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PROLOGUE

In the deepness of the desert, amid dunes taller than any prayer tower, men are made tiny, less than ants The sun burns there, the hispers, all is in ht The prophet said sand is neither kind nor cruel, but in the oven of the Sahar it is hard to think that it does not hate you

Tahnoon’s back ached, his tongue scraped dry across the roof of his ait of his calare even behind the thin material of his shesh He pushed the discomfort aside His spine, his thirst, the soreness of the saddle, none of it mattered The caravan behind him relied on Tahnoon’s eyes, only that If Allah, thrice-blessed his narant that he saw clearly then his purpose was served

So Tahnoon rode, and he watched, and he beheld the multitude of sand and the vast eaather coth his fellow Ha’tari rode the slopes, their vigilance turned outward, guarding the soft al’Effem with their tarnished faith Only the Ha’tari kept to the coid observance was all that kept a h and survive, but only Tahnoon’s people lived in the Sahar, neverthe fine line in all things Pure Allah’s chosen

Tahnoon angled his camel up the slope The al’Effem sometimes named their beasts Another weakness of the tribes not born in the desert In addition, they scri Allah his full due

The wind picked up, hot and dry,the sand hiss as it stripped it fro the top of the slope, Tahnoon gazed down into yet another ehts returning along his trail to the caravan He glanced back toward the curving shoulder of the next dune, behind which his charges laboured along the path he had set them These particular al’Effem had been in his care for twenty days noo more and he would deliver them to the city Two rate upon hihters were the worst Walking behind their father’s camels, they wore not the twelve-yard thobe of the Ha’tari but a nine-yard aboht its folds barely concealed the woman beneath

The curve of the dune drew his eye and for a second he iined a female hip He shook the vision from his head and would have spat were his mouth not so dry

“God forgive me for my sin”

Twodays

The wind shifted fro Tahnoon fro to turn her head fro of the sand Tahnoon did not turn his head Just twenty yards before hie, but like none Tahnoon had seen in forty dry years The empty space rippled as if it were liquid silver, then tore, offering glimpses of soht that woke every ache the Ha’tari had been ignoring and turned each into a throbbing misery Tahnoon’s lips drew back as if a sour taste had filled hishis fear

“What?” A whisper to hied strips through rents in the fabric of the world Tahnoon saw a naked woman, her body sculpted from every desire a man could own, each curve underwritten with shadow and caressed by that saht The wo heartbeats before his gaze finally wandered up to her face and the shock turound he had his saif in hand The de, baring fangs like those of a dozen giant cobras

Tahnoon scraone, the thud of her feet diained the crest in time to see the slashed veil between him and the teh the side of a tent The succubus stood fully displayed and before her, now tuh the torn air, a man, half-naked The man hit the sand hard, leapt up in an instant, and reached overhead to where the succubusher way into the rip that he’d dived through headfirst As she reached for hiertips, theblack clutched in his fist, and with an audible click it was all gone The hole torn into another world— gone The deone The ancient teht of that awful place sealed away again behind whatever thinness keeps us frohtmare