The Legend of Sheba by Tosca Lee

Author:Tosca Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

When we reached Najran, the farthest north I had ever been in my life, I gave Khalkharib my simple message to send ahead with a company of men:

King of contradictions! You are tortured and commanding. You beg and then require.

I delight you. I anger you.

You say if I am wise I will be cautious. The wise and cautious both speak little and yet you crave my words.

You say if I am clever I will be simple. And yet you relish riddles.

You say I must send words in quantities to feed a king, but not by my wisest or cleverest man.

Very well. I grant them all. I shall send no man. As you cast your bread upon water, I shall cast mine upon the sands.

Prepare a place for me.

The first weeks of the journey I had felt liberated, interested in every detail, invigorated the day the entire caravan covered itself against a rolling cloud of sand from the desert and awed by the mystical shroud that hung over us after. And by even the sand itself, ever in the ears and hair and food, as messy as bread and lovemaking.

But now, after dispatching my men, I was restless. I could no longer fall into the meditative stupor of the saddle, nor be lulled by the tinkling of the amulets and ornaments dancing from bridles. I felt worn down by the endless stretch of the world before me. And I was weary especially of the smell of burning camel dung.

Even the tribespeople who came to sit by our fires failed to fascinate me, one of them most recently raising my hackles when he pointed at me and asked loudly if I were a gift for Solomon’s Egyptian queen. Many of these people, upon seeing the presence of such good bulls, left quickly and came back leading a she-camel in estrus to have her serviced. Sometimes it was not camels that were brought to our caravan, but women, by their seedless husbands or even their mothers. I never watched to see whose fire they went to, though I did wonder if Tamrin had serviced such women himself.

The terrain grew dryer, the acacia and junipers more stunted as we skirted a bizarre landscape of lava fields. By the time we entered the fertile plain south of Bakkah with its pale, yellow soil, only the Desert Wolves could ease my stiff ennui. On more than one occasion I watched them break suddenly away from the caravan, disappearing at times for an entire day before returning to their feeding fire at night with a gazelle. At night, I listened to the peculiar ceremony with which they divided the meat among them, drawing lots for each portion as it was served, while in other camps men argued endlessly that they had received far too much until their meat went cold.

“This is for the smelliest man,” the lot drawer would say and pluck a reed with a man’s mark upon it from his fist. Laughter and shoulder slapping ensued.

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