has to be something.”
Omaha slammed a fist on the map. “I’ve been there myself. It’s a dead end. All this danger and bloodshed…for nothing!”
“There has to be something everyone has missed,” Painter persisted. “Everyone thought those two tombs we were at before had been thoroughly examined, but in a matter of days, new discoveries were made.”
“Discoveries made by Safia,” Omaha said sourly.
No one spoke for a long stretch.
Painter focused on Omaha’s words. Realization slowly dawned. “She’ll go there.”
Omaha turned to him. “What are you talking about?”
“Safia. She lied to Cassandra to stop her from getting to Ubar. But like us, she knows where the clues truly pointed.”
“To Shisur. To the old ruins.”
“Exactly.”
Omaha frowned. “But like we said, there’s nothing there.”
“And like you said, Safia discovered clues where no one found them before. She’ll think she can do the same at Ubar. She’ll go there for no other reason but to keep whatever might be there from Cassandra’s grasp.”
Omaha took a deep begrudging breath. “You’re right.”
“That’s if she’s allowed to go,” Coral said from the side. “What about the woman who took her away? The one with the leopards.”
Barak answered her, his voice somewhat embarrassed. “I’ve heard tales of such women, spoken around campfires out in the desert. Spoken among all tribes of the sands. Warriors of the desert. More djinn than flesh. Able to speak to animals. Vanish on command.”
“Yeah, right,” Omaha said.
“There was indeed something strange about that woman,” Painter conceded. “And I don’t think this is the first time we’ve had a run-in with her.”
“What do you mean?”
Painter nodded to Omaha. “Your kidnappers. In Muscat. It was a woman you saw in the market.”
“What? You think she’s the same woman?”
Painter shrugged. “Or perhaps one of the same group. There’s another party involved in all this. I know it. I don’t know if it’s Barak’s warrior women or just some group looking to make a buck. Either way, they’ve taken Safia for a reason. In fact, they may have even attempted to kidnap you, Omaha, because of Safia’s affection for you. To use you as leverage.”
“Leverage for what?”
“To get Safia to help them. I also spotted the silver case tied on the camel’s back. Why take the artifact unless there’s a good reason? Everything keeps pointing back to Ubar.”
Omaha pondered his words, nodding his head. “Then that’s where we’ll go. With that bitch distracted, we’ll wait and see if Safia shows up.”
“And search the place in the meantime,” Coral said. She nodded to the stacked gear. “There’s a ground-penetrating radar unit in here, good for looking under sand. And we’ve a box of grenades, additional rifles, and I don’t know what this is.” She held up a weapon that looked like a shotgun with a belled end to it. From the glint in her eyes, she was dying to try it out.
Everyone turned to Painter, as if waiting for his agreement.
“Of course we’re going,” he said.
Omaha clapped him on the shoulder. “Finally something we agree on.”
1:55 A.M.
SAFIA HUGGED Kara. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m not sure.” Kara trembled in her grip. Her skin felt clammy, moist.
“The others? I saw Painter…what about Omaha, his brother…?”
“As far as I know, everyone’s okay. But I was away from the fighting.”
Safia had to sit down, her legs weak, knees rubbery. The cavern swam a bit around her. The tinkling of the waterfall through the hole in the roof sounded like silver bells. Firelight from the five campfires dazzled her eyes.
She sank to a rumpled blanket by the fire. She couldn’t feel the heat of the flames.
Kara followed her down. “Your shoulder! You’re bleeding.”
Shot. Safia didn’t know if she’d spoken aloud or not.
Three women approached, arms full. They carried a steaming basin, folded cloths, a covered brazier, and oddly out of place, a box with the red cross of an emergency medical kit. An elderly woman, not the same as the one who had led her here, followed with a tall walking stick, fiery in the glow of the campfire. She was ancient, shoulders hunched, hair white but neatly combed and braided back over her ears. Rubies adorned her lobes, matching her teardrop tattoo.
“Lie down, daughter,” the old woman intoned. English again. “Let us see to your injuries.”
Safia had no energy to resist, but Kara guarded over her. She had to trust that her friend would protect her if necessary.
Safia’s blouse was stripped from her. The soiled bandage was then soaked in a steaming poultice of aloe and mint and slowly peeled back. It felt as if they were flaying the skin off her shoulder. She gasped, and her vision darkened.
“You’re hurting her,” Kara warned.
One of the three women had knelt and opened the emergency medical kit. “I have one ampoule of morphine, hodja,” the woman said.
“Let me see the wound.” The elder leaned down, supported by her staff.
Safia shifted so her shoulder was bared.
“The bullet passed cleanly through. Shallow. Good. We’ll not have to operate. Sweet myrrh tea will ease her pain. Also two tablets of Tylenol with codeine. Hook an IV to her good arm. Run in a liter of warmed LRS.”
“What of the wound?” the other woman asked.
“We’ll cauterize, pack, and wrap the shoulder, then sling the arm.”
“Yes, hodja.”
Safia was propped up. The third woman poured a steaming mug of tea and handed it to Kara. “Help her drink. It will give her strength.”
Kara obeyed, accepting the mug with both hands.
“You’d best sip, too,” the old woman told Kara. “To clear your head.”
“I doubt this is strong enough.”
“Doubt will not serve you here.”
Kara sipped the tea, grimaced, then offered it to Safia. “You should drink. You look like hell.”
Safia allowed a bit to be dribbled between her lips. The warmth flowed down into the cold pit that was her stomach. She accepted more. Two pills were held in front of her.
“For the pain,” the youngest of the three women whispered. All three looked like sisters, only a few years apart.
“Take them, Saffie,” Kara urged. “Or I’ll take them myself.”
Safia opened her mouth, accepted the medication, and swallowed them down with a bit more of the tea.
“Now lie back while we minister to your wounds,” the hodja said.
Safia collapsed to the blankets, warmer now.
The hodja slowly lowered to the blanket beside her, moving with a grace that belied her age. She rested her walking stick over her knees.
“Rest, daughter. Be at peace.” She placed one hand atop Safia’s.
A gentle bleary feeling swelled through her, fading all the ache from her body, leaving her floating. Safia smelled the jasmine wreathed about the cavern.
“Who…who are you?” Safia asked.
“We’re your mother, dear.”
Safia flinched, denying the possibility, offended. Her mother was dead. This woman was too old. She must be speaking metaphorically. Before she could scold, all sight dissolved away. Only a few words followed her away.
“All of us. We’re all your mother.”
2:32 A.M.
KARA WATCHED the group of women attend to Safia as her friend lolled on the blankets. A catheter was inserted into a vein in her right hand and hooked to an intravenous drip attached to a warm bag of saline, held aloft by one of Safia’s nurses. The other two rinsed and daubed the bullet wound in Safia’s shoulder. The injury was smaller than a dime. A cauterizing powder was sprinkled generously over the site, which was then painted with iodine, packed with cotton gauze, and expertly wrapped.
Safia thrashed slightly, but remained asleep.
“Make sure she keeps her arm in a sling,” the older woman said, watching the work of the others. “When she is awake, make sure she drinks a cup of the tea.”
The hodja lifted her staff, posted it on the ground, and pulled herself up. She faced Kara. “Come. Let my daughters care for your sister.”
“I won’t leave her.” Kara moved closer to Safia.
“She will be well cared for. Come. It is time for you to find what you have sought.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Answers to your life. Come or stay. It makes no matter to me.” The old woman thumped off. “I will not argue with you.”
Kara glanced to Safia, then to the elder. Answers to your life.
Kara slowly rose. “If anything happens…” But she didn’t know whom she was threatening. The nurses seemed to be taking good care of her friend.
With a shake of her head, Kara set off after the hodja.
“Where are we going?”
Ignoring Kara, the hodja continued. They left the trickling waterfall and fires behind and crossed into the deeper gloom that rimmed the chamber.
Kara stared around. She barely remembered entering this cavern. She had been conscious of it, but it was as if she had moved in a pleasant fog, plodding behind a similarly clad older tribeswoman. After leaving the van, they had walked for well over an hour, through a shadowy forest, to an ancient dry well, accessed via a narrow cut in the rock. They had spiraled down into a mountainside, walking for some time. Once they reached the cavern here, Kara had been abandoned by the fire, told to wait, the fog lifting from her. With its dissipation, her headache, tremors, and nausea had returned like a leaden blanket. She felt barely able to move, let alone find her way out of this warren of tunnels. Questions she asked were ignored.
And she had many.
She stared at the back of the elder ahead of her now. Who were these women? What did they want with her and Safia?
They reached a tunnel opening in the wall. A child waited at the entrance, bearing a silver oil lamp, like something you’d rub to raise a genie. A tiny flame lapped the tip of the lamp. The girl, no more than eight, wore a desert cloak that appeared too large for her, the hem bunching slightly at her toes. Her eyes were huge upon Kara, as if she were staring at some alien being. But there was no fright, only curiosity.
The hodja nodded the child forward. “Go, Yaqut.”
The child turned and shuffled forward down the tunnel. Yaqut was Arabic for “ruby.” It was the first time she had heard a name spoken here.
She stared at the hodja at her side. “What is your name?”
The old woman finally glanced at her. Green eyes flashed brightly in the lamp’s flame. “I am called many names, but my given name is Lu’lu. I believe in your language that means ‘pearl.’ ”
Kara nodded. “Are all your women named after jewels?”
There was no answer as they continued walking behind the child in silence, but Kara sensed the woman’s acknowledgment. In Arabic tradition, such jeweled names were given to only one caste of folk.
Slaves.
Why did these women pick such names? They certainly seemed freer than most Arab women.
The child turned off the tunnel into a limestone chamber. It was cold, the walls damp, scintillating in the lamplight. A prayer rug lay on the cave’s floor, cushioned by a bed of straw. Beyond it stood a low altar of black stone.
Kara felt a thrill of fear ice through her. Why had they brought her here?
Yaqut walked to the altar, circled behind it, and bent out of sight.
Suddenly flames crackled brighter behind the stone. Yaqut had used her oil lamp to light a small stack of wood. Kara smelled incense and kerosene from the pile, scented and oiled for easy lighting. The kerosene burned away quickly, leaving only the sweet fragrance of frankincense.
As the flames licked higher, Kara saw her mistake. The dark altar was not opaque but crystalline, like a chunk of black obsidian, only more translucent. The glow of the flames shone through the stone.
“Come,” Lu’lu intoned, and led Kara to the prayer rug. “Kneel.”
Kara, exhausted from lack of sleep and shaky from the drain of adrenaline from her system, both naturally and artificially induced, gratefully sank to the soft rug.
The hodja stood behind her. “This is what you have come so far and searched so long to find.” She pointed her stick toward the altar.
Kara stared at the block of translucent stone. Her eyes widened as the stack of wood blazed behind the altar, shining through it.
Not opaque stone…raw glass.
Flames lit the interior, illuminating the heart of the glass block. Inside, embedded like a fly in amber, rested a figure, plainly human, blackened to bone, legs curled fetally but arms out in agony. Kara had seen a similar stricken figure. In the ruins of Pompeii. A form turned to stone, buried and petrified under hot ash from the ancient eruption of Vesuvius. The same posture of tortured death.
But worst of all, Kara knew why she had been brought here, shown this.
Answers to her life.
She collapsed to her hands on the rug, her body suddenly too heavy. No… Tears burst to her eyes. She knew who lay buried in the heart of the glass, preserved in agony.
A cry escaped her, wrenching everything from her body: strength, sight, hope, even the will to live, leaving her empty.
“Papa…”
3:12 A.M.
SAFIA WOKE to music and warmth. She lay on a soft blanket, instantly awake, but she languished in the moment. She listened to the soft stringed cords from a lute, accompanied by the soft piping from a reed instrument, haunting and lonely. Firelight danced across the roof overhead, limning the drapes of vines and flowers. The tinkling water added counterpoint to the music.
She knew where she was. There was no slow waking back to the present, only a vague muzzy-headedness from the codeine she had ingested. She heard voices speaking softly, occasional dazzling flashes of laughter, a child playing.
She slowly sat up, earning a grumpy complaint from her shoulder. But the pain was dull, more a deep ache than a sharp twinge. She felt inordinately rested. She checked her watch. She had been asleep only a little more than an hour, but she felt as if she had slept for days. Relaxed and rested.
A young woman stepped toward her, kneeling down, a mug warmed between her hands. “The hodja wishes you to drink this.”
Safia accepted the tea with her good arm. The other lay in a sling across her belly. She sipped gratefully and noticed a conspicuous absence. “Kara? My friend?”
“When you finish your tea, I’m to take you to the hodja. She waits with your sister.”
Safia nodded. She sipped her tea as quickly as its steaming heat would allow. The sweet tea warmed through her. She placed the mug on the ground and crawled to her feet.
Her escort offered a hand to help, but Safia declined, feeling steady enough.
“This way.”
Safia was led to the far side of the sinkhole cavern and down another tunnel. With a lantern in one hand, her guide walked her assuredly through the maze of passages.
Safia addressed her guide. “Who are you all?”
“We are the Rahim,” she answered stiffly.
Safia translated. Rahim was the Arabic word for “womb” Were they some bedouin tribe of women, Amazons of the desert? She pondered the name. It also held an undercurrent of divinity, of rebirth and continuity.
Who were these women?
Ahead a light appeared, glowing from a side cavern.
Her escort stopped a few steps away and nodded Safia forward.
She continued, feeling for the first time since waking a tingle of unease. The air seemed to grow thicker, harder to breathe. She concentrated on inhaling and exhaling, riding through the moment of anxiety. As she stepped nearer, she heard sobbing, heart-deep, broken.
Kara…
Safia pushed aside her fears and hurried to the cavern. She found Kara collapsed on a rug in the cavern. The elder hodja knelt at her side, cradling Kara. The old woman’s green eyes met Safia’s.
Safia rushed over. “Kara, what’s wrong?”
Kara lifted her face, eyes swollen, damp-cheeked. She was beyond words. She pointed an arm toward a large stone with a fire behind it. Safia recognized the chunk as slag glass, molten sand that had hardened. She had found such pieces around lightning strikes. They were revered by ancient peoples, used as jewelry, sacred objects, prayer stones.
She didn’t understand until she spotted the figure in the glass. “Oh, no…”
Kara croaked, “It’s…it’s my father.”
“Oh, Kara.” Tears welled up in Safia’s eyes. She knelt on Kara’s other side. Reginald Kensington had been like a father to Safia, too. She understood her friend’s grief, but confusion shattered through. “How? Why…?”
Kara glanced at the old woman, too overwhelmed to speak.
The hodja patted Kara’s hand. “As I’ve already explained to your friend, Lord Kensington is not unknown to our people. His story leads here as much as the story of you two. He had entered sands forbidden on the day he died. He had been warned, but chose to dismiss it. And it was not chance that brought him to those sands. He sought Ubar, like his daughter. He knew those same sands were near its heart and could not stay away.”
“What happened to him?”
“To tread the sands around Ubar is to risk the wrath of a power that has lain hidden for millennia. A power and place we women guard. He heard of the place, was drawn to it. It was his doom.”
Kara sat up, clearly having heard all this already. “What is this power?”
The hodja shook her head. “That we don’t know. The Gates of Ubar have been closed to us for two millennia. What lies beyond those gates has been lost to the ages. We are the Rahim, the last of its guardians. Knowledge passed from mouth to ear, from one generation to another, but two secrets were never spoken after Ubar was destroyed, never passed to our line by the surviving queen of Ubar. So great was the tragedy that she sealed the city, and with her death, those two secrets died: where the gates’ keys were hidden and what power lies under the sand, at the heart of Ubar.”
Each word spoken by the old woman raised a thousand questions in Safia’s mind. The Gates of Ubar. The last of its guardians. The heart of the lost city. Hidden keys. But some inkling reached through to her.
“The keys…” she muttered. “The iron heart.”
The hodja nodded. “To lead to Ubar’s heart.”
“And the spear with the bust of Biliqis, the Queen of Sheba.”
The elder bowed her head. “She who was the mother of us all. The first of the royal house of Ubar. It is only right she adorns the second key.”
Safia reviewed the known history of Ubar. The city had indeed been founded around 900 B.C., the same period during which the historical Queen of Sheba lived. Ubar prospered until the collapse of a sinkhole destroyed the city around A.D. 300. It had a long reign. But the existence of the ruling house was well documented.
Safia questioned this fact. “I thought King Shaddad was the first ruler of Ubar, the great-grandchild of Noah.” There was even a reclusive clan of bedouin, the Shahra, who claimed to be descendants of this same king.
The old woman shook her head. “The line of Shaddad were administrators only. The line of Biliqis were the true rulers, a secret hidden from all but the most trusted. Ubar gave its powers to the queen, chose her, allowed her to birth her line strong and sure. A line that continues to this day.”
Safia remembered the visage on the bust. The young women here bore a striking resemblance. Could such a line remain pure for over two millennia?
Safia shook her head, incredulous. “Are you saying your tribe can trace their lineage all the way back to the Queen of Sheba?”
The hodja bowed her head. “It is more than that…much more.” She lifted her eyes. “We are the Queen of Sheba.”
3:28 P.M.
KARA FELT sick, nauseous—but not from withdrawal. In fact, since her arrival here in these caves, she felt less jagged, the shakes slowly subsiding, as if something had been done to her head. But what she now suffered was a thousandfold worse than the lack of amphetamines. She felt crushed, heartsick, worn thin, devastated. All this talk of secret cities, mysterious powers, ancient lineages meant nothing to her. Her eyes stared at the remains of her father, his mouth frozen in a rictus of agony.
Words of the hodja had locked up her brain.
He had sought Ubar, like his daughter.
Kara recalled the day of her father’s death, the hunt on her sixteenth birthday. She had always wondered why they had traveled all the way out to that section of the desert. There was good hunting much closer to Muscat, why fly out to Thumrait Air Base, travel overland in Rovers, then start their pursuit on sand cycles. Had he used her birthday as an excuse to hunt those lands?
Anger built in her chest, shining out of her like the flames behind the chunk of glass. But it had no focus. She was angry at these women who had held this secret for so long, at her father for throwing his life away on a deadly quest, at herself for following in his footsteps…even at Safia for never making her stop, even when the search was destroying Kara from the inside. The fire of her fury burned away the dregs of her sickness.
Kara sat back and turned to the old hodja. She interrupted her history lesson with Safia, her words bitter. “Why was my father searching for Ubar?”
“Kara…” Safia said in a consoling tone. “I think that can wait.”
“No.” Anger put command in her voice. “I want to know now.”
The hodja remained unimpressed, bowing before Kara’s fury like a reed in the wind. “You are right to ask. That is why you are both here.”
Kara frowned from lips to brow.
The woman glanced between Kara and Safia. “What the desert takes, it also gives back.”
“What does that mean?” Kara snapped back.
The hodja sighed. “The desert took your father.” She waved toward the gruesome stone. “But it gave you a sister.” She nodded to Safia.
“Safia has always been my dearest friend.” Despite her anger, Kara’s voice flared with emotion. The truth and depth of her words, spoken aloud, struck her bruised heart with more impact than she would have imagined. She tried to shake them away, but she was too raw.
“She is more than your friend. She is your sister in both spirit…and flesh.” The hodja raised her staff and pointed it at the body entombed in glass. “There lies your father…and Safia’s.”
The hodja faced the two stunned women.
“You are sisters.”
3:33 A.M.
SAFIA’S MIND could not grasp what the woman was saying.
“Impossible,” Kara said. “My mother died when I was born.”
“You share a father, not a mother,” the hodja clarified. “Safia was born from a woman of our people.”
Safia shook her head. They were half sisters. The peace she had experienced upon waking moments ago had shattered. For ages, she had known nothing about her mother, only that she had died in a bus accident when Safia was four. Nothing was known about her father. Even among the vague memories of her childhood before the orphanage—foggy glimpses, scents, a whisper in the ear—there had never been a male figure, a father. All she had left from her mother was her name, al-Maaz.
“Calm yourself, both of you.” The woman raised her hands, one palm toward each. “This is a gift, not a curse.”
Her words drained some of the wild beating in Safia’s heart, like a palm placed on a thrumming tuning fork. Still, she could not bring herself to glance toward Kara, too ashamed, as if her presence somehow fouled the good memory of Lord Kensington. Safia’s mind went back to the day she was taken from the orphanage, a terrifying, hopeful day. Reginald Kensington had chosen her above all the other girls, a mixed-blood child, taken her home, put her in her own room. Kara and Safia had instantly bonded. Had they, even at that young age, recognized a secret bond, an easy comfort of family? Why hadn’t Reginald Kensington ever told them of their secret sisterhood?
“If only I’d known…” Kara gasped out, reaching out to Safia.
Safia looked up. She read no blame in her friend’s eye; the anger of a moment ago had been snuffed. All she saw was relief, hope, and love.
“Maybe we did know…” Safia mumbled, and leaned into her sister’s embrace. “Maybe we always knew down deep.”
Tears flowed. And just like that, they were no longer just friends—they were family.
They hugged for a long moment, but questions eventually pulled them apart. Kara kept Safia’s hand in her own.
The hodja finally spoke. “Your shared story goes back to Lord Kensington’s discovery of the statue at the tomb of Nabi Imran. His remarkable find was significant to us. The statue dated from the founding of Ubar, buried at a tomb tied to a woman of miracles.”
“The Virgin Mary?” Safia asked.
A nod answered her. “As guardians, one of our number had to get close, to examine the funerary object. It was said that the keys to the Gates of Ubar would reveal themselves when the time was right. So Al-maaz was sent.”
“Al-Maaz,” Safia said, noting the pronunciation was slightly off.
“Almaaz,” the hodja repeated more firmly.
Kara squeezed her hand. “All the women here are all named after jewels. The hodja’s name is Lu’lu. Pearl.”
Safia’s eyes widened. “Almaaz. My mother’s name was Diamond. The orphanage thought it was her family name al-Maaz. So what happened to her?”
The hodja, Lu’lu, shook her head with a weary frown. “Like many of our women, your mother fell in love. In investigating the discovery of the statue, she allowed herself to get too close to Lord Kensington…and he to her. They both were lost to each other. And after a few months, a child grew in her womb, seeded the natural way of all women.”
Safia frowned at the strange choice of words but didn’t interrupt.
“The pregnancy panicked your mother. It was forbidden for one of us to bear a child from a man’s loins. She fled Lord Kensington. Back to us. We cared for her until she gave birth. But after you were born, she had to leave. Almaaz had broken our rule. And you, a child of mixed blood, were not pure Rahim.” The old woman touched her teardrop tattoo, the ruby symbol of the tribe. Safia had no tattoo. “Your mother raised you as best she could in Khaluf on the Omani coast, not far from Muscat. But the accident left you an orphan.
“During all this time, Lord Kensington never gave up his search for your mother…and the possible child she carried. He scoured Oman, spent fortunes, but when one of our women wish to be unseen, we are not found. The blood of Biliqis has blessed us in many ways.”
The old woman glanced down to her staff. “When we learned you were orphaned, we could not abandon you. We found where you were taken and passed the information to Lord Kensington. He was heartsick to hear of Almaaz, but as the desert takes, it also returns. It gave him back a daughter. He collected you and pulled you into his family. I suspect he planned on waiting until you both were old enough to understand the complexities of the heart before revealing your shared blood.”
Kara stirred. “On the morning of the hunt…my father told me that he had something important to tell me. Something that, on my sixteenth birthday, I was woman enough to hear.” She swallowed hard, voice cracking. “I thought it was only something about school or university. Not…not…”
Safia squeezed her hand. “It’s all right. Now we know.”
Kara glanced up, her eyes full of confusion. “But why did he still pursue Ubar? I don’t understand.”
The hodja sighed. “It is one of many reasons we are forbidden from men. Perhaps it was a whisper across a pillow. A bit of history shared between lovers. But your father learned of Ubar. He sought the lost city, maybe as a way of being closer to the woman he lost. But Ubar is dangerous. The burden of its guardianship is a heavy one.”
As if demonstrating, the old woman hauled herself up with considerable effort.
“And what of us now?” Safia asked, standing with Kara.
“I will tell you along the way,” she said. “We have far to travel.”
“Where are we going?” Safia asked.
The question seemed to surprise the hodja. “You are one of us, Safia. You brought us the keys.”
“The heart and the spear?”
A nod. She turned away. “After two millennia, we go to unlock the Gates of Ubar.”