Sandstorm (39 page)

“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.”

DECEMBER 4, 5:55 A.M.
DHOFAR MOUNTAINS

A
S THE
skies brightened to the east, Omaha slowed the van at the top of the pass. The road continued down the far side…if the rutted, stone-plagued track could be called a
road.
His lower back ached from the constant bump and rattle of the last ten miles.

Omaha braked to a halt. Here the road crested the last pass through the mountains. Ahead, the highlands dropped to salt flats and gravel plains. In the rearview mirror, fields of green heather spread, dotted with grazing cattle. The transition was abrupt.

To either side of the van lay a moonscape of red rock, interrupted by patches of straggly, red-barked trees, bent by the winds flowing over the pass.
Boswellia sacra.
The rare and precious frankincense trees. The source of wealth in ages past.

As Omaha braked, Painter’s head snapped up from a light drowse. “What is it?” he asked blearily. One hand rested on the pistol in his lap.

Omaha pointed ahead. The road descended through a dry riverbed, a wadi. It was a rocky, treacherous course, meant for four-wheel-drive vehicles.

“It’s all downhill from here,” Omaha said.

“I know this place,” Barak said behind them. The fellow never seemed to sleep, whispering directions to Omaha as they wound through the mountains. “This is Wadi Dhikur, the Vale of Remembrance. The cliffs to either side are an ancient graveyard.”

Omaha popped the van into gear. “Let’s hope it doesn’t become ours.”

“Why did we come this way?” Painter asked.

In the third row of seats, Coral and Danny stirred, slumped against each other. They sat straighter, listening. Clay, seated beside Barak, merely snored, head craned back, lost to the world.

Barak answered Painter’s question. “Only the local Shahra tribe know of this route down the mountains to the desert. They still collect frankincense from the trees around here in the traditional manner.”

Omaha had never met anyone from the Shahra clan. They were a reclusive bunch, almost stone age in their technology, frozen in tradition. Their language had been studied at length. It was unlike modern Arabic, almost a reedy singsong, and contained eight additional phonetic syllables. Over time, most languages
lose
sounds, becoming more refined as they mature. With the additional syllables, the Shahri language was considered to be one of the most ancient in all of Arabia.

But more particularly, the Shahra called themselves the People of ’Ad, named after King Shaddad, the first ruler of Ubar. According to oral traditions, they descended from the original inhabitants of Ubar, those who fled its destruction in
A.D
. 300. In fact, Barak might be leading them down the very path to Ubar that the People of ’Ad had once used to flee its destruction.

A chilling thought, especially shadowed by the entombed graves.

Barak finished, “At the bottom of the wadi, it is only thirty kilometers to reach Shisur. It is not far.”

Omaha began their descent, in the lowest gear, creeping at five miles per hour. To go any faster risked sliding out in the loose shale and rocky scree. Despite the caution, the van skidded all too often, as if traveling on ice. After half an hour, Omaha’s hands were damp on the wheel.

But at least the sun was up, a dusty rose in the sky.

Omaha recognized that hue. A storm was coming. Due to strike the area in a few more hours. Already winds off the sands blew up the wadi, blustering against the less-than-aerodynamic van.

As Omaha rounded a blind bend in the riverbed, two camels and a pair of robed bedouin appeared ahead. He hit the brakes too hard, fishtailed the rear end, and struck broadside into a precariously stacked set of stone slabs alongside the road. Metal buckled. The slabs toppled.

Clay startled awake with a snort.

“There goes our collision deposit,” Danny griped.

The two camels, loaded and strapped with bales and overflowing baskets, gurgled at them, tossing their heads, as they were walked past the
stalled van. It looked like they were carrying an entire household on their backs.

“Refugees,” Painter said, nodding to other similarly laden camels, mules, and horses moving up the dry watercourse. “They’re fleeing the storm.”

“Is everyone okay?” Omaha asked as he fought the gearshift knob, punching the clutch. The van lurched, rocked, and finally began to roll again.

“What did we hit back there?” Coral asked, staring at the toppled stones.

Danny pointed to other similar stone piles that peppered the graveyard. “Triliths,” he answered. “Ancient prayer stones.” Each was composed of three slabs leaned against one another to form a small pyramid.

Omaha continued down the road, wary of the stacked stones. This was made more difficult as “traffic” grew thicker the lower down the riverbed they traveled.

Folks were fleeing the desert in droves.

“I thought you said no one knew about this back door out of the mountains,” Painter asked Barak.

The Arab shrugged. “When you’re facing the mother of all sandstorms, you run toward higher ground. Any ground. I wager every riverbed is being climbed like this. The main roads are surely worse.”

They had heard periodic reports over the radio as reception came and went. The sandstorm had grown in size, as large as the Eastern Seaboard, whipping up eighty-mile-per-hour winds, packed by scouring sands. It was shifting sand dunes around like they were whitecaps on a storm-swept sea.

And that was not the worst. The high pressure system off the coast had begun to move inland. The two storm systems would meet over the Omani desert, a rare combination of conditions that would whip up a storm unlike any seen in ages before.

Even as the sun dawned, the northern horizon remained cloaked in a smoky darkness. As they descended the mountain road, the storm ahead grew taller and taller, a tidal wave cresting.

They finally reached the bottom of the wadi. The cliffs fell away to either side, spilling out into the sandy salt flats.

“Welcome to the Rub‘ al-Khali,” Omaha announced. “The Empty Quarter.”

The name could not be more fitting.

Ahead stretched a vast plain of gray gravel, etched and scoured with
pictographic lines of blue-white salt flats. And beyond, a red ridge marked the edge of the endless roll of dunes that swept across Arabia. From their vantage, the sands glowed in pinks, browns, purples, and crimsons. A paint pot of hues.

Omaha studied their fuel gauge. With luck, they’d have just enough gas to reach Shisur. He glanced over to the Desert Phantom, their only guide. “Thirty kilometers, right?”

Barak leaned back and shrugged. “Thereabouts.”

Shaking his head, Omaha turned forward and set off across the flat-lands. A few straggling folk still trudged toward the mountains. The refugees showed no interest in the van heading
toward
the storm. It was a fool’s journey.

No one in the van spoke, eyes fixed forward on the storm. The only sound: the crunch of sand and gravel under their tires. With the cooperative terrain, Omaha risked pushing the van up to thirty miles per hour.

The winds unfortunately seemed to pick up with every half mile, blowing streams of sand from the dunes. They would be lucky to have any paint on the van when they reached Shisur.

Danny finally spoke. “It’s hard to believe this used to be a vast savannah.”

Clay yawned. “What are you talking about?”

Danny shifted forward. “This wasn’t always desert. Satellite maps show the presence of ancient riverbeds, lakes, and streams under the sand, suggesting Arabia was once covered by grasslands and forests, full of hippos, water buffalo, and gazelle. A living Eden.”

Clay stared at the arid landscape. “How long ago was this?”

“Some twenty thousand years. You can still find Neolithic artifacts from that time: ax blades, skin scrapers, arrowheads.” Danny nodded to the wastelands. “Then began a period of hyperaridity that dried Arabia into a desert wasteland.”

“Why? What triggered such a change?”

“I don’t know.”

A new voice intervened, answering Clay’s question. “The climatic change was due to Milankovitch Forcing.”

Attention turned to the speaker. Coral Novak.

She explained. “Periodically the Earth
wobbles
in its orbit around the sun. These wobbles or ‘orbital forcings’ trigger massive climatic changes. Like the desertification of Arabia and parts of India, Africa, and Australia.”

“But what could cause the Earth to wobble?” Clay asked.

Coral shrugged. “It could be simple
precession.
The natural periodic changes in orbits. Or it could be something more dramatic. A flip-flop of the Earth’s polarity, something that’s occurred a thousand times in geologic history. Or it might have been a burp in the rotation of the Earth’s nickel core. No one can really say.”

“However it happened,” Danny concluded, “this is the result.”

Before them, the dunes had grown into massive hummocks of red sand, some stretching six hundred feet high. Between the dunes, gravel persisted, creating winding, chaotic roadways, nicknamed “dune streets.” It was easy to get lost in the maze of streets, but the more direct route over the dunes could bog the hardiest vehicle. Something they could not chance.

Omaha pointed ahead, directing his question to Barak, meeting the Desert Phantom’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “You know your way through there, right?”

The giant of an Arab shrugged again, his usual response to everything.

Omaha stared at the towering dunes…and beyond them, a wall of churning dark sand rising from the horizon, like the smoky edge of a vast grass fire sweeping toward them.

They had no time for wrong turns.

7:14 A.M.

S
AFIA MARCHED
beside Kara down another tunnel. The Rahim clan spread out ahead and behind them, traveling in groups, carrying oil lanterns in the darkness. They had been walking for the past three hours, stopping regularly to drink or rest. Safia’s shoulder had begun to ache, but she didn’t protest.

The entire clan was on the move. Even the children.

A nursing mother strode a few steps ahead, accompanied by six children, whose ages ranged from six to eleven. The older girls held the younger ones’ hands. Like all the Rahim, even the children were bundled in hooded cloaks.

Safia studied the young ones as they sneaked glances back at her. They all appeared to be sisters. Green eyes, black hair, burnished skin. Even their shy smiles carried the same dimpled charm.

And while the adult women varied in minor ways—some were wiry, others heavier built, some long-haired, others shorn short—their basic features were strikingly similar.

Lu’lu, the tribal
hodja,
kept pace with them. After announcing their journey to the Gates of Ubar, she had left to organize the clan’s departure. As guardians of Ubar for centuries, none of the Rahim would be left out of this momentous occasion.

Once they were under way, Lu’lu had gone silent, leaving Kara and Safia plenty of time to discuss the revelation of their sisterhood. It still seemed unreal. For the past hour, neither had spoken, each lost to her own thoughts.

Kara was the first to interrupt the silence. “Where are all your men?” she asked. “The fathers of these children? Will they be joining us along the way?”

Lu’lu frowned at Kara. “There are no men. That is forbidden.”

Safia remembered the
hodja
’s comment earlier. About how Safia’s birth had been forbidden. Did permission have to be granted? Was that why they all looked so identical? Some attempt at eugenics, keeping their bloodline pure?

“It’s just you women?” Kara asked.

“The Rahim once numbered in the hundreds,” Lu’lu said quietly. “Now we number thirty-six. The gifts granted to us through the blood of Biliqis, the Queen of Sheba, have weakened, grown more fragile. Stillborn children trouble us. Others lose their gifts. The world has grown toxic to us. Just last week Mara, one of our elders, lost her blessings when she went to the hospital in Muscat. We don’t know why.”

Safia frowned. “What
gifts
are these that you keep mentioning?”

Lu’lu sighed. “I will tell you this because you are one of us. You have been tested and found to harbor some trace of Ubar’s blessing.”

“Tested?” Kara asked, glancing to Safia.

Lu’lu nodded. “At some point, we test all half-bred children of the clan. Almaaz was not the first to leave the Rahim, to lie with a man, to forsake her lineage for love. Other such children have been born. Few have the gift.” She placed a hand on Safia’s elbow. “When we heard of your miraculous survival of the terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv, we suspected that perhaps your blood bore some power.”

Safia stumbled at the mention of the bombing. She remembered the newspaper reports heralding the
miraculous
nature of her survival.

“But you left the country before we could test you, never to return. So we thought you lost. Then we heard of the key’s discovery. In England. At a museum you oversaw. It had to be a sign!” A bit of fervor entered the woman’s voice, so full of hope.

“When you returned here, we sought you out.” Lu’lu glanced down
the tunnel, voice lowering. “At first we attempted to collect your betrothed. To use him to draw you to us.”

Kara gasped. “You were the ones who tried to kidnap him.”

“He is not without talents of his own,” the old woman conceded with half a smile. “I can see why you pledged your heart to him.”

Safia felt a twinge of embarrassment. “After you failed to kidnap him, what did you do?”

“Since we couldn’t draw you to us, we came to you. We tested you in the old manner.” She glanced to Safia. “With the snake.”

Safia stopped in the tunnel, remembering the incident in the bath at Kara’s estate. “You sent the carpet viper after me?”

Lu’lu halted with Kara. A few of the women continued past.

“Such simple creatures recognize those with the gift, those blessed by Ubar. They will not harm such a woman, but find peace.”