“Good evening,” Ahmet said. “Do you have room for one more traveler tonight?”

The innkeeper looked him up and down, then peered out of the slot up and down the street. It was empty and a lone man, dressed in the garb of an Egyptian priest, stood before him. The man shut the covering over the view-slot and slid back the bolts on the door. Ahmet bowed and stepped inside. The innkeeper rubbed sleep from his eyes and led the Egyptian into the common room on the right side of the atrium.

“Rooms we have,” he said, over his shoulder, “a solidus a night. There’s cold stew on the fire and water in the bucket. Wine is a copper a mug, if you want it.”

“Thank you, no,” Ahmet said. “I do not drink wine.”

The innkeeper grunted and pointed up a flight of stairs on the far side of the common room. “The third door on the right, past the landing. You’ve it to yourself for tonight.”

Ahmet nodded his thanks and shrugged off his shoulder bag and parcels onto a table near the fireplace. He counted out a solidus in copper from his wallet and gave it to the innkeeper. Then he drew out the scabbarded knife that he had taken from the bandit and gave it to the innkeeper.

“A bandit attacked me in the canyon outside of town. Only one. This was his. Perhaps the civil authorities should check into it.”

The innkeeper raised an eyebrow and examined the blade, turning it over in his hands. “He dead?”

Ahmet nodded and took his bowl and a spoon made of carved horn out of his satchel. He went to the fire and began scooping cold lamb stew out of the iron pot.

The innkeeper put the blade back among the priest’s things. “I’ll tell the prefect in the morning. If the fellow is dead, there’s little use of rousing anyone tonight.”

The innkeeper went back to bed, turning down the wick on the one lamp near the entry door. Ahmet sat and ate his stew in quiet solitude. The water was tepid and smelled of smoke, but he drank deep from the bucket as well. After he was done, he said a short prayer to the hearth gods for finding safe haven for the night.

“Are you a priest?” A sleepy voice came out of the dimness on the other side of the bulk of the fireplace. Ahmet turned slightly. A man had sat up from lying on the bench behind the other table.

“Yes, of the order of Hermes Trismegistus. I am Ahmet, of the School of Pthames.”

Even in the dim light of the single lantern and the embers of the fire, Ahmet could see the flash of strong white teeth nestled in a dark beard. The middle-aged stranger swung off the bench and came to sit opposite the priest on the other bench. He was dark-skinned, whether by the sun or birth could not be told. He had a strong nose and a noble chin and forehead. A neatly trimmed beard and mustaches graced his face. Long dark hair was tied back behind his head. He was dressed in the tan-and-white linen robes of the desert tribes south of the Nabatean frontier.

“I am Mohammed of the Bani Hashim Quraysh. I am a merchant on my way to Damascus.”

Ahmet smiled back. He did not need his othersight to see that the merchant was a bundle of barely repressed energy. His handshake was firm and direct. “Well met, Mohammed of the Quraysh. I am also on my way to Damascus.”

Again the smile in the darkness. “To many men, I would say that traveling alone on these desert roads is a chancy business But I heard you speak with the innkeeper and you seem a man capable of taking care of himself. I wonder

“What?” Ahmet said, his voice filled with amusement. It seemed clear to him that the Southerner had been watching and waiting in the darkness, making up his mind about what he was going to say. Despite the Arab’s direct, even rude, approach, he found himself liking the irrepressible fellow.

“I wonder if a priest that is quick with his hands, and wit, would consider traveling with a merchant on his way to Damascus. By the look of your cloak and sandals, you’ve no camel or horse. You’re walking and it’s a very long road to Damascus from here.”

Ahmet nodded, impressed at the keen eye of the mer chant. “I just came from Aelana. It has been slow going.”

Mohammed nodded, quite pleased with himself. He reached into his robes and pulled out a finely tooled leather pouch. Tiny ivory clasps held it closed. He unsnapped the top and shook out several silver coins into his palm. “Ten solid?-if you will accompany me and my men to Damascus and help protect the caravan. Before you ask, I will tell you-a priest is good luck and these are dangerous times, particularly on this road.”

Ahmet eyed the coins on the tabletop as if they were asps. His vows with the order urged poverty and a simple, even rustic, life upon the priests.

You’ve already broken those vows once, said a little voice in his head, coming here, looking for the boy.,

He reached out and turned one of the Roman coins over. It was newly minted. On the face, the stern visage of the Emperor Heraclius, on the obverse, the sigil of the mint of Palmyra and a smaller inset of a woman in a crown. He picked up four of the coins and pushed the others back.

“I will accompany you as far as Gerasa-I am looking for a missing friend, and I do not know if they have gone as far as Damascus.”

“Good enough for me,” the merchant said. The Southerner pushed his chair back and gathered up the other coins. “You’re tired, I think, so sleep in. We won’t leave until late afternoon tomorrow at the earliest. I have a cargo of myrrh to load and pottery to sell. Ask the innkeeper where I am, he’ll know.”

Ahmet nodded his thanks and put the heavy coins in his wallet. The merchant gathered up some things from the other table, one of them a heavy papyrus scroll. Ahmet raised an eyebrow at the sight.

“What are you reading?” he asked as the merchant finished gathering his things.

Mohammed looked down and laughed softly. “A gift from a friend. You will find that I am a questioning man- always wondering about this thing or another. I was pes tering him with questions about the way of things in the world and he gave me this. To my thinking, he hopes that I will read it and bother him no more. He calls it the torah. It is a holy book of his people.“

“He is a priest, then,” Ahmet said.

Mohammed nodded. “He calls himself a teacher, but I think that you are right.” He looked down at the scroll case. “It was a princely gift. I will have to find something as good, or better, to give back to him when I return to the south.”

Ahmet rose as well, his supper done.

“Good night, Mohammed,” he said. “Perhaps on the road to Gerasa, we can discuss the way of things.”

The merchant nodded, smiling, and went up to his room.

Morning came and with it a great racket in the street. Ahmet dragged himself from the soft bed with great reluctance. After four days of sleeping on stones in the wilderness, the comforts of the caravansary were welcome indeed. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin and pushed the shutter on the deep window embrasure open. In the street below, hundreds of men and horses were milling about.

Soldiers, he thought. A cavalry regiment.

They were dressed in desert garb and light armor, with lances and bows. Eventually order was imposed on the unruly lot and they trotted away up the narrow canyon that the stream came out of.

When he had reached Alexandria on the trail of the boy, Dwyrin, Ahmet had found the Greek city in an equal uproar. The canals and harbor were clogged with barges, dhows, and great triremes. The Roman Legion that was stationed in Egypt was being withdrawn to fight against the Persians, and tens of thousands of men were on the move. It had taken almost three days to find and see the quartermaster in charge of the levy of new troops. Then Ahmet, to his dismay, had learned that the boy had not reported in at all.

Much of his small store of coin was expended in getting the chief scribe at the prefect’s offices in the New Palace to find out where Dwyrin’s unit was heading; the Third Ars Magica, a component of the Third Cyrenaicea Legion, was being loaded aboard ship to sail to Sidon on the coast of Phoenicia. If the boy was not on the rolls in Alexandria, perhaps he had met with his unit already and was well away from the city. Non-Imperial shipping to the embattled coast of Syria was nonexistent, and he could not well take passage on a troop transport. He had made his way back to the inn on the southern canal. Several sailors had been in the common room, and discussions with them had led Ahmet to take a ship back down the Nile to Heliopolis and then go by camel to the burgeoning port of Clysma on the Sinus Arabicus. Everywhere he had traveled in the lower delta, the Roman army and its auxillia was on the move.