Telamon hailed the most proximate of these harvesters as he and David came up. “What do you reap, sisters?”
The dame held up a withered sprig. She wore mittens of rawhide and took care not to let the plant near her nose or mouth or to breathe its vapors.
“Haban, ashkar, Sodom’s apple.” She indicated a smaller, second sack about her waist. “And devil’s trumpet.”
“Are you witches?” Telamon asked.
The woman laughed. “Slaves.”
David noticed, then, warders among the foragers, in muffled garb as well, armed with bows, slings, and lances.
Man and boy sat out the heat of the later postnoon at a spring beneath an outcrop. A father and son had taken shelter in this shade as well. The pair led an ass so small that David thought at first it was a dog, yet laden with a load as weighty as that borne by Telamon’s broad-backed Jericho mule.
“What are you doing out here?” David asked the boy.
The lad lifted the flap on one of the sacks on the ass’s back. The bag writhed with live scorpions.
“We milk them,” he said, “for the poison.”
The venom would be processed into an elixir called an almahlusat, “vision maker,” the father explained. This stuff was much prized in Alexandria and even in Rome. “Priests use it too,” he said.
“What for?” David asked.
“To see God.”
“The desert is a froomah, my boy!” declared the father, using the Nabatean word for “pharmacy.” “Whatever ails a man, God has here planted its antidote. And free of all imposts!”
One traversed this pre-wilderness, David came to understand, from inhabited place to inhabited place, or more exactly from well to well. Encountering a fellow upon the trail, a traveler proffered news of the country through which he had passed and received the same from him he hailed.
Out here, when you asked how far it was from point to point, the answer was given in wells. “To Wadi Alnahl, four wells.” “Alexandria, thirty.”
David dared not ask Telamon where the Big Desert began, or when they would come upon it. The mercenary, he knew, would only cede him a stern look.
Man and boy came late in the day to a sere valley so devoid of life that neither could pick out a tree or even a bush. David was tramping in a semi-stupor, brought about by the double oppression of the late sun glaring into his eyes and the waves of fire yet ascending through his soles from the still-scorching desert floor. He had fallen twenty paces behind Telamon.
David noticed a bee land on the back of his right hand.
How odd, he thought, here where there are neither blooms nor flowers. A second touched down, then a third and a fourth. David heard a fierce buzzing, then felt a shadow, like that cast by a cloud, hissing directly above. A bee flew up one of his mule’s nostrils. The beast balked and squalled.
Before David could reckon or react, a swarm of thousands filled the air about his eyes and ears. Ahead, he saw Telamon enveloped by the same assault. David’s mule bawled and kicked; the boy had to seize the halter rope with both hands.
“Master!” he heard his voice cry. He scurried forward, fleeing this onslaught, which followed, emitting a keening thrum that seemed to drown utterly David’s cries.
Through the furious cloud about his head, the boy spotted an upright post, or perhaps it was a stump, standing beside the mercenary. Telamon was speaking to this.
David realized the post was a man.
The man’s flesh was covered in a carpet of bees.
David hastened up.
Bees fashioned a beard upon the fellow’s face and a helmet atop his brow. The swarm made him as well a coat and trousers, and even ankle-boots about his feet.
“Hold still,” the fellow commanded. “Do not swat. And whatever you do, show no fear.”
Bees in myriads enveloped Telamon and David. But no mass settled upon either’s flesh as they did upon the man made of bees. Instead the bees swarmed in a cloud about their heads.
“Remain calm,” said the man. “These will wing away in a moment.”
Sure enough, after a few seconds the swarm took flight. By the count of twenty the host had vanished entirely, except those settled upon the man made of bees. These seemed utterly at ease and void of agitation. They neither buzzed nor hummed.
“Welcome to the Valley of Lavender,” said the fellow. He gestured around the shoulder of the ridge. There, extending for miles within a sheltering cove, spread a carpet of bloom, in vivid blue, pink, rose, purple, and violet. “You are free to pass through.”
David stared at the man in astonishment. Bees filled the pockets of his ears and the voids of his nostrils. They trod even upon the lashes of his eyes.
“Are you all right, sir? Does this swarm remain upon you night and day?”
The man laughed and indicated that he felt no distress.
“But,” said David, “don’t they sting you?”
The man smiled with lips made of bees. “I am all stings,” he said.
Telamon’s glance to David said, Uncover the panniers.
The youth obeyed.
“If I may ask,” the mercenary addressed his host, “are you called Timothy?”
“I am.”
The mercenary introduced himself and David. He said nothing about the errand he ran or whom he ran it for. He indicated the load of clay jars that he and the boy had carried on their mules from the stock pens. “We have brought you a dolet.”
The man made of bees thanked Telamon and directed him and the boy to follow.
Telamon and David were not permitted to enter the Valley of Lavender. They were led by their host a quarter mile beyond the shoulder of the ridge. From this vantage they were directed to a bivouac among tamarisks at the southern terminus of the vale.
“Leave the jars there,” said the man. “I will send a boy for them later. There is a spring with a pool, at which you may refresh yourselves. Stay just the night. You are the only travelers at the moment. You will be alone and safe.”
The pockets of the man’s eyes cleared themselves now of bees, as did his nose and upper lip. David found that he was already becoming accustomed to this odd apparition.
“We were told at the stock pens in Gaza,” said Telamon to Timothy, “that you might possess intelligence of any who had passed this way.”
The mercenary reached for his purse.
Timothy’s raised hand made clear that the offer of remuneration was unnecessary.
Telamon apologized at once. He begged the man’s pardon if he had inadvertently offered offense.
“In the wilderness,” said Timothy, “all in need are aided, as each himself may one day be in need of aid.”
The man made of bees straightened and glanced about. Clearly he was readying to take his leave. No other human or animal stood visible as far as sight could carry.
“He whom you seek,” said Timothy, “passed this way three nights ago.”
The fellow unslung an article from his shoulder. David realized that the man was carrying some kind of rucksack. From its folds the fellow withdrew a clay jar the size of a small melon. The jar was sealed across its mouth with wax and tied with twine.
“Honey,” said the man made of bees.
He handed the jar to Telamon.
“This will be your dolet for the Anthill.”