# #
Perhaps you would prefer the story this way, Lord Prince:
# #
Prince Leonas sat on the cold, hard sand before the campfire. Somewhere behind him, a camel snorted. Certainly he could smell it. Certainly, too, he knew how he had come to be here, though the details were fading now, as if he had awakened from a dream.
On the other side of the fire, the owlish boy reached up his hand and caught the glowing scarab beetle. He pressed the insect gently to his chest and allowed it to crawl into his loose, ragged garment. Leonas knew that the scarab was a messenger of Surat-Hemad, the crocodile-headed Lord of Death, Who lies in the mud at the center of the universe, He Whose teeth are the stars, Whose mouth is the night sky, out of Whose belly the Great River flows and into which it and all
