Sheikh's Temptation. ALEXANDRA SELLERS

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СКАЧАТЬ she never took food for granted now. Too often she had seen poor villagers produce their last morsel of food for their visitors…the generosity of the people here was the deepest she had ever met.

      So she stood, looking down to where Arash sat on a rock, his right leg extended. He too was much thinner now, though every gesture still carried the promise of power. “Thanks, Arash, I’ve had plenty.”

      She saw his pupils expand, all at once, like a cat’s. Then his eyes fell to the cup between his hands. After a moment, he lifted it to his mouth and drank deeply.

      He held it out to her again. “The last mouthful is for you.”

      He had drunk less than half, but she could not argue the point further. She took the cup with a nod and gratefully drained it, while Arash with quick efficiency cleaned up the remains of their meagre meal.

      He stood, drawing his right foot under him in the awkward way she was used to, and Lana unconsciously tightened her lips and shook her head. She knew something could be done, if not to restore full function to the knee, at least to relieve the constant pain she was sure he suffered. She had asked a couple of surgeons about his case, and the prognosis was pretty clear. Why wouldn’t he let her father finance the operation?

      They shouldered their backpacks in silence. “Ready?” Arash asked briefly, and at her nod stepped into the wind and started off. Lana followed as the rope that joined them lost its slack.

      Her hands were cold. She had only two thin pairs of gloves, and other than drawing her hands up inside her sleeves there wasn’t much she could do to warm them. Pockets were out of the question most of the way—she needed her arms free for balance.

      The wind was horrible; she had never experienced such cold, strong winds in her life. Thank God now, except for gusts, it mostly came from behind. Whenever it blew into her face and her nose, terrifyingly, it seemed to suck the breath from her lungs.

      They had been heading downhill for some time. More than once she was blown against Arash’s back. On each occasion he stopped, firm as a rock, till she got her balance, then with a brief word set off again.

      “I suppose that’s a knack you get when you’re raised in the mountains,” she called once, but if he answered her, the wind snatched away his words.

      It was funny—she didn’t like him, but she trusted him. There was no one she would rather have been in this trouble with, no one she would have trusted more to get her through this.

      She searched for her reasons. Because he was not a man who lied to himself. Arash never disguised his perception of reality in order to bolster his ego.

      How rare that was among men.

      She knew there was no one Kavi trusted more. “Arash is my right hand,” she had heard him say to Alinor once. “If I only think about a thing, it is done, as if my own hand had done it.”

      He was as fine a warrior as any of his famous ancestors: the Parvanis were a nation of storytellers and she had heard plenty of stories about Arash’s war exploits, from everyone but him.

      She had nothing but respect for him as a man. She had never seen him perform an ungenerous act.

      Except one.

      It was a pity they couldn’t like each other. But chemistry was like that, sometimes. Something primitive operating in spite of all rational process.

      And she, of course, had other reasons.

      They came to ground that sloped sharply upwards, and here, the vegetation having got a little thicker, the path was visible. Arash turned up a defile, and the wind simultaneously changed direction and blasted fiercely at them. The snow it carried was cold and hard, stinging her face with sudden ferocity.

      Losing her balance, Lana stumbled and cried out, but though the wind seemed to steal the cry right from her throat, Arash turned and stepped quickly down to her, his hand outstretched.

      She grasped it and recovered her balance, her heart beating so hard and fast that she was lightheaded for a moment. She clasped her other hand to her chest and blew out a relieved breath.

      “Thanks!”

      Her pack was heavy enough to have made a fall nasty. She might have broken a bone. His grip was firm, and he held her for an extra second to be sure she was safe. Her heart was still going like a drumroll.

      “All right?” Arash asked. “It will be easier very soon now.”

      She nodded, and he let her hand go, turned and went on.

      For a moment she stood frowning down at her hand. Just with that brief touch his hand had warmed her freezing fingers.

      After a long struggle, half-blinded by the snow, they crested the ridge, and the world was transformed. Lana, breathing heavily from exertion, gasped at her first glimpse of what lay below.

      Behind was the familiar white and grey of rock and mountain and snow, but at their feet the ground opened, as if a giant knife had cut a gash in the fabric of the earth and the two sides had been pulled apart to reveal the earth’s deepest beauty in a vast, rich valley.

      “But it’s magic!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Oh, Arash, how beautiful! It’s like—it’s like Shangri-La!”

      It was green with spring growth and the early buds on numerous trees. There were neatly planted orchards in a dozen directions, as well as the wild growth of natural forests.

      There were villages, and farms with the neat, centuries-old terracing she had come to expect in Parvan. There were sheep and goats freckling the fields, and their bells jangled on the wild wind as shepherds hastily drove them home.

      As everywhere in Parvan, there was evidence of the Kaljuks’ destructive bombs. Terraced fields were smashed, a roofless house gaped helplessly at the coming storm, sad skeletons of a burnt orchard clawed emptily at the sky.

      But there were also signs everywhere that the inhabitants were rebuilding their lives. A half-finished new roof, the fresh bricks of a rebuilt muezzin tower, freshly plowed land.

      Far to their right, a river cut through a rocky gorge and thundered in a massive, breathtaking waterfall down to the valley floor so far below. There it continued its journey as a river again, glistening between rich hilly banks all along the valley till it was lost to view.

      At their feet the path they had been following suddenly became visible as a trail leading along the steeply sloping side of the valley down towards the river. It branched out in many directions, and she realized that this path was the inhabitants’ link to the caravan route and the outer world.

      A blast of wind drove more stinging snow into her face as she paused to catch her breath, and Arash said, “We must hurry to get to cover. There is still some way to go.”

      “Has the valley been cleared of mines?” she asked.

      He nodded. “This valley was mostly spared the mines in any case, being so close to the Barakat border. The Kaljuks were afraid of bringing the Barakat Emirates into the war against them. If a pilot had made a mistake, if the mines or the bombs fell across the border…”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ