Men turned uneasy eyes toward the centermost, the highest tower of all, capped in a wrought spiral of gold like a flame and gleaming with wondrous mosaics of mauve and rose marble. They knotted their fists tightly at their sides and crooked their thumbs in the protective sign of the thunder god, Balass. “Now the tengri and the high fire of heaven protect us,” whispered the men in the bazaars and hurriedly began to batten the open fronts of their shops. The litters of the wealthy made haste to seek the safety of their own brazen gates and high, spiked walls. On the rich blue waters of Baikul, the knout whips of the overseers cracked across the arching backs of the slaves, urging the pointed prows of the fish galleys toward the water gate. In the fields, other naked slaves swung to their shoulders the crude tools of the soil and trotted sullenly under the guards’ whips. When once more that thin wailing note that might come from the heart of the air, or might indeed sound within the bowels of man himself, the Flame Wind would begin to blow in from the Kara-korum, the desert of the Black Sands.
