Dragons on the Sea of Night by Eric Van Lustbader

intricately carved and handsomely worked which opened inward, on clever hinges, the imposing front doors to the compound. But Moichi explained that his forefathers had been world merchants even when it had been dangerous and inadvisable to seek trade with the continent of man, and they had fallen in love with many of the foreign products for which they hammered out long-term deals.
    The villa was situated atop the highest of the nine hills that overlooked the great curving bay that was one of Iskael’s few natural assets. Far below them, the crescent city of Ala’arat spread like the frond of a date palm. It had taken them all day to file the necessary papers with the harbor authorities. For a bustling port, Ala’arat was crawling with security in the unwieldy guise of bureaucratic red tape. Now, in the twilight, the city shone like a jewel, lights twinkling, changing colors in the twists of smoke rising from myriad cooking fires. The air was perfumed by the sounds, distant and haunting, of voices raised in ululating prayer. The cobbled streets of the city’s vast markets, choked since dawn, were almost deserted as the sacred hour of chaat, the weekly holy evening approached. Moichi hoped to reach his villa before the beginning of the ritual feast.
    â€˜Once, many years ago, all of Ala’arat was as bare and bleached as desert bones,’ he told Aufeya as they walked up the snaking drive. ‘In the space of a generation, the Iskamen made lush landscape out of rock and wind-blown sand.’
    â€˜Why did you settle here, if it was so inhospitable?’
    Moichi paused, pointing over the roofs of the villa. ‘Out there is the Mu’ad, the Great Desert. The Iskamen traveled half a year in the Mu’ad wastes. Any other people wandering in the Mu’ad for so long would have died of thirst or exposure. But God was with us. He showed us that we had no choice – the Mu’ad was our destiny.’ They began to walk again, toward the villa’s great oaken gates. ‘You see, Aufeya, the Iskamen had spent eight generations enslaved by a race called the Adenese, who live on the far side of the Mu’ad. God spoke to the Iskamen elders. He told them they would be safest across the Great Desert.’
    â€˜But even though your people are free, Moichi, there are so many armed guards, so many suspicious eyes at the port and in the streets.’
    â€˜Old fears die hard, and the bitter truth is that the persecution of the Iskamen has never really ceased.’
    She cocked her head quizzically. ‘You knew this, and yet you chose to turn your back on it.’
    â€˜I chose to become a navigator.’
    â€˜To take to the seas. To leave your homeland and your people’s fight far behind.’
    He rounded on her angrily. ‘Are you questioning my courage?’
    She felt the searing heat from his eyes and put her hand gently on his arm, feeling the muscles tense and rippling. ‘Not your courage, Moichi, never that. I owe you my life – more than I could ever know how to repay in one lifetime.’ Her voice softened as she kissed him passionately. ‘And I love you as I’ve loved no other man. It’s your commitment to the ancient struggle of your people I’m talking of.’
    Moichi was silent for some time. The swirling palm fronds seemed to bend the last of the sunlight, making of it something living and aqueous, like a creature from the sea-bottom slithering out of its coral den. A kestrel cried suddenly, a predator from the desert.
    â€˜â€œMan the ramparts, the Adenese are coming!” That was my brother’s battle cry. It was the rationale for the entire Fe’edjinn, our virulently militant sect. Freedom fighters, they called themselves, but in my mind they were no more than assassins, bent on circumventing the laws of Iskael to achieve power and their fanatical objective: a holy war of retribution against the Adenese. His