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VIRGA REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS when a sponge was thrown across his face No, not a sponge, he decided momentarily, but rather his swollen and bloody hand He re way, like sticks broken by powerful hands, and wanted to be sick but could not , to the top of his throat and tried to get his bearings

He looked up at the bright stars as they whirled their divine patterns But night was not old; a faint tinge of purple in the sky showed the path on which the sun had slipped the horizon He wasjostled and bounced on thick tires, and there was the loud roar of an engine There was no longer the sulf salt in the air Now there was only the dry, bitter sa&039;s knees were drawn up tightly, his legs cramped He had been slammed onto the rear floorboard of a Land-Rover and it was only when he twisted his head to the side that he realized his ed with coarse cloth At the driver&039;s seat was a nize Yes The fair-haired man from Baal&039;s library And in the other seat was the darker disciple He had seen them for only a split second before his vision was blocked out by a fist Both of the men wore pistols at their belts

How far into the desert they were Virga had no way of knowing He didn&039;t knohere they were headed or why, but he made no noise or motion to indicate to the disciples that he had awakened

His head pounded fiercely It was a fiery ache that raged just behind his eyes The pain of his head and the pain of his shattered hand were two brothers who met somewhere at his shoulder

He realized that the crucifix had saved hily repelled the a would have been swept away by an aweso Thein mockery of the stars

The Land-Rover dipped and swayed over desert dunes like a craft at sea The two uns they wore spoke for the to be killed or held soreed to aid Baal Perhaps he would even be tortured These were uilt, without ht off a neave of unconsciousness that crept subtly over hiers, crushed and crooked, had turned blue Veins throbbed in his wrist and the injured hand had swollen hideously to twice its size Like Job&039;s disease, Virga thought, almost humored by that recollection The Land-Rover, jarred by rocks, brought him back into the terrible present and the realization that hethe men&039;s profiles There sees were very stiff If he could leap fro place in the darkness, perhaps but he feared that his legs ainst the shock If his knees buckled they would simply run him down, if they ain if they meant to hold him captive He worked his shoulders free, painfully, and was able to glance about in the darkness On all sides the desert was bare and forbidding The only lights he saere cast by the headlas of rock He drew his head back down

He would not get two chances The element of surprise would have to carry hi able to find a hiding place If theyto do; if theyto do because he would rather be dead than help thisunder the cloth, he worked his legs free He tensed to ju for a rush of adrenaline to boost him His heart pounded al a bluff Rocks thuritted his teeth and, shoving out with his legs, dived over the side of the vehicle

He cradled his injured hand but his elbows hit rocks when he fell, shredding his jacket He cried out involuntarily and knew that the muffled sound had carried As he slid across rocks to smooth sand at the base of the bluff, he saw the two men look down at the Land-Rover&039;s empty rear floorboard

The Land-Rover turned sharply, its yellow headlaa scra with the awful pain, and ran The sand, sucking at his shoes, slowed him Behind him the vehicle roared louder and louder He did not dare took around Suddenly there came the crack! of a pistol shot and sand kicked up viciously to his right, less than a foot away Virga knew they meant to murder him Before him stretched a plain of sand and rock; the Land-Rover would soon reach him on this terrain Already his silhouette ran ahead of hi distance He cursed and felt cold panic rising There was no place to hide!

But no! Virga ducked his head and ran, s the swirl of sand from the heavy-ribbed tires Ahead, the plain suddenly dropped off into jagged darkness: a narrow chasm If he could reach it the Land-Rover couldn&039;t folloithout turning turtle But there was no way of judging its depth It could be a fall of only ten feet to deep sand, or it could be a fall of twenty-five feet to razor-edged rocks There was no tiainst a death in free-fall The Land-Rover roared at his heels; the next bullet screa the edge, leaped out into space

The length of the fall made him shriek into the cloth Brush and rocks ripped at him And then, finally, he hit sand peppered with stone His knees and elbows scraped raw, he rolled for cover against the chas and panted heavily, listening for another shot

Dozens of feet above hihts of the Land-Rover prowled the opposite wall He could see theover the precipice into the chasainst the wall of sand and stone, afraid that they ht pinpoint hi After a few endless a watched the Land-Rover&039;s headlaa&039;s senses stirred Perhaps they had lost hi at the bottoht be dead and now they were searching for the body The Land-Rover slowly, slowly followed the winding course of the chasa watched the yellow headlamps move away Yes! They&039;d lost hi the swollen agony of his hand; his eyes were narrowed and probing the depths around him, wary of some kind of trick Perhaps one of the un in hand, stalking hiin to fire rando bullets in haphazard patterns Slugs whined around hi the chasm wall as bullets ricocheted off the rock Theof eed themselves back into their seats and the Land-Rover tore away across the desert, leaving a tail of spinning sand

It was a very long ti a foothold on rocks or a grip on brush, he fell twice before hauling hie Very far away but still visible on the desert were the red taillights of the vehicle

Watching the Land-Rover vanish in the night, Virga are of the pain that had crawled up his shoulder and spread across his chest, sending out razors as reconnaissance over the fields of flesh It gradually and insidiously clai it, and when it reached his temples he slumped forward and lay with his lips pressed into the sand

When he awakened he realized why they had not ht of the predawn sky he struggled to his feet, his hand hanging like a sack of concrete, and saw the immense empty expanse of desert that even now shifted and danced in veils of heat For miles and miles and miles beyond stretched only the white dunes and sunbaked flats God only kne far it would be to a highway or a Bedouin waterhole Soon the sun would burst over the far dam of land and drown him in an ocean of his own salt sweat Around hi arc, ca in their sand nests Flies began circling his head, darting down to suck at the sweat; they sreedily to the crusted wound on his pal whether he was dead or not, because out here it was only a h tire tracks were still clear in the direction in which the Land-Rover traveled He blessed the deep indentations that stretched on, on, on out of sight, seeing in thea pulled his jacket up like a makeshift Arab headdress to protect his face and bald head He started walking, squinting as the sun whitened above the horizon

The sun cli insects bit at his exposed flesh When he ducked his head to escape their whirling cloud they descended too; they filled his eyes and clogged his nostrils They sainst his face He moved on, across rock flats and across dunes in which he sank to his knees Overhead the sun was both a staring inflamed eye and an open bloody s craain; he had to sit in the sand and knead the ain Soon he found hi off the tire track Shaking hi to see telephone lines or the rise of derricks, but nothing altered the desolation His lips cracked with the unbearablehi else He was past the point of either pain or fear, he concentrated on what seemed to be the blue shi the Charles with Katherine clutching his arm, her nose and cheeks windburned, her dark hair wild in the bracing wind Above theht the fresh scent of the onderful river; he wondered now, thousands of miles from that time and place, why he hadn&039;t cupped his hand in the water and pressed it to his lips, gently, just like this

And when he opened his eyes he staggered and spat out sand