"Do not worry, my love. The mare has been bred for docility, I promise you."

Tamar put a gentle hand on Iris's shoulder, and said in a low voice, "Don't overprotect her, Iris. You will do her no favor if you do. Bedawi women are bred to be independent."

"I want to ride her now!" Zenobia cried, and Zabaai lifted his daughter up onto the mare's back. She sat proudly, as if she had been born to sit there. "Come on, Akbar! I'll race you!" Zenobia challenged her father's heir.

"I must get to my horse," he protested, amused.

"Well hurry!" she fussed at him, and was quickly off through the courtyard door.

In the year in which she was eleven Zenobia decided she would not go on the winter trek with her family. Palmyra had suddenly become a fascinating place to her. How she loved the city with its beautiful covered and colonnaded streets, great temples and broad marble avenues, its wonderful shops and open-air markets, each with a different and distinct smell. Leather tanning. Perfumes being blended. Wet wool being readied for weaving and dyeing. The silk-dyeing vats. The livestock. The spices. Exotic foods of all kinds. She simply couldn't bear to leave it again!

With stubborn resolve she had secreted herself when no one was looking, and now she hugged herself gleefully, convinced she would not be found.

"Zenobia!" Tamar's voice echoed sharply through the virtually empty house. "Zen-o-bia! Where are you, child? Come now, you cannot hide from us any longer! The trek has already begun."

"Zenobia, you are being foolish!" Iris's voice was becoming tinged with annoyance. "Come to us at once!"

Under the great bed in her father's bedchamber the child crouched, chuckling softly. She would not spend the winter in the damned desert again this year. The gods only knew she hated it! Miles and miles and miles of endless sand. Long, boring days of blue skies, cloudless and as placid as pap. She sniffed with distaste.