CHAPTER 27

The road down from the underground stream was long and steep, and as the sun rose, Jimmy was grateful for his soaked clothing. Tamar stayed a few steps ahead of him, keeping her eyes focused on the path. After an hour of hiking, they descended to the valley floor, and Tamar led them along the river, following the water until it diminished to a trickle, then disappeared.

The sand of the dry riverbed was cooler than the surrounding ground, and Jimmy stepped down to walk inside it. A moment later, Tamar followed suit, staying beside him but saying little.

At noon, they rested in the shade of the riverbank. Tamar sat next to him, he could feel her warmth and hear her breath but they did not touch or speak. Jimmy played with the sand, scooped a fist and let the fine sand sift through his fingers.

Finally, Tamar cleared her throat. “Thou shalt take nothing from Sheba,” she said in a monotone.

Jimmy nodded. He let the sand slip from his hand like that sand in a hourglass, when he realized that there were no stones, no gravel – they were sitting and walking in an arid dessert. The only thing he had on him were the disc and the empty canisters.

“Jimmy,” she whispered, “think of this as nought but a dream, and when thou wakest, thou wilt be among thy physicians, and thou shalt live.” She stopped, then repeated, “Thou shalt take nothing from Sheba.”

He waited, then decided to test his luck. “Are you still angry with me?”

“Angry?” she repeated. “No. Merely disappointed.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “If you just…”

“Stop,” she said, holding up one hand, and Jimmy fell silent.

Tamar rose, listening intently, and her jaw began to tighten. “We are discovered,” she said, pulling Jimmy to his feet. “Follow the wadi to a village called Seven-Dry-Wells. And run,” she said, pushing on his back. “Goest thou now, and make haste! No Levites in the village. Run.”

“Tamar…” he protested, looking back at her, but she pushed him again.

“Go!” She turned at the sound of hooves, and saw the High Priest’s soldiers riding around the bend. “Run!”

Jimmy hesitated a moment longer, but before he could renew his plea for Tamar to leave with him, she sped off in the opposite direction, heading back for the cliff. The soldiers spotted her and tore off in her direction, and quickly began to gain on her.

Once again, Jimmy realized, she had deflected soldiers from detecting him. He climbed a nearby rock to watch, unwilling to abandon Tamar.

As Tamar sprinted onward, the soldiers’ horses surrounded her, forming a net that closed even before she could reach the water. They hemmed her in, using their spears like a flexible cage to hold her in the center of their circle, and one rode off, heading back toward the larger party Jimmy spotted in the distance.

A messenger. It had to be.

And Jimmy had nothing left—no weapon that would allow him to take on half a dozen armed, mounted soldiers.

Jimmy climbed down from the rock, gritted his teeth, and began to run toward the village on the horizon.

Seven-Dry-Wells had begun almost as a joke, an extension of the name a farmer had given to his neighbor’s property when his third well ran dry. By the time the fourth had failed, the farms had grown into a town—if the land couldn’t support crops, at least it could support a few buildings, the nearby farmers reasoned—and had only expanded with the passing years, adding streets and wells by turns. There was talk that the village would soon be “Eight-Dry-Wells,” but Sheba had seen a good rainy season, and perhaps, the villagers hoped, they could hold out another year.

That afternoon, they stayed in their parched fields and behind locked doors, watching warily as two platoons of the princess’s warriors rode through the main street and down to the still-functional well. Just as the women were tying their horses up and watering them, another group of horses arrived, bearing the old Scribe and several of his servants. The warriors nodded to the newcomers, and then one of them pushed a disheveled young man toward the Scribe’s horse.

Ezra dismounted and turned to the chief warrior. “No sign of them, I was told.”

“None, my lord,” she replied. “The crater was calm.”

He nodded thoughtfully, then looked at Eugene. “And thou—thou didst see them?” he asked, switching to English.

“Yeah,” said Eugene. “But I don’t know why you brought me here. I just want to go back to my wife and kids! They’re in the city! I mean, I told her ten times,” he protested, pointing to the chief warrior, “they’re dead. The princess jumped in, and Jimmy followed, and that was it. They never even surfaced…”

“Precisely,” said Ezra.

Suddenly, one of the warriors perked up, and her fellows turned to follow her eyes. “There, in the distance,” she said, waiting as the chief warrior joined her, “is that…”

The chief warrior leapt onto her horse and sped off without further reply, and Eugene squinted at her cloud of dust, but could not see through it.

The old man folded his arms. “Surfacing.”

Jimmy almost hid at the sight of the horse barreling toward him, but recognized the woman astride it as one of Tamar’s warriors and waved her down. She rode past him, turned, then scooped him off the ground in one fluid motion, and Jimmy gasped as she deposited him in front of her. “English?” he cried, clinging to the horse’s mane.

She pulled him back, wrapping one arm around his chest to steady him. “Aye. The princess?”

“Amnon got her! Back toward the cave.”

She rode like a storm back to the village, where she dropped Jimmy into the dirt, then shouted to her women, who followed in a thundering pack behind her, leading a rider-less horse for Tamar. Jimmy staggered to his feet, dazed, and was nearly thrown back to the ground by Eugene, who pounced on him, beaming. “Kid! You made it! I thought you were dead, you little bastard!” he cried, smacking Jimmy in the chest.

Jimmy ignored him. He grabbed one of Ezra’s men’s horses, swung into the saddle, then kicked his horse into motion and rode off to save his princess.