A battalion started to ascend the mountains toward the back of the Damavand volcano. The rest of the army circled the Alborz Mountains, away from the canyon. Engineers who had for months dug trenches to redirect lava down the sides of the mountains scrambled out of their hiding places. Cranes lifted boulders that had for years directed the constant flow of lava toward man-made paths away from the valley.

An echo spiraled up the volcanic crater and convulsed against the feverish mouth. A column of ancient smoke ascended. Havoc flowed down from the northern slopes. Horses bolted, muzzles frothing. The trapped enemy rushed to one side of the valley. Others scampered up the opposite direction. In a body the men dashed back to the center. There was no escape. Lava flowed down from all directions.

A molten river snaked down the valley—liquid iron on the move and gone wild, an immense rush of scalding fire; everything in its path smoldered, bursting into flames, sputtering when coming in contact with terrified bodies.

A scorching cloak of gray buried man and beast.

32

Rebekah embarked on a visit to the harem. Since the eunuch had last called upon her, nightmares had overwhelmed her sleep. She could not take her mind off the shrouded look on the eunuch’s pig-eating face.

The guards at the palace portals unlocked the gate. She gazed into their eyes and fear churned at the pit of her stomach. She planted a kiss on each of their noses. “What’s the problem, sweetloves? Have you lost your mistresses to the black plague?”

“Not us,” one of the guards replied. “But you might lose your daughter to Teymour the Lame and his beasts.”

Rebekah slumped on the dirt, her tongue unable to form a single word. Gold Dust had never even whispered the possibility of going to war! “I’m not through with you, Narcissus,” Rebekah murmured, rising and dusting herself off. Untying her bundle, she searched among her fabrics, finding the velvet pouch that held her valuable baksheesh. She did not know what awaited her in the harem and it was wise to remind the guards of her friendship. She offered each man a roll of opium.

She ran through the halls, burst into the harem, and stopped in the center of the main vestibule, as if it were her private domain. Her heart twisting like laundry wrung by the riverside, she shouted at the top of her lungs: “Narcissus!”

The name reverberated against marble columns but did not startle the sultanas out of their languor and narcotic trances that drained them of petty concerns.

Honey murmured from a smoky corner, more to herself than to anyone else, “The news reached you, at last.”

Followed by murmurs afloat on hashish breezes, Rebekah marched through the halls, into the quarters of the eunuchs, and burst into Narcissus’s room. He lay on his mattress, a sickly pallor on him, clutching a gerbil. Disbelief swept over her as she stared at his drugged eyes and sweat-drenched face. Disgust contorted her face. She spat on his naked body. “You miserable low pervert! And I expect you to protect my Gold. You don’t even know what’s good for yourself!”