Born of the desert, bred in its scorching heat, Zarah made one with it in her relentless cruelty. In it she had found her joy and, what counted more to her than all, her greatest triumphs with her men. Through it love, the love which is passion, the only love of which she was capable, had come to her; in it, in years to come, death would find her.
Death!
She laughed aloud as she listened to the sound of her people calling to each other as they hastened from their quarters to obey her summons.
Death would come, as it must come to all, but not until she had repaired the mistake she had made in endeavouring to place the white man at the head of her small but turbulent kingdom; not until she had ruled for many years; not until she had wiped the memory of the white people who had tricked her from the minds of her subjects, whom she would link closer still by her union with one of themselves.
With all the instability and inconstancy of the Arab blood in her veins her passion for the white man passed, burned out in the fire of the wrath that consumed her.
Let the white people die. Let the slight ripple they had made upon the sea of her exuberant, triumphant life be wiped out, so that peace might once more reign in the Sanctuary.
Death!
With her plan of revenge in her mind she looked across at her throwing spears hanging upon the wall, then laughed as she caught sight of herself in one of the many long mirrors her intense vanity had caused her to place about the room.
As she crossed the floor she made the gesture with her fingers, used by the superstitious all the world over, against the thought of death which filled her mind, then took her favourite spear from the wall. Damascus steel, inlaid with gold, with razor edges to the slender, needle-pointed blade. She smiled as the thought of the day, those years ago, when with it she had transfixed the greyhound accepted as a gift by her father’s guest.