Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

partly into the hills. There was no evidence of Roman or Greek influence in the architecture, but instead the larger buildings had tile roofs that turned up at the corners, a style that Joshua and I would see all over Asia before our journey was finished. The people were mostly rugged, wiry people who looked like Arabs without the glow in their skin that came from a diet rich in olive oil. Instead their faces seemed leaner, drawn by the cold, dry wind of the high desert. In the market there were merchants and traders from China, and more men who looked like Ahmad and his bowmen guards, a race whom the Chinese referred to simply as barbarians.
    “The Chinese are so afraid of my people that they have built a wall, as high as any palace, as wide as the widest boulevard in Rome, and stretching as far as the eye can see ten times over,” Ahmad said.
    “Uh-huh,” I said, thinking, you lying bag-o’-guts .
    Joshua hadn’t spoken to Ahmad since the bandit attack, but he smirked at Ahmad’s story of the great wall.
    “Just so,” said Ahmad. “We will stay at an inn tonight. Tomorrow I will take you to Balthasar. If we leave early we can be there by noon, then you’ll be the magician’s problem, not mine. Meet me in front at dawn.”
    That night the innkeeper and his wife served us a dinner of spiced lamb and rice, with some sort of beer made from rice, which washed two months of desert grit from our throats and put a pleasant haze over our minds. To save money, we paid for pallets under the wide curving eaves of the inn, and although it was some comfort to have a roof over my head for the first time in months, I found that I missed looking at the stars as I fell asleep. I lay awake, half drunk, for a long time. Joshua slept the sleep of the innocent.

    The next day Ahmad met us in front of the inn with two of his African guards and two extra camels in tow. “Come on, now. This may be the end of your journey, but it is merely a detour for me,” Ahmad said. He threw us each a crust of bread and a hunk of cheese, which I took to mean we were to eat our breakfast on the way.
    We rode out of Kabul and into the hills until we entered a labyrinth of canyons, which meandered through rugged mountains that looked as if they might have been shaped by God out of clay, then left to bake in the sun until the clay had turned to a deep golden color that reflected light in a spray that ate up shadows and destroyed shade. By noon I had no sense whatsoever of what direction we were traveling, nor could I have sworn that we weren’t retracing our path through the same canyons over and over, but Ahmad’s black guards seemed to know their way. Eventually they led us around a bend to a sheer canyon wall, two hundred feet tall, that stood out from the other canyon walls in that there were windows and balconies carved into it. It was a palace hewn out of solid rock. At the base stood an ironclad door that looked as if it would take twenty men to move.
    “Balthasar’s house,” Ahmad said, prodding his camel to kneel down so he might dismount.
    Joshua nudged me with his riding stick. “Hey, is this what you expected?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t know what I expected. Maybe something a little—I don’t know—smaller.”
    “Could you find your way back out of these canyons if you had to?” Joshua asked.
    “Nope. You?”
    “Not a chance.”
    Ahmad waddled over to the great door and pulled a cord that hung down from a hole in the wall. Somewhere inside we heard the ringing of some great bell. (Only later would we learn that it was the sound of a gong.) A smaller door within the door opened and a girl stuck her head out. “What?” She had the round face and high cheekbones of an Oriental, and there were great blue wings painted on her face above her eyes.
    “It’s Ahmad. Ahmad Mahadd Ubaidullaganji. I’ve brought Balthasar the boy he has been waiting for.” Ahmad gestured in our direction.
    The girl looked skeptical. “Scrawny. You sure that’s the one?”
    “That’s the one. Tell Balthasar he owes me.”
    “Who’s that with him?”
    “That’s his stupid friend. No extra charge for him.”
    “You bring the monkey’s paws?” the girl asked.
    “Yes, and the other herbs and minerals Balthasar asked for.”
    “Okay, wait here.” She closed the door, was gone only a second, then returned. “Send just the two of them in, alone. Balthasar must examine them, then he will deal with you.”
    “There’s no need to