Fazel the Eunch smashed his fist down upon the table. Rattling the expensive glassware which covered the surface of mirror polished teak. Before him the captain of the guard, a great ebony skinned man from the far south stared over his shoulder. The room was expensively appointed with walls of smooth white sandstone and brightly colored mosaics inlaid into its floor. Luxiourious furnishings and exotic silks hung in careless testament to a life spent in the acquisition of power. If the Captain was intimidated by the Vizier's outburst he was at pains to show no sign of it.

"So they escaped under the very noses of your men and cannot be found? A thousand soldiers and you cannot bring me one woman and a lowly slave?!" Fazel was a small man of almost feminine build and a bald head that shone with the oil with which he polished it but he had a presence and right now his eyes held a snapping fury which would have cowed lesser men.

"They bought a boat from a merchant on the docks," the captain reported tossing the golden coin the guards had retrieved from the wretch so that it bounced down the length of the table towards Fazel. Before it completed its bouncing journey Fazel swatted it violently from the air so that it clinked musically against a far wall and ricochet off among a stand of pottery.

"I am not interested in some date swindler you cursed fool!" the enuch roared.

"Would you like us to search the river for miles down stream Vizier?" the captain asked in his stony barritone.

"I'm certain that the Sultan would not object to removing guards from the city. The Vizier fumed for a moment in silence. If there was one thing that all who knew Sultan Ali Ib Tariz, Lord of Silver Shod Sharsaya, Lion of the Tagria, Beloved of Allah and Defender of the Faith, agreed upon it was that he was a coward. The Sultan bowels would spasm if Fazel suggested denuding the city of guards.

"Get out," Fazel hissed in a deadly quiet tone that contrasted jarring with the fury of a few moments ago. The Captain banged his fist to his breastplate in salute and bowed himself out.

Fazel turned to a great mirror of beaten copper which hung upon the sacred eastern wall of his chambers and waved a hand in a cryptic gesture. The shadow imperfections of the mirror shimmered and then seemed to coalesce into the barest suggestion of a great face.

"Speak," boomed a low and distant voice, filled with an ageless malevolence. Fazel dropped to one knee an act he would never have performed before Ali Ib Tariz even should the fat old Sultan have demanded it.

"My Lord... I... I regret that the Anhouri has fled the city?" Fazel stammered his voice dropping to a whisper.

"Fled?" the voice enquired with deceptive calm, the shadows shifting once more in less recognisable patterns.

"Y.. yes my Lord, she killed Abdul the Cartographer and fled to the west along the Tagria." Fazel was sweating now even as the room chilled noticeably.

"Fled alone and with the map?" the voice went on. Fazel didn't want to speak, had intended not to speak but some force beyond him pulled the answer from him like a cork being drawn from a bottle of arak.

"With a slave my lord, a nobody."

"FOOL!" roared the voice defeningly loud within Fazel's mind.

"Do you think the Anhouri would delay herself for the sake of a mere slave!" Fazel pressed his fingers to his ears though it provided no more defense than raising ones hands against a spear thrust.

"A nobody my Lord a pit fighter of some note in the squalid hole he came from but nothing to us."

"The Anhouri does nothing without cause worm," the voice went on. The room was chill now, a sheath of condensation forming on the glass ware even as Fazel quivered.

"Find out what you can of this slave. The Cartographer, did she burn his body when she was done with him?"

"No... no my Lord, my soldiers drove her off before she had a chance," Fazel explained in a rush feeling his thundering heart slow to have some news to report that did not end in his failure. His master had little tolerance for failure.

"Very well, bring his corpse to me before midnight and we shall see what this map and this slave have to do with our plans."

With a sudden release of tension, like a storm breaking on a summer night the cold and the voice were gone and the mirror was nothing more than a mirror slicked with moisture which rapidly evaporated in the desert heat. Fazel, Vizier of Shayshaya, shakily stood and staggered towards the door way, a trickle of blood running from his ears and fear in his heart.

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